Helicopter views of Bay St. Louis area

Clive sent me a link to a Jackson Mississippi TV station who have a Windows Media version of a helicopter view of the damage in Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Waveland. It's pretty stark viewing.

I've been able to spot the turn-off from highway 90 we took into Bay St. Louis back in March, but from that point onwards, there's very little to see but rubble and trees totally stripped of foliage. It looks like they've lost almost everything, and the footage from Waveland is even worse: there's little left but foundation slabs and footings.

Update: If you open a browser window and go to http://maps.google.com/, type "Bay St. Louis MS", you can follow the video along the map or the hybrid map/satellite photo. The photos are months or even years out of date, but they are still valuable for showing relationships between named points in the narrative.

Hmmm . . . does this mean I should emigrate?

Kateland scored the same on the test as I did:

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Further on the Katrina aftermath

Colby Cosh is less kind than I was towards the Antonia Zerbisias column I referenced in this morning's posting:

There's plenty in the column about the Bush administration's contempt for the environment, but I'm damned if I can find anything else about the reforms to the Corps of Engineers that led to the budget cuts. Where did the pressure for the reforms come from? Where else? Environmental groups that have been crusading noisily for years against wasteful and ecologically harmful Corps projects. This could account for the relative silence of a "national media" that lacks Ms. Z's Star talent for spectacular own-goals.]

Cosh also converts to hard core anticapitalism in a later posting:

Maybe this is unduly controversial or ill-informed,
but isn't much or most "looting" of the sort we're seeing in New Orleans just "salvage" in fast-forward? Are there really shop owners in downtown NoLa who think it's super important that their furniture or electronics are ruined by moisture over the next month rather than stolen? Isn't it arguably a good thing that valuables are being retrieved — by poor people who contrived to last out a hurricane without much help from the authorities — from a city that, for all relevant purposes, is now gone?

As I wrote in an email earlier today, there are only three distinct groups left in New Orleans right now:

• the elderly, the infirm, and the very poorest people who had no way to get out of town . . . only some of whom made it to the emergency shelters like the Superdome
• crooks, gang members, and thieves: the scum who prey on the folks in the category above
• police, fire, ambulance, hospital, and other emergency workers, the National Guard, and local politicians.

It's no wonder that civil order started to break down quickly, once the majority of law-abiding, able-bodied civilians left the area, and the main storm had passed. It became difficult for the civil authorities to keep order even before the flooding began, because there was little or no way to stop vandalism, theft, and other criminal activity with power out, telecommunications failing, and gasoline and batteries in short supply.

When I listened to the CNN feed at lunchtime, they had reports of a hospital in the city effectively under siege by looters. The lure of the drugs held at the hospital have drawn the thugs to the door like moths to a candle flame. The hospital staff were barricading the doors and windows to try to keep the mob outside. I hope this was an exaggerated report, but under the circumstances in the Crescent City, it's tough to dismiss things like this out of hand.

This is a unique situation, where most of the modern tools that law enforcement depends on have been taken away: there's little or no communication or transportation, there is only firepower left . . . and the bad guys are at least as well-equipped as the police.

The National Guard may turn out to be the key: they have communications that are not dependent on cell towers or city electrical supplies. The question is, are there enough of them to provide sufficient help to the police?

News coverage of the aftermath of Katrina

I ended up obsessively watching the CNN coverage last night after I got home from work. There was little other choice: CBC's "Newsworld" feed looked like some sort of retrospective on an artist's model I'd never heard of, and most other channels we could pick up were back to showing their regular schedule. I'd hoped that Newsworld would at least pick up the BBC World Service, but that apparently was beyond their ability (or imagination).

The contrast with the usual CNN reporting was pretty stark: the reporters were clearly on the edge of panic themselves in several cases (especially those in New Orleans proper). The scale of the disaster is only now becoming clear to those actually in the afflicted areas. CNN's staff had been working flat-out in the lead-up to the arrival of the storm and through the wind and rain (the traditional idiotic talking heads leaning 45 degrees into the wind and saying how "hellish" it was), and then stood down to rest and recover . . . just as the real disaster unfolded.

It was again interesting watching the anchorperson-of-the-moment try to spin the reporting towards their own particular interests. Aaron Brown (I think that's the guy's name anyway) was pretty blatant in his constant questions to reporters about whether the National Guard was involved. At one point, just after a local official (possibly the Mayor of New Orleans) specifically mentioned the National Guard presence, Brown directly asked whether there was any sign of the National Guard. I'm not sure what his personal beef was, but it was clearly very, very important to him to highlight the fact that the NG wasn't blanketing the entire state shoulder-to-shoulder.

This morning, the anchor at CNN was talking to a former mayor of New Orleans who clearly felt that the entire disaster was George Bush's fault. In a three minute interview, he must have called for Bush to drop everything and devote his undivided attention to the disaster five or six times. I'm not sure what he thought the President could do, but he was adamant that Bush do _something_ to help. He made an issue that the President hadn't visited the area yet, but the governor of Louisiana had stated just a couple of minutes earlier that she had asked the President not to come too soon because there was little that he could do, and few places that would be safe enough to visit.

Under the circumstances, I don't think there's much more that can be done, due to the peculiar geography of the New Orleans area. There are only three land routes to reach the city from elsewhere and all of them are cut by dropped bridges or worse. There's no safe land route in or out of the city, and even the water routes are extremely dangerous: even in normal conditions, the Mississippi River is treacherous for shipping, and Lake Ponchartrain is very shallow, so most ships would be unable to enter or get close enough to the shoreline to be of much use — even if they could get into the lake. The US Marine Corps and the US Navy may have the best equipment for this, but they're not positioned close enough to the disaster area to be of immediate assistance.

With most of the other forms of transportation blocked, the helicopter is the most valuable player in the ongoing rescue attempts, but even the Americans have a limited number of those essential machines. Any way you slice it, it's going to be a long, painful recovery for the victims . . . and the death toll is going to be much worse than the original estimates. This will turn out to be one of the biggest disasters to ever hit the United States.

Antonia Zerbisias has an interesting column in today's Toronto Star:

How did it get so bad?

Perhaps if media had done their job properly before this cataclysm, the toll would not have been so shockingly high.

Consider how, so often before, cable news treated every relatively minor hurricane as if it were a disaster movie, leading many people to believe that they could ride Katrina out.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Toronto Star article without the obligatory swipe at the current administration:

In fact, there's been almost zero coverage about the record-setting federal budget cuts — just two months ago — to the New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers budget. That's who builds the dams and levees that protected the city. Yet the Bush government cut it by $71.2 million (U.S.)

Of course, the cuts were for the following fiscal year, so they wouldn't have yet had any effect on that branch of the ACE, but her point is still worth considering. New Orleans is built in a brilliant strategic position . . . for the 17th century. It's been sinking for nearly as long as there's been habitation there, and the levees, dams, canals, pumps, and other civil engineering installations are there to protect what's already been built. No one in their right mind would start to build a new city there right now.

After a disaster of this magnitude, will the insurance industry and the state and federal governments try to rebuild the city to what it was, or will they realize that New Orleans will be subject to this sort of disaster again in future. Zerbisias again:

In 2001, a hurricane strike on New Orleans was ranked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as one of "the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters'' that could hit the U.S., along with a terrorist hit on New York and an earthquake in San Francisco. Since then, the army engineers' budget has been cut by 44 per cent. Not a sound from the national media.

QotD: Modern Families

While you're contemplating whether 22-year-old Matthew Koso's relationship with his 14-year-old wife, Crystal, whom he impregnated when she was his 13-year-old girlfriend, should be treated as rape, here's another legal question to ponder: Should their decision to name their infant daughter Samara, after the evil ghost in The Ring, be treated as child abuse?

Jacob Sullum, "I Hope They Don't Have a Well", Hit and Run, 2005-08-30

New Orleans

I'm only just getting caught up on the latest news from New Orleans. There was a massive breach in one of the levees holding back the water from Lake Ponchartrain (information on the levee system here). The breach was reported as being 200 feet long, which is allowing literally millions of gallons of water into the city every minute. The city was reportedly 80% flooded and there is no chance of stabilizing the breach immediately.

News is grim and getting grimmer from Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis, with no firm casualty counts yet (they reported 50 dead in one apartment building collapse alone). We'd driven all the way along that stretch of coast back in March. It's sobering to think of how badly hit they have been (like most people, I tend to think of "disaster news" as happening a long way away, not in places I've been camping).

Update: Wikipedia has a roundup of news and links being updated regularly.

Serenity in the comics

Fevered Rantings.

The "next" comic after this is nasty to fanfic writers. But probably justly so. . .

Here's a judicial concept due for a quick update

Jon passed along a link to a Globe and Mail article on the difference between heterosexual adultery and homosexual "affairs":

The 44-year-old Vancouver resident had been married nearly 17 years when, in October of 2004, she discovered her husband was having an affair with a younger man.

She and her husband separated immediately and she filed for divorce two months later, seeking an immediate end to their union.

Canada's Divorce Act allows for a no-fault divorce after a one-year separation, on grounds of marital breakdown.

It also allows for an immediate divorce if there is admitted or proven adultery or cruelty.

Ms. Pickering's ex-husband signed an affidavit on Jan. 5, 2005, acknowledging his adulterous relationship, and did not appear in court in February to contest the divorce.

But Justice Nicole Garson of the B.C. Supreme Court declined to order the immediate divorce, because the definition of adultery in common law does not include homosexual relations.

Justice Garson may be following the strict letter of the law, but clearly isn't following the spirit of it, now that the law recognizes same-sex marriage.

Ten tech items inspired by science fiction

An old post on Eclecticism details a bunch of 20th century techno-toys and -tools that were predicted by SF authors:

• THE GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE: Arthur C. Clarke
• THE COMPUTER WORM: John Brunner
• ORGANLEGGING: Larry Niven
• THE WALDO: Robert A. Heinlein
• GYRO-STABILIZED PERSONAL CONVEYANCE: Robert A. Heinlein
• THE WATERBED: Robert A. Heinlein
• HOME THEATER & WALL-MOUNTED TV: Ray Bradbury
• THE FLIP-PHONE: Gene Roddenberry et al.
• THE TASER: "Victor Appleton"
• MULTI-USER DOMAINS IN CYBERSPACE: Vernor Vinge

Hat tip to "Heather" from the Bujold mailing list.

