mint madness

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/05/canadian-mint-we-own.html
that's just plain stupid. I sincerely hope that's made up.
Anyway, 2008 marks the 150th year of the penny in Canada, you might have seen the posters at bus stops and such. From wikipedia: "The first Canadian cents were struck in 1858..."
The penny, strike that, the "one cent piece," SHOULD BE ABOLISHED.
Why are people still attached to this shinny copper (coloured) coin? Is it because they think they'll get ripped off by vendors who round up? Well, let them read the following about inflation and Canadian history:

While consumer price data prior to 1914 are unavailable, a broader measure of inflation, the gross domestic product (GDP) deflator, is available back to 1870 (Leacy 1983). While the CPI and GDP
deflator can diverge, they tend to move together over time. Since 1870, with annual GDP inflation averaging 3.6 per cent, the Canadian dollar has lost more than 96 per cent of its value. Again, this is equivalent to saying one Canadian dollar in 1870 would have the purchasing power of roughly $26.70 in today’s money.

So, for those who are attached to the penny, don't understand inflation, and can't do math quickly, let me paraphrase that to say that in today's prices, the smallest coin back in 1870 was worth more than the 25c piece today. Working it the other way around, today's penny was worth about .04cents back then. They obviously didn't feel anything that insignificant was necessary back then, so why should we?
Meanwhile, taxpayers are payrolling the lawyers suing the city of Toronto, and the advertising campaign for the 150th year of the coin. And you're worried about being shortchanged at the till for the rare cash transaction? ha! literally penny-wise pound stupid.

telephone number conventions

with 10-digit dialing, why do people/business still write the area code in brackets? the reason why it was put in parentheses is because it was optional. Guess what? NOT ANY MORE. sheesh. use a hyphen (or even a dot if you insist) but fergoshsakes, drop the parentheses already!

Open letter to my employer

frustrate[1,transitive verb]

Pronunciation:

\ˈfrəs-ˌtrāt\

Etymology:

Middle English, from Latin frustratus, past participle of frustrare to deceive, frustrate, from frustra in error, in vain

(1): to make ineffectual : bring to nothing (2): impede, obstruct b: to make invalid or of no effect

Thanks, Mr. Employer, for your gross negligence in submitting an old, non-compliant resumé on a bid to extend my current position, instead of the up to date one that I tailored specifically for this purpose. If you wish to contact me, I'll either be in the unemployment line or begging at the heals of your competition.

things that make you go hmmm...

If knowledge is the key to freedom, why is thinking also called "de-liberation" ?

economic or gag stimulus?

You wouldn't have seen this type of spin vs reality journalism when the Cons first took power:

[When asked if he would match the $130-billion US stimulus package being adopted in the United States,] Flaherty said the government has already done enough to stimulate the economy. He said tax measures introduced by the Conservatives since coming to office in January 2006 - estimated to be worth $190 billion by 2012 - [... are ] "a huge stimulus to the Canadian economy, much more than what our American colleagues are thinking of doing in the United States. We've already done it in Canada."
The two initiatives are difficult to compare, however, because the Canadian measures include tax reductions and other initiatives already in place and some that will come into effect as late as 2012, while the U.S. package is targeted for immediate relief.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/02/06/flaherty-budget.html

Glad to see the media are overcoming their fear/awe/courtship with the neoCons.

PS. a $130-billion stimulus package for the US economy? seriously? I wonder if that contravenes NAFTA and other trade agreements... even if it is I doubt the Harper government will challenge it...

haute politics

Like in haute cuisine, O'Brien seems to be big on presentation but short on substance.
Urging business leaders to turn out the lights Saturday from 8 to 9pm is a great statement, but really, what effect will it have on compliance? most businesses (whom I expect already shut off most of their lights during non-business hours) are closed during that time, except for retail where utter darkness doesn't really encourage consumer spending or deter crime that well. If the city was really serious about climate change and the environment, he would encourage higher electricity prices. THAT would balance out the cost-benefit ratio of energy saving initiatives a whole lot more effectively!

Mayor O'Brien joins chorus of cities turning out lights
Jake Rupert, Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, January 31, 2008

The City of Ottawa has joined a world-wide initiative aimed a bringing attention to climate change, and municipal officials want all businesses and residents to get behind the cause.

The initiative, called Earth Hour, is sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. It will see people from around the world in cities from Copenhagen to Sydney turn off all their lights from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 29.

Thursday morning, during a speech to members of the Greater Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Larry O'Brien urged the city's business leaders to get behind the event and pledge to shut off the lights in their buildings.

"I'm calling on you to pledge support for this," he said. "It will show the City of Ottawa, its business leaders, and its people are serious about climate change and the environment. I'm proud of our accomplishments in these areas, but there's a lot more work to be done and this will show our commitment."

Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Downloaded this book from
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11876.
total of 89 pages, with lots of pretty pictures. I look forward to reading it in my "free time."

deep thoughts

Education is the key to freedom but for the burden of awareness it brings.

not out of the woods yet

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/01/22/afghan-journalist.html

The drug of combat

I have never actually been there, but this rings instantly true to me:

Dr Kevin Patterson is a critical care specialist from Nanaimo, B.C. who served (as a civilian) with our Multinational Medical Facility at Kandahar Airfield in February and March of 2007. He has written a book on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan entitled "Outside the Wire." LGen (ret'd) Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian senator, has written a foreword to the book which is excerpted below.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=238274

The drug of combat
In a new book, Canadian soldiers and aid workers deliver eyewitness tales from Afghanistan. In its forward, excerpted below, Romeo A. Dallaire explains how their experiences will change them - in good ways, and bad Romeo A. Dallaire, Special to the National Post Published: Tuesday, January 15, 2008.
In account after account from the trenches of Vimy, the front lines of the liberation of Holland and outside the wire in Afghanistan, we struggle -- soldiers struggle -- with how to convey the real reality. Sometimes even with what is the real reality.
In Afghanistan, experiencing the intensity of battle; being the cause of the destruction of villages; being able to do little to address the extreme poverty and deprivation of the children; witnessing the burden and abuse of women in this male-dominated social order; hearing the suffering and cries of the wounded, civilian and military alike; seeing the cold and cruel face of death on your enemy as well as on your comrade: These are some of the realities veterans carry back to Canada.
When they arrive home, other realities may shock them: the unseemly opulence of our country; the debates and posturing of politicians wanting to grab the next headline without knowing much about the war; the air of security that envelops civilians as they go so earnestly about their daily routines, detached from any sense of the threat encountered daily by their nation's representatives abroad; the consuming fervour and stress generated by our keen work ethic in this industrialized society; being able to hit the off switch on the remote when the tube projects too much hurt and agony. Is this the mindset the veterans of Afghanistan, and so many of their predecessors, are expected to slip into once again?
The reality of combat in Afghanistan or the reality of life back home -- which one does the young warrior most have to grapple with? Which actually comforts him most? Which one does the doctor cling to as she faces the passage of wounded through the Kandahar military hospital? Which does the battlefield humanitarian clutch to his breast to weather the moral and ethical dilemmas of service?
As the adrenalin high of the war zone recedes ever so slowly, the hurt rises in your stomach and buckles your shoulders under the weight of grief and sorrow. You're surprised to feel the deep ache of lonesomeness as you sit once again at your family dinner table -- where you longed to be. Though you deny it to the people who love you, the people in your home life who rely on you, you long for extreme emotions: the pounding of your heart in your throat so strong you nearly choke; the perverse exhilaration of defying death time and time again; the intoxicating spasm of raw power you experience among the explosive lights of bursting projectiles, with their
acrid smell and deafening blasts; the climax of battle, which leaves you drowning in sweat and relieved to be alive.
How can we -- how can they -- stay off that drug of combat, that rush into temporary oblivion that has absolutely no equal in the human experience? I can think of no civilian equivalent where one's job is to offer up life and limb for a mission, a cause, a buddy, another human being who is just as human and vulnerable as you. In the aftermath of combat, forever burnt into the wiring of a combatant's brain is another reality, which invades everyday life with a clarity and speed that can surprise, disillusion, depress and elate all at once. In my experience, no amount of time can dampen this impact on a soldier's psyche.
Aptly, some of the writings in this revealing explode and pierce the reader with an unbridled energy and clarity that pulls at the heart and drives right to the soul. Reading these pages is like hearing voices from the beyond, like seeing ghosts wandering the recesses of all the world's battlefields.
A reader will also encounter the kind of soldiers' stories that wars always produce but that often remain unheard, unread: statements that come out so spontaneously and so to the point. In the field hospital at Kandahar airbase, young Corporal Ryan Pagnacco, having been severely wounded in action, wakes up from his drug-induced torpor to the sound of rocket and mortar fire nearby. As he lies helpless in his bed, the nurse throws a blast blanket over him, and he asks: "Are we being attacked?" The reply comes immediately with calm and serious intent: "Yes ... go back to sleep." Can one imagine a more suitable response from a caregiver to an anxious patient
fresh from the front?
Many serve and so few are recognized or even receive a word of thanks. Often
the intensity of the battle prevents its leaders from noticing a fait d'armes of heroic proportions. At other times, the leaders themselves are wounded or killed and are not there to pass word up the line of a warrior's feat committed by a private. At other times, the cohesiveness of the group brings about a victorious outcome or a disciplined withdrawal under fire: All are truly heroes, yet all simply feel that they just did their jobs.
It is only when the tired, dirty, hungry and thirsty combatants find a moment of rest that the vividness, the adrenalin rush and the steady vise-grip on their stomachs catches them by surprise, replaying in slow motion the rage, fear, sorrow and extraordinary high of facing death head-on and surviving.
The anecdotes and jokes, the technical and emotional descriptions, the blood-curdling and sad exposes: All are present in these letters home from the battlefield in a far-off land. The human dignity and sorrow, as well as the elation of victory and the emptiness of loss, are laid out in the participants' own innocent, lively and clear prose -- the richness of which is incalculable.
-Romeo Alain Dallaire is a Canadian senator. In 1993 and 1994, he served as
Force Commander for the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. Excerpted from
Outside the Wire. Copyright C 2007 Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren.
Reproduced by arrangement with Random House Canada. All rights reserved.
This foreword copyright C 2007 Romeo A. Dallaire.

