Category: Uncategorized

Good News For Freedom

Good to read this news out of the Supreme Court of Canada this morning:

HUMAN RIGHTS: “POLITICAL BELIEF” DISCRIMINATION

The Respondents were a group of occasional provincial government employees and members of the Provincial Liberal Party, who were either not recalled to work or had their hours of work reduced after the Provincial Conservatives came into power in P.E.I. in 1996. They filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission alleging “political belief” discrimination. While the cases were pending, the Conservative government amended the Human Rights Act , limiting the amount the employees could recover, and preventing them from seeking other remedies available to complaints brought on other grounds of discrimination. The Respondents alleged that the amendments violated ss. 15(1), 2(b) and 2(d) of the Charter. The Prince Edward Island Supreme Court declared the statutory limitation on the available remedies for “political belief” discrimination and the compensation formula prescribed by ss. 28.4(2) to (5) of the P.E.I. Human Rights Act contrary to ss. 15(1), 2(b) and 2(d) of the Charter , and not saved by s. 1. The Appeal Division unanimously upheld the trial judge’s decision with respect to s. 2(d) of the Charter. The Appeal Division did not address the issues of ss. 15(1) or 2(b). Government of Prince Edward Island v. Merrill Condon, et al. (P.E.I. C.A., February 16, 2006)(31416) “with costs”

As I have noted here before and provided more background to the related rulings under the “political rights” heading, I was involved in the original level of this matter before I left private practice. The only thing that diminishes the ruling today and its implication that there is no argument to be made in favour of imposing unconstitutionality upon our political freedom in Canada, is that I was really hoping to get to sit in on a hearing, watching at the back in the cheap seats in the biggest of the courts of the land.

Boomer Finger-pointery

Even though this place is named after Generation X, I really do not directly yap that much about demographics (as it is all so deeply implicit) but this piece in the BBC caught my attention with its accusations of bad boomery:

Baby boomers like to trumpet their generation’s achievements. But their fondness for conspicuous consumption and foreign travel has led to many a modern-day ill, from rising debt to environmental destruction. This week, former US President Bill Clinton – perhaps the archetypal baby boomer – turns 60.

Great. So they now are turning 60 and get all the attention never mind that they sucked it up at 30, 40 and 50 already. Sooner or later there will be the second Gen X headline floating around but it will be something like “Last Gen Xer Likely Dead At 103…Maybe”.

Off-line-ish

As a result of the move, the same service has gone from solidly consistent to patchy.   No high-speed for the last 24 hours.   But maybe I bought the whole life package – so Bell Sympatico high-speed is reminding me there are other things in life.   So, thank you Bell Sympatico high-speed.  

I wonder if StatsCan check on the number of people cursing the dead screen as part of their internet stats update.

Is Rock Dead?

Thankfully, I no longer have to worry about what the young kids are listening to as I have reached an age where I am confident that I have experienced throughout the years of my life the very apex of rockdom. Yet it is still disconcerting to read this:

“It’s not trendy enough to do guitar solos,” suggests Mike McCready, lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. “Maybe people aren’t writing songs that they think need guitar solos, or people are telling them not to do that. I want them to come back.”

This is a dull musical era. There is no doubt about that. We all wait for the next wave of ska. We wait for the next garage band movement. In the interim, you might suggest the best guitar or, if ska related, trombone solo we might find comfort with until that good day comes.

Update of Reflection: do you really need another post today when the very existence of rock is the question? I think not.

My Cat Appears To Be Malfunctioning


“Explain myself? I don’t have to frikkin’ explain myself…I’m a cat!”

As far as I can tell, I think there are humans on one side of the line and then there are plants and animals on the other. Our cats were mousers. They were brought in for a job and when we moved three and a half years ago to a mouse-free lifestyle, the cats found a way into the luggage. They are pushing seven now and life most early middle agers are starting to show signs…even leak once in a while.

When we first moved we deal with his 12th floor anxiety and a vet prescribed a buck a day kitty-valium. And the other one, the she, proved the old joke “When is a cat like a dog – when she is a bitch”. We bought catnip instead. Kept them stoned until the angstity one straightened out a bit. Now we have another problem and I am bracing for the “overnight stay” recommendation. I wonder if that will trigger the big needle response. Don’t get me wrong, this is a pretty good cat as cats go. The only trouble is he goes all over the place…no, that is unfair – he goes where it is most distasteful. That is a skill.

