informed confusion

2008-04-08T01:42:00.001-03:00

More woes for the CCP as it tries to push the Olympic Torch across the globe:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/04/07/paris.torch.canceled.ap/

This man

2008-04-06T18:28:00.001-03:00

Has a wall of skulls in his office. Clearly a must.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSfg7cWRIAE&feature=related

strange things vol. I

2008-03-24T03:34:00.006-03:00

An otherwise normal-looking man standing next to me at one of those "make your coffee unhealthy" Starbucks station-things emptied no less than four sugar packets, one after another, into his coffee, vigorously shaking each packet for several seconds before carefully pouring it in, stirring the results after each dump with a different stir stick.

..the stranger part: I stood by watching, idle, engrossed in the whole affair as if witnessing some unique, coffee-inspired modern sacrament, one part ancient Teotichuacan ritual-cum-Fordist manufacturing assembly line, two parts OCD-engendered dementia.

2008-03-23T07:44:00.000-03:00

I've taken a break from blogging to get some thing done — including a book on North Korea — but now I am back. O Ye nonexistent readers.

Russian 'democracy'

2007-11-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

Is catching up with Gary Kasparov.

A few good links, vol. MXVII

2007-11-23T08:11:00.000-04:00

Couple oddities in today's New York Times.

First up is this article, by liberal columnist Maureen Dowd, about the recent spats between Democratic Presidential nomination front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over their respective foreign policy experience. The title of the piece — "She's No Morgenthau" — looks to be an on-topic reference to Hans J. Morgenthau, an international relations theorist and University of Chicago professor who immigrated to the U.S. from Poland after living through World War II.

But there are no further references to Morgenthau in the story proper, nor would a candidate's possession of foreign policy experience necessarily make he or she "Morgenthauian."

(Morgenthau's main claim to fame is setting out the fundamental precepts of classical realism in his influential 1948 tome, Politics Among Nations, a school of International Relations theory that identifies the consolidation of power, maximization of security, and the protection of core national interests as the predominant responses of nation-states to what the theory argues is a fundamentally anarchical international order. So, basically, realpolitik, but dressed of for academes.)

Pardon my ignorance on the details of the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination campaign, but the realpolitik doctrine doesn't seem all that applicable to the foreign policies of either Obama or Clinton. And with no mention of Morgenthau after the first reference, Dowd leaves us guessing as to why she had his name put up in the hed.

(In the public policy sense of the word, Morgenthau was not a foreign policy practitioner, either. Although influential, he was, by trade, an academic — a little far off from what usually makes for a President of the United States.)

So what is Dowd trying to do? Compare Clinton to realism? Attract some IR theorists to her column? Was this a desk editor trying to be clever?

Second up isn't so much an oddity as an interesting piece on Hollywood producer Brian Grazer. As the article points out, Grazer isn't well-known — he certainly isn't a household name — and for someone who has been behind such major projects as Eight Mile, Inside Man, A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, and American Gangster, his Wikipedia entry contains scant information. I found this bit of the NYT story most fascinating, though:

For the last 20 years, Mr. Grazer has met each week with a person who is an expert in science, medicine, politics, fashion, religion — anything other than entertainment. He is so serious about the meetings that he has a staff member whose job it is to find interesting people.

The weekly get-togethers have led to some of Mr. Grazer’s most successful ideas. After meeting with five of the top trial lawyers in the country, Mr. Grazer came up with the idea for “Liar Liar.” “Eight Mile” came about because he had met Chuck D, the lead singer for Public Enemy, and Slick Rick, a rapper from the 1980s. A meeting with a former F.B.I. agent, Christopher Whitcomb, led to “The F.B.I.,” a new show for Fox.

“I like learning stuff. The more information you can get about a person or a subject, the more you can pour into a potential project,” Mr. Grazer said. “I made a decision to do different things. I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original. I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone.”

Read away.

~

Domo Arigato, Michelin-San

2007-11-20T18:33:00.000-04:00

Revealing something I've always had a sneaking suspicion was true (or, in the least, truthy), Michelin Guide today declared Tokyo the world's top city for cuisine.

Ze quote:

Eight of Tokyo's restaurants won the maximum three stars — only two fewer than Paris itself. Another 25 got two stars and 117 one star.

To add to Paris's embarrassment, three of the top eight restaurants in Tokyo serve French food. Three more offer traditional Japanese fine dining, and the other two are sushi houses.

"Tokyo is becoming the global city with the finest cuisine, the city in the world with the most stars," said Michelin guide director Jean-Luc Naret.

In other news, it turns out it is possible to clean blood off a knife with soap and water (or, preferably, bleach).

2007-11-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

Canada is now China's 3rd largest export market, reports the China Daily:

Canada's exports to China nearly doubled to 8 billion Canadian dollars (US$8.8 billion) in 2006 from 4 billion Canadian dollars (US$4.4 billion) in 2002. In the first seven months of 2007, they soared 43 percent over the same period one year ago, the largest gain by any of the G-7 countries, the report said.

Although Canada still imports far more from China than it exports, 21.7 billion Canadian dollars (US$23.9 billion) as of July, 2007 compared to 5.5 billion Canadian dollars (US$6.1 billion), export growth has outpaced imports by a wide margin this year, said the report.

This is good news for our export portfolio. Sadly, according to 2006 figures from Industry Canada, 82% of our exports still go to the U.S. — a whopping $360 billion, versus East Asia's total $23b.

Net worth(s)

2007-11-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

In yet another sign of the global power shift away from the Atlantic and toward the Pacific, China's flagship sovereign wealth fund, PetroChina, has become the world's largest company by market value.^*

The oil giant closed out its first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange at 44 yuan per share, putting the company's total market value at just under $1 trillion USD — a tad below Canada's annual GDP and roughly equivalent to India's. Taking up the second violin chair on the world's-most-valuable list is ExxonMobil, worth about $480 billion USD, or $90 a share (NYSE). And of the five most valuable firms on earth, three are Chinese — PetroChina at No. 1, China Mobile at No. 4, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at No. 5. (General Electric rounds out the top five at No. 3.)

Even if ExxonMobil is "more profitable, better managed, and richer in assets," as The Economist reports, and PetroChina's IPO is inflated and unreflective of its actual market value, the $500-billion gap is still a major indicator of the shifting global winds.

(Hint: the weather vane points east.)

~

^* Market value does not reflect a firm's total assets, market capitalization, or "size." Measured in terms of assets, western banking giant Citigroup dominates, though the recently-privatized Japan Post savings system is probably worth more. In terms of market capitalization — or "physical stuff," as it were — GE is king.

Yes, I know it's a famous and acclaimed novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

2007-11-04T20:07:00.000-04:00

...but "Love in the Time of Cholera" has got to be one of the worst movie titles ever. And the badness is made worse by New Line's marketing campaign, which features romantic, rose-adorned posters, a melodramatic trailer complete with lush, soaring music, and the word "Cholera," printed in large, white text and announced by a male narrator so delicately it's as if he's saying "silk lingerie" or making a pass at a moonlit-damsel in Seville. The effect borders so closely on camp that I've yet to sit in a theatre showing the trailer where moviegoers didn't break down and giggle when the title appears near the end...

(The giggling is followed by the trailer's quick, almost off-hand proclamation that the film features original songs by Shakira. You can take a guess at where this leads.)

It's all a tad shameful because, well, who knows, Cholera could be really good.

~

Feels good

2007-11-03T21:35:00.000-03:00

To be 25

I am become tourist trap, maker of dollars

2007-10-30T20:00:00.000-03:00

On Tuesday, the New York Times put up an interactive online feature that lets you roam around a map of New York and click on former Manhattan Project sites for pictures and info. Among the notable clicks are Pupin Hall at Columbia University, where early experiments on atom-splitting led to breakthroughs, J. Robert Oppenheimer's childhood home on the upper west side, and the former New York Times building at 229 West 43rd Street.

Thought: why not go one step further and organize a paid-admission 'Manhattan Project Walking Tour' — you know, an American equivalent of sorts to Whitechapel's über-popular Jack the Ripper walk? I'd sign up.

And a bottle of Rummy

2007-10-25T08:28:00.000-03:00

I got into a spirited discussion/pseudo-argument at a recent Canada's World shindig, the topic du jour being the "cause" of the Iraq war. (Indeed, I know how to pick 'em). Speculation abounded: It was oil. It was the power of the Israeli Lobby. It was Bush playing second fiddle to his executive. It was doing what daddy had not done in 1991. It was part of a liberal grand strategy to install democracy in the Middle East. It was Cheney. It was Rumsfeld. It was Rove. Yep, that's the cause. Based on the evidence. Well, depending on how you read the evidence. Er, which evidence you read.

It occurred to me, after nearly a half hour of this sort of cherry-picking (*gasp*, could it be all of the above?), that discussions of these sorts are now largely irrelevant. The sad fact of the matter is that the U.S. is in, hands dirty, knees bent, and Iraq for its part has been invaded, occupied, liberated, dismantled, remantled, reconstructed, deconstructed, and screwed and nailed in lopsided bits and pieces into a giant fucking mess.

Was it for the oil?
Does it matter?
And if it does, is this really worth so much of our attention?

~

On an aside, DFAIT, as part of its decades-long, never-ending budget cut, is selling its expensive embassies and properties in a bid to raise cash.

Canada is reviewing properties abroad that have been owned for 25 years or more that are too big for their diplomatic functions, too costly to upkeep and too far from business centres, said Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore. When a property is sold, it will be replaced by a more economical leased or purchased property.

Getting rid of expensive, limited-function overhead is, of course, wise resource management. But why do I get the feeling this yard sale is a bit of a public cry for help in the face of more systemic cash-related problems?

*cough*

~

No queen walks here

2007-10-13T23:34:00.000-03:00

Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the sequel to 1998's Elizabeth and, astoundingly, made by mostly the same people, is a giant mess of sloppy editing, overbearing music, cringe-inducing melodrama, and gross historical inaccuracy, the last of these problems so egregious that the film's screenwriters are unquestionably guilty of high treason — the historical-disinformation-ala-Braveheart kind of treason that is sure to leave audiences far dumber than they would be otherwise.

Historicity aside — Hollywood can't always be perfect, after all — Braveheart aimed no higher than a relatively obscure bit of the past, at the very least capturing William Wallace's 14th century rebellion against English imperialism 'in spirit'.

The same cannot be said of The Golden Age, which (among other things) reduces Philip II of Spain to an effete, maniacally-religious twat, portrays the long, rather indecisive Spanish Armada of 1588 as an all-night boat party held within throwing distance of the not-even-close cliffs of Beachy Head, and depicts the poet/explorer Sir Walter Raleigh as if he stumbled off the set of Pirates of the Caribbean and added cum-saviour-of-England to his CV.

Granted, a few plot devices here or there approach the level of historical accuracy one hopes to get from a big-budget period-piece: the infamous Papist plot to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots is kept, for example, and Raleigh's contentious marriage to lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Throgmorton becomes a central part of the film's narrative thrust. But they're either grossly simplified or happen at the wrong time — like, during or just before 1588, instead of after, way before, or not at all.

(For a movie with few pretensions against gruesome displays of torture, some well-known and dramatically colourful bits of history are inexplicably ignored. It took no less than three swings of the executioner's blade to separate Mary's head from her body, for example, and the second blow sliced open her subclavian artery, sending blood everywhere. All we get in The Golden Age is one off-screen clang!)

These details wouldn't matter if the film's artistic license held any water. But the possibility of 'in spirit' film making — or good film making, even — seems to have been left on the editing room floor. Or in the second unit director's head. Or buried under a budget cut.

Indeed, aside from Cate Blanchett's performance, The Golden Age is glorious in its incoherence.

But for all its foibles, The Golden Age is still worth watching. First among reasons is Blanchett, who brings wit and intelligence to even the most deadened of lines. And there are a few scenes, mostly toward the end, that pack tremendous visual power (and even fewer, mostly toward the beginning, that convey a pang of emotion or two). But the main attraction here is all that blabbering and historical apostasy, which make for one bloody entertaining show, even if it's more parade of horribles than, for lack of a better comparison, Elizabeth.

Just don't say you weren't warned.

~

Wither DFAIT, year 33

2007-10-09T16:05:00.001-03:00

In what must be one of the most systemically true, non-time-sensitive Canadian news stories of all time, the Canadian Press reported on Sunday that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (or, wearing a different hat, Foreign Affairs Canada) is "is in the grips of a kind of existential crisis" and "faces financial, morale crisis; feels muzzled."

Quelle surprise.

This sort of thing has been true since the mid-1970s, when, as a colleague tells me, Canada's foreign diplomats in Kabul attempted to pull one over the Brits by kindly asking them to henceforth handle Canada's affairs in Afghanistan.

The British response to our request did not, as one might expect, reciprocate any usual Canadian courtesy.

The problem then was, as it is now, a matter of funding. Not a culture of bureaucratic indifference, nor inter-departmental enmity, nor any of those adjunct institutional factors that, while they play a major and ongoing role in the tragedy, are actually understudies to the lead.

The real existential crisis is overextension, the 'minimax' expectation that Canada punch above its weight without wearing the right gloves. Our leaders consistently make 'maximum' public foreign policy demands that, supplied with 'minimum' funding, are well beyond DFAIT's financial and operational capabilities.

(The same could be said of CIDA, DND, CSIS.)

The systemic nature of the 'minimax' problem then begs the question: are we — the taxpayers, the government, whomever — actually willing to spend the money it takes to address let alone achieve Canada's foreign policy objectives, be they what they may?

Or have we always simply set the bar too high?

~

Link of the day, Vol. XIX

2007-10-05T14:02:00.000-03:00

Alas, I cannot resist.

Japanese workers in Wikipedia row

Japan's Agriculture Ministry has reprimanded six civil servants who spent hours at work editing articles on Wikipedia - mainly about robots.

One man was found to have made 260 entries to articles about Gundam, a popular animated series featuring giant robotic fighting machines.

Read the story.

Four steps to Russian 'Democracy'

2007-10-04T14:45:00.000-03:00

Big moves in the motherland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin deftly ensured his place at the top of the Russian political apparatus by appointing loyal, no-name Victor Zubkov as Prime Minister, and then announcing that he himself will run for Parliament after his constitutionally-limited second term as President is up. When run through the Russian mystery political strategy formula™, this essentially means that Putin plans to play switcheroo with Zubkov using a four-step process:

1. Putin runs for Parliament and wins, being an obviously popular, affable man;
2. Zubkov runs for President and wins — unopposed, of course, thanks to the dirty work of Putin's cronies;
3. Zubkov nominates Putin as Prime Minister, allowable under the Russian Constitution; and
4. Zubkov de facto steps aside while Putin takes reign, as PM, over the Executive.

The real coup-de-grace is that the Russian Prime Ministership has no term limitations, meaning Putin can effectively run Russia from the Federal Assembly forever provided he maintains favour with the President. Should this plan go awry for some reason, Putin can run again for the Presidency after sitting out for a term — the constitution only limits consecutive terms. The success of all this back-door strategizing will be assured though the precise and meticulous application of bribery, threats, and cronyism, of course — all those Soviet-era tactics Putin's democratic rule has worn like an old jacket.

Machiavelli would be pleased.

~

Quote of the day, week, whatever

2007-09-25T15:30:00.000-03:00

From Fungineer via Slate's "Today's Blogs" feature:

Bush is predicting that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic Nomination.

Thus, I can only conclude, given Bush's track record, that Obama is going to win the Democratic Nomination.

My manga portfolio has seen better days

2007-09-24T09:12:00.001-03:00

Just two weeks after the meteoric, Paul Martin-esque rise and fall of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan is set to have a new chief executive: 71-year-old Yasuo Fukuda.

Thoughta? For one, Taro Aso, Fukuda's chief competitor and a great fan of manga, will not be PM.

(And here I was hoping for more North American imports of hentai DVDs.)

It also means that Japanese foreign policy in East Asia may return to form, breaking from the more jingoistic regional relations practiced by Abe and his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. As the BBC writes:

Mr Fukuda is seen as a foreign policy dove who eschews Mr Abe's more ambitious policies, such as revising Japan's pacifist constitution to facilitate military deployments overseas.

He has emphasised the need for cordial ties with China and promised not to visit the contentious Yasukuni shrine, which Japan's neighbours see as a symbol of the country's past militarism.

He has also hinted at a more flexible stance towards North Korea to resolve a row over Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But Mr Fukuda is in favour of continuing Japan's naval mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting the war in Afghanistan.

Coming off recent progress made on the North Korean nuclear issue, Fukuda's dovishness is good news for the region — which is, I might add, the only region where things seem to be going in the Bush administration's favour.

Viggo Mortensen is a man-killing machine

2007-09-23T01:54:00.000-03:00

At one point in David Cronenberg's latest flick, Eastern Promises, a somewhat naked Viggo Mortensen suddenly finds himself the target of a hit, armed with only a waist towel against two knife-wielding aggressors. What ensues is surely among the most 'ultra' fight scenes ever put to film — ultra-graphic, ultra-violent, and ultra-brutal.

Bathhouse sparring isn't the only reason to go see the masterful Eastern Promises, but it's a big one.

(And, for the squeamish, a bit of a warning.)

Artists lost

2007-09-18T06:22:00.000-03:00

Robert Jordan, Joe Zawinul, and Luciano Pavarotti all died in the space of a few weeks; Ingmar Bergman and Robert Altman not that long ago, either. Why do these things seem to happen in clumps?

....

From Dragonmount:

It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered [sic] in his faith, nor questioned our God’s timing.

The writings of James Oliver Rigney Jr, also known as Robert Jordan (1948-2007), had a major impact on my reading habits and interests in life. I first discovered The Wheel of Time series in my high school years, and I was quickly taken up by Jordan's epic pastiche — a genteel blend of adventure and imagination, one part pulp fantasy, two parts heady realpolitik. The series' massive tomes inspired me to imagine, and played a formative role in my interest in history, politics, and writing. To cast The Wheel of Time aside as a Lord of The Rings Nouveau, as its critics often do, is to sell the series far short of what it is: an epic, complex, sweeping set of works that covers so much intellectual, emotional, and thematic ground (and pages... 11 volumes!) that labeling it mere 'fantasy' would be, for want of a better term, an injustice.

To the critics' credit, Jordan's writing is often overlong, rife with fantasy clichés, heavy on complicated political plots, and, depending on one's blood-alcohol level, wonderfully pomp.

And yet, like a Wagnerian opera, it succeeds. From Jordan's New York Times obit:

Known for its epic sweep, intricate plotting and large cast of complex characters, the series centers on Rand al’Thor, a humble messianic figure who must stave off the forces of evil that threaten to overtake the faraway land in which he lives. Along the way, there are perils and portents, fair maidens, fantastical deeds and the like.
In an essay in The New York Times Book Review in 1996, Edward Rothstein wrote, “Even a reader with literary pretensions can be swept up in Mr. Jordan’s narrative of magic, prophecy and battle.”

The “Wheel of Time” books have often been compared to the work of J. R. R. Tolkien in terms of their ability to exert a magnetic hold on readers. Translated into more than 20 languages, the books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, according to Mr. Rigney’s publisher.

Sadly, Jordan died before he could finish the series' twelfth and final volume. His unique, southern voice will be missed.

2007-09-05T19:15:00.000-03:00

It is often difficult for a 24-year old Canadian male who has never travelled to the Middle East, witnessed a person die in an armed conflict, or even visited Ground Zero (let alone been pulled out of airport line) to fully grasp the visceral reality of international terrorism, war, and violence — I am drunk, if you will, on the plush, numb comforts of Western materialism.

Occasionally, a moment of sobriety sets in.

Orwell a 'socialist' writer?

2007-09-05T06:06:00.000-03:00

The BBC seems to think so:
MI5 monitored socialist writer George Orwell for more than two decades, but did not believe he was a mainstream communist, records have revealed.

To quote Emperor Leopold II...

2007-09-03T01:56:00.002-03:00

What City Should You Live In?
	You should live in New York City. America's largest city will ensure that you will blend into the crowd. You are the brooding type--introspective, creative, and eccentric--and NYC's cutting-edge, individualistic culture and ambience will appeal to you.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

...well, there it is.

Stardust

2007-09-01T04:47:00.000-03:00

is – at times – poorly acted, jarringly edited, awkwardly written, and occasionally degenerates into just about every sci-fi/fantasy/adventure genre cliché you can think of (though on this last count I can't rule out the possibility that the filmmakers were aiming for camp-qua-satire deliberately)...

...yet I left the theatre completely enchanted. And in love with Claire Danes. Why do I get the feeling I had a crush on her in high school – in real life?

Sure as hell ain't Algiers

2007-08-23T14:38:00.000-03:00

It's been a month since I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and the occasion has neatly coincided with the 2007 edition of The Economist's annual survey of the world's most livable cities. Vancouver ranks first out of 132. A citation, if you will:

The Economist Intelligence Unit says Vancouver was chosen number-one due to a low crime rate, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed transport and communications infrastructure.

While I cannot disagree with the premises of this assessment, a few things I've noticed in the user comments I agree with:

1. Vancouver is tremendously aesthetically pleasing — epic, even. It easily qualifies as the most visually stunning city in Canada, architecture included.

2. Downtown Vancouver has a startling number of panhandlers, junkies, and homeless persons. And I don't just mean the notorious Downtown East Side. I mean the whole downtown. I'm don't mean your usual 'sign-out-front-head-down' homeless person, either — the sort that reminds one of the cruel and unusual realities of society, nature, and capitalism. I'm talking down-and-out v. 2.0: legion, mobile, and aggressive. I'm certain 99.9% of Vancouver's homeless population suffers from cruel life circumstances and means absolutely no harm, but I actually feel less safe at night here than in other places in Canada and abroad as a result — counting in Montreal, Toronto, London, Geneva, and Paris, for example. Has Canada's shelter/mental-care system really failed this badly?

3. B.C., as one reader points out, stands for "Bring Cash."

4. Despite the condos and downtown density, Vancouver's urban centres are spread out and very 'suburb.' The white culture downtown (and I mean on the downtown peninsula only) is very 'experientially'-oriented, in a suburban sort of way: car, kids, condo, kayaks, mountain bike. It's an inward-looking, if outward-experiencing, existence. The city life, being disjointed and stretched out around large residential 'deadzones' (to borrow a phrase), seems to suffer as a result. One must, following the rule of the Vancouver road, be mobile.

(On an aside, I'm told there is a sizable indie population at 12th and Main, though I'm not sure if that's a plus.)

5. The Georgia Straight is the best weekly in Canada.

6. Fresh air is a great, great thing.

~

Democracy is a Harsh Mistress

2007-08-20T14:08:00.000-03:00

Election Monitors Be Hatin', Say Kazakhs

Man at Robson St. Coffee Shop:

2007-08-18T21:41:00.000-03:00

"Dude, does your iPod say 'Modest Mussorgsky'?"
"Yep."
"Is that Swedish Death Metal or something?"
"More like late 19th-century Romantic."
"Oh... Cool."

