sad beauty

Manufactured Landscapes looks like another excellent documentary that quietly captures the sad beauty of our self-destruction.

what's the government waiting for?

We need economic incentives in place to get technologies in place to reduce, capture and sequester CO2 emissions, right now.
I don't know how much longer Canada's "new" government can go on critiquing the former government for waffling on the little things, before Canadians start realizing the Tories are waffling on such fundamental big-picture long-term issues as greenhouse gases and social well-being.

dirty party tricks

Ref: La Presse's coverage of the latest government environmental audit
They say a best defence is a good offense...

Les conclusions du rapport [...] seront sûrement reprises par les conservateurs qui utiliseront les passages qui leur plaisent pour justifier leurs actions et attaquer les libéraux.
Ce n'est donc pas une coïncidence si le rapport a fait l'objet de fuites avant son dépôt au Parlement, obligeant les libéraux à se mettre en mode réduction des dégâts dès mercredi.

...but I'm not comfortable with the Conservatives thinking this is all just a game.

«Les changements climatiques sont une réalité et peu importe la façon de voir les choses, les enjeux sont de taille pour le Canada», a déclaré la commissaire qui, sans le nommer, cible son message au gouvernement conservateur. «Il est impératif que le gouvernement adopte un plan réaliste, clair et crédible visant à réduire de façon significative les émissions de gaz à effet de serre», poursuit-elle.

Update: as expected, the tories have jumped on this opportunity like little children desperate to say "I told you so" for anything.

20-foot chasm

Apparently there's this American proverb that says:

It makes no sense to cross a 20-foot chasm with two 10-foot leaps.

In my view, this is exactly what's wrong with Harper's approach to Senate reform.

"Fight for what you have" or "Sell out now" ?

Canada's so-called "new" government has made a number of budget cuts to non-mainstream (read: vote insignificant) sectors, reinforcing my doubts as to their intentions. Below are some of their latest victims and the potential impact:

• Court Challenges Program. Makes it harder for non-mainstream Canadians to fight for language and equality rights.
• Pine Beetle Program. Population is out of control because the winters are warmer due to global warming. First goes the Kyoto commitment, then the efforts to deal with the mess. What`s next?
• Adult literacy and work skill development programs. Right, since when is an educated workforce good for the economy? Rather than helping them, they'll be squeezed onto the Welfare list and have to work under the table for peanuts. But at least they won't appear on the unemployment stats! I suspect this may also be a covert attempt at reintroducing slavery...
• Youth employment program. Right, why give these kids hope and skills for the future when we could be locking them away in a tougher stance on crime!
• Status of Women Canada. Ok, this has been around for a long time and has probably achieved its goals (well, at least by Tory standards who seem to be willing to settle for the 70% solution...)
• 12 fewer cabinet ministers. Right, who needs all this bickering around the table? why should the workload be spread across that many MPs and leave them time to deal with the bothersome needs of their constituents? Besides, too many people involved makes it harder to control any leaks.
• Public Safety also takes a $75M loss - uhm, what about that whole thing about making Canada a safer place to live?

All I see in these announcements and their actions are discrete but effective attempts to erode the social structures that make this country the peaceful, orderly place that it is, while replacing it with a more direct, confrontational and exclusive/divisive attitude typical of the United States. This budget is a well-calculated Trojan Horse that will very likely influence mainstream voters to vote in a majority conservative government so they can unleash the next round of borg-like assimilation.

Which conveniently brings me back to my subject line: In a world that is increasingly polarized, should we be fighting against all odds to preserve the progress (rights and priviledges) that we (and our forefathers) have fought for and earned, acting as a beacon of resistance and hope for future generations and others around the world, or should we give it all up and head full speed down the drain to stake out our place and welcome the rest of the world, since that's where we're all headed anyway?

Bell Sympatico incompetence

Would you believe it took Bell 4 weeks to conclude that my intermittent connection to their high-speed DSL service was due to the faulty new modem that they shipped me?
The whole time I had to endure thinly veiled accusations from their technical support that it was a user error (e.g., filtering the modem line, or not entering the right user ID), or my computer not having the right drivers (even though I've been with them for 6 years and know that no software is required because it was working fine before switching local phone companies), after which they resorted to claiming it must be an internal wiring problem (even after I told them i isolated that line and installed a whole new jack directly at the demarc).

