Non-partisan blog posts – Page 11

What Next…No Butter Knives?

I am not exactly a candidate for NRA membership but this bit of news about shutting down a Toronto university shooting range with a perfect track record smacks heavily of something very smelly:

While news of the closing came to light recently, the university made the decision months ago, during a regular five-year review of Hart House activities, says Rob Steiner, U of T assistant vice-president. When it came to allotting the institution’s scarce resources, the committee couldn’t reconcile firing weapons on the university’s grounds with the U of T’s core values of “discovery and education,” safety and maximizing the opportunity for dissent, he said. “Shooting a gun on campus. Sit with that for a second. It leaves me cold,” Steiner said. “This campus is a gun-free area, full stop. You can learn about safety on campus and shoot somewhere else.”

The civilized and safe doing of anything outside the criminal is a pursuit of excellence. Interesting to note that U of T has a professor with a Phd in Experimental Nuclear Physics who worked for NATO who likely pursues his vocation excellently and safely. There is a fencing team. There maybe a a boxing team and there is a wushu club, training in Communist Chinese martial arts programs. Likely all pursue their craft safely and excellently. The Canucks Amuck, a wargaming club, even meets monthly at Hart House.

But a gun club…that’s different.

Ratty R.I.P.

As discussed in the spring, we have a neighbourhood garden rat feeding off the bounty of various well maintained compost piles. Don’t believe the “no meat, no pests” stuff – they are branching out into vegetarianism. Or rather we did have such a beast. Yesterday, the snap of the trap took him from us. It is a bit of a thing picking out one animal from the fairly robust mammalian world of a 43 year old suburb between two or three wild zones. I would have felt bad if a chipmunk were to be taken out as collateral damage. And I am not particularly anti-rat as they are only squirrels with bad PR. But it was in the shed too much. My shed.

Anyway, a thin coat of peanut butter all over the snappy trap was the thing. The lump did not work. You have to keep shifting the tactics. In the past rats have met their maker via a sticky trap and bucket laced with baking soda into which vinegar was then poured or, once, a hockey stick. A Mario Lemieux model as I recall. This one’s life’s path was far more humane in its conclusion. He joins a host of mousies as well as one night-jumping deer and a rather fat groundhog that almost broke an axle all waiting for me at the pearly gates where they will no doubt get me.

We Am Doooooomed!!!

Who knew?

The humble office printer can damage lungs in much the same way as smoke particles from cigarettes, according to a team of Australian scientists. An investigation of a range of models showed that almost a third emit potentially dangerous levels of toner into the air.

Quick – who wants to start a think tank and fund raising group dedicated to stamping out computer printers. While there are many in, say, the global warming anti-Suzuki set who will say this is nonsense, I am convinced that this is both a real threat and quite funny.

Dreamy Yuffs

Some days it’s hard to find a story that will please and inform Hans. For all I know, he’s on vacation or in a white painted ward somewhere for people with internet addiction but my role here is clear: make sure Hans gets a story a day. But the dog days of summer can be tough in terms of fodder if you are not going to go on and on about something or other. So seeing as the well is pretty much dry, let’s looks at yuff today. Here is one example – some guy working at a job a week:

With many more jobs to go, he said he’s trying to help his generation deal with how to reconcile their views on personal success with their dreams of making a difference. “We’re more aware of how we impact others. It’s looking for a career situation that in which we can be happy and be passionate about, but also how we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves,” he said. “It’s totally cheesy. But I think cliches become cliches for a reason.”

“We’re more aware…” That statement is made every year by some guy doing something vaguely familiarly nutty, some difference-maker-in-training who will end up owning a business, hiring, firing and chalking it all up to “passion.” Dandy. Fabulous even. The world and developers of houses on slightly larger than normal up-scaleish suburbs need them. I was more aware once. Then I got older and blogging started. [You know who was aware as a youth? Harry Patch. Having a little too much awareness is not an impossibility.]

So, I was in the grocery store the other day and had a weird yuff related deja vu of sorts. Some Hall and Oates song was playing as I looked for some goat cheese or another bag of coffee beans. I am still unsure why the 2 am dance bar pick up music from when I was 19 is now the 11 am dairy aisle music of my forties. Anyway, I was thinking about what I was going to put together for supper and thought “I wonder what Bruce is drinking tonight” – whammo – in a total time shifted second I was in 1982 undergrad moment – not a reflection but a real mental blip – planning for a BBQ at 44 transformed in an instant to planning a party at 19. Very creepy. And then I thought it was creepy. There was something immersive in the moment that brought me back to the smell of a dorm, drifty anxiety, the perfect generation assuming it’s on the cusp of something we-are-more-aware-ish. Who needs that? I shook my head and the moment was gone. Whatever Bruce was drinking back then it was crap and there was far too much of it.

Which is all to say good luck to you, job a week kid, as some guy now dead or retired wished me good luck a quarter century ago. You will make something of yourself as most do. And, even better, good times and fine goat cheese and decent lawn chairs are just a couple of decades ahead, too.

Which Of The Orange Games To Hit?

If last year’s trip to the Carrier Dome taught me anything, it is not the best opponent that makes the best game but the best match in an opponent. Which means the one you beat in overtime. So which is the most likely home game to give the best experience?

Fri, Aug 31 – Washington

Sat, Sep 15 – Illinois
Sat, Oct 6 – West Virginia
Sat, Oct 13 – Rutgers
Sat, Oct 20 – Buffalo
Sat, Nov 10 – South Florida
Sat, Nov 24 – Cincinnati

By the way, I can’t see sustaining another season following one player as closely as I followed Brendan Carney last year. I need to pick a higher level approach to being a fan. Following total defensive stats or some such thing.

Red Tape Or Something Else

A fairly alarming report in the NYT this morning detailing how the Iraqi government appears to have little interest in getting control of the rebuilding being undertaken there:

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day. Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is “finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, ‘Operate and maintain it,’ ” another official in the inspector general’s office said.

It would be naive to have expected after more than four years that there would not be tensions between the civil authorities in Iraq and the American forces but this appears to be a plan to undermine success as much as anything. What to do with this information? There can’t be any point in continuing to reconstruct only to watch projects fall apart soon after. That is nothing but building sand castles. But, like the person stuck in the manic needy relationship, you may be too aware of the alternatives.

Friday Linkfest For The End Of July

Just like that it’s gone – the thing you wait for all year. No one waits for August. That is like waiting for the weekend to come so you can sit on Sunday afternoon thinking about the workweek to come.

Big Toe Update: really – big toe.
Update: Ben points out why Hillary is very likely going to be the next President – the responsibility gene.
I don’t know if this should make me cry or make me laugh.
How to make pals? Hit them up for money:

Another Conservative official who was approached said in political parties, “these things normally should not have to be asked for.” The official said he already contributes to the party and the request has exacerbated uncomfortable relations between the PMO and some ministerial offices.

What is it about these guys that they seek out and destroy goodwill wherever they go.
Rob shares in interesting warning. As you know, Rob is much more keen on the new digital order but I appreciate how he is learning about it before our eyes:

It’s almost impossible to buy music with no frame of reference. There were no hits, no recommendations, no “if you like x, you’ll like y”. I realized that the time it would take to decide if I liked an album was probably worth more than the $3 it would cost to buy one–in other words, not even worth it for “free.” Musicians, bloggers, writers–if you’re toiling in the long tail, getting stuck at zero is now a real possibility. Being just like the other guys but trying harder is less of an effective strategy than ever before.

Yes, the long tail has plenty of room at zero. They didn’t mention that bit. Without authority nothing is authoritative. Without guidance we are unguided. How do you do that in the million person village? I am not saying not to do it. Nick is quite right about the importance of doing. But how does one do when the only venues come with sidewalks? Does it matter?
Truly, the Kitty of Dis.
Patty Smith is playing “Because the Night” live on CBS’s The Early Show, given seven seconds in passing during a promo introduction for the eight am news. A part of me just died.

That is it. Maybe more later. Off to the office on a nice sunny day.

Fix The Record

So what do you do with cheats? Fix the record says Curt Schilling:

Schilling also had some choice things to say about Jose Canseco, the former Major League All-Star who has freely admitted to using steroids, and who detailed his usage in a 2005 book. “Jose Canseco admitted he cheated his entire career,” said Schilling. “Everything he ever did should be wiped clean. I think his MVP should go back and should go to the runnerup.” Former Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell, who finished second in the 1988 American League MVP race, has stated numerous times that he thinks the trophy should be taken away from Canseco and given to him.

This is entirely reasonable. Sports rely on integrity as much as tradition and performance to attract our attention and gain our devotion. So there is no reason not to fix the wrong of these records any more than there is no reason to consider Ben Johnson a champion.