Another reason to avoid LA

2007-08-18T05:01:00.001-03:00

Your plane might explode.

Officials said the WestJet Boeing 737, carrying 136 passengers, came within 15 metres of colliding with a 150-seat Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 that was taking off.
[...]
The "runway incursion" was the eighth such incident at LAX this year, matching the total for all of 2006.

According to my calculations, the approximate chance you might almost die* from a plane collision in 2007 at LAX¹ is:

1 in 58,157

(or about 0.001719 percent)

-------------------

¹656,842 aircraft movements in 2006 at LAX (Source: Airports Council International) = approx. 465,263 aircraft movements by August 15, 2007, presuming no significant change in airport traffic between 2006 and 2007. Divided by eight incidences of near-death = 58,157.
*Presuming 100% death rate upon collision.

Wikipedia Vandals Exposed!

2007-08-16T13:56:00.000-03:00

...And they are, apparently, among the U.S.'s most cherished institutions.

The BBC reported yesterday that a new program called "Wikipedia Scanner" allows users to track Wikipedia edits back to their sources via IP address association.

While the media attention given to IP-address tracking seems relatively new, the method used by the program is anything but. At a forum I used to monitor, staff members once tracked down a user's residential address using little but an IP address and google after he posted a suicide note on the forum — a serious one. An administrator called the appropriate county authorities and, as far as events thereafter indicated, a suicide was prevented.

Forums with registered members or any sort of IP logging mechanism have had this ability for years.

What is interesting about the BBC report, though, is that IP addresses traced back to the CIA and the U.S. Democratic Party appear to have engaged in myriad acts of Wikipedia Vandalism.

Not only were these clear acts of vandalism, instead of say, what you'd expect from the CIA — questionable NPOV editing — they were outright moronic acts of vandalism, too. One edit traced to a CIA computer involved nothing but the insertion of the term "Wahhhhhh!" into Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Wikipedia bio.

(...makes me wonder if anyone at the vaunted Liberal Party of Canada or CPC has been tampering with Wikipedia's pages on Canadian politics... perhaps I should take a gander and find out...)

No Yasukuni

2007-08-15T21:34:00.000-03:00

This is new. Too bad Abe is otherwise in a lot of trouble.

Crystal Palace, Dubai Style

2007-08-10T23:35:00.000-03:00

Everything is made of ice: the walls, tables and chairs; cups, glasses and plates; the art on the wall, the sculptures depicting Dubai's skyline, the beaded curtains, the two-metre-chandelier and the bar.

Read all about it.

About this Iggy business...

2007-08-09T13:22:00.000-03:00

...simple: better late than never. Regardless of one thinks of Ignatieff's foreign-policy views, I for one always find it refreshing when a politician candidly admits an error in judgement.

(Bonus points, of course, if that error in judgment didn't actually lead to a catastrophe, form the basis for a misguided policy, or kill anyone.)

I do wish Iggy could be a bit more to-the-point, though...

Keep dem der kids away from mah Mahjong

2007-08-06T04:59:00.001-03:00

4 shizzle.

(Don't ask why my title has a Texas accent.)

Bourne better than Bond?

2007-08-05T04:59:00.000-03:00

Legacy, cultural influence, and popular zeitgeist-ness notwithstanding — maybe. Or perhaps not. At the very least, though, the latest Bourne (and last?) kicks serious ass.

....On another note, don't ever order from the unnamed fast-food chain that's upstairs in Vancouver's Scotiabank/Granville St. theatre. Not unless you want to wait for an hour while you watch the staff go about mundane tasks in such an excruciating, maladroit, sloth-like, piecemeal fashion that I cannot possibly begin to describe it here.

(Well... this wouldn't be a very bloggish blog if I didn't write something substantial now and then. So here's an attempt. Fact to know: movie starts at 10:50 p.m.)

10:40. Cashier takes order. Cashier relays order to staffer. Staffer looks at order. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier relays order to staffer again. Staffer looks confused. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer realizes order. 10:41. Staffer goes to back table. Staffer finds a burger bun on back table. Staffer places bottom half of burger bun on different part of table. Staffer goes looking for burger patty. 10:42. Staffer realizes burger patty is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. Cashier asks question about drink. 10:43. Cashier begins filling requested drink. Staffer emerges from freezer with burger patty. Staffer places burger patty on grill. Staffer stares at burger patty on grill. Drink overflows. 10:44. Cashier apologizes. 10:45. Staffer takes burger patty off grill. Cashier fills new drink. Cashier apologizes. Staffer looks confused. Staffer discovers burger bun on table. 10:46. Staffer places burger patty on bun. Staffer looks confused. Cashier apologizes. Staffer realizes burger needs top bun. Staffer looks confused again. Staffer realizes top bun is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. 10:47. Cashier hands over refilled drink. Staffer emerges from freezer with top bun. Staffer realizes bun must be thawed. Staffer places bun in toaster. Staffer stares at toaster. Staffer turns around. Staffer sees original top bun next to burger patty and bottom bun. Staffer puts original top bun in toaster. 10:48. Staffer realizes original top bun is already thawed. Cashier removes original top bun from toaster. Second top bun emerges from toaster. 10:49. Staffer is unsure what to do with extra thawed top bun. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks confused. Staffer puts extra bun next to original bun. 10:50. Staffer looks for pickle. Staffer realizes pickle is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. 10:51. Staffer returns from freezer with pickle. Staffer places pickle on burger. 10:52. Staffer looks at pickle. Staffer looks at burger. Staffer looks confused. 10:53. Staffer realizes burger needs tomato. Staffer goes in freezer looking for tomato. 10:54. Staffer emerges from freezer with no tomato. 10:55. Staffer looks in smaller freezer. Staffer finds tomato. Staffer looks happy. 10:56. Staffer places tomato on top of pickle on burger. Staffer looks at tomato. Staffer looks at burger. Staffer looks at top bun. Staffer looks confused. 10:57. Staffer takes tomato off pickle. Staffer takes pickle off burger. Staffer places tomato on burger. Staffer places pickle on tomato. Staffer looks happy. 10:58. Staffer places original top bun on burger. Staffer stares at burger. Staffer looks confused. 10:59. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks confused. Staffer looks confused. Cashier looks at me. 11:00. "Ketchup?"

(Thank God for previews.)

It's About That Time...

2007-08-01T00:18:00.000-03:00

...to attempt to save the Sudan. Low and behold, the 62-year-old United Nations Security Council, still woefully outdated, always insidiously political, today made an intelligent decision about one of those rare crises that garner universal admonishment: it voted to send the world's largest peacekeeping force into the Sudan. Note the inclusion of an "African Union mandate" in the UNSC's resolution, underlining (or belying?) the sad fact that a [u]regional security force should and could have been given legally-binding permission to go in ages ago[/u], but wasn't, largely because of UNSC politics.

Better late than never, I s'pose....

Ingmar Bergman

2007-07-31T00:29:00.000-03:00

...may you rest in peace.

Unabashed Movie, Blog endorsements, + Bonus Link

2007-07-29T22:54:00.000-03:00

Movie: The Lives of Others. Synopsis: German Stasi surveillance officer becomes emotionally attached to his 'subversive' subjects. My opinion: well-worth the two-hour + cost of ticket exchange. (I don't hold this opinion often.)

Blog: Bert Archer's blog. Synopsis: uh, Bert Archer ... blogging. My opinion: Bert is a friend of mine, and a regular Globe and Mail contributor. All things being equal, Bert's expressive abilities eclipse my own, so better to let Bert speak for himself. Or type for himself. Or whatever.

Bonus Link: it seems no one likes Conrad Black.
〜

Random thoughts while queueing at Vancouver Starbucks #348

2007-07-26T21:42:00.000-03:00

Here’s an idea: coffee shops that administer two lines for waiting patrons — one for those of us that want regular coffee, and another, longer line for anyone who wants one of those complex, silly, has-nothing-to-do-with-coffee -and-is-more-like-a-dessert / fruit non-alcoholic-cocktail things that takes eons to make.

(Full disclosure: When I go to a coffee shop, I do so to because I want coffee — not something thick and fruity enough to float a barge and substitute for perfume simultaneously.)

To be completely fair, the ubiquitous presence of Starbucks, Second Cup, and other “boutique” or high-end coffee shops in Canada’s urban centres is a blessing for lovers of good coffee. A blessing, of course, only so long as we remain in line behind this:

What’s that? You’d like a triple-malt strawberry-banana fructolicious latté shake? Sure! Which size would you like? Medium? This is a medium. Larger? Great! A large. Ok, back to a medium then. Great!! Would you like soy, lactose free, organic, whole milk, or creamo with that? Skim? Great!! And sugar? No sugar? Oh! Cane sugar! Awesome!! Cane sugar coming right up! You want kiwi, too? Great! Oh, hold the strawberry?? So yes to kiwi and no to strawberry? Sure!

...do you want banana tree peelings as well? Great! That’ll be $18.95!

That’ll be five fucking minutes of my life I will never, ever get back.

Coffee, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

beverage brewed from the roasted and ground seeds of the tropical evergreen coffee plant of African origin. It is consumed either hot or cold by about one-third of the people in the world, in amounts larger than those of any other drink.

The 2004 Oxford English Dictionary:

Cof•fee |'kôfē; käfē |
noun
1 A drink made from the roasted and ground beanlike seeds of a tropical shrub, served hot or iced.

The icing: Starbucks defines itself as...

...the leading retailer, roaster and brand of specialty coffee in the world.

Am I missing something?
〜

Drugs are bad

2007-06-04T11:14:00.000-03:00

Chris --

[adjective]:

Visually addictive

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

A Few Good Fonts, vol. XVII.01 (boldface)

2007-05-25T13:23:00.000-03:00

Several authors, a law prof, and an artist-in-residence wax poetic on their favourite fonts in this Slate article. A few "telling" snippets:

I talked to my therapist, and she said my love of Courier stems from my childhood.
-Elisa Zuritsky, writer and producer of Sex and the City

It exists only on Hewlett-Packard #92286P, an obsolete font cartridge that plugs into an obsolete printer. When my printer dies, my beloved font will die as well.
-Anne Fadiman, author of At Large and At Small

I also like the fact that in [my favourite font] each letter is accorded the exact same amount of space, which I think is only fair to the 'i' and the 'l'.
-Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York

I can even hear the rattle of the metal ball against the sheet of paper, I swear.
-Jonathan Lethem, author of You Don't Love Me Yet: A Novel

Out of admiration, out of superstition, out of habit, in chivalrous devotion, on too many computers (for how many thousands of words?), on three continents, at all hours of the day and in every single human mood, I have remained completely loyal to this font. Fourteen point, to be precise.
-Dushko Petrovich, artist in residence at the Royal Academy, London

My favourite font? Palatino, or, I suppose, Book Antiqua — eleven point, to be precise. Why? I don't know. I guess it just looks nice.
〜

Empty words?

2007-05-16T12:25:00.000-03:00

There's an excellent if brief piece in last week's Maclean's that outlines the surreptitious but very real presence of Chinese spies in Canada. This comes on the heels of Chinese-born Canadian Celil Huseyin's life sentence, handed to him by Chinese courts on the premise that Celil is a Uighur nationalist (according to mainland law, not only are Uighur nationalists a very bad thing, but dual citizenships such as Celil's don't count for much, either).

And thus off to prison he goes. In his tracks: a stupefied Canadian government that, as far as I can tell, either has no idea what it is doing, or has several contradictory ideas and doesn't understand the concept of "management". As J. Michael Cole at the Taipei Times writes,

Sadly for Celil and [Maher Arar] precedent notwithstanding, he is unlikely to receive much help from Ottawa -- or the rest of the international community, for that matter. And the reason is simple: China.
It is one thing for Canada to reprimand Syria on human rights for the very real possibility that individuals in its prison system are being badly treated, if not tortured. [...]
But hapless Celil has a tremendous handicap: China's economy and the lure it has, siren-song-like, on other countries. Statistics from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada show that Canada's total trade with China last year was close to C$42 billion (US$37.3 billion), while two-way trade with Syria for the same period was approximately C$72 million. China's GDP was estimated at US$2.225 trillion in 2005. Syria's was US$25.84 billion. [...]
It is one thing to "anger" Damascus and put bilateral trade at risk; it is quite another when it comes to China.

It seems to me that the Canada-China connection is slowly turning into one of the world's great publicly mismanaged relationships, a heap of economic and political potential that seems to lack any clear vision. Even today, breaking his usual post-Harper silence, former Prime Minister Paul Martin weighed in on the debate.

It's no secret that Canada has for eons attempted to diversify its export portfolio beyond the great consumer market to the south — take Trudeau and his failed Third Option trade initiative with the European community, for example.

Post-9/11, the reality that the Canada-U.S. border could be closed in a heartbeat has become all too real, especially if a porous border becomes a threat to American national security.

China presents Canada with a real opportunity for economic change. We have resources; China wants them. At the same time, the Chinese government and ruling communist party are very unpopular in Quebec, a key battleground in Canada's electoral landscape. Governments throughout the world have been reticent to threaten China with real consequences when faced with the CCP's human rights regime. Empty words and criticism? Sure. Real action? Absolutely not. The taste of China's economic teet is simply too sweet to dismiss, especially when the alternative is considered: human rights — hardly profitable.

Canada wants to play the China game somewhere in the middle. Criticize, embrace; become strategic partners, keep a distance. Play a human rights card; play a Canada card. Feign indignation. Our "strategy" has clearly miffed the Chinese. As with many things in Canadian foreign policy of late, "unrealized potential" is, sadly, the shoe that fits.

If our government wishes to affect change in China on matters of Canadian interest — Celil is a prime example — it needs to take a clearer position: foster a relationship, as it seems to want to, or get out. The CCP has no real stake here, and we have no real stake there. Until that changes, Chinese leaders can quite simply ignore Canada, regardless of what card we play.
〜

11 important lessons from Spider-Man 3

2007-05-13T03:15:00.000-03:00

1. If you kill your best friend's dad, it's OK; being best friends is more important than semantic, easy-to-ignore distractions like criminal law and premeditated homicide
2. People with emo haircuts are obviously just evil versions of their normal selves
3. New York, or at least lower Manhattan, is inexplicably full of sand
4. It's OK to walk into a jazz club and yank the singer off stage mid-song. She won't get fired or in trouble or anything, even if the rest of the bar is full of patrons who have paid cover
5. 'Physics' is a bunch of nonsense someone made up in the 1600s hoping to confuse the film industry
6. If an alien life form lands on Earth, no one but a college physics professor played by Dylan Baker will care
7. #6 only applies until the life form inhabits a rubber suit, whereupon it can be defeated through the mostly inexplicable use of either (1) ringing steel tubes or (2) church bells of an obviously different pitch. Jazz arrangements containing a variety of notes, harmonies, and wide range of vibrations won't work, however, and will instead inspire the alien to break into an embarrassing dance number
8. When a superhero gains the ability to shape-shift, he/she will always miraculously shape-shift back into the same outfit. This leads one to wonder if shape-shifting also has a dry-cleaning effect
9. Women, or at least Kirsten Dunst, have no climbing ability whatsoever... especially in those scenes where imbuing a character with realistic physical abilities would inconveniently ruin several plot points
10. The last film in a trilogy must always have at least two overwrought endings
11. Despite his unquestionable awesomeness, a Bruce Campbell cameo does not rectify Rules 1-10

〜

Better late than never？

2007-05-08T12:51:00.000-03:00

According to a report from BBC News, in-person Japanese PM visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine appear to have ended. PM Shinzo Abe instead made an offering to the shrine, declining to visit the Akasaka/Tokyo site in person:

Mr Abe offered a potted masakaki tree, accompanied by a card that read "the prime minister", to mark Yasukuni's spring festival on 21-23 April, a spokeswoman for the shrine said.

Although the debate over whether Japanese public officials should visit/not visit the shrine is usually limited to discussions of optics — and the visits themselves often seen as highly politicized lip service — this small gesture, IMHO, could prove to be a meaningful "first" in the necessary, but so far unrealized, establishment of a mutually accommodating East Asian security community.

And that's that.
〜

Late-Night Movie Censorship = bad

2007-05-07T16:28:00.000-03:00

On Saturday night TBS aired a version of Gladiator so heavily edited that the fight scenes — some of which contain major plot points — became incomprehensible. When will major networks, American and otherwise, finally realize that chopping a movie into bits and then airing it amounts to artistic castration?

Great TV....

2007-04-26T18:29:00.000-03:00

...on the web. Charlie Rose, perhaps the best, most-intelligent talk show on air (or the most-intelligent best talk show on the air...) has relaunched its website — and in fine fashion, might I add. Start off by checking out Charlie's one-hour sit down with George W. Bush.

On the more absurd side, it seems a number of otherwise intelligent Japanese citizens have been "fleeced" — literally — by a pet poodle scam; on the other side of the world, Newfoundland has posted a $261-million dollar surplus and will soon bequeath to its taxpayers the largest tax cut in the province's history. I wonder: given Newfoundland and Labrador's spruce economic record — troughs, a peak or two, follow by more troughs — is a $155 million tax cut the best way for Danny Millions to prodigalize the province's hard-earned purse?

Oh, and then there's this dandy...

再见。

A Good Link, Vol. 6

2007-04-24T16:53:00.000-03:00

Make sure your speakers are turned UP.

http://www.khaaan.com

The Globe's redesign

2007-04-24T12:25:00.000-03:00

The consensus is in: it sucks. And it looks just like — at least according to a number of friends of mine who know better than I do — The Guardian Weekly. What in the hell was wrong with the older, distinguished, tall & thin typeface look?

Cleaning up?

2007-04-23T19:21:00.000-03:00

The nominations list for the 30th annual National Magazine Awards was just announced, and my current place of employment — The Walrus magazine — leads the pack with 51 nominations.

To be fair, it's not uncommon to hear stiff criticism drift the NMAs' way... the awards are often roundly criticized as being virtual hand-outs, yearly alms for Canada's publishing poor. Well, if you're of that blasé sort, let me defer to an old adage: "strength in numbers."

(Also, the next competitor down, Toronto Life, only garnered 23 nominations.)

太好了。

New Blogroll

2007-04-22T14:47:00.000-03:00

Empowered by my newfound sense of empowerment, I've edited the list of blogs appearing under the links header to the right of this post. New additions include The Walrus blog, which I occasionally help HTML-ize; and Daniel Aldana Cohen's blog, which, depending on the day, either advocates the imperial system of measurement or is unabashedly anti-Pole.

A Few Good Links, Vol. 86

2007-04-22T14:25:00.000-03:00

1. Moscow's hidden city of billionaires
2. Canadian jailed in China
3. Conrad Black, in his own words
4. Man loses arm to Crocodile; arm later re-attached
5. World's longest tunnel will be a Russia-U.S. pipeline

Photofile Vol. 99

2007-03-16T21:39:00.000-03:00

My two-day voyage from Halifax to Toronto via train was long, somewhat claustrophobic, and not particularly recommended — unless the idea of taking a train in Canada holds for you, as it did for me, some novelty value. Here are a few snapshots:

...the rest can be viewed at LaRoche Online Galleries.

Rumours of my demise have not, as one might expect, been greatly underrated

2007-02-12T01:37:00.000-04:00

In fact, they are accurate; I am still very much alive. And, as you might expect, I am still very much interested in updating this blog.

Unfortunately, the last month-plus has been, uh, basically, very busy. I will not go into any 19 Duncan St. details, but rest assured that:

1. I am having a blast; and
2. Toronto is indeed a vast, lonely place for those of us without preexisting Toronto networks.

Aside from my impending disconnection from society and disinterest in other human beings, the big smoke has turned out to be quite — *gasp* — livable and accommodating. A few reasons... one, I have done my best to avoid the TTC and simply walk everywhere I need to go. This has worked well except for those times when the thermometre has fallen below -25. Thankfully, they be sparse. Two, I am not in much danger of falling victim to an accidental run-over, either. The aggressiveness of Toronto's traffic is fairly 'lame' by European or even Montreal standards, and strangers will stop to pick up something I've dropped, or apologize if they bump into me in a crowded line. As one of my coworkers put it, "it may be Toronto, but this is still Canada."

Three, I can also safely report that, as of my arrival, winter in Toronto has become a very real, cold, Canadian thing, snow and ice and all.

As I presumed, things here are more expensive here than in Halifax. Well, a few things that concern me. Beer, coffee, and groceries are more-or-less the same, maybe a bit more expensive. But rent, 'nightlife,' and the ubiquitous 'cultural activity' are far enough outside of my skeleton budget that most of the benefits of the big city are bereft of me: the symphony ($35-$100+), the museum ($30+), non-China Town restaurants ($30 for a cheap one), and drinking out more than once or twice a week ($30+ for a few; $60+ to get drunk, at least, depending on how much I've eaten).

(To some extent I presume that these things can be found on the cheap in one nook or cranny or another — for those in the know. I am not, as a foreigner to this city, in the know.)

Still, wandering is totally free pastime, and Toronto's great melange of sights passes time rather quickly. I live adjacent to Bloor St., Chinatown, and U of T, and I'm not far from Kensington Market. The best of Queen St. W is about 30 minutes away on foot. Er, shopping. I can even walk to the St. Lawrence Market without feeling overly displaced. Best of all, I have a brilliant if slight view of the CN tower from my front door!

(Sorry, Toronto readers — as dumb as it may sound, I can't help but admit that seeing the CN Tower at various times of the day still makes my heart rate jump a little.)

More updates to come...

Onward and upward,
再见.

In the T-dot

2007-01-16T23:25:00.000-04:00

Readers,
I have successfully relocated to Toronto for my stint at The Walrus. I don't have reliable internet access at the moment, however, so I probably won't get around to updating until Friday or whereabouts.

A picture from my cross-Eastern Canada odyssey:

Butterfly? Really?

2007-01-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

Your Birthdate: November 2

You're so intuitive, it's like you have a sixth, seventh, and eighth sense.
You connect with others freely and easily - and you tend to have many best friends.
Warm and caring, it's hard for you to close your heart to anyone.
Affection is like air for you - you need to give and receive it to survive.

Your strength: Your universal compassion

Your weakness: Your unpredictable mood swings

Your power color: Mauve

Your power symbol: Butterfly

Your power month: February

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

A Few Thoughts Vol. 382

2007-01-05T19:10:00.000-04:00

I have decided to take the slug, er, train to Toronto because the slug, er, train will let me bring more luggage on board than would an airplane.

