Overheard at a recent meeting of the OCTranspo Rider Vehicular Use Facilitation Group Committee meeting: “Maybe if we placed a large, proximity-activated wooden mallet above the door right beside the signs describing how to make it open…”
(OK, there’s no such group. Ergo, no such meeting and no such comment was “overheard”. In fact, my entire life is made up. With that disclaimer, back to the topic at hand.)
Where was I? Oh yes... if such a mallet were in place, it would have been of immense help to rider after rider after rider that I watched during a recent homeward-bound commute.
I have long been a user of public transportation. My earliest associated memories stem from 1959 or thereabouts when our family was posted overseas because Dad was then in the Royal Canadian Air Force. The school I attended was on the base. But the base was about ten miles from the residential area – the PMQs as they were known (for “Permanent Married Quarters”. And no, it was never explained to us if it was the quarters or the marriage that was supposed to be “permanent”.) At that time, the bus we rode – which was old enough that it probably ran French troops to the Maginot Line about two decades earlier – had a massive camel-hump cover inside the bus right beside the driver’s seat. Lifting it offered access to the motor. I also remember that the entire population of elementary-school riders always had to rush to the back of the bus whenever we came to this one hill, in order to position our collective weight above the back wheels and thus give our driver the traction he needed to complete the wheezy climb to the hilltop. (It was like that scene in “Das Boot” when the submarine’s crew had to rush forward to hasten the speed of the crash dive in an effort to escape the pursuing Allied destroyer’s depth charges. But I digress.)
Anyway, that was just to establish the legitimacy of my credentials as a public transportation critic.
OCTranspo is my present public transportation service of choice… Actually, to be completely truthful, their “choice” – since transit is, of course, a function of the city in which one lives. (“OC” refers to “Ottawa Carleton”.)
Their newest buses now have a different system of enabling passengers to open the rear door. More efficient? Nope. More confusing? Yep. More complicated? You bet. So why do it? Who the hell knows?
In the good old days (up to about a month ago), there were two ways to exit the bus by the rear door:
1. You the rider stood by the door. As the bus approached your stop, you stepped down onto the trigger step. When the bus stopped, a small green light above the door snapped on and the door opened. You stepped out. The door closed behind you (or behind whoever was the last exiting passenger);
2. You the rider stood by the door. As the bus approached your stop, you stepped down onto the trigger step and placed your hand on the vertical steel handle attached to the door. When the bus stopped, a small green light above the door snapped on and you pushed on the handle. The pressure caused the door to open. You stepped out and let go of the handle -- unless of course someone was behind you. In which case, you exhibited typical Canadian courtesy and held the door -- just until they were sufficiently through the gap that you could let go and have it whap shut on their shoulder, instead of right into their face. Then the door closed behind you (or behind whoever was the last exiting passenger).
Both these systems have worked incredibly well. For years in fact. So OCTranspo has decided this obviously won’t do. We are, they have concluded, a modern, technologically advanced society and therefore we require a modern, technologically advanced means by which passengers interact with their exit doors. Therefore, clearly the simple ones -- the ones whose operation has been understood for years by absolutely everyone over the age of two who rides a bus -- need to be replaced. (The doors, that is, not the passengers. Although if the fuming I saw recently indicates a coming storm of user complaint, I won’t be surprised to hear that OCTranspo also wants to replace the passengers.)
The new exit now requires that the passengers do the following: When the bus stops, you wait for the green light above the door to snap on (if they ever eliminate that green light, we are doomed to become a race of commuters who never get off the bus!) You then step forward towards the door and (are you ready for this?) you wave your hand about in the vicinity of the crack separating the door’s two halves. The theory is that by so doing, you apparently trigger some sort of sensor mechanism that sends a command to a mysterious onboard force that will obediently open the door for you. But wait! There’s more! As an alternative to waving your hand about in search of the mysterious photo-electric beam, there is a large circular sticker on the door, just above waist height, that says “Touch here to open the door.” You touch it and the door will open.
Now there is an interesting word, that: “Touch”. It’s just non-specific enough that it can mean anything, from: Gently brush as though manually executing a butterfly’s kiss all the way up to: Hurl yourself against it with enough force to breach a mediaeval portcullis. What it does NOT (and desperately needs to) add is, “and then let go”, or “stop touching”, or some well-chosen phrase that means, in plain English, disengage from your tactile contact. “Touch and let go,” would do it.
I can’t tell you how many would-be disembarkees I watched push on the door after the light went on, who then kept pushing, and for whom nothing happened. Time after time, they would yell at the driver, “Back door, please” only to have someone else on the bus yell, “Stop touching the door.” (“But the sign on the door says, ‘Touch’”. “Well yes, but you’re supposed to stop touching after you’ve touched it.” “But the sign on the door doesn’t say, ‘Touch and then stop touching…’” And so on.)
And you really do need to STOP touching the damned door after you’ve touched it, to make it open! If you don’t, it won’t. (Although remember that, alternatively, as another friendly sign advises even less helpfully, you can “Wave hand near door”.)
How do you wean – uneducate – a population of long-term commuters from the idea that if the door doesn’t open automatically, you apply pressure steadily on it (that'd be: you push) and it will? Because under the new system, the poor stupid door really just wants the very briefest of tactile or motion signs that you’re there. Don’t insist, the system demands of you. Just gently and quickly show me you’re in the exit neighbourhood. Nothing more.
For my part, I really see this as a perfect example of something that should have stayed in the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school. We had a system that worked, and everyone understood it. Now we have a system that works – but only to a very narrow set of specifically observed instructions, and rather muddily worded ones at that.
“Wave your hand in the vicinity of the door” ??? Well wave this, OC Transpo!
Monday, July 26, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004
Why am I not re-assured?
Recently, on what clearly was a slow news day, CBC-TV ran a story about the latest trend in tanning for those who didn’t want to expose themselves to the open-air wasteland of melanoma-forming nuclear toxicity we so carelessly refer to as “a warm sunny day”. Although the CBC rationalized what they presented by having the segment flagged as “health”, I noticed that it also offered them the opportunity for using lots and lots of shots of tanned, shapely and barely covered anatomy on beaches ranging from Vancouver BC to… West Vancouver, BC. (The rest of the country is still rather desperately searching for summer among the raging floodwaters of torrential downpours, it seems.)
Apparently, you can now get a tan by being hosed from forehead to feet by someone wielding an artist’s airbrush connected to a reservoir filled with a substance that goes by the warmly re-assuring label of dihydroxylacetone (DHA, for convenience’s sake). And they’ve even named the colours you can go for, with monikers like “Glamour Gold”, “Amber Mist”, “Bronzing Mist” and so on… although one product line rather disconcertingly also offers a 5-pack of “Corrector” applications. (“Oh, you didn’t want the ‘Shaka Zulu’ finish. No problem. Just bathe five times in our special ‘dip and strip’ formula…”)
“And it’s completely natural!” chirped a “consultant beautician”, whose plucked and pencilled eyebrows made it wincingly clear that she and “natural” had parted company somewhere back about the time John and Arlyn Phoenix were naming their kids River and Leaf.
So just for fun, I did some quick online hunts. Apparently DHA has cleared the US Food and Drug Administration’s testing processes. In fact, DHA is just about the only active ingredient they’ve officially approved for artificial tanning. Despite its relative newness in the vanity industry, its medical background has a significantly longer pedigree. According to the FAQ-finders on a website called “Sunless.com: Your sunless tanning guide”, DHA was observed to “turn the skin brown” by “some apparently sloppy German scientists in the 1920s”. The immediately beggared questions, (a) what were they actually looking for? and (b) what happened that led to their being labelled “sloppy”? sadly go unanswered.
(“Und zo, Hans, iff you vill vatch carefully, you vill zee how chust a small application uff a minute amount uff zis miracle ingredient on ze left front paw uff Heidi, ze laboratory schnauzer, vill… oops. Ach, mein gott in himmel!!!” And the very next morning a headline in the Dusseldorf Rheinische Post screamed: “Residents of Unteralpenshutzenfrieburgstrassesschnitzelhaven terrorized by gigantic but beautifully tanned dog!!!”)
After WWII, the substance was used to treat a condition called vitiligo, which apparently is sufficiently well-known that it merits its own foundation, called The National Vitiligo Foundation, oddly enough. Vitiligo is defined as “spontaneous irregular depigmentation of skin which can occur at any stage in life”.
(It strikes me here that this offers real potential for a major PR boost of ear-friendly nomenclature by someone who can make a lasting contribution to the future fight to find a cure for vitiligo – just like Lou Gehrig did for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Try them out – Vitiligo, or… Michael Jackson’s Disease? But I digress.)
And even more surprising, DHA itself can probably claim a legitimate connection to the “natural” label. It’s derived from a vegetable source -- “most likely sugar beets”, according to sunless.com; a “colourless 3-carbon sugar”, according to the New Zealand Dermatological Society. DermNet NZ, however, is not as unconditionally optimistic as sunless.com. The New Zealand derms note that DHA has “rarely” resulted in contact dermatitis.
But come on people, you’re spray-painting yourselves for heaven’s sake!
I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that someone once died from being spray-painted from head to toe. That’s true, right?
Oh, no, wait a minute… now I remember!
Actually, this whole stupid story made me realize just how right Carol Pope had it when she sang, “I’m a victim of fashion.”
