Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
I said no way but I said, yes, it was happening. Tag the first guy out at first. Then leave Lee looking at his knees. Then get A-Rod. No sweat. Especially for guys who likely sell real estate all winter.
Woot!
I couldn’t think of anything else to say about this news from that bastion of democracy somewhere below your toes:
Most foreigners visiting Japan would be photographed and fingerprinted under controversial legislation approved Tuesday by the country’s cabinet. Children under 16, diplomats and permanent residents — such as ethnic Koreans born in Japan — would be exempt from the requirements. The government wants the bill voted into law during the current session of parliament, which ends on June 18. If the law is adopted, advance lists of passengers and crew members would also be required for all airplanes and ships arriving in Japan.
Yumpin’ Yimminy! Strike another country off my list of places to visit. I say we make each Japanese traveller do tongue twisters upon landing in Canada. Or jumping jacks. It will be of about as much use and will be more entertaining.
When does this stuff get to be a concern?
Web giant Google is planning a massive online storage facility to encompass all users’ files, it is reported. The plans were allegedly revealed accidentally after a blogger spotted notes in a slideshow presentation wrongly published on Google’s site…
“We deleted the slide notes because they were not intended for publication,” Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. “We are constantly working on new ways to enhance our products and services for users, but have nothing to announce at this time.”
Would we not be concerned if it was China or the CIA or General Motors or even Coors Beer? Why is Google less a threat? It’s the funny name in the friendly primary colours, isn’t it.
I got this sad report through the Kings College grapevine this afternoon:
A Canadian soldier in Afghanistan is in critical but stable condition after being attacked by a man wielding an axe during a meeting with tribal elders today. The reservist soldier, Lieutenant Trevor Greene, of Vancouver was initially taken to the Canadian-led multinational hospital at Kandahar Airfield where he underwent treatment for head wounds. He will now be airlifted to the U.S. medical facility in Landstuhl, Germany, said CTV’s Steve Chao, in Kandahar. Early reports suggested Greene was injured in a firefight with insurgents. It was later learned that he was attacked during a sit-down meeting with tribal elders when a man struck him in the back of the neck with an axe.
Trevor was a couple of years behind me in undergrad but Kings being so small we certainly knew each other, played intramurals, argued over the merits of pre- or post-Wham George Michaels and shared beers. It is quite the thing, 20 odd years after the age folk sign up, that Trevor was still ready and able to volunteer as a reservist. Thoughts today are with him.
In addition to be an officer in the Canadian reserves, Trevor is an author and journalist who wrote on the killings of prostitutes in Vancouver which are now the subject matter of the Pickton trial. More here and here and here and here.
Update, March 8: more stories on Trevor and his condition here, here, here, here and here.
Update, March 9: There is an interview in the Toronto Star with Trevor’s Dad. More here.
Update, March 10: A good story in the Vancouver Sun today about Trevor’s time in the navy.
Update, March 11: here is a CBC radio interview with Trevor’s Dad, Richard Greene. The link should open a real audio player and the interview is about 6 minutes long. [Later] Here is a story from CTV about improvement in Trevor’s health over the last few days.
Update, March 13: Here is a story from the Ottawa Citizen today with updated information on the state of Trevor’s health.
Update, March 15: Trevor’s back in Vancouver.
Update, March 22: Stephen Kimber (who knows Trevor as a Journalism professor at Kings then and now – and who posted in the comments below) wrote this article on the attack on Trevor.
Update, March 29: Barb in Vancouver has posted an update.
Update, April 26: Debbie has posted an update on the great improvements on Trevor over here.
Update, April 27-28: news updates of Debbie’s comment posting here and here and here and here.
Update, 29 April 2006: our pal Stephen Maher has a very good essay in the Chronical Herald today.
Update, 14 September 2006: there was an update on Trevor’s condition in the Vancouver Sun this week.
Update, 21 October 2006: there was an update in the Globe and Mail this morning with lots of quotes from lots of you. Funny – I have never seen the words “Mr.” and “Gibson” placed together in that way. Sounds like Trevor is moving forward.
Update, 16 December 2006: The Toronto Star has an article on Trevor’s recovery in this morning’s paper.
None
Graceless politicization appears to be the flavour of the day in the new PMO:
“The Prime Minister is loath to co-operate with an individual whose decision-making ability has been questioned and who has been found in contempt of the House,” said Sandra Buckler, a spokeswoman for Mr. Harper. “All this really is, is a partisan complaint and a political dispute.”
Get ready for it. Any bureaucrat now may be a “liberal” therefore a lesser species in the eyes of the rural overlords. Morality over process. Despite the question of the propriety of offering benefits and plums – plums– like cabinet posts to party defectors undermining the House of Commons, unlike the similar review during the Gruwal matter when the Liberals were the potential bad guys. Sure the new PM intents to line in a different world one day but in the meantime you shouldn’t get to pick your rules. The most charming bit of hair splittery was mentioned on the CBC last night when apparently the PMO suggested that there is no Parliament at the moment so there was not jurisdiction for an ethical inquiry…therefore no ethical standards at all. Sweet.
The First Law of Discomforting states that lay rejection of the scientifically obvious will be directly related to the discomfort it provides to people, systems and investments. Discuss.
