MEMORANDUM
FROM: Me
TO: TV news shows
SUBJECT: “Newer is not always better”

More and more TV news shows seem to be getting caught up in the technology of transmitting “live” by cellphone in an effort to show us, the viewers, that they’re right on top of the story. However, the one common element I have seen in all these remote stories is that the technology seems to be on a par with the images that the Apollo 11 camera and microphone transmitted from the surface of the moon in July 1969.

“Skype” is the name that most often follows the word, “Via” in such reports and, in a public-service effort to find out more about it for the countless (well, “countless” as applied to people whose numeracy ends when they run out of fingers) readers of this sporadic ramble, here’s how it is summed up on Wikipedia, which at least avoids trying to sell me the application:

“Skype ([skaɪp]) is a software application that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing. Skype was written by Estonia-based developers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, who had also originally developed Kazaa. The Skype Group, founded by Swedish-born entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, has its headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose.”

Well, that explains it, because nothing says “quality software” like “Estonia-based developers”.

Isn’t Estonia one of those places where spammers register their file servers to avoid being charged under North American law?... [GoogleGoogleGoogle... yep]

“With countries like Estonia, Russia, and Romania doing little or nothing to track down and prosecute cybercriminals, they will continue to set up shop there.” (From www.allspammedup.com / May 8, 2009)

As news networks link to reporters transmitting from such faraway and difficult-to-reach exotic locations as, oh for example Mexico City (during the height of the swine flu scare), the best onscreen image they can manage is grainy and just enough out of synch with the sender’s voice to be really, really irritating. Add to this the fact that cellphone lenses are invariably wide-angle, which usually gives the remote reporter hilariously exaggerated features at the middle of his / her face, suggesting that this is not so much a news report as it is a failed audition for “The Blair Witch Project”.

It all leaves me wondering why the news shows don’t dispense with the live Skype-and-its-clones feeds entirely and simply do what they used to do not so very long ago – put a still photo of the reporter onscreen while airing the audio of the telephone conversation that the news host is having with the distantly located reporter.* If anything, that says “immediate” even more than the ridiculous, jerky, Skype-transmitted cellphone images.

* Alternatively, there’s always “The Daily Show”’s perfectly functional, albeit satirical, approach. Whenever they cut away to a special correspondent – their “Senior Child Molestation Expert”, to take just one example – they simply switch to a different camera in the studio that is framing their “remote” reporter in front of a bluescreen on which they insert a screen-captured background image of whatever the heck they agree looks vaguely like the location from which the stand-up report is supposed to be coming. Meanwhile, the “remote” reporter is standing about 20 feet away from anchor Jon Stewart at his desk. Much hilarity abounds.

= = =

When is a park not a park?

When it’s the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Park.

Not so long ago in our neighbourhood, this was officially opened.

(Photo: The Epoch Times) And I have a great deal of difficulty understanding exactly what it is all about. From the very first page on its website, for example, you’re presented with this rather bizarre summation:

“Located on 4.5 acres at the busy intersections of Alta Vista Dr., Industrial Ave., and Riverside Dr., Ottawa’s Cancer Survivors Park is the second of its kind in Canada and will offer a place of serenity and inspiration to cancer patients and survivors, their friends and families.”

Is it just a quirk of my thinking, or does anyone else reading that sentence wonder how a “place of serenity” is to be found at the “busy intersections” of three of Ottawa’s most heavily-travelled streets? Because at 5:00 pm when the homebound weekday rush is in full swing, “serenity” is just about the last description you think of applying to the whirl of vehicles navigating those intersections.

Meanwhile, the “park” is a multi-million dollar conglomeration of steel and stone that, for me, recalls the Korean War Memorial on Washington DC’s Mall, minus the ghostly sculptured soldiers walking among the paths of stone and highly polished granite. (Photo: z.about.com)


There is, in other words, precious little about it that is “park”-like – you know: trees, grass, flowers, and so on. In fact, as that website front page shows, its only “flowers” are two-storey tall hideous artificial constructs in colours seemingly selected from the discount stocks offered at an end-of-season Wal-Mart paint sale priced so as to clear the shelves for their incoming array of plastic outdoor nativity scenes. (Photo: The Epoch Times)


(Those flowers, incidentally, come with a tale of their own. Allegedly, they were all supposed to be yellow – daffodils, in fact. Then, being as how we’re in Ottawa, our inherent politicization of everything drew the Canadian Cancer Society into the fray with a demand that the Blochs eliminate any overt “daffodilism” in their park because the CCS hangs its own annual springtime fundraising campaign on sales of live, potted versions of precisely that flower. One wonders if they got an early look at the Blochs’ monstrosity and reasoned that any confusion at all with it in the public’s mind – and wallets – would not help their cause at all, indeed might well work against it.)

The Blochs’ park is also filled with several large stone blocks resembling sarcophagi, each of which is decorated with a couple of greyish-looking artificial oak leaves that look like petrified bat turds, and a bronze plaque on which is cast an inspirational saying, or a bit of factual information about the disease that is cancer. (Photo: ATV.ca) Frankly, were I a cancer survivor, or the relative of a family member lost to the disease, I would be hard pressed to imagine another place short of a funeral home that is more depressing than this “park” festooned with so many symbols and structures resonant of death.

Had I successfully grappled with cancer, I think I would much prefer a genuine, natural place of serenity like, oh, you know, perhaps a... park, there to celebrate the beauty of the natural world and my place in it, instead of parking my butt on an ice-cold steel bench overlooked by claw-like semi-arches on which sculptured steel tendrils of ivy have been woven, frozen into immobility, hope-absent and about as welcoming as one of those other “parks” – the ones with stripes painted on their flat surfaces to help drivers position their cars with a minimum of fuss and disorder.

But maybe that’s just me.

= = =

Irony of the month.

I have the feeling this little bit of whimsy was created by a line-up editor with a sense of humour, but recently on msn.ca’s online news page, this story: “Drop parental opt-out on evolution, other issues, teachers urge Alberta. Alberta's teachers have officially asked the province to drop amendments to its human rights legislation that would give parents the right to pull their children out of classes discussing religion, evolution, sexuality or sexual orientation.”

appeared right beside this one:

“47-million-year-old primate fossil unveiled. Scientists on Tuesday unveiled fossilized remains of one of the oldest and most complete skeletons of an early primate, a finding they say could further our understanding of what our own ancestors might have looked like.”

which ought nicely to tie those parents seeking to pull their kids out of those ungodly evolution classes into wild new pretzel shapes.

= = =

Sleep tight tonight; your government is “simplifying”.

For your amusement (hat tip to IK), here – verbatim – are the instructions that appear on p.1 of a Government of Canada website which purports to allow federal employees to “access your CompensationWeb Applications (CWA)” The “amusement” comes when you read on – and on – after the first four words:

"Follow these simple steps...

"1. PREPARE
Collect the following information before you enrol.
Pension Number (Superannuation Number) – found on your Pension and Benefits Statement *
Total Deductions – found on your most recent pay stub
Personal Record Identifier (PRI) – found on your pay stub
Government E-mail Address
Date of Birth (yyyy | mm | dd)

"2. CREATE A PROFILE
Go to: [Public Works and Government Services Canada / PWGSC website]
remuneration-compensation
Select the English or Français button.
Select the New Users button.
Scroll down and select Pay Applications or
Pension Applications.
Choose and Record
User Name
Password
Recovery Secret
Check the box I agree to Terms and Conditions of use.
Select the Submit button.
Record Identifier.
..........................................
Do not close the browser.

"3. ENROL
Select Click here to log in.
Type your User Name and Password.
Select the Log in button.
Select the Continue button for the next 2 pages.
Type your Pension Number (Superannuation Number).*
Type your Total Deductions.
Type your PRI.
Type your Government e-mail address.
Type your Date of Birth.
Select the Enrol button.
You will receive an e-mail with an attachment and a link.
Open the attachment.
Copy the Enrolment Activation Number (EAN).
Open the link.
Paste the EAN in the field.
Select the Continue button.
The System returns to the Home Page of the tool you selected.
* Not applicable for non–pension plan
members."

= = =

What in heaven’s name would we ever do without organizations like this that are willing to spend their own money to fund such outstanding and impartial research? File this under “What are the odds?”:

"Study commissioned by plastics industry says reusable grocery bags dangerous
CANADIAN PRESS (May 24)
TORONTO - The growing popularity of reusable grocery bags could pose a health risk to Canadians by increasing their exposure to dangerous bacteria, says a study commissioned by the plastics industry released Wednesday.
The Canadian Plastics Industry Association hired two independent labs to conduct what it said was the first study of so-called eco-friendly grocery bags in North America, and found 64 per cent of them were contaminated with some level of bacteria…"

Not to be outdone in publishing its own findings, the World Wildlife Fund is cited in the same article:

“The World Wildlife Fund, which worked with grocery chains such as Loblaws to convince retailers to charge five cents for each plastic bag to discourage their use, said the concerns raised in the study could be addressed by washing the reusable bags.”

