Quotulatiousness

June 4, 2010

Toronto finally accepts DVP “dual name” proposal

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

I thought that this proposal was finished when the current Toronto city government turned it down a few years back, but according to this article by Adrian Humphreys, the Don Valley Parkway will also be known as the “Route of Heroes.”

In a sweeping gesture to honour veterans and fallen soldiers, the city of Toronto is designating the Don Valley Parkway — where the flag-draped caskets of all soldiers killed in Afghanistan travel when returning to Canada — as the “Route of Heroes.”

The city-owned, six-lane expressway will be dotted with prominent signs featuring the ceremonial name, other signs reading “Lest We Forget,” and pictures on exit ramps of the red poppy [. . .]

The move comes three years after Mayor David Miller rebuffed veterans who asked to rename the DVP. The new plan, supported by the Mayor, keeps the DVP designation in a “dual name” system.

The ceremonial change is similar to the provincial designation of “Highway of Heroes” to the portion of Highway 401 stretching from the military base in Trenton to the top of the DVP.

Given the strident portion of Toronto’s political class who are against the mission in Afghanistan in particular, and the military in general, I’m surprised and pleased that this gesture is being made.

At least it’s not rectangular

Filed under: Africa, Soccer — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:07

The official World Cup soccer ball is not popular with some folks. Keepers, in particular:

[G]oalkeepers dislike the Adidas ball more than Diego Maradona dislikes reporters and photographers. Although to the keepers’ credit, they have not yet fired at the balls with air rifles or run over them in their cars.

Basically, the ball is being criticized for being too light and too curvy, as if it were a fashion model who eats too little food and has too much plastic surgery.

Altitude and technology will not only cause goalkeepers stress, but also make balls carry too far on crosses, causing some headers to be missed by two feet, said Marcus Hahnemann, a reserve keeper for the United States and a man not given to understatement.

“Technology is not everything,” Hahnemann said Thursday. “Scientists came up with the atom bomb; it doesn’t mean we should have invented it.”

Adidas has christened the World Cup ball Jabulani, which is apparently Zulu for “offends goalkeepers.”

Not really. The name actually means “to celebrate.” But it has been lost in translation for the guys between the posts.

I seem to recall plenty of disdain being heaped on the official ball every World Cup since I started paying attention. Watch for this article to be re-run in four years’ time, with new names appearing in the fill-in-the-blank spots.

June 3, 2010

Toronto Police tougher than the RCMP?

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

Kelly McParland notes that even though the RCMP have a lot of tough-guy things on their list of “will do”, there’s one thing Toronto Police will do that the RCMP won’t:

The RCMP will Taser an old lady at the drop of a hat.
They’ll Taser a guy in an airport because he’s holding a stapler and looks upset.
They’ll Taser the disabled.
They’ll Taser a 15-year-old girl in handcuffs.
They’ll Taser an 82-year-old heart patient in a hospital bed.
They’ll Taser someone who’s been hog-tied, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed and manacled.
They’ll Taser just about anything that can be Tasered. But they won’t use “sound cannons” in the middle of a city. Too risky.
Toronto police are buying four of the ear blasters for the G20 summit.

US & Canadian funding for War of 1812 bicentennial events

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

Colby Cosh floats the notion that one of the reasons for the huge disparity in funding for 1812 bicentennial events between the Canadian and American governments is “Maybe they’re still mad they lost”.

In the eyes of the world, the War of 1812 may always appear insignificant against its Napoleonic backdrop. But it did decide the destiny of a continent, persuading Empire and Union that it was better to have trade crossing the border than troops.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Niagara Falls, Ont., on May 21, opening a new federally funded expansion to the city’s History Museum, which stands on the site of the ferocious July 1814 Battle of Lundy’s Lane. The federal and provincial governments are each giving the museum up to $3.2 million; for the feds, the money is part of a Throne Speech promise to commemorate the bicentennial of the war, “an event that was key to shaping our identity as Canadians and ultimately our existence as a country.”

