Non-partisan blog posts – Page 21

A Day In Watertown New York

Steve French

Regular readers will know that I take great joy in being able to pop over the border that is 35 minutes from my front door and nose around northern New York state. Today, we primarily went to go to the Thompson Park Zoo at Watertown, sitting on a hill behind the town and it was a great day to check out the bat house, the caribou, the bears as well as Steve French in the photograph above. All in humane outdoor fenced areas and all native species now or in the recent past. Turtles get as big billing as the fisher and wolves.

Before the zoo, however, the great revelation was out first visit to the new outlet of the Texas Roadhouse chain across from the Salmon Run Mall. Best ribs ever. I tell you now lie and I like ribs. They were smokey and sweet but most of all they were massively meaty. Culturally appropriate side dishes and craft beer were there, too. Yet the meat seems to be the main theme there as there was, in the foyer, a chilled glassed display of superbly cut steaks – including a 32 oz. ribeye about two inches thick. Frankly, if they can do a steak that big well, I would order one with four salads and all of us would share. There is something about NY state and beef. My best experience so far with a bit of steer was at Oswego, a Delmonico with blue cheese at King Arthur’s brewpub.

One curiosity of the day was the pavilion at the back of Thompson Park pictured below. An oval of stone and wood which seems to have forgotten its original purpose. What took place in the middle? Why would people sit around and stare into the oval’s center?

Fantabulastictasity

Christmas colours

Was last night’s 7-6 defeat of the Yankees by the Red Sox the best game I have ever seen? No, as my only trip to Fenway was when I was ten and I saw the Yankees lose something like 10-9 live from the bleachers. And there was that gutting of the former Highlanders by the Bostonians in 2004. But this one was up there.

First, the starting pitching was fairly string not the greatest. Andy Pettitte was better than Schilling, who was not as bad as his awful first outing but no where near his last two starts. Rivera sucked and Okajima, the pitcher many think is in the bullpen to give Dice-K someone to talk to, came out and was as effective a closer as I have ever seen. A-Rod started to walk towards first at one point during his final at bat, failing to notice that he had just been eviscerated by a wicked good curve that dropped exactly where and when it needed to drop.

And the offense was all upside-down, too. Ortiz stretched a single into a double. Variteck homered. Manny was quiet but worked in a walk after being 0-2 in the count when we needed it. And Coco came back to life last night. Out-playing his counterpart and shadow Johnny “hugs money” Damon [Ed.: pittui!] he beat out a ugly throw from A-Rod in his third at bat and in his last, ripped one into the corner just skimming past first base to tie the game. The Boston Herald called him an “offensive stud“.

We are off to Yankee land today with a trip to the zoo and maybe supper out at Sackets Harbor. Day tripping with today’s 4 pm start on the radio.

Cheese Punting Is Down

As part of Wikiality Week, it is important to note that the rate of cheese punting around here has gotten somewhat embarrassing. My access to baubles and trinkets depends on hefty cheese punting teamwork. Your access to fabulous potential prizes is likewise a matter directly connected to boot meeting cheesy goodness.

It is your right and duty to punt the cheese. Web 2.0 is teetering folks. To the ramparts, I say! Punt the cheese!!!

Web 2.0 Is A Lie!

It is over. The emperor has no clothes. Time to get out your old Web 1.0 t-sirts and accept the bitter truth:

Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed Tuesday. A tiny 0.16 per cent of visits to Google’s top video-sharing site, YouTube, are by users seeking to upload video for others to watch, according to a study of online surfing data by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Web audience measurement firm Hitwise. Similarly, only two-tenths of one per cent of visits to Flickr, a popular photo-editing site owned by Yahoo Inc., are to upload new photos, the Hitwise study found. The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation’s couch potatoes — voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer’s statistics show.

Oh. My. God.

You know, this really surprises me be cause, you know, everybody at work blogs, right? Non-stop. And nobody looks at me like I have three heads when I say the word “blog” any more. And I am making thousands a month from my Google ads. That is the beauty of the new e-conomy. It’s like earning piles of cash for doing next to nothing…or is it the other way around.

[Ed.: I should have dubbed this “Wake Up To Web-ality Week” but who knew this would be the week the wheels started to fall off. Secret – I use bank tellers.]

Ahoy! Pirate Radio Ahead!