Night Shot

This isn't my typical post - there's no rant.
Here's a pic that I took in Florida last month; I'm particularly pleased with its serenity.
(well ok, maybe just a little rant: there's a plastic water bottle on the beach bottom centre - What in the world would possess people to toss garbage into such an otherwise pristine environment? sheesh!)

leader of the free world

..but for how long? (the "free" part, that is)

>
> Comedian or just NTB???
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijz1CdUj5fg
>
>
>
> Caught off guard?
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCvqXXnxLZw
>

pay now, pay later to a whole new level

zero tax increases --> city cutting back its social presence --> religions fill the social vacuum and before you know it, sharia is alive and well here too. taxes and the city services they fund are the only weapons we have to defend ourselves against people with whom you can't debate because they do things in the name of some supreme deity, who conveniently delegates authority only to a few "chosen" individuals.

This is how you get courts sentencing women to 200 lashes and six months in prison after being abducted and gang-raped by seven men.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2007/11/28/4691235.php

CMAJ accuses drugstore chain of 'poaching' African pharmacists

Shoppers Drugmart is getting a little greedy... bad on them.

TORONTO - Canada's top medical journal is calling for a boycott of the country's largest chain of drugstores over the "unethical" practice of "poaching" pharmacists from South Africa.
In an editorial titled "Shoppers Drug Mart or Poachers Drug Mart?" the Canadian Medical Association Journal accuses the national chain of contributing to a health disaster by luring workers from the AIDS-ravaged country, a scheme it describes as "foreign aid in reverse."
"Those who poach deserve to lose business," the editorial says, citing figures from the KwaZulu-Natal province, in which three-quarters of government-funded pharmacist positions were unfilled.
The editorial suggests Shoppers should fund pharmacist training programs in South Africa, rather than exploiting the education system of a poverty stricken state.
"Shoppers has a legitimate need for workers, but it's not solving that need by bearing the cost in some way, by sharing the cost of training those workers," said Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in law, Population Health, and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, who co-wrote the editorial.
"The South African taxpayer bears the cost in large part, and the worker is pulled away to Canada, where Canadians get the benefit. The lack of equity is obvious."
John Caplice, the company's senior vice-president, treasurer, investor relations and corporate affairs, refused to be interviewed yesterday, but said in an e-mail: "We are familiar with the editorial ... and strongly disagree with what is implied by its contents. Shoppers Drug Mart has in the past recruited a select few pharmacists from South Africa, as well as from other English-speaking nations. It is not our intention to 'poach' or damage the health care system of any other country."
The editorial, to be published in the forthcoming issue, contrasts the fair practice of "passive enticement," such as advertisements, with unfair, active "poaching." Mr. Attaran said Shoppers crossed the line by actually going to Africa and making company lawyers available to help with immigration hurdles. The company also pledges to reimburse the cost of Canadian licensing exams for successful recruits.
"In other words, they're facilitating the decision, not simply offering the option. It's the facilitation that is the problem," Mr. Attaran said. "I think we would feel very hard done by if American corporations were actively poaching away our graduates, and yet that's what a Canadian corporation is doing. And bear in mind, we don't have 19 per cent of adults with HIV; the South Africans do."
The editorial was prompted late last month when Wendy Lack, manager of associate recruitment for Shoppers, contacted Roderick Walker, dean elect of the faculty of pharmacy at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, with a personal invitation to a recruiting drive that began yesterday.
Mr. Walker spread the word to colleagues, and co-wrote the editorial, which represents the views of the entire CMAJ board.
Ms. Lack was in Pretoria yesterday for the recruiting drive, which continues Thursday in Johannesburg, and next week in Durban and Cape Town. She did not respond to requests for comment.
For individual South African pharmacists, the question of emigration is often a dilemma that pits the welfare of their homeland against that of their families, with predictable outcomes.
"It's a good opportunity for Shoppers to be there because of the bad situation for pharmacists at the moment. ... The whole profession is under threat," said Wilhelm Venter, 40, a pharmacist who left South Africa five years ago and now owns and manages a Shoppers Drug Mart in Toronto's financial district.
He said his profession is poorly supported in South Africa because, unlike in Canada, doctors can dispense drugs as well as prescribe them. He said legislation has been changed for the worse in the last couple of years, with the effect of "bankrupting a lot of pharmacists," and so the interest in emigration is now at a peak. But he said a lack of doctors and facilities, and the high cost of medication, are far worse problems.
"Unless you have an actual private drug plan, which very few people can afford, most people can't even afford to buy medications from a pharmacy, so the pharmacist's role is pretty limited," he said. "They're going out of business. That's why they're leaving."