Still, I must somehow fit my entire life into 4 suitcases weighing no more than 50lbs each. This may sound easy for some of you, but I happen to be one of those condemned persons who plays musical instruments. Even attempting to bring my electric guitar rig to Toronto would put me over the VIA Rail limit — my coffin of an amp alone weighs something in the order of 80 or 90lbs, and all my pedals and cables stuffed into a book bag ends up being very heavy.

My trumpet, with its large case and "priceless" (er, sentimental) quality will probably have to stay. And I don't particularly like my acoustic guitar enough to tie it up for the haul, so I may try to get rid of it before I go. That leaves me with a flügelhorn and an assortment of mutes, all of which will probably fill a suitcase.

"Ü," I say.

Then I've got my winter clothing. It's light, to be sure, but bulky. I enjoy sweaters, and I do, contrary to popular belief, have a winter coat or two.

And suits. I like suits.

Er, and shoes. I must have a few pairs of shoes. I am there till at least July, after all, and I arrive in the middle of winter. I'd like to go to the opera at least once, so I need dress shoes. Might as well bring my Italian leathers (brown), too, just to cover the brown side of things.

What if I go jogging?

(Who am I kidding. I'm not going to go jogging.)

No bike, no skis, either. Too big. What a winter/summer this will be. I am going to waste away.

Thank God for Centrum.

I have a laptop — it must come, or I will suddenly find myself in danger of becoming a human being. So must the computer speakers (they're small). And then there's the matter of things dear to me: a few books, a sketch pad, my Chinese dictionaries, my digital camera, adapters for my computer, camera and speakers, my ipod, the ipod charger, an espresso coffee maker, a teapot, a small Buddha, more books, pens, a King's College mug, guitar picks, a few mouthpieces, a DVD or two, my wallet, a cheese grater, bellybutton lint, socks, a hat, some ski gloves (for shoveling), Vaseline (er, for chaffing), a DVD player (just in case!), adapters for electronics, adapters for clothes, adapters for life .... More, more, more space eaten up by post-material whims and odds and ends and things that would be maniacally frivolous were I not addicted to them, their presence, and their use in my daily life; doings and ongoings....

Sometimes I wish I was an actual Buddhist monk. No possessions, no worries; all love, all kindness; stability. And views of the Himalaya. Who could ask for any more?

Hell, I might as well go to space.

"Ü," I say.

Onward and upward,
再见。

A Few Good Links Vol. I

2007-01-03T19:23:00.000-04:00

In an attempt to increase the number of posts on this blog without forcing readers to wade through piles of drivel (ahhhhh I'm innocent! Really!), I've come up with new "periodical" blog post-type thing.... A Few Good Links.

(Yes, before you ask, A Few Good Men aired on TV the other night, and I'm ripping it off. Blatantly. So don't ask. And don't tell any Scientologists.)

Here goes. One link, one sentence. Sorta.

Why Saddam should have lived, Eroll Mendez, The Ottawa Citizen, January 3, 2007. I think Saddam's trial was nothing less than a bacchanal crap shoot, and this article agrees with me completely, hence my posting it (the headline, "why Saddam should have lived," is a hangman of a misnomer, though. Uh, shame on The Citizen's desk editors...).

Dick in a Box, Saturday Night Live digital short (link: YouTube), December 16, 2006. Step 1: watch this video; step 2: laugh until your lungs rupture; step 3: call 9/11, and remember, for legal purposes, that I warned you.

Canada past 'tipping point' on public smoking, Norma Greenaway, The Montreal Gazette, January 3, 2007. I don't know why The Gazette decided to put 'tipping point' in between apostrophes.

(OK, second sentence: I'm one of those 'health-freaks' who enjoys returning from a 'pub' sans needing to 'wash' a few dozen cigarettes' worth of 'nostalgia' out of my clothes, brain, hair and lungs included.)

Crunks '06: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections, Craig Silverman, Regret the Error, December 16, 2006. I'll let the howlers speak for themselves:

A headline on Page One on Saturday should have made clear that Oregon Health & Science University will be studying the effects of meth, not cooking it.

[...]

An editorial in Friday’s paper incorrectly stated that Florida Cresswell, a candidate for state representative in the 28th District, was convicted in 1999 of battery and stealing Tupperware. In fact he was convicted of stealing a battery from a van as well as Tupperware that was inside the van.

[...]

In Wednesday’s Taste section, a Washington Post recipe on Page F7 included an incorrect cooking time for carbonada (braised beef with onions and red wine). The dish should be cooked for 2 1/2 hours, not 10 to 20 minutes.

[...]

Following our article on Princess Eugenie’s birthday celebrations, we have been asked to point out the party was closely monitored by adults throughout and while a small amount of mess was cleared away at the end of the evening, there was no damage to furniture, no revellers dived into bedrooms in search of drunken romps and to describe the house as being trashed was incorrect. We are happy to make this clear and regret any distress our report caused. Link
An excerpt from the offending story:

ASTONISHED witnesses told last night how Princess Eugenie’s 16th birthday party descended into a drunken rave – with teenage guests snogging, boozing and being sick. Fifty youngsters had flocked to the Hooray Henry bash at the Duchess of York’s Pounds 10 million mansion. But rather than sitting down to a meal prepared by caterers, some began knocking back champagne, spirits and strong lager they had secretly smuggled in – and quickly became legless.
...The witness told how randy guests dived into BEDROOMS in search of drunken romps. Others PASSED out because they were so drunk, while several VOMITED inside the property. And rooms were TRASHED, with carpets stained and cigarettes stubbed out on furniture as the March 18 party continued into the early hours, to the strains of a blaring disco.
[...]

It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.

Toyota vehicles to refuse drunk drivers, The Associated Press, January 3, 2007. Just a good idea.

Iraq War Coalition Fatalities, arranged in chronological order and superimposed on to a map of Iraq using Flash. Watch it, and make sure your computer speakers are turned on.

Last and probably least...

Lawyer Sayings, Quotes & Quotations. Evidence presented: "Make crime pay. Be a Lawyer."

Noodling; Pensive

2007-01-02T20:33:00.000-04:00

Subtitle: The impossibility of having normal human relations in this world of ours is making me anxious

It's funny. All of our telephones, satellite links, internet connections, Lonely Planet books, and iThings, supposedly allow us to communicate with anyone, anywhere. The last five visitors to this blog, in fact, logged in from Kingston, Calgary, and Montreal, Canada; London, England; and an undisclosed location in the U.S. I can email a friend in China, ask him about the weather, and practice Putonghua; I can IM an ex in Ottawa, brush up on news, and send pictures across the great invisible expanse that separates us.

Yet at the same time "this world" (what a laden term!), with all of its opportunities and bag checks and technologically-created communities, forces us out and about in the pursuit of happiness, goals, careers, new connections, and a buck or two. We need the telephone because no one lives in the same place. We need the Internet because the simple voice-transfer of the telephone is, in this age, a woefully limited medium of communication. And we need each other because, without human interaction, we would indeed inhabit a "lonely" planet, live lonely lives, and die in lonely graves surrounded by anonymous corpses belonging to people we've never met and probably could never meet, that being just "the way it is."

The other day I spoke with a dear friend who I dated once. Our relationship was broken off mostly because she was moving elsewhere and the cross-oceanic commute would have been financially and emotionally impossible, taxes, heartbreak, and globalization included (our relationship hasn't restarted, despite mutual reservations, for the same reasons). Amidst reminiscing, laughing, getting drunk, taking shots at each other's self-esteem and wondering if things might have ever been different, I said something to the effect of: "you know, I was born in Halifax. It is home. But I have to move elsewhere because there really is nothing for me here. If I were born in London or New York, I wouldn't really have to move anywhere."

To which she replied: "if you were born in London or New York, you probably wouldn't want to stay in London or New York."

I suppose that's just "the way it is." And I suppose graves in London and New York, regardless of where you're from, are pretty anonymous.

In two weeks I will become part of a regional 'brain drain.' The move, to Toronto, serves only my own interests — I'm on to bigger things, as they say — but I'm leaving a lot behind: friends (what's left of them), family (who will eventually move), and colleagues (to be brain-drained too, perhaps in a few years). The first 24 years of my life, 2006 included, all feels very unfinished, like a rough draft with promise that's been shuffled around a desk. I'm putting the draft in a drawer for keeping, but who knows if I will ever return to it. I certainly don't; other human beings certainly don't; and God, as far as I can tell, has been mute for the last 24 years.

Chances are, though, that I won't return, and if I do, it won't be for long. For want of a better term, there is little for me here, career-wise, curiosity-wise, experience-wise, you name it.

Except everything, of course.

But that everything is fleeting. My friends are filtering away to various corners of the country and the earth, and so am I. For better or worse, I am powerless to stop it. But do I want to? And is this a shame? And what about all those people that I want to chase, who have gone in different directions like the frayed end of a rope? What about "what ifs" — will I ever get any second chances? Will things between myself and so-and-so or such-and-such ever finally line up?

When it comes to emotions — goddamn them! — opportunity can be suffocating. The new "information age" (Gates age?) means that my scattered band of friends in London, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Ottawa, Halifax, B.C., and elsewhere are never more than an email away. I can keep up with them. But the content of these emails is the same: limited to 'keeping up.' The power of shared experience is in this age an old man in a rocking chair, a relic of the way 'things used to be' before geographic separation became the norm. I wonder how many "what are you up to these days?" head-above-water emails it will take for the old man to speak up. 'Dreams' aren't just career moves. They imply that at some point one finds the right person, at the right place, and in the right time. And that's becoming, in my mind, damned difficult.

I hope, for better or worse, that things eventually line up for me, or that I somehow find the courage to drop everything and make my own destiny, find that right place, and be content. I also hope that if any of this happens I have the courage to do something about it. I haven't found that courage yet, but I suppose, being young and all, that's just the way it is.

Onward and upward,
再见。

I am no fan of mass-murdering dictators...

2006-12-29T18:13:00.000-04:00

...but what in heaven's name will this accomplish? This entire Saddam vs. the Iraqi Tribunal ordeal has been such a monkey trial I'm surprised anyone out there is standing for it. Are we to presume that, in executing Saddam, all dictators on Earth are effectively told "beware: totalitarian regimes are risky, crime-ridden endeavours"? Are we to presume that this signal will effectively challenge or change the behaviour of the likes of Kim Jong-Il, the Iranian Ayatollah, or Fidel Castro? Are we to presume that, in death, Saddam's powers of insurgency rabble-rousing against the U.S. are nullified?

(How about no, no and no...)

The Godfather of Soul, 1933-2006

2006-12-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

James Brown, the legend, the creative force, the abuser, the musician, the cat, the polemicist, the rights activist, the addict, the eternal spirit beyond good and evil, passed away this morning at the age of 73. There is a great deal of "James Brown" that cannot be fully understood by a modern audience, the nature of the beast being such that you either had to "be there" to see Brown in action, or you had to be part of Brown's action proper. James Brown went beyond simple grooves and beats; he was part-and-parcel of the entire American experience, the human experience, from the 1960s and onward. His music is inseparable from race relations in post-War America, and the mark he left on American popular is, to be blunt, immense.

I never bowed into the depths of soul very far; my ears stop, on one side of the artistic spectrum, at Miles Davis' 1970s funk-jazz experiments; on the other, at Ray Charles and the Parliament Funkadellic. Back when I was fortunate enough to play in a few bands that covered the standards of soul, funk, R&B and gospel music, however, the figure of James Brown was monolithic; his image, his sound, his vibes; the texture and smell of his rhythms, his basslines, his beats, his shouts — his problems, his triumphs. Soul and funk are not my "safe" idioms, and from a musical standpoint many of my expeditions into this new realm failed miserably (one of these actually had me dug in at Halifax's own Thirsty Duck Pub & Eatery several times a month for nearly a year, until I was replaced by a better trumpeter. That better trumpeter was Rick Waychesko of Tower of Power, thankfully, so my ego survived).

Worse, my relationship with Mr. Brown's music has been necessarily limited to no more than technical voyeurism. Like many of the readers of this blog, I was not alive during the 1960s and 1970s; I was not there to see James Brown in action.

Nor am I part of that action. I am not black, and I am not underprivileged because of the colour of my skin or my socioeconomic background. My "generation" may possess an immense appreciation for the Godfather's art, but, as years pass, there are fewer and fewer individuals with any deep or lasting personal connection to the social context that spewed Brown and his great music forth — the maw of 1960s/1970s American counter-culture and civil activism. Perhaps all we can realistically do to understand this era, all we can do as a human beings born post-hoc, is read about it, find the remnants of it, look at pictures of it, remember it, and think about it, long and hard.

Were he somehow able communicate with us from beyond the pale, though, I think the Godfather would sing a different tune. Despite the passing of the year 1972, racism and racist beliefs are widespread; poverty lies none too far from any doorstep, first world or third; and social injustice, the media tells us, our eyes and ears tell us, and our heart/gut/irrational-human mechanism tells us, is just about everywhere one can look. The world of James Brown still exists, outside of photographs and newsreels; we're a work in progress, a first-draft civilization, and Mr. Brown knew this, to the core, in his bones, in death, everywhere.

"You," he might say, "have a lot to do with my music."

And what music! It cuts and swings, always chasing after that "pure hard-flat-jazz-funk" that Brown once "heard in his dreams," perhaps never quite getting there, but achieving glory along the way, regardless. If all the historical and sociological cleavages that surround Mr. Brown's music are stripped away, we are still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

And if all that shit gets thrown back on — dates, rallies, statements, influence, life stories, social threads, the first-draft of all being, all of that — we're still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

As the Godfather might have said, Amen to that.

* * *

I've read a few articles on James Brown in my short days, though I cannot pretend to be encyclopedic or even offer a comprehensive opinion on the matter. Still, this is the best piece on Mr. Brown I've ever read. It captures James Brown no less than a year ago, at his most incoherent, at his most prescient, cryptic and/or profound, still having fun, and still going after that pure hard-flat-jazz-funk (the quoted bits in the preceding paragraph are actually pulled from this story).

Being an acolyte of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, I can't help but cite this...

For my part as a witness, if I could convey only one thing about James Brown it would be this: James Brown is, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a man unstuck in time. He's a time traveler, but unlike the HG Wells-ian variety, he lacks any control over his migrations in time, which also seem to be circumscribed to the period of his own allotted lifespan. Indeed, it may be the case that James Brown is often confused as to what moment in time he occupies at any given moment.

Happy Holidays, everyone. May Mr. Brown continue chasing his dream, wherever he ended up.

Plagiarism in the Post?

2006-12-20T13:21:00.000-04:00

I read The New Yorker often; I almost never read the National Post. Nevertheless, when I spied the Post's bit on left-winger/bon-vivant-turned-Iraq-War-proponent Christopher Hitchens, I took a gander and read the piece. After finishing, something seemed amiss — I was reminded, particularly by one line, of a Hitchens profile that The New Yorker ran the previous month.

Well, I've finally dragged that issue out of the great stacks of clutter that populate my room. I've compared it to the Post's piece, and I think I've found something.

Take a look at this sentence, written by Joseph Brean and run in "A day in the intellectual glare of Christopher Hitchens," The National Post, November 18, 2006:

In public speaking, which [Hitchens] does frequently and well, he has adopted the politician's trick of eliding the last words of one sentence into the first words of the next, which prevents both stuttering and interruption. Not that either seem much of a danger for him these days. Now, at public events like these, he does the interrupting . No one else would dare.

Now take a look at this line from a New Yorker piece on the same subject, by Ian Parker (October 16, 2006, p. 150):

[Hitchens] is a fine, funny orator, with the mock-heroic manner of an English barrister sure of his ground ("by all means," "if you will"), using derision, a grand diction, and looping subclauses that always carry him back to the main path. He also has the politician's trick of eliding the last word of one sentence to the first word of the next, while stressing both words, in order to close a gate against interruption.

Plagiarism, coincidence, or what?

EDIT: I've received a response from Joseph Brean, the author of the National Post piece. I'll be putting some of our correspondence up here in the forthcoming days.

Also, it occurs to me I haven't done any of my Christmas shopping yet.

I never cease to anticipate myself.

Truth vs. Truthiness vol. 1: Colbert on Rose

2006-12-18T13:28:00.000-04:00

I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word police, the "wordanistas" over at Webster's, are gonna say, "hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today — because face it folks, we are a divided nation. Not between democrats and republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No. We are divided between those who think with their head — and those who know with their heart.

Many of you know I am an avid fan of political satire — things like The Onion and The Daily Show. I am also an avid fan of long-form, serious journalism: documentaries, news features, new journalism, biographies, and so on. One of my favourite sources for "serious" journalism, a show I try to never miss, is Charlie Rose on PBS. Nowhere else in the TV idiom (or even in print) can one find hour-long, commercial free "interviews" with the world's leading decision-makers, artists, thinkers, actors, and writers.

If you're a skeptical sort, the show's guest list from last week should convince you otherwise. Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jancis Robinson, and Lou Dobbs all made a showing. Sting made an appearance on Tuesday, while on Wednesday Salman Rushdie, Michael Caine, and the President of Botswana all shared the "other" chair at Charlie's table, one after another. On Dec. 6, Charlie booked the authors of the Baker Report — James Baker and Lee Hamilton — on the same show as Tony Bennett. In the next two days, Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, and Robert DeNiro will all appear. And I don't need to mention that the famous oak table and black backdrop often plays host to the likes of Bono, Romeo Dallaire, Bill Clinton, and Thomas Friedman, the last of whom virtually lives in Charlie's studio.

Regardless of the billing on any particular night, it goes without saying that Charlie knows his shtick. If an interview is boring, it generally isn't because of Charlie. For his part, Mr. Rose labels what he does as "conversation." The label isn't a lie: Charlie often interrupts guests halfway through an answer. The show suffers from Mr. Rose's poorly-timed exhortations, but they still leave CR leagues above all other interviewing on television — though these days that isn't saying much.

Two things cause CR to falter. Well, three, but the fact CR broadcasts in Halifax at the same time as The Daily Show isn't exactly the show's fault.

Occasionally, Charlie books too many guests. This tends to happen just after a major news event; the show is filmed in New York, which, though a great location for dragging the world's artisans into a TV studio, is terrible for politics. CR's producers tend to patch-in most of their political-oriented guests via satellite links because, of course, none of these impoverished politicos can make the Washington-New York hike. Ahem.

The nature of the crime — politics — means these shows tend to have 4+ guests in one segment, some in the studio, some not. Satellite links make for bloody awful television when there's more than one guest and more than one point of view. Several guests inevitably attempt to make a point at the same time, and their tribulations immediately turn into aural gibberish. When one guest attempts to give another room for a riposte, the other does the same. Dead air ensues. ("Go ahead," the talking heads say in unison, followed by silence. "Um," they say in unison, followed by more silence. In the middle, a flummoxed Charlie Rose attempts to coordinate, his brow furrowed, his shoulders hunched, his hands raised and open like an orchestra conductor trying to conduct a symphony without the score.)

Charlie does much better in a studio-only setting — but even then he sometimes loses interest, or simply doesn't know the subject well enough to fill up an hour of dead space. Take, for example, Charlie's interview with the Dixie Chicks, broadcast last month. I know almost nothing about the Dixie Chicks, including the band members' names or the names of any of their hits. Even still, Rose's shortcomings were evident. Charlie had to ask a lot of dumbfounding questions (Paraphrased: "So... uh... what are you guys about?"), and couldn't contribute much as co-participant in the interview. Charlie is at his best when he fills in gaps that the television viewer may not know — details, anecdotes, clarifications and so on, some of it taken from his encyclopedic daily research, some of it taken from his own experiences in broadcasting and from his life in the who's-who circles of patrician New York haute couture. When he can't do this, CR's vaunted "conversation" turns into a standardized morning show interview. Only this version is longer, drawn out, and punctuated by silence. If you're not a fan of the Dixie Chicks, you won't get much out of this experience aside from 30 minutes of standard information about a band you're not even into.

(On the opposite end of the spectrum, Charlie interviewed a series of rappers and rap execs last year to much aplomb. It is obvious that Charlie doesn't listen to rap, yet his interview with Jay-Z, halfway through here and here, is stellar, especially after he hits on Jay Z's business savvy. Kanye West — see the second link — couldn't stop talking while in the dark studio, egging a smiling Charlie on with his vainglorious proclamations of being, paraphrased, "the best fuckin' rapper evah, dawg.")

Last week, the best of Charlie's game met head-on with Comedy Central's equivalent: Stephen Colbert of Colbert Report fame. The winner of the joust, if we're drawing swords, was Colbert. I've never known Colbert to be much of an improviser; most of the Report is scripted, and so is just about everything else Colbert has done since hitting fame as a fake news reporter on The Daily Show. But Colbert's on-air quips, out-of-character moments, and brilliant interview comebacks should have convinced me otherwise. The man makes for a brilliant interview. It's no surprise he used to be a serious actor. He shines on CR's camera, as most actors do. But he's also fun, intelligent, and surreptitiously unassuming. When he does need to hit the nail of the head and address all those nagging bits of immodesty that come along with becoming a cultural icon, Colbert slips into character to make the point, abandoning all the customary shame someone might experience while making such incantations (to make a in-character not-in-character distinction, Colbert cocks his head, takes on a slightly different disposition of character, with more gravitas, and says something along the lines of, "I'm brilliant, and everyone else is wrong," if not exactly in those words. Then he relaxes, now out of character, and laughs as if nothing he just said is true. True, perhaps not. Truthy? Probably).

As for the Report.... The Daily Show is brilliantly funny. It skewers public hypocrisy like nothing else on TV. The Colbert Report, however, is high art. It skewers hypocrisy, then becomes hypocritical, and then doubles back and skewers itself, which, because it now appears hypocritical, also appears hypocritical. Yet the point is made, and the laugh is achieved. And all of this is done in one beat of satire.

...I'm not particularly articulate, particularly when it comes to the concise, and in particular when it comes to the word particular. So, to offer a second opinion, here's Colbert on Colbert, on Rose:

Let me tell you the difference between me and Jon Stewart, Charlie. Can I do that? Can I call you Charlie? Good. Jon demurs. Jon says he doesn't have an impact, ok? "We don't want to be influential." I'll tell you what, I wanna change the world. I want to change it a little bit everyday. Not much, but give me the wheel. Give me the ball, God — I'll run it down the line.

How can you change the world, though?

[Colbert stares at the desk for a few moments, deep in concentration... he looks up:]

By catching it in the headlights of my justice.

Or this gem on Anderson Cooper:

He's crisp, and that's just not dress. I could have the same suits, and I wouldn't have the.... I wouldn't be as bright as a new dime. You know, the way he is? In the middle of a war zone, he's like, "aaah!" Spit and polish! You know? No one's ever made squalor like that.

