Quotulatiousness

February 17, 2010

“Not a single American consumer complained”

Filed under: Europe, France, USA, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 17:26

French wine merchants scam US wine importer:

A dozen French winemakers and traders have been found guilty of a massive scam to sell 18 million bottles of fake Pinot Noir to a leading US buyer.

The judge in Carcassonne, south-west France, said the producers and traders had severely damaged the reputation of the Langedoc region.

The 12 more than doubled profits passing off the wine to E and J Gallo under its Red Bicyclette brand.

The case came to light when French Customs noticed that the winemakers were selling more Pinot Noir to Gallo than was grown within the Langedoc region. Don’t feel sorry for the fraudsters: along with suspended sentences ranging from 1-6 months and fines from $2,000 to $156,000. The swindle netted over $10 million. It’s not clear whether they had to repay those profits.

We once had neighbours nearly this bad . . .

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:13

. . . and yes, there was a body, but that’s a different story. Solomon talks about the Alabama shooter, before she moved to Alabama:

By now you’ve heard all about the University of Alabama shooter, Amy Bishop, the shooting rampage, the old murder she got away with (the “cover-up” and the connection to now retiring Congressman Bill Delahunt), the letter bomb she likely sent…

Turns out I have a tenuous connection to this woman. You see she used to be the next door neighbor of a good friend of mine in Ipswich (a north shore Boston suburb) for a few years. At the time I used to hang out at his house quite a bit. This was one of those typical suburban neighborhoods with little traffic, lots of kids, smallish houses fairly close together without a lot of fences.

I remember when the previous neighbor moved out it wasn’t long before my friend started complaining. He had a deck in the back of his place that was effectively on the second floor making it very visible to the neighbor’s yard and house. So one day I go over to find that he had erected a wooden privacy fence on the side of the deck facing their yard — and only on that side. So I’m like, “Uhh…isn’t that a little uncomfortable. I mean it’s obvious you put that there just to block only those people.” He tells me he does…not…care. He doesn’t want to look at them, and he doesn’t want them to look. He hates them, as does the entire neighborhood.

Our bad neighbour issues weren’t quite as bad, although we did feel like we were escaping when we finally did move out. And we did have to provide emergency first aid to a severely wounded man who staggered to our front door one night (he eventually died, but not officially of his wounds from that incident). He’d been partying at our neighbour’s house, and an argument got out of hand. But, so far as I know, our bad neighbour didn’t leave a trail of multiple bodies . . .

Is “Own the Podium” the end of Canadian niceness?

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

In another common refrain, Canada’s “Own the Podium” slogan appears to be doing irreparable damage to our international image . . . according to a few bored reporters. Again, it seems to shock and dismay people that Canadians might actually want to compete and win in the Olympics — apparently that’s not “Canadian”. Dahlia Lithwick looks at some of the “we can’t believe it” coverage:

Someday, someone is going to explain to me why it is that journalists so frequently speak about Canadians as though we are all about 2 feet tall and 7 years old. See, for instance, this exceedingly strange New York Times piece about how those tiny little Canadians are building a “giant laser” or some such thing, in order to bring home more Olympic medals than ever before. Look! Look at all those funny little Canadians in their funny little hats, trying to be good at sports! Look at them spending their whole allowance on a top-secret program to create a human slingshot for speed skaters and “super-low-friction bases for snowboards and [to find out] whether curling brooms really melt the ice.” The Seattle Times describes this effort as “Canada’s non-nuclear Manhattan Project.”

It was bad enough when they were calling us “un-Canadian” and “inhospitable” just for wanting to win medals. It got uglier last Friday when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was tragically killed in a practice run. The Canadians’ decision to limit outsiders’ use of Olympic facilities before the Games began — a maneuver that every other host country pulls — got spun as “an unfortunate nationalistic impulse” that put patriotism ahead of safety. The subtext: When Canadians care about winning just as much as the rest of the world, can there be any more warmth and goodness left in the universe?

The flip-side of all this is . . . the world barely even knows that Canada exists. Why do we get all worked up about how the world “sees” us? More evidence that Canada still needs to grow up a bit and get over the teenage angst. It’s unbecoming in teenagers, but it’s much worse for a nation.