- - - - - - - - - -
And finally, file this under “messing with your mind”:
My morning walk to work always takes me through a church parking lot where, during the week, several people park who work at the nearby Ottawa General Hospital. Friday morning, as I crossed the paved surface, I heard an appalling sound coming from the peak of the church roof – a sound that seemed to marry gagging on a partially swallowed chunk of chicken with the sound of someone breathing his last as the choking hands of a Ninja assassin complete their throttling. (To tell the truth, I’ve only ever really heard one of these sounds; the other – well, I confess I actually have to imagine how someone would sound if he was choking on a bite of chicken.)
Looking up, I saw an adult crow being chased along the church’s roofline by two juvenile crows. The sound came from the kids, who even though big enough to chase down their own food, clearly still had not let go of the concept of parental feeding and were demanding breakfast as only crows can.
Meanwhile, one of the hospital workers had just exited her car and was crossing the parking lot when the young birds’ strangled cries got her attention as well. She looked up as I got close enough to her to say, “It’s a good thing crows are such huge birds because they sure can’t sing worth a damn!”
She replied “That’s… uh, right,” and my last view of her was one of a somewhat perplexed expression as she started pondering what possible impact either a reduction in size or an improved song voice would make on enhancing the position of the lowly crow in the bird world’s… well, (*ahem*) pecking order.
When I got to work I had coffee.
Recently, on what clearly was a slow news day, CBC-TV ran a story about the latest trend in tanning for those who didn’t want to expose themselves to the open-air wasteland of melanoma-forming nuclear toxicity we so carelessly refer to as “a warm sunny day”. Although the CBC rationalized what they presented by having the segment flagged as “health”, I noticed that it also offered them the opportunity for using lots and lots of shots of tanned, shapely and barely covered anatomy on beaches ranging from Vancouver BC to… West Vancouver, BC. (The rest of the country is still rather desperately searching for summer among the raging floodwaters of torrential downpours, it seems.)
Apparently, you can now get a tan by being hosed from forehead to feet by someone wielding an artist’s airbrush connected to a reservoir filled with a substance that goes by the warmly re-assuring label of dihydroxylacetone (DHA, for convenience’s sake). And they’ve even named the colours you can go for, with monikers like “Glamour Gold”, “Amber Mist”, “Bronzing Mist” and so on… although one product line rather disconcertingly also offers a 5-pack of “Corrector” applications. (“Oh, you didn’t want the ‘Shaka Zulu’ finish. No problem. Just bathe five times in our special ‘dip and strip’ formula…”)
“And it’s completely natural!” chirped a “consultant beautician”, whose plucked and pencilled eyebrows made it wincingly clear that she and “natural” had parted company somewhere back about the time John and Arlyn Phoenix were naming their kids River and Leaf.
So just for fun, I did some quick online hunts. Apparently DHA has cleared the US Food and Drug Administration’s testing processes. In fact, DHA is just about the only active ingredient they’ve officially approved for artificial tanning. Despite its relative newness in the vanity industry, its medical background has a significantly longer pedigree. According to the FAQ-finders on a website called “Sunless.com: Your sunless tanning guide”, DHA was observed to “turn the skin brown” by “some apparently sloppy German scientists in the 1920s”. The immediately beggared questions, (a) what were they actually looking for? and (b) what happened that led to their being labelled “sloppy”? sadly go unanswered.
(“Und zo, Hans, iff you vill vatch carefully, you vill zee how chust a small application uff a minute amount uff zis miracle ingredient on ze left front paw uff Heidi, ze laboratory schnauzer, vill… oops. Ach, mein gott in himmel!!!” And the very next morning a headline in the Dusseldorf Rheinische Post screamed: “Residents of Unteralpenshutzenfrieburgstrassesschnitzelhaven terrorized by gigantic but beautifully tanned dog!!!”)
After WWII, the substance was used to treat a condition called vitiligo, which apparently is sufficiently well-known that it merits its own foundation, called The National Vitiligo Foundation, oddly enough. Vitiligo is defined as “spontaneous irregular depigmentation of skin which can occur at any stage in life”.
(It strikes me here that this offers real potential for a major PR boost of ear-friendly nomenclature by someone who can make a lasting contribution to the future fight to find a cure for vitiligo – just like Lou Gehrig did for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Try them out – Vitiligo, or… Michael Jackson’s Disease? But I digress.)
And even more surprising, DHA itself can probably claim a legitimate connection to the “natural” label. It’s derived from a vegetable source -- “most likely sugar beets”, according to sunless.com; a “colourless 3-carbon sugar”, according to the New Zealand Dermatological Society. DermNet NZ, however, is not as unconditionally optimistic as sunless.com. The New Zealand derms note that DHA has “rarely” resulted in contact dermatitis.
But come on people, you’re spray-painting yourselves for heaven’s sake!
I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that someone once died from being spray-painted from head to toe. That’s true, right?
Oh, no, wait a minute… now I remember!
Actually, this whole stupid story made me realize just how right Carol Pope had it when she sang, “I’m a victim of fashion.”
- - - - - - - - - -
And finally, file this under “messing with your mind”:
My morning walk to work always takes me through a church parking lot where, during the week, several people park who work at the nearby Ottawa General Hospital. Friday morning, as I crossed the paved surface, I heard an appalling sound coming from the peak of the church roof – a sound that seemed to marry gagging on a partially swallowed chunk of chicken with the sound of someone breathing his last as the choking hands of a Ninja assassin complete their throttling. (To tell the truth, I’ve only ever really heard one of these sounds; the other – well, I confess I actually have to imagine how someone would sound if he was choking on a bite of chicken.)
Looking up, I saw an adult crow being chased along the church’s roofline by two juvenile crows. The sound came from the kids, who even though big enough to chase down their own food, clearly still had not let go of the concept of parental feeding and were demanding breakfast as only crows can.
Meanwhile, one of the hospital workers had just exited her car and was crossing the parking lot when the young birds’ strangled cries got her attention as well. She looked up as I got close enough to her to say, “It’s a good thing crows are such huge birds because they sure can’t sing worth a damn!”
She replied “That’s… uh, right,” and my last view of her was one of a somewhat perplexed expression as she started pondering what possible impact either a reduction in size or an improved song voice would make on enhancing the position of the lowly crow in the bird world’s… well, (*ahem*) pecking order.
When I got to work I had coffee.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Inventors and scientists call it the “Eureka!” moment.
I think this example is more appropriately called a “Hallelujah!” or “Thank God! It’s about time!” moment, but whatever you want to call it, it looks like the mighty Rogers Communications has just experienced one.
For the past four months at least, I have been faithfully returning to Rogers, each and every night, one enormous attachment-laden message containing all the spam e-mails that have landed that day in my Rogers e-mailbox. I estimate – conservatively – that Rogers has received from me no fewer than (four and a half months, say 140 days or so, X a minimum of 85 messages per day = at least 11,900) messages. I have titled each night’s transmission “Unsolicited bulk e-mail for [Date]” and the message body has been the same few simple words: “Return to originating ISP – Rogers.com.”
Yes, it’s anal; yes, it’s inconvenient. But my earliest communications with Rogers on the subject had always led down precisely the same dead-end street. They sent me a canned “How to prevent unwanted e-mails” reply instead of opening a dialogue. The gist of their advice was that the arrival of spam in my e-mail was entirely my doing. “Never reply to a spammer,” they said. “Never leave your e-mail address where it can be harvested by a spammer,” they added helpfully.
Never was there even a whisper of an acknowledgement that their “firewalls” were non-existent or that they were hoping to review and improve their system. That tacit refusal to accept any responsibility at all for sending me all these unsolicited messages, some with incredibly vulgar subject lines and preview windows filled with images that used to be seen only by shuffling old men in badly-fitting raincoats – or any responsibility for considering anything that might reduce the blight of garbage emanating from their service – is what set me on the road to returning (to date) almost 12,000 spams to them.
So a few weeks ago, I noted a media announcement of Rogers’ forthcoming merger with Yahoo and thought, “Oh &%#$@!!! GREAT!”, because Yahoo has always been a source of a large percentage of the spam that pours into my Rogers address. But then I received a message from Rogers that announced, as a part of the merger process, they were going to initiate a new series of moves aimed at reducing spam.
Uh huh, I muttered darkly. Sure you will.
Well the day before Bastille Day 2004 (Mark your calendars!), Rogers might in fact have actually taken a worthwhile step up the scaling ladder from which to storm the walls of Fortress Spam. About halfway through the day, according to the time signature on the spam messages I received that day, the indication “[Bulk]” began to appear as the first word of each spam’s subject line. I actually sat and stared at it, dumfounded.
Simple. Elegant. Effective.
Shortly after dinner, I opened my “Message rules” option and created a simple new rule: each message with “[Bulk]” appearing in its subject line was to be consigned to my “Delete” folder. Then I waited. As the day ran its inexorable course to midnight, I checked once or twice and, sure enough, everything Rogers had marked as a “[Bulk]” message was being automatically transferred to my “Delete” folder.
That’s when I had my “Thank God! It’s about time!” Rogers moment. I was so delighted, I didn’t even send my usual late-evening “Return to sender” message – for the first time since March 1st, give or take an Ides.
Now at this point, logical thinkers are logically thinking, “Well you idiot, why didn’t you just buy a mail guard program and set up the spam / bulk dumping yourself?” In fact, I had thought of that. I even did quite a bit of online reading about some of the almost infinite variety of spam-blocking software out there, from the Cadillacs that would block even a whisper of “Spam” no louder than the proverbial mouse peeing on a cotton ball, to the ones that are essentially Freeware and require you to choose from among all sorts of active (“Block this sender”) vs passive (“Block everything except messages specifically addressed to me”) variations.
But to me, that reflects the whole problem I have with spam. It puts all the onus on the end-user client – and none on the service provider – to solve the problem. At its most extreme, my accepting that solution would be to accept the blame for all the spam arriving in my e-mail. But what I have always maintained with Rogers is that they should be capable of intercepting the vast majority of crap like this before it even leaves their servers. Especially ones with obscenity-laced subject lines and front-page hardcore pornographic images.
So I’ll give this “[Bulk]” flagging a chance. Based on very early results, it looks promising. Some crap is getting through; but it’s a small fraction of the former total, and my system is industriously trashing everything that Rogers pre-identifies as “[Bulk]”.
My suspicion is that the spammers will quickly clue in and come up with ways to defeat it. But in the meantime, both Rogers and I can enjoy the holiday from my “Return to Sender” campaign.
- - - - - - - - -
Finally, here are a couple of footnotes about a couple of footnotes from a book I’m reading by Simon Winchester, entitled “The Map That Changed the World”:
1.
“Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin, along with Josiah Wedgewood and James Watt, were all Lunaticks, members of Birmingham’s Lunar Society, which met monthly on the occasion of the full moon. Freethinking, radical ideas were welcomed by a group that was principally involved in applying scientific discovery to the newly flourishing world of industry.”
Priestly was one of discoverers of oxygen; Darwin was to sire the man who would sire Charles (Erasmus was himself a respected physician, a well known poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and a believer in the evolutionary development of species); Wedgewood not only designed pottery, he brought industrialization to its manufacture; and Watt, of course, invented the steam engine, which drove air and water pumps that permitted coal mines to be sunk to hitherto unthinkable depths below the surface.
For the record, at that time, “freethinking, radical ideas” included what Winchester calls “spiritual gymnastics” – challenging (and consequently being branded a heretic) the widely promulgated Church “research” by Irish Bishop James Ussher that the world had been created at precisely 9:00 am, October 3rd, 4004 BC, and that fossils were created at the same time by God as a demonstration that He could make anything, including objects that appeared to make the world look older than Ussher said it was.
Every age should all be possessed of such “lunaticks”.
2.
I have read articles speculating about how swiftly the end came for one entire epoch when dinosaurs ruled the planet. Some scholars and Disney filmmakers have postulated a cataclysmic event on the order of a very large meteor strike on Earth that effectively terminated all sun-dependent life at a stroke. But I had no idea just how blindingly swift the end must have been until I read the following in the same book. In a different footnote, Winchester describes a quirky little extra noted in the discovery in 1820 by Mary Anning, a highly regarded amateur woman paleontologist of the day, of Britain’s first large aquatic fossil, a plesiosaur.
“More charming still her discovery that, lodged above its pelvic bone, right where its colon would have passed, was a newly formed coprolite, a fossilized version of the item that, had it lived, the beast was just about to leave steaming in its wake.”
One can almost imagine the scene. Two teenaged plesiosaurs are swimming up and down the boulevards in front of the local underwater hangouts, cruising the coral malls for nubile young plesiosauresses, when one abruptly looks up at the sudden appearance of an impossibly bright flash in the sky -- above and outside their aquatic world. “Uh oh,” he says to his buddy, “That could be trouble.” His friend, also looking up, responds with paleontology’s – and the world’s – first-ever appearance of irony.
“No shit,” he blurts out.
Literally, as Ms Anning would find out countless millennia later.
I think this example is more appropriately called a “Hallelujah!” or “Thank God! It’s about time!” moment, but whatever you want to call it, it looks like the mighty Rogers Communications has just experienced one.
For the past four months at least, I have been faithfully returning to Rogers, each and every night, one enormous attachment-laden message containing all the spam e-mails that have landed that day in my Rogers e-mailbox. I estimate – conservatively – that Rogers has received from me no fewer than (four and a half months, say 140 days or so, X a minimum of 85 messages per day = at least 11,900) messages. I have titled each night’s transmission “Unsolicited bulk e-mail for [Date]” and the message body has been the same few simple words: “Return to originating ISP – Rogers.com.”
Yes, it’s anal; yes, it’s inconvenient. But my earliest communications with Rogers on the subject had always led down precisely the same dead-end street. They sent me a canned “How to prevent unwanted e-mails” reply instead of opening a dialogue. The gist of their advice was that the arrival of spam in my e-mail was entirely my doing. “Never reply to a spammer,” they said. “Never leave your e-mail address where it can be harvested by a spammer,” they added helpfully.
Never was there even a whisper of an acknowledgement that their “firewalls” were non-existent or that they were hoping to review and improve their system. That tacit refusal to accept any responsibility at all for sending me all these unsolicited messages, some with incredibly vulgar subject lines and preview windows filled with images that used to be seen only by shuffling old men in badly-fitting raincoats – or any responsibility for considering anything that might reduce the blight of garbage emanating from their service – is what set me on the road to returning (to date) almost 12,000 spams to them.
So a few weeks ago, I noted a media announcement of Rogers’ forthcoming merger with Yahoo and thought, “Oh &%#$@!!! GREAT!”, because Yahoo has always been a source of a large percentage of the spam that pours into my Rogers address. But then I received a message from Rogers that announced, as a part of the merger process, they were going to initiate a new series of moves aimed at reducing spam.
Uh huh, I muttered darkly. Sure you will.
Well the day before Bastille Day 2004 (Mark your calendars!), Rogers might in fact have actually taken a worthwhile step up the scaling ladder from which to storm the walls of Fortress Spam. About halfway through the day, according to the time signature on the spam messages I received that day, the indication “[Bulk]” began to appear as the first word of each spam’s subject line. I actually sat and stared at it, dumfounded.
Simple. Elegant. Effective.
Shortly after dinner, I opened my “Message rules” option and created a simple new rule: each message with “[Bulk]” appearing in its subject line was to be consigned to my “Delete” folder. Then I waited. As the day ran its inexorable course to midnight, I checked once or twice and, sure enough, everything Rogers had marked as a “[Bulk]” message was being automatically transferred to my “Delete” folder.
That’s when I had my “Thank God! It’s about time!” Rogers moment. I was so delighted, I didn’t even send my usual late-evening “Return to sender” message – for the first time since March 1st, give or take an Ides.
Now at this point, logical thinkers are logically thinking, “Well you idiot, why didn’t you just buy a mail guard program and set up the spam / bulk dumping yourself?” In fact, I had thought of that. I even did quite a bit of online reading about some of the almost infinite variety of spam-blocking software out there, from the Cadillacs that would block even a whisper of “Spam” no louder than the proverbial mouse peeing on a cotton ball, to the ones that are essentially Freeware and require you to choose from among all sorts of active (“Block this sender”) vs passive (“Block everything except messages specifically addressed to me”) variations.
But to me, that reflects the whole problem I have with spam. It puts all the onus on the end-user client – and none on the service provider – to solve the problem. At its most extreme, my accepting that solution would be to accept the blame for all the spam arriving in my e-mail. But what I have always maintained with Rogers is that they should be capable of intercepting the vast majority of crap like this before it even leaves their servers. Especially ones with obscenity-laced subject lines and front-page hardcore pornographic images.
So I’ll give this “[Bulk]” flagging a chance. Based on very early results, it looks promising. Some crap is getting through; but it’s a small fraction of the former total, and my system is industriously trashing everything that Rogers pre-identifies as “[Bulk]”.
My suspicion is that the spammers will quickly clue in and come up with ways to defeat it. But in the meantime, both Rogers and I can enjoy the holiday from my “Return to Sender” campaign.
- - - - - - - - -
Finally, here are a couple of footnotes about a couple of footnotes from a book I’m reading by Simon Winchester, entitled “The Map That Changed the World”:
1.
“Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin, along with Josiah Wedgewood and James Watt, were all Lunaticks, members of Birmingham’s Lunar Society, which met monthly on the occasion of the full moon. Freethinking, radical ideas were welcomed by a group that was principally involved in applying scientific discovery to the newly flourishing world of industry.”
Priestly was one of discoverers of oxygen; Darwin was to sire the man who would sire Charles (Erasmus was himself a respected physician, a well known poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and a believer in the evolutionary development of species); Wedgewood not only designed pottery, he brought industrialization to its manufacture; and Watt, of course, invented the steam engine, which drove air and water pumps that permitted coal mines to be sunk to hitherto unthinkable depths below the surface.
For the record, at that time, “freethinking, radical ideas” included what Winchester calls “spiritual gymnastics” – challenging (and consequently being branded a heretic) the widely promulgated Church “research” by Irish Bishop James Ussher that the world had been created at precisely 9:00 am, October 3rd, 4004 BC, and that fossils were created at the same time by God as a demonstration that He could make anything, including objects that appeared to make the world look older than Ussher said it was.
Every age should all be possessed of such “lunaticks”.
2.
I have read articles speculating about how swiftly the end came for one entire epoch when dinosaurs ruled the planet. Some scholars and Disney filmmakers have postulated a cataclysmic event on the order of a very large meteor strike on Earth that effectively terminated all sun-dependent life at a stroke. But I had no idea just how blindingly swift the end must have been until I read the following in the same book. In a different footnote, Winchester describes a quirky little extra noted in the discovery in 1820 by Mary Anning, a highly regarded amateur woman paleontologist of the day, of Britain’s first large aquatic fossil, a plesiosaur.
“More charming still her discovery that, lodged above its pelvic bone, right where its colon would have passed, was a newly formed coprolite, a fossilized version of the item that, had it lived, the beast was just about to leave steaming in its wake.”
One can almost imagine the scene. Two teenaged plesiosaurs are swimming up and down the boulevards in front of the local underwater hangouts, cruising the coral malls for nubile young plesiosauresses, when one abruptly looks up at the sudden appearance of an impossibly bright flash in the sky -- above and outside their aquatic world. “Uh oh,” he says to his buddy, “That could be trouble.” His friend, also looking up, responds with paleontology’s – and the world’s – first-ever appearance of irony.
“No shit,” he blurts out.
Literally, as Ms Anning would find out countless millennia later.
Monday, July 12, 2004
At work, I am now officially a “Stair Warden (Back-up)”, the result of a recent series of exchanges that culminated in my volunteering to help out “however you think you can use me” with the authoritatively named “12TH FLOOR BUILDING EMERGENCY ORGANIZATION TEAM”.
So I am a back-up stair warden. But despite the title, apparently this does not mean I race to the stairwells and order descending people from 13 and 14 to go “back up”. No, I am the emergency warden equivalent of a bench-warmer.
In a nutshell, this means that when a general alarm sounds and it is not a drill (and assuming, of course, that someone in front of me on the list of stair wardens is away and I as back-up am called into action) that I am responsible for aggressively touring around some as-yet-to-be designated chunk of the 12th floor. I snuffle around like a truffle hog spying out miscreants who prefer not to have to descend 12 flights of a stairwell – whose population increases exponentially the closer you get to the bottom – until they actually smell smoke. I am to urge everyone to get to the nearest stairwell and exit the building.
To help me achieve this end, I have been given an armband and a flashlight. The armband is a six-inch wide strip of velcro-fastened evil-looking black nylon around which has been sewn a two-inch wide fluorescent yellow stripe that apparently will leap into view when the headlights of an approaching fire truck illuminate it. (I say “apparently” because I am aware of no test yet devised that has married the requirements of darkness and a fire truck’s headlights… on the 12th floor… to validate the claim of luminosity attributed to the armband.)
According to my sheet of instructions, I am also expected to “record all incidents”, a euphemistic instruction in print that, as it was explained verbally to me, means “get the name of anyone who refuses to leave”. Apparently I am not supposed to club them about the head with my flashlight in an effort to reduce the volume of incident reporting required of me. (Although, again, that is not actually written down. In fact, the “how” mechanics of completing the instruction to “have floor occupants evacuate” seem to be left pretty much to the volunteers.)
So let’s see now… I have the rudiments of a uniform and the authority to stomp around demanding that people get out as quickly as possible, even to seek them out in order to ensure they are told to leave. I can’t quite hurl them from the building, but the whole position and all of its responsibilities, duly assigned and bureaucratically conveyed to us, the volunteers, for some reason ring a vague bell of recollection…
Where have I seen just such a fulfilling and important job portrayed before? Oh yes, I remember…
…
“Resistance is useless!”
“Oh give it a rest,” said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.
“Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked suddenly.
The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his face.
“Enjoy?” he boomed. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” said Ford, “is does it give you a full satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships...”
The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, “Well the hours are good...”
“They'd have to be,” agreed Ford.
Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
“Ford, what are you doing?” he asked in an amazed whisper.
“Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?” he said. “So the hours are pretty good then?” he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except...” he thought again, which required looking at the ceiling – “except some of the shouting I quite like.” He filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is...”
“Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you're good at that, I can tell. But if it's mostly lousy,” he said, slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”
“Er...” said the guard, “er ...\ er ... I dunno. I think I just sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon - you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium...”
“There you are Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, “you think you've got problems.”
Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much.
“Try and understand his problem,” insisted Ford. “Here he is poor lad, his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships...”
“And shouting,” added the guard.
“And shouting, sure,” said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his neck in friendly condescension, “...and he doesn't even know why he's doing it!”
Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
“Well. Now you put it like that I suppose...”
“Good lad!” encouraged Ford.
“But alright,” went on the rumblings, “so what's the alternative?”
“Well,” said Ford, brightly but slowly, “stop doing it of course! Tell them,” he went on, “you're not going to do it anymore.” He felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.
“Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...” said the guard, “erm, well that doesn't sound that great to me.”
Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
“Now wait a minute,” he said, “that's just the start you see, there's more to it than that you see...”
But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his original purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously quite touched.
”No, I think if it's all the same to you,'' he said, ``I'd better get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other bits of shouting I've got to do.”
It wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all.
“Come on now ... but look!” he said, less slowly, less brightly.
“Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn ...” said Arthur without any clear inflection.
“But hang on,” pursued Ford, “there's music and art and things to tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!”
“Resistance is useless,” bellowed the guard, and then added, “You see if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know.”
They had now reached the airlock - a large circular steel hatchway of massive strength and weight let into the inner skin of the craft. The guard operated a control and the hatchway swung smoothly open.
“But thanks for taking an interest,” said the Vogon guard. “Bye now.” He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the small chamber within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford scrambled round and flung his shoulder uselessly against the reclosing hatchway.
“But listen,” he shouted to the guard, “there's a whole world you don't know anything about ... here how about this?'' Desperately he grabbed for the only bit of culture he knew offhand - he hummed the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth.
“Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?”
“No,'' said the guard, “not really. But I'll mention it to my aunt.”
(A pivotal scene in, of course, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, by the late, much lamented Douglas Adams)
And finally, for people clamouring for one more illustration of the differences between Britons and Americans (you know who you are!), I will relate the following. (I assume the reader has a passing familiarity with the concept of a television show called “Antiques Roadshow” and might also be aware there has been a US version of the show for some time.)
Recently I was late-night surfing and paused at a segment of the US version where an evaluator was going on and on about what a magnificent specimen of a certain type of desk that a woman had brought in. After the evaluator highlighted all its features, she happily informed the owner she could reasonably expect to receive about $15,000 for it at auction. At this point in the British version of the show, the owner usually gets giddily surprised and registers anything from a “Gasp!” of euphoria to an understated but no less shocked, “Oh my!”
Well in the US version I was watching, the owner promptly moved closer to her desk, pulled open one of its wing doors and proceeded to start arguing with the evaluator based on some online research she’d done which suggested hers was an especially unique version of the desk model in question. The evaluator quietly, but rather firmly, clenched her teeth and waited out the owner’s arguments before essentially repeating her first assessment.
But you could just tell that what she really wanted to say was something like, “Well perhaps you should take the bloody thing to E-Bay and flog it with the 'Special Collector’s Edition' cellphones then, instead of bringing it to a professional!”
So I am a back-up stair warden. But despite the title, apparently this does not mean I race to the stairwells and order descending people from 13 and 14 to go “back up”. No, I am the emergency warden equivalent of a bench-warmer.
In a nutshell, this means that when a general alarm sounds and it is not a drill (and assuming, of course, that someone in front of me on the list of stair wardens is away and I as back-up am called into action) that I am responsible for aggressively touring around some as-yet-to-be designated chunk of the 12th floor. I snuffle around like a truffle hog spying out miscreants who prefer not to have to descend 12 flights of a stairwell – whose population increases exponentially the closer you get to the bottom – until they actually smell smoke. I am to urge everyone to get to the nearest stairwell and exit the building.
To help me achieve this end, I have been given an armband and a flashlight. The armband is a six-inch wide strip of velcro-fastened evil-looking black nylon around which has been sewn a two-inch wide fluorescent yellow stripe that apparently will leap into view when the headlights of an approaching fire truck illuminate it. (I say “apparently” because I am aware of no test yet devised that has married the requirements of darkness and a fire truck’s headlights… on the 12th floor… to validate the claim of luminosity attributed to the armband.)
According to my sheet of instructions, I am also expected to “record all incidents”, a euphemistic instruction in print that, as it was explained verbally to me, means “get the name of anyone who refuses to leave”. Apparently I am not supposed to club them about the head with my flashlight in an effort to reduce the volume of incident reporting required of me. (Although, again, that is not actually written down. In fact, the “how” mechanics of completing the instruction to “have floor occupants evacuate” seem to be left pretty much to the volunteers.)
So let’s see now… I have the rudiments of a uniform and the authority to stomp around demanding that people get out as quickly as possible, even to seek them out in order to ensure they are told to leave. I can’t quite hurl them from the building, but the whole position and all of its responsibilities, duly assigned and bureaucratically conveyed to us, the volunteers, for some reason ring a vague bell of recollection…
Where have I seen just such a fulfilling and important job portrayed before? Oh yes, I remember…
…
“Resistance is useless!”
“Oh give it a rest,” said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.
“Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked suddenly.
The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his face.
“Enjoy?” he boomed. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” said Ford, “is does it give you a full satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships...”
The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, “Well the hours are good...”
“They'd have to be,” agreed Ford.
Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
“Ford, what are you doing?” he asked in an amazed whisper.
“Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?” he said. “So the hours are pretty good then?” he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except...” he thought again, which required looking at the ceiling – “except some of the shouting I quite like.” He filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is...”
“Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you're good at that, I can tell. But if it's mostly lousy,” he said, slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”
“Er...” said the guard, “er ...\ er ... I dunno. I think I just sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon - you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium...”
“There you are Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, “you think you've got problems.”
Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much.
“Try and understand his problem,” insisted Ford. “Here he is poor lad, his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships...”
“And shouting,” added the guard.
“And shouting, sure,” said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his neck in friendly condescension, “...and he doesn't even know why he's doing it!”
Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
“Well. Now you put it like that I suppose...”
“Good lad!” encouraged Ford.
“But alright,” went on the rumblings, “so what's the alternative?”
“Well,” said Ford, brightly but slowly, “stop doing it of course! Tell them,” he went on, “you're not going to do it anymore.” He felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.
“Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...” said the guard, “erm, well that doesn't sound that great to me.”
Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
“Now wait a minute,” he said, “that's just the start you see, there's more to it than that you see...”
But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his original purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously quite touched.
”No, I think if it's all the same to you,'' he said, ``I'd better get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other bits of shouting I've got to do.”
It wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all.
“Come on now ... but look!” he said, less slowly, less brightly.
“Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn ...” said Arthur without any clear inflection.
“But hang on,” pursued Ford, “there's music and art and things to tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!”
“Resistance is useless,” bellowed the guard, and then added, “You see if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know.”
They had now reached the airlock - a large circular steel hatchway of massive strength and weight let into the inner skin of the craft. The guard operated a control and the hatchway swung smoothly open.
“But thanks for taking an interest,” said the Vogon guard. “Bye now.” He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the small chamber within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford scrambled round and flung his shoulder uselessly against the reclosing hatchway.
“But listen,” he shouted to the guard, “there's a whole world you don't know anything about ... here how about this?'' Desperately he grabbed for the only bit of culture he knew offhand - he hummed the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth.
“Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?”
“No,'' said the guard, “not really. But I'll mention it to my aunt.”
(A pivotal scene in, of course, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, by the late, much lamented Douglas Adams)
And finally, for people clamouring for one more illustration of the differences between Britons and Americans (you know who you are!), I will relate the following. (I assume the reader has a passing familiarity with the concept of a television show called “Antiques Roadshow” and might also be aware there has been a US version of the show for some time.)
Recently I was late-night surfing and paused at a segment of the US version where an evaluator was going on and on about what a magnificent specimen of a certain type of desk that a woman had brought in. After the evaluator highlighted all its features, she happily informed the owner she could reasonably expect to receive about $15,000 for it at auction. At this point in the British version of the show, the owner usually gets giddily surprised and registers anything from a “Gasp!” of euphoria to an understated but no less shocked, “Oh my!”
Well in the US version I was watching, the owner promptly moved closer to her desk, pulled open one of its wing doors and proceeded to start arguing with the evaluator based on some online research she’d done which suggested hers was an especially unique version of the desk model in question. The evaluator quietly, but rather firmly, clenched her teeth and waited out the owner’s arguments before essentially repeating her first assessment.
But you could just tell that what she really wanted to say was something like, “Well perhaps you should take the bloody thing to E-Bay and flog it with the 'Special Collector’s Edition' cellphones then, instead of bringing it to a professional!”
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Just for closure* on the story of the UNB’s atrocious treatment of the blind would-be English immersion student and his unilingual guide dog, Pavot. I was so moved by the tale (wagged, you might say), that the following spilled from my pen:
* It was either this or bring in the grief counsellors.
(You are required to recall the music to the late Jim Croce’s signature tune, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”.)
Well the South side of New Brunswick
Is home to U-N-B
And if you go down there
You better just beware
Of a place where the French dogs pee
Now Pavot's more than trouble
You see, he stand about two foot four
All those down-town bitches
Call him big black lover
All the boy-dogs call him Sir
{Refrain}
And he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Now Pavot, he's a guide dog
And he likes his harness lead
And he likes to wear
His INCA vest
(Just don’t say C-N-I-B!)
He's got a master with a white cane
Who's got a Braille guide in his hand
He's got a yen to learn
how to speak “Hainglish”
But that don’t mean Pavot can
{Refrain}
And he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Well, Friday 'bout a week ago
Pavot went to Registry Hall
And at the door to the U
When they heard, “Allez mon chou”
They told him “Go back to St Paul”
Well, they found out that a blind guy
With a big black friendly pup
Knows how to make the best
Of a sympathetic press
That’ll lap this stuff right up.
{Refrain}
But he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Well, those two sides took to fightin'
And when they got into the news
Pavot looked like
a saint in black
And the U looked like dog-pooped shoes.
Cause he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Yeah, he was bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Fin
- - - - - - -
And I can’t resist leaving the very last word on this to a University of Ottawa law professor who is either dryly brilliant (my guess) or accidentally hilarious. The Globe and Mail wrapped it up on their July 8th front page and buried deep in their story was the following short paragraph:
"Prof. McIntyre, a law professor and director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, questioned the university's argument that it was compromising the success of its English-immersion program. 'That sounds pretty dogmatic to me.'"
* It was either this or bring in the grief counsellors.
(You are required to recall the music to the late Jim Croce’s signature tune, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”.)
Well the South side of New Brunswick
Is home to U-N-B
And if you go down there
You better just beware
Of a place where the French dogs pee
Now Pavot's more than trouble
You see, he stand about two foot four
All those down-town bitches
Call him big black lover
All the boy-dogs call him Sir
{Refrain}
And he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Now Pavot, he's a guide dog
And he likes his harness lead
And he likes to wear
His INCA vest
(Just don’t say C-N-I-B!)
He's got a master with a white cane
Who's got a Braille guide in his hand
He's got a yen to learn
how to speak “Hainglish”
But that don’t mean Pavot can
{Refrain}
And he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Well, Friday 'bout a week ago
Pavot went to Registry Hall
And at the door to the U
When they heard, “Allez mon chou”
They told him “Go back to St Paul”
Well, they found out that a blind guy
With a big black friendly pup
Knows how to make the best
Of a sympathetic press
That’ll lap this stuff right up.
{Refrain}
But he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Well, those two sides took to fightin'
And when they got into the news
Pavot looked like
a saint in black
And the U looked like dog-pooped shoes.
Cause he's bad, bad Pavot black
Baddest dog in the whole damn pack
Bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Yeah, he was bad enough to bark francais
But even meaner when he growls anglais
Fin
- - - - - - -
And I can’t resist leaving the very last word on this to a University of Ottawa law professor who is either dryly brilliant (my guess) or accidentally hilarious. The Globe and Mail wrapped it up on their July 8th front page and buried deep in their story was the following short paragraph:
"Prof. McIntyre, a law professor and director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, questioned the university's argument that it was compromising the success of its English-immersion program. 'That sounds pretty dogmatic to me.'"
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
It must be the silly season. Two stories that vaulted to the front pages today make me think so.
As Rod Serling would have said, “Submitted for your approval…”
1. Like any large government, the Government of Ontario is also responsible for a massive program that pays welfare and disability benefits to a great many people in this province. Recently, it was revealed that a computer system, which supposedly is capable of handling the program’s administration, is in fact utterly incapable of coping with the Government’s recent announcement that it will increase payments for both these programs by 3%.
It all sounds perfectly in tune with current general government philosophy that dictates no problem is so small that it can’t be made vastly more cumbersome and expensive to resolve. From the Toronto Star (July 7th): “People who have to work with the system have said it is confusing and takes hours to make even the smallest adjustments. ‘In creating this massive system (they) that made it so damn convoluted that it takes hours to make even the most minor change,’ said a former caseworker, who added that it is so difficult to retrieve information that fraud cases have been dropped because necessary evidence can't be found in the computer. Another government insider confided that the system is so time consuming that caseworkers are prevented from spending precious minutes with welfare and disability recipients.”
The numbers? Program development + staffing + training (so far): $500 million. First estimate of the costs to tinker with the computer program to accommodate the 3% increase: $20 million. Other contracts held by the computer company in question (Accenture / formerly Anderson Consulting): Governments of Alberta and New Brunswick, and the CBC. Complete details on tonight’s eleven o’clock news… except for viewers in Alberta and New Brunswick. Oh, and only on CTV.
2. The University of New Brunswick has refused to accept a blind candidate into its apparently vaunted English immersion program because his guide dog responds only to commands in French. Apparently the rules of this course are so strict that even when students phone home, they are required to speak English – never mind that family members on the other end of the phone might not understand a single word they are saying. There is simply no way for the University to come out of this looking like anything other than tunnel-visioned bureaucrats, I’m afraid.
Asked to comment, Pavot, the French-trained black lab in question, replied “Le woof?”
The story recalls the (probably apocryphal) parrot tale a few years back, variously attributed to a range of roots, from “the truth” to no less venerable a source than the late Mordecai Richler. But live on it does, witness this citation of an “Anglo” report at a website calling itself (albeit en français) the “daily voice for an independent Quebec”, and which is dedicated to, among other things, maintaining “vigilance” over threats to the French language in that province. (This report is apparently presented on this site as an example of the Anglo sneering that greets efforts to protect the French tongue. Although in this case the source probably embarrasses as many, if not more, English Canadians as it angers those who are French. It comes from something called the Citizens Centre Report, whose motto is “Pushing Anglo Supremacy on Ignorant Canadians is What we Do Best!”):
“Francophones continue driving English-speakers from Quebec while expanding French usage across Canada (...) In perhaps the most extreme example of language-police zealousness, Mr. Kalasatidis reports, ‘A pet store owner was threatened with fines because a parrot spoke to customers in English only.’ As a result of such harassment, he says, ‘The strategy has worked, and hundreds of thousands of English have left Quebec.’" (http://www.vigile.net/ds-langue/index-canada.html)
UPDATE: Now here’s a shocker. By day’s end, news coverage of the UNB story, which in one day has circumnavigated the globe and appeared in forums like the Times of India, the BBC and the Washington Times, was announcing the following:
(Canadian Press) “University to allow in French-only guide dog: FREDERICTON — The University of New Brunswick has reversed a controversial decision to ban a blind man and his guide dog from an English immersion program. The university found itself in the dog house this week when Yvan Tessier, a blind student from Quebec, was refused entry to a five-week summer English program because his guide dog, Pavot, understands only French commands. The university announced in a release late Wednesday it will now allow Tessier in the course. The decision came after Tessier, who is from Trois-Rivieres, Que., went public with his story and it was picked up around the world.”
Or as Mr Tessier’s dog would no doubt say, could he talk, “Quel surprise!”
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
As Rod Serling would have said, “Submitted for your approval…”
1. Like any large government, the Government of Ontario is also responsible for a massive program that pays welfare and disability benefits to a great many people in this province. Recently, it was revealed that a computer system, which supposedly is capable of handling the program’s administration, is in fact utterly incapable of coping with the Government’s recent announcement that it will increase payments for both these programs by 3%.
It all sounds perfectly in tune with current general government philosophy that dictates no problem is so small that it can’t be made vastly more cumbersome and expensive to resolve. From the Toronto Star (July 7th): “People who have to work with the system have said it is confusing and takes hours to make even the smallest adjustments. ‘In creating this massive system (they) that made it so damn convoluted that it takes hours to make even the most minor change,’ said a former caseworker, who added that it is so difficult to retrieve information that fraud cases have been dropped because necessary evidence can't be found in the computer. Another government insider confided that the system is so time consuming that caseworkers are prevented from spending precious minutes with welfare and disability recipients.”
The numbers? Program development + staffing + training (so far): $500 million. First estimate of the costs to tinker with the computer program to accommodate the 3% increase: $20 million. Other contracts held by the computer company in question (Accenture / formerly Anderson Consulting): Governments of Alberta and New Brunswick, and the CBC. Complete details on tonight’s eleven o’clock news… except for viewers in Alberta and New Brunswick. Oh, and only on CTV.
2. The University of New Brunswick has refused to accept a blind candidate into its apparently vaunted English immersion program because his guide dog responds only to commands in French. Apparently the rules of this course are so strict that even when students phone home, they are required to speak English – never mind that family members on the other end of the phone might not understand a single word they are saying. There is simply no way for the University to come out of this looking like anything other than tunnel-visioned bureaucrats, I’m afraid.
Asked to comment, Pavot, the French-trained black lab in question, replied “Le woof?”
The story recalls the (probably apocryphal) parrot tale a few years back, variously attributed to a range of roots, from “the truth” to no less venerable a source than the late Mordecai Richler. But live on it does, witness this citation of an “Anglo” report at a website calling itself (albeit en français) the “daily voice for an independent Quebec”, and which is dedicated to, among other things, maintaining “vigilance” over threats to the French language in that province. (This report is apparently presented on this site as an example of the Anglo sneering that greets efforts to protect the French tongue. Although in this case the source probably embarrasses as many, if not more, English Canadians as it angers those who are French. It comes from something called the Citizens Centre Report, whose motto is “Pushing Anglo Supremacy on Ignorant Canadians is What we Do Best!”):
“Francophones continue driving English-speakers from Quebec while expanding French usage across Canada (...) In perhaps the most extreme example of language-police zealousness, Mr. Kalasatidis reports, ‘A pet store owner was threatened with fines because a parrot spoke to customers in English only.’ As a result of such harassment, he says, ‘The strategy has worked, and hundreds of thousands of English have left Quebec.’" (http://www.vigile.net/ds-langue/index-canada.html)
UPDATE: Now here’s a shocker. By day’s end, news coverage of the UNB story, which in one day has circumnavigated the globe and appeared in forums like the Times of India, the BBC and the Washington Times, was announcing the following:
(Canadian Press) “University to allow in French-only guide dog: FREDERICTON — The University of New Brunswick has reversed a controversial decision to ban a blind man and his guide dog from an English immersion program. The university found itself in the dog house this week when Yvan Tessier, a blind student from Quebec, was refused entry to a five-week summer English program because his guide dog, Pavot, understands only French commands. The university announced in a release late Wednesday it will now allow Tessier in the course. The decision came after Tessier, who is from Trois-Rivieres, Que., went public with his story and it was picked up around the world.”
Or as Mr Tessier’s dog would no doubt say, could he talk, “Quel surprise!”
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
Monday, July 05, 2004
At our home, we invest an hour or so each year in watching the last part of the Boston Pops 4th of July spectacular on TV, because it always ends with some pretty amazing fireworks.
The orchestra’s musical run-up to the first aerial explosion always features some wonderful medleys from the US patriots’ universal songbook, including “God Bless America”, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, “Yankee Doodle” and its bastard son “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, the Americans’ own lyrical application to music stolen from the British anthem, “God save the Whatever gender of monarch is on the throne”. (For the record, theft of patriotic music is not confined to US nationalists. When the Pops orchestra played Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, my wife and I gleefully sang its Canadianized chorus: “from Bonavista to Vancouver Island; from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters…”)
For the fireworks this year, as in past years, they had arranged some incredibly intricate co-ordination between the explosions and their accompanying music. But this year surpassed anything we’ve seen before. At its most astonishing, the lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s version of “Wonderful World” featured sky-colouring bursts of tree-shaped green clusters at the precise moment one heard, “I see trees of green…”, followed immediately by a flood of red as in the next breath Mr Armstrong sings, “Red roses too…”
But it was with the line, “The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are there on the faces of people going by” that fireworks technology revealed just how far it has come. The sky erupted in first in a breathtaking multi-coloured single burst – one amazing explosion of an enormous gasp-inducing palette that covered the sky with all the colours of the rainbow!) followed, on “faces…”, by a series of bursts that showed themselves to be the ubiquitous “smiley” faces, complete with circle outline, smile and eyes. And, finally, with “They’re really sayin’ ‘I love you’”, the sky bursts were beautifully rendered heart-shaped outlines of sparkle. Heart-shaped fireworks explosions!
(It occurs to me that if the US military really wants to win the hearts and minds of people like those in Iraq on whom they are still desperately trying to impose “freedom and democracy”, they should use some of these to punctuate their “shock and awe” attacks, for those occasional moments when a blast misses a military target and levels a building full of civilians seeking shelter. Nothing says “Whoops!” like a towering fireball in the shape of a gigantic heart capped with a twinkling smiley face. But I digress.)
But awe and the taking of breath aside, there is also something that is really unsettling about the way that some “my country right or wrong” Americans hurl themselves at the 4th of July. This year, one thing that really churned my stomach was a moment during the especially jingoistic coverage of New York City’s fireworks, sponsored by Macy’s.
Now I will grant that New York City unquestionably has a much stronger claim than a lot of other US sites on the right to pound the drums of patriotism. So several wrenching reminders of the World Trade Centre losses can be forgiven on a day devoted to celebrating all that is great about being Born in the USA. But I gagged when a screen cutout presented a moment by a national journalist talking about how great it is to live and work in the United States of America, with freedom of speech to a degree that is the envy of the world, and a society that allows for the freedom of dissenting voices to be heard without fear of suppression or reprisal. Right. The good reporter has obviously missed a big chunk of the coverage surrounding the release of the new Michael Moore film, “Fahrenheit 911”, to wit:
1. “Another group, Move America Forward out of Sacramento, has organized boycotts of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ claiming, among other things, that the film is a recruiting tool for the al-Qaida and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. ‘I’m thrilled that we have been able to get the word out and let people know that this is not journalism or a documentary – it’s Moore’s opinion,’ said Siobhan Guiney, executive director of Move America Forward. ‘We just don’t want the unsuspecting public to walk in and think they are seeing a documentary from an objective perspective.’" (Palm Springs Desert Sun, June 25th 2004)
2. “A rightwing US pressure group (Citizens United) is calling for a ban on television advertising for Michael Moore's controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11, claiming it amounts to "electioneering’ .“
(Guardian Unlimited, July 5th 2004)
So sure, it’s a “free speech” society, you betcha! But just be sure that your speech produces commentary that conforms to the present Conservative Style Guide. If it doesn’t, the First Amendment be damned! (That’d be the one with a part that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”.) Too bad the spirit of the US Constitution’s prohibition against Congress’ abridging free speech hasn’t percolated down to vested interest organizations, especially those who share an attitude with Citizens United or the oxymoronically named “Move America Forward.”