Or on Geraldo Rivera:

Geraldo? He has a sense of mission. [...] I read once that when he goes jogging in Central Park, he's like a battleship on patrol. You know? "I'd love to see somebody get mugged.... because I'd bring the hammer down." [...] He's just with the absolute force of his justice... slowly turning the ship of destiny....

If you're a fan of Colbert, or The Daily Show, you should definitely take a gander with this interview. The whole shebang is about 40 minutes long, and Colbert remains out of character for almost all of it (watch as he segues into character near the end and ad-libs a few lines, though — as I described above, it's a treat). Skip to just after the 19 minute mark so you can avoid the New York Times' Baghdad bureau chief (and frizzy-head) John F. Burns, unless you're actually interested in the future of the Middle East and America's place in it, of course.

flying invisible camera anyone?

2006-12-14T10:08:00.000-04:00

The New York Times Magazine has "explored human ingenuity" in its 2006 edition of the year in ideas. Most of the contraptions presented in the feature haven't actually been realized yet, but there are a few interesting ones...

The Boomerang Drone

When the Phantom Sentinel takes flight, it looks like an awkward boomerang — a set of three small blades. It spins in a circle, faster and faster as it ascends into the sky. Then, when it reaches about 50 feet, it whirls so fast that something remarkable happens: it vanishes right before your very eyes.

The Sentinel is still there, but you can’t see it. It is the world’s first “invisible spy drone,” a new class of remote-controlled stealth aircraft. Driven by electric-engine propellers on two of its blades, the Sentinel also moves in virtual silence. “You could fly it 75 feet above the Macy’s parade, and nobody would know it was there at all,” says Dean Tangren, president of VeraTech Aero Corporation, which received a patent for the invention this summer.

I am a little aporetic — but does the idea of a spinning-blade camera that is invisible strike anyone else as, say, extremely dangerous?

* * *

This is unquestionably one of the more bizarre news stories I've ever read.

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.

* * *

Thoughts on Senate reform? Simple: it's about time. There is a legitimate argument floating about out there that says elected politicians should take caution when f*&^king up the political apparatus that has served this country since 1867 -- especially when a hit from the batting box has constitutional implications.

Then again, the Canadian political identity is no stranger to major reform, de jure or de facto (read: fancy words for on paper and in practice. Yes, I am a fop). When Canada was birthed under John A. MacDonald's drunken watch in 1867, our country was better characterized as "unitary" than "federalist." Forget "two nations," "just society," or anything remotely multicultural. Canada was centralized, and run by white Anglo ex-Brits who often had obvious penchants for the perverse. Today, Canada's provinces are almost as independent as the states below our border.

Yep, in the spectrum of federalism, only Spain -- home to three separatist territories; a staunchly multilingual and multinational culture; a history encumbered by a debilitating civil war and decades of fascist oppression; and a terrorist organization -- is worse.

Modern politicians do all sorts of things that aren't constitutionally enshrined -- try, say, free voting. Or the fact our Governor General, contrary to the Constitution, is really nothing more than a rubber stamp for an ultra-powerful PMO. None of this was imagined as such when the wigged lot of the House of Lords passed the BNA almost 150 years ago.

Instituting permanent Senate reform through a constitutional amendment should be the ultimate goal of Parliament. But taking baby steps up front isn't a bad idea. So yeah, elect 'em, make 'em accountable, and see what happens.

The Colony of Unrequited Boredom

2006-12-11T07:49:00.000-04:00

Life as a post-MA grad with little to do outside of re-editing a master's thesis is, to be frank and curt all in one place, woefully uninspiring.

A conversation with my brain might go like this:

Me: Hello?
Brain: Hullo.
Me: Is there anybody in there?
Brain: Well, am I answering you?
Me: What?
Brain: Am I answering you?
Me: Well... I suppose.
Brain: Right. Now presume there's no one in here.
Me: Right....
Brain: Well, who would answer you?
Me: That was my question.
Brain: But I answered you first.
Me: What?
Brain: Oh bother.

Where did it all go? Have I typed too many words? Why is the best idea I've come up with in weeks something as moronic and silly as "if you're early, does that mean you're still alive?"

Why am I now compelled to type "har, har"?

Have the Gods of All That Is Ripe and Critical and Inane and Stupid and Worthy of Writing About forsaken me? Is the Olypmian union on strike?

Listen: I get up most days. I read the news most days. I even watch movies most days. The other day, a "most" day, I watched Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- for the first time. I was engaged. I prepared my cortexes and vortexes and lumpy brain things for thoughts (it was going to be a flood). I drank some V8 (low sodium, of course; I do not want to become a human salt lick, though my dog probably wishes otherwise). I made some popcorn. I sat down, dimmed the lights, pressed play; Kubrick's last film, at last. My eyes were wide open for all of it, and, aside from my latent biological predisposition toward blinking, I took it all in.

And I have no thoughts on the matter.

None! Zippo! I watched, it came, it went, it sputtered, it rolled, and now I am filled with nothing but the giant sucking sound of complete mental aphonia. I am Ross Perot, full of enthusiasm, defeated at the polls. I have been deadened. I might as well become a mime -- a vapid, prosaic, uninspired mime.

Have I not travelled enough? I left the country last exactly one year ago. But I've since been to Toronto twice, Ottawa thrice, Montreal once, and Vancouver for a brief spell. Is the vastness of our country similarly vacant when it comes to the provision of inspiration? I think Richler, Atwood, Thomson, Cohen, and Haggis would attest otherwise. So would a bunch of other people I haven't bothered to write up here. Carr? I could go on.

Obviously I hold myself in too high esteem. I should not expect to be the "next" Richler or Johnson or Ralston Saul, even if such a thing could be picked out of next year's generational writers catalogue.

Still, I seem to remember being inspired at some point, even if the results were trite. I once wrote a nonsensical post about the Bush administration's liberal affectations. It was called, "How The White House Forgot About Nietzsche." As I've already mentioned, it was nonsense. But I felt good writing it. There were some ideas in my head I needed to put down, and out they came, eggs, baskets, and all.

How can I go on? Should I take up pottery? I always had an eye for colour. But clay, well, eh, no thanks. I like architecture; I'd rather make sandcastles. But math and I tend to disagree on fundamental precepts, and I hate the beach.

(Too much sand... yeah.)

Perhaps, taking a cue from what makes news, larceny and grand theft would be more my style. I recently had a two-hour conversation with a group of friends over pints; the topic of discussion: how to get rich, real quick. We started with a well-planned bait-and-switch involving the Canadian mint. We denigrated from there onto the idea of brewing our own beer and trying to sell it in pubs. We then gave up, paid our tab, and went home. A life of 'Costra Nostra,' it seems, ain't suited fa' me, ma.

(To answer the obvious: Movies cost money, and my social life is so dispiriting these days that I'd rather save them for fleeting "what ifs" and hollow aluminum chances at a date. I have plenty of music, all the music in the world, even, but I've given up writing anything sensical about it. Music exists on its own plane; we can document its history, its theory, and its people, but all of this really only amounts to math for animals, records for a deaf man, and the Mona Lisa shown around to a blind tour at the Louvre, unless the reader has actually listened to what you're writing about.)

So where to now? Here's an idea I can soundly steal from Western tradition: books. Books I already own, in fact, thus indicating I should probably read them. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." Books are full of ideas and I'm need of a refill. So I'm reading Animal Farm. I haven't before, and it's a small tome. From a cost-benefit point of view, this should work out just fine. The irony is, of course, that I'm done my MA, cursing me as outlined above -- but only as a result of finishing my MA do I now have the time to take up the solution to the post-MA curse...

...I should make my next book Catch-22...

Inspiration, I await you!

Odds and Sods and Clumps of Blog

2006-12-06T21:49:00.000-04:00

The quest to find a reasonable, well-located place to live in Toronto for six months rages on....

* * *

I hope I don't get Toronto Syndrome.

I expected Torontonians to be beautiful and elegant.... and when I got there, I found out their character was the complete opposite of my own...

* * *

Here's a dandy of a conversation I had while on the phone with a College St. landlord:

"Can I send someone by to look at the place?"
--silence--
"'Someone'?"
"Yes, I'm in Halifax. I'm moving to Toronto. I'd need to send someone by to look at the place."
--silence--
"Shouldn't you be moving to Edmonton?"

* * *

Last up (w/ thanks to Sepand Siassi): do not fart on a plane and then attempt to cover up the stench by lighting matches.

The Kennedy-Dion Love-In

2006-12-02T20:42:00.000-04:00

In the end, it was probably Kennedy who made the biggest difference -- by dropping out of course, and delivering (by my count) the vast majority of his delegates' votes to Dion. A little foreshadowing, anyone?

(As I type this, Dion is sitting in a CBC soundstage with ol' Don "Kermit the Frog" Newman, answering questions about whether he would have supported Kennedy had Dion finished fourth and dropped off: "we share the love.")

Biggest surprise: Rae not going the distance.

Biggest relief: Ontario may still vote Liberal in the next election.

Biggest worry: Dion, despite his francophone-ness, failing to get past Harper's well-oiled Quebec War Machine by this time next year.

Thoughts?

Partisan Self-Service at the Palais des Congres

2006-12-01T20:06:00.000-04:00

Last night, the consensus was unanimous: Dion should win the Liberal leadership race.

Well, at least that was the consensus at my table -- one among many at the superbly-organized, well-attended Dal Poli Sci Xmas dinner at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Downtown Halifax.

Also at my table: Eric Lehre, a former bigwig in the Canadian navy and ex-commander of Canada's NATO forces.

His nugget of insight (not quite verbatim):

"What a consensus! A table full of political science graduate students thinks Dion should win, without exception... I suppose that means he probably won't!"

Rather than wax more poetic (or whatever) on the race and take stabs at who should win (Dion-Kennedy Hybrid?), who will win (Rae?), and who won't (Ignatieff?), however, I'll simply offer these two quotes, two "what if's" and "coulda-been's..."

(See if you can decipher the subject matter):

He is the Liberal leadership A-team -- smart, affable and fluently bilingual, an inspirational speaker with years of experience running a successful political party, winning election campaigns by historic margins and delivering good government.
By comparison, the eight remaining Liberal leadership candidates are B-teamers, for sure.

...

[He] cuts a forlorn figure here, wandering the hallways with the same old hangers-on and saying the same old things about his many priorities with his same old earnest urgency.
He was politely ignored amid the frenzy of arm-twisting for second-ballot support between rival camps and negotiations among young (and not so young) delegates seeking to put those free Liberal condoms to good use after the hospitality suites close.

Hints:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=d02b0bf1-c325-4087-a6da-8249462862bc;
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2006/12/01/2575590-sun.html

Oh, and have you ever wondered what Belinda Stronach might look like with auburn hair? Tune into CBC...

Oh, Those Succulent Clams

2006-11-28T04:26:00.000-04:00

A little update for you regularly confused:

I've returned from yonder (Toronto) with a job in hand (internship, actually) that will begin on January 17, 2007, at The Walrus Magazine on Duncan St. (essentially a block or so directly north from the CBC building).

I am excited, in part, because:

A. The Walrus is really something to aspire to; a thinking publication, and by far the most decorated magazine in Canada at the last few National Magazine Awards;
B. The internship itself pays enough to make eating every day a distinct possibility; and
C. The winning "essay" I submitted, written as per the editors' instructions on the topic of "Walruses" (but not The Walrus), was this:

Are You The Walrus?

A Self-Assessment Test™ for the Concerned, Curious, and Condemned

(Subtitle: Facts About Walruses Cleverly Disguised as a Questionnaire)

Instructions:
Please read each question before answering. We recommend a 2 HB pencil or equivalent.

Do not worry about filling in the bubbles entirely. This is not an automated test, and you will be asked to score yourself when the test is complete.

If you have trouble gripping a pencil for any reason — deformity, lack of opposable digits, slippery skin — please ask an aide for help.

Take no longer than one hour to fill out the questionnaire. When you are done, please turn to the back of the questionnaire booklet for scoring instructions.

Please note: if at any point during the questionnaire you feel a sudden and inexplicable urge to dive into cold water or consume shelled objects of any kind, at present or in the future, rate this urge on a scale of 1-10 (1 being “mild” and 10 being “uncontrollable”) and make a note of the number you have chosen at the bottom of your answer sheet. This number will be used in scoring.

Thank you, and good luck!

SECTION 1:
GASTRONOMY
Subtitle: What Walruses Like To Eat, Suck, and Digest

Please rank the following items from 1-4, with 1 representing your least preferred culinary item and 4 representing your most preferred. Do not repeat the same number twice. In the event that you prefer two items equally, stagger your rank (3,4; 2,3; etc.). In the event that you do not prefer any items, imagine that you are being forced to consume them.

Breakfast
1. Two Eggs
2. Grits (boiled)
3. Cigarette
4. Salt Water, preferably cold, w/ option of Mollusk and side of Sea Cucumber

Lunch
1. Salad (assorted greens)
2. Salad (assorted greens w/ option of Russian or Blue Cheese dressing)
3. Soup de Jour
4. Anything on a menu in Savoonga, Alaska

Dinner
1. Easy Mac
2. 12oz New York Strip Loin, prepared Medium Rare, with side of Fries and Salad
3. Guinness-brazed Lamb Shank with Onion-Roasted Shrimp Tails, Foie Gras (confit de canard), and Smoked Head of Canary (display only)
4. Clams, raw or otherwise

SECTION 2:
LEIZURE, ACTIVITY, AND EXCERCISE
Subtitle: What Walruses Sometimes Choose to Do With Themselves

Please rank the following items from 1-4, following the same guidelines as Section 1, but this time applying the ranking to each item individually.

1. Swimming
2. Sex
3. Sex, w/ option of cigarettes
4. Alcoholism
5. Watching Canadian Idol
6. Basking on rocks
7. Eating clams
8. Eating clams, w/ option of alcoholism
9. Watching videos on YouTube
10. Watching videos of seals, seagulls, or other wildlife on YouTube
11. Enjoying a good novel
12. Fighting over mates
13. Updating http://www.myspace.com/walruslover4life/
14. Visiting the dentist
15. Debating the circular logic presented by Descartes’ fifth and third meditations in Meditations on First Philosophy using only sentences that can be formed as questions
16. Protecting the pack, presumably as a result of No. 12, 11, 2 through 4, or in abstinence of 6.

SECTION 3:
SELF-ESTEEM
Subtitle: Facts about Walrus Behaviour and Walrus Depictions in Popular Culture

Please review the following statements and mark whether you “strongly agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” or “strongly disagree” with the statement. For each answer score yourself 1-4, with “strongly agree” being 4 and “strongly disagree” being 1.

1. I have, in the past or the present, desired to kill and eat a seagull, just to see what it would taste like.
1b. This has caused problems in my marriage.
2. I am an admirer of John Lennon.*
3. My name, or the name of one of my blood relatives, is Wally.
4. I often find myself unable to do things that my friends/colleagues/family can do with their hands, such as open a jar or write a note.
4b. I find this depressing.
5. I find it easy to defeat my friends/colleagues/family in competitions that require body pinning, deep diving, tusks, or sitting still.
5b. I find this depressing, too.
6. I am English soccer manager Sam Allardyce.
7. I enjoy the company of carpenters.
8. If I were disfigured and had (for example) flippers instead of hands, I would hang out with other people with similar malformations.
8b. I might be inclined to call these groups “packs.”
9. I often fight over females by brandishing my teeth. (This gets me nowhere in bars.)
10. I have an inexplicable aversion to ivory.
11. I have an inexplicable hatred for Marvel Comics.
12. The phrase “coo coo ca-choo” is not inexplicable, but I must keep this meaning secret from others.
13. I have met Woody Woodpecker.
14. I hate him.

*If you are John Lennon, please answer “strongly agree.”
SECTION 4:
FINAL QUESTIONS
Subtitle: Facts about Walrus Physiology, Blubber, and the United Nations

Please answer “yes,” “no,” or “N/A” to the following, scoring yourself 1 for “yes” and 0 for “no” or “N/A”:

1. Do you enjoy swimming, diving to depths of up to 90 metres, or spending about half of your time submersed in salty sub-arctic to arctic-arctic water?
2. Do you find pleasure in the thought of urinating through your skin?
3. Do you become irritated when others underestimate the length of your bones?
4. Would you, hypothetically, swim in near-to or sub-zero temperatures?
5. If surrounded in several tons of heat-preserving, blubbery fat, would you answer “yes” to question 4?
6. Do you think you look fat?
7. Do you think you look fat in the order of 1,600 to 1,800 kilograms?
8. If your friends/colleagues/family accuse you of being thick-skinned, do you take this to mean that your skin is literally thick?
9. Have you ever been mistaken for U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton?**
10. Are you fond of blubber?
11. Do you despise friends/colleagues/family who are fond of blubber, or show any interest at all in the 1851 Herman Melville novel Moby Dick?
12. Was Zacharias Kunuk’s The Fast Runner one of the most disturbing motion pictures you have ever seen?
Finally,
13. Are you a regular reader of The Walrus?
**If you are U.S. Ambassador the UN John Bolton, please answer “N/A.”

Please add up your score and write to: Walrus Self-Assessment Test™, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B4A 3N9. We will get back to you regarding your Walrus status as soon as we can.

That's all for now. Posts coming soon...

A Brief Reprieve from Bloggophrenia

2006-11-18T15:12:00.000-04:00

Subtitle: An Opprobrious Malediction of the Supposed and Very Much Barmecidal Operational Supremacy of Modern Technology

~or~

My Computer is Broken

(And I am a Luddite at Heart)

In an unforeseen turn of events, my trusty laptop of innumerable uses and years of companionship (complete with laptop drops, hits, slams, thwacks and squishy liquid-dumps) has finally "kicked the can" and gone yonder to the great big pile-of-technological-decay in the sky.

In the interest of full disclosure, actually, said events were not altogether unforeseen, nor did they change much (a straight of events?). The laptop is still sitting on my desk, in fact, and I've known the thing was going to die for a few months now. Somewhat absurdly, the computer itself works just fine -- but the motherboard connection to the laptop's screen is, as one might be inclined to say this time of year, kaput. So while I can "use" the computer, I can't see what I am doing, even if I plug my desktop screen into the laptop's monitor jack.

(And oh, Oh(!) how the computer gods taunt me: I can still hear that perky popping noise OS X makes when the on board volume is adjusted using the keyboard volume keys. I bet if I clicked around blindly for long enough I could get iTunes running....)

In any case, there is a new laptop on the way, care of my parents, Steve Jobs, Chinese and/or Taiwanese manufacturing prowess, and my 24th Birthday.

But I don't know precisely when the new machine will arrive, and I am heading out of town next week (Wed-Mon) for a brief but needed reprieve from the carefree humdrum of my Haligonian life.

What all of this onerous vituperation means is that any blogging or updating I may (or may not) undertake over the next week (or so) is more likely (than not) to be a bit spotty (more than usual, anyway).

Ahem.

Should the unpredictable and often maniacal passage of time deign that none of the above become true, I suppose then that he meaning of this post is simple: I am getting a new computer, and you aren't.

As the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II used to say,
"Well, there it is."

A thought on the sometimes necessary, most times unecessary killing of other human beings

2006-11-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

IMAGINE THIS: You wake up on a spring morning, the sun meekly peering into your room through its blinds.

It's early; dew still clings to the grass outside. There's a bit of mist at the top of your street.

Unable to negotiate with the sun, and knowing you've got a full day ahead of you, you get out of bed. Yawning, you lurch your way downstairs. You begin making coffee.

The sound of the coffee grind is your alarm clock. You scratch your head. The sun is warm, and you're looking forward to the new day.

Waiting for the pot to brew, you wander outside and open up your cold, metal mailbox. The mail hasn't been there long — it's still warm. Shuffling through what's arrived, you notice a big brown envelope marked "orders."

Your life, as you knew it, ends here.

You see, someone in a far away country is at war with some other far away country. And you just got a letter ordering you to suit up, check in, get fit, and ship out across the Atlantic — where you will sit in a trench, inside a tank, or behind a gun, watching your neighbours and countrymen die while you shoot and try to do the same to someone else's.

The whole idea is to stop that faraway was from reaching your still-moist lawn and your still-brewing coffee pot. If you don't go, that might just very well happen. Your country needs you, and you know it. And you're likely to give your life for it.

You put the envelope down. Your coffee's done. You scratch your head.

The sun is warm, and your life just took a U-turn.

Try to imagine what this must feel like.

Can you?

I can't.

And that's why veterans deserve far more respect than we give them —
— lest we forget, as they say.

再见。

没关系。。。

2006-11-10T13:36:00.000-04:00

If there's one thing that's thouroughly disappointing when it comes to the foreign policy purviews of the Conservative government, it's their willingness to obfuscate the Canada-China relationship in favour of.... well, nothing, outside of what looks to be a bad case of diplomatic laziness.

This is just the latest in a series of articles run by the Globe outlining the sour grapes that have sprung up like lemmings in the Canada-China relationship. A question often asked by conservative bloggers when I (or someone else) mentions this usually entails: "should we really be disappointed in a government that has let slide its relations with one of the world's worst human rights offenders?"

My response? "Yes."

Change does not happen in a vaccuum. And change in China will not happen if the outside world continues to view the country as nothing more than either 1) a profitable manufacturing zone, or 2) a profitable manufacturing zone that threatens Western global hegemony.

A few points to think about:

Cross-pacific economic platforms such as the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative are, business-wise, good news. They encourage increases in the number of business interactions that take place between Canadian enterprises and China's new global competitors, and as the China-Canada relationship widens and deepens, the depth of these business interactions between both our countries will also grow. This means Chinese businessmen at all levels will begin to learn more about Canadian culture, and vice versa — opening up long-term, generational opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, new exchanges of ideas (business and otherwise), and an increasing awareness of how modes of governance on either side of the Pacific tend to work. Following from this...
Canada, being a multicultural nation whose interior makeup is less dissimilar from China's than one might think, has a lot to it can show China regarding how intellectual property rights, human rights, and vast cultural diversity can coexist within one functioning system — a democratic system in which geopolitical differences are an advantage, not a problem, and in which the centre does not need to oppress the periphery to maintain basic law and order.
China, for its part, has indicated that it is receptive to new ideas and change. In a recent survey of new CCP membership, the top cited priority was government reform. The reasoning behind this phenonemon is simple: if the core is corrupt, the periphery will be corrupt, too. And bad apples equal bad business. Corruption at the local levels, in the market, and in the courts make up China's greatest development hurdle. The newer echlons of the CCP recognize the need in China for a more open and democratic governmental system from which the substance surrounding the seed — business, law, society — will take shape. China can look at the Canadian example — warts and all — and take from it ways in which some of the ideas explored above can be adapted to their own changing framework of governance and growth.
Culturally speaking, Westerners on the whole know very little about Asian history, culture, and identity — so there's room to explore from our side as well. If business interactions lead to university partnerships, cultural exchanges, and an increase in cross-Pacific dialogue, we're headed in the right direction. Chinese entrepreneurs certainly have a lot to show their Canadian equivalents, and Canada's governmental system could probably learn quite a bit from exchanges with China's, if simply from a perspective of "here's how another society does things." China's government is adept at promoting business, inviting FDI, and successfully running a massive, decentralized country. Surely there's some nugget in there aside from Sun Tzu.
Canada could reap economic benefit from an expanding cross-Pacific relationship. China needs resources. We have them. Increasing trade with China is Canada's best opportunity to diversify its export portfolio beyond trade to the U.S.

To use a recent example, Canada has essentially put all of its eggs in one basket — for the benefit of an analogy, income trusts. Imagine if something terrible happens to income trusts tomorrow — following the analogy, a new tax platform. Don't you think Canada would have been better off if it had some dollars invested in mutual funds and other securities, too?

The point: increasing China-Canada trade is in Canada's immediate and long-term interests. If the American political wind shifts course against an open border, softwood lumber, beef exports, or what have you, Canadians will have a safety valve — another market to fall back on. 9/11 has only made the dangers of our dependency on American import dollars more acute; imagine if tomorrow Americans shut the border down because of a terrorist attack traceable to Canada. Imagine if the border never re-opened, or at least remained restricted. The American economy would lose some steam, to be sure, but the Canadian economy would be the real loser. The Canada-U.S. trading relationship needs a counterweight — and China is it.

For all these reasons, the Harper government shouldn't be letting its diplomatic relations with the PRC slide into oblivion. A good economic relationship with China requires a good political relationship with China, especially if your government cares about things like cultural exchanges, human rights, and attracting more than just a trade deficit. And a good political relationship with China is, for the time being, Harper's job.

New Prediction(s)

2006-11-08T14:21:00.000-04:00

The Dems take both houses -- or at least tie the Senate -- and Donald Rumsfeld steps down.

Oh wait, this seems to have already happened.

Update: What timing. Had Rumsfeld quit three weeks ago, the Republican Party might have appeared even more of a sinking ship than it already did. With Rumsfeld's resignation coming now, just after the election, the Repubs can paint this as "Party renewal." Brilliant. This is not to mention the fact that the resignation news lead has moved Nancy Pelosi's historic win (first female Speaker) off of the top spot of every online news organization's mainpage. Brilliant, indeed.

Afterthoughts: I wonder if this will hurt Bob Woodward's sales, or make them explode?

Edit: I took the word "Rummy" out of my post -- and I apologize for the brainless interlude. I absolutely hate how pundits/writers/unemployed bloggers often use nicknames for U.S. administration staffers ("Dubya," OK; "Condi," not). I don't normally hold myself to my own standards, but I figure there comes a time when a man should look himself in the mirror, realize that he is awash in his own self-inflicted shame, and make some effort against being the self-centred well of cynicism that he is -- put on a respectable face, and do his best to rid himself of the years of laziness, hypocrisy, and unfair criticism that preceded that moment, if only so he can grasp a brief reprieve of honesty; deliverance from the lies and deceit that so deeply pervade the modern human ethos.

(Wait, I think this is called campaigning...)

Nostradamus: BRB

2006-11-06T19:22:00.000-04:00

Subtitle: A Non-Prediction Prediction About Tomorrow's Election

As Hendrik Hertzberg writes in this week's New Yorker, all the polls, predictions, and analyses of the American political theatre would indicate that a cast change may be waiting backstage in the 2006 midterm elections. The Republicans have never sat so high and stooped so low, losing precious political applause over Iraq, Katrina, a slew of inner-courtyard scandals, and the altogether scattershot public relations of a (literally) shotgun-happy administration.

The Democrats, for their part, have never had a better opportunity to upstage their curtained competition. Since the Reagan era, the Democratic Party has mostly been the understudy of the U.S. political system, failing to gain simultaneous control of both the legislative and executive branches of the American government for any more than the first two years of Clinton's run as President. But the lead actor is now sick, and governance of the entire U.S. Congress — something the Dems haven't been within earshot of since 1994 — is within the Party's sights.

If a quick reading of the national political dialogue in the U.S. is to indicate anything, the Democrats should gain one if not both houses by Wednesday morning.

But polls, as Hertzberg warns, only indicate so much.

The real race may in fact be, well, the real race — the race between each individual candidate in each individual Congressional district and State. Voters may err from the national line if they feel they should vote for one candidate over another. Ineffective Democratic contenders may simply appear unelectable to middle-of-the-run voters, especially next to Republican candidates who may have actually done something for their constituents over the last 12 years. This certainly won't be the case everywhere, but it may prevent the American electorate from turning the house over to Dean, Clinton, Kerry & Co. by the end of tomorrow night.

All this goes without saying; it does not mention that vast rural skew of the U.S. electoral system — now mostly painted Republican Red — that ensures urbanite Democrats will have to win a sweeping popular majority to even budge their seat count.

(An example: the current crop of Democratic Senators — 45 of them — represent more Americans than do all 55 Republican Senators).

Predictions made by outside parties, unless they involve bets, create strategies, or alter player conduct, are mostly rhetorical chaff — inevitably, the winner of tomorrow's election will win, regardless of what I write here. This post, likewise, will then become nothing more than an irrelevant curiosity amidst the post-election blogging landscape, what I may or may not have thought about an event beyond my control ground into the static earth by the great, unstoppable wheel of time.

If the polls are right, we could see a Democratic renaissance in the American legislature. If my gut feeling is right, and voters stick to the issues that pertain more to their individual fiefdoms than national ones, the renaissance may be put off by more annual rounds of GOP inquisition. Or two.

I suppose we will just have to have some patience.

谢谢。

A Tusk of Wisdom

2006-11-03T15:31:00.000-04:00

So, my nativity celebrations at the Gradhouse and Stage Nine last night essentially turned from "Chris' 24th Birthday" to "Professor Frank Harvey, Distinguished Fulbright Chair And Writer of Many Books, Deftly and Unequivocally Defeats All of His Students at Pool."

A few good lines:
"Frank, are you sure you can handle that much wood?"

And...

"Chris, how do you want this racked? Oh wait, I already beat you."

(He didn't even buy me a drink!)

* * *

On to the purpose of this post. It's a new month, and that means new wisdom. November's selection has been brought to by none other than Devin DeCiantis, "Special Projects Manager" (fancy title, eh?) at The Walrus in Toronto. Drum roll...

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. - Otto Von Bismarck

Coincidentally, I happen to have a Bismarck quote as one of the openers for my thesis -- a similar one, to boot:

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

* * *

In other news, North Korea is now allegedly returning to the Six-Party Talks, meaning that I might have to rewrite another chunk of my thesis.... ugh.

再见。

If Youth Knew; If Age Could

2006-11-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

As of today, I am 24 years old. I am not a big fan of Birthdays, given that they are -- in essence -- artificial constructs. According to the Gregorian Calendar, I was born this day 24 years ago. But I doubt the Earth has gone around the sun precisely 24 times since I came out kicking and screaming at the Halifax Grace Maternity Hospital (which, fittingly, is now a parking lot on University Avenue). Nor have I passed some great watershed or birthright of sorts from which I have emerged fundamentally different from how I was before. Graduations do that. Exams do that. Job interviews do that. Trips do that. Birthdays do not.

In fact, the Birthday Grinch in me would frame it as such: yesterday, I was 8766 days old. Today, I am 8767 days old. So what?

I suppose, in the end, Birthdays are meant to be happy reminders that we are getting older, bookends to years that might otherwise mesh into each other in long, seamless string of gradually disintegrating memory. Birthdays encourage the young to get on with living and warn the old that they will soon get on with dying.

They also give life a starting point. I was born on November 2, 1982, sometime in the morning, delivered through a caesarian section to Georges Robert LaRoche and Lois Robillard LaRoche at a hospital that no longer exists. As far as I can figure these things out, I was most certainly conceived in Houston, Texas. I was later baptised in the Notre Dame de Grace borough of Montreal. I was heavy baby, over 10 pounds. I had blonde hair. I listened to Bob Dylan in the womb. That's my start.

Birthdays help fill in details. If we count period of a month or more, I've lived in three houses, one apartment, one university residence, and one basement of a relative. I've accumulated two degrees, run a student newspaper, worked about a dozen different jobs, and travelled to four different continents, if I include my own. I can play three instruments to a reasonable degree. And I think I'm getting somewhere.

But what matters most, and what Birthdays point out, is that I have a roof over my head, a loving family, and great friends and colleagues, including you, the person reading this post. I am extremely fortunate. If I were dying of cancer, I would still be fortunate. In life, as in death, a human being cannot ask for much more than what I've already listed.

Life is good, grand, and happy -- and even though I'm only a day older today than I was yesterday, I'm glad an artifical construct of a day has reminded me.

谢谢。

Perhaps the Emperor Needs Clothes...

2006-10-29T20:26:00.000-04:00

For the last, uh, ten years, my satorial choices for Halloween have generally involved donning a suit and sunglasses. This stylistic strategy has worked wonders for me; it leads many people to "guess" what I'm dressed up as (in high school, normal responses included "a mobster" and "one of the Blues Brothers." Post-the Matrix, they mostly shifted to "an Agent" or "those computer dudes from The Matrix").

This year, perhaps, I will try something different. I'm not a big fan of creative, fancy, or complicated costumes. They require money, effort, and time. Putting on a suit I already owned essentially did this for me without requiring money, effort, or time.

And such, I feel I should do something similar this year. I thought about going as Keith Richards, because I have his ears and nose, but I'd need to buy a wig for that and somehow create lots of wrinkles on my boyish face (ugh!). Indeed, ugh to that.

Instead, my current best idea is to put some fake 'tats' on my fingers, put on a skull cap I already own, put on a guitar I already own, and go as The Edge.

But I wonder if anyone will get it unless I label myself somehow... like a big "U2" sign on my back. Hmmm...

Edit: Well, The Edge costume went alright after all! I had to tell most people who I was dressed up as, but afterwards everything went alright ("You really do look like The Edge!").

Sep didn't get any good pictures of me, but here's two... please note that the facial hair is my own facial hair covered in a lot of black makeup. I am not actually this scuzzy.

The More Security You Have, The More You Will Need

2006-10-27T19:14:00.000-03:00

Subtitle: A Little Bit About My Research

Here's what I've been doing all night -- a slide on Canadian perceptions of the War on Terror for Dr. Frank Harvey, who presented his CDFAI thesis "The Homeland Security Dilemma: The Imagination of Failure and the Escalating Cost of Perfecting Security" (pdf) in Ottawa this morning. The slide was laboriously constructed as per the directions given in his email, which I received on Wednesday, after I enquired about when he'd need a slide by:

Hi Chris,

I'll need the slide by tomorrow if at all possible (I leave for CASIS Thursday
evening). Just need some recent polling trends on terrorism. The Afghanistan
polling can wait for now.

Frank

Yes, we academics like to live on the edge. *Cough* This is a preliminary slide, even though it took me about ten hours to make.

Drum roll:

Explanation: the red line represents support for Canada's operation in Afghanistan (insofar as it pertains to the War on Terror); the blue line represents the "yes" side of a question involving whether or not a terrorist attack in Canada is imminent; and the yellow line represents public opinion regarding our government's preparedness in fighting the War on Terror (this is inclusive of border security) -- i.e., a "positive" response here indicates that we should do more to be prepared.

The timeline begins just after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre towers in New York and ends in September, 2006.

The graph shows that opinion of Afghanistan has been declining while opinion of the seriousness of a terrorist threat has been increasing. If we juxtaposed this graph with Canadian defence spending (counter-terrorism and non), we'd see a four-headed hydra forming: defence spending goes up -- but public support for Afghanistan goes down, public belief that we will be attacked by terrorists goes up, and the number of Canadians who believe we should do more to be prepared remains the same, with some fluctuation.

The question: where do you draw the line on counter-terrorism spending? And what do you do if you draw the line and are attacked afterward?

再见。

Where Art Thou, O Uncovered Meat?

2006-10-26T20:39:00.000-03:00

If I were to eat a meal and don an "Aristotle" hat sometime afterward, it would not be unreasonable for me to conclude that the more opaque food is, the less of it I can eat -- and the more of it my stomach must bequeath great efforts to digest.

(Bear with me here; evidence suggests that the importance of opacity in cuisine is near-universal. For example, Jello and bluefin tuna, prized by bon vivants for smooth texture and fat content, are both greatly cherished in completely unrelated spheres of gastronomy.)

The same could be said of the world of drink, wherein apple juice is easier to consume in large quantities than milk or even, say, orange juice. Milk butter or a thick brand of eggnog, furthermore, cannot be consumed in the same wanton amounts as chocolate milk, lest the toilet cease to be found wanting.

(The more adventurous dipsomaniacs among you will know that while red wine makes for an intoxicant midnight companion, white is easier to drink than red; likewise, a yard of Guinness is more difficult to put down than a yard of light ale; and Kahlua, for various reasons that should be obvious by now, must really be avoided altogether).

Food and drink aside, I do not believe the same goes for human beings.

Magister Mundi Sum

2006-10-23T20:03:00.000-03:00

For the last few weeks, my primary occupation in and around Halifax's various watering holes and thinking establishments has been something along the lines of "The go-to-guy on North Korea." I have no qualms with this "occupation," especially given that I spent the better part of last year studying the Korean dilemma, and, aside from a thesis that was read by a handful of people, most of the work I did would otherwise never escape the cavernous hollows that are so beholden to the interior of my skull.

But I am not all about Mr. Kim and his nuclear aspirations. In fact, the one issue that has attracted most of my hollow scholarly attention over the last three or four years is post-secondary education. I've covered it as a journalist, written about it in classes, and, of course, paid for it in tuition. Compared to North Korea, East Asia, nonproliferation, or post-modern discourses, PSE is a fairly simple subject. And thus my head, being the echo-ey place that is, does well when confronted with such simplicity.

Along with my a few of my colleagues, I graduated from Dalhousie University this weekend with a Master of Arts in Political Science. I am proud to receive such an honour. But, to put it bluntly, I ended up doing an MA at Dal by near-coincidence: in the last year of my undergrad, I won an editorship at The Dalhousie Gazette as the student newspaper's lonely copy editor. Faced with the decision between getting paid about $5,000 to be a copy editor at a student newspaper, or taking my chances and possibly making significantly more to be a "real reporter" somewhere else, most of you would probably guess that I chose the latter but simply didn't get anywhere. On the contrary, I specifically chose the former -- more poverty, more student journalism, and more status-quo comfort as an enrolled full-time student (this was a prerequisite for the job) -- dashing my hopes of being a "real" journalist after my BJH.

Why the hell did I do that?

The answer is compound, but to be completely honest, I enjoy copy editing. A lot. And while I enjoy reporting and writing as well, in 2004 I had no desire to jump off to a rural community newspaper and become a media workhorse. I didn't really have the stuff it takes to make it big in print journalism, big like The Globe and Mail or Maclean's, and I didn't want to get stuck on some backdesk beat job, either.

Instead, I convinced the Dal Political Science Department to take me on as an MA student, even though my undergraduate degree was in journalism and my existing marks weren't up to "as good a snuff" as they may have wanted. At the time, I liked political science, but I thought it was a bit of a loony, separated-from-reality discipline.

(A lot of it is, by the way, especially in International Relations).

Two years later, however, I've both kept up with student journalism and become somewhat of a tweed-jacket-wearing "real academic" -- or, at least, I've turned into someone who sees a whole load of opportunity in political science as a discipline. A future PhD is in my cards — but so is writing for a magazine (hmmm... perhaps Foreign Policy?). My journalism background makes me vomit a little anytime I think of working for the man in some cubicle somewhere, so I've almost ruled out a life in the public service. A life as a public intellectual, however, would suit me just fine, provided someone eventually cares about what I say.

(As a matter of record, I am fully prepared to die unknown and hated by all, so long as the incidence of my demise is accidental and quick. On another aside, I am very attracted by the prospect of working on Parliament Hill, or helping out with an election campaign. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, this means I'd have to finally reveal myself as someone who usually votes one way or another... by... well, working FOR a political party. Not yet, I don't think... Non-partisan to the end...)

I digress. As you might imagine, there is a fair amount of overlap between what journalists do and what political scientists study. And no subject has coincided more with my own education than post-secondary education funding in Canada.

Hence the topic, and title, of this post. I am a 'master of the universe' by degree, but that universe that finds itself thinner and poorer in the east and thicker and richer in the west. In other words, Canadian PSE funding is in dire need of reform because it is lopsided all across this country. PSE reform is precisely why I jumped on the Michael Ignatieff bandwagon a while ago -- he said something to the effect of wanting to make PSE funding follow students across provinces, rather than stay in one province, where the funding for PSE is based on total population. And while "saying something" is not much, it's better than saying nothing at all on the matter.

In essence, a per-student PSE funding formula revamp would make Dalhousie University rich, and perhaps make my degree worth more to those that read Maclean's or the Times Higher Education survey. Universities such as UBC, UCal and UofA do well under current funding formulas because they operate in provinces with "profitable" student-per-capita ratios. Universities like my alma mater, The University of King's College, or Dal, do not do so well, mostly because Nova Scotia has far more students per capita than the national average. It's a bit of complicated scenario to explain to kids from Quebec or B.C. who ask "what? What do you mean N.S. universities are unfairly disadvantaged on a whole number of levels? I thought you bluenosers were just poor!"

(It is, but this is hardly the only crux in the problem!)

In any case, the fine folks at The Dalhousie Gazette (my real alma mater, I suppose) let me take up a whole page of theirs so I could throw a bit of my weight around -- in a news-reporting format, of course (I'm shy of 150lbs, so what did you expect?). Thanks to Liberal Party luminary Devin Maxwell for already linking this on his blog. Here she blows:

University consolidation a hard sell

It was once called ‘rationalization.’ Now it’s called ‘consolidation.’ But no matter the dressing, the idea is the same: Nova Scotia's universities should be downsized so that they become more financially viable. It's politically difficult to implement -- but it may make Nova Scotia universities more competitive.

Chris LaRoche
Special to The Gazette

On the surface, Peter Marshall Butler is not a man you’d expect to be an expert on Nova Scotia’s university infrastructure. A quick glance at his recent publications doesn’t reveal as much. But the Dalhousie sociology professor, who specializes in political behaviour and methodology, acted as an adviser to the provincial Department of Education between 1980 and 1991. And, among the issues he dealt with, the prospect of merging Nova Scotia’s universities was a big one.

“My job, primarily, was to be the person on hand in the government who assessed the way in which the universities could be rationalized,” says Butler.

“When I came in, the issue was all about a shortage of money… we had more universities than Nova Scotia could afford.”

The reasoning behind university rationalization, Butler says, is that overlap in the Nova Scotia university system makes the province’s universities less cost effective — and therefore less competitive — than larger systems with fewer universities. Essentially, economies of scale play a large role in determining how effective university departments are. Nova Scotia, endowed with many small universities offering many of the same degrees, is bound to have a lot of overlap.

During Butler’s years, cuts in the federal government’s transfer payments to the provinces turned the N.S. government’s attention to reducing overlap in post-secondary education, culminating in a Royal Commission report tabled in 1986, says Butler. In a province with more students per capita than any other, and therefore with much less money to spend per student, these cuts made a big difference.

“In the 80’s, we certainly weren’t flush with money,” he says. “And there was no doubt that what [the government] wanted to do was deal with questions of amalgamating bits of Nova Scotia post-secondary education.”

Under Butler’s watch, the N.S. government divvied up various university departments between post-secondary institutions across the province, sometimes closing entire universities. This was the case when the Atlantic Institute of Education, which offered education degrees, was broken up, its degree-granting powers distributed to Mount St. Vincent, Saint Mary’s and Dalhousie. This was also the case when the Technical University of Nova Scotia merged with Dalhousie University in 1997, creating DalTech.

And this may be the case again. During a Sept. 21 press conference, N.S. Education Minister Karen Casey said her government might push universities toward further “consolidating” their administrations or programs if enrolment in N.S. post-secondary institutions continues to decline.

Although David Finch, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, later told The Gazette that talk of future consolidation is still “very preliminary,” some ideas he mentioned included collapsing each university’s admissions department into a central office and further re-allocating departments within the university system.

“Maybe every university doesn’t have to have a Bachelor of Arts English program,” says Finch. “It would make more sense for three universities to have full English programs, as opposed to five universities with two-thirds of a program each.”
Provincial universities are already strapped for cash because federal funding for education is based on a per-capita formula — and Nova Scotia, with less than a million residents but 11 small-to-medium-sized universities, has far more students per capita than any other province in Canada.

Politically difficult

But while university consolidation in the province could improve its PSE infrastructure from a financial standpoint, it is “a very, very difficult thing to do,” Butler says, pointing out that a major barrier to university consolidation is university constituencies. Mount St. Vincent University, Université St. Anne and Cape Breton University all act as community centres, Butler says — and attempting to amalgamate portions of these institutions with other universities or close them completely was, and is, politically difficult.

“What do you do about a very small place, Université St. Anne, that is culturally and politically symbolic?” Butler asks. “Nobody has a particular axe to grind [with downsizing] these institutions.”

Small universities do not present the only barrier to consolidation. Butler says one of the areas he explored while acting as an adviser was to “work out an arrangement” between Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s regarding the universities’ business schools. “Boy, was that controversial,” he says, mentioning that both universities now have brand-new management buildings, effectively sparing them from any future program amalgamation.

“As good an idea as [rationalization] was, it’s not an idea that is politically acceptable.”

Dalhousie: bearing the brunt?

The significance of N.S. university downsizing is not lost on Dalhousie, which, although it’s the largest university in the province, could suffer from any government-enforced downsizing because of the breadth of degrees it offers.
Dal spokesperson Charles Crosby acknowledges that discussion of departmental or administrative amalgamations “hasn’t happened yet.” But he says he’s concern that such a discussion would focus only on university downsizing, rather than the benefits universities bring to their communities.

“If we’re going to have that discussion, it should be a broader, more holistic process,” says Crosby.

But with enrolment down for the last two years, and a looming demographic change that will reduce the number of Canadian citizens entering university, PSE downsizing may soon become a reality in Nova Scotia.

Dalhousie Student Union President Ezra Edelstein says Dal’s unique funding scenario makes consolidation a unique challenge. The university houses a larger proportion of high-cost students than other universities in the province, says Edelstein, and this means that downsizing could be both bad and good.

According to Edelstein, Dal offers research-intensive graduate degrees and programs such as engineering, where upper-year students must study at Dal but can do their first two years elsewhere. So, while Dal must pay high costs for lab infrastructure and faculty to support these programs, other universities can specialize in low-cost degrees.

