Quotulatiousness

October 19, 2012

Vegemite: it’s not just Australian for Marmite

Filed under: Australia, Cancon, Food, History, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

BBC News celebrates the 90th birthday of that uniquely Australian spread, Vegemite:

Vegemite and Marmite
Photo via Wikimedia

Vegemite started as a wartime substitute for Marmite, but it’s now as symbolic of Australia as Sydney Harbour Bridge and the koala. How did this salty spread become so popular?

What’s the link between German U-boats, the beer industry, processed cheese and the Men At Work’s 1983 hit, Down Under?

The answer is, they all played a part in turning Vegemite from a humble yeast spread into an Australian icon. Stop any Aussie on any street, anywhere in the world, and they will have a view on Vegemite – for, or against.

Now, on the eve of its 90th birthday, the first official history has just been published. The Man Who Invented Vegemite is written by Jamie Callister, grandson of the man who created it.

[…]

Walker put Callister on the case in 1923, and by the end of the year, the pair were confident they had a finished product. Walker decided to launch a competition so the public could name it and claim a £50 prize. Hundreds entered and it was Walker’s daughter Sheila who pulled the word Vegemite out of a hat.

Like the product itself, the name stuck. But sales were sluggish.

Walker had heard about an ingenious Canadian called James Kraft, who had perfected what came to be known as processed cheese. It was a sensation, as it allowed people who couldn’t afford fridges to store cheese for much longer periods.

In 1924, Walker met Kraft in Chicago. The two men got on well and Walker persuaded Kraft to grant him rights to sell his cheeses in Australia.

[…]

As World War II unfolded, Vegemite became associated with the national interest. Posters put up in Australia had pictures of it with the slogan, “Vegemite: Keeping fighting men fighting fit.”

For Vegemite, the war was a turning point, marking its entry deep into the hearts and consciousness of the Australian public.

October 17, 2012

Dalton McGuinty’s “legacy”

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

All the media chatter about Premier Dalton McGuinty running for leader of the federal Liberals must be coming from folks who want to watch a national train wreck, says Michael Den Tandt:

Set aside that, with nine years as premier of Canada’s most populous province, constituting more than one-third of the national population, McGuinty would be past his best-before date at the best of times.

And let’s ignore his long track record of broken promises, beginning shortly after he was elected on a solemn vow to run balanced budgets and hold the line on taxes. He made that promise in writing. He broke it without a shred of visible remorse, blaming the other guys.

Let’s set aside the e-Health scandal, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. scandal, the eco-tax affair, and the continuing Ornge air ambulance scandal. While we’re at it, let’s wave off the abrogation of the rule of law in Caledonia. That’s all old news.

Forget the voluminous independent study by economist Don Drummond, who found, in a nutshell, that McGuinty’s entire approach to government in the previous eight years had been wrong-headed, slipshod and ruinously wasteful. Drummond recommended a radical course correction. McGuinty nodded sagely, kindly even, and ignored him.

We could even try — come on now, let’s do this — to ignore the Green Energy Act. This was the ideologically driven plan, still in place, to create an artificial market for “green” energy and erect thousands of 50-storey industrial wind turbines across Ontario, destroying the landscape for the sake of energy that only flows when the wind blows — that is, intermittently.

[. . .]

Let’s set aside, also, the cloying, nanny-state condescension of McGuinty’s approach to leadership — never a principle too firm to be melted into formless goo, never a controversy too sharp to be smothered in a warm quilt of apple-pie hokum. Never mind that, temperamentally, McGuinty is Mitt Romney without the millions. These are intangibles.

Matt Gurney on Iran’s anti-Canadian coverage

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

A pair of former First Nations chiefs have been on Iran’s Press TV to denounce Canada and Canadian treatment of natives:

Friends, I have a double dose of bad news for you. There’s no easy way to say it. So here it is. Not only is Canada set on exterminating a whole segment of its population. That would be bad enough. It also turns out that we frankly aren’t very good at it.

