Category: Uncategorized

Five Up Again

Finally an exciting game with the Red Sox winning it in the ninth with Coco driving in Tek from second. Wooo. And the Yankees got blown away by Baltimore. Wooo. Except Boston was playing Tampa, the worst team in baseball. Hmmm. But their Kazmir was pitching, worthy on any roster. Wooo.

This is a funny season, perhaps one of transitions that no one wants to talk about – Shilling, Ortiz and Manny not being that young anymore – and a year that some of the recent acquisitions have pointed themselves out ans not being what they might have been – Drew and Willi Mo in particular. But the sluice gates of money have opened and the Red Sox will buy. Gagne was finally dominant yesterday in the eighth after two utter failures in Baltimore last weekend without which the Sox would be seven rather than five games up in mid-August.

And they are up five. Sure the Yankees decided to be Yankees finally, largely on the backs of young players on the mound and at the bat. The upcoming games are going to be interesting. Dice-K should crush Tampa and there is a double header tomorrow against the Angels, the evening game of which may see my new pal Clay Buchholz taking the mound. Hopefully, too, Baltimore will win again and Detroit will not suck and will take a few from the Yankees, too – especially as they face Bedard and Verlander in the next few games, two of the best pitchers in baseball.

Half The Point

This is an interesting article but not necessarily for the intended reasons:

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin joined Ms. Robertson in her siege against a “business model” of operating law firms that is soul-destroying, outmoded and steadily driving women away from a private law practice. The business model typically involves an expectation that lawyers will put in 70 or 80-hour weeks and forgo their family lives in return for wealth and partnership status. Putting aside her prepared text in favour of an off-the-cuff analysis of the evolution of women’s battle to gain an equal place in the law, Chief Justice McLachlin said that for women, winning that legal right to become lawyers was only half the battle. More than half of law school graduates are now women, she said, yet they are grossly underrepresented in private law firms.

The funny thing is, of course, men are equally affected but sometimes it happens in ways we call success. Male or female, the pressured private lawyer can find themselves with no home life, drinking or simply losing it at work – and like any lawyer I have been witness to these breakdowns – but carries themselves as a business leader to the greater community and sometimes even at home. Massive accommodations at work are made all around the person but often the root cause is not to be addressed. What is the root cause? Often the burden of carrying the responsibility for solving horrible crises of other is just too much, often the expectation of a millionaire’s life-style is the cause of over-whelming debt. Often it is just too much for any reasonably balanced person.

The legal profession at least in Canada has followed down a path that allows it to characterize all this as unfair to women. I have no idea why it is not blindingly obvious as being unfair to men, too.

Important BBQ Knowledge

Via NYCO, and just for the record, this post is very important not because of its critique of the Dino BBQ but because of its identification of three more worthy WNY BBQ joints to explore:

But there I was, chewing on a rib as Harleys rumbled up and parked next to my outdoor table, thinking: Buffalo barbecue is this good. There might not be one place that’s as conspicuously a real, fun joint, but I’ll take the ribs at Suzy-Qs and Kentucky Greg’s or the brisket at One Eyed Jack’s over what the Dinosaur served me.

Buffalo Pundit provides more geographical and qualitative detail: “Tonawanda’s Suzy Q’s ribs (amazing), Lockport’s One Eyed Jack’s brisket (tender & smoky), and Cheektowaga’s Kentucky Greg’s ribs (quite excellent).” I can’t believe I was just in Lockport and my homing devices failed to alert me to a BBQ joint called “One Eyed Jack’s”.

Note in comments to BP: Sticky Lips BBQ on Culver, etc.

Why Does Convergence Fail?

…or is it just an attempt to cross-breed whales and goldfish? This article about NBC’s 600 million blown in trying to converge something with something else is illustrative:

Most embarrassing, an effort to increase traffic by introducing a syndicated television program, “iVillage Live,” resulted in a month-to-month drop in visitors to the iVillage Web site. Introduced last December, “iVillage Live,” carried on NBC-owned stations in 10 cities, was seen as a failure on its own, suffering from low ratings, poor production quality and a certain nagging cloying quality. It ceased production in June, but is still running in repeats and will return, after a full makeover, next month.

