Tag: News, Politics, Events

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.

James Bond Activism

I am not planning to watch much of Live 8 though I hope it all goes well. But lines like this from the schedule strike me as a little freaky:

12:45 p.m.: Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof will address the world from London.

I wonder if I will hear it from where I am sitting with any luck at Moosewood, a voice speaking from the clouds.

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

Possible Charges

Again, the moral objectionists, boo-hoo bleaters all, have come out full of rage over the Gurmant Grewal tapes. To briefly review, Tim talked to GG and GG taped it without telling Tim. That is OK. But what they talked about? Now the RCMP is listening to the tapes. Moral ragers say “HANG TIM” and “BRING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT!”… though admittedly they say that every day.

What might the RCMP do? Let’s look at some law and consider how it works. The RCMP have to read the Criminal Code and have to find a section under which to review the impugned activity. For someone to be charged, their acts and bits of thoughts must fall into line with all elements of an offence as set out in the section. [Other bits of thought like motive are not so much considered.] Here then are a couple is the section which would be reviewed in this situation:

119. (1) Every one who:

(a) being the holder of a judicial office, or being a member of Parliament or of the legislature of a province, corruptly

(i) accepts or obtains,
(ii) agrees to accept, or
(iii) attempts to obtain,

any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment for himself or another person in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by him in his official capacity, or

(b) gives or offers, corruptly, to a person mentioned in paragraph (a) any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by him in his official capacity for himself or another person,

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

(2) No proceedings against a person who holds a judicial office shall be instituted under this section without the consent in writing of the Attorney General of Canada.

Chatting in some contexts then could be bad for both chatters. And, as you can see, unlike the sections relating for public officials at s.124 and s.125 , where the crime is about the generic concept of giving or getting “reward”, here in 119 it is about giving or getting only the listed things and one of those listed – but one of those things is an “office”. [I still think “reward” is in fact a very interesting word in these tapes as it is used, perhaps unfortunately – some folks might wish “shoe” or “grannies old soup” were used instead.] So, if two folk sit around thinking about how “offices” might be transacted that is maybe possibly bad. Again with the lists, section 118 defines “office” so that it includes

(a) an office or appointment under the government,

(b) a civil or military commission, and

(c) a position or an employment in a public department

Which offices does this include? Note also that it is important to see a separate element in the word “corruptly” – that word alone is the fall back for the defence as the Crown would have to prove some sort of particular wicked intent. I wonder if there is a case out there on the meaning of “corruptly” by a Parliamentarian? Note also that the Federal Attorney General has to agree under 119(2). Hmmm – interestink. We need not go beyond that for educational purposes the noo.

But wait. Consider if one side was setting the other up without an intention to find themselves in that hot water. Consider this Criminal Code provision of general application:

22. (1) Where a person counsels another person to be a party to an offence and that other person is afterwards a party to that offence, the person who counselled is a party to that offence, notwithstanding that the offence was committed in a way different from that which was counselled.

(2) Every one who counsels another person to be a party to an offence is a party to every offence that the other commits in consequence of the counselling that the person who counselled knew or ought to have known was likely to be committed in consequence of the counselling.

It would appear to me that if one was trying to get another to do a wrong – whatever the first person’s motives – that too is a crime. You cannot in effect chat someone up into a crime – taking advantage of their corruptability – and to do so without being held accountable for that inducement. Sensible. We do not want that sort of thing going on, either. So if you are in on the deal – bad. If you are not in on the deal but make someone else commit to the deal – also bad. Depending on the facts. Which only the RCMP know about – except for a few of others. We just have the transcripts or maybe 30% of them. I am sure lil’ Stevie told GG all this.

I have to go make supper. I’ll plug in more links later. Dinner done and good. But still comments on potential defences to these sections might be in order.

Let My Hoodie Go!

Tony Blair, fresh from victory at the polls is taking on a new enemy – the hoodie:

Britain has a new public enemy: the teenager in a hooded sweatshirt. Hoods, no longer just an adolescent fashion statement, lie at the centre of a debate over what many people, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, see as an alarming rise in bad behaviour. Mr. Blair says rowdy public drunkenness, noisy neighbours, petty street crime, even graffiti and vandalism are top concerns. He is enthusiastically backing an English shopping mall’s ban on hoods, baseball caps and other headgear that obscure the face. “It is time to reclaim the streets for the decent majority,” Mr. Blair told the House of Commons. “People are rightly fed up with street-corner and shopping-centre thugs….”

You might think that something is amiss when a garment I and my children wear has become the icon of the evil in British Society. You might think that there is something else to this. Which of course there is. The knowing amongst you may know I did a wee thesis for my LLM a couple of years ago on the implications under Canadian law for distant biometric surveillance. The interesting thing is that the western nation most interested in using superfast cameras to gather biometric images of people’s faces and immediately cross reference them against databases of the known is the UK. No koo-koo wingnuttiness. That is just reality.

The hoodie over the face defeats this watching, making it difficult for the computers to figure out who you are through simply the cloaking and even the face down posture. So when he speaks of “the decent majority”, keep in mind that the UK government reserves to itself tools for the identification and logging of individual citizens which would be unacceptable under Canadian and US law, which, though the technolgy is here, still provide more by way of autonomy for the citizen from the state. Sure there are likely other aspects to it as there always are but keep in mindw who is watching and how they watch when the hoodie is separated out as the new evil.