[poll id=”2″]
February 23, 2011
Poll question: how would you vote if a federal election is called
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February 20, 2011
Tunnelling man desperate for coffee
An amusing story from Yolk Region News:
Duane Oppenheimer, 59 1/2, of Newmarket was charged with mischief and unlawful excavation on Wednesday evening, after cleaning staff at Upper Canada Mall discovered a large rectangular crack in a utility closet floor. The crack turned out to be a hatch leading to Oppenheimer’s tunnel, a 200-metre subterranean passageway that extended under the mall’s south parking lot and continued below Davis Drive into an adjacent subdivision where it emerged inside the Oppenheimer’s garage.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who said “Who knew that people in Newmarket were so industrious?”.
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February 17, 2011
Once upon a time, working in public service entailed a bit of sacrifice
But that old notion of “lower wages but better pensions” for public service work has gone the way of the buggy-whip industry. Now, public servants get better wages, much better pensions, and generally much more generous benefits. Even through the recession, federal and provincial wages continued to outpace those in the private sector:
Both images are details from this National Post graphic.
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February 16, 2011
Damned good reasons for Canadians to fly from US airports instead of Canadian airports
An article at the National Post talks about the rising number of Canadians who drive to US airports. After a recent experiment, I can understand why.
Last weekend, I had a notion to go to Boston for the coming long weekend. I checked the Porter Airlines website. Multiple flights from Toronto Island airport to Boston, great! So I started the booking process. Two people, flying from YTZ to BOS, return trip . . . how freaking much????
Because I wasn’t booking more than two weeks in advance, the flights were going to cost $800+. That’d be bad enough, but that’s per person. One way. But the return flight was cheaper: a doddle at “only” about $690. So about $3,000 not counting taxes, fees, and surcharges.
American Airlines, if I booked right now could get us to Boston from Buffalo for $246 each. Return flight at the same price, or cheaper ($181 each) if we used JetBlue.
So, for the added hassle of driving to Buffalo (and the border crossing, of course), I’d save nearly $2,000 on this little jaunt. If that’s at all representative, then it’s amazing that Canadian airlines are able to hang on to as much of the business as they currently do.
“A heart filled with music will not have room for God’s words”
Islam is apparently not a religion to appeal to the musically inclined, because, as former guitarist Bilal Philips warns, only certain forms of music are acceptable to God:
Bilal Philips was once a guitar god. Now he is trying to convince Muslims that God doesn’t want them listening to guitars.
A Saudi-trained Canadian, Mr. Philips is among a small group of lecturers who preach against most forms of music — a controversial prohibition that surfaced in Manitoba recently, where a dozen Muslim families want to pull their children from music class.
“A heart filled with music will not have room for God’s words,” he writes in his book Contemporary Issues, which also defends child marriages, wife beating, polygamy and killing apostates while calling homosexuality “evil and dangerous.”
While Mr. Philips argues that Islam does not prohibit all music, he says it only allows adult male singers and “folk songs with acceptable content sung by males or females under the age of puberty accompanied by a hand drum.”
“Wind and stringed instruments have been banned because of their captivating power,” he continues. “Their notes and chords evoke strong emotional attachments. For many, music becomes a source of solace and hope instead of God. When they are down, music brings them up temporarily, like a drug. The Koran, the words of God filled with guidance, should play that role.”
Of course, music is bad because of the behaviour of musicians, too:
“What you see instead is that some of the most corrupt elements of society are found among the musicians. The drugs, the deviations and homosexuality, these type of things and all the corruption that’s there, people committing suicide,” he says. “The reality is that it in fact does carry an evil, dark side which produces that type of corruption amongst themselves and, in the end, ends up corrupting elements of the society.”
Wow. I didn’t realize the Toronto Symphony was such a hotbed of decadence and perversion!
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February 11, 2011
Reif produces first Canadian raisins
I always figured that we were too far north to produce raisins, despite our large-and-growing grape crops. Just because it was widely thought doesn’t mean it’s true:
“Originally, the idea was to make an appassimento-style wine that involves the drying of grapes that is common in a region of Italy where they make Amarone-style wines,” explains Reif Estate winemaker Roberto DiDomenico. DiDomenico and Reif Estate owner Klaus Reif, a 13th-generation winemaker who immigrated from Germany in the early 1980s and bought his uncle’s Niagara winery in 1987, had some contacts in Simcoe’s tobacco country. “We learned that there would be some kilns available as the tobacco industry has been waning,” says DiDomenico. They purchased two refurbished kilns that were shipped up to Reif Estates in the spring of 2009. And that’s when the process began. Almost. Explains Reif, “Our grapes that we use for the appassimento winemaking process were not yet ready, so we had these two kilns sitting here and we thought, what should we do with them now?”