These painful revelations come to us from Tehran courtesy of Terry Nelson, formerly chief of the Roseau River Anishinabe nation south of Winnipeg, and Dennis Pashe, of the Dakota Tipi nation. Both men have plenty of time to travel these days, having both lost their jobs as chiefs. Nelson lost his after his own band council gave him the boot, for the third time, last fall. Pashe was fired by Ottawa in 2003, after the federal government sent in a third-party manager in the face of corruption allegations and violence on his reserve, compounded by Pashe’s refusal to call elections.

[. . .]

But ignore Tehran’s pathetic attempts to portray Canada as worse than Iran (or ask some of the protesters gunned down, raped or tortured during the post-2009 election protests what they think about the two nations’ comparative human rights records). The truly sad thing about Nelson and Pashe’s trip is that there are, indeed, systemic issues facing Canada’s native population, and Nelson and Pashe have made a mockery of them.

Nelson isn’t wrong to point out that many native women are missing. Or that natives are overrepresented in the prison population. Or even to point out that many resource extraction projects, including petroleum sites, are on or near native reserves. And many Canadians, native and otherwise, agree that many reserves are essentially designed to fail, and that the living conditions for natives there are unacceptable. These are all fair things to say.

October 16, 2012

Early Baby Boomers had it much easier than those who followed

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

Depending on where you draw the demographic line, I’m either a (very) late Baby Boomer or an early arrival from the next generation. I “get” the anger that some younger folks feel about the BB’s, because I came along too late to benefit in the same way that the early boomers did:

But, have baby-boomers really enjoyed a cozy ride through life? The truly lucky were their parents, who worked in the post-Second World War “Golden Age” of low unemployment, rapidly rising real wages, rising house prices, and expanding public and private pension plans.

The postwar boom was petering out by the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as many baby boomers were entering the job market. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by two severe recessions, and by an increase in jobs which often did not provide steady wages or a decent pension.

The unemployment rate for the baby-boomers, then mainly in their early thirties (age 30-34), was more than 10 per cent from 1983 to 1985, and over 8 per cent for the boomers in their late thirties during the recession years of 1992 to 1994.

Many baby-boomers never managed to find the secure and well-paid jobs characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s that lay the basis for a decent retirement. A recent study by former Statscan assistant chief statistician Michael Wolfson found that one-in-four middle-income baby boomers face at least a 25 per cent fall in their standard of living in retirement. (He looked at persons born between 1945 and 1970, and earning between $35,000 and $80,000 per year.)

The proportion of all persons age 65 to 70 who are still working bottomed out at 11 per cent in 2000 and is now 24 per cent, and about one half of persons aged 60 to 65 are still working today.

In my entire career, I’ve worked for only one company that provided a pension plan — and I was laid off before my contributions vested anyway. I don’t expect to ever voluntarily retire: I won’t be able to afford it. And I’m far from alone in that.

Whither Ontario?

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

Blazing Cat Fur celebrates the departure of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, but warns that there’s little joy for the Tories (or ordinary Ontarians for that matter) even with McGuinty off the stage:

So what’s next for Ontario? Tim Hudak will not be the one to lead Ontario out of the wilderness and I don’t blame Hudak. I doubt any conservative will be elected premier for a very long time in Ontario.

McGuinty turned Ontario into a have not province and in the process sold Ontario to the public service unions. No conservative candidate, no matter how blue the 905 etc, can realistically expect to win against Fortress Entitlement, aka Toronto. If you want to see the future of Ontario then look to Detroit. Successive Democratic party regimes looted the tax payers to pay for the promises made to their “friends”. The resulting sense of entitlement became institutionalized, a part of the political DNA. Ontario is no different, look at how Toronto is run, the entitlement spiral is well on its way there. The public service unions will continue to demand more and our politicians will continue to grant them more and there’s nothing you or I can do about it except move. It’s a simple numbers game and there’s more of them than there are of us.

One can only hope that he’s being too pessimistic. But the politician most likely to gain from McGuinty’s resignation isn’t even a member of the Liberal party: it’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who may be able to ride the tail end of the federal NDP surge into Queen’s Park as our second NDP premier.

