Category: Uncategorized

Canada The Powerhouse

There are plenty of folk who use blogs – imagine – to blindly criticize our fair land, saying it is a shame that we do not have standing armed forces of 250,000 to rattle our swords now and then, saying it is a shame that we are taxed for sensible public services looking with envy southward where conservatives get to spend but not pay for it, saying that it is a shame we let people actually live as and with whom and how they decide without asking for permission. So it is good to be reminded that Canada is doing very well these days as it has been doing for quite some time. We’ve even it the lowest unemployment rate for 30 years despite the dollar being now about 25% higher in relation to our largest customer compared to where it was about two years ago.

You wonder when some folk would ever be happy.

Contract Enforcement

This is an interesting situation and an educational point on the enforcement of contracts:

“If they don’t comply with the contract … we can do whatever we want with these aircraft, whatever the hell we want. Maybe we’ll give 10 planes to Cuba or to China so they can study the technology,” Chavez said. “We could give them away and buy aircraft from China or from Russia. … We don’t need any U.S. imperialism,” he said. A U.S. defense official said there had been no communications with Venezuela’s government about any sale of F-16s to other countries, but he noted that U.S. laws on foreign arms sales were “quite strict” regarding third-party transfers.

Via the Unabrewer.

New CBC Afternoons

Interesting to read that my old pal from Halifax days, Kelly Ryan, is reviving her radio host career started twenty years ago when she did CBC Halifax’s weekend wake-up show. Once I goaded her into referring her co-host as “L-7” and “four corners” based on the Flinstone’s beat poet episode of another twenty years earlier. I think she got into news not long after that. Kelly has had some grim national radio news reporting jobs like 9/11 and the Picton mass murders. With her sense of humour, I have high hopes for this show.

I am a little more concered with the Globe’s report on what will happen with the CBC Radio 1 11 am to noon slot:

The new programming will kick off in the late morning, before local noon-hour shows, with host Jian Ghomeshi’s The National Playlist, which will feature musicians, actors and politicians debating their favourite songs. Listeners will also be able to call in to kick songs off the continually evolving play list. CBC is billing it as an iPod play list debated nationally every weekday.

Gee – Jian is going to rate songs…like he has for about 3 years now in unending repeats. Nice pandering to the iPod bubble, too. I have low expectations but it is nice to see, at least, that the Ghost of Peter Gzowsky Past may have less air time.

Brent Doesn’t Fear

I was listening to Brent on CBC Radio’s last remaining good show, Go, this morning and he played “Don’t Fear The Reaper”…again. I checked the old notes for his musical choices that I kept when he was on CBC Ottawa and didn’t see that he played the Blue Oyster Cult classic but he did play it on that afternoon show he did right after the lockout, though only a cow bell-less cover.

I am starting to think he obsesses about the song. I also am starting to think that it is the seminal piece of art from the 1970s. There may have been better tunes but there was not a better 70s song. Compare and contrast, class.

Shakespeare Image

Seeing as I am up now, I might as well take a swing at those who say this picture is not Shakespeare – because you know I know plenty about this stuff. You know I do. Auntie Beeb reports:

Dr Tarnya Cooper, 16th Century curator at the National Portrait Gallery, said: “We believe that Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon following the birth of twins in 1585. One possibility is that he joined a travelling theatre troupe and it is very unlikely that in 1588, Shakespeare would have been able to afford a costume of this type.” She said the painting has not been looked at in a systematic way before. “But the painting has fuelled the kind of Shakespeare in Love theories of the 21st Century, of a beautiful young man with a sensitive and passionate face, of a character with an incredible emotional range,” she said.

Because you know actors never use costumes and painters always paint the financial truth about their subjects. Look – I know there are a lot of 16th century textile experts among you so I don’t want to cause a flame war over this. I’m just saying.

One Killer App

Ian says that wikipedia and Google are the new killer apps. I say no way. I say email is the only killer app in that it does what it promises and is useful to anyone who comes into contact with it. The web, conversely, fails in many many ways…but even saying that is not getting it. Is there any other industry and activity which lacks any real critical analysis of its downside? The teflon effect of the Internet is likely its greatest success.