When is an Ontario wine not an Ontario wine?

The answer may well be "all the time" if a proposed temporary change to the Ontario government's labelling requirements for the 2005 vintage, according to a Toronto Star report (reg. req'd.):

The goal is to prop up the VQA-approved, 100-per-cent-made-in-Ontario brands. To do that, wineries propose that they should be allowed to devote more of their scarce grapes to those higher-profile, pricier brands and less to their blended varieties.

The plan is to lower the amount of Ontariograpes required for blended brands from 30 per cent to zero. That means that a bottle of wine from an Ontario vintner could be made entirely of foreign grapes.

"We want to try and keep as much high-quality VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) wines on the shelf as possible. It's certainly going to help us in terms of brand perception," said Norm Beal, chair of the Wine Council of Ontario, which represents dozens of wineries.

But the vintners and growers only want the change to last one year, to apply to the 2005 vintage bottles that will hit shelves early in 2006. After that, the minimum blend requirements would return to 30 per cent Ontario grapes.

As you probably know from reading the blog, I'm generally a fan of the VQA system, in so far as it promotes higher quality Canadian wines. This is less a quality issue than a regulatory one: the Ontario wineries want to retain more of the locally grown crop — which will be down significantly from previous years — for their premium VQA wines, but that means that the Ministry of Government Services must allow them to sell wines from totally foreign grapes to be sold as "Ontario" wines.

I rarely buy non-VQA wines, so it's not going to directly effect me . . . but if they don't allow the change, it will probably drive up the price of VQA wines. Colour me prejudiced in favour of the change!

A related move by the Wine Council is to ask the LCBO to make the distinction between VQA and non-VQA wines more obvious to consumers:

Currently, both VQA and blended wines sit in the "Ontario" aisle, though in separate sections.Though Beal noted that blended wines say "Cellared in Canada" on the label so as not to completely hide foreign content, he said, "It sometimes can be a little bit confusing. A lot of people don't look at the label until they get their wine home."

And the addition of local-made but entirely foreign-content wines could increase the confusion.

So the groups want a distinct "Cellared in Canada" area — which would be home to the zero-per-cent local content wines next year and the 30-per-cent wines once the proposed stopgap blend change returns to normal.

This is a good move regardless of whether the other proposal is allowed. I hope the LCBO follows through on it.

Hat tip to Jon for the link to the Toronto Star article.

Site Meter's latest cool feature

I was looking at my Site Meter stats pages this morning, noting all the recent visitors from Relapsed Catholic, when I saw a new-to-me link on the Site Meter page:

You can view the last n visitor locations on a world or regional map. I'm a bit of a map geek, so this was very, very cool.

QotD: Travel Writing

The poor-but-oh-so-happy sentiment pops up without fail in any crappy travel magazine version of a visit to Myanmar, Laos, or Nepal (and probably any other desperately poor and badly governed country), in which "the people" are always gleeful, generous, and colorful. I'm not exactly sure what it is about being ruled by insane dictators that makes people so damn nice, but here's an idea: If you're a Western travel writer, or, say, German tourist, and you're going to an impoverished country full of hungry people in which you clearly stand out as someone with money to spend, people might be extra nice to you.

Kerry Howley, "But the People Are So Friendly", Hit and Run, 2005-08-18

Conspiracy theory of the week

An article in this week's Libertarian Enterprise has this rather interesting assertion:

Probably the most important thing to understand about current events is that this is not — and never was — a war about oil itself, but a war about oil from particular sources, the sources controlled by the Bush family's cronies. And their excuses grow more threadbare every day. There is now a considerable body of evidence — shared with us generously by George Crispin (give him a Google) — that reserves that were once thought depleted are filling up again from underneath, as new oil is produced, not by any biological process, but by the basic pre-biological processes that eventually gave rise to life on Earth.

Just what Fred Hoyle predicted decades ago — so much for "peak oil".

Conspiracy fans, start your engines!

Graveyard Humour, Mississippi Style

Debbie offers some out-takes from Mississippi Public Radio's broadcast day today:

"This is not your Mama's hurricane."

"If the rain is moving horizontally and the debris is moving horizontally, your car should NOT be moving horizontally."

"Do not wade into the water. Remember where it came from. The rain moved horizontally through the Gulf swamps. There may be some alligators that got moved horizontally too."

"ALL highways to the Coast are closed. The wind is too strong for anything taller than a Corvette, and anybody with a Corvette shouldn't risk it in this weather."

And a bit of graveyard humour from the Bujold mailing list, courtesy of Laura Gallagher:

Karl's comment du jour, after hearing about people thinking they can call for rescue in the middle of the worst of the storm:
Updated police telephone protocol: "911, sucks to be you, may I take down your last words?"

Saturday at SFX2005

Victor ambushed me on Friday morning with the news that there was a huge combined Anime / SciFi / Comic / Horror / Gaming convention on this weekend and that we had to go. I wasn't overjoyed: the last big convention I attended at the Metro Convention Centre was highly unpleasant. But I've got to pretend to be a good dad every now and again, so Saturday morning found us on the GO train in to Union Station.

I'm not an Anime, Comic, or Horror fan, and the last time I did regular gaming the hot new game was something called Advanced D&D. So the area of interest for me was restricted to just over a fifth of the activities. I was rather disappointed to discover that the SciFi was really restricted to movies and TV shows, rather than written Science Fiction (although the use of the five-letter abbreviation should have tipped me off).

I did get a brief glimpse of "Jayne Cobb", from Firefly:

The hall was already pretty crowded by the time we arrived (the line-up to buy tickets was just over half-an-hour from where we joined until we got to the booth). It got much worse as the day wore on:

I should mention that I'm not good with crowds.

After visiting the Serenity booth staffed by volunteers from the Canadian Browncoats, I eventually found myself a quiet piece of wall to lean against and waited for Victor and his friend Jacob to spend themselves dry.

New Orleans . . . doomed?

Pundit Guy paints a very grim picture of what may happen to New Orleans in the next hour or two:

Unless she receives a last minute act of Divine Intervention, New Orleans, as we know it, will cease to exist in a few hours. Hurricane Katrina is gearing up to geographically change that city. The winds will cause havoc, but the real killer is Storm Surge.

I surely hope that Pundit Guy is wrong here . . . I was in New Orleans back in March . . . and I'd like to think it'll still be there after today. More than half a million people have been evacuated from the city and immediate surrounding areas (that number is way out of date . . . it's probably two or three times that by now). I hope they have homes to come back to.

Hat tip to Jon for the link.

Belated photos from Friday's VRWC gathering

After receiving further orders from Karl Rove, I can now publish a few more photos from the VRWC blogstravaganza on Friday.

Actually, my preference for taking non-flash photos is the real problem: the Nikon Coolpix 4300 just doesn't have enough light-sensitivity to take hand-held shots without a flash in low-light conditions. I strongly prefer taking non-flash shots because I don't want people to have to interrupt their conversations (or heated arguments) either to pose for a shot or to recover from the unexpected burst of light.

Brenda Tipper (of Tipperography and Kateland (of The Last Amazon), with Brian Mertens (Free Advice) in the background.

David Warren (who is actively avoiding opening a blog) and Mike Brock (On the Attack). Mike is busy live-blogging the gathering on his Blackberry. Or Blueberry. Some sort of fruity electronic device, anyway. Either way, apparently, I was "disturbing" him.

Commandante Bob, showing the same mysterious hand gesture which appears in almost every photo of him. On the right (how appropriate), Paul Tuns looks at one of Greg Staples' photos of the event. Greg will live to post again, as he graciously did not post the eye-searingly scary photo of me. Good call, Greg!

Kathy Shaidle won the prize for the best T-shirt of the evening. And again on the right, Greg Staples, "Commandante Hand Gesture", and Paul Tuns get further Rovian instructions.

My apologies to the folks whose images I don't identify . . . I am perhaps the worst person in the world for remembering names correctly. No slight is intended, and I'm happy to make corrections as needed!

QotD: Luck of the Irish

Making dark comments about the likelihood of an unhappy outcome is the way we Irish Catholics deal with anxiety, dread, and uncertainty. It's our special pact with God: If we expect the worst, obsess about it, worry about it, drink about it, indulge in black humor, and honestly convince ourselves that something awful is going to happen, then God will step in and prevent said awful thing from happening just to mess with our heads. But you have to sincerely expect the worst, not just go through the motions. It's when you expect good things to happen or keep happening — when you presume upon God — that bad things happen. Remember what happened when the Irish presumed upon all those potatoes?

Dan Savage, "Welcome Black", AndrewSullivan.com, 2005-08-08

QotD: Chardonnay

What seemed to me to make white Burgundies worth the effort was the fact that they tended to have more character, to be better balanced, more elegant . . . more, how you say in English . . . more Catherine Deneuve. More Jules and Jim than Die Hard; less top-heavy and more food-friendly than New World wines. On the other hand, it was and is quite possible to spend forty bucks on a bottle that tastes like it has been barrel-fermented with a big clump of terroir, or with Pierre's old socks, or possibly his former cat. Yikes! Rather too much character, mon cher.

Jay McInerney, Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar

Last night's VRWC gathering

Just a few shots, before I crawl off to detox:

Victor (The Phantom Observer) and Damian (The Feckless Sidekick), early arrivers.

Some, but not all of the participants at the Bishop and Belcher. Apparently this will be the last time that the VRWC will be able to use the old B&B . . . the pub will be closing next month, according to scuttlebut around the bar. I think we'll miss the old place . . .

Update 29 August: More photos (and links) here.

QotD: Wood

If someone today invented wood, it would never be approved as a building material. It burns, it rots, it has different strength properties depending on its orientation, no two pieces are alike, and most cruelly of all, it expands and contracts based on the relative humidity around it. However, despite all of these problems, wood is the material of choice when building houses. In fact, we can use wood better than we can use steel, masonry and concrete.

Joseph Lstiburek, Builder's Guide to Cold Climates, 2000

Not that I obsess, but . . .

If there's an active blogger on the face of the planet who can honestly say they don't obsess about their traffic, then I've never met that person. Today's little minor panic attack came courtesy of the TTLB Ecosystem:

That's a pretty steep drop in links. I sure hope it's just another one of those occasional re-jigging of the system!

VRWC to gather tonight in Toronto

The VRWC will be holding a secret meeting tonight at the Bishop and the Belcher. I plan to infiltrate this nefarious gathering and I'll try to publish any incriminating photos I may manage to take.

Commandante "Bob" and his Sub-CommandanteFeckless Sidekick "Damian" appear to be the ringleaders.

Update: "Damian"'s title changed at his huffy request.

QotD: Democracy

In a democracy, the majority rules and individual rights are irrelevant. If the majority votes that half of your income be confiscated before you can even buy groceries, oh well. If the majority votes that you must educate your children in a certain location because you live on a certain side of an arbitrary line, oh well. If the majority votes that you must be disarmed and defenseless against violent criminals, oh well. If the majority votes that your religion be designated an "outlaw religion" and that you and all other practitioners be committed to mental institutions, oh flipping well.

(And this is what our political, economic and media elites want to export across the globe?)

Doug Newman, "An Understatement: The Founding Fathers Hated Democracy", The Libertarian Enterprise, 2005-08-14

Advance preview of the next health act

As we've all been made aware by the constant drumbeat of media-generated panic, obesity is the biggest problem facing the Canadian healthcare system. Canadians are getting much fatter, getting less exercise, and generally imperilling their own health and, in the aggregate, the entire healthcare system — the core of the Canadian identity. The government is moving to confront this looming problem in the very near future.

Tackling Obesity

Because voluntary measures have failed, the federal government, in consultation with the provinces and territories, is going to amend the Canada Health Act, the cornerstone of the healthcare system. Poor health is no longer an individual problem: it affects the entire country. This means that the government is going to get very serious about tackling the causes of the problem, not just treating the patient after the problem becomes severe.

The current provincial health ID cards will become federalized: this is to ensure that all Canadians are able to get consistent treatment when travelling outside their home provinces. The new ID cards will carry biometric information and it will be mandatory to carry these cards at all times.

To ensure that we comply — it is for the sake of our healthcare system — the health ID card will be requested on boarding all public transit, commuter rail, airplanes, ferries, and ships. Inexpensive card readers will speed processing. No ID? No travel. Simple as that. Our healthcare system is too important to risk for minor concerns like individual rights, privacy, or freedom of movement.

It is expected that the major banks will quickly realize the advantage of integrating their ABM networks with the new universal ID card, obviating the need for them to maintain their own card issuing services. Any who do not quickly adapt will find it difficult to get government business. But it will be strictly voluntary, of course.

Once the banks have adapted, the government can phase out the production of printed money . . . there will be no need for it since you will always carry your combined ID/ATM card. This will be a boon to shopkeepers, banks, and anyone involved in handling money right now.

One of the biggest advantages of this will be that the government will be able to act decisively to combat the scourge of obesity: all food purchases will be directly traceable to show who is eating too much or too much of the wrong kind of food. Within a few years, as the existing printed "Nutrition Facts" information is encoded into RFID tags, it will be possible for your ID/ATM card to restrict the amount of food you purchase to the recommended daily allowance for your diet. Won't that be great? You won't even need to think about what to eat, because you'll only be allowed to eat the "right" amount of the "right" foods, as determined by the government.

Of course, those Canadians who have allowed themselves to eat too much should not be given the same top-priority access to healthcare that their less weighty fellow citizens should have . . . overweight patients will be treated in inverse proportion to their deviation from the norm. That's only fair, and fairness is nearly as important an aspect of Canadianness as Universal Healthcare.

There may be some bleeding hearts in the civil liberties movement who decry this extension of government power, but we can safely ignore them. The only thing that makes Canada the great place it is today is universal healthcare. This has been repeated so often that most of us accept the concept without any doubt or uncertainty.

Universal healthcare is Canada; Canada is universal healthcare.

Universal healthcare matters more than anything else, again as uncounted public opinion polls and government surveys have discovered, so anything that strengthens the healthcare system is good for Canada. Critics of the system are clearly not acting in the best interests of the healthcare of all Canadians, so we must move to suppress such unpatriotic — even treasonous — talk.

Snuffing Out Smoking

After obesity, the next greatest threat to the system is already being addressed by all levels of government: smoking. It will soon be possible, using the same combination of mandatory ID/ATM cards and RFID tags to completely stamp out the purchase of tobacco products. The government would be remiss if they failed to take full advantage of the current wave of public support to make tobacco use illegal everywhere. Canadians are naturally law-abiding: they will quickly adapt to the need for vigilance for signs of illegal tobacco use. Snitch lines may be required in certain areas to provide more support to those Canadians who want to ensure the health of their fellow citizens — and, of course, the essential healthcare system!

Other methods can be used to ensure compliance, especially in the delivery of healthcare: patients who have smoked will be required to wait longer for all services, to be fair to those patients who never smoked. In the model of "plea bargaining", patients may be able to get faster aid by reporting others who supplied them with tobacco.

Annihilating Alcohol

Alcohol abuse is the next problem to be overcome. The cost to the healthcare system from treating the direct results of alcohol abuse are staggering. It is manifestly unfair that non-drinking Canadians must pay to rectify the self-inflicted damage of alcohol by drinkers. Earlier Canadian and American governments tried to stamp it out during the last century, but they failed. This government will not: we have the tools to enforce compliance that earlier governments lacked.

As a first step, all sales and production of alcoholic beverages will be nationalized. All citizens must apply for permits to allow them to drink alcoholic beverages, which will only be available from government outlets at strictly controlled times. Sensible limits will be applied, so that packaging that encourages abuse (24-packs of beer, 1.18 litre bottles of alcohol, etc.) will be quickly removed from use. Purchase limits will be strictly enforced, to ensure that so called "binge drinking" can be controlled and eliminated. Drunkenness will be dealt with as sabotage of the healthcare system.

Importing alcohol will be eliminated as a source of health problems, and domestic production will be gradually curtailed and then eliminated in turn. Home brewing and winemaking will be very quickly made illegal: snitch lines will certainly be needed to enforce this, but good Canadians will realize that the health of all requires us to clamp down on those who do not follow good health guidelines.

Enforcing Exercise

It's not going to be easy to make Canadians as healthy as possible, but the vigour of our Universal Healthcare system can only be enhanced by improving the physical well-being of all Canadians. Voluntary efforts to encourage healthy exercise have been a dismal failure, so mandatory exercise is the only way to move forward. In the short term, all public and private schools, offices, factories, and other workplaces will be required to add exercise periods to every workday.

Mandatory exercise, however, will not be allowed to encourage carelessness and risk-taking — so-called "extreme" sports are all foreign concepts to Canadian culture, and should be discouraged at all cost. The healthcare system must not be held hostage to stupid, careless victims of unnecessary accidents. They'll be in last place for healthcare services, after the obese, the smokers, and the drinkers.

The End Result

Let's be honest . . . this is going to be a gruelling regime, and some will not have the intestinal fortitude to pull through. By phase IV of our program, we should expect to see some weaker souls emigrating to escape the rigours of our brave new healthy world. We should let them go, but ensure that they have paid a fair price for the privilege of living in the healthiest country in the world: a sliding scale tax on property maxxing out at 90% for the wealthiest.

But what a wonderful country it will be without them: everyone at the absolute peak of health and vitality (because getting sick will be illegal).

Maybe they weren't blank after all

Do you recall the "blank" tapes from the platforms of the tube station? Apparently they weren't blank after all:

CCTV footage recovered from the scene of the shooting by police of Jean Charles de Menezes has proved to be "crucial" to the inquiry into his death, the inquiry head said tonight.

Nick Hardwick, chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), said he was confident his team now had all the relevant CCTV from Stockwell Tube Station and that there was "no reason" to believe any had been deliberately withheld.

However he said tonight that the delay between the shooting and the IPCC taking on the investigation had been a "cause for concern" that his organisation would have to address.

Is anyone else still feeling confused by all of this? Perhaps a better question might be "Does anyone still have any faith at all in London police statements?"

Hat tip to Samizdata.

Slashdot chatter on SpaceShipThree

There's a brief news update and plenty of informed (and uninformed) discussion about SpaceShipThree at Slashdot:

The president of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has recently stated that if the upcoming suborbital service with SpaceShipTwo is successful, the follow-up SpaceShipThree will be an orbital craft. Although orbital spaceflights would be much longer and could potentially dock with orbital space stations, they are also considerably more difficult than suborbital spaceflights. Other private firms working on orbital spaceflight (and potentially in the running for Robert Bigelow's $50 million America's Space Prize for orbital flight) include t/Space and SpaceX.

QotD: Champagne

I only drink champagne when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it — unless I'm thirsty.

Lily Bollinger

An alternate universe history of Canada

Colby Cosh links to a fascinating alternate history which ends like this:

The Second World War ends with a rain of atomic Avro-bombs on Dresden and Berlin, a show of might that makes official what has been whispered for years: the Empire no longer belongs to England but to its former colony. On July 1st, 1947, Canada's Prime-Minister-For-Life Maurice Duplessis effectively dissolves the English Parliament in London. "A Flannel Curtain has descended across the continent," Winston Churchill thunders; he dies in a Yukon gulag for daring to challenge "Duplessisme." King Edward VII is re-installed as Canada's puppet monarch; he lives out his days playing shuffleboard in Victoria's Empress Hotel. Duplessis expires in 1967; the bench-clearing brawl for his succession is won by the blustering Field Marshall Donald Cherry.

Chilling. Just chilling.

QotD: Value

It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men dive for them because they fetch a high price.

Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, quoted on the Library of Economics and Liberty site.

The Merck Mess

Jane Galt explains why the recent Merck case could be an utter disaster for pharmaceutical research in the United States:

According to the Wall Street Journal, jurors were swayed by things that simply shouldn't have been a factor — an irrational belief that the CEO should attend the case (Merck is sued hundreds of times a year; should the CEO stop running the company so the jurors can feel special?), and even more disturbingly, a desire to get on Oprah. You only get on Oprah if you find for the plaintiff.