Wine is made from grapes with seeds while raisins are generally made from seedless grapes. Niagara is wine country, but as luck would have it, a friend of Reif’s, John Klassen, who grows table grapes for supermarkets, happened to stop by the winery for a visit. “He was telling us that his grapes were ripe, but the supermarkets didn’t want them anymore,” says Reif. With those plump, juicy Sovereign Coronation grapes destined for the birds, Reif said, “Bring them in; we’ll try to make raisins.” (While most raisins are made from green grapes, these Niagara raisins are made from red grapes.) DiDomenico and Reif put the grapes in the tobacco kilns for three to four weeks to raisin-up.
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February 9, 2011
Real usage-based billing might work, but not the current form
Tim Wu contrasts the way the UBB issue is being presented and how it might actually be successful:
The issue of usage-based billing is a little tricky because such systems are not inherently evil. When you think about it, we usually pay for things on a usage basis. Gasoline, electricity and even doughnuts are generally billed based on how much you use. And the fact that usage-based billing sounds reasonable in theory is surely why the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the new rules.
But take a closer look and something far more insidious is going on. If bandwidth were actually billed like electricity or water, that might be fine. But what the CRTC approved is something different. Claiming that its profit and consumer welfare are exactly the same thing, Bell wants to remake Internet billing. It wants to make use of the most lucrative tricks from the mobile and credit-card industries by preying on consumer error to make money. And this ought not be tolerated.
Any rule that asks the consumer to guess at usage, and punishes you if you’re wrong, is abusive. Imagine being asked to guess how much electric power you need every month, with a penalty for mistakes. Yes, that’s what cellphone companies do — or get away with — but that hardly makes it a model. It’s a system of profit premised on human error, and this begins to explain Bell’s deeper interest in usage-based billing. Bell wants to make the horrors of mobile billing part of the life of Internet users. And that’s a problem.
H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.
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LSE to buy TSX
It’s a crafty move, but it’s not clear whether it’s the buyer or the seller being the craftier:
London Stock Exchange Group Plc, the 210-year-old bourse operator, agreed to buy Toronto Stock Exchange owner TMX Group Inc. for about C$3.2 billion ($3.2 billion) in stock as the companies cut costs to counter lost market share. LSE surged to a two-year high.
LSE shareholders will own 55 percent of the company, while TMX investors will hold the rest, the exchanges said today in a statement. TMX shareholders will receive 2.9963 LSE shares for each they own, valuing the Toronto-based company at about C$42.68 a share, 6 percent more than yesterday’s closing price.
Xavier Rolet, LSE’s chief executive officer, will reduce 35 million pounds ($56 million) a year in costs and expand into new businesses such as derivatives as competition from alternative trading platforms increases as do mergers among rivals. His predecessor Clara Furse fought off five takeover offers in two years and bought the operator of the Milan stock exchange. The LSE’s share of U.K. equity trading was 63.8 percent last quarter, compared with 75 percent in 2009, data from the London- based company show.
It could be a way for London to diminish the impact of European rules on their business (by having a non-EU place to land if necessary) or it could be a way for the EU to extend their rule-making to the Canadian market. Or, and this is the least believable scenario, it might just be an ordinary acquisition by a company that happens to run stock markets.
Update: What is presented as a take over in other markets is being positioned (spun?) as a “merger” for domestic consumption:
TMX Group, which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the London Stock Exchange announced Wednesday they are merging to create one of the world’s largest stock exchanges.
The merger, which is subject to regulatory approvals, is unanimously being recommended by the boards of both exchanges.
The merger, if approved, would give the new firm a value of just over $6 billion (Cdn.) and give LSE shareholders just over 50 per cent of the combined company.
TMX Group is valued at $2.99 billion, while the London Stock Exchange Group’s value is slightly higher, around $3.25 billion.
The new company will have the world’s largest number of listing, more than 6,700 companies with an aggregate value of $5.8 trillion, the partners said in a statement early Wednesday.
[. . .]
The company will be co-headquartered in Toronto and London with Xavier Rolet, the CEO of the London Exchange, retaining that position with the new company. The president will be Thomas Kloet, the CEO of TMX. The FO will be Michael Ptasznik, who currently holds the same post with TMX, and the company director will be Raffaele Jerusalmi, the Milan-based CEO of Borsa Italiana.