Another $9 million in 50-50 federal-provincial cash is going to three Niagara Parks Commission sites: Old Fort Erie, McFarland House, and the Laura Secord Homestead. Ottawa has also set aside $12 million for improvements to 1812-related National Historic Sites along the frontier, including Gen. Brock’s monument at Queenston Heights. And Toronto is putting at least $5 million into a new visitors’ centre at Fort York.

But the only corresponding public funding on the other side of the border, as noted by the Buffalo News in April, has been a measly US$5,000 donation from the Niagara County legislature. Why isn’t Uncle Sam pulling his weight?

It’s more likely that the various levels of government are afraid of being seen to spend money on frivolous activities.

$30 per barrel for diesel fuel?

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:43

Joule Unlimited claims to have developed a new single-cell plant which can produce diesel fuel from sunlight and carbon dioxide:

Henry Ford, the father of the modern assembly line, predicted a future where fuel would be mass-produced from natural materials like fruit, weeds, or even sawdust — renewable alternatives to finite fossil fuels. Still, one energy technology being developed by Joule Unlimited, a company in Cambridge, Mass., might have surprised even him: a plant that sweats diesel.

Plants use the sun to convert carbon dioxide into energy, but Joule has designed tiny, gene-altered organisms (essentially single-celled plants) that use the photosynthetic process to create liquid fuel. Stored in brackish water enclosed in glass panels, they grow for a few days before a genetic switch is flipped, diverting their energy toward fuel production. The diesel, which they pump out continuously, is circulated away to a separator, where it’s extracted and sent to a storage tank. After several weeks, the plants are flushed away and the process starts over again. These microscopic organisms can be genetically engineered to secrete diesel or other chemicals the company plans on commercializing; president and CEO Bill Sims calls the technology an “above-ground oil well.”

June 2, 2010

New copyright bill introduced

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:21

It’s not yet online, so I haven’t read it myself (and, not being a lawyer, it might not be a good use of my time). Michael Geist has, however, and provides a useful summary of the good and the bad:

The bill contains some important extensions of fair dealing, including new exceptions for parody, satire, and (most notably) education. It also contains more sensible time shifting and format shifting provisions that still feature restrictions (they do not apply where there is a digital lock) but are more technology neutral than the C-61 model. There is also a “YouTube exception” that grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances. While still not as good as a flexible fair dealing provision, the compromise is a pretty good one. Throw in notice-and-notice for Internet providers, backup copying, and some important changes to the statutory damages regime for non-commercial infringement and there are some provisions worth fighting to keep.

Yet all the attempts at balance come with a giant caveat that has huge implications for millions of Canadians. The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used — whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices — the lock trumps virtually all other rights. In other words, in the battle between two sets of property rights — those of the intellectual property rights holder and those of the consumer who has purchased the tangible or intangible property — the IP rights holder always wins. This represents market intervention for a particular business model by a government supposedly committed to the free market and it means that the existing fair dealing rights (including research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review) and the proposed new rights (parody, satire, education, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies) all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.

It’s not quite the total surrender to the entertainment rights holders that many feared, but it’s certainly not the best deal for consumers. Bottom line:

For the glass half-full, the compromise positions on fair dealing, the new exceptions, and statutory damages are not bad — not perfect — but better than C-61. For the glass half-empty, the digital lock provisions are almost identical to C-61 and stand as among the most anti-consumer copyright provisions in Canadian history. Not only are they worse than the U.S. DMCA, but they undermine much of the positive change found in the rest of the bill. In the days and weeks ahead, Canadians must speak out to ensure that the compromise positions found in C-32 remain intact and that the digital lock provisions move from the no-compromise category to the compromise one.

Tweet of the day

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:50

IMAO_ (Frank J. Fleming): You can’t watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” these days without thinking how much sense Mr. Potter is making about irresponsible lending.