Up next: a study commissioned by the same Canadian Plastics Industry Association finds that shredded plastic bags are better than bran for really cleaning out the ol’ colon.

And what does it all call to mind? (You Tube link)

= = =

And finally, why is the international community so upset about North Korea testing a nuclear bomb by setting it off deep underground within its own borders? I think the international community should be doing exactly the opposite by doing everything it can to encourage them to test every last one of their nuclear bombs by detonating them underground within their own borders – just to be sure they all work. And if they build another one? Test it... you don’t want to find out you’ve got a dud just when you need it most.

PS... Watching news coverage of this story leads me to wonder why it is that all the military “bad guys” of the world seem to require the goose step from their soldiers on parade. It’s a hopelessly bizarre march cadence that’s got to be incredibly hard on boot heels, not to mention human thigh muscles. North Korea’s troops include entire regiments of women and if you thought the goose step looks stupid when guys do it...

Until la prochaine...

I must admit that in recent weeks my Muse has been on vacation. Either that, or like me she (because my Muse is a “she” / a little more about her later) has just thrown up her hands in dismay at what is wafting across the airwaves these days and crying aloud, “How can I compete with that?!”

To evoke Rod Serling, “Consider if you will...”:

-- Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is doggedly sticking to his delusion that we all will accept there are just some people – “legitimate businessman”-type people, foreigners to be sure, and doncha know they do things differently in Germany? – who pay high-priced consultants with wads of thousand-dollar bills stuffed into envelopes and slid quietly across coffee shop tabletops in expensive urban hotels. Accepting such payments (his voices continue to tell him), not telling anyone and only paying taxes years later when you get caught are all nothing more than “whoops, my bad” moments by a man who would normally have entrusted those record-keeping responsibilities to competent financial staff, but dangnabbit, he just didn’t have the staff anymore when he became a “former” Prime Minister.

-- At the same time, Ruby Dhalla, a sitting Member of Parliament is addressing her own personal scandal. This one began with the innocuous fact that someone in her family (BUT NOT HER!!) employed Filipina women as caregivers for her mother. The story has since exploded into a torrent of wildly divergent versions with all sorts of allegations of abuse by the caregivers. Ms Dhalla, however, claims that the caregivers are now engaged – perhaps as unwitting dupes in the moulding hands of the evil Conservatives – in some vast conspiracy to discredit her. Further, they are not telling the truth – at least according to Ms Dhalla and her lawyer – when they say that they were hired by Ms Dhalla, reported to Ms Dhalla, were paid by Ms Dhalla, and treated abusively by Ms Dhalla by being forced to work for many more hours than those for which they were contracted, at tasks that they argue were about as distant from “caregiving” as this planet’s South Pole is from its North. Further, the caregivers have specifically claimed that when they openly considered complaining, their official documentation, including their passports, was seized by Ms Dhalla and returned only when a caregiver advocacy agent threatened to call the police. And oh, by the way, almost all of the reporters and commentators who have anything at all to say about this story are careful to ensure that we continue to know – by reminding us again and again and again – that Ms Dhalla is “drop-dead gorgeous” and “a former beauty queen”. (So... what?)

-- Larry O’Brien, presently the Mayor of Ottawa (albeit on an unpaid leave of absence) is currently on trial, facing charges of influence-peddling by offering a campaign opponent a lucrative federal office if he (the opponent) would just drop out of the municipal election campaign and effectively clear the track for all his (the opponent’s) supporters to toss their eventual X-marked circles his (O’Brien’s) way on voting day. Which is pretty much how the “ends” played out. But whether those were in fact the “means” is now up to the court to decide. The Ontario Provincial Police, however, decided there was sufficient smoke to consider at least the possibility of a fire, and it was their investigation into the allegations that led to the laying of charges.

-- And while we’re on the subject of law enforcement, the RCMP... yes those RCMP. Even the Force’s own until-recent first choice as psychological consultant has slammed those four infamous officers on Vancouver airport security duty for opting to use their Taser training as the only possible method of dealing with one confused, exhausted, non-English speaking Polish immigrant named Robert Dziekanski, who had remained trapped in the secure customs area of the airport for some nine hours before the sudden appearance of the flak-jacketed four and their (to him) completely incomprehensible instructions, leading to his multiple tasering and death just moments after they (the four “peace officers”) first arrived on the scene.