“We’re stuck carrying the burden for the more expensive students,” Edelstein says. “But there’s also a benefit to Dal for having some overlaps in programs, especially the cheaper ones, such as arts degrees, non-lab degree, math, etcetera.
“Program offering contributes to the problem, but it’s also a very positive aspect of how Dal works.”
* * *

The plight of Nova Scotia’s 11 universities is long and complex, but essentially entails a lack of funding from the federal government and a lack of priority from the provincial government. Here’s a step-by-step look at why you pay the second-highest tuition in the country:

First, Ottawa sends Canada Social Transfers (CSTs) to the provinces based on how many residents each province has. These lump sums of cash are aimed at closing the gap between funds raised by the federal and provincial governments and their respective spending responsibilities. (Generally speaking, the federal government has more taxing powers than the provinces, but the provinces are responsible for the implementation of more programs.)

Second, the provinces are responsible for divvying up the CST sums so that they fund the various social programs the provincial governments are responsible for administering. Among these programs are public education and post-secondary education.

Problem #1: Nova Scotia has too many students. While a per-capita CST transfer would make sense if everyone in Canada went to a university in his or her home province, they don’t. In fact, Nova Scotia has many more students per resident than the national average. So while the Nova Scotia government gets a CST transfer proportionate to Nova Scotia’s population, the post-secondary portion of that lump must cover many more students than it should.

Problem #2: The Nova Scotia government does not prioritize PSE in its budget. The provincial government can divide a CST transfer in whatever way it pleases. Even if the Nova Scotia government divided the post-secondary education portion of the CST on par with every other province, this amount would not cover the high number of out-of-province students enrolled in post-secondary institutions. But it doesn’t, and the provincial government has prioritized health care and other social programs much higher than PSE. As a result, a smaller proportion of the CST transfer goes to PSE than in other provinces. To make up the difference, Nova Scotia universities charge more for tuition.

Solution #1: Revamp PSE funding formulas. As a first step, CST transfers from the federal government could be divided so that a portion is specifically marked for PSE. A second step would be to alter the PSE transfers from a per-capita basis to a per-student basis. Nova Scotia would therefore get federal funding for the precise number of students it has, rather than how many students it “should” have according to its population.

Solution #2: Reinvest in PSE. The provincial government, which is ultimately responsible for PSE funding, could reinvest in direct PSE funding, regardless of federal funding formulas.

Solution #3: Cut university costs. The provinces and universities can downsize, lay off staff, hire more part-time professors and reduce waste to improve their existing finances.

You can read the story in its natural environment here, or if you pick up a copy of The Gazette before this coming Thursday (the electronic version of the story is missing an entire box).
再见。

Where oh where...

2006-10-17T20:48:00.000-03:00

...is China's resolve to tame North Korea? Oh wait, here it is. To my friends in Asia: if you read reports that China is securing its border with the DPRK, and you live in any major city that sits within range of a Nodong, well... I suggest you quickly become friends with your basement, or at least the bottom of a desk.

UPDATE: Dual-Citizenship review? Can we spell "bad idea"? I am all for the Asia-Pacific Gateway initiative that Harper launched last week. Even the N.S. premier caught on -- ol' MacDonald will be snooping around for a similar Asia-Canada programme, this time focussed on the East, when he heads to O-Town. But a dual-citizenship review would throw the gateway intitiative out the window, not to mention put a big dent in the economy of Vancouver, or, shall we say, Hongcouver.

* * *

Here's an interesting poll. Ironically, Canada already had nuclear arms in the early 1960s, installed in missiles meant to replace the not-so-popular-with-Dief's-liver Avro Arrow. Oh, and I love this from Bourque.com -- Canada is surrounded by nuclear powers, it seems.

Ahem:

Another irony is that the CANDU reactor, built and designed by Canadians, is responsible for a whole whack of the colourful nuclear proliferation you see above. Yay!

In other news, I've become a facebook addict. Well, sort of. I was enthralled for the first 48 hours, adding people I knew to my friends list, sending messages, writing on walls, and poking people (why does this sound like high school?).... then the high wore off and I thought, "what is the ultimate point of this?" At least I can exchange useful information with people on MSN. Or here, even.

Nobody knows what it's like when you're down and out... and a nuclear power

2006-10-16T12:50:00.000-03:00

Subtitle: A Few Obligatory Thoughts on Mr. Kim's Nuclear Brinkmanship

The current round of UN sanctions targeting North Korea, now approved by the United Nations Security Council, are pretty much what I expected. They're also mostly useless, and continue to point out a flaw in U.S. strategies toward North Korea: sanctions simply won't work because the only countries that can sanction North Korea really, really don't want to.

China and Russia have refused to allow a UN Chapter VII citation, which would make enforcement of the sanctions through threat or use of arms completely legal under international law. Chapter VII references have therefore been dropped from the sanctions document to avoid a veto at the UNSC table. The rest of the document involves inspecting cargo and attempting to prevent illegal anything from getting in and out of the DPRK.

Russia has very little trade with North Korea, but China and South Korea do. And they will do very little, since they'd essentially be sanctioning their own investment. The big ol' North Korean investment, that is. Both China and South Korea support the North Korean regime because an immediate collapse would be a nightmare for either country -- in military terms, in humanitarian terms, in political terms, what have you. North Korea makes a lot of money off of illegal dealings, and although both the PRC and the ROK would rather North Korea open up and pursue the "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" driving the Chinese economy, neither country want to deprive North Korea of its livelihood, either.

As for the other two countries involved in the region -- Japan and the U.S. -- very little can be done. Japan has already imposed its own set of unilateral sanctions on Japan-North Korea trade, most of which came in the form of remittances from Korean nationals in Japan. And the U.S. involvement at this point is essentially irrelevant, since it does not trade with North Korea whatsoever.

So what's going on here? Nothing new. A now-confirmed North Korean nuclear test is a major loss of face in Beijing. We would presume the Chinese would be more willing to push North Korea around, and by the looks of things, they are, as they were after the July 4, 2006 missile launches, and as they have been on occasion.

But Chinese patience with North Korea is deep and wide, especially considering sanction might make Kim's regime go belly-up.

Ashton Carter, an Assistant Secretary of Defence under Bill Clinton, asked an apt question today on CNN: where do we want these sanctions to go? Unfortunately, the answer to his question is a resounding "nowhere." If the sanctions are supposed to encourage North Korea to go back to the Six-Party negotiating table, they will probably fail miserably. Only two things can get North Korea back to the multiparty format: (1) increased pressure from South Korea and/or China; and/or (2) a Six-Party recommitment to carrots-and-sticks-based "rewards for cooperation" negotiation strategies.

The first is very politically difficult to do, even after the nightmare scenario nuclear test. The problem is that the PRC or ROK don't want Kim's regime to collapse, and they think that the U.S. is pushing for such an end, even in the multilateral format. So they'll only really push North Korea on anything if they know the regime will not be put in danger as a result. And chances are Beijing is now trying to get North Korea back to the Six-Party Table as best as it can.

The reality is, however, that the U.S. does not see (2) as a tenable strategy. It doesn't swim well in circles where North Korea is considered a "cheater for life," and is (perhaps rightly) seen as too likely to use any economic concessions to sustain its illiberal self and further develop its nuclear programme.

The bottom line: the growing China-DPRK split still hasn't widened to the point where Chinese and Russian leaders have decided that taking hardline against North Korea is in their best interests. Sanctioning North Korea into a hard-landing collapse (or near-to) may work in that it will force the regime to recalculate the benefits of its nuclear plans. But China, Russia and South Korea are still unwilling to risk such a maneuver because of the immense strategic loss that could come as a result of a failing North Korean regime.

What comes next? A PRC-DPRK or ROK-DPRK divide that would make additional sanctions useful isn't likely to happen unless things go really haywire (i.e., more haywire than a live nuclear test). This would entail either:

Some impending military action on North Korea's part, or;

A shift in China or South Korea's greater East Asian strategy away from supporting the North Korean regime.

The second point is where the U.S. may be able to build more negotiating room, and is partly aided by the first. A new government in South Korea could usher in cooler DPRK-ROK ties; a new set of leaders in the standing committee of the CCP's politburo could have a similar effect.

China-U.S. relations, which are much more important to the politburo than PRC-DPRK relations, may change in the future so that Chinese support for Kim Jong-Il and his successors becomes less and less cost-effective or politically desirable for China's decisionmakers.

On the other hand, support for the DPRK may become more and more politically desirable in China's highest political corridors if the U.S. further pushes China on issues such as Taiwan, cross-Pacific trade, and Japan's remilitarization.

Whatever the case, trust issues between the U.S. and North Korea stemming from the 1994 Agreed Framwork continue to obstruct a viable alternative -- the soft-landing strategy -- under which North Korea is rewarded for cooperation. North Korea may cheat, but as I've felt all along, a cheating North Korea with a limited nuclear programme will be an easier nut to crack than a sanctioned, noncompliant North Korea that has lifelines from China and South Korea and can develop its nuclear programme as it pleases.

Let's hope the international community's dealings with Iran go a little better....

No, it's not sparkling wine

2006-10-16T02:56:00.000-03:00

What a sharp and acute change it was to do what those in power must do -- fundraise at auctions -- just after doing what those in power want to do -- drive around in a limo (or two!). Alll night, picking up random Haligonians while sipping from a few bottles of Dom Perignon.

Props to my friend Li Dong, who rented two limos, booked a table at Bish, brought us to Seven, and paid for every last bit of it, limos, wine, champagne, beer and company included. Props also to those who couldn't make it -- unfortunately Li had to cut the first portion of the evening down to a very small number of people, though we did our best to accomodate everyone we could after dumping the small limo at Bish. There's nothing quite like roaming around Halifax at 3:30 a.m. in a stretch SUV and stopping anyone who looks like they might be fun -- and inviting them in.

Oh, and while we sipped $200/bottle champagne and listened to Li's "new-new-new-money" sountrack of Hip Hop beats (with a tad of Franz Ferdinand), we barked orders at the driver: "To the Citadel!" "Stop here!" "We need to let these people in!" "We must find ice!" "Drive around some more!" Not even running The Dalhousie Gazette was this fun.

Aside from the late-night cat calling (you'd be surprised how many randoms will actually approach a moving limo and try to open the door), the best, most "this is absolutely nuts" moment of the night actually happened very early as Li and I roamed about the city looking for ice and cold beer. Imagine this: you work at a gas station, a liquor store, or Sobey's, and a limo drives up, two young gents in suits jump out in a rush, and yell/ask "Do you have ice???? We need ice!!! We have really expensive champagne and we need ice!"

The facial expressions were priceless.

So was the guy-to-girl ratio, which at my end of the Limo was about 1-5 in my favour.

:)

Check a few pictures here, or on Li Dong's facebook page.

* * *

Additional props must be given to Jen Bond for inviting me to a Halifax-Citadel Liberal Party fundraising event, held at Halifax Curling Club. The whole event was a lot less "Liberal" than I expected, although a joke I made about an autographed copy of Bob Rae's book that was being auctioned ("What's it called? How I Ruined the Ontario Economy?") didn't go over so well. I sat directly straight across a cramped table from the ultra-friendly MLA Diana Whalen, though, which was a treat; her husband, Mount Saint Vincent University VP and former DFAIT diplomat Michael Whalen, had a number of interesting and not-exactly PC (thank God!) things to say about potential Nova Scotian university "consolidation." And I got a free meal, too. Even though I still consider myself nonpartisan and often vote across Party lines, this was an inexpensive and very informal treat.

* * *

Last, I'm beginning work on my to-be-published thesis this week. It needs a new title, a thourough rewriting, and a completely new introduction. This sounds like a lot of work considering the original took me the better part of a month just to get down on paper, but hey, if the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies wants to stick something I wrote in its own book, hell, I'll rebuild the 38th parallel DMZ with my bare hands. I'll keep everyone updated on what happens.

Blatant Self-Promotion Vol. III - Letter in the Post

2006-10-13T18:30:00.000-03:00

The National Post was kind enough to print a letter I sent to them earlier this week. Kudos to Richard, who has an online subscription and could check up on the paper for me (for those of you outside N.S.: the Post no longer delivers east of Quebec City. Apparently they made no money off of Canada's far east... capitalist roaders...).

Here it is, from Thursday's issue. The last two paragraphs are sliced-and-diced a little, but it otherwise accurately conveys what I meant:

What do we do about North Korea?
Re: Kim Jong-Il’s Explosive Mistake, editorial, Oct. 10.

This editorial does a fine job of highlighting the various problems presented by attacking or ignoring North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear program. Unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired in terms of diplomatic solutions. While a concerted, international plan for regime change in North Korea sounds like a novel idea, it may not be so novel in practice.

Kim Jong-Il’s regime has proven resilient to international sanctions, no matter how “crippling” their nature. In fact, increasingly aggressive behaviour from external aggressors only further legitimizes the country’s unyielding belief in Juche, a siege-mentality of sorts that stresses international isolation, economic autarky and Kim Jong-Il’s own cult of personality.

A carrots-for-compliance, sticks-fornon-compliance approach has a better track record. The 1994 Agreed Framework successfully limited North Korea’s nuclear program for nearly a decade. And it fell apart not because North Korea had any latent desire to cheat, but because a similarly non-compliant United States gave North Korea room to so.

It would make little sense for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms, the only real hand it can play at the international table. But concentrating only on regime change, as your editorial suggests, would be at best futile, at worst dangerous. If North Korea is to be gradually opened up to the world, short-term co-operation with North Korea on the nuclear issue will be necessary.

On the other hand, if North Korea is to undergo a “hard landing,” in which it collapses, South Korea and China will have to be convinced that it is in their best interests to ruin the North Korean economic system. The country will attempt to stay afloat by selling its nuclear technologies, WMDs and missiles to anyone who will buy. And, in his dying hour, Kim Jong-Il may very well push every red button he has.

Christopher LaRoche, MA researcher,
Dalhousie University, Halifax.

再见。

Blatant Self-Promotion Vol. II

2006-10-12T12:55:00.000-03:00

I am in The Daily News again, this time in the Letters to the Editor section. I'm not sure why this excites me so much, especially considering I once wrote a bunch of feature stories for The Montreal Gazette, which has a circulation of like 300,000 as compared to the Daily's +/- 100,000, but who knows... maybe I'm getting old and washed up and giddy to see my stuff in print somewhere. :) In any case, here she is:

Korean Conundrum

To the editor:
Re: Your Oct. 10 editorial, Nuclear Club Gains News Member:
This editorial propoagates two misunderstandings about North Korea: that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is mad and plans to nuke the world, and that only pushing North Korea will solve this problem.

The record of evidence points to the opposite of these conclusions.

North Korea has shown no ability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that could be delivered to South Korea or Japan. Nor would it want to any time soon, as such an act would result in the regime's immediate destruction by American, Japanese and possibly South Korean forces.

Since the U.S. administration adpoted a hardline approach toward North Korea in 2003, pushing the country has gone nowhere. Offering the country positive incentives in exchange for co-operation on the nuclear issues, and negative incetives if it does not co-operate has a proven positive record.

Such an approach resulted in a 1994 agreement under which North Korea' nuclear program was frozen. In the end, both U.S. and North Korea broke the agreement. And the possibility that North Korea will cheat on any agreement the outside world makes is something to consider.

But while this may be true, a short-term, "carrot-and-stick" solution that limits North Korea's nuclear program is much more desirable than attempting to sanction a country to death that simply will not die — Chinese support or not.

The editing job is a bit hacky, and misses the point that a cheating North Korea still must be dealt with in the long run. But, otherwise, it beats the two lines I got in yesterday's paper:

Local reaction to nuke test low key

[...]

Christopher LaRoche, a Dalhousie University researcher, said he wasn't surprised at the reported test, but said it remains to be seen what impact it will have.

Turning to a plan that offers economic incentives for disarmament may be the best solution, LaRoche said, if it means opening up North Korea to the world.

Well, I suppose you get a semi-full picture if you read both of them in tandem. More updates to come!

Incontinence We Trust

2006-10-12T06:26:00.000-03:00

Now that thanksgiving has given my brain plenty of terrestrial, non-plastic food to work from, I've found the ol' lump o' green lard catching up on magazine reading, blog visiting, T.V.-watching, and movie gorging, all done in earnest, and all performed with a haste natural only to the worst manifestations of lethargy, unambition, and lackadaisical sloth. Among the winners this week:

Barry Lyndon is surely one of the most underrated movies in history. Captured on special lenses designed so that artificial lighting wasn't necessary (the largest apertures ever used in film), Lyndon is both the oft-copied blueprint and the defining oeuvre of "period" cinema. Everything in this movie is gorgeous, cinematic, and thouroughly 18th Century. Looking very much like a series of Early Modern and late-classical paintings, and using not one film set, Lyndon follows a young Esquire from Ireland (Redmond Barry, Esq., who is later to assume the title of the movie's namesake) as he makes his way across Europe, posing, at different times, as a solider, a deserter, a spy, a gambler, an addict, a chauvenist, a debutante, a sidekick, a conman, a Prussian, a Prussian solider, an Irishman pretending to be a Prussian police officer, an Irishman pretending to be a Prussian police officer pretending to be an Irish spy, a British lieutenant charged with delivering fictional dispatches to a rather deceased General, a father, a deadbeat, and so on. Just read this bit of a passage, all delivered in deadpan Irish by the actors, with great pauses of silence inserted between each line (the accent is essential for things like "How do you do?", which end up sounding more like "Whoodyadoo?"):

Captain Feeny: How do you do? I'm Captain Feeny.
Redmond Barry: Captain Feeny?
Captain Feeny: Captain Feeny at your service.
Redmond Barry: The Captain Feeny?
Captain Feeny: None other. May I introduce you to my son, Seamus?
Seamus: How do you do?
Redmond Barry: How do you do?
Captain Feeny: To whom have I the honor of speaking?
Redmond Barry: My name's Redmond Barry.
Captain Feeny: How do you do Mr. Barry? And now I'm afraid we must get on to the more regrettable stage of our brief acquaintance. Turn around, and keep your hands high above your head, please.
Seamus: There must be 20 guineas in gold here, father!
Captain Feeny: Well, well, well. You seem to be a very well set up young gentleman, sir.
Redmond Barry: Captain Feeny, that's all the money me mother had in the world. Mightn't I be allowed to keep it? I'm just one step ahead of the law myself. I killed and English officer in a duel, and I'm on my way to Dublin until things cool down.
Captain Feeny: Mr. Barry, in my profession we hear many such stories. Yours is one of the most intriguing and touching I've heard in many weeks. Nevertheless, I'm afraid I cannot grant your request. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll allow you to keep those fine pair of boots which in normal circumstances I would have for myself. The next town is only five miles away, and I suggest you now start walking.
Redmond Barry: Mightn't I be allowed to keep my horse?
Captain Feeny: I should like to oblige you, but with people like us, we must be able to travel faster than our clients.

The Prussian service was considerably worse than that of the English. The life that the private soldier led was a frightful one. Punishment was incessant, and every officer had the right to inflict it. The gauntlet was the most common penalty for minor offenses. More serious ones were punishable by mutilation or death. At the close of the Seven Years' War, the army, renowned for its disciplined valor, was officered by native Prussians. But it was composed, for the most part, of men from the lowest levels of humanity — hired, or stolen from almost every nation in Europe. Thus Barry fell into the very worst of courses and company, and was soon very far advanced in the science of every kind of misconduct.

Fate had determined that he should leave none of his race behind him, and that he should finish his life poor, lonely and childless.

Stanley Kubrick

A Clockwork Orange

2001: A Space Odyssey

The Shining

Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove

Lolita

Barry Lyndon

Master and Commander

Gangs of New York

Memoirs of a Geisha

Lyndon

poor Barry a try

Heroes is a great show. I haven't seen the first two episodes, but "sat in" on the third when it aired earlier this week. I quickly found myself looking up the plots to the first two episodes online — as lame as a show about people with "superpowers" could be, this one is not.

Lastly, thanks to my friend Devin DeCiantis at The Walrus Magazine for passing this along. It seems the Chinese have an Area 51-type installation in Ningxia, Northern China — but instead of hiding aliens and testing stealth technology, the Chinese have decided to built a 900m x 700m, 500:1 exact scale model of their border with India and Pakistan... some 2,500 kilometres away from that border. And, according to a snapshot taken by Xinhua News Agency, the area is inhabited by men in blue jumpsuits. Utterly bizarre. The best part of all of this is that someone simply stumbled on the site while using Google Earth.

Zaht is Ahl,
再见。

Blatant Self-Promotion

2006-10-10T17:49:00.000-03:00

I don't normally do this (wait... yes I do), but yesterday I was interviewed by the Daily News for today's story on local reactions to North Korea. I can't find an electronic copy of the story, but my two lines (w00t!) appear at the bottom of "Local reaction to N Korea test low key" on page 3. I'll type a copy here once I get my hands on it!

Update: I've sent letters to the editor to both The Daily News and The National Post. While I enjoyed The Daily News' editorial, it makes a few errors, putting too much emphasis on the role of China in getting the Six-Party Talks ... talking... again. The current Six-Party impasse in fact stems from U.S. sanctions on a non-nuclear issue -- the ball is in the U.S.'s court to get North Korea back to the negotiating table, and back to the September 2005 agreement that held so much promise.

The Post's editorial is a little bit more ridiculous. Check it out here. In effect, the editorial advocates abandoning negotiations and concentrating on regime change. While this isn't a bad idea in principle, the editors at the Post have completely underestimated South Korea's unwillingness to push North Korea into a hard-landing collapse. No amount of sanctions will topple Kim Jong-Il's regime, especially if either South Korea or China are reluctant to go ahead with a harder line. Here's my letter:

The National Post's October 10 editorial ("Kim Jong-Il's explosive
mistake") does a fine job of highlighting the various problems presented
by attacking and/or ignoring North Korea's burgeoning nuclear programme.
Unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired in terms of diplomatic
solutions. While a concerted, international plan for regime change in
North Korea sounds like a novel idea, it may not be so novel in practice.
Kim Jong-Il's regime has proven resilient to international sanctions, no
matter how "crippling" their nature. In fact, increasingly aggressive
behaviour from external aggressors only further legitimizes the country's
unyielding belief in Juche, a siege-mentality of sorts that stresses
international isolation, economic autarky, and Kim Jong-Il's own cult of
personality. Sanctioning and threatening North Korea with sticks will only
compel the nation to develop its nuclear technologies faster, as it has
done in the past.

A carrots-for-compliance, sticks-for-noncompliance approach has a better
track record. The 1994 Agreed Framework successfully limited North Korea's
nuclear programme for nearly a decade. And it fell apart not because North
Korea had any latent desire to cheat, but because a similarly noncompliant
U.S gave the DPRK room to do so.

