Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Time To Cut Equalization?

Is it time to cut equalization and other aspects of the massive Federal funding to the anti-constitutionalist PEI government?

It may be the law, but same-sex couples can’t get married on P.E.I. None of the provincial bills that cover marriage have been changed, and P.E.I.’s attorney general, Mildred Dover, said it will take an undetermined amount of time for the Island to follow Canadian law.

This was hardly unexpected in light of the general Charter fighting track record of the current suits…but isn’t it time to penalize those who would obstruct the enjoyment by Canadians of the full rights of being Canadian?

Panhandling Policy

My policy on panhandling is clear:

  • I buy a lot of crap that costs way too much. What a panhandler gives me materially is more honest. I get a bit of “no thing” in return for a small amount of expenditure. A bargain I understand.
  • I pick favourites. I try to support a few who are there all the time. I favour women and the elderly.
  • I do not quibble about giving something that will provide comfort like a good coffee or a bottle of cheap wine. If I ever find myself in that position I expect each of you to give me that – and don’t give me that look when you do.
  • Look in the eye and say “no, thank you” or “have a good day.” Like Mormans, these folk are too easy a target for too many folk.
  • I am no hero as it would be lucky if I gave 1/1000th in this way but it is good to be good and nice to be nice.

I Un-♥ Day By Day

Below is the lastest strip in a web based cartoon called Day By Day which a bunch of bloggers post and which drives me nuts. Today’s is one of the worst examples but is illustrative of a number of points:

  • It derives its imagery in part from Doonesbury, the long running counter-culturish strip which started in the 60’s by Gary Trudeau, especially the quotes floating about the White House (not displayed in this strip but often a part of the daily dose.) It is indicative, however, that it is asserting itself as a response to Doonesbury with a rightist twist. For me if you are going to say something different, new and interesting, don’t coat tail – you are only reinforcing the fact that your idea is only a reaction.
  • It requires dumbing down to read it. The one below, like much neo-con a la Frum, requires a very conscious supression of known fact. This is based on the assertion one supposes that whatever the left is also supresses fact. But you have chosen to mimic that which you hate if you accept this. That is just sad.
  • In this particular installment, it requires you to reject specific awareness of the very well known facts of Watergate and Oliver Nort/Iran/Contra as conspiracies of the right, needing you to accept the concept that “the conspiracy” against Clinton is laughable. This requires the abdication of personal responsbility for determining relevance through inviting you down the path of collective unawareness to get the joke – rather than considering all of recent history. Again, the argument may be that the left does the same thing but that is the “we are no better than X so like us better than X” argument: aka nonsense.
  • The characters are interchangible, reflect one point of view and are unconnected to any personal existence other than the expression of the point of view. Without storylines, it is a shallow cartoon regardless of the quality of its political content.
  • It flows these points through a non-existant group: hip diverse young right-wing folk who are attractive, witty and all sexificated. Everyone know that all young political types of any point of view are not like this, although they perceive themselves to be through their self-association with power. My own experiment with policial humour here is teaching me the lameness of the medium because, as we all know, they who like political humour are, in fact, more like the characters in Dilbert. I would actually be happy if someone would mirror Day By Day with the comments interposed over the characters from Dilbert. That would be entertaining.

So to like Day By Day, in order for you to “get it,” you have to be unaware of historical fact, willing to supress known fact, jealous of the success of the strip being mirrored, somewhat unfunny to begin with, and needy in relation to self-image. Who wants to fit themselves into that definition? Like Canadian conservatives and Stephen Harper, I am sure they can do better.

Home Grown

Steve in Manchester has put it very well again:

Why, why, why? You were born here FFS! What medievil twat filled you with that much hatred? Was it moral outrage? Bare female arms at the height of summer? Rowdy young men quaffing ale outside the pubs of England? Was it the very notion of democracy that offended you? A deep yearning for the proud civilsations of the Tigris, Euphrates, Ganges and the rest to return to some kind of perverted ascendancy? What was it? What made you think that setting that timer, triggering the carnage with a mobile phone or whatever; what made you think it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

‘Cos, for the life of me I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I suppose for me the futility of it is what is dumbfounding. This morning’s 6 am CBC radio news says one suicide bomber’s parents rain a nice fish and chip shop in a mixed neighbourhood where everyone got along and that the bomber was a friendly guy, excellent cricketer. What is so ill about that picture that you blow yourself up for a cause that will never come within a thousand years of ever coming to pass? Because, frankly, there is nothing the slightest bit attractive in the form or the substance of the message.