-- South of the border, the man elected President last November on a virtual tsunami of post-Bushlite “HOPE” has just announced he is quietly reversing two of his key campaign promises – Mr Obama recently ordered the suppression of what are rumoured to be as many as “several hundred” more photos of alleged US prison guard abuse of detainees at US detention centres around the world; and he has also “quietly” ordered the military tribunals in Guantanamo – reviled by critics as “kangaroo courts” – to resume their proceedings, a decision that may not bode well for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, who was pretty close to the top of the “Next” list when Obama ordered an end to the tribunals immediately after being sworn into office.

-- And much farther afield, waaaaay overseas, one of the world’s great voices of democracy, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in that country forever, or so it seems, was two weeks away from being released, when in an act that beggars belief she was visited in her home by a American man named John Yettaw – a “borderline diabetic... asthmatic” member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. With the aid of a pair of homemade swim fins, Mr Yettaw supposedly swam across a lagoon to Ms Suu Kyi’s house, reportedly to deliver a bible to her. This story, frankly, smells to high heaven (“He has asthma real bad, that's why I'm surprised he swam so good,” said his ex-wife in one of the Associated Press articles about the ever more peculiar story) because the military junta in charge in that country would like nothing more than to avoid returning the hugely popular passionate pro-democracy advocate to the public eye. And as luck would have it, having a visitor is expressly prohibited by the terms of Ms Suu Kyi’s house arrest. Violating those terms is subject to a five-year term in prison and the Myanmar generals have wasted no time. At this writing, Ms Suu Kyi is confined to a cell in Insein Prison (another of those tragically appropriate bits of nomenclature) while the Myanmar government tries to weather the growing storm of international condemnation over the whole affair.

I think if Ms Ruby Dhalla really wanted to see a conspiracy in action, she could take lessons from the travesty of dictatorial leadership presently helming Myanmar.

-- Meanwhile, back in this country the ever more certifiable Harper government has decided that their best hope for re-election lies not in touting their own record (understandable since as late as last November their Minister of Finance, Jim “There will never be a deficit while I am Minister of Finance” Flaherty, was forecasting a “slight surplus” in his Fall Economic Update, instead of the $80-plus billion deficit under which we are now living), but rather in convincing voters that the real threat to Canada is for our population to even think of voting for a man who drinks espresso coffee into which he dunks chocolate wafers, who has lived outside the country and who (*shudder*) has actually been in the employ of Harvard University – as a professor, no less. “Attack ads”, the Conservative campaign is called officially. Unofficially, I think that most people – most living beings with brains, in fact – would use the label MBPE: management by psychotic episode.**

** Sourced, if you can believe the internet, to this paragraph in a memorandum written by an International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) union local representative, Dr William H Jones, arguing that morale at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was low because the Agency was then in “utter chaos”:

“Did Mr. Goldin help this state of chaos along? Yes. Certainly. He eagerly accepted budget cuts, without the political difficulties of commensurate mission cuts, in a business that had no budget to spare. He decided in his own mind that sufficient chanting of the right mantra could make up for all the talents and resources that he was happily tossing away; he erected a framework of management by psychotic episode the like of which has probably not been seen since the Roman Emperors.”

And that’s just the quick off-the-top of my head list. How can you make fun of self-satirizing material like that? No wonder my Muse headed for the peace of a sunlit pond-side patch of green and took two giant pitchers of beer with her!
(Photo: a still from “Happy Gilmore”)

= = =

A couple of TV ad bleats. That’s always safe ground. We have an ongoing family poll for pride of place on our worst-commercials-going list. Among our current high vote earners: The company that sells insurance for seniors (well, for people over 50, they say) by showing us an appallingly impatient woman driver accompanied by the nasally-bound voiceover: “You don’t drive like her; so why should you pay the same insurance premiums as her?” I wrote them a letter and told them I was still trying to decide which group should feel more insulted – women drivers, their target audience of drivers over 50, or frankly everyone with a television. In the real world, that woman simply would not be driving for very long before some large guy with a lug wrench would step out of his own car, walk back to hers, and smash every last window in her car to bits. (“C’mon already THIS, you ignorant...!”)