After escalating my calls three times to a Level 2 Technician, somebody (whose mother tongue actually is English) from the Test Centre finally called me back and confirmed the complete line test checked out ok, and we scheduled a service call to my house. After 45 minutes of testing my wiring (which was perfect, no signal loss, cross-over or bleedthrough), the lineman finally had enough of the manager (who had "come along for the ride") insisting it must be the wiring somewhere, went to the truck and got me a new modem. I hooked it up, and voila, connected instantly. They were even surprised I was getting the speeds I could get given I had done my own wiring and had no Access Manager or drivers. They stuck around to make sure I could re-establish the connection through my router, and of course it picked up right away.

What a bunch of (expletives deleted). As soon as I get cable internet up and running reliably, they're history. At least they've confirmed that my wiring was irreproachable. The lineman even asked me what high-tech company I worked for, which brings me to another pet peeve of mine: Why is it people generally arrogantly extend credibility only to someone who has specialized in the subject at hand, whatever it may be? But I'll keep that discussion of educational prejudice for another day.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back online, even if it is with Sympatico.

Affairs of State

The Governor General has made some comments that were less than warmly received by separatists. I have not been able to find a reference article in English, but Radio-Canada.ca covers some of the reactions.

One of the opening comments to the article is that "[She] costs us a fortune."
RDI last night presented an article on the same subject and followed it with a single background-info slide, showing how the GG's budget almost doubled from 1995 to 2005.
This is a recurring complaint, smacks both of ignorance and of desperation to impress Joe Canadian with big numbers, and I feel a little context should be provided.

The GG represents Canada as head of state to the world, maintaining diplomatic and cultural relationships with other heads of state. She just recently welcomed the President of Latvia and will be receiving the king and queen of Sweden next month.
As she represents us to the world, she also represents, in a way, our world image to us. I very much respect the comments she makes and her desire to break the barriers between the "two solitudes." She's fighting self-obsession at the provincial level (she's not only picking on one province) so as to unlock the potential this country has to offer the world.

As for her "expenses": Rideau Hall is managed and maintained (rather shoddily I might add) by Public Works (as they do with all the official government residences), and Foreign Affairs dictates her agenda and organizes her trips. Personally I think its very convenient for this country to have two people to play the very different roles of good cop/bad cop when it comes to international diplomacy, and I see no reason why anybody should reproach her for doing the same with domestic diplomacy.

socially-irresponsible crock

MSN editors recommended an article that says now is the time to buy an SUV.

How can it claim that a $12,643 Durango is "cheaper" than the "more expensive" Honda at $12,000???

Promoting gas-guzzlers so unabashedly leaves me wondering if the author isn't trying to pump his investment portfolio overly heavy on oil and Big 3 stocks. Furthermore, barely skimming the environmental impact is unpardonably irresponsible.

I submitted feedback strongly suggesting the editors reconsider their support for this article. If you feel the way I do, I urge you to do the same; if you feel otherwise, please explain why to me as clearly I'm missing that point.

significant environmental impact

Re: Car-Free day in Qc
More green streets please!

inquiring minds want to know

Two of my colleagues, alerted to the fact I use them as source material for this blog, are on a mission now to find this blog
(insert Mission Impossible theme song here).

dynamic truth

One colleague (BH, exasperated) to another (GL) just a minute ago:

"I get tired listening to you because the truth changes as the minutes tick by."

I'm not so sure the truth itself had changed, but rather the words chosen by GL to express the underlying facts.
This was a good example of why I don't always like talking to people, because I usually don't have the patience to deal with people who blame the speaker (me) after they have clung to certain words and jumped to conclusions about what I meant.

Anyway, our section head has just forayed into this (now rather intense) discussion about the usage and meaning of various terms. (sigh) Too bad language has suppressed our ability to communicate effectively...

measures of awareness

According to EirePreneur:

It seems that intelligence, natural or artificial, is an emergent property of collective communication. Human consciousness itself may be an epiphenomenon of extraordinary processing power. Although experts prefer to avoid simplistic definitions of intelligence, it seems clear that all intelligence involves the rational manipulation of symbolic information.

Somehow this came about during the discussion of human superiority because we (at least most of us) are intelligent because we are self-aware as a result of our complex language skills.
Since our level of self-awareness can only be measured in words (usually) understandable only to us (humans), we are deaf to the expressions of self-awareness of other species and therefore any conclusion that they aren't intelligent strictly based on that argument is invalid.

There are more thoughts/concepts/notions on this floating in my brain that I can't quite put to words just yet. So, should my intelligence be measured on my awareness of them, or my ability to express them in words understandable by (most) others?