battlefield deciders

"Some of the best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot," Nagl's counterinsurgency manual says. Instead, it advises troops to get to know the locals — both individually and as groups — and gain their trust. The locals generally know which of their neighbors are insurgents and which aren't; they're already plugged into the communal network. "Arguably," the manual says, "the decisive battle is for the people's minds."

From Wired.com, ironically enough. I believe this is as important in a city like Ottawa, struggling for public confidence in its ability to provide effective and efficient needs. Retreating into service-cutting "0% tax increase" modes is counterproductive. Instead, the city should be an integral part of the community - if not, you leave the door open for other organizations to fill the void, organizations that you typically can't discuss with rationally because [god] is on their side.

the mayor speaks

There's no way in a hundred million years that the (1500?) staff at City Hall can match the intellectual capacity of the 877,000 people of the City of Ottawa.

-Larry O'Brien on a telephone interview with BOB FM this morning (26 Nov 07 around 6:20am) on municipal budget consultations.
Wow.
Akin to the 2004-11-20 Dilbert where Alice is outwitted by PHM during a performance review ("inability to handle criticism ... and you argue with people much smarter than yourself.")
Evidently, in this first-past-the-post election system, his conscience is guided by a public opinion weathervane.
Personally, I think dissing your staff in order to flatter the electorate and gain public support for overriding staff recommendations is a cheap trick. I guess he also considers having the guts to say and do stupid things that nobody else would dare as "leadership."
My only consolation is that, as time goes on, the backward slides into conservativism, the reactionary shifts between left and right, are getting shorter-lived as people start realizing neither is the panacea for public ills. Part of me is beginning to look forward to the next quantum change that resets the public's frame of reference. Isn't 2012 the year the Mayans think this (particular iteration of the) world ends?

lost in a golden age?

This is stupid. Why remove a book because it is controversial? Better thing to do is take your heads out of the sand and ask the students to discuss what they think makes it controversial. Oh but wait, that would lead to free thought...
shortlink
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071123/compass_books_071123/20071123?hub=Canada

"The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people's lives in the name of some invisible god (and they're all invisible, because they don't exist) -- and done terrible damage," Pullman writes on his website.

"In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it."

honorary titles

interesting factoid:
"In the United States, the form "Excellency" was specifically denied to the President"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellency

well, interesting from a historical p.o.v: this obviously stems from an anti-british monarchy/peerage system sentiment, which is interesting to me because the best definition for Canadian is "not american."

A friend of mine suggested Dubya would prefer "Your Omnipotency." If we were to use "Your Inepotency" instead, would the spelling error distract him from the thinly-veiled attack?

Why exactly is Hollywood on Washington's radar?

I never imagined that the American government would concern itself over leftist Hollywood, that persistent thorn in the side of absolutist intentions, other than, perhaps, to serve as a convenient catchment area for social laxism and vice. Is Washington then afraid that such an attack might allow the communist "disease" to break out and infect the rest of the country? Or are they afraid that without Nicole and Britney and the anorexic twins, the media will have to start talking about the real world again and people will start paying attention to Washington and the rest of the world again?

EXPERTS FAULT U.S. PREPARATION FOR ANTHRAX ATTACK
Will Dunham
November 14, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The United States has done too little to prepare for another potential domestic anthrax attack six years after spore-laden mail killed five people, a former CIA director and other experts said on Wednesday.
[...]
The report illustrated the threat by laying out three scenarios involving an anthrax attack: spreading spores on New York's subway system, killing thousands; dispersing a smaller amount of the spores in a Minneapolis movie theater, Las Vegas casino and California theme park, killing hundreds; and an attack at the Academy Awards ceremony, killing famous actors.
"Congress needs to get much more involved right now. The administration needs to put this on the front burner," Livingstone said.
[...]

no words can describe this

somebody's spending not enough time with the rest of society (which in this case might be a good thing for the rest of us):
http://www.churchofmoo.com/half-mad/teevee/teevee.html