To close -- a couple bits and pieces:
From the “Big enough to admit when we’re wrong (and how!)” department comes the following correction that appeared in a recent issue of the New York Times: "An account in the Soccer Report column on June 22 about Ethan Zohn, a former player in Zimbabwe who won $1 million on the CBS reality show ‘Survivor: Africa’ in 2002 and has capitalized on his moment of fame by starting an international nonprofit AIDS awareness foundation on the continent, misstated a word in a comment he made. Mr. Zohn said, ‘We can make value judgments all we want, but through some cultural differences it has been all right for men in Africa to have multiple sex partners’ -- not ‘all right for me.’”
And finally, I’m assuming that the Ottawa Police and Fire Department arson investigation units read the Ottawa Citizen and have already checked out this possible lead in their search for what started a huge weekend fire that destroyed an east end strip mall. From the Citizen’s July 5th coverage of the fire’s aftermath: “Among the businesses destroyed by the fire was Pure Class Tattoos, owned by Mike Osborn, who didn't have insurance. Mr. Osborn said yesterday that he'd met with an insurance agent last week and had an appointment to sign the papers today. ‘I think I'm screwed good,’ he said. At the still-flaming scene yesterday afternoon, the 32-year-old businessman, who was married in March, said he couldn't bear to stay around for very long to watch as bulldozer crews knocked down the walls to help put out the fire. Mr. Osborn said his tattoo parlour had only been up and running for about a month. ‘We were doing good. It was taking off, on fire… ‘ “
Uh huh.
The orchestra’s musical run-up to the first aerial explosion always features some wonderful medleys from the US patriots’ universal songbook, including “God Bless America”, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, “Yankee Doodle” and its bastard son “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, the Americans’ own lyrical application to music stolen from the British anthem, “God save the Whatever gender of monarch is on the throne”. (For the record, theft of patriotic music is not confined to US nationalists. When the Pops orchestra played Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, my wife and I gleefully sang its Canadianized chorus: “from Bonavista to Vancouver Island; from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters…”)
For the fireworks this year, as in past years, they had arranged some incredibly intricate co-ordination between the explosions and their accompanying music. But this year surpassed anything we’ve seen before. At its most astonishing, the lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s version of “Wonderful World” featured sky-colouring bursts of tree-shaped green clusters at the precise moment one heard, “I see trees of green…”, followed immediately by a flood of red as in the next breath Mr Armstrong sings, “Red roses too…”
But it was with the line, “The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are there on the faces of people going by” that fireworks technology revealed just how far it has come. The sky erupted in first in a breathtaking multi-coloured single burst – one amazing explosion of an enormous gasp-inducing palette that covered the sky with all the colours of the rainbow!) followed, on “faces…”, by a series of bursts that showed themselves to be the ubiquitous “smiley” faces, complete with circle outline, smile and eyes. And, finally, with “They’re really sayin’ ‘I love you’”, the sky bursts were beautifully rendered heart-shaped outlines of sparkle. Heart-shaped fireworks explosions!
(It occurs to me that if the US military really wants to win the hearts and minds of people like those in Iraq on whom they are still desperately trying to impose “freedom and democracy”, they should use some of these to punctuate their “shock and awe” attacks, for those occasional moments when a blast misses a military target and levels a building full of civilians seeking shelter. Nothing says “Whoops!” like a towering fireball in the shape of a gigantic heart capped with a twinkling smiley face. But I digress.)
But awe and the taking of breath aside, there is also something that is really unsettling about the way that some “my country right or wrong” Americans hurl themselves at the 4th of July. This year, one thing that really churned my stomach was a moment during the especially jingoistic coverage of New York City’s fireworks, sponsored by Macy’s.
Now I will grant that New York City unquestionably has a much stronger claim than a lot of other US sites on the right to pound the drums of patriotism. So several wrenching reminders of the World Trade Centre losses can be forgiven on a day devoted to celebrating all that is great about being Born in the USA. But I gagged when a screen cutout presented a moment by a national journalist talking about how great it is to live and work in the United States of America, with freedom of speech to a degree that is the envy of the world, and a society that allows for the freedom of dissenting voices to be heard without fear of suppression or reprisal. Right. The good reporter has obviously missed a big chunk of the coverage surrounding the release of the new Michael Moore film, “Fahrenheit 911”, to wit:
1. “Another group, Move America Forward out of Sacramento, has organized boycotts of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ claiming, among other things, that the film is a recruiting tool for the al-Qaida and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. ‘I’m thrilled that we have been able to get the word out and let people know that this is not journalism or a documentary – it’s Moore’s opinion,’ said Siobhan Guiney, executive director of Move America Forward. ‘We just don’t want the unsuspecting public to walk in and think they are seeing a documentary from an objective perspective.’" (Palm Springs Desert Sun, June 25th 2004)
2. “A rightwing US pressure group (Citizens United) is calling for a ban on television advertising for Michael Moore's controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11, claiming it amounts to "electioneering’ .“
(Guardian Unlimited, July 5th 2004)
So sure, it’s a “free speech” society, you betcha! But just be sure that your speech produces commentary that conforms to the present Conservative Style Guide. If it doesn’t, the First Amendment be damned! (That’d be the one with a part that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”.) Too bad the spirit of the US Constitution’s prohibition against Congress’ abridging free speech hasn’t percolated down to vested interest organizations, especially those who share an attitude with Citizens United or the oxymoronically named “Move America Forward.”
To close -- a couple bits and pieces:
From the “Big enough to admit when we’re wrong (and how!)” department comes the following correction that appeared in a recent issue of the New York Times: "An account in the Soccer Report column on June 22 about Ethan Zohn, a former player in Zimbabwe who won $1 million on the CBS reality show ‘Survivor: Africa’ in 2002 and has capitalized on his moment of fame by starting an international nonprofit AIDS awareness foundation on the continent, misstated a word in a comment he made. Mr. Zohn said, ‘We can make value judgments all we want, but through some cultural differences it has been all right for men in Africa to have multiple sex partners’ -- not ‘all right for me.’”
And finally, I’m assuming that the Ottawa Police and Fire Department arson investigation units read the Ottawa Citizen and have already checked out this possible lead in their search for what started a huge weekend fire that destroyed an east end strip mall. From the Citizen’s July 5th coverage of the fire’s aftermath: “Among the businesses destroyed by the fire was Pure Class Tattoos, owned by Mike Osborn, who didn't have insurance. Mr. Osborn said yesterday that he'd met with an insurance agent last week and had an appointment to sign the papers today. ‘I think I'm screwed good,’ he said. At the still-flaming scene yesterday afternoon, the 32-year-old businessman, who was married in March, said he couldn't bear to stay around for very long to watch as bulldozer crews knocked down the walls to help put out the fire. Mr. Osborn said his tattoo parlour had only been up and running for about a month. ‘We were doing good. It was taking off, on fire… ‘ “
Uh huh.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
There may be no perfect answer to the question, “What the heck is Canada Day all about?”, but here’s a pretty darned good one.
We were invited to a Canada Day barbecue at the in-laws. Since there would be children present, my Significant Other thought it’d be a great idea to hunt down some sparklers for the kids to wave around after dark.
Despite the Canadian statutory holiday designation of July 1, there are open stores to be found. (In fact, just across the river in Quebec, hardly anything is closed in a province that still stubbornly celebrates its own “Fête National” on St Jean-Baptiste Day – June 24th. And given that they just turned 54 of their province’s seats in the federal House of Commons over to the sovereignist Bloc Québecois, don’t look for things to change anytime soon. But I digress.)
And even in Ontario, corner convenience stores are open and there is a chain of them – “Quickie” – that always has a variety of fireworks for sale. This, however, I only discovered after failing to find any in our own neighbourhood corner store and asking where they might be found. But it was my encounter there that prompted the observation that opened this brief entry.
When I asked, “Do you sell sparklers?”, the helpful clerk behind the counter pointed vaguely to a refrigerated shelf along one wall. I wandered over there, thinking that the arsenal of explosives was probably in a floor display or on an adjacent shelf.
Nothing.
So I spread my arms helplessly and turned back to the clerk, asking, “Where should I be looking?”
“Right there,” he said, pointing back along a straight line that was dead on the path where I stood between him and the refrigerator. I turned back and saw in front of me only the refrigerator. Now I’m beginning to wonder if for some peculiar reason they are refrigerating fireworks in this store.
The helpful clerk finally removed himself from his position behind the counter and came racing over – yes to the refrigerator. Reaching in front of me, he said, “It’s the last one we have left,” and proudly grasped…
A bottle of pickled asparagus.
So now I know that, to the East Asian Canadian’s ear, “sparklers” sounds a lot like “asparagus”.
When our good-humoured communication finally determined what I was seeking, he directed me to the nearest Quickie where they not only sold sparklers, they sold GREAT sparklers!
But I quietly laughed about my sparkler / asparagus discussion for several long minutes afterwards.
And just to put the icing on the maple cake, as I was driving back home with my newly purchased sparklers I caught a glimpse, off in the distance, of the signature diamond formation of the Snowbirds as they lined up for another pass over the National Aviation Museum.
Happy Canada Day, everyone! I am Canadian!
We were invited to a Canada Day barbecue at the in-laws. Since there would be children present, my Significant Other thought it’d be a great idea to hunt down some sparklers for the kids to wave around after dark.