Excellent speech to the Economic Club of New York

Just read the speech and found it excellent. It drives home the importance of partnership with the US during a time congress seems ready to sacrifice us as collateral damage in the self-serving "protection" of their own borders. It also drives the point that Canada is an important petroleum producer with a stable democratic climate and whose economy leads the G7. He ends it by downplaying our differences by lightly teasing them about the cultural differences embedded in our constitutions and our sports and then reminds them of our shared fundamental values.
Overall it was a brilliant speech, but the message will have to be repeated over and again before the warmer attitudes translate into more profitable trading, because, unfortunately, it's exactly the kind of message that gets drowned out in their media's obsession with fuelling the shock-and-awe addictions of their (idiot) consumers.

fighting solitude

I was recently given a scenario that spawned a whole set of philosophical questions. You sociology majors will sneer at this probably entrance-level exam question, but it's one that we never looked at in engineering school (so humour me, ok?).

Setting. A kid in high school is always being picked on and he begins to isolate himself.
Scenario 1: You aren`t involved in any way with any of the people involved.
Scenario 2: You personally witness the situation but aren't friends with anybody involved.
Scenario 2: He is a friend and confides in you.
Scenario 3: You are part of the tormenting group and hear warnings from a third party.

Questions for each of the scenarios: (a) Whose fault is that? (b) Who, if anybody, should intervene, with whom, in what manner and when?

Variation1 on the setting: How do your answers change if he has retaliated violently against those that picked on him - is that self-defence?
Variation2 on the setting: How do your answers change if he has retaliated violently against random individuals or society at large?

scope creep

Client recently said 'We need something between "better than nothing" and "while we're at it." '
Classic.

mindboggling

If only the level of customer support could match the technology some companies offer...

double-edged words

On the Prime Minister's news release titled "Afghan President to visit Canada"
dated September 14, 2006:

Guided by our core values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights, Canada is proud - along with our allies - to support President Karzai's legitimate, democratically elected government, said the Prime Minister.

uhm, why so much emphasis on justifying Karzai's government, I wonder?

Technical support nightmares

Battling with Sympatico lately. Switched to a cable-based home phone service and Ma Bell promised to put in a dry loop (naked DSL) right away. Which they eventually did, but forgot to activate the high-speed internet on it. So, after three weeks, twenty-some-odd calls to tech support saying I suspectd my dry loop had no DSL service, waiting endless hours on hold waiting for somebody to answer, hoping in vain my "ticket with the level 2 agents" would be acknowledged within 24h as promised (only to find out later its a 66h response but was ignored anyway), changing my modem because somebody was convinced it was defective, rebooting/disconnecting/resetting it umpteen times and installing new software because somebody else was convinced it was essential for the computer to connect to the service, I FINALLY landed on someone who thought of checking if the service was actually activated on my dry loop. It turns out, big surprise, that they forgot to activate my service during the install. Lovely. Now I have to call back tomorrow during the day to kindly request that they get their heads out of their butts and/or pull them away from their monitoring of people's personal stuff to get them to complete the job they were supposed to THREE WEEKS AGO.
Schadenfreudic bastards.
I'm going to bitch for a credit, over and above the time unavailable, burn that off, then switch to somebody who is actually motivated to help people.

accountability, according to harper

I don't understand what the whole problem is with the whole appointment process anyway, since any appointments to the senate (for example) hangs over the head of the PM at the next election anyway. (Was it Joe Turner's campaign that took a dire turn when he said to Mulroney during the debates "i didn't have a choice" (referring to trudeau's instructions)?.
Harper keeps touting "accountability" to the people - however, he's removing himself (and his party) from that by shutting out the media, having his MPs repeat the same scripted points over and again rather than letting them speak freely, blatantly ignoring calls for by-elections for Emerson and Fortier to "earn" their mandates, and using the results of the last general election as blanket approval for their entire platform. I understand his reasoning is that Canadians will hold them accountable at the next general election, but I hardly believe that this retaliation voting concept is in the best interests of the country. We need some mechanism to exert pressure on their decisions issue by issue, preferably not after swallowing fourteen poison pills.