October 11, 2012

David Suzuki “owes economists an apology”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

In the Globe and Mail, Mike Moffatt examines Suzuki’s latest attack on the economics profession and finds it extremely unpersuasive:

Popular environmentalist David Suzuki has described conventional economics as a form of brain damage. In a documentary called Surviving Progress, he quotes a fictional economist by saying, “who cares whether you keep the forest — cut it down. Put the money somewhere else. When those forests are gone, put it in fish. When those fish are gone, put it in computers.”

Beyond tarring the economics profession, he displays a perplexing lack of understanding of basic economic concepts. First of all, none of the rules taught in undergraduate economics course advise the owner of a resource to deplete it as quickly as possible. Perhaps he was confused with the Tragedy of the Commons problem, where lack of private ownership causes a resource to be overused.

[. . .]

The idea that economists do not care about externalities is a strange one, given how prominently they are featured in economics textbooks. An externality is, simply put, a spillover effect. It is the unintended costs or benefits from a transaction or decision experienced by third parties (that is, they were external to the decision). It does not mean phenomena that are external to economic modelling or things outside the interest of economists. Since, as Dr. Suzuki points out, the world is full of externalities, the concept is crucial in economic research.

October 10, 2012

Macdonell on the Heights

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:50

One of my favourite Stan Rogers songs is “Macdonell on the Heights”. Here’s the history behind the song, courtesy of the Niagara 1812 Legacy Council:

John Macdonell was born in April 1785 in Scotland. At the age of seven he came with his family to Canada where at the age of 23 he became a lawyer. He later earned a seat in the legislature and in September 1811 he was appointed attorney-general.

Macdonell was not loved by all, especially William Baldwin who duelled with the attorney-general, but his position brought him closer to Isaac Brock, who asked Macdonell to serve as his aide. Macdonell was a lieutenant-colonel in the York Militia where he served as Brock’s aide with energy and poise.

During the Battle of Queenston Heights Macdonell was not far behind Brock, who had left in the early hours from Fort George to the site of the American invasion. It was not long after Brock’s failed advance up the heights that Macdonell led his own desperate charge to retake the redan battery. Macdonell’s small force did push the Americans back briefly, but a musket ball hit Macdonell’s horse, which reared up as a second musket ball struck Macdonell’s back. Macdonell was shot four times but it did not prevent him from attempting to stand and continue the attack. Fellow officers pulled the lieutenant-colonel from the battlefield as the attack failed to capture the redan battery.

Is “national security” just another term for “protectionism”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:16

Daniel Ikenson at the Cato@Liberty blog:

Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE long have been in the crosshairs of U.S. policymakers. Rumors that the telecoms are or could become conduits for Chinese government-sponsored cyber espionage or cyber attacks on so-called critical infrastructure in the United States have been swirling around Washington for a few years. Concerns about Huawei’s alleged ties to the People’s Liberation Army were plausible enough to cause the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to recommend that President Bush block a proposed acquisition by Huawei of 3Com in 2008. Subsequent attempts by Huawei to expand in the United States have also failed for similar reasons, and because of Huawei’s ham-fisted, amateurish public relations efforts.

So it’s not at all surprising that yesterday the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday, following a nearly year-long investigation, issued its “Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE,” along with recommendations that U.S. companies avoid doing business with these firms.

But there is no smoking gun in the report, only innuendo sold as something more definitive. The most damning evidence against Huawei and ZTE is that the companies were evasive or incomplete when it came to providing answers to questions that would have revealed strategic information that the companies understandably might not want to share with U.S. policymakers, who may have the interests of their own favored U.S. telecoms in mind.

It’s not just the United States, either: Canada is also getting wary of Huawei.

The Canadian government has said that it will be invoking a “national security exemption” as it hires firms to build a secure network, hinting that Chinese telco Huawei could be excluded.

The exemption allows the government to kick out of the running any companies or nations considered a security risk, which coming in the wake of the US report earlier this week labelling Huawei and ZTE as security threats, strongly indicates they’re out of the bidding.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s top media spokesman refused to say for sure whether the government had Huawei in mind when invoking the exemption.

“The government is going to be choosing carefully in the construction of this network and it has invoked the national security exception for the building of this network,” he said, according to the Calgary Herald.