The (male) office worker who dresses like Santa for the office Christmas party and has all the women staff atwitter after they’ve paid a visit to his lap – because he takes “natural male enhancement” pills. What bothers me about that one is, first of all, the suggestion that Office Santa apparently has been sitting there all day in a state of obvious... *ahem* enthusiasm, but even more than that is the creepy grin pasted on this guy’s face throughout the ad. It’s the kind if look that, were you to spot it roadside on the face of a hitchhiker, would cause you to swerve far to the other side of the road, accelerate and then put a great many kilometres between you and him just as fast as you possibly could. I have no idea why the makers of this pill have apparently decided that look holds an attraction for women.

= = =

This landed in my e-mail box recently, under the thread title, “RBC Online Banking Alert:- Notification Of Irregular Account Activity!” (Oh fer shure I’ll give you all my account security information and I really appreciate your drawing this to my attention!). Exactly as it arrived,:

“Dear Customer,
.We are unable to send message(s) to your online banking due to a Error Code [E634] between your e-mail address.

To enable you start receiving security e-mail alert when any transaction Or login attempt has been made from your online banking and also continue accessing your online account it will only take you few minutes to update your e-mail address including your Security information's. Click on the link below and you will be taken straight to where you can update your e-mail and Security information's.
http://royalbank.com/login/pro/update/account

Important Notice:- You are strictly advised to match your Memorable Word rightly to avoid service suspension.

Thank You.
Royal Bank of Canada Customer Services”

And of course I just know with even more certainty that it’s a valid message because the many punctuation errors and amusingly creative application of basic English vocabulary (“match your Memorable Word rightly”; “Security information’s”) only re-assure me that you clearly place a much higher priority on accounting and numbers and important stuff like that, rather than frivolous and unnecessary things like correct English grammar. That’s for me the bank of much goodness!

= = =

And finally, I received a Facebook urging from one of my Facebook friends recently inviting me to visit a link so as to be able to vote for something called “The Best Canadian Song of All Time”, according to a short list compiled by someone / something called “Luminato”, which helpfully explains itself to be “The Toronto Festival for the Arts”. These are my only voting options:

1234, Feist
Basement Apartment, Sarah Harmer
Boy Inside the Man, Tom Cochrane
Courage, The Tragically Hip
Cuts Like a Knife, Bryan Adams
Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen
Hasn't Hit Me Yet, Blue Rodeo
Helpless, Neil Young
Taking Care of Business, BTO
The Weight, The Band

Now I agree completely with those who think that setting out to compile a “Best of...” anything list in this age of global internet communication puts you on a par with lawyer Jimmy Stewart picking up a gun for the very first time and, without even taking off his apron, strolling out into the street and hollering, “Alright Liberty Valance, bring it on!” It makes you, in other words, a target, and immediately opens you, the compiler, to all sorts of, “OH COME ON! WHAT ABOUT...??” replies, retorts and outright abuse, depending on the responder’s passion.

In my case, my initial reply along those lines (abuse) was mitigated by the realization that a couple of those named songs I have never even heard of, and so really can’t be too critical. Maybe they’re musical dynamite! (At least I’ve heard of all the musicians, so I’m not entirely orbiting – tune-awareness-wise – out there beyond Pluto.)

But if one reversed the process and, instead of offering me a list and asking me to vote, asked me simply to name what I think is the “Best Canadian Song of All Time”, I would name a song that to me sums up a great many things about what it means to be Canadian. Making it singable, indeed popular, is a bonus. For me that song is...

(drum roll)

...

Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy. It transcends generations and remains surprisingly relevant to the times, regardless of when one hears it. After all, it began life as a celebration of what Lightfoot applauds as the single most symbolically unifying event in Canada’s history – the building of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway. And now, as we sit here in mid-2009, we look at the poignant story behind that still-mighty anthem and realize that Lightfoot has managed to make it resonant even today, when it is still the strongest single image of what it means to be Canadian.

Because, after all, that awesomely forged coast-to-coast ribbon of steel was a project that took thousands of foreign workers, brought them to Canada to work under inhumanly difficult, harsh, dangerous, even slave-labour-like conditions for ridiculously unfair wages – if the pittance they received could even be called a “wage” – on a scandal-riddled project that pretty much lined the pockets of federal and provincial corrupt, graft-driven politicians from coast to coast.

And I ask you, what could be more Canadian than that?

À la next time.