I also suppose one odder thing is that it is fanatical regressivism. At least the IRA and, say, the 1890s Chicago anarchists blowing themselves up were revolutionary in the sense they were trying to make a better day in their twisted attacks, nasty utopians. But what is the plan with these back-facers? Most fans of tyranny do the right thing – take over the army, enslave and destroy the people and reap the rewards. But these guys appear to confuse the tyrant and the victim: “if you don’t watch out I will blow me up…and when we’ve all blown ourselves up then…err…watch out!”

I am coming to think that there is little to the fighting the causes of terrorism but also there may be little to the fight – unless we get a clue what this is about. I think islamo-fascism is too simplistic. The faith has been around for 1500 years and no one has talked about a puritan nilhilistic militantism like this in the past. There is something awfully odd wrapped by the guise of islamo-fascism. Georgetown odd. Columbine odd. So someone is passing a compelling message – which is hate speech. Hate of normal folk.

Thanks Cable Co Guy

I have altered history through the power of email!

In late April, I complained to my faceless anonymous cable company complaint email service about the blacking-out of the last half of a local Yankees broadcast. I do not love the Yankees but their local broadcast is pretty good coverage and I do need my Kate Smith “God Bless America” seventh inning fix now and then. So I wrote as follows:

I noticed you made an error in switching to a Canadian broadcast of one US channel on Friday night. At 9 pm on Friday, Channel 5 (Syracuse) switched to the CTV Ottawa broadcast of “Third Watch”. Third Watch is not shown on Friday nights on channel five – the Yankees game is. As a result, we lost the last third of the game and had the same “Third Watch” show on channels 5 and 6. You are only required under CRTC regulation to switch when the broadcast of the US station is also on a Canadian so this swtich was not proper.


Gee – I hope Al saw me do that…

I received this in response:

Thank you for taking the time to contact Cogeco Technical Support.

As we do try to have a system that does not fault, some issues do occur such as some switching issues. Although I do not know the extent of as to why the switch did occur we do also try to resolve such problems in a timely manor. If you have any other questions or concerns please visit the Contact Us section at www.cogeco.ca. If you would like to speak to a customer service representative please call 1-800-267-9000. Our representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

“Try” was not giving me the happy and I was a little concerned that this was actually a canned autobot response so tried again:

Will this practice be stopped? Channel 5 in Kingston will carry
baseball on Friday nights and will not have the same TV show as on channel 6 through out the season.

To which this respose was given:

Hopefully the programming that we receive from the stations was corrected and will not happen again.

“Hopefully” still left me wondering but I dropped it as it was apparently no bot. Frankly, as there is only a game on the odd Friday night, especially early in the baseball season, I had in my mind it was a switch requiring human attention and so the cause was lost. Happy, then, was the man that watched the 9:00 pm time slot come and go with no switch to the Canadian broadcast of a US show and happier still the man who saw the same pass into the 10:00 pm hour. Victory. The entire see-saw Yanks v. Cubs game with the local Yanks announcers and US car dealer ads. Yes, I know I have corrupted myself as a Canadian in spending my Friday night in this way but I could not help myself.

Tantrama Summit Collapses!

You, Sir, are a fool and a fascist! The day we agree to this proposal is the day I see you in rotting in the bowels of Hell!!!

Ian Doyle, Nfld Min of Finance, responding yesterday to the summit’s closing speech by First Minister Designate John McDonald MacKay Archibald

Emotions ran high this week at the end of the summit in Tantrama City on health issues which extended well past the original four days. Some progress was made but not in areas where great hope for a breakthrough had been expected.


Angry Crowds At Tantrama City Yesterday

Despite the hope and, then, demands of all four provincial premiers, representatives of the breakaway regions of Cape Breton, New Brunswick’s Acadian Penninsula and, to a lesser degree, the Souris Downtown Region (Alleged) as well as (beyond the security fencing) crowds which grew day by day, no further funding for health care was extended beyond the levels in place before the irrevocable extension of direct access to the Federal Treasury was granted by Federal Order in Council to the Tantrama City, granting First Minister Designate of the Provisional Government, John McDonald MacKay Archibald, what some – including he himself – have described as god-like powers.

Rather than announcing changes in health care funding in accordance with resolutions of the conference sesssions, First Minister Designate Archibald announced an elaborate plan of subsidized ferry and hydrofoil building for local transportation as a means to achieve self-sufficiency for the shipyards of the Northumberland Strait “for generations to come!” to the wild – some say intoxicated – applause for the delegates from the Souris Downtown Region (Alleged).

Calls of a legitimization of the new intermediary level of government through a ballot providing responsible government and a referendum on the policies proposed by the Provisional Government were met with little action. Meanwhile, officials from the four Provincial Premier’s offices reported no longer being able to contact the office of Federal Prime Minister Paul Martin or, even more oddly, the offices of Opposition co-Leaders Belinda Stronach and Peter MacKay. All recently published Federal literature, including maps indicate the region to the east of Edmunston, New Brunswick, as New Atlantica with the capital at Tantrama City. When questioned by these events, First Minister Designate Archibald announced that he would be undertaking a region wide series of “mussel, clam and lobster feeds or gobstuffs” in preparation for evaluation of the policy research opportunities required in order to lay the groundwork for plans for the first free election for New Atlantica:

Through meeting with supporters and perhaps others throughout the region and eating clams with them, it is the hope that the Provisional Government may lay the basis for the introduction…err… continuation…ummm…use of responsible government throughout the region as is enjoyed in…other places…I think.

The first in the series of Regional Feeds was announced late today for a series of villages from Tidnish to Pugwash along Nova Scotia’s North Shore with the theme “Hydrofoil Production and You.”


First Minister Designate Archibald, Left, Undertaking Provision Planning
For The Upcoming Regional Feeds Earlier Today

Not The Cover Of The Rolling Stone

So there I am, in the last paragraph 14th story in The New York Times, Business Section, Media and Advertising page, web edition index at 6:37 am Monday morning with the precious URL, all live and linky:

No seized web site or anything. No referrers yet as I can see. Oh well. Wait for the entire workforce of New York City to get to work and turn on their computers to slack off for the morning by flipping through the web edition, I suppose…

It was an interesting process being interviewed via email by the reporter who has lots of web industry writing experience but not a homebrewer or anything. She noticed this post I made January on the nutty idea of an “open source beer”. Too bad they did not use the full quote – which I thought was really helpful – but, true, would have needed a separate section:

I have not tried the but think from what is provided that I would not like to try to make it or drink it. Making the beer would be difficult for most homebrewers given the volumes provided. Most homebrewers brew in lots of 20 litre or perhaps double that but an 80 litre boil as required in this recipe would find the brewer facing over 200 pounds of boiling sticky sugar syrup needing transferring by the brewer, a near impossible task in the average kitchen. By contrast, even the small end of the microbrewing scene expects an entry point at the 5 or 7 barrel scale of brewery. One barrel of beer is about 170 litres. Here is some information from the brewery manufacturer DME: which may help understand the scale: http://www.dmeinternational.com/brewing/brewbup/naturalbrew.html. So it is unclear for whom this scale of recipe is devised. Recipes can be scaled up or down but you might want to start with a point that is useful – or even safe – for one type of brewer or another.

That being said, there are issues with the ingredients, too. Beer is basically made of four things: water, yeast, hops and malt. In this recipe, there is detail provided about only hops and malt. As a result, it the same ingredients were used and made with the soft water of Dublin or the hard water of Burton-upon-Trent, England, the resulting products would be very different. These effects can be reproduced by adding water treatments which mimic one location or
another. But without any guidance as to water quality, there is a great deal of variation left to the imagination of the brewer. The same is the case of the yeast. The recipe does not tell us whether it is lager yeast or ale yeast, the two general hemispheres of the beer world. Further, it does not state which of sub-type might be used. Consider this web page of a homebrew supplier which offers 33 ale yeasts and 16 for lager, aside from the 18 for the specialized wheat and Belgian styles of beer: http://www.paddockwood.com/index.php. Selection among these yeasts will greatly affect the outcome of the brewing process. But no guidance is given.