Running repeats. Excellent plan.

It reminded me for some reason that may not be exactly clear in my mind of the movie 24 Hour Party People that was on over the weekend about the rise and fall of mid-80s Manchester rave scene that spawned Happy Mondays and the use of ecstasy. Effectively paid for by New Order through flipping their record sales to subsidize the money pit of everything else, the movie notes how the entire time was a financial flop due to the failure of the clubs to control the actual money flow. Ravers bought drugs not beer. A bubble economy except for the pushers.

What they may have in common is the acceptance of the insistence that a concept is viable supporting external investment of money and other resources, including public interest.

As a general concept that may be useful and something that explains many things. David recently wrote a good comment here about to the effect that (because I can’t find it at the moe) through blogging he has come to the conclusion that people understand their own beliefs very poorly. Maybe this is the human condition, however, and that all things are bubbles to some degree as we thrive on hope and expectation more than knowledge.

Steve’s National Brilliance

Now that I am back in Canada even after only a few days, I can celebrate the lack of a third colour on the flag, our poor standards for lawn mowing and trimming as well as the capacity of our national leaders to leave all the toys on the political stairway, like these results of Steve’s great idea last year to call Quebec a nation:

The provincial government plans to force the federal government’s hand on how it views the division of powers with the provinces and spending, Quebec Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Benoît Pelletier says. Premier Jean Charest’s government also wants to finally see Quebec’s distinctiveness recognized in the Constitution in a charter of open federalism. Quebec wants the federal government to address the division of jurisdictions between Ottawa and the provinces and intends to press Ottawa on the matter, Mr. Pelletier said in an interview yesterday. He also wants the federal government to spell out precisely how it sees the federation operating and wants Ottawa to limit spending in provincial jurisdictions.

That’s not much. And it is a damn good thing that Steve is so clever that he can handle this situation and come up with a plan that will make everyone happy. I am sure that plan is in there, right? He has a plan, right?

Or is the plan saying the Liberals were no better?

Lawyers Gone Bad

There is a new book in Canada called Lawyers Gone Bad which is causing a controversy within the law talking trade:

Lawyers Gone Bad features the story of about 20 disgraced lawyers who faced disciplinary action for offences ranging from overbilling to sexual offences against children, to hiring thugs to beat up clients. In the past week, the Canadian Bar Association’s head office received upwards of 200 fuming emails and phone calls and the regional offices have also been inundated with irate solicitors baying for both Maclean’s and Slayton’s blood. He’s been the subject of choice at law firm water coolers across the country, and the featured hot topic on the city’s legal blogs. Since Monday, the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association have each issued scathing statements condemning Slayton’s book and the magazine article – particularly the cover, which boasted five would-be lawyers labelled “I sleep with my clients,” “I take bribes” and “Justice? Ha!”

Lawyers get particularly prickly about these kinds of things but this author is a former dean of law school and former a senior practitioner on Bay Street in Toronto. Here is my take:

  • Law is very funny (not ha-ha) stuff. Unless you are rich and seeking preventative guidance, for most people being involved with law and lawyers means you have to spend masses of money to get you out of the greatest crises of your life. Of course you will be unhappy.
  • Practicing law is often no fun. Most lawyers earn a middle class living and deal with unhappy people going through the greatest crises of their lives. Many times you will not fix the problem so much as guide to a best resolution. People want you to fix the problem – get the charges dropped, make the deadbeat like he was when you met him, make it like it was before the accident. Can’t do it. Lawyers often think they can do more than they can actually do.
  • I have been exposed to an inordinate number of lawyers under discipline caused by things from recourse to alcohol to congenital thievery to simple ignorance. The system does not weed these people out as aggressively as people might wish. They hurt peoples lives.

The combination of crisis, over expectation and human weakness is a bad one. It does exist in other professions but, if my opinion is worth anything almost 20 years after entering law school, it is accentuated in law. Yet law and lawyers are vital in a free and democratic society. Maybe this book will do some good, have a result other than a circling of the CBA’s wagons. After all, people once scoffed at Jose Canseco.

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.