(By 2003, when evidence of North Korea's alleged uranium programme was
presented, almost every promise made to North Korea by the U.S. had been
delayed, cancelled, or forgotten. And evidence of North Korea's HEU
programme has yet to surface anywhere, with many corroborating agencies in
the East Asian region now recanting their claims.)

North Korea may indeed be a cheater for life. It would make little sense
for the regime to give up its nuclear arms, the only real hand it can play
at the international table.

But concentrating only on regime change, as your editorial suggests, would
be at best futile, at worst dangerous. If North Korea is to be gradually
opened up to the world, short-term cooperation with North Korea on the
nuclear issue will be necessary, cheating or no cheating. If North Korea
is to undergo a 'hard-landing' in which it collapses, South Korea and
China will have to be convinced that it is in their best interests to ruin
the North Korean economic system. If by some miracle this works, we can
rest assured that North Korea will attempt to stay afloat by selling its
nuclear technologies, WMDs and missiles to anyone who will buy. And, in
his dying hour, Kim Jong-Il may very well push every red button he has.

Christopher LaRoche, BJH, MA
Researcher,
Dalhousie University

Oh, Kim, How You Kill Me (and other human beings)

2006-10-09T10:28:00.000-03:00

A few thoughts on the latest North Korean affair:

A North Korean nuclear test isn't a big deal in itself. We've known that the Kim Family Regime (KFR) has probably had nuclear arms for some time now -- maybe even as early as 1993 -- and all international attempts to disarm North Korea have worked off of the assumption that KFR has built somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen or so primitive warheads. The October 9 test simply confirms our working assumptions. They've got em.
The big danger here is what this means for the region. Japan and China now have more compelling excuses to go ahead and eat their parts of the East Asian re-militarization cake. Japan, because it is a liberal democracy and its pro-military MPs gain ground anytime Kim Jong-Il pulls something threatening, has no defence mechanisms against a nuclear-equipped North Korea. In fact, Japan has few defence mechanisms against an emboldened North Korea whatsoever, aside from the hollow comfort of knowing that if and when a North Korean MRBM lands on Tokyo, North Korea will be flattened by American and South Korean bombs (although, my guess is far more of the former and few of the latter).

China has a remilitarization case, of course, because it is the rightful Asia-Pacific hegemon, or something like that, and balancing against imperialist American presence in the region is a must. Well, a must only insofar as Chinese militarization does not jeopardize the greater Sino-U.S. relationship or destabilize the region. China is happy with the status quo: Japan, though no longer in a recession, is in wane as the predominant Asian economic power. China has pursued major remilitarization for almost two decades without serious contention from its neighbours, and its economic renaissance still goes undaunted by protest over yuan undervaluation, trade defecits, and intellectual property issues. A remilitarized Japan is a real threat to China's regional ambitions, particularly if that remilitarization goes hand in hand with harder lines on China-Japan regional disputes (it's the oil, stupid!). Thus we have a real Asian domino effect: North Korea tests, Japan builds up its arsenal, China does the same, and the U.S. responds by further encouraging South Korea and Japan to build. North Korea announces that it feels increasingly threatened, and uses the remilitarization outside of its borders as an excuse to conduct further nuclear tests. This is not to mention Taiwan -- the real Asian flashpoint -- which could jump into the gun game at any point.

What would all this remilitarization mean? Hopefully, nothing -- but one thing is certain: at some point, Kim Jong-Il will die, or his regime will collapse, or both. And who knows if his predecessor will have a firm grip on things. If North Korea collapses as functioning state, which it would without continuing Chinese support, any number of scenarios could happen. Missiles could get launched, nuclear arms could be used or sold, and armies could march across the 38th parallel. Refugees would certainly pour across the DPRK-PRC border in the hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- once the North Korean state apparatus stops feeding its citizens the few scraps it now manages. And as for all that military ordinance -- who knows? North Korea has hundreds of MRBMs, a few nuclear arms, lots of WMDs, and thousands of other odds and sods that any terrorist group with half a sense of mind would certainly want to get its hands on. In other words, a North Korean collapse would be a disaster.

China-DPRK relations are in an obvious thaw. In a surprising move, China supported the UNSC sanctions stemming from North Korea's July 4, 2006 missile tests. Just the other day, PRC officials teamed up with the Japanese to condemn a possible North Korean nuclear test. China will likely support future sanctions being put to the UNSC by the U.S. following yesterday's nuclear test. And, as far as the Six-Party Talks are concerned, simmering DPRK-PRC relations could mean that China will be more receptive to the U.S. strategy of using sticks as an inducement for North Korean cooperation, rather than carrots.
A second, related danger is what the test means for the nonproliferation regime. The success of both bilateral and multilateral negotiations in the Korean case is stunning: aside from talking North Korea into limiting its nuclear programme between 1994 and 2002, every element of the nonproliferation regime has thus far failed to achieve a peaceful solution to the Korean nuclear dilemma. North Korea has since 2003 been developing its nuclear arsenal while the rest of the world, afraid of claiming ignorance or simply bombing the country, has attempted to talk the DPRK into doing otherwise. And it has done this with good cause: ignoring North Korea is simply not an option, particularly given the regime's track record of selling WMD technology to anyone who will buy. Bombing North Korea, conversely, would be extremely military risky, and would almost certaintly result in the deaths of thousands if not millions of Korean citizens. Because of a lack of alternatives, and because diplomacy did succeed in 1994, the Six-Party Talks are still option number 1 for the international community. But will they get anywhere? And what can we expect if they do?

My hunch is that North Korea has no reason to give up its nuclear arms, and will not do so so long as KFR remains in charge. Worse, the regime does not respond well to threats -- it either does not believe it will ever be invaded, or thinks it can win a confrontation with the U.S. It therefore will not give up its nuclear arsenal under threat of sanction. Rewarding North Korea with positive incentives for good behaviour has its uses -- we can limit its nuclear programme and resolve the short-term crisis -- but KFR is unlikely to order a full dismantlement given that the regime is hated around the world, under sanctions for a number of non-nuclear related activities, and consistently targeted by post-Cold War foreign policies, nuclear arms or not. A robust nuclear capability, then, is the only real international card of value the North Koreans possess.

Can we live with a nuclear North Korea? Probably, but it could be dangerous, particularly given the regime's dwindling ability to economically sustain itself. Money counterfieting, drug smuggling, kidnapping, and missile trafficking are among the regime's favourite means of procuring funds. And we can probably add WMD/nuclear warhead exporting to that list if we give it a few more years, particularly if China decides to pull the plug. To prevent North Korea from threatening the world with its arsenal (and possibly selling weapons to groups who will use them without fear of retaliation), the international community would have to give North Korea no good reason to possess nuclear arms in the first place. Unless international norms suddenly reverse so that isolated, human rights-violating, totalitarian regimes are given their proper place amidst the celebrated nations of the international system, this sort of in medias res carte blanche of international acceptability is unlikely.

So we are left with nonperforming negotiations, nonperforming nonproliferation, nonperforming threats, and a very well-performing North Korean nuclear programme.

What's to be done? A carrots and sticks negotiations approach may get us another agreement that will limit North Korea's programme, ease tensions, and build trust among the East Asian nations. But North Korea will probably cheat on that agreement. Given this, a noncompliant North Korea will simply have to become an acceptable reality -- that short-term limitations will have to suffice, and that the region's players will have to look outside of the nonproliferation regime to find a real solution to the nuclear impasse. Regime change is obviously a major factor in framing the Korean secuirty dilemma, but regime change can take many, many forms. Easing the pressure on North Korea in the short term may make a soft-landing -- a longer, more drawn out process of reintegration and opening up -- a much better alternative to an immediate hard landing, and it'll be one that won't get lots of people killed. For all we know, Kimg Jong-Il really is nuts, really does want to retake South Korea, and really will push every button he can as soon as he feels he is ready. And that's a risk we shouldn't be willing to take.

再见。

Hmmm...

2006-10-08T07:13:00.001-03:00

I have been listening to too much James Blunt.

You're beautiful? It's true.

Ugh. Pass the garlic powder.

(Real post coming soon...)

A few points of thought

2006-10-03T18:06:00.000-03:00

1. Check out this line from a John Ivison article in today's National Pest:

But there is little doubt that whether it is now or on the second ballot, Brison will back Ignatieff. If he does reach this conclusion, the Stockwell Day comparisons will disappear from memory like snow on a river. Brison, freshly ensconced as Ignatieff's new economic point man, will wax lyrical about how his new boss is the Canadian Kissinger, while Ignatieff will flash his malevolent grin -- the one that makes him look like he's just evicted an orphanage.

Just evicted an orphanage??!! Really?? I'm thinking John "Ivison" might actually be John Ibbitson's evil, less-articulate (but more-entertaining) twin.

2. My friend John sent me this, care of Bruce MacKinnon at The Halifax Herald. It is, especially in light of this photo, quite funny:

...and, on a related note...

3. Bob Woodward of Watergate and All The President's Men fame will be on Charlie Rose for a whole hour tonight (no commercials!), no doubt blaming Donald Rumsfeld for 99% of the U.S.'s current woes in Iraq. Oh, and he's probably abut 99% right, too. Check it out.

Was that something about a Liberal?

2006-10-03T03:27:00.000-03:00

Because the preliminary Liberal leadership delegate tally has been beaten to death on just about every other blog out there, I'd like to simply ask a favour: forget policies, forget histories, and forget this race -- if you had to vote Liberal, who you want standing next to Harper, Layton and Duceppe at the next leaders' debate, on a primal, instinctual (and perhaps rock-em-sock-em) gut level?

(Sadly, my answer is Pierre Trudeau. Even more sadly, I'm not sure his corpse would be able to take the heat from the bright TV lights without turning into small piles of half-mummified flesh. I suppose I'll take Ignatieff as a close second. *Sigh*).

Zaht is Ahl,
再见。

A New Era in East Asian Security?

2006-10-01T16:42:00.000-03:00

On Friday, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Japan got a new Prime Minister. Shinzo Abe, a man I know almost nothing about, took over for Junichiro Koizumi, one of the most important reformers in recent Japanese history.

Two things are clear: Koizumi, while a great leader on domestic issues, didn't have the best foreign policies in the world. And Abe, who appears much like the standard bureaucrat type in comparison, will have a good chance to clean up Japan's international image. As far as I can tell, however, this could be a longshot.

You may be wondering: what's wrong with Japan's international image? Simple answer: a lot. Here in the West, we generally look to Japan as another modernized state with a powerful economy, a vanguard technologies sector, and a burgeoning alternative-energy plan. More specifically, Japan is the United States' best and most important ally in the entire Asian region, India, Russia, South Korea and Kazakhstan included. Japan contributed troops to the Iraq conflict and continues to promote U.S. interests through multilateral corridors such as the Six-Party Talks and ASEAN, and through bilateral relationships with its neighbours.

For Japan, the reasoning behind these foreign policy positions are simple: the country is threatened by North Korea, threatened by a rising China, and threatened by any anti-U.S. "balancing" blocs that may develop out of the Shanghai Cooperation (China, Russia, and some Central Asian countries) or a similar "alternative" alliance to Western hegemony.

From the U.S.'s perspective, likewise, Japan is a vital ally in a region with a few bad, unsteady, or worsening relationships (those with China, Thailand, South Korea), a number of flashpoints (Taiwan, North Korea), and an enormous amount of strategic and economic potential. The China-Japan-U.S. trading relationship, in terms of numbers, is one of the largest trading triangles in the world, for example; with very few exceptions, South Korea, China, and Taiwan have posted major GDP increases for the last two decades plus; and Japan is now coming out of its 13-year recession, poised to (at least for the time being) regain some of its international importance as the world's second or third largest economy (after the U.S. and, if you count it as such, the EU).

The bad news is that to countries like North Korea, Vietnam, South Korea and China, Japan's pro-U.S. stance makes it a "hegemonic puppet" in a region the U.S. has no real "right" to be in, period. And unlike Taiwan, Japan has a history of being a hegemonic power in the region, invading almost all of East Asia in both World Wars. Protectionist trading policies, recalcitrant militarism, and a history of invading and subjugating other nations in the region all make Japan the most hated nation in the East Asian region.

Abe should be wise to fixing this, and it looks like he already has a gameplan. Unfortunately, his gameplan reveals a major crux in Japanese domestic opinion: while Japan would like to have better relations with its neighbours, Japanese politicians continue to use nationalism to consolidate domestic support. And lately this 'nationalism' has come in the form of: government-authorized (but unpopular) textbooks that skim over or deemphasize Japan's World War II history; high-profile visits to a Shinto shrine that honours Japan's war dead (including war criminals); and most importantly, proposals to amend Japan's constitution so that it would allow the Japanese military take a more active role abroad.

(This is not to mention Japan's eager participation in the U.S.'s BMD project, a system that would at best prevent North Korea from mounting a reasonable nuclear deterrence and at worst create a new arms race among Asia's nuclear powers.)

Abe's leadership goals show no signs of a Japanese paradigm shift. The PM has not said whether he will discontinue visits to Yasukuni shine, and he has made it clear that constitutional reform is on his agenda. BMD is a no-brainer. The big problem with these developments is not that Japan has no right to a larger military mandate or ballistic missile defence. Nor is it particularly important to consider whether Chinese and South Korean officials are legitimately offended by Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.

What is more important, in all cases, is that Japan's seeming militarism is used by other East Asian nations to legitimize their own strategic objectives. This is particularly acute in democratic nations such as South Korea (and Japan, of course), where anti-Sino or anti-Japanese "rhetoric" can win legislative seats and be used to promote militaristic agendas. China is able to legitimize its military policies toward the Korean peninsula and Taiwan by pointing out the fact that Japanese militarism has increased. China has no real domestic need to legitimize its military policies, but within the CCP and politburo, legitimacy is everything. A more peaceable Japan would likely do a lot to disenfranchise the militaristic voices of China's top leadership.

Likewise, in South Korea, more aggressive Japanese and American military stances in regards to Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea have resulted in widening anti-Japanese and anti-American sentiment. The last two South Korean elections have empowered left-wing governments who are eager to continue rapprochement with North Korea and much less eager to tow the U.S. line on North Korea's missile programs, human rights abuses, financial activities, or nuclear posturing.

What should Abe do? Cutting out the Yasukuni visits and making some formal progress on acknowledging Japan's history might be a big step. If China's long-term strategic goals entail dominating the East Asian region, retaking Taiwan, and ending U.S. involvement in the Western half of the Pacific, the shrine visits are irrelevant (as is anything else Japan can do).

Even if this is true, though, China's long-term strategic goals are not set in stone. A more conciliatory approach from the Japanese side could have an effect on the ongoing "expansion" debates that take place within the Chinese leadership. It could further entice China to take a harder line on North Korea in the Six-Party Talks, and ease tensions over Taiwan as soft-liners and moderates gain more say in Beijing's politburo standing committee. A Japanese-Sino reconcilliation could also help resolve a number of outstanding regional disputes over oil patches, sea access, and island clusters that exist between North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, and pave the way for broader, stronger East Asian multilateral cooperation. We should never forget that North Korea and Taiwan represent two flashpoints in which millions of civilians could very easily die; while "rhetorical" events such as protests over textbooks, shrine visits, and the cancellations of high-level talks between East Asian nations may not significantly inform the underlying strategies of China, Japan, the Koreas or Russia, they certainly do nothing to acknowledge East Asia's potential for increased cooperation, mutual understanding, and formal mediums for dispute resolution.

The next big step in East Asia's future will be the establishment of a multilateral institution that aims to stabilize the region's ongoing security dilemmas. Such an institution will have to go beyond ASEAN, and it will have be inclusive of issues such as North Korea's nuclear programme, BMD, and the legitimacy of China's supposed "peaceful rise." In a region where appearances simultaneously mean everything and nothing, clearing the air on a high-level basis could help avoid a sudden disaster and better reconcile the region's progressive economic relationships with its political ones. And, hopefully, Mr. Abe knows this.

再见.

Damnit.

2006-09-29T11:02:00.000-03:00

SPIKE TV has decided not to renew Blade: The Series for another season. This might sound silly, but Blade was, at times, quite a good show, completely different from what I expected, and the only thing I looked forward to on TV all this year (with the exception of The Colbert Report and certain Charlie Rose interviews, of course). Even though the series had reasonable numbers for something on a specialty channel (1 million+ viewers), and received far more favourable reviews than any of the Blade movies (!), it attracted too many females and too few males than what SPIKE's marketing team needed to sell the male-oriented advertising the network is geared for. In any case, New Line Cinema is apparently still behind the show "100%", and Blade may find a home on another network soon enough. If you watched, and liked, do send an email to the chaps in charge, buy the DVD when it comes out, and keep your fingers crossed.

Six Criticisms of Stephen Harper's Conservatives

2006-09-27T19:26:00.000-03:00

If you've been following the plight of Canada's Liberal Party as it tries to assemble a reasonable opposition and rebuild its ability to win government, you'll know that the current Liberal line entails accusing the Conservative minority government of (among other clichés) 'being in bed' with George W. Bush, the American neo-conservative movement, and U.S. Republican Party on the whole. While in some cases these villifications may not be in complete opposition with the truth -- the U.S. and Canada shared similar positions on the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, for example, and the Conservatives have a similar, if placid, social agenda to the Bushites -- an award-winning election strategy Bushwhacking does not make. We need only look at the triumphant defeat of the Democratic Johns for evidence of this.

Yes, the 2006 Liberal Leadership Campaign looks like a boring version of a student union election, complete with tow-the-line pre-Law types, poli sci geeks, and crazy protest-loving leftists. Yes, Joe Volpe is a bridge troll. Yes, Bob Rae, one of the frontrunners, was Ontario's most ill-fated premier, and an NDP one at that. Yes, Stephane Dion, another frontrunner, wrote the most mind-numbingly vague piece of legislation in recent Canadian history, and later named it the "Clarity Act" in what must surely be the most tongue-in-cheek choice of words to ever appear at the top of a Parliament bill. And yes, Michael Ignatieff, another frontrunner, hasn't really lived in Canada since Trudeau was Prime Minister, and likes to call accidentally killed Lebanese civilians "diminishing returns."

It's all true. It's a shit show. And I'm normally fairly non-partisan, finding strengths in all three-or-perhaps-four of Canada's political parties. But the centralist, federalist, Trudeauist in me thinks we must have hope.

Hard-hitting, easy-to-understand election slogans are, generally speaking, a good species of language to use amidst the dull sea of policy rhetoric that is usually the hallmark of a Canadian election campaign. But trumpeting slogans (and the more detailed, wordy rhetoric that follows) such as "Harper is Bush," "The Canadian Blue is the American Red," or "Once a Neo-Con, Always a Neo-Con" will not work for the Liberals. The twin legacies of the Adscam Sponsorship Scandal and Paul Martin's complete and utter uselessness as a minority PM will require more than simple finger-pointing, moniker-applying, and an election strategy constructed entirely out of what appears to be negative space, in order to be overcome. The Liberals will need actual policies, actual vision, and, low and behold, an electable leader. Such may be the case by January 2007.

Aside from these positives, though, it seems to me the that Libs have missed a number of opportunities to get Harper where it hurts -- attack him on real grounds where he can't respond, and where the previous Liberal record may not reveal a conspiratory Martin or Chretien government. That is to say that few Liberals have mounted a well-researched attacks on the Conservatives that do NOT entail comparing them to the Cheney-Perle-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld brand of neo-conservatism.

In the spirit of political bloodsport and rubbing-things-in, here are a few the Libs may want to try between now and December (and maybe afterwards, too!):

1. Reinvestment. Canada has produced surpluses for more than a decade, the most recent being in excess of $13 billion ... and, in light of this, the Conservatives have decided to cut $1 billion-worth of programs on the basis that they don't serve the needs of Canadians. Interesting tactic. Of course, the Conservative idea of what a "Canadian" is seems to be a middle-class working person who has an education, belongs to a family, drives a car, and pays taxes... rather than, say, a "Canadian" who visits museums, attends adult literacy classes, or seeks youth employment. But let's not be too harsh. As has been pointed out elsewhere, these cuts were coming. And some of the cuts make sense. Look at the money the Conservatives released simply by downsizing the huge Liberal cabinet. Paying down the debt, likewise, should be a priority for any government with a surplus on its hands.

But the expected cuts are just that -- little bits of fiscal predictability from a government that shows no indication of wanting to reinvest in those "non-essential" parts of Canada that don't involve taxes, jobs, or some combination of the two. Funding the arts does not necessarily provide you with a monetary return. Instead, it provides with a point for living aside from paychecks and raises. The government should be looking at reinvesting in programs they cut high and dry in 1995 -- PSE, anyone? -- instead of trimming more "fat." And at this point we're talking thin layers of fat overlapping the bones of a near-skeleton. Let's not forget the Conservative abrogation of Kyoto -- for what? An environmental stall? Post-Secondary Education, Health Care, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Imbalance, you name it, the Acronym needs it. And the Conservatives have done shit.

2. Foreign Policy. The Asia-Pacific, now emerging as the world's most important region, is becoming peripheral in Ottawa as the Federal Government's field of vision becomes narrower. Aside from the ridiculous mid-Lebanon plane stunt, and his government's irrational and unconditional support of Israel, Stephen Harper's foreign policy has been a few shades better than the Liberals (this is a point especially well made when people like the Honourable Denis Coderre march in support Hezbollah).

But a major element in Canada's foreign policy, Canada-China relations, have slowly been going the way of Trudeau's mid-1970s "Third Option" push to increase Canada-ECC trade. That is, they are going nowhere. This report is hardly surprising. Increased trade with China represents the first real opportunity Canada may have to expand its export portfolio beyond the U.S. by a significant margin. Anyone up on Chinese foreign policy, domestic policy, or Canada-China relations realizes this. China is interested in our oil, our water, our markets, and our ability to supply just about all of the resources China will start needing if it plans to continue to develop its xiaokang and flying geese development strategies. Which it does. And the international demand from Chinese markets will be overwhelming. There is no lack of evidence that China-U.S. relations are tenuous at best, especially on the economic front. This relationship will necessarily affect Canada as Sino-American competition over our water, precious metals, and oil continues to mount. China has major feelers in the tar sand operations already; it's time to start planning, on a political level, so that Canada can ease into a large, robust trading relationship with China without damaging its relationship with the United States. And it's also time to start encouraging increasing China-Canada trade, more cultural exchanges, and political interaction. East Asia is a powderkeg with no neutral parties, including the U.S. By increasing Canada's profile in Chinese affairs, we are better positioned to broker future agreements and disagreements over BMD, militarization, regional disputes, and U.S.-China impasses. And we will gain a bigger, better chair at the human rights table in China.