Expect this deal, even if it eventually gets regulatory approval, to drag on for most of this year.
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February 6, 2011
“Mad Max” throws away the Quebec vote
At least, that’s the way most in the media are likely to interpret his position on Bill 101:
Some people say I am not a “real Quebecer” and are accusing me of “attacking Quebec” simply because I want to be more popular in the rest of Canada. They seem unable to conceive that it’s possible to have a different position than theirs on the basis of fundamental principles.
My position is this: Yes, it’s important that Quebec remain a predominantly French-language society. And ideally, everyone in Quebec should be able to speak French. But we should not try to reach this goal by restricting people’s rights and freedom of choice.
French will survive if Quebecers cherish it and want to preserve it; it will flourish if Quebec becomes a freer, more dynamic and prosperous society; it will thrive if we make it an attractive language that newcomers want to learn and use. Not by imposing it and by preventing people from making their own decisions in matters that concern their personal lives.
Mad Max for PM!
Update, 9 February: According to an anonymous Conservative, Maxime Bernier is “mostly harmless”.
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February 4, 2011
The Montreal Gazette‘s 1969 view of the year 2000
Paleofuture‘s Matt Novak digs up a Montreal Gazette cartoon from 1969:
The January 18, 1969 Montreal Gazette ran this most peculiar comic, chock full of hilarious expositional dialogue and dystopian delights.
We follow the futuristic misadventures of George Daedalus, also known as Daeda 928 502 467, in the year 2000 AD. George lives in Oshtoham, Canada’s second largest city — which I’m guessing is a combination of the cities Oshawa, Toronto and Markham — and works as a travel agent. George lives his life surrounded by technological wonders like robot servants, videophones, moving sidewalks and 3D hologram walls, but we come to find out that he’s really just not that happy. The last panel shows George taking drugs and using a computer to escape his reality. Boy am I glad I don’t live in that future!
H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.
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February 3, 2011
CRTC head called to testify before Commons committee
In what some are hailing as a victory for Canadian internet users, but might well be just another Conservative sop to public opinion, the head of the CRTC has been called before a Commons committee:
The chairman of the CRTC will appear before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on Thursday, as the regulator’s decision on usage-based billing for Internet services continues to generate anger among consumers and businesses.
Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will appear before the committee of federal MPs to explain the regulator’s decision, which allows large Internet providers like Bell Canada to charge smaller providers who lease space on their networks on a per-byte, or usage, basis.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to review the decision, lending clout to Industry Minister Tony Clement’s announcement to examine the CRTC ruling a day earlier. Mr. Clement and Mr. Harper’s cabinet, of course, have overturned the CRTC before — most notably by striking down the regulator’s ruling that Globalive, which now operates Wind Mobile, couldn’t launch service in the regulated sector because of foreign financial backing.
The problem for the government is that they need to be seen to do something, but the best “something” would be to open up the Canadian market to foreign competition in order to drive prices down toward world levels. That would upset too many cosy arrangements for the current beneficiaries of licenses to print money government approval to operate.
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February 2, 2011
A tribute (of sorts) to Wiarton Willie
John Scalzi, several years ago, wrote a tribute to Wiarton Willie, who was in the news in an unaccustomed way at the time:
To tell you the truth, the most disturbing thing is not that the groundhog died — certainly this animal earned his eternal rest — but that his handlers couldn’t think of anything better to do but tell a festival crowd that he had croaked. Those kids in the crowd will be forever traumatized. Groundhog Day will no longer be a happy time, but a constant reminder of death and mortality in the bleak midwinter. 10 years from now, I expect that Wiarton, Canada will become the new North American epicenter of dark, gothic teenage poetry.
Lying frozen in the snow
The groundhog soul resides far below
Gone to a place of doom and gray
Now winter will always stay.
Die Groundhog Die!
Mommy and Daddy Lied!
But wait, there’s more:
Now, on to the groundhog Wiarton Willie, who, as you know from yesterday’s entry, died before Groundhog Day and whose body was photographed lying in state in a dinky little pine coffin. Or was it? Now news comes from the sordid little burg of Wiarton, Canada, that the rodent corpse in the coffin was not Wiarton Willie at all, but a stuffed stand-in. The real Willie was apparently found so decomposed that the gelatinous remains were unsuitable for public display. So the town elders found a stuffed groundhog that just happened to be lying around (apparently the body of a previous “Wiarton Willie,” who was no doubt poisoned by the current, and now rotting, Willie in an unseemly palace coup), plopped it into that Barbie coffin, and presented the remains to a horrified public. Here’s the groundhog you’ve all been waiting for! And he’s dead! Winter for the next ten years!