October 9, 2012

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson interviewed by Premier Guitar

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Shawn Hammond talks to two-thirds of Rush in the November issue of Premier Guitar magazine:

If there’s one band on the planet that’s made it cool for musicians to be … well, uncool, it’s Rush. Because let’s face it — the intelligent, chops-heavy prog rock that Geddy Lee (vocals/bass/keyboards), Alex Lifeson (guitars), and Neil Peart (drums/lyrics) have become synonymous with over the last 30-plus years will never completely escape the stigma of being considered overwrought, stodgy, and even nerdy.

But with 1980’s “The Spirit of Radio” — a tune that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ranked as one of the top 500 most genre-defining — the dudes raked in fame and glory with brainy, multisyllabic bashing of the very industry and medium that made their careers possible, and they did it over a backdrop of swirling pull-off licks, distorted bass, and tour de force drumming that was somehow still catchy. Their encore? The next year they pilloried modern society at large with “Tom Sawyer” — a chops-laden, darkly futuristic anthem that even hardcore deriders of prog can’t help but dig.

Today, Rush is arguably the longest running, most original, and most influential progressive rock band ever. Their influence can be heard in major bands ranging from Pantera to Smashing Pumpkins, Primus, Death Cab for Cutie, the Mars Volta, Coheed and Cambria, and countless others. And yet, through innumerable musical fads they’ve remained staunchly committed to big ideas, grand arrangements, and stellar, instantly identifiable musicianship — rich, unorthodox chording, odd-meter riffing, and ethereal solos from Lifeson, and a finger-busting mix of Jack Bruce’s beef, Jaco Pastorius’ finesse, and a funk master’s groove from Lee. But they’ve also been flexible and open-minded enough to not come across as stagnant and stubborn. In the process, they’ve managed to get more radio play than just about any of their peers, scoring bona fide hits with songs like “Fly by Night,” “Closer to the Heart,” “Freewill,” “Limelight,” and the aforementioned classics. But even when their collective open-mindedness led to sonic evolutions that didn’t sit well with some longtime fans — specifically, the synth-heavy output from 1982–1989 that seemed to push Lifeson into a more atmospheric and textural approach — the band has remained unapologetically forward-looking.

October 6, 2012

Reporting from the St. Catharines Wine and Grape parade

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:43

Scott Feschuk goes back to St. Catharines to watch the parade go by:

In my hometown of St. Catharines, Ont., the last Saturday of September brings the Grape and Wine parade — a fun, child-friendly celebration of Niagara’s contribution to our national drunkenness. Join me as I attend the parade for the first time in 25 years:

9:48 a.m. We set up across from City Hall, just down from the viewing stand and just up from the elderly lady in the “Will work for wine” T-shirt. Behind us, at a church-run snack table, a sign announces that passersby are welcome to take a free apple as a gesture of God’s love. An Italian sausage, however, will set you back four bucks because the hydro company does not accept payment in love gestures.

9:54 The parade doesn’t start until 11 o’clock, which gives everyone plenty of time to brag about when they arrived downtown to Get a Good Spot. The exchange between two women in line for coffee is typical. “I got here around 8.” “Really? We were totally set up by 7:30.” Subtext: You are a terrible mother, first woman.

[. . .]

11:14 I didn’t know the Grape parade had a theme — and had I known, I’d have assumed it was Please Stop Laughing at Our Floats. But this year several of the floats commemorate the War of 1812, including one with a giant banner that reads: “1812-2012: 200 Years of Peace.” Being a stickler for historical accuracy and also a huge jerk, I loudly point out that the war didn’t end until 1814. Feschuk 1, Parade 0.

11:16 It’s still early, but if I had to pick my favourite War of 1812 re-enactor so far, it would definitely be the soldier in the period-accurate Nike cross-trainers.

[. . .]

12:27 The parade is almost over and there hasn’t been a single clown yet—not one. And where is the A&W Bear and why aren’t people on floats throwing candy and why isn’t everything exactly the same as it was in my childhood WHEN EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT AT ALL TIMES??

12:34 A final note: the Grape and Wine parade featured a number of cheerleading teams and academies — so many that I feel confident in stating for the record that we, as a nation, are good for cheerleaders. We do not require any more eight-year-old girls to paint on thick, sparkly eye makeup and thrust their pelvises in a sexualized manner. We are good for bare midriffs and self-esteem issues. Sure, Niagara may have lost most of its manufacturing jobs, but it’s in terrific shape if the key to prospering in the global economy turns out to be human pyramids.