It was quite sad to hear about Leonard Cohen finding himself in something approaching a view of the poor house due to a legal dispute in this era when he should be being dipped in gold as a national treasure. And I don’t even like his songs that much. I do like, however, what he stands for as a symbol of individual autonomy to make the world the poem that you see it to be. So it was good to read this in the Globe this morning:
A judge with Los Angeles County Superior Court has granted Leonard Cohen a default judgment of $9-million (U.S.) against the Canadian singer-songwriter’s former manager. Judge Kenneth Freeman made the ruling earlier this week in response to a civil suit Cohen filed last August alleging fraud, negligence and breaches of contract and fiduciary duty on the part of Kelley Lynch, who served as his business manager from early 1988 through October, 2004…The Montreal-born Cohen, 71, has alleged that Lynch over eight years had siphoned off more than $5-million of his savings, so that by late 2004 his retirement nest egg had been reduced to about $150,000. Westin, now teaching law at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, was named in the claim because Cohen alleged that Westin helped Lynch with the $12-million sale of both Cohen’s music-publishing company and artist royalties. Most of these proceeds went into a Lynch-created company, Traditional Holdings, of which Lynch had 99.5 per cent ownership.
Apparently he has settled out of court with other money grubbers. Good. But why do I like him so much but not really his music? I do recall a documentary on his likely 20 years ago when he was having new fame with the Famous Blue Raincoat CD and it was done in his apartment in Montreal that looked like a normal sort of apartment except that everything was white. He said something to the effect it made the outside more a part of the inside. Then I got to like him more when he won a Juno for singer of the year and he said only in Canada could his voice win singer of the year. But best of all was his stumping of Gzowsky the ultimate but early beacon of political correctness and all that is wrong with that when Cohen said he was stopping his European tour early. Why, says, Gzowsky. Can’t afford the wine. Gzowsky stammered. When you drink 3 or 4 bottles a day, Cohen goes on, you need to buy the increasingly really good stuff and as this tour was so much longer than he had done before he was buying bottles now each worth thousands and that was costing more than the tour was bringing in. Gzowsky stammered some more.
When I was a kid in the poorer and plainer Maritimes you assumed everyone in Montreal was like Cohen – cooler, smarter and looking better in black while knowing where the best window to look out of while drinking coffee could be found. You felt that your friends from Nova Scotia who got jobs or went to university in Toronto sold their soul; people from Nova Scotia who got to Montreal would wind up like or even be pals with Leonard Cohen. His expression of that sort of style of the international man was something that added to Canadian-ness in a way that equalled all the canoes. Good to see that he will now have his wine and black turtleneck expenses covered off in his reclining years.
I am still trying to figure out the Harper plan for child care and, without getting political just now, just want to make sure I have the math right. So this is what I understand today:
32,805,041 Canadians
2,057,848 Canadians 5 and under
6.27% of Canadian population is under six and eligible
There are roughly 116,000 people in Kingston
6.27% x 116,000 = 7,273 people in Kingston 5 and under
7,273 x 1,200 per year per child 5 and under = $8,607,600 per year
Is that right? I keep doing the math and it seems to be. While I do understand (though do not agree with) the policy of stopping public child care expansion, the new evil for our new rural overlords’ social theorists, but I do not understand doing so at a cost of around 400% the cost of that increased public child care, as this morning’s Whig-Standard illustrates for Kingston:
Under the scheme, Kingston and Frontenac County were to get millions annually in federal money to create new child care spaces, improve services in schools and provide more early intervention programs for children in need. The city has the first-year funding, $2.32 million, in the bank, but has not yet spent any of the cash. We’ve got the money and we’re not giving it back,” Lance Thurston, Kingston’s commissioner of community development services, said in an interview yesterday. Thurston said the outgoing Liberal administration knew that a policy shift might come after the election, so they passed on the cash some time ago.
So if the Federal Government’s plan costs four times as much and takes away the realistic ability to provide more child care spaces – what does it actually provide? It doesn’t create a level playing field as the people that don’t need it still don’t get it – only those that do need it lose. In return every little kid gets some money in pocket that will not add up to child care or any thing else other than 25 bucks more a week for groceries for toddlers. Was there a suffering in the nation? Was there a mischief to be corrected through increasing spending 400%? Did every toddler need 25 bucks more? How is this not like a promise of free mustard for all when some people need food? Keep you danged mustard. Any why should I pay for the mustard of others through my tax dollars anyway? Let folks buy their own mustard. Except if you can’t afford mustard. But our new rural overlords do not like that idea so much. Prairie mustard farmers vote conservative for the most part.
So please correct me if you can but I still just don’t get this at all. And saying Tory bad or Liberal bad is not helping anything.
TNT rule. Well, at least they rule over Iceland. Dwight Yorke (leaping right) but not seven guys called Desmond and a bunch of others called Dennis now heads to Sydney for the A-league final.
I reiterate. I will change my name to Clive Desmond…or Desmond Clive…if they win the World Cup. Note: new website for the team…or the Department of Tourism and the team.
Today is really the last day of winter. It is the last day like Labour Day is the last day of summer. The weather is not necessarily going to tell you but its days are numbered even with the sharp spell we face for a few days.
The days lengthen. Somewhere in the month that begins tomorrow there will be a day that will be shorts weather and there will be more green around the foundations of buildings. The day after tomorrow the Red Sox play the Twins in the beginning of the graprefruit league. Tomorrow, February will be eleven months away.