3. Image. The Conservative Leader is one of the least charismatic leaders in the world, and may even be so within his party. Harper looks like your Average Joe, yes, but he is no "man of the people" insofar as diplomacy and statesmanship are concerned. Harper's hermitic nature does not score him points with international organizations, leaders, or persons expecting someone of Trudeau's, Chretien's, Mulroney's, or (at worst) Pearson's diplomatic stature. MacKay, maybe; Harper, no. Take the whole International AIDS Conference fiasco. Some people became very angry when Harper didn't show up to an international conference about the world's most high-profile killer. Others say his decision to send two ministers was enough, given that other PMs didn't go in the past.

But if you're the smartest man in the room, why not take the middle-ground? Why not send two Ministers (or one Minister) and a pre-taped message that explains the decision? Surely someone in Harper's handling team knew the AIDS conference organizers would be disappointed, particularly since Paul Martin promised he would attend if elected. Surely someone in Harper's handling team knew that issues like AIDS are not just African problems, and that millions of Canadians live with the disease each day. Surely someone in Harper's handling team knew that even a token gesture at the conference would have been better than complete ignorance, especially in the eyes of Quebec voters, whom Harper will need to win a majority. In electoral politics, image is almost everything. Provided someone worth a damn wins the Liberal leadership race (*cough*), image may not be the Liberals' worst liability.

4. Stockwell Day.

5. Social reform. The Conservatives are, to be frank, conservative. Liberal voters who "went blue" in the last election need to remember that. Harper has not moved on changing the definition of marriage so that it limits such a union to a man and a woman (doing so would be unconstitutional and require either a constitutional amendment and/or the use of the notwithstanding clause). But the Conservatives have said they will prevent marijuana from being decriminalized, and their latest round of cuts hardly point out their undying support for women's groups or the arts. A full discussion of why marijuana should be decriminalized in Canada is beyond the scope of my little number/point here, but essentially entails: 1. less kids in jail or with records that have ruined their lives; 2. the limitation of an underground economy that supports other types of drug trade; 3. more taxes for government; 4. a cleaner, more regulated product; 5. more jobs for skilled workers; and 6. less petty work for police so they can better focus on more destructive substance abuses and crimes.

Canadians should expect more of this if the Conservatives win a majority government. Or, rather, Canadians should expect the Liberals to point out an undeniable probability: that a Conservative minority means no movement on marijuana, possible movement on same-sex, and future revisions of Canada's progressive social agenda.... that is, if the Liberals could mount a campaign worth a damn.

6. Defence. The Conservatives have done an awful job explaining their defence decisions. I support the mission in Afghanistan. I semi-support BMD, although I have my reservations about a system that will give China, Japan, Iran, North Korea and possibly Taiwan further excuses to militarize. But the Conservatives haven't explained what our troops are doing in Afghanistan, and they haven't moved anywhere in regards to the yes/no ambiguity of the Liberals' decision on Canada's participation in BMD. Worse, the international community seems to be in the woods regarding the extent of our commitments. In Afghanistan, contrary to popular belief, Canadians are not involved in a purely combat role. Our troops are building schools, protecting residential areas and attempting to limit major Taliban presence to a small area in Afghanistan's south. And despite what Paul Martin says, this is exactly what was entailed in our mission when the Liberals signed on post-9/11. Violence in Kabul has been limited to the occasional suicide bomb and/or assissination. These are troubling events, yes, but this is far different reality from when we went in, or before we went in, when it was illegal for Afghans to listen to music, watch movies, and women were brutally oppressed.

The Liberals have a case, if slim, to call the Conservative government out on its own record -- and not its alleged ties to Bushism, neo-conservatism, or any "what may or may not be true" speculation about the "craftiness" and "creepiness" of Harper's secret agenda. Painting the enemy black is a good idea, but it should be done with some substance. Imagine carrying the Bush-Harper line for three hours in a nationally-devised debate; easy, perhaps. Election-winning, no. If the Libs are smart, and I hope they are, they should take heed and turn this slim case into a fighting one.

Thoughts of a Midnight Rambler

2006-09-25T04:54:00.000-03:00

People often ask me what it's like to have lived in the same place for so long; I've effectively lived in the same room, rather consistently, for two decades.

Well, I'll tell you: it's not as comfortable as it seems. There's nothing sheltering, easing, or innocent about staying in one place whilst everyone else moves around you, past you, and elsewhere, including just about anyone you ever cared about. It's hermitic -- it's absolutely isolating.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it can be a blast, knowing the contour of the sidewalk, the history of a building, the feeling and memories of some late-night escapade seeping upward from a moist streetscape. You laugh, you see smiles, and you smile back. You listen to a record and you know ever word, every vocal nuance, every missed beat, every record crackle. You look into an old shoebox full of memories you wrote down and forgot about -- but didn't, really. You're home.

Other times, home is downright lonely.

New smiles remind you of other smiles you never see, like you're that one cop, that one solider who's still posted to some outpost somewhere where everyone dies, transfers, or simply disappears into the great, dark nature beyond. You're that last officer on duty; you're locking up premises, meeting the morning shift as the sun comes up and you walk home tired. You meet newcomers, remember your old friends, and then remember the newcomers as they become old and wrinkle into questions: "what's that building? Is this a good bar? Where's that? What are your plans in life?"

Living in one place for a time when none of your peers do the same is eerie. It's an uncanny valley of familiarity, ease, and extraterrestriality. Your sense of self-perception becomes very adult. You, crystal clear, sober as a stick, remain in focus and in place. But everything else is as if trapped behind a badly-made lens; you're stuck in a turnstile door, going round and round, while a filmmaker captures you in regular speed and everyone else in fast-forward. You can't put a name to a place or a place to name because the place is the same and the faces are many; a dozen rainfalls won't wash them away, but all the chiseling in the world won't make them any clearer, either.

The Spring Garden curb, the Barrington bench, the church wall by Pizza Corner, the drive over Magazine Hill; the stones, the blocks, the bars, and the sewers begin to tell you that you're the only stagehand in the production, and the cast has since turned to dust, ghosts, phantoms and apparition, remembered in photographs tacked up on the box office wall.

It's time to move on, stagehand.

But where?

"Place" isn't just form and structure; it is people. And the parade can be disorienting, sobering, and isolating even as it marches in and out of the harbour, out and to the airport, waiting in terminals, staring at arrival times, sipping coffee and sitting on badly upholstered benches. You don't need to remain in one place to understand what an alienating, bizarre, flukey society we live in. Social connections, the lifeblood of human interaction, are sacrificed in the face of professional ones. We trudge off to jobs and bills but do not think of humans. How many friendships out there have been squandered? How many loves lost? I am no alien. Materially, I am in one place. But in spirit and in body I am not. I can leave, walk into the harbour, step onto an airplane, and find someone else's mid-insect, mid-ruler, mid-transit treadmill. And I can keep running.

But would it be any different?

Sometimes, I feel like a nomad who has never left his home. Where is here? And what is this place other than the people who do not live here, or won't tomorrow?

Other times, I perfectly comfortable. I wouldn't give up this life for the world.

Most times I feel both at once.

One thing in life, it seems, can't be expressed by the formulas — and that's the basic dichotomy of it all, the absurdity, the sadness, the hypocrisy and the madness, and the confluence of all that (and more) into a taste and feeling and rhythm and time that makes one feel older, wiser, younger, and more vulnerable all at the same time. It's 2+2 = 5. It's a tired, jubilant sunrise. It's new memories and old memories stacked in shelves. And I suppose it's wonderful nonsense, so long there turns out to be an finish line for the treadmill somewhere over the horizon, and bit of luck for me to get there.

(pre-)Autumn in Paris (er, Halifax...), The Genius of Gustav Holst, and the Eternal Question that Tends to Bother Me once a day at 9:47 p.m.

2006-09-21T21:18:00.000-03:00

Fall is almost upon us. The Fall season, for me, has been a major catalyst of change. It was back in grade 11 that I rid myself of my first and only cast (rods included, although my left arm is permanently damaged); it was in 2000 that I started university (and proceeded to get both horrible grades and a great foos game); it was in 2003 that I was hired as The Dalhousie Gazette's news editor, an event that completely changed my life path (unequivocally for the better, unless you talk to my liver); it was in 2005 that, among other things, I began my one-year barnburner of a stint as Editor-in-Chief at The Dalhousie Gazette; and it is now, in 2006, that I find myself saying goodbye to a dear friend, sayonara to the classrooms I once called home, and hello the great big unknown beyond.

(It's true: aside from a course I am auditing at St. Mary's, I am no longer a student of any kind. This hasn't been true since I was 4 years old. Gasp! Ack!)

And so I am confronted with memories and realities that are both bittersweet and exciting; of departing friends, of new beginnings, of fall fashion (no, I am not 'metro'), of a new Parliament (no, I am not as big a poli geek as some other people I know... like 2 or 3), of the sharp, welcome prang of Fall air (yes, 'prang' is a word, and dictionaries are wrong), of a newly-endowed Li Dong (Mr. Dong has been hitting the gym — it shows — and the bastard won 97,000 USD in a single poker game last month), and of the recently departed, the planet Pluto (on that: look, if the beauty of Gustav Holst's "The Planets" needs no Pluto, neither do we).

* * *

I am also confronted with several new links on the right, and a new wisdom of the month, care of Reid Southwick. Mr. Southwick will now be mentioned in every post of mine for a week, as the contest deal stipulates. Reid's entry was certainly not the best, and I thank all of you who submitted. Unfortunately, Reid managed to out-pester all of you, at one point threatening to physically harm me if I didn't post his submission soon. The lesson in all this: I respond well to physical threats.

The new links are, in no order (of course!): my friend Aimee's blog, which appears to be about her glorious life gallivanting around downtown Halifax, having fun while the rest of us become depressed and hermitic; my friend Laura's blog, which chronicles her time in Ghana, making the rest of us wish we were overseas and immunized against all sorts of diseases; and my friend Paul Yeoman's blog, who used to run the University of Western Ontario with his left hand while blogging with his right ("blogging," of course, is up to your interpretation). Please do check them out.

* * *

Finally, all this talk about Fall and life-altering catalyst-type events often makes we wonder: what is the meaning of life? Is there meaning? Is there a point in searching for it? Why must I ask so many questions and learn so many tricks when a newborn turtle is already capable of walking, swimming, and hiding in its shell? And where is my shell? Did someone steal it?

I suppose, after the noise calms down, the question marks relent, and the turtles become teenaged, that there can only be a single conclusion. That the meaning of life is just that — to wonder about the meaning of life.

I also suppose that this wondering provides life with a sense of restlessness; a journey of sorts in which our minds expand while our bodies slowly give way to the withering effects of time, temptation, and all that good stuff that so occupied the minds of Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, Holmes, Deep Thought, and, perhaps, the creators of CSI.

(Aristotle, I must say, was a smart chap. The jury is still out on CSI.)

And so, I also suppose, we're likely to die before we find an answer, or, perhaps, even before we figure out how to ask the question. But we die perhaps knowing that the answer was in fact nothing more than the question, and that, perhaps, it was the question, not the answer, that needed answering. The asking, the wondering, and the searching, then, was all put out there to get us going on this journey of ours, this circular process of asking questions, knowing answers, and succumbing to the withering effects of time.

(With some room for blogging in the interim, of course!)

Expressed mathematically, this might appear as follows.

Meaning of life/answer (x) = wondering (y) + asking (w)
Journey/withering (z) = wondering (y) + asking (w) + time (t)
THUS
x = y + w; and
z = y + w + t
THEREFORE
z - t = y + w; and because
x = y + w; then
x = z - t;
AKA
The meaning of life (x) = journey/withering (z) - time (t);
which means that
x = z - t;
and because z = 57 varieties, and t = +/- 15 billion years
the meaning of life = 42

(Hmmm...)

* * *

A last supposition, then, is that the above paragraphs will result in my arrest, trial, conviction, and execution, all of it done in no short order, on grounds of excessive silliness, circular logic, and the prodigious, profuse, unabashed use of sap for undesirable effect. I hope, then, that my departure (hello Pluto!) will save me from having to ask questions that I do not know, seek answers that I already possess, or wear inadequate footwear while on a silly journey in which I must wither, succumb, and watch CSI.

(Although, I will admit, CSI makes great use of camera lens filters, and is no stranger to my favourite band, The Who.)

Alas, if only the meaning of life were so kind!

Zaht is Ahl,
再见。

Done and done and time to Roll(ing Stone).

2006-09-19T21:45:00.000-03:00

No political rants today, although I tend to save those for comments on other people's blogs (for my opinions on Neo-Conservatism and Iraq, see this; for my response to the accusation that Canadian media is "trash," which IMHO it is unequivocally not, go here).

In other news:

I've finally submitted all six copies of my thesis (that is, 193 pages x 6) to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. On that note, I'd like to apologize to trees everywhere, and congratulate paper companies on making a mint off of my troubles (in total, I've printed about 20 copies, a few dozen copies on my introduction, plus hundreds of replacement pages for typos I noticed after-the-fact... Thanks to The Gazette for helping out... I would also like to thank Louise Carbert and the rest of the Department for putting up with my defence being moved to a rather awkward time, the morning of the 6th, when we had to substitute a chair, among other things, and for dealing with FGS when I couldn't get a third signature on my signatures sheet -- thanks!).

Despite the delays, FGS is sneaking me in for this October's graduation. I know this first-hand because FGS has kindly added $120 to my university account bill, thus disabling me from requesting the transcripts I need. Fan^&*%ingtastick!

Given this, I'm going to celebrate (a bit) on Friday. Party starts at the Gradhouse. Give me a shout. I may continue the festivities the next day by picking up a ticket to the Stones, (hopefully shamelessly from day-of ticket dumping) and getting my ear drums hammered in by a group of lost-past-their-due waifish ghouls with a bunch of guitars and a drummer.

On that:
Let's be honest. The Stones have almost never been a good live band, which generally requires either a tight, competent, but nervous ensemble, or a bunch of virtuosos who can take chaos and turn it into art without thinking about. The Stones, who capitalize on looseness, sit in an uncomfortable middle. They are anything but nervous. And they are not virtuosos. At their height, Mick Taylor handled the post-Brian Jones virtuoso factor well. But he quit. Charlie Watts is certainly competent, Mick Jagger is certainly unique, and Keith Richards is certainly a genius. But virtuosos or nervous players they are not.

(I know almost nothing about Ronnie Wood, Taylor's virtual "replacement," other than he appears to be semi-competent, skinny enough to fit in with the other waifish ghouls, and was probably better off with Rod Stewart in Jeff Beck's proto-heavy metal group of the late 1960s than on a stage with Keify.)

The Stones' various elements make for a great studio band, but, over the years, have left the Stones' live shows fairly spotty — especially in comparison to their main hard rock competitors, The Beatles, who always played clear and clean, safe but fun; Cream, who specialized in jazzy wanking bookmarked by crunchy blues riffs; The Who, who are probably the best live band in history, being simultaneous masters of chaos, noise, power chords, storytelling, humour, and art; and later, Led Zeppelin, who reached beyond anything that had been done in rock and roll before 1968, performing massive 3-hour shows with only one set, twenty-minute drum solos, and a prodiguous use of lighting effects, theatrics, and violin bows.

Still, the Stones could light up a stage on occasion, combining just the right amount of choas with lots of feel and improvisation (see the 1970 live album "Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!"). In Mick and Keith's old age, however, the once teetering-on-chaos Stones show has now become a bit of a bizarre affair in which the band seems to play a lot of inspired (but unorganized) nonsense over top of an extremely professional band. The effect is kind of like putting a new hybrid engine into an old 1950s hot rod. It's an interesting idea, and it "works," if only because the hotrod would not move without and engine, and an engine on its own is basically just a machine of function that sits on the ground needing to either be put into a car or sold to someone who will.

"Works," of course, is a word that can be read in many different ways, especially in music. For example, INXS picking a new lead singer they like "works." Is it art? Maybe. Is it great art? Probably not. In fact, great art usually comes out of something that doesn't "work," or at least not by the standards previously set for things that do "work." The Stones is just that: a band that doesn't work according to any previously arranged rules or classification of what makes or does not make good music. Like most of the great innovators in the rock genre, the Stones' music is cacophonous, but beautiful. The band is disorganized, but "in the pocket," never missing a beat, never ruining a groove. The Stones' backing band may be a pacemaker of sorts, a new plastic wrap put over the band to keep its contents from spilling all over the place -- but the contents are still there, the heart is still good, and, of course, the songs are still timeless, as they should be, being "timeless" and all. Mick and Keith may be the musical equivalent of a wine from 1795 that was really only drinkable until a few decades ago, but hey, when was the last time your tried a wine from 1795? And when was the last time you saw a rusty hotrod with a hybrid engine singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction"?

Well, I'm going to check it out, anyway!

Zaht is Ahl,
再见。

我的论文是很大！

2006-09-18T14:48:00.000-03:00

The thesis has been successfully defended, and I am now burried in the machinations of proofing the damned thing for the Faculty of Graduate Studies and getting it out the door. In fact, I got a small extension last week:

Good day Mr. LaRoche,

You have offered many and varied reasons in support of an extension. Unfortunately the vast majority of them are evidence of bad planning, more than genuinely extenuating circumstances. Having said this, if you can provide a clean thesis by the end of the working day on Monday, September 11, we will accept it.

Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it can also get you a weekend's worth of time. Sometimes, when your extension is up, it turns out that you were never registered in your programme properly in the first place, so FGS can't even look at your thesis. This gives you a second extension, and a bill of $2,199 CAD when it is fixed.

* * *

Some of you have been asking, what's next? Well, I have been interviewed by the Library of Parliament in Ottawa for a defence policy analyst position, and I am waiting to hear back. The position sounds great (odd hours, lots of writing), and right up my alley policy-wise -- but we'll see. The competition out there is stiff as a salted cod, and I've been out of the defence world for a few months now because of the giant 200-page word document on my desktop.

In the meantime, I'm working one/two research jobs for John MacIntyre and Frank Harvey, the former of Figuratively Speaking fame (syndicated column that gets printed 10 million + times; I did the sixth stat down in the linked column, for example), the latter of Smoke and Mirrors fame. They're fun gigs, and I am enjoying slumming around Halifax with no money and little future.

(I am also taking a second-year Chinese class at St. Mary's to keep my mind nubile and work on my 中文／普通话, and perhaps get a future... translating Chinese or something... who knows).

This week I've been charged with writing the front-page editorial in the Dalhousie Gazette. It's nice to return to my old digs, though I've imposed strict standards on myself regarding word length this time, mostly because I no longer run the paper, so I can't write 1,500 words and get away with it. Or, at least, I can't do that without looking especially narcissistic. So we'll go with a flat 1,000 and see what comes up ;)

Finally, there is some word that my thesis may be published by the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies here in Halifax. I've got nothing other than that, but I'll keep y'all updated. Given that it's 180 pages + frontmatter @ 1.5 linespacing, though, I'm probably going to have to do one hell of an editing job on it first.

Zaht is Ahl.
再见。

Oh, how you've been neglected

2006-09-13T19:54:00.000-03:00

It has been a long ten days. But don't worry, the long days are growing shorter in number.

Also, apparently "uninspected" is not a word, either.

But it's definitely going in.

Those little things that occupy me constantly and eventually consume my soul

2006-09-02T19:30:00.000-03:00

Yes to Antagonism. Why not Protagonism?

Things pan out. Why can't they skillet out, too?

Cases are open and shut, but no word on my briefcase, nutcase, or caselogic™ container.

'Unfuelled' is a lot more elegant than 'without fuel.'

And surely there must be some room in the canon of English meanings for 'professionality.' 'Professionalism' simply doesn't always do.

Ugh.

A Quick One

2006-09-01T13:13:00.000-03:00

Time I received the call: 3:00 P.M., August 30
Request: An interview at 1:00 P.M the next day.
Catch: ...in Ottawa.
Number of hours it took me to organize flights and thesis deadline extensions: 2
Check-in time on departure: 6:30 A.M. EST
Arrival time: 8:30 A.M. EST
Number of hours spent wandering the Hill: 2
Number of hours spent in the Bridgehead coffee shop: 2
Interview time: 1:00 P.M. EST
Check-in time on return: 5:00 P.M. EST
Arrival time: 9:00 P.M. AST
Comment: Rideau St./Centre Starbucks = great people watching.

informed confusion

This man

strange things vol. I

Russian 'democracy'

A few good links, vol. MXVII

Domo Arigato, Michelin-San

Net worth(s)

Yes, I know it's a famous and acclaimed novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

Feels good

I am become tourist trap, maker of dollars

And a bottle of Rummy

No queen walks here

Wither DFAIT, year 33

Link of the day, Vol. XIX

Four steps to Russian 'Democracy'

Quote of the day, week, whatever

My manga portfolio has seen better days

Viggo Mortensen is a man-killing machine

Artists lost

Orwell a 'socialist' writer?

To quote Emperor Leopold II...

What City Should You Live In?

Stardust

Sure as hell ain't Algiers

Democracy is a Harsh Mistress

Man at Robson St. Coffee Shop:

Another reason to avoid LA

Wikipedia Vandals Exposed!

No Yasukuni

Crystal Palace, Dubai Style

About this Iggy business...

Keep dem der kids away from mah Mahjong

Bourne better than Bond?

It's About That Time...

Ingmar Bergman

Unabashed Movie, Blog endorsements, + Bonus Link

Random thoughts while queueing at Vancouver Starbucks #348

Drugs are bad

A Few Good Fonts, vol. XVII.01 (boldface)

Empty words?

11 important lessons from Spider-Man 3

Better late than never？

Late-Night Movie Censorship = bad

Great TV....

A Good Link, Vol. 6

The Globe's redesign

Cleaning up?

New Blogroll

A Few Good Links, Vol. 86

Photofile Vol. 99

Rumours of my demise have not, as one might expect, been greatly underrated

In the T-dot

Butterfly? Really?

A Few Thoughts Vol. 382

A Few Good Links Vol. I

Noodling; Pensive

I am no fan of mass-murdering dictators...

The Godfather of Soul, 1933-2006

Plagiarism in the Post?

Truth vs. Truthiness vol. 1: Colbert on Rose

flying invisible camera anyone?

The Colony of Unrequited Boredom

Odds and Sods and Clumps of Blog

The Kennedy-Dion Love-In

Partisan Self-Service at the Palais des Congres

Oh, Those Succulent Clams

A Brief Reprieve from Bloggophrenia

A thought on the sometimes necessary, most times unecessary killing of other human beings

没关系。。。

New Prediction(s)

Nostradamus: BRB

A Tusk of Wisdom

If Youth Knew; If Age Could

Perhaps the Emperor Needs Clothes...

The More Security You Have, The More You Will Need

Where Art Thou, O Uncovered Meat?

Magister Mundi Sum

University consolidation a hard sell

Where oh where...

Nobody knows what it's like when you're down and out... and a nuclear power