Every successful big lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company reduces the capital available to the industry, and the willingness of the industry to spend capital on developing new drugs, rather than novel ways to package things already on the market that they haven't been sued for. As Richard Epstein says, it's no good saying you only want to target the bad companies; investors have no way of telling, in advance, which companies jurors will decide are "bad". This case was widely viewed as a slam dunk for Merck, given that the plaintiff's deceased husband had neither the use profile, nor the cause of death, associated with Vioxx's problems. In the case of companies that are misbehaving, that is a cost we have to bear. But there seems to have been little evidence that Merck was misbehaving, and no scientific evidence that the drug caused the death the plaintiff was suing over.

No matter how you look at the case, it's bad news for patients, investors, and the pharmaceutical companies all around. Richard Epstein indicates what may need to happen:

Much as I disapprove of how the FDA does business, we must enact this hard-edged no-nonsense legal rule: no drug that makes it through the FDA gauntlet can be attacked for bad warnings or deficient design.

Desert Islam's Problem With Women

I saw this article yesterday (H/T to Samizdata), but I didn't get a chance to link to it:

In true puritanical style, Desert Islam has taken the spice and colour out of Arab life, and it looks like doing so for a long time yet. The joys of flirtation or provocative self-expression through dress, or lack or it, are gone — all replaced by black. Black for women. White for men. Whole countries now wear school uniform.

Totalitarian systems are not sustained at the top, but at the bottom, where a system of mutual surveillance prevails. The influence of Desert Islam on the region has engendered just such a totalitarian system, whereby a woman who refuses to wear the hijab is stigmatised, and possibly threatened with violence. Even in liberal Lebanon, where women have historically been highly expressive in their dress, the present generation is increasingly adopting the hijab and shaming those who don't. Some people see this trend as a reaction to the West and modernity. It is anything but. It is merely a succumbing to the encroaching influence of Saudi-funded Desert Islam, a totalitarian system expounded by highly rational modern means.

"These are no good to us. They are blank."

Perry de Havilland updates us on the ongoing travesty which is the "investigation" into the de Menezes shooting:

We were told that the CCTV footage of the fatal incident was not available because the media from the cameras had been removed before the shooting so that detectives could examine them for clues relating to the failed 21/7 bombings.

Not so. The tapes were 'blank'.

Perry quotes the Evening Standard article:

Senior Tube sources have told the Evening Standard that three CCTV cameras trained on the platform at Stockwell station were in full working order. The source spoke out after it emerged that police had returned the tapes taken from the cameras saying" "These are no good to us. They are blank."

A station log book has no reported faults concerning the CCTV cameras which would have been expected to record the crucial moments as Mr. de Menezes approach the train on 22 July.

Yes. Of course. All the tapes of that particular platform at that particular time are 'blank'. Perfectly understandable . . . could happen to anyone.

In other news, Hell is reporting unseasonably cold temperatures. . .

Non-traditional "traditions"

Amir Taheri's New York Times article from August 15th is now available here:

All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam.

That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Hat tip to Damian Penny.

QotD: Air Travel

The thought of people being able to use cell phones on airplanes during flight is almost too horrible to contemplate. But I understand why the airlines are considering it: They've run out of new ways to make flying unpleasant. Long lines, inexplicable delays, lost baggage, no food, filthy airplanes, unhappy workers (is anyone else worried about planes being flown by despondent pilots who've had their pensions stolen from them?) — allowing people to use their cells phones is the only way for the airlines to freshen up the hell they've created for us.

Dan Savage, "Terror Cells", AndrewSullivan.com, 2005-08-09

50-1. Not the odds: the score

I've had some bad defeats in my now-finished soccer coaching career, but never one as bad as this:

A third-division provincial girls football team entered the annals of Belgian soccer on Saturday after suffering a crushing 50-1 defeat because of the absence of a single but crucial player: their music-loving goalkeeper.

SK Berlaar's goal was left unguarded in a match with FC Malines after its goalie opted instead to go to a rock festival, Het Laatste Nieuws reported Monday.

"Kick-off, move upfield and in it goes. That was repeated without a halt. At half-time, it was already 27-to-0," the Flemish newspaper said, describing how 16-year-old Charlotte Jacobs tried in vain to defend the goal in the absence of the usual goal-keeper.

Hat tip to Fark.com.

QotD: Individualism

Liberals say, "It takes a village" to make a society great and strong.

The conservatives reply, "No, it does not take a village; it takes a family."

Both sides are wrong. It takes an individual. It takes an individual to accomplish even modest goals. It takes a special kind of individual to accomplish great things. More often than not, individuals accomplish what they do in spite of the family, or in spite of the village.

It takes an individual to think, conceptualize, plan, and create. It takes an individual to rise above mediocrity, fear, and toward new discoveries.

"Families" do not work, study, and make a living. Individuals do. "Villages" do not discover electricity, or cure terrible diseases. Individuals do. Families and villages are not mystical entities. The are comprised of individuals. It is the brightest, and most creative, of those individuals upon whom the family and village depend.

Michael J. Hurd, "It Takes An Individual", Capitalism Magazine, 2005-08-11

Posted by Nicholas at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)

Firejuggling in Stratford

Yesterday's trip was yet another trip to Stratford. The reason (excuse?) was the PlayMakers! annual "Take it Outside" event. The weather was not willing to co-operate, as the rain arrived about 45 minutes after the event started.

The opening act was a bit of juggling, including the always-popular fire-juggling.

After a few short scenes from previous performances, the rain forced a quick relocation to the bandshell. Quickly, a swordfight broke out:

The final scene was taken from the most recent production of "The Imaginary Invalid", set in the 1920's:

QotD: Chardonnay

When my editor told me that I could write about anything I wanted in my first column so long as it was Chardonnay, I thought briefly about killing her. In the years since Chardonnay has become a virtual brand name I've grown sick to death of hearing my waiter say, "We have a nice Chardonnay." The "house" chard in most restaurants usually tastes like some laboratory synthesis of lemon and sugar. If on the other hand, you order off the top of the list, you may get something that tastes like five pounds of melted butter churned in fresh-cut oak.

Jay McInerney, Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar

QotD: Activist Actors

It was never a practical project to silence the acting profession. These people are famous. Having acquired their fame, they then want to use their fame to do good, and in the process to become even more famous. This is only natural, especially when you consider that doing good and being heroic is what, according to the entertainments these people spend their lives making and acting in, life is all about. Trying to stop famous actors from expressing what they consider to be virtuous and heroic opinions in public is like trying to stop the wind from blowing or the sea from being wet.

Brian Micklethwait, "Minnie Driver and the changing meaning of goodness", Samizdata, 2005-08-01

Strange e-Bay auction of the day

Obi-Wan figurine that actually flew on SpaceShipOne. Proceeds to charities (listed in the auction).

Hat tip to Jason A. Ciastko for posting the link.

Stormblogging

Some images from the massive storm that just rolled through Toronto:

Jon and I went outside to see what we could see. Not much. The photo doesn't really give you an accurate impression of how heavy the rain was: we were about ten feet back from the open area and still got our shoes and pantlegs splattered with rain.	The hail came down for about ten minutes in our area. It set off at least one car alarm in the parking lot . . . but you could barely hear it over the noise of the hail landing.
The power went out, killing the lights in front of the building.	The little enclosed area in front of the door rapidly transformed into a small lake. We amused ourselves by trying to come up with appropriate names for the new wetland, and calculating how long it would be before it was officially designated as such.
The workers who'd been replacing some of the roof of our building lost some insulation panels (fortunately, they were too light to damage any of the cars they fell on).	The "T" junction in front of the office flooded deeply enough to stall out a few cars.
It's amazing the number of drivers who tried to gun it through the flooded intersection.	What was perhaps more surprising was the number of near-collisions as people tried to get through or around the flooded area.
The aftermath: incomplete roof repairs PLUS massive rainstorm EQUALS one heck of a clean-up job indoors.	This is the area of the floor just a few feet from my desk.

Randy Moss and the NFL's drug testing regime

Hit and Run examines yesterday's news about former Viking Randy Moss and his not-very-surprising admission that he smokes marijuana:

It's fun to watch the stunned reax to Oakland Raiders wide receiver Randy Moss declaring that he has smoked pot in the past, and perhaps in the present, but without "abusing it." NFL officials, not to mention the sanctimonious scribes who shill for them, define all use as abuse. Yet the league only bothers to test players for pot during training camp, a tacit don't ask-don't tell policy for the in-season months and most of the off-season.

Moss obviously violated the don't tell part of this little pact, which for PR purposes maintains the fiction that the healthy, wealthy young men of the NFL differ significantly from their non-football playing peers in their recreational habits. Plus there is the little problem of Moss personifying a high-achieving occasional pot smoker who has yet to hit skid-row or otherwise help the terrorists win.

Accordingly, expect the hammer to drop on Moss, ASAP.

I've always had an ambivalent view of Moss: he's such an amazingly good athlete, and such a sad excuse for a normal human being. The man is arguably the best receiver in football today, and certainly one of the best of all time, but I'm afraid he has one of the worst attitudes going (although Terrell Owens is probably going to eclipse Moss in this regard).

While I'm sorry to see his stats meander over to Oakland, I think the Vikings are better off as a team without him.

Found humour

This is a door on the floor below where I work:

You can't argue with an authoritative sign like that, can you?

Presenting the news, Canadian style

Today's big story, as filtered through the Rogers portal:

Yeah, a rumour about a couple of members of the Royal family being asked to do voice work for an episode of The Simpsons is far more interesting than a rocket attack on US Navy vessels. Par for the course.

QotD: Antisemitism

The right and the left take turns deciding who's going to be anti-semetic this century. For some time now the hard left in the West has led the charge against the Jews — or, as the sleight-of-hand term has it, the Zionists. The adolescent spirits of the left love nothing more than a revolution, a story of a scrappy underdog rising up against a colonizing power, and the Palestinians, with their romantically-masked fighters and thrilling weapon-brandishing, fit the bill. Plus, there's something so deliciously naughty and transgressive about calling Jews the new Nazis — if it feels that good, it must be right.

Doesn't matter that one side is a liberal democracy that grants rights to women and non-Jews, and the other side has thugs and assassins for rulers and sends its kids to summer camps where they learn the joys of good ol' fashioned Jew-killin'; doesn't matter at all. According to the script of the hard left, Israel was created when some Europeans (hisssss) invaded the sovereign nation of Palestine, even though we all know the Jewish homeland is somewhere outside of Passaic. Then for no reason Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza — which for some reason had not been set up as New Palestine by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, but never mind — and made everyone stand in line and get frisked. Those who joined the line in '67 are just getting through now. Evil Zionists.

James Lileks, "The most important story in the world last Sunday", Screedblog, 2005-08-11

Mike Tice profiled

An interesting view of Minnesota's head coach, Mike Tice from Sporting News:

He has been gone, what, 24 years from Central Islip, N.Y., right in the middle of Long Island, and you'd never know it. Talks like he still lives there, you know what I mean? He hasn't forgotten his roots; he's damn proud of them. Tell me what other NFL coach would describe himself like this: "I am a big, tall, deep-voiced, loud, arrogant New Yorker who thinks he is right all the time. That rubs some people the wrong way. I don't mean anything by it. But I am opinionated."

Toss in gutsy, too. This being a family publication, I can't be more anatomically specific, but you get my drift. I mean, he has no contract after this season, which gives him the security of a mosquito at a Raid demonstration. Even close friends concede the Vikings need to go deep into the playoffs for him to be retained. He knows that, too, yet he gets rid of Moss. What's more, he does it even though he is about to gain a new owner, which doesn't make for the swiftest first impression, even if the new big man, Zygi Wilf, is an East Coast guy.

But what the heck. You might as well give it your best shot surrounded by guys who buy into your rules and play hard all the time, not just when it suits them, and respect authority and understand loyalty. I mean, Moss never got it. Tice believes in this loyalty thing big-time — go ask anyone in Central Islip about loyalty — and he starts right off as coach by declaring the "Randy Ratio," which really is a love offering to Moss, only the jerk never understands. He rewards Tice by various displays of stupidity, whether it's a run-in with a meter maid or mock mooning Packers fans or leaving the final regular-season game last January before it's finished and, dumbest of all, responding to a question about Tice's future by saying, "I don't know if coach Tice is the coach for this team, and I don't know if he isn't."

Talk about sticking a knife into someone who actually likes you and stands up for you and even to this very minute won't bad-mouth you because that's the honorable thing to do. If Moss had his way, Tice and Daunte Culpepper would be ex-Vikings and his own loud mouth and mercurial personality would be in Minnesota, where his teammates still would be disgusted with both his churlish behavior and his special set of rules.

I have nothing to say . . .

. . . on a whole bunch of currently hot topics in the Toronto area. The Last Amazon has said everything I could say — and far better than I would have done — on the recent spate of shootings in Toronto. Go read what she has to say. Even if you disagree with what she says, she's living right there where much of the violence has been happening. I think we should pay attention.

"Catastrophic Errors"

Jon passed along a link to a Times Online article providing a photo and more information on the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes:

This armed team had been given photographs of alleged bombers, yet no one realised that Mr de Menezes bore no resemblance to them. The report states that the firearms unit had been told that "unusual tactics" might be required and if they "were deployed to intercept a subject and there was an opportunity to challenge, but if the subject was non-compliant, a critical shot may be taken".

CCTV footage shows that Mr de Menezes was wearing a thin denim jacket that could not conceal a bomb, and he was not carrying a bag. Far from running from police, he did not realise that anyone was following him and even picked up a free newspaper before using his season ticket to pass through the barrier. He began to run only when he saw his train pull into the station. At the time of the shooting, Scotland Yard said that Mr de Menezes's "clothing and his behaviour at the station added to their suspicions". It was only when Mr de Menezes boarded the train that a surveillance officer guided four armed police into the same carriage.

A man sitting opposite him is quoted as saying: "Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. He was pointing a small, black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me.

"He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man's head. The gun was within 12 inches of the man's head when the first shot was fired."

No level of concern for public safety can justify this sort of (if you'll pardon the expression) cowboy policing. The police appear to have taken on the role of some sort of freelance vigilante gang, rather than acting to protect the public.

Still no sign of contrition from the powers-that-be in the London police, apparently.

QotD: House Wine

ENTRY REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF NATALIE MACLEAN

Natalie MacLean, Nat Decants newsletter, 2005-08-04

More information on the de Menezes shooting

Today's latest news in the subway shooting comes from The Guardian:

The young Brazilian shot dead by police on a London tube train in mistake for a suicide bomber had already been overpowered by a surveillance officer before he was killed, according to secret documents revealed last night.

It also emerged in the leaked documents that early allegations that he was running away from police at the time of the shooting were untrue and that he appeared unaware that he was being followed.

So, if the latest information is accurate, de Menezes not only was not wearing a bulky jacket, did not run away from police, did not vault over a turnstile, and in fact was sitting peacefully in his seat until a surveillance officer wrapped his arms around de Menezes. The man was immobilized, and then another undercover officer fired the first shot to the head.

Can it get much more damning for the London Police?

Update: Perry de Havilland asks for the right thing:

There had damn well better be a very heavy accounting for this with a lot of abruptly and dishonourably ended careers and jail sentences. For a start, just a start, the head of the Metropolitan Police should be out of a job by this time tomorrow.

At the time of the shooting, based on the initial information released, I was applauding the police for taking the correct action: I still think, if the suspect had actually behaved as suspiciously as the original report detailed, the police took the right action. But in this case, clearly they did not take the right action. An innocent man has been brutally murdered. And the police have been doing everything they can to prevent that fact from coming to light.

Soccer juggling

This link was posted to a soccer coaching list I still read (even though my coaching days are over . . . the kids got better than I'd ever been).

Absolutely amazing what some athletes can do with their bodies, that's all I can say.

Test Drive Tips

I wish I was as organized as the folks who wrote up this article on how to get the most out of a test drive.

The history of blogging

David T. sent me a link to this rather amusing Six Apart presentation on what it would have been like if Blogging had been around much, much earlier.

QotD: Coffee

Is it a bad sign if, instead of calmly removing the lid from the can of coffee in the morning, you claw at it sort of like a rabid animal?

Not that I know anyone who does that.

Steve H., "Caffeine and Socialism", Hog On Ice, 2005-08-05

One of the commenters asked "Canned coffee?", to which Steve made the obvious response: "I am not a coffee connoisseur. After all, we are talking about medicine, not a beverage."

Steve H. tries to thin out the Libertarian herd

Steve H. is doing everything he can to remove the last vestiges of Libertarianism from the United States:

Attention, Libertarians

I know I have a bunch of Libertarian readers, and we all know Libertarians are just conservatives who take a lot of drugs. For that reason, I am making a limited-time offer. For fifty bucks, I'll email an envelope full of hallucinogenic millipedes to any location in the U.S. For an additional fifteen dollars, I'll guarantee live delivery. These millipedes are fresh and guaranteed to knock you flat on your ass. If you die, that is your own problem. Email me for PayPal instructions.

Jon often accuses Libertarians of trying to get high on swamp water and toxic waste puddles. Clearly Steve H. is of the same opinion.

Politicians out of touch, part of a continuing series

Back in 2001, Andrew Rasiej was presenting information to a group of Democratic politicians on how to make modern technology work better for them. He'd just finished his presentation. . .

Here are two responses I got. First Senator Dianne Feinstein raised her hand and said, "Senator Daschle, the Internet is full of pornography and pedophilia, and until that's clean up, I don't think the Senate should be on the Internet." (And she represents Silicon Valley!) Afterwards, another senator came up to me and said, "Andrew, I get 10,000 emails a day into my office. How do I make it stop?"

I feel his pain. So to speak.

Police "facts" fail the sniff test in London

According to a report in The Observer, the "suspected terrorist" who was killed by London Police was not just innocent, but the entire story appears to have been massively distorted by the police:

The questions are mounting. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted because he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged.

It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head.

In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the incident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened.

Mark Steyn has been pilloried on the right for his criticism of the shooting, but apparently even he understated the case. It's now sounding like a deliberate extra-judicial murder by out-of-control police officers. I think the Metropolitan Police have a lot of explaining to do. And damned soon.

I didn't think the Kelo case could get worse . . .

. . . but I was just so wrong:

Reader Russ Dewey points to an un-fucking-believable turn of events in Kelo v. New London, the Connecticut case surrounding the use of eminent domain to boot homeowners to build a privately owned luxury complex: The leaders of New London are now demanding rent from the people whose property they've seized!

As one of the first comments points out, one of the properties which was condemned as being blighted is being assessed at over $6,000 per month rent. Talk about having it both ways!

The metric system as an anti-feminist plot

Tom Palmer unravels an intricate plot to seriously damage the status of women in modern society:

My own take on [metric systems replacing Imperial measurement] is that such "rationalization" is nothing but an assault on the special power held by women in society. Non-metric systems give special power to women, who are, um, let's see . . . more in touch with the natural rhythms of Gaia. Right. Consider: when you want to know how many pints are in a quart or how many pecks are in a bushel or how many teaspoons are in a gill, do you ask A) the oldest male in the house, or B) the oldest female in the house? (Of course, today you can just go to the internet, which is, as we all know, male-dominated . . . and "digital". . . kind of like "metric," and, in so far as it rests on the superiority of the "digit" over the "zero," an example of a phallocracy, to boot.) Real, Gaia-based feminism is, you know, not into the whole 10×10×10 thing and is based on organic immersion in a lived experience. That kind of stuff. So the bottom line . . . oops, um, at the end of the 24-hour day, women have lost the special prestige they enjoyed as the gender capable of mastering non-metric systems. That was the now-lost compensation for the generally lesser upper body strength that gave men advantages in state-building, as they could hit other people harder. At least, that's a good enough reason for me to resist learning the Celsius system, which is about as absurd as you can get, what with chilly (15.5 degrees C) and really hot (32 degrees C) temperatures being pretttyyyy close together, unlike, say, 60 degrees and 90 degrees, which are far enough apart to tell you that one is cool and the other is hot.

Hat tip to Hit and Run.

Is the SCA getting too authentic?

An unconfirmed report from The Pittsburgh Channel says that a woman was raped by two unknown assailants at the SCA's Pennsic War being held this week just north of Pittsburgh.

Risk of entrapment in Emery case? You don't say!