But I have standards. I will not have a cat that wears a diaper. I will not pay $500 buck. There are too many young cats in the minor leagues waiting for their break.

Friday Chat From The New HQ

A while ago I wondered about the point when a move is really made as opposed to finished. Turns out it is not the beds or the telephone but the stuff on the walls. As soon as you put the framed stuff up, your interior is yours. Forget about the TV. That just costs you an hour of sleep and night.

  • And speaking of losing sleep, if the Red Sox lose both the AL East and the wildcard and miss the playoffs blame this week. They have gone 1 out of 6 against Tampa and KC, two teams who are a combined 57 games back. This is a complete embarassment.
  • We forget sometimes that in all the concerns of the day that there are still the legacies of the last sentury to deal with including Conrad Black. Apparently he has to find more money to give the court confidence he will show up:

    Conrad Black’s bail was raised Thursday by another $1-million (U.S.) in cash, but the erstwhile media baron managed to score one important legal victory: His wife won’t be forced to reveal her financial affairs under oath.

    An interesting morality play.

  • Personally, I avoid technologies that make me feel like I am going to be sick – parachutes, roller coasters and Imax.
  • I find it odd that I am not entirely caught up with the liquid bomb story. I think Al Queda has lost me thanks to the skill of the British police’s anti-terrorism unit. I do not assume all will be well. But they are pretty good at making sure all is well. Maybe Al Queda will be content with reverse psychology as its resources thin and its manpower fades.

Must make coffee. Maybe more later. What stories are you following anyway?

The Furnace

Remortgaging the future on the bet of stability has meant owning a furnace again. There is a lot to be said for living in an apartment building big enough to warrant a super…not to mention a pool. We never seem to move from one sort of place to a similar one. Just as the move from a century old farmhouse on two-acres of onions and grass to a hundred plus unit mid-rise was a re-education, so too is moving into the 1960s suburban dreamscape. One friend who bought into the modern suburban dreamscape looked at our tree filled streets and yards the other day and was immediately ticked: “great, now I get to come over and think about how great our place will look in 2037.”

But every thing comes with a cost and that means we now have our own furnace to tend…and water heater and laundry and air and other things I really don’t understand yet. At least we don’t have a well and a septic system. Nothing feels better than cutting a cheque for $5,500 on a new poo treatment facility on your mini-farm. A poo eating machine. Because they are all machines and a house is just a stranded ship filled with machines.

Before the farm out east, we rented the upper story of an Ottawa Valley lumber barons whome from a couple of pals who lived on the main floor after dividing it into three apartments as an investment. We ended up with the two upstairs ones for a year and a half. Ten or more foot ceilings, two kitchens and more than eighty paces from the front door to the TV. That place was an ocean liner, two hulking metal boxes in the basement the size of mini-vans providing the heat. They needed tending…for if you didn’t anticipate the effect of impending shifts in the continental low and high pressure systems upon the inert thing that is a 30 by 50 by 100 foot, twenty room house of stone built for a rich dreamer in around 1890, you (and your thoughtful tenants upstairs) roasted or froze – depending on the whim of the season – usually for two days and usually at solstice but magnified during a quirky thaw, intense heatwave or summer coldsnap, as the furnaces were stroked and stoked, as the pipes creeked and coaxed hot water radiators to convey more or less energy into the mass of rock that encased our families, landlord and tenant in equal subjugation to the laws of thermal dynamics and Victoria home engineering. Men who knew not enough and knew they knew not enough worried over these machines at such times. Worried and drank beer in the basement, watching.

Apparently the new furnace, air cooling and water heating matrix in the new dark room down there is in good shape and has been well tended. I have some time.

Writing Myself Into A Blob

It has been a bit of a blur recently. Much of what I do at work boils down to reading, writing and editing. I get up and read and write – and sometimes edit – here. And recently I was asked to write two beer related bits, one 500 words and one 5000, which means I have been pretty much writing for a few weeks from getting up to going to bed. It is a very blobbifying gig. So I bought weights. The place we just left had a pool and that was grand. Swimming is the opposite of writing. It takes more effort than you feel like you are giving. You can dive under and contemplate for a few seconds what it would be like to be a fish. Writing does not give you that – with its incessant clatter and the need for others to receive the printed word. I suspect hoisting weights will not be like pretending to be a fish either.