Of course, this effort to caricature Canadians has been aided most of all by Canadians. You know you’re suffering an international feistiness deficit when your prime minister begs his fellow citizens to show the world a little more testosterone. “We will ask the world to forgive us this time,” declared Stephen Harper in an effort to rouse Canadians into showy displays of patriotism, “this uncharacteristic outburst of patriotism and pride, our pride of being part of a country that is strong, confident and stands tall among the nations.”

What’s strange about all this deep Freudian analysis is that Canada has done pretty darn well on the hardware front in recent years. It jumped from 13 medals in 1994 to 24 at Turin in 2006. Canada ranks seventh overall in winter medal wins. Not bad for a country of 33 million people where per capita spending on Olympians has historically been a fraction of what some other countries spend. Is it possible that Canada has been doing just fine at the Winter Olympics but nobody ever bothered to notice?

However, I have to take issue with one thing she writes:

It has always seemed to me that sweeping efforts to identify a Canadian national character are pointless. It’s a vast country built on compromises between French and English, Canadians and the British. The nation differs so fundamentally from east coast to west that, Olympics notwithstanding, it’s hard to know what a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian might find to talk about.

Get two Canadians together from different parts of the country, and they’ll immediately have something to talk about: their shared loathing of Toronto . . .

Fleet Street, in unison: “Worst. Games. Ever.”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

British journalism is a bit less respectful than the Canadian variety (not that “respectful” is all that common here). British journalists also tend to look for lines of attack, rather than lines of inquiry. It works for them: the British newspaper scene is far more entertaining than anywhere else in the world, but it doesn’t do much for those in the scrutiny of the Fleet Street flashmob. Vancouver and the VANOC folks are squarely in the crosshairs at the moment, and bored British journalists are bringing their patented approach to Olympic criticism:

If there was a gold medal for premature Winter Olympic whining, the British would be perennial occupants of the middle podium.

Right on schedule, on the fourth of 17 event days, U.K. scribes have written off the Vancouver Olympics as a “worst-ever” Games in the making, an “abomination” for producing the accidental death of a luger and an organizational “fiasco” for slow buses and venue meltdowns.

Well, in fairness, never before at an Olympic venue has there ever been a weather delay or mechanical breakdown. Only in Vancouver have these things ever . . . oh, what? There have been problems before? Funny, the way it’s being reported — with ice-ruining machines and immobile buses — you’d think this was an absolutely unprecedented series of disasters.

There’s no obvious explanation for why London reporters are the most caustic of the contingent, having elevated Vancouver-bashing into an unofficial Olympic sport.

Perhaps they’re dreadfully bored. After all, the BBC alone has more personnel at the Games than the kingdom’s entire 52-member Olympic team. There’s also dispiriting news that bookies back home predict the U.K. will experience a medal shutout in Vancouver, with only an outside shot at the curling podium.

What’s that? You think they could have a motive for painting the Vancouver games in the worst possible light?

Guardian columnist Martin Samuel went postal in his attack in the aftermath of the luge fatality. “Canada wanted to Own The Podium,” he snarled. “This morning they can put their Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia.” Good grief.

Other U.K reporters predict financial disaster for Vancouver, a defensive move given that London’s 2012 Summer Olympics are already $1.8-billion over budget.

They complain of heavy-handed customs officials and no-nonsense security, which is a tad rich from a country where police will have the right to enter homes without a warrant while Olympic officials storm residences or enterprises near Games venues to search for protest material.

Of course, Canadians are not being as polite in response to what they see as provocation from the British press:

Not surprisingly, thin-skinned Canadians are filling British newspapers with backlash sneers and jeers.

“London will be worse (in 2012). It will also be dirtier, smellier, and have worse teeth,” mocked one offended Canuck. “Just because you long ago abandoned any ambitions in the world – or for that matter basic sense of identity or dignity – and became a lethargic nation of elitist whiners who no one really likes, don’t fault those younger nations who do enjoy and embrace life,” snapped another.

Which will, in turn, provide more fuel for the fires. Exactly the sort of reaction they were hoping to get.

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