Where there is some guidance, we are still uncertain. We are told that “1 kg of caramel malt” is required. That usually defines a class of malts with a sugary aspect but they differ in the taste they impart according, among other factors, to the degree they are roasted. As a result, a pale crystal malt may give a slight nuttiness to a beer where a dark one provides a strong raisiny flavour. Just saying “caramel malt” in not specific enough. Similarly, the recipe includes 4 kg of sugar but we are not told if it is corn or cane, light yellow or dark demarara or even whether Belgian candi sugar is to be used. Sugar is not sugar is not sugar.

So in the end it is very difficult to determine what a brewer might do with the recipe as it is really only part of a recipe. If you take the information provided and run it through a popular beer recipe calculator used by homebrewers for planning you get a beer which is somewhat pale and normal strength at 5.2% but a bit cloying due to the moderate hops and likely richness of some residual sugars. It would also have no to very rich yeastiness with anything from a slight nuttiness to a strong raisin flavour. Here are the results from when I ran the test:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator?6074722#tag. Except for the odd ingredient “300 g Guarana beans” this could be half the beers I have ever encountered depending on how the unstated variables are addressed by the particular brewer. It is interesting to note that guarana bean is included in the new Budweiser product, B-to-the-E: this author does not find that product very pleasant:
http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/beerman/beer_20024917.shtml

I do go on, don’t I.

None

Tantrama City Health Summit


First Plenary Session, June 10, 2007

Given the surprise devolution of powers two weeks ago to Atlantic Canada through its new Free Zone and Autonomous Regional Capital, Tantrama City this weekend will be the scene of a swiftly arranged summit to determine what now could be done with the health care fiasco two years after the end of universal medical coverage triggered by the June 2005 Supreme Court of Canada case, Chaoulli v. Quebec given Tantrama City’s new and surprising access to the Federal treasury. Representatives of the four Atlantic Provinces as well as representatives of the breakaway regions of Cape Breton, New Brunswick’s Acadian Penninsula and the Souris Downtown Region (Alleged) met in the shadows of rapidly forming capital plaza of Tantrama City in temporary facilities to work out the implications for health care of new financial decision-making powers extended irrevocably to Tantrama City’s Provisional Government.

Calgary: August 2006

In the two years since the ruling, much has changed in Canada, requiring delegates at the summit to consider many models and exercise prudence. In Quebec, the ruling was been extended by subsequent cases under the Quebec Charter of Rights to all government operations leading to reverse nationalization and the eventual buy out and lease-back of the entire provincial government by Quebecor and the impending renaming of the province as Quebecor. In Calgary, former Premier former Prime Minister now Prime Deacon Harper of the renamed Congregation of Alberta faces only 23% popularity after that province’s ravaging by bird flu in the summer of 2006, the following social collapse, mass evacuations and subsequent default on equalization payments all due to Harper’s decision to cease all public health activities by the province on his theory, announced after the Chaoulli decision, that “the private sector…will fill in…any gaps…left by these changes…seamlessly…in a swift…and moral…fashion…”

In this context the representatives of all Atlantic Canadian communities will meet over the next four days to determine how the newly and mistakenly granted access to the Federal Treasury can arrest and reverse the collapse of healthcare within Canada’s poorest region. At the first plenary session this morning, First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, John McDonald MacKay Archibald, left, introduced by a bagpipe rendition of “We’re In The Money” praised the leaders of Atlantic Canada for gathering so soon after the announced devolution of fiscal powers and regional autonomy, especially given the “quite valid but, frankly, pointless dissatisfaction voiced over the lack of constitutional precedent or electoral support for the recent realignment and the decisions to be made at this glorious summit,” comments which were met with stoney silence from the room except for the delegates from the Souris Downtown Region (Alleged) who cheered wildly.