But can the principle be extended? Sports is something of a last bastion of the appearance of integrity it seems. We have celebrity crooks like Conrad Black, Martha Stewart and Lindsay Lohan – not to mention political criminals like Scooter Libby and maybe even our own Senator Eric Berntson. Why do they, too, not meet with the universal castigation they deserve so richly? We have fallen into a trap as a culture of fretting about the institutions by which we judge our wrong-doers. To what end? Who gains? It operates in a very similar way to how professional sports leagues and international sports bodies circle wagons to insulate themselves from taint. It is a reaction, of course. The same sort of reaction that you hear these days from people who actually suggest that if you do not understand dog fighting you do not understand the US South. Others are blamed. The wrong is diminished.

We fail to address wrongs at our own peril as sooner or later we stop being able to tell right from wrong…and then stop even being able to trust that there is right and wrong. A moral vacuum is created. So ask why those empowered to determine things are undermined by cranks and naysayers when you see it happen. Ask why, too, when the person so empowered does not act.

The Cheats Around All Us

For a blogger of some heritage relative to the medium – yes, I am now part of Canada’s blogging heritage being well into my fifth year of it – I hope I have no sense of my own importance. Sure, I did once…but that was 2004 when bloggers were going to rule the planet, leading through words alone, thrilling with my intellectual purity and strident adherence to the one or two ideas I had, striding over cities and past agricultural valleys like the uber-man I clearly had created myself to be…through blogging. No, it became far less rapidly apparent than it should have that the clickity-click of the pajamamen was only what it appeared to be. So I settled into that, relaxed and accepted it for what it was. After, say, 2005 or so.

Which makes me think of that poor schlep of an NBA ref whose name popped up during a FBI wiretap of some mobsters talking about gambling. And even if it did not happen that way, I like to think that it did because it paints the problem so clearly. As with the vanity of bloggers, the root of the cheating ref is that sin of self-importance. Why does some git who gets to blow a whistle for traveling or makes that call between whether the ball was falling or still on the ascent when it was blocked think he deserves more, think he should be as wealthy as the players around him? I have seen this first hand. I have known an inordinate number of lawyers who ended up in the big house or worse through the inability to understand that the client’s money is in that pile and yours is in that smaller stack over there. Heck my “financial adviser” at a small town Ontario bank branch in the mid-90s ended up face down in the river one Saturday morning after it was discovered Friday night that there was an extra 3 million in the wrong bank account.

People like to think they are more than they are. Which is weird. If I have come to any conclusions now that the majority of my years on earth are past me it is that most people deeply misconstrue what this whole experience means. Not in an evil bad way but a far simpler way. Which is not far off what the Book of Job was telling us all along: we cannot even see the strings around us let along know who or what is pulling them. The fool thinks otherwise and walks around with reversed mirrored glasses, convinced and sometimes even finding a career in writing newspaper columns or as talk-show host.

But that ref thought he could pull strings and never stand out. Rewrite rules for gain. So now an entire sport – and not one that I particularly loved – is thrown in the grey zone with professional wrestling and figure skating. It gets you thinking about what else is around you that can be monkeyed by one or two people as easily as you can shift figures between a lawyer’s trust fund and general ledger or by making up mortgages for people who do not exist. You have to have a situation where there is plenty of rule calling. The NBA ref blows the whistle more than once a minute. Who else so closely controls the situation? A ref in soccer called 53 fouls is the Argie-Chile game the other day. Someone else calculates your pay packet deductions, your mortgage payment, your electricity bill. Does the specter of the cheat infuse it all? That is why games ought to be so good – that marble is either out of the circle or it is not, the blowing pin is standing or it is not. We turn to games we play or watch for certainty as much as honing or enjoying skill. There should be more with less chance for cheats – whether of the whistle blowing or blabby false prophet varieties. So bowl. Bowl your hearts out and know there is good in the world. That is all I can tell you in these troubled time. Bowl.

Group Project: What Are you Doing With your Summer?

These group projects don’t always have to be so stodgy. Why can’t we lighten up and just tell each other what is going on this summer. This seems to be what we are up to:

Canoeing. I think I am terrified of lakes now. All I want to do is hug the shoreline. There are animals in lakes you know. Hidden ones.
Camping. We are planning to take the kids camping in a couple of weeks for the first time. Nothing rustic. There are animals in the woods.
Backyard. Having one for the first summer since 2002, we are BBQing plenty and have had a whack of visitors over the last few weeks. We have seven kids under eight right now. Help. Plus there are fewer animals in the backyard but they are still about. Gotta be careful.

Remember – Labour Day is only six weeks off. What are you doing to pack fun into those few days?