US based web radio is about to get a massive hit and it will be interesting to watch how it plays out:

The new fees, which will apply until 2010, will charge a flat fee per-song, per-user in addition to a $500 fee for every channel owned by a station. Fees will increase every year until 2010. Radio stations with multiple channels, such as NPR, would be charged thousands of dollars, which they claim will cripple them. Previously, stations paid an annual fee plus 12% of their profits. The fees will start on 15 May 2007 and will be collected retrospectively for 2006. Webcasters will be allowed to calculate retrospective payments by averaging listening hours.

My first reaction is to call NCPR and make sure I pay my fair share. That one station is the main source of music in my life now. I rarely by CDs anymore as I have about 400 plus 150 lps and cassettes and 45s and I pretty much never get around to using them as much as I might – though I have to admit the vinyl did spin last Friday night. [Ed.: T-Rex was right – we were born to boogie.] But what of the amateur hobbyists like Darcey’s Friday Night Blues and Beer or Steven’s Acts of Volition Radio? Sure these are both Canadian but how and when will a fee like this apply? How can I pay it when it does arise.

Don’t get me wrong. I think there should be a fee. Sadly, there were plans to have nice and useful hidden fees attached to purchases of media of one sort or another but the hyper-libertarians and whacko self-proclaimed “user rights” advocates got to that idea and gave it the boot – my nickles! my dimes!!! they shouted so that a direct fee structure will be imposed granting people the right to be coat tail on both the artists and the medium that provide the access to the good stuff. So now we are stuck with the wrong end of the pipe holding the bag and a reasonable likelihood that the access to intelligently selected music on the web will dry up.

How should we pay the piper anyway?

Reopen The Constitution, I Say!

I don’t know what all the fuss is. A suggestion that Quebec join in the constitution – after 25 years wandering in the wilderness with nothing but a far superior Charter of Rights to keep them warm – sparks this sort of reaction:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has rejected suggestions by Quebec Opposition Leader Mario Dumont to reopen the Constitution, blaming Prime Minister Stephen Harper for encouraging the notion with unclear promises for more provincial autonomy. “The thing [Mr. Harper] needs to do to prevent a problem is to speak out and say very clearly which powers, which responsibilities, he wants to transfer from the federal government to the provincial government,” said Mr. Dion in an interview Sunday. “If he continues to be vague and confused, I think it’s not good at all for the country. He owes that to Canadians.”

I want a constitutional debate. And I want in, too – personal autonomy needs to be beefed up. The misguided will also want a kick at the can about property rights. And a place for First Nations and municipalities as semi-free states. And weakening or strengthening the courts so our rights will not be at the whim of politicians. Whatever.

Why not have a big national chat about it? The only down side is really the intense tedium. What people forget is not that the nation almost fell apart – it’s that the country almost ground to a halt in the 70s and early 80s with unending live TV coverage of hearings taking up all the channels. People from NS will also remember the embarrassment of seeing all the others laughing in the background whenever Premier John Buchanan decided to speak up. Now that we have more than three stations to watch I suppose that is not a problem. But really – don’t expect a lot of “amending formula” jokes. This stuff is mostly boring.

Getting Rid Of The Internet

What! Is there some kind of weird thing happening here? Just one year ago – one thin year – I asked the question whether we should turn off the internet […well, not “we” as in this bunch around here but the “we” that we are all part of, a small bit of which “we” has actually the power to turn off the Internet…] and now they […by which I mean people with more power than “we”…] are thinking about shuttin ‘er all down.

Will there be room made for me and my dopey blogs? Why would there be? Western world creates a miracle of a communications system and it – aside for the fact that it is structured like something out of a terrorist’s dream – it is filled with the empty babble of dingbats like me, people selling old paper cups on eBay and the hacking and spamming and fisking and all the other vacuous dingbattery that goes on around the world. Why would anyone in charge actually make room for that…for me…for we?

What will it look like when the Internet goes off-line? Wanna bet when it’s going to happen? How would we report the winner?

Morton Loses…But Named Champions Anyway!

My people – my pale, pale people.

It is all coming together. For those in the pool, the answer is 6(a). See, the Morton lost today but so did Stirling. So that leaves Morton top of the league with two games to go. Automatic promotion. Respect: Stirling’s the town where I learned about ska in 1980 at Dad’s pal’s house (aka “me auntie’s”) care of Dad’s pal’s late teen daughter (aka “me auntie’s kid”) and that Specials 7 inch ep she controlled. And Stirling was the scene of “the epic bender” in 1986. Entered a pub and the bartender shouts “yes, the Canadians are going for it!” Entered the next pub and there is the shorter guy hitchhiking out of town at the end of Gregory’s Girl. I also realized Scots kids tucked in their wool sweaters on that trip…like, in their pants.