senate deform

Last week I had the opportunity to watch the PM being questioned during the senate hearings on bill S4 (which would limit newly appointed senators to 8-year terms). Personal mistrust and misgivings toward the current PM aside, I have serious issues with the way this is being done and the potential impact on our parliament, basically because I don't believe Joe Canadian, to whom Harper wants to make the senate accessible to, will ever be interested enough to get involved. It is very easy for high-profile individuals to spout rhetoric about (and for Joe Canadian to believe) how ineffective and expensive the senate is, how senator absenteeism rates are unacceptable, and how senate appointments are undemocratic. I believe the root cause of these issues is the fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the senate, but nobody is taking the time to discuss it. (If you are interested in a quick overview, wikipedia offers pretty good info.)
Without going into a point-by-point rebuttal of the PM's statements, I have grave concerns with the direction the Conservative party is taking with senate reforms. This first-of-many bills intends to limit the term of new senators to 8 years. How does that solve the root-cause? And what happens after the 8 (or 9 or 10 as he said he would be willing to accept) year term? Eligibility for re-appointment creates an incentive for the senators to kiss-up and vote in favour of the government to increase their chances of being re-appointed, violating the "sober second thought" process and making it irrelevant. But if you prevent them from being re-appointed, how would you prevent them from being influenced by external lobbyists, with whom they may wish to seek employment after their term? To make that case even worse, taxpayers wouldn't get any value at all from the growing ranks of retired senators each drawing a fat pension. Either scenario paves the way for the Conservatives to justify eliminating the upper house completely. So how can Bill S4 remain silent on such a critical issue, unless that is their desired end-game?

Another problem is the abuse of the propaganda that "the democratic will is supreme" and all the blabla that only elected representatives have the true mandate to govern, and therefore should be able to do so uninhibited by such troublesome things as laws, ethics, minorities, and even the constitution.
I don't trust the current government, not just because it has oft misappropriated the results of the last election as a carte-blanche by the people to do whatever it is they promised, when many canadians really only wanted to vote the other guys out. The PM even smugly stated with a Trudeau-esque "just-watch-me" smile when he told the senate committee not to force him to use any veto power, appoint new conservative senators (there are currently 8 vacancies), or bypass the upper house to get these bills passed.
Forgive me, I promised I would put personal dislike aside. Right, so limiting the senators' terms will rejuvenate the upper house on a regular basis. Fine. Hey, wouldn't it make sense then for Canadians to elect them? Result on parliament: Joe Canadians will elect the prettiest, dirtiest, most successfully slanderous snake-oil salesmen to the upper house. Don't we already have that in the house of commons? Then why bother with a second house at all?

The senate's role is defender of the constitution, regional rights and minorities. The days of the upper house being the house of lords protecting the interests of the landowners and other uber-rich are over, and any argument that is rooted in such lore is therefore invalid and should be called as such. Senators are being appointed from various social, economic and cultural communities (most having already held prominent government positions) to ensure that rights and freedoms of every piece of the social mosaic aren't abused, while, as one of the senators pointededly stated during the hearing, "the majority can look after itself." As Sir John A. Macdonald observed, it is a body of "sober second thought" that would curb the "democratic excesses" of the elected House of Commons.
Speaking of democratic excesses, Harper seems hellbent to capitalize on society's desire to curb abuses in politics, and is firing a silver(plated) bullet into the senate to "prove" that a democratically elected body as the ultimate authority as a panacea to all ills in politics and restore popular faith. In the short term, this will probably satisfy peoples delusional appetites for change, but I suspect people will very quickly realize what happens when you give somebody absolute power... Compounding the problem is that, like dealing with a schizophrenic who stops taking his meds, it can take a long time before you find a successful cocktail of new meds that will restore the delicate balance.
Bottom line is that this self-assigned democratization mission sounds more and more like the US Republican Party mantra, and the centralization of ("democratic") power is slightly reminiscent of propaganda from that German Socialist Party of the 1930's...

senate reform (2)

Let's say you bought a Lada because it was the lowest-cost vehicle when you needed something motorized with an enclosed cab to pick up the groceries at the corner store, and your friends invited you for a car race. You obviously wouldn't think of putting a Porsche engine in your Lada to join them; because you'd figure it'd burn out the transmission for starters. Then if you upgrade your transmission, you'd burn out your differential. Upgrade that, you'd blow out your tires. Upgrade your tires, you'd have to change the suspension, and so on. You just know it'll waste a lot of resources and cause a lot of downtime trying to get the car to do what it was never meant to do in the first place, and even if it did work, it would cost too much to keep it as a car to run simple errands with.

So what makes Harper think he can reform the senate bit by bit the way he is?

If something isn't efficient, you improve the process, but if it's not effective, you have to re-evaluate your options in achieving your goals. (If you don't agree with the goals, well, buckle up for a national debate.) To do anything less is a dishonest abuse of power, and to mislead the people in such a way is hypocritical to the worst degree.