Marc Emery, who is constantly in the news these days, is now warning his customers to beware of a possible entrapment operation run by US and/or Canadian law enforcement agencies:

B.C. pot activist Marc Emery is warning his marijuana seed customers their orders may have been intercepted by U.S. justice officials.

He also alleges that those people are now being sent letters by drug enforcement authorities in a surreptitious move to entrap them. "These people are being set up to be busted in their own homes," Emery said on Monday. "They should be very alarmed."

He called the move "ominous in a way Canadians aren't used to."

Emery is the Canadian activist wanted on drug charges in the United States on conspiracy to sell marijuana seeds in that country. The U.S. wants him extradited from Canada to face the charges.

Anyone who has had dealings with Emery's business in the past should already be aware that they are at risk of (at the very least) much greater scrutiny now that Emery himself is the focal point of a major investigation. You don't have to be paranoid to make the fairly obvious leap of logic that those with whom he has been doing business are now also going to be investigated.

Consider this my public service announcement for the week.

QotD: Comparative Advantage

To produce the wine in Portugal, might require only the labour of 80 men for one year, and to produce the cloth in the same country, might require the labour of 90 men for the same time. It would therefore be advantageous for her to export wine in exchange for cloth. This exchange might even take place, notwithstanding that the commodity imported by Portugal could be produced there with less labour than in England. Though she could make the cloth with the labour of 90 men, she would import it from a country where it required the labour of 100 men to produce it, because it would be advantageous to her rather to employ her capital in the production of wine, for which she would obtain more cloth from England, than she could produce by diverting a portion of her capital from the cultivation of vines to the manufacture of cloth.

David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, quoted on the Library of Economics and Liberty site.

Military code names and national character

Last year, I posted a brief thought about how different armies name their major operations. Apparently, there has been much made of this in previous wars, as the Imperial Armorer reflects:

The whole naming thing started out as a security measure. It gave a shorthand way to refer to something in messages, whether a weapon system, troop movement, location, operation, intel asset, etc , so people in the know would understand what you meant, without larding up messages with a lot of text, as well as revealing info to interested eavesdroppers. Jargon for security.

Like the Manhattan Project for the atomic bomb. Operation Overlord for the invasion of Europe. Utah Beach, Operations Olympic and Coronet for the planned invasion of Japan. "Tank" for the Tank (crates with the first tanks in them were marked "Water Tank" — the name stuck). Infinite Justice Enduring Freedom — the take-down of Afghanistan. The military aren't the only ones, either; e.g., Microsoft's "Longhorn" which is now officially "Windows Vista."

The Cosh Report for Reporters

Colby Cosh has created the master list of ways to present drug information to the gullible public. He's crafted carefully calculated approaches to all discussion on drugs, to ensure the greatest scare factor. Reporters, the hard work has been done for you . . . now all you have to do is clear a space on your desk for the inevitable Pulitzer.

IF A RECREATIONAL DRUG:

• promotes drowsiness or lassitude: you can frighten people about it by warning that legalizing it will create impaired drivers, impaired pilots, impaired helmsmen of Viking ships, etc.
• prevents drowsiness or lassitude: you can frighten people about it by warning that prolonged use induces lack of sleep and hence psychosis.
• is expensive: you can frighten people about it by arguing that the crippling costs of addiction ruin human lives.
• is cheap: you can frighten people about it by emphasizing its "availability" to the young and the impoverished.
• is physiologically addictive: you can frighten people about it by describing in detail the Goya-ish horrors of detox.
• isn't physiologically addictive: you can frighten people about it by warning of the nerve-shattering psychological "crash" that invariably follows heavy use.

Update: Here is the column he was researching when the master list was revealed to him in a vision.

QotD: Conservatism

This whole idea of personal autonomy — I don't think that most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. And they have this idea that people should be left alone to do what they want to do, that government should keep taxes down, keep regulation down, that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, that we shouldn't be involved in cultural issues, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world. And I think that most conservatives understand that we can't go it alone, that there is no such society that I'm aware of where we've had radical individualism and it has succeeded as a culture.

Senator Rick Santorum, quoted by Matt Welch in "That Frothy Mixture of Statism and the GOP", Hit and Run, 2005-08-04

QotD: Rosé Wine

Anyone who starts analyzing the taste of a rosé in public should be thrown into the pool immediately. Since I am safe in a locked office at this moment, though, let me propose a few guidelines. A good rosé should be drier than Kool-Aid and sweeter than Amstel Light. I should be enlivened by a thin wire of acidity, to zap the taste buds, and it should have a middle core of fruit that is just pronounced enough to suggest the grape varietal (or varietals) from which it was made. Pinot Noir, being delicate to begin with, tends to make delicate rosés. Cabernet, with its astringency, does not. Some pleasingly hearty pink wines are made from the red grapes indigenous to the Rhône and southern France, such as Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Cinsault. Regardless of the varietal, rosé is best drunk within a couple of years of vintage.

Jay McInerney, Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar

Boro 0, Liverpool 0

In a non-Earth-shattering result, Middlesbrough drew with Liverpool 0-0. Match report here.

This is not the way to fight terrorism

I think we're all aware that the United States has been making it harder for foreigners to enter the country — even us Canucks who used to treat the border like a slightly-more-elaborate-tollbooth are being treated to more restricted access than of old — but this is ridiculous:

The first sign started about a year ago, when those of us who travel on the Visa Waiver scheme (residents of officially friendly EU states) were required to submit to being fingerprinted and photographed as a condition of entry. This procedure is one more normally associated with arrest and criminal prosecution; it's not something you do to your friends. While I understand the motivation behind it, which is not so much to be arbitrarily unfair to visitors as to do something — anything — about the huge, porous borders the USA shares with the rest of the world, it's a worrying sign of the times. Visitors are no longer welcomed, they're made to feel like suspects in a criminal investigation. Fortress America is raising its drawbridge.

Now, according to the New York times, the office of the Attorney General is contending in court that foreigners have no rights: "Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday."

I've generally been willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the US government in their heightened levels of concern after the 9/11 attacks, but there is no possible way in hell to justify the detention of innocent travellers and withholding access to basic necessities of life. Nothing.

The government is contending that aliens who have not been explicitly granted leave to remain have no right to due process of law, no privacy, no safety, no protection of property, nothing except a reasonable expectation that they won't be subjected to "gross physical abuse", whatever that is. Which is drawn up in such narrow terms that physical starvation and sleep deprivation — hallmarks of torture in most civilized jurisdictions — appear not to be included.

Yet again, it's hard to believe that the United States, the self-described "beacon of freedom" has adopted tactics from the worst of the tinpot dictatorships of yesteryear.

If this legal theory stands up in court — and I hope it doesn't — then visiting the USA, or even flying on a route that crosses through US airspace, will become a profoundly uninviting experience — much like flying into the Soviet Union during the early 1980s. There'll have to be a pressing purpose at stake before I'll risk endangering myself in that way, by putting myself beyond the legal protections offered by the courts to any law abiding person.

The other thing to keep in mind is the principle of reciprocal treatment: if your government treats lawful foreign visitors as criminals, just imagine how well American travellers will be treated in formerly friendly nations. This sort of low-level harassment has a much greater ripple effect than just the individuals or families directly affected: the damage to wider American interests could be vast indeed.

Background info: the Maher Arar case.

Hat tip to Pat Matthews, who forwarded the original link to the Bujold mailing list.

Vikings beat Chiefs in pre-season opener

Ah, finally . . . football is almost back. Of course, there's only a tiny chance of any non-Buffalo games being telecast in the Toronto area, but one can sometimes luck out.

At the Metrodome last night for the first pre-season game, the Moss-less Minnesota Vikings beat the Kansas City Chiefs 27-16. Here are the game reports from the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

It's the first pre-season game, so the starting lines for both teams were only in for the first couple of series, allowing coaches to evaluate their second- and third-string players. Pre-season is a young player's best chance of impressing the coaches and improving their chances of securing a roster spot (teams cut down from the 80+ players on the roster now to just 53 to start the regular season).

Overall, the retooled Vikings defence showed some improvements over the last few years, keeping the Chiefs out of the end zone on the first drive of the game (previous versions of the Vikings D too often gave up touchdowns and rarely forced punts). Special teams were shaky to start, although running back Mewelde Moore did get 43 yards on a kickoff return (he had a strong game all around, with 69 yards and a TD playing with the second string offence). Incumbent punter Darren Bennett had a bad punt in the first half, which may allow challenger Travis Dorsch a chance to take his job.

Perhaps the best news of the night was that there were no reported injuries. That's always the trade-off of playing pre-season games: it's great experience for younger players, but increases the risk of injuries because the players are only part-way through training camp.

QotD: Canadian Content Rules

[Stargate: Atlantis] is a Sci-Fi channel show produced in Canada, starring Canadians and featuring a cranky, sympathetic Canadian character in a lead role. But thanks to Canadian trade-barriers it has yet to air on Canadian television. Remind me again what original programming Canada's CRTC sheltered Space: the Imagination Station has produced? How many times can we be expected to watch decade old repeats of Seaquest DSV in defense of "Canadian culture"? If they had the wisdom to rebroadcast Starlost or some such epic crap I could almost see the point but as it stands CanCon rules, and the businesses they shelter, are a joke.

I tried making this case to a left-leaning friend. She said, half-joking, "I know you are speaking Canadian but I can't understand any of the words." I am reminded every day of my former communication studies undergrads who would argue for Canadian content rules (I am told these represent "regulation" and not "censorship") and, with no change of expression, cheerfully explain they never watch Canadian television because it is uniformly awful. Such is the naked truth of ideology.

Nick Packwood, "Poisoning the Well", Ghost of a Flea, 2005-08-12

Steve Stirling interview

S.M. Stirling is a science fiction author whose more recent works are very good indeed (just skip the early "Draka" stuff unless you've got a strong stomach). I've certainly enjoyed his Island in the Sea of Time books and the more recent Dies the Fire. Glenn Reynolds has an interview with Stirling at his Tech Central Station site:

GR: Your novel "Dies the Fire" — and for that matter, earlier books like "Island in the Sea of Time" — depends a lot on ordinary people having hobbies that turn out to be pretty useful. That's partly a plot device, of course, but do you see the widespread possession of all sorts of cottage-industry skills as a good thing?

SS: Well, it's fun for the people who do it, and having a broad skills-base is always a good thing. It's also a sign of the quirky individualism of the American population, also a positive factor.

GR: Do you think that people are more inclined to develop those sorts of hobbies as society gets richer?

SS: Certainly in an absolute sense; you can't afford the time if you're scrambling to stay alive 24/7.

GR: In writing your books, did you interview or observe a lot of armor-makers, SCA types, etc.? Or was it just based on longtime personal experience? What do you think motivates people to take up hobbies like that?

SS: I've moved on the fringes of that set for a long time; and I also made contact with a lot of them specifically for this series. As to motivations . . . it's romanticism, of course, the same thing that makes people read books like . . . well, like mine! Living it out is a more recent development, but as you say, people have more spare time these days.

I was one of the people who provided some input — although my contribution was microscopic compared to many others who were in contact with Steve.

It is interesting that some of the fastest growing hobbies today include things like woodworking and other "creative" no-longer commercial skills and activities. It is quite possible that there are more active woodworkers, potters, glass-blowers, and the like than at any time since the end of the 19th century: we've grown to appreciate the appeal of the hand-made one-off item due to its rarity (our grandparents were delighted to discover that mass-produced items were cheaper and more dependable). This is a luxury of our relative affluence: we can value the aesthetic appeal more highly because we can more easily meet our basic economic needs without undue strain. Mere functionality is assured, so we can place more emphasis on the beauty or other appealing aspects of everyday items.

Hat tip to Samizdata.

Dan Savage's Secret Shame

Dan Savage, renowned gay sex advice columnist (that is, he's gay and he writes a sex advice column, not that the column is only for advice on gay sex), is currently guest-blogging at AndrewSullivan.com. Here is a shocking admission of his secret shame:

A confession: I had three beers last night. For most Irish Catholics this would not be a big deal. My brother Billy pours three beers over his cornflakes in the morning. But I am the freak of the family — not for THAT, that subject that I shall not touch on today. I'm the only lightweight in Savage family. Three beers on Tuesday night means a wicked hangover on Wednesday morning.

Pushing back the encroachment of the state

Radley Balko notes the victory of both common sense and uncommon justice:

A District Court judge in New Mexico has issued an injunction against the state's practice of impounding and reselling vehicles of people accused of a crime — before they're ever brought to trial. The state was seizing the cars of DUI suspects as well those of suspects with two or more camera-issued citations for running a red light.

That's right. Merely be accused of running two red lights or driving under the influence (which, by the way, is different from driving while intoxicated, and can comprise any amount of alcohol in your system), and you lose your car to the state.

This is the sort of thing I read of and wonder if I've slipped through some sort of dimensional rift into a science-fictional dystopia. How can it be that in our modern world, innocents can be deprived of their property by the state without any need for the state to prove wrongdoing? In any country with an English common law tradition, this sort of thing should have the citizenry hoisting legislators from lamp-posts for the crime of passing and enforcing laws of this type.

So one state, of how many with this sort of tyrannical law on the books, has temporarily reclaimed some of the rights of free Englishmen. Note that it's only an injunction, not a full-fledged strikedown . . . I assume it now proceeds to the state supreme court for further deliberation. I hope that the next-higher court makes the right decision: throw out this law and any others which deprive individuals of the right of due process.

QotD: Wal-Mart

Our research shows that Wal-Mart operates two-and-a-half times as much selling space per inhabitant in the poorest third of states as in the richest third. And within that poorest third of states, 80 percent of Wal-Mart's square footage is in the 25 percent of ZIP codes with the greatest number of poor households. Without the much-maligned Wal-Mart, the rural poor, in particular, would pay several percentage points more for the food and other merchandise that after housing is their largest household expense.

So in thinking about Wal-Mart, let's keep in mind who's reaping the benefits of those "everyday low prices" — and, by extension, where the real conflict lies.

Pankaj Ghemawat and Ken A. Mark, "The Price Is Right", New York Times, 2005-08-03

Artistic mis-spelling

Last year, I linked to a story about Maria Alquilar, the artist who couldn't spell. The story continues:

On Tuesday, Maria Alquilar worked under the blazing sun, using power tools to reshape and install tiles changing "Eistein" to "Einstein" and "Van Gough" to "Van Gogh."

But Alquilar — who last year claimed artistic license and said she wasn't going to fix the faux pas because people were being too mean about it — was in no mood to talk.

Wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and working under a tent, she wagged her finger at a television cameraman and threatened to throw a rock at a Chronicle photographer.

"No pictures of me!" Alquilar yelled, standing behind a barrier that officials had put up to separate her from the public. "If I'm in it, I'm going to sue you."

Hat tip to Hit and Run.

Entrapment, the standard drug warrior's favourite tool

Hit and Run links to a story of a government informer who's been honing his entrapment skills for 32 years:

[. . .] undercover operative Marc "The Mole" Caven suggested it would help applicants' prospects if they could hook him up with a bit of methamphetamine or marijuana. And at least 46 of them succumbed to the pitch, landing them berths in the Yamhill County Jail.

The suspects include a 22-year-old McMinnville youth who finally came up with less than half an ounce of marijuana after reportedly being hounded by Caven on a daily basis for weeks. Pumping gas, the lure of construction work at $10.50 an hour got the better of him.

Of course, we're all so much safer now that weak-willed "criminals" like this are safely locked away for their mandatory 20-year sentences, and more informers like Caven work to entrap others. Yeah, sure.

Tuesday's Beamsville Winery Tour

Tuesday's wine tour was all in the Beamsville area, including Fielding Estates, Crown Bench, De Sousa, Birchwood, and Flat Rock Cellars.

We got off to a later start than we'd planned, so we only managed to get a visit in to Fielding Estates before lunch, but the visit was very worthwhile. Jake, our host, was very enthusiastic and happy to share his knowledge with us. We sampled several wines and then toured the facility, which is very impressive. As you drive in from the road, the building is very reminiscent of the huge Jackson-Triggs facility in Niagara-on-the-Lake — Fielding used the same architects.

Tasting notes for Fielding Estates wines:

From Fielding, we drove in to Jordan to have lunch at Zooma-Zooma Café. They were quite busy, so we didn't make up much time, especially as we then had to backtrack to get to our next planned winery: Crown Bench Estates.

Crown Bench is just far enough off the main wine route that they don't appear to have to cope with mass crowding in their tasting room (we've been driven out of some rooms as busloads of tourists arrived). Their speciality is flavoured icewines, although you can only taste one complimentary icewine sample (if you buy an icewine glass, you get two more free icewine samples). Unfortunately, Brendan and one of the staff members at Crown Bench didn't hit it off well at all, and Victor was made to feel very unwelcome so we left under less than ideal conditions.

Tasting notes for Crown Bench wines:

Leaving Crown Bench, we stopped at De Sousa Wine Cellars, who distinguish themselves from other area wineries by emphasizing their Portuguese heritage. One of the ways they do this is by serving some of their wine in clay cups (although on our visit, they were using disposable plastic wineglasses).

Tasting notes for De Sousa wines:

From De Sousa, the next planned winery was Ridgepoint, but they (and nearby Tawse) are not open on Tuesdays, so we carried on to Birchwood. Birchwood's facility is visible to traffic hurtling by on the Q.E.W., but this was the first time we'd been able to stop. It turned out to be a great visit, as the wines were interesting and the server at the tasting bar (who is also the winery assistant manager) did a wonderful job of informing and entertaining us (and other visitors).

Tasting notes for Birchwood wines:

The wine-tasting day was rapidly drawing to a close (most wineries close by 5, a few by 6), so we were fortunate that Flat Rock Cellars was our final planned stop in the Beamsville area. Flat Rock has a wonderful site, overlooking part of their vineyard and looking north towards Lake Ontario. The winery is one of only three gravity-flow wineries in Ontario (that I'm aware of, anyway), so the grapes enter the winery at the top level and are processed at each level before flowing naturally down to the next level (minimizing or eliminating pumping).

Tasting notes for Flat Rock wines:

At the end of the tour, Brendan and I had each accumulated over a dozen bottles from the various wineries and could easily have brought home many, many more. Aside from our experiences at Crown Bench, we could declare the tour a resounding success.

Have you heard the latest Silvio Berlusconi joke?

Well, it isn't actually a joke, according to The Scotsman:

The Italian premier has given his backing to the book, written by the press director of his Forza Italia (Go, Italy!) party, which collects comments, both light-hearted and vicious, made by the left-wing opposition about Italy's billionaire prime minister.

Called Berlusconi, I Hate You, the collection of more than 500 insults — all reported over the years by Italy's national news agency, ANSA — is being published by the Mondadori publishing house, part of Mr Berlusconi's media empire.

The tamer insults include "clown", "bandit" and "Premier Pinocchio", while others such as "megalomaniac", "extremist", a man who speaks like a "drunken hooligan" and who behaves "like a Taleban" are more cutting.

"Berlusconi is like AIDS: If you know him, you avoid him," said Antonio Di Pietro, an anti- corruption magistrate turned centre-left politician, in 2002.

Hat tip to Jon.

The Illinois Wine Industry

Jon passed along a link to a posting at Free Will blog, talking about the state of the Illinois wineries:

[Quoting from a Chicago Tribune article]: "That hasn't stopped the state from pouring $500,000 a year to promote and assist the blossoming wine industry and to encourage residents that trips to wineries and vineyards make great getaways to enjoy local tastes. To help the cause, Blagojevich has even declared September 'Illinois Wine Month'."

Despite fueling a $20,000,000 tourism industry, the money hardly "pours": We only get that because when the Governor tried to cut us off (after lying to our faces about his intentions to preserve it), we basically threatened to declare Jihad. Otherwise, they would've used it to move a Jesuit museum from one part of Chicago to the other or powerwash somebody's office or some such nonsense.

Illinois, like other central states, does not have a climate particularly well-suited to the vinifera grapes from which many of the great wines of the world are made. They have too severe a winter to allow Merlot, Chardonnay, or Pinot Noir to grow, for example. Concentrating on the hardier hybrids makes a lot of sense, although there's always a snob factor that many consumers hold against wines made from hybrids (I'm guilty of this myself).