Despite the Canadian statutory holiday designation of July 1, there are open stores to be found. (In fact, just across the river in Quebec, hardly anything is closed in a province that still stubbornly celebrates its own “Fête National” on St Jean-Baptiste Day – June 24th. And given that they just turned 54 of their province’s seats in the federal House of Commons over to the sovereignist Bloc Québecois, don’t look for things to change anytime soon. But I digress.)
And even in Ontario, corner convenience stores are open and there is a chain of them – “Quickie” – that always has a variety of fireworks for sale. This, however, I only discovered after failing to find any in our own neighbourhood corner store and asking where they might be found. But it was my encounter there that prompted the observation that opened this brief entry.
When I asked, “Do you sell sparklers?”, the helpful clerk behind the counter pointed vaguely to a refrigerated shelf along one wall. I wandered over there, thinking that the arsenal of explosives was probably in a floor display or on an adjacent shelf.
Nothing.
So I spread my arms helplessly and turned back to the clerk, asking, “Where should I be looking?”
“Right there,” he said, pointing back along a straight line that was dead on the path where I stood between him and the refrigerator. I turned back and saw in front of me only the refrigerator. Now I’m beginning to wonder if for some peculiar reason they are refrigerating fireworks in this store.
The helpful clerk finally removed himself from his position behind the counter and came racing over – yes to the refrigerator. Reaching in front of me, he said, “It’s the last one we have left,” and proudly grasped…
A bottle of pickled asparagus.
So now I know that, to the East Asian Canadian’s ear, “sparklers” sounds a lot like “asparagus”.
When our good-humoured communication finally determined what I was seeking, he directed me to the nearest Quickie where they not only sold sparklers, they sold GREAT sparklers!
But I quietly laughed about my sparkler / asparagus discussion for several long minutes afterwards.
And just to put the icing on the maple cake, as I was driving back home with my newly purchased sparklers I caught a glimpse, off in the distance, of the signature diamond formation of the Snowbirds as they lined up for another pass over the National Aviation Museum.
Happy Canada Day, everyone! I am Canadian!
So… pending the outcome of a couple of judicial recounts because the results separated winner from second place by less than a hundred votes, here’s what has Canadians wondering any of a dozen interpretations of “What did we just do?” (punctuated in the West with strategically inserted obscenities and substituting “Ontario” for “we” because Ontario re-elected way more Liberals than any of the pre-election pollsters were predicting would be the case. They were hammered in the West and, of course, in Quebec. The East gave them a few gains but the East really has too few seats -- about 34 across four provinces -- to make anything but ripples on the Canadian electoral pond):
Liberals: 135;
Conservatives: 99;
Bloc Quebecois: 54;
NDP: 19
and one lonely Independent in BC.
Consider that in Canada there are 308 seats in the House of Commons, half of which is 154 (in this blog, we aim to spare you unnecessary complications like math). Now, just for fun, imagine an issue requiring a vote and play with some possibilities:
Liberals plus NDP: 154
Bloc plus Conservatives plus that one independent: 154
Now consider that someone among those 308 has to be lifted from his or her seat by the Party asked to lead a government and be designated as Speaker of the House, thus to be dropped from being eligible to vote, except in the event of a tie.
Customarily the governing party (in this case the Liberals) draws the speaker from their own ranks. So change that 135 to 134.
I repeat: What did we just do?
In these days immediately following the election, cooler heads seem to be saying, “We can make this work.” They are also saying, “We will not form an official coalition” which pretty well binds you together through thick and thin, but rather “We will work together on an issue by issue basis.”
I think that someone should design a “media bingo” game and publish game boards that offer a grid of hackneyed phrases one can expect to see or hear in the media in the weeks and months ahead. (I frankly doubt that “years” will pass before we’re all dutifully marching off to the polls again.) And put “strange bedfellows” right smack in the middle -- the one usually labelled "Free Square" on a Bingo card. Because it's going to be everywhere!
Case in point: Employment Insurance benefits for seasonal workers. Huge issue in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, which both are home to a great many fisher… people thingies. Just before the election, the Liberals promised to spend more money on the program so workers could qualify for EI cheques sooner, based on fewer hours worked. The Conservatives, however, campaigned on reducing EI seasonal benefits and putting the money into creating more full-time jobs in the affected regions. But the Bloc will support the Liberals on anything that adds money to seasonal workers’ pockets.
Another case in point: Increased Employment Insurance benefits for new moms and dads on parental leave. Small business hates this because small business can’t afford to keep lengthening the time its working parents are off work. Quebec hates the feds having anything to do with it because they see it as a federal intrusion into provincial turf. Quebec’s position has been: just give us the money and let us manage our own parental leave program. The Bloc, therefore, won’t support anything that keeps control of this program in federal hands. But almost every other province in Canada opposes downloading it on the provinces because Quebec is about the only province in the country wealthy enough to manage its own parental leave program. Who’ll support whom on this one? Heads or tails.
Tax cuts (Conservatives) vs ramping up government spending on social programs, even going into deficit if necessary (NDP).
Huge increases in military spending (Conservatives) vs no way José (everyone else).
It’s not just where the vote splits will occur given present Party positions, it’s where a Party will prove to be willing to prostitute itself and sell out one of its campaign positions in favour of winning major concessions on another.
Minority governments have a short shelf life in Canadian politics. But no one among the present assembly wants to trigger a rush back to the polls anytime soon because the general view is that a couple of them (the Bloc especially) are sitting on the platform labelled “As good as it gets”. Another election isn’t going to improve their fortunes unless (a) they make a major positive impression by a series of successful strategic alliances, or (b) someone uncovers a cesspool of past Liberal slime and corruption – preferably with the soiled diapers being found outside the Prime Minister’s home – so pungent that not even the Liberals will escape total voter wrath next time around.
What, indeed, did we do?
SPECIAL THIS WEEK: Just take this opinion to any of the National Capital Region Starbuck’s, along with $5.00, and receive one Vente-sized cup of your choice of their featured brewed coffees of the day – regular or de-caff. And they’ll even throw in some change.
About two cents worth.
Liberals: 135;
Conservatives: 99;
Bloc Quebecois: 54;
NDP: 19
and one lonely Independent in BC.
Consider that in Canada there are 308 seats in the House of Commons, half of which is 154 (in this blog, we aim to spare you unnecessary complications like math). Now, just for fun, imagine an issue requiring a vote and play with some possibilities:
Liberals plus NDP: 154
Bloc plus Conservatives plus that one independent: 154
Now consider that someone among those 308 has to be lifted from his or her seat by the Party asked to lead a government and be designated as Speaker of the House, thus to be dropped from being eligible to vote, except in the event of a tie.
Customarily the governing party (in this case the Liberals) draws the speaker from their own ranks. So change that 135 to 134.
I repeat: What did we just do?
In these days immediately following the election, cooler heads seem to be saying, “We can make this work.” They are also saying, “We will not form an official coalition” which pretty well binds you together through thick and thin, but rather “We will work together on an issue by issue basis.”
I think that someone should design a “media bingo” game and publish game boards that offer a grid of hackneyed phrases one can expect to see or hear in the media in the weeks and months ahead. (I frankly doubt that “years” will pass before we’re all dutifully marching off to the polls again.) And put “strange bedfellows” right smack in the middle -- the one usually labelled "Free Square" on a Bingo card. Because it's going to be everywhere!
Case in point: Employment Insurance benefits for seasonal workers. Huge issue in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, which both are home to a great many fisher… people thingies. Just before the election, the Liberals promised to spend more money on the program so workers could qualify for EI cheques sooner, based on fewer hours worked. The Conservatives, however, campaigned on reducing EI seasonal benefits and putting the money into creating more full-time jobs in the affected regions. But the Bloc will support the Liberals on anything that adds money to seasonal workers’ pockets.
Another case in point: Increased Employment Insurance benefits for new moms and dads on parental leave. Small business hates this because small business can’t afford to keep lengthening the time its working parents are off work. Quebec hates the feds having anything to do with it because they see it as a federal intrusion into provincial turf. Quebec’s position has been: just give us the money and let us manage our own parental leave program. The Bloc, therefore, won’t support anything that keeps control of this program in federal hands. But almost every other province in Canada opposes downloading it on the provinces because Quebec is about the only province in the country wealthy enough to manage its own parental leave program. Who’ll support whom on this one? Heads or tails.
Tax cuts (Conservatives) vs ramping up government spending on social programs, even going into deficit if necessary (NDP).
Huge increases in military spending (Conservatives) vs no way José (everyone else).
It’s not just where the vote splits will occur given present Party positions, it’s where a Party will prove to be willing to prostitute itself and sell out one of its campaign positions in favour of winning major concessions on another.
Minority governments have a short shelf life in Canadian politics. But no one among the present assembly wants to trigger a rush back to the polls anytime soon because the general view is that a couple of them (the Bloc especially) are sitting on the platform labelled “As good as it gets”. Another election isn’t going to improve their fortunes unless (a) they make a major positive impression by a series of successful strategic alliances, or (b) someone uncovers a cesspool of past Liberal slime and corruption – preferably with the soiled diapers being found outside the Prime Minister’s home – so pungent that not even the Liberals will escape total voter wrath next time around.
What, indeed, did we do?
SPECIAL THIS WEEK: Just take this opinion to any of the National Capital Region Starbuck’s, along with $5.00, and receive one Vente-sized cup of your choice of their featured brewed coffees of the day – regular or de-caff. And they’ll even throw in some change.
About two cents worth.
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