Anyway, the Greenock Morton actually advance to the First Division – which is the second division – for next season. Playing with the almost big boys. Woot. Photos above from an excellent set at Inverclyde Now in which the photographer does a great job not only of capturing the emotion of the visiting Greenock supporters but also gets a great range of the various jerseys sported by the fans – I love the blue tartan one. A great set by a thoughtful photographer turning his back on one story for another. I think we have about eight Morton jerseys in the house, two or three scarves, a pennant – and a few pins, many old programs and those cloth badges. And books…I have books…and away socks. And programs and a Jimmy Cowan cigarette card from around 1948. And other stuff.

Big big day. A wee dram of the good stuff in my Greenock Golf Club 1890-1990 tumbler tonight. More championship Morton chat at greenockmorton.net and from The Greenock Telegraph. Grannie would be proud.

A Canard, I Say!!!

While the story is interesting in its own right, the summation is the business:

The objection that reform would mean that rural interests would be ignored is a canard. The change would require candidates to present positions that galvanized all Americans. This is the truer and more certain path of democracy.

A canard! The claim to evoke rural interests is often a canard. A specious one, at that. I, in fact, am going to take up that accusation as a day to day sort of turn of phrase: “That, sir, is a most specious canard.” Like the continuing existence of the Electoral College itself. A specious canard and perhaps even a trumped-up one.

April Showers Bring Friday Bullet-pointy Chatt-a-ramas

This week. This was a short week. Short weeks are good in that Friday comes faster but it also has the air of less than a full week off as much as less than a full week of work. But was another week in your life. And it has passed.

Later Update: man’s only trump card soon to be lost thanks to science.
Lunchtime Update: NYCO knows where the bees are.
Update: please consider and vote for the best of beer poetry. The prize is a weekend of free beer so make your decisions carefully.
Speaking of passing, this was the week that Kurt Vonnegut died. I first read his books when one should – in my late teens. In my mind, I vaguely lump him with the also late Peter Sellers but he is almost the opposite. Sellers was a big jerk personally and only celebrated the absurdities of life as an angst-ridden professional. Vonnegut advocated contentment, humour and compassion for this life in all he did, even as he suffered from personal depression.
One of my constant bloggy reads throughout the years has been Ian at xtcian.com and he is celebrating his fifth bloggiversary today with a retrospective. I’ve followed him through his medicated post-9/11 volunteering singlehood to his medicated becoming a husband through his medicated struggles as a movie maker through his medicated struggles as a TV writer through now his days as Daddy. Because he comes to the game as a good writer he is, in my opinion, the best personal blogger on the net. And I say that even though his regular updates with pictures of his kids are the second nicest photos of family – after mine…which, of course, I never post because I have a clue about data mining and biometrics.
I have been trying to think of analogies in Canadian culture on the Don Imus now-firing. I think that it is a good thing that this pervasive voice was fired for saying such a foul thing – and saying it in such an offhand…even, dare I say, entitled manner – that was focused on a specific and small group of young people who achieved only excellence. The closest I can think of as an equivalent would be Don Cherry calling our national women’s hockey team Pepsis and sluts. But he never would. He may be a dope but he is not cruel. I think that is the thing and maybe it is the thing that broke the back of the shock-jock’s status even with all his good work for charity.
The Tiger points us to the photo of the week. I miss Jean like I miss Ed Broadbent.
The BBC is running an interesting series examining anti-Americanism. Being at a peak of pro-Americanism in my personal life these days (what with baseball being my main sport of obsession now, what with my upstate day-tripping, what with listening largely to NCPR and WFAN for my radio diet, what with my exploration of BBQ and what with the dreary nature of Canadian politics compared to the gold mine that is local New York state politics) I find anti-Americanism beyond my understanding. I am fortunate in what I am able to do and have a more than a couple of projects on the go that get me involved in cross-border discussions. But was not always the case – I suppose, like me, many more Canadians can say that compared to say in the 80’s. Is this, too, due to free trade?

What a load of bullets. Usually I struggle with these but those whipped right out. Now for coffee to be followed by spelling mistake correction.