The people of Wiarton meant well, I’m sure. But I’m having serious doubts as to their combined mental capacity. First off, the real Willy was found in a state of advanced decomposition, which means he had been dead for weeks. Weeks. How could that happen? This rodent is the cornerstone of Wiarton’s entire tourism economy for the month of February, and no one bothers to check on him from time to time? Did they just stick him in a cage after last Groundhog Day and then forget to feed him? Every kid in the world had a hamster they forgot to feed, but you’re usually, like, five at the time. These were actual adults. They say he was hibernating when he died. Sure he was. I used that excuse about the hamster.
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QotD: “Welcome to the Canadian Internet. Now stop using it.”
Welcome to the Canadian Internet, where extreme concentration in telecoms and a weak, lame regulator have given rise to a nation where your Internet access is metered in small, ungenerous dribs, and where ranging too far afield during your network use results in your ISP breaking into your browsing session to tell you that you’re close to being cut off from the net.
The incumbent telcos have successfully petitioned for “usage based billing,” wherein their customers only get so much bandwidth every month (they’ve also long practiced, and lied about, furtive throttling and filtering, slowing down downloads, streams, and voice-over-IP traffic). This will effectively make it cheaper to use their second-rate voice-over-IP and video-on-demand service than it is to use the superior services the rest of the developed world enjoys.
If you were a Canadian entrepreneur or innovator looking to start your own networked business, this would be terminal. How can an innovative service take hold in Canada if Canadians know that every click eats away at their monthly bandwidth allotment? I can think of no better way to kill Canadians’ natural willingness to experiment with new services that can improve their lives and connect them with their neighbours and the wide world than to make them reconsider every click before they make it.
Cory Doctorow, “Welcome to the Canadian Internet, now stop using it”, BoingBoing, 2011-02-02
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February 1, 2011
Fearmongering media empty Toronto highways in advance of Snowpocalypse 2011
I had a great commute into downtown Toronto today: unlike my usual pattern of spending 20-30 minutes inching down the Don Valley Parkway from Finch to York Mills (and then sometimes another 20-30 minutes from there to Bloor/Bayview), today’s drive was actually pleasant. There was a bit of congestion in the right-hand lanes coming south on the 404 past the Sheppard/401 exit, but other than that, I didn’t even need to downshift until just north of Eglinton.
I’m sure some of this is due to the efforts of energetic, enthusiastic news and weather folks at 680 News and other media outlets. They’ve been in full pantswetting mode for the last 24 hours, warning us about the alarming possibility of snowfall. That drumbeat of doom must have persuaded lots of drivers to avoid coming in to the looming epicentre of severe winter weather at Yonge and Bloor.
For those of you unfamiliar with Toronto weather, you probably think we experience regular snowfall, with cold temperatures and high winds (like Montreal and Winnipeg often do). If Toronto did experience things like that, we wouldn’t be able to deploy any troops to Afghanistan, because they’d all be in Toronto trying to save the city from utter panic and absolute civic collapse. Toronto doesn’t handle winter very well at all.
I thought it was just the highways, but Darkwatermuse found the same phenomenon on city streets today:
Did anybody else notice the light traffic today? I had to head uptown on the bus for a mid-day appointment and the bus cruised slowly past each empty bus stop. Stops which normally have two or three people debarking or embarking the bus.
On the way home I found myself alone on the bus, not considering the driver. If the driver’s seat had been empty I would have snapped a photo of it with my smart phone and emailed the photo to the media. Assuming I survived the crash and after the bus came to a complete stop and having shown somebody at the TTC my valid transfer.
Alone. On the Sherbourne bus. That’s like being alone in the serving line at the shelter on Christmas Eve. Strangely, a lot of those same missing people normally take the Sherbourne bus so I wasn’t too fussed being alone for once.
For once the bus didn’t smell like 3AM vomit and an ashtray overflowing with Player’s Navy Cut cigarette butts. An unlikely outcome just like snowballs in hades or, apparently, snow in Toronto.
Of course, I may have to retract all of this if the weather really does (for once) come close to the media’s hyperventilated predictions: I’m meeting another member of the VRWC (libertarian sub-committee) after work tonight, so I’ll get to experience a bit more of the joy of Toronto in snow.
Update, 2 February: As we few, bedraggled survivors claw our way out of the Massive, Unprecedented, Crippling Snowfall, the CBC offers us their support and sympathy:
