Quotulatiousness

February 17, 2010

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.

February 16, 2010

QotD: Football

Filed under: Football, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:11

The Super Bowl is one of those great annual events that is uniquely American — except for the Roman numerals. I think those still belong to the Vatican.

If you missed it, the final score was Saints, XXXI and Colts, XVII.

The Super Bowl represents what we Americans are all about: creative commercials occasionally interrupted by violence. During the six-hour broadcast, there were only 11 minutes of actual, live football action. Some of the commercial breaks were so long that, when we finally came back to the game, I had forgotten which teams were playing.

And what better Norman Rockwell-esque ritual could I have with my kids than to watch 20 erectile dysfunction commercials to every snap of the football? “Daddy, why are those people in bathtubs watching the sun set?” I just tell them the people lost their homes to foreclosure.

Football is a lot like sex: countless hours of advertising how good it will be with only 11 minutes of actual action. Then, for me, there is always that awkward moment at the end when my credit card is declined.

Ron Hart, “Super Bowl: Uniquely American – except the Roman numerals”, Orange County Register, 2010-02-10

The (looming) Greek default

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

Tim Cavanaugh dispenses with the careful-to-avoid-blaming-anyone information being peddled by most reporters:

If you ever start thinking no place could suck harder than the good ol’ U.S.A., just look to the glory that is Greece. The Greek government is responding to its self-inflicted debt crisis by doing just about every single thing wrong.

That might not be clear from most of the media coverage. To comprehend any of the popular descriptions of Greece’s public debt problem, you need to be a yes man as mindless as the guy whose job it is to keep saying “Certainly, Socrates… You’re quite right, Socrates…” in the Platonic dialogues.

The New York Times blames the investment banks that held a gun to the crowned heads of Europe and forced governments to take on more debt. The Guardian says it was deregulation and privatization of state enterprises that caused public spending to, um, increase? (Just go with it.) Greek tax collectors say the problem is that tax collectors need to be paid more. And because he knows that being able to print your own money always encourages fiscal responsibility, Paul Krugman says it’s because Greece went off the drachma too soon. (That problem may be working itself out faster than anybody planned.)

But the beauty of Greece’s looming default is that it is a totally straightforward story of uncontrolled public spending and the determination of governments to run up impossible debts. In this case, as the above Times article spells out, those debts were run up in duplicitous ways that in fact violated the public debt rules of the EU from which Greece is now trying to get a bailout. Your worst nightmare of a wastrel American politician — call him Barack Schwarzenegger — would have a hard time mismanaging state finances this badly. Since getting on the euro in 2001, the Greek government has apparently been fudging its budget statistics, a practice countenanced by both conservative and socialist governments. To its credit, the current government kicked the current crisis into high gear when it released a deficit-to-GDP number of 12.7 percent — double the previously announced figure, and by far the highest in Europe.

Read the whole link-laden thing.

Things I did not know about Curling

Filed under: Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:35

I’ve been living under a bunch of misapprehensions about the “sport” of Curling. I admit, I haven’t subjected these revelations to any peer review or fact checking, but if the climate “scientists” can get away with that kind of sloppiness, why can’t I?

* The movie Death Race 2000 was loosely based on curling.
* Curling has been described as shuffleboard plus ice plus chess times football plus ninjas times a grizzly bear plus a nuclear explosion minus badminton.
* Curling is banned in most of Europe due to making their heads explode with its awesomeness
* The stones in curling are made from brimstone mined from the very depths of hell.
* Placing a stone perfectly in the house has been rated the hardest act in any sport, harder than hitting a fast ball or catching the golden snitch.
* Due to the excitement, curling is not recommended for the elderly, those with heart conditions, pregnant women, and people who suck and don’t like awesome things.
* In ancient times, only the greatest, strongest warriors were chosen to play curling… and housewives good at sweeping.
* No one is sure where curling came from, but most guess it was a collaborative project of Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Jack Bauer, and Fred Thompson.

It’s not surprising that more Canucks are lefties than Yanks

Filed under: Cancon, Sports, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:38

Although this is about hockey, not politics:

What is the difference between a Canadian and an American? The old question is coming up again here at the Olympics, with answers involving eagerness for war, ketchup, the pronunciation of toque or the ability to identify poutine and the Tragically Hip.

But none may be so simple as how one holds a hockey stick. According to sales figures from stick manufacturers, a majority of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, and a majority of American players shoot right-handed. No reason is known for this disparity, which cuts across all age groups and has persisted for decades.

Most Canadians, like most Americans, are naturally right-handed, so the discrepancy has nothing to do with national brain-wiring. And how you hold a pencil, say, has little or no bearing on how you hold a stick. A left-handed shooter puts his right hand on top; a right-hander puts the left hand there.

February 15, 2010

QotD: “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . .”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

Holy smack people. We spent about a billion gazillion dollars on this thing. Every fourth person in the country has had their picture in the paper after getting a chance to carry the Olympic torch on some weird relay race around the country. We’ve been warned that anyone hinting these games aren’t the absolute bestest thing that ever happened in Canada will be drawn up on treason charges. And when the thing finally gets underway (hallelujah!), all we can think of is finding people who are “disappointed” because their particular race/creed/colour/language group wasn’t better represented.

My God. Vanoc should have asked Stats Canada to drawn up a statistical breakdown of the country, and then awarded spaces at the ceremonies strictly on that basis: 4.2 French-speaking non-Quebec First Nations people; 0.6 Presbyterian Metis single mothers; 1 Catholic that everyone else is allowed to make fun of; exactly 50% female representation, subdivided among the top 34 national racial, ethnic and religious groups; no men.

Then everyone would be happy, right? Actually, I doubt it.

Kelly McParland, “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . . (fill in beef here)”, National Post, 2010-02-15

February 12, 2010

Game music: Guild Wars Eye of the North

Filed under: Gaming, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:05

Eric Raymond finally “gets” the Vikings

Filed under: History, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

I’m just as happy that my area didn’t receive any of the snow that’s been blanketing areas to the south of us. Eric Raymond wasn’t as lucky:

Now I understand the Viking Era
So I’m sitting here, looking out my window at the 3-foot snow and the 5-foot icicles, reverting to ancestral type. Thinking:

“Fuck this. Let’s go sack Miklagard.”

And Ken Burnside points out even more opportunity for enriching historical knowledge:

The reason why Minnesota and Wisconsin were settled by Norwege and Swenske isn’t because the other cultures couldn’t hack the winters.

It’s because compared to 19th century Norway and Sweden, Upper Minneosta and Upper Wisconsin are *paradise*.

“Look! Farmland! Lakes for fishing! Timber and lumber to build from! And no morass of petty aristocracy to tell you no. And, hey, it only snows for five whole months here! They won’t believe THAT back in the old country!”

The only reason there weren’t more of them was because a lot of Norski STILL remember the marketing flimflam that was Greenland. They had a completely justified 900 year old mistrust of ANYONE telling them about ‘great farmland, only snows for five months of the year, plenty of timber…’

Careful wording of poll questions significantly influences responses

Filed under: Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

I know, “duh!”

But most people don’t know how much the choice of questions does influence the outcome of polling. This is a perfect example:

As the Obama administration proposes repealing the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that a majority of the public support allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military.

There’s less support, however, for allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

Confused?

The results highlight the importance of wording on the issue. In a test, half of the poll’s respondents were asked their opinion on permitting “gay men and lesbians” to serve, and the other half were asked about permitting “homosexuals” to serve.

The wording of the question proved to make a difference. Seven in 10 respondents said they favor allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve in the military, including nearly 6 in 10 who said they should be allowed to serve openly. But support was somewhat lower among those who were asked about allowing “homosexuals” to serve, with 59 percent in favor, including 44 percent who support allowing them to serve openly.

This is a very simple example. It can get a lot more sneaky:

Crash site of the USS Macon declared a National Historic Site

Filed under: History, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

Like most people, I assumed that the crashes of various post-WW1 dirigibles had already ruined the future of lighter-than-air flight well before the Hindenburg caught fire. I had forgotten about the US Navy’s fleet, including the Akron, Shenandoah, and the Macon:

The US government has added the crash site of the most powerful flying aircraft carrier ever built to the National Register of Historic Places, 75 years after the event.

The airship USS Macon — comparable in size to the even more famous and equally doomed liner Titanic — suffered storm damage and crashed into the ocean off Point Sur, south of San Francisco, exactly 75 years ago yesterday. The huge dirigible’s remains and those of her embarked biplane fighters now lie 1500 feet below the waves in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. However, all but two of the 83 men aboard survived the crash and were rescued by responding waterborne ships.

“The USS Macon and its associated Sparrowhawk biplanes are not only historically significant to our nation’s history, but have unique ties to our local communities, where public museums highlight the airship’s history,” said Paul Michel, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary superintendent. “The National Register listing highlights the importance of protecting the wreck site and its artifacts for further understanding our past.”

February 11, 2010

QotD: Slandering and insulting Uzbekistan

Filed under: Asia, Law, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:02

Yesterday Uzbek photographer Umida Akhnedova was convicted of slandering and insulting her people. Her crime consisted of taking pictures, such as the one on the right, that government officials thought made Uzbekistan look bad. Among other things, The New York Times reports, Akhnedova was accused of “showing people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change or other images so dreary that, according to a panel of experts convened by the prosecutors, ‘a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages'” (a misleading impression, since the Spanish Inquisition never persecuted people for taking photographs). The government also charged that Akhnedova’s 2008 documentary about the Uzbek custom of verifying a bride’s virginity is “not in line with the requirements of ideology” and “promotes serious perversion in the young generation’s acceptance of cultural values.” Although her crime is punishable by up to three years in prison, the judge let her go, officially to celebrate the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence but possibly also because the publicity surrounding the case was tarnishing Uzbekistan’s reputation (no mean feat).

Jacob Sullum, “One Frown Over the Line”, Hit and Run, 2010-02-11

Audi’s target market

Filed under: Environment, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:45

Who is Audi trying to sell their little green Panzerkampfwagens to? Folks who think the ad wasn’t Gorewellian enough:

“The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police,” writes Grist magazine’s David Roberts on the Huffington Post. The target audience, according to Roberts, is men who want to “do the right thing.” He’s certainly right that the ad isn’t aimed at people (whom he childishly mocks as “teabaggers”) who worry that their liberties are being eroded.

But the message is hardly “do the right thing.”

To me, the target demographic is a certain subset of spineless, upscale white men (all the perps in the ad are affluent white guys) who just want to go with the flow. In that sense, the Audi ad has a lot in common with those execrable MasterCard commercials. Targeting the same demographic, those ads depicted hapless fathers being harangued by their children to get with the environmental program. MasterCard’s tagline: “Helping Dad become a better man: Priceless.”

The difference is that MasterCard’s ads were earnest, creepy, diabetes-inducing treacle. Audi’s ad not only fails to invest the greens with moral authority, it concedes that the carbon cops are out of control and power-hungry (in a postscript scene, the Green Police pull over real cops for using Styrofoam cups). But, because resistance is futile when it comes to the eco-Borg, you might as well get the best car you can.

H/T to Ghost of a Flea for the link.

Montreal’s U.S. airport – Canadians voting with their feet

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

A new study shows that Canadian travellers can do basic math (which means bad news for Canadian airlines and airport authorities):

It’s not just the cheap fares, many Canadians report it’s simply easier to pass through United States customs via land than air. They also report security lineups at the small regional hubs offer a fraction of the waiting time of their Canadian counterparts.

Self-employed Toronto business owner Mike Payer says the past two years he has flown out of Buffalo’s airport for Christmas vacation because the price difference has been too hard to ignore.

“I saved $3,000 flying to Fort Lauderdale. It was $4,500 [for a family of four] to fly from Toronto but only US$1,200 from Buffalo. On top of all that it’s just so much simpler with U.S. Customs. You stay in a hotel overnight and most of them will even let you leave your car there [while on vacation]. I guess the only risk is the weather and missing a flight.”

I suspect there’s a mistake in the second paragraph of the linked article: no matter how much you can save, I strongly doubt that 18% of Canadians flew out of their closest US airport. 18% of Canadians who flew, maybe, but not 18% of the whole population.

Some regional airports are booming with the new Canadian traffic:

The pitch has been probably the strongest in Plattsburgh, a little town of 25,000 that spent millions in 2007 to convert a former air force base into an airport that would attract Quebec passengers. The airport, which is 100 kilometres from downtown Montreal, is fully bilingual.

“They don’t even call us Plattsburgh. We’re known as Montreal’s U.S. airport now,” said Michele Power, vice-president of marketing with the Plattsburgh-North County Chamber of Chamber of Commerce.

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