October 5, 2012

Apparently only Christians go to prison in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:29

At least, that’s the most charitable interpretation of this move by the federal government:

The federal government is cancelling the contracts of non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons, CBC News has learned.

Inmates of other faiths, such as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance, according to the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is also responsible for Canada’s penitentiaries.

Toews made headlines in September when he ordered the cancellation of a tender issued for a Wiccan priest for federal prisons in B.C.

Toews said he wasn’t convinced part-time chaplains from other religions were an appropriate use of taxpayer money and that he would review the policy.

In an email to CBC News, Toews’ office says that as a result of the review, the part-time non-Christian chaplains will be let go and the remaining full-time chaplains in prisons will now provide interfaith services and counselling to all inmates.

According to the report, 57% of inmates are Christian. I smell a charter challenge to this ruling.

October 4, 2012

The zero-sum trading myth

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, Economics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:44

In Maclean’s, Stephen Gordon decries the undying myth that if one party to a trade is benefitting then the other must be losing:

In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan argues that the most important obstacles to implementing sound economic policies are not lobby groups or the ability of other special interests to influence politicians, but certain systemic, irrational beliefs of the electorate. This is hardly an encouraging conclusion, but if we needed any more evidence for at least one aspect of his thesis, the CNOOC-Nexen takeover is providing it.

One of the prejudices identified by Caplan is what he calls anti-foreign bias: “a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of interaction with foreigners.” According to popular (mis)perception, dealing with foreigners is to be mistrusted: if they want something from us, then they must perceive some benefit from the exchange. And if foreigners are gaining, then Canadians must be losing.

October 3, 2012

“The stereotype is so strong, that when you look at the actual data, you’re shocked”

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

In the National Post, Tom Blackwell finds the common stereotype on domestic violence at variance with the facts:

Conventional wisdom suggests that women usually kill their spouses in self defence or as a final, desperate reaction to chronic battery, the burning-bed syndrome that is sometimes cited as a defence in murder trials. A new Canadian study, however, suggests that barely a quarter of husband-killers are victims of domestic abuse, less than half suffer from any identified psychological problem, and fewer still have had trouble with police.

[. . .]

To Don Dutton, a UBC psychology professor who has examined domestic violence for decades, the results of the new study are no surprise, despite what he called an erroneous understanding of “intimate-partner” assault that continues to prevail in society.

“We’ve got a stereoptye about domestic violence … that the oppressor or perpetrator is the male and when female violence happens, it’s a reaction against male violence,” he said. “The stereotype is so strong, that when you look at the actual data, you’re shocked.”

Prof. Dutton, author of the book Rethinking Domestic Violence, suggested that such assumptions evolved from the feminist view that family violence was a socio-political act of “patriarchal men suppressing women.” He argues instead that personality disorders in both male and female offenders better explain family violence than do social norms.

Prof. Dutton, not involved in the Quebec research, cited a number of studies in the United States that concluded the most common type of domestic violence was not abuse of women by men, but “bilateral” violence where both spouses hurt each other with similar severity.

September 29, 2012

Disabusing Canadians about mercantilism, one tweet at a time

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:29

Stephen F. Gordon is waging a lonely campaign to persuade Canadians that free trade is better than the managed, mercantilist “free trade” most of our governments have wanted since the NAFTA negotiations:

CN experiments with natural gas for its locomotives

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Railways, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Canadian National Railways is running a limited experiment with a pair of retro-fitted diesel locomotives converted to running on natural gas:

Canadian National Railway is exploring whether its feasible to use cheap and relatively clean natural gas to power its trains instead of diesel.

CN has retrofitted two of its existing diesel-fired locomotives to run mainly on natural gas. It’s testing the locomotives along the 480-kilometre stretch between Edmonton, a key energy processing and pipeline hub, and the oilsands epicentre of Fort McMurray, Alta.

Longer term, CN and three other partners are looking at developing an all-new natural gas locomotive engine as well as a specialized tank car to carry the fuel.

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