QotD: Turkey’s conspiracy theorists

Filed under: Middle East, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

I’m a little surprised by how resolutely Turkey is turning against Israel at this moment (although it’s been building for years). When I was living in Ankara, it wasn’t too hard to find a Turkish-language copy of Mein Kampf in mainstream bookstores; even more widespread was books of conspiracy theories of every stripe and variety. Many Turks believed that there was a secret Israeli plot to harm Turkey; they also believed in a secret American plot with the same goal, a secret European plot, a secret Iranian plot, a secret Arab plot, a secret Russian plot, a secret Chinese plot, a Vatican plot, and perhaps a secret plot by the penguins in Antarctica. From my experience, the first rule of Turkish political philosophy is that everyone is always out to get Turkey, and the fact that what most Americans know about Turkey could fit on a 3×5 index card is no impediment to this conclusion. We may be subconsciously conspiring against them.

(Rule number two of of Turkish political philosophy is that they’re not Arabs and in their minds, Turks are nothing like Arabs. They’re like Europeans; sophisticated, comparatively wealthy, advanced, educated, technologically innovative, honorable and nothing like those backwards despotic hellholes across the border. A lot of Turks look at Arab states as former branch offices of the Ottoman Empire; the sense is that they couldn’t be anything like the Arabs because they used to rule over the Arabs.)

Jim Geraghty, “Oh, Turkey, You Used to Be So Different From All the Others…”, National Review, 2010-06-02

Litany of problems with new NH-90 helicopters

Filed under: Australia, Europe, Germany, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:25

Strategy Page reports that new NH-90 helicopters delivered to Australia are showing similar problems to the laundry list of issues the Germans reported when their NH-90s went into service:

The German Army conducted an evaluation of their new NH-90 helicopters, and were not pleased. Their conclusion was that, for combat missions, another model helicopter should be used whenever possible. A particular problem was the lack of ground clearance. The NH-90 can’t land on a piece of ground with any obstacles higher than 16 cm (6.4 inches). That makes many battlefield landing zones problematic. That assumes you can even get on a NH-90 and find a seat. The passenger seats cannot hold more than 110 kg (242 pounds). Combat equipment for German troops weighs 25 kg (55 pounds), meaning any soldier weighing more than 85 kg (187) has to take stuff off, put it on the floor, than quickly put it back on before exiting. Then there’s the floor, it’s not very sturdy, and combat troops using the helicopter for a short while, cause damage that takes the helicopter out of action for repairs. Worse, there is the rear ramp. It cannot support troops carrying all their equipment, making it useless for rapid exits of combat troops. There is not enough room in the passenger compartment for door gunners. There are no strap downs for larger weapons, like portable rocket launchers or anti-aircraft missiles. The passenger compartment also does not allow for carrying cargo and passengers at the same time. The winch is not sturdy enough for commandoes to perform fast roping operations. And so on. The Germans were not pleased with the NH-90.

I’ve never specced out a new helicopter design, but these complaints sound like issues that should have come up during the initial design review, not things that appear once you’ve taken delivery. It sounds like the military equivalent of buying a new car without taking a test drive or checking the specifications for how well the vehicle matched your actual requirements.

Design fail, manufacturing fail, or ordering fail?

The (almost) silent scream of the word nerds

Filed under: Gaming, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

The folks who labour (very much) behind the scenes of online gaming sometimes manage to hacksaw through the shackles and post about their anguish:

I’m guessing a large portion of our player base has never cracked open The Chicago Manual of Style. I work in a room full of word nerds. We live and breathe this stuff to the point where we agonize over seemingly mundane things like punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing. For years we’ve gnashed our teeth to the gums while capping common nouns and game terms with every release. Our eyes literally hurt when we edited some copy.

Starting with this article, we’re changing Guild Wars 2 house style to conform more closely to CMS rules. Professions are now lowercased except when used in a title. The same goes for playable races, though nationalities and group affiliations will remain uppercase as is consistent with contemporary practice. It may take a few minutes to adjust to the new look, but we’re pretty confident that you’re a savvy bunch. You don’t need every other word capitalized for emphasis. Context will tell you all you need to know about our lore and game mechanics. Existing Guild Wars 2 articles should be updated to reflect this, but if you catch an error, feel free to let us know.1 Existing original Guild Wars articles and in-game text will retain their legacy formatting, however.

99% of the readers won’t know what the heck you’re talking about, Bobby, but I feel your pain.

June 1, 2010

Another local outbreak of counterfeit bills in Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:08

I was just down in the convenience store in my clients’ office building in downtown Toronto and heard from the store owner that there are lots of counterfeit bills appearing today. She showed me an example $10 bill, which looked fine except it was missing the metallic strip on the left side of the bill.

Here’s a guide to recognizing the differences between real and counterfeit Canadian bills from the Bank of Canada:

QotD: The Pascal’s Wager of Economics

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

[S]timulus spending is the Pascal’s Wager of economics. Seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal couldn’t prove God existed, but figured he might as well be devout since, if there is a God, he’s saved from damnation. If there wasn’t, well, no harm in trying. Politicians see stimulus spending the same way. They can’t prove it works, but if they sit on their hands during a downturn, they know they’ll be blamed for inaction should things turn worse. If and when the economy recovers, as it has here, the government’s happy to take credit. And if more misery comes? They can at least claim to have staved off larger calamity — which is how it’s gone in the U.S., where they’re now spending their third stimulus package in two years.

Politicians are only acting rationally. Last year, they were convinced they faced another Great Depression. [. . .]

Get used to this. Since the narrative that stimulus spending pulled us back from the abyss works for Ottawa, it virtually guarantees that, when dark economic clouds are again sighted from Parliament Hill, we’ll see this routine recur: Dire recession warnings from politicians, followed by stimulus as insurance to cover political hides from any economic blame. As long as future taxpayers get the bill, via future debt payments, it’s as risk-free a gambit as Pascal’s: The latest stimulus added tens of billions in national red ink with little political distress for the Tories.

Kevin Libin, “The Stimulus Bluff: There’s Mounting Evidence That Government Spending Has Had No Impact On The Economic Recovery. Too Bad Politicians Aren’t Listening”, National Post, 2010-06-01

This is a solution in search of a problem

Filed under: Cancon, Soccer — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

The wise heads at the Gloucester Dragons Recreational Soccer league have decided to stamp out all the evils of competitive soccer once and for all:

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default.

The Gloucester Dragons Recreational Soccer league’s newly implemented edict is intended to dissuade a runaway game in favour of sportsmanship. The rule replaces its five-point mercy regulation, whereby any points scored beyond a five-point differential would not be registered.

Kevin Cappon said he first heard about the rule on May 20 — right after he had scored his team’s last allowable goal. His team then tossed the ball around for fear of losing the game.

I coached children’s soccer for more than a decade, and my teams sometimes lost by more than five goals (and occasionally won by similar margins). That’s inevitable, given that recreational soccer teams are not balanced for skill or experience, just for age level. Sometimes random selection puts together three or four very good players (who are not, for whatever reason, playing competitive soccer). Sometimes, otherwise good teams have bad games.

As a parent and as a coach, you know within the first few minutes of a game whether the kids are “in to the game” or if they’re just counting the minutes ’til the final whistle. There’s one thing worse than being beaten by an opposing team by lots of goals . . . and that’s the other team obviously, ostentatiously, not scoring the goals.

I’ve only had it happen against my team once, about six years ago. We were the last-place team in the division and we were facing one of the top teams. It was late in the season, and my kids didn’t have much hope to win, but were still trying. The other team had a higher proportion of bigger players, in addition to having a few really good players. We were down six goals by halftime, and although we were still playing hard, they were out-playing us.

If the second half had gone the same way, it would have been just a bad loss. But the other coach decided to “take it easy” on my team, and loudly and repeatedly directed his players not to score. My players were humiliated for another 30 minutes of “play”. I was surprised we didn’t have fights breaking out on the field: it was that bad.

Next week, I barely had enough players show up for the game. Ironically, even with the few we had, we won that game handily.

Update, June 11: The league has decided to modify the rule:

In response to the feedback, the league decided to get rid of the rule, which will be rescinded starting June 14.

In its place, a new mercy rule will be instituted under which a game will be called once one team has a lead of eight goals. Whichever team is ahead at that time will be credited with the win, Cale said. Teams can then play on if they wish for player development, wrote Cale.

Media emphasis distorts extent of conflicts

Filed under: Media, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:53

Strategy Page points out one of the baleful aspects of modern media coverage of wars and other conflicts:

Worldwide violence continues to decline, but most people are unaware of this because the mass media will feature whatever wars and disorder they can find. This is an old journalistic technique, and it’s good for business. But not so helpful if you are trying to keep track of what’s really happening out there. Oddly enough, the most bloody conflicts (like Congo) get the least media coverage. Reporting tends to be distorted by how accessible wars are, as well as how easily your viewers could identify with the combatants. The media also has a hard time keeping score. For years, Iraq was portrayed as a disaster until, suddenly, the enemy was crushed. Even that was not considered exciting enough to warrant much attention, and that story is still poorly covered by the mass media. Same pattern is playing out in Afghanistan, where the defeats of the Taliban, and triumph of the drug gangs, go unreported or distorted. If you step back and take a look at all the wars going on, a more accurate picture emerges.

Worldwide, violence continues the decline is has exhibited for most of the decade. For example, violence has greatly diminished, or disappeared completely, in places like Iraq, Nepal, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Chechnya, Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. Even Afghanistan, touted as the new war zone, was not nearly as violent this past six months as the headlines would deceive you into believing.

All this continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere. The current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies, which are seen as out-of-step with the modern world. Many are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism), that still resonate among people who don’t know about the dismal track records of these creeds. Iran has picked up some of the lost Soviet terrorist support effort. That keeps Hezbollah, Hamas, and a few smaller groups going, and that’s it. Terrorists in general miss the Soviets, who really knew how to treat bad boys right.

The flotilla incident

Filed under: Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:25

I’ve seen lots of posts about yesterday’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara from both pro- and anti-Israeli viewpoints. Adrian McNair has one of the most even-handed summaries:

When I first got wind of the news that Israeli Defense Forces had attacked a Turkish flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean Sea, it was accompanied by the words “massacre”, describing the death of 10 pro-Palestinian demonstrators aboard one of the ships. But as Jonathan Kay wrote about the incident in the National Post, if Israel truly had wanted to “massacre” the Hamas sympathizers aboard the flotilla, they could have simply sunk them to the bottom of the Sea with torpedos.

The “massacres” and “genocide” on Gaza continues to go very poorly indeed, given the available firepower of the Israeli military. In fact, like all international incidents involving the IDF, once the fury dies down and the seas calm a little bit, we usually learn the true story of what really happened.

As a humanitarian effort, the flotilla was a waste of resources. As a propaganda tool, however, the flotilla was quite successful: most media reports will concentrate on the casualties and ignore the fact that Israeli forces clearly tried to avoid causing those casualties.

Several different videos seem to corroborate statements by the IDF that troops came under attack by the passengers, who were clearly enraged at having been boarded by the Israelis. To further avoid violence, the soldiers had been armed with paintball guns. If that sounds like something a military command would order with the intent to “massacre” civilians, it could not have been less effective.

After coming under attack, the commandos requested permission for the deployment of lethal force, which they were granted. Up to 10 activists are believed to have been killed in the ensuing melee, with some reports stating that the activists had got a hold of weapons from the soldiers and were firing at them.

Update: Kathy Shaidle advises the “this is terrible PR for Israel” conservatives to back off:

The raw anti-Semitism making the rounds yesterday certainly disturbed me.

However, more sinister (all the more so because it was well intentioned) was the tsking and moaning about how the flotilla incident was “bad PR” for Israel — five minutes after the news broke, no less.

“Who cares about the facts?! Think of how this looks!“

You sound like the leftists on the boat.

So-called pro-Israel “conservatives” who’ve read a couple of books and articles — and certainly have never been commandos, or even been on a boat that wasn’t shaped like a swan — really have no business debating the finer points of hand to hand combat at sea.

And they simply polluted the conversation yesterday with their tiresome, showoffy “tsk tsk” tweets and posts about “PR” and “optics.”

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