QotD: Teens

At some point I stopped wanting to go to the farm on Sundays; I was suffering from Sudden Onset Self-Addled Sullen Disengagement Syndrome, which strikes when you blow out 14 candles.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2005-08-10

Monday's Fruit Winery Tour

I'd hoped to get both Monday's and Tuesday's notes written up and posted by now, but to top off everything else, we've had three separate bands of thunderstorms roll through here this afternoon, requiring all computers to be shut down until the sturm und drang was over.

On Monday, Brendan and I tried to visit a few wineries in the wider GTA: Archibald Orchards, Ocala, Willow Springs, Applewood Farm Winery, and Southbrook. Unfortunately, Willow Springs and Applewood were both closed on Mondays, so they were not included in the tour after all.

We started with the furthest east (Archibald) and worked generally west (Ocala, then Southbrook). We did have a time limit to the tour, because Victor had a soccer game at 6:30 in Whitby, so we couldn't go too far afield.

We met Michael Pinkus, aka "Grape Guy", at Southbrook. He runs the Ontario Wine Review newsletter. I'd say go look at his site, but I think his ISP had a bad case of the backup blues yesterday: it looked like they'd overwritten his current site with an old backup or partly modified template files. Hopefully he'll be able to get them to fix the problem by the time you read this.

Overheard on a winery tour

At one of the wineries we visited yesterday (full report later as work and time allow), I overheard part of a discussion between a winery employee and a visitor:

Winery employee: " . . . oh, we can usually tell the difference between local [Canadian] visitors and Americans right away.

Visitor: "How is that?"

Winery employee: "Canadians almost always ask about dry table wines. Americans almost always ask about sweet or Ice wines."

I have seen several Americans arrive at a winery, purchase one or more bottles of Ice wine, and then say that they were buying it to have with steak, or burgers, or whatever. Ice wine as table wine? Urgh!

Back, but busy

I took as much summer vacation as my work schedule will allow (an extra-long weekend). It's done now. Once I get caught up with the couple of hundred emails that piled up while I was away from the computer, I hope to post something worthwhile . . . but it's far more likely that I'll just post more of the usual, unfortunately.

QotD: Financial Risk

I believe that it is [. . .] men of business, of slight education and of active temperament, who have made money rapidly, and who fancy that the skill and knowledge of a special trade which have enabled them to do so, will also enable them to judge of risks, and measure contingencies out of that trade; whereas, in fact, there are no persons more incompetent, for they think they know everything, when they really know almost nothing out of their little business, and by habit and nature they are eager to be doing.

Walter Bagehot, The Postulates of English Political Economy, quoted on the Library of Economics and Liberty site.

QotD: Armchair Generals

Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper.

Robert E. Lee, quoted at American Digest, but sounding like he'd written it last week.

QotD: Whimsy

Whimsy is an aesthetic category for cultural artifacts that do not quite conform to, but do not fully violate, the rules of contemporary culture. Whimsy is licensed departure. It makes free with cultural conventions in a way we find charming, funny, winsome and sometimes freeing. Whimsy is chaos on a leash, departure that may not stray.

Grant McCracken, "Discontinuous innovation and the mysteries of Roger Ebert", This Blog Sits at the, 2005-08-03

QotD: Wine Labels

One cannot fail to notice the contemporary marketing of wines by means of fun-and-funky labels, with their fractal curves, tropical fruit juice colors, and animals designed to appeal to the inner child, that cretinous monster who lurks inside us all. There is an undeniable increase in animals, for example, on wine labels, a trend which is bound to grow. All one can do to protest this development is to point out that the quality of a wine is probably in inverse proportion to the ferocity of the animal on its label. Beware, therefore, of labels with eagles, tigers, or bears (though I have not yet seen sharks, leopard seals, or velociraptors, it is only a matter of time).

Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur

QotD: Televised Debates

As televised liberal-conservative dust-ups go, this one doesn't quite hold a candle to the celebrated Bill Buckley vs. Gore Vidal cat fight during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. After wordsmith Vidal insisted that, no, really, the author of God and Man at Yale was a "pro-crypto-Nazi," Buckley (who famously signs his letters in National Review, "Cordially...") stopped speaking in his native Latin and declaimed: "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in you goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." That's good stuff — and it was on broadcast TV for god's sake.

Nick Gillespie, "Bob Novak: 'That's Bullshit . . . Goodnight, Everybody!'", Hit and Run, 2005-08-05

Co-generating wind power not financially viable

Colby Cosh links to a post at Sambal talking about the economics of domestic wind power:

Installation cost, including hardware and labor, is estimated at $25k. More than I have in my wallet, but that's okay, maybe we can finance it. It takes money to make money, and the power is free, right? So what the ROI, or, in terms the efficiency types like, the payback on that puppy? The calculator knows how much power costs here, so it can work all that out.

The answer is (drumroll please): 91 years. No typo, ninety-one. I'll be dead, and probably my kids too, and no doubt my house will have been gone for decades before it pays off. Oh yeah, not to mention the turbine itself, which has only a 25 year life expectancy.

Wow. That's even worse than I would have expected!

So much for the hopes of going "off the grid" with your own wind power generation capability.

The Ghost of a Conscience

Nick Packwood has little patience for the expected flood of "Japan as victim" noise on the anniversary dates of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings:

Fifty years after the end of the war the democratically elected and representative government of Japan still refused to assist in war crimes proceedings regarding biological warfare. In addition to the tens of thousands killed by Japanese germ warfare, Unit 731, Unit 100, Unit 516, Unit 1855 and other research facilities were directly responsible for the deaths of ten thousand people in the course of medical experimentation. Live un-anesthetized vivisection was a common practice.

This is to say nothing of the remaining grotesquerie of Japanese war crimes. Hundreds of thousands raped and forced into sexual slavery, the mass torture, abuse and murder of prisoners of war and atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre that manage to exemplify the actions of imperial Japan's people while being entirely unexeptional.

I have little patience for much of what is going to be said about Hiroshima on August 6 or Nagasaki on August 9. More particularly, with everything people will choose not to say.

No amount of retrospective angst, regrets, and belated second thoughts on the part of the allied nations of World War Two seems to be enough. No amount of contrition or genuine remorse on the part of the successor government of Japan seems to be too little. There's a moral disconnect there, wouldn't you say?

The Schroer case progresses

Julian Sanchez reports on the Diane Schroer case:

[The government denies] that being transgendered puts one in a "protected class" (which, as I recall, the original ACLU complaint hadn't claimed anyway) and, more to the point, that gender crossing doesn't fall within the scope of "sexual stereotype" discrimination. And there, as law prof Robert Post noted when I spoke to him for the piece, is the rub: The courts are perfectly ready to agree that it's gender discrimination if you fire a man for acting too sissy or a woman for being too butch in most contexts. But they're not prepared to say the same thing about the man who's fired because he insists on coming to work in a dress (so long as female employees are allowed to do so).

I've written briefly about this case once or twice.

Offensensitivity again

Apparently the situation is now even worse for free speech in Canada: Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, has been ordered to undergo sensitivity training after CAIR objected to this sentence:

In April, he predicted that oil prices would double by 2010. Demand will outstrip supply because "this time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on," he wrote.

So, even more today than yesterday, carefully police your language to avoid the merest hint of a shadow of a penumbra of something that someone somewhere might, perhaps, decide is offensive to them (or even to third parties). I strongly doubt that CIBC is acting of their own free will: almost certainly they are trying to forestall government action here. Even the biggest corporations in the country are afraid that the PC police will be unleashed at the slightest provocation nowadays.

Welcome to Canada. Please check your civil liberties at the door.

Hat tip to Jon for the link.

QotD: Method Acting

Fortunately, pop Wonka is played by Christopher Lee — or, as one of my kids exclaimed, "It's Count Dooku!", that being the name of his splendid turn in Star Wars. Lee is having a grand old time at the moment, doing ten minutes in every blockbuster around. My favourite moment in the Lord of the Rings movies isn't actually in any of the movies, but in one of those 'the making of' documentaries that appears on the DVD. It's the scene where Saruman gets stabbed by Grima Wormtongue, and Lee explains to director Peter Jackson that the backstabbing sound isn't quite right, because in his days with British Intelligence during the war he used to sneak up and stab a lot of Germans in the back and it was more of a small gasp they made. Jackson backs away cautiously.

Mark Steyn, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", The Spectator, 2005-07-30

To "foster a plurality of viewpoints" . . .

. . . the state will control all media. Sound familiar? It's actually the way the game is played in France, according to information posted to Samizdata (but originally published in a subscriber-only article in Political Journal):

Even the "private" French press is massively subsidized. It enjoys lower tariffs for freight transport, a postal discount, a reduced value-added tax rate and a complete exemption from local taxes on investment. Government also subsidizes secondary printing facilities and helps pay for the distribution of French papers abroad. If you're a journalist — or just a "journalist" — you also pay income taxes at a lower rate. And the best part: If a newspaper faces revenue losses because of declining advertising or circulation, the government will help make up the difference. The only catch is that, to benefit from this munificence, publications must officially register with a state agency (the French call it an organisme) run by a committee of editors and government functionaries.

The ostensible rationale for all this madness is that the government wants to avoid capitalistic media concentration and foster a plurality of viewpoints. The effect, of course, is the exact opposite: Unlike in the U.S. or Britain, in which various publications tend to represent some segment or other of market opinion or taste, French journalists are utterly indifferent to the views of their readers. Instead, they tend to write articles with a view to impressing their colleagues, a classic media echo-chamber that's as conformist as it is insular. No wonder the French public tunes out: Le Monde, the biggest and most influential daily in a country of 60 million, has a circulation of only 400,000.

I had no idea that there was so much concentration of power in the French media . . . it certainly accounts for the monolithic viewpoints presented on so many issues.

Vitamin P, your liberty-enhancing supplement

An article in New Scientist shows why digital pornography has non-prurient benefits:

Why we all need pornography

The makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are facing an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission after it emerged that explicit sex scenes were hidden inside the popular game's software. The discovery provoked a wave of condemnation from politicians, including an accusation by Republican congressman Fred Upton that GTA's publisher, Take-Two, had "blatantly circumvented the rules in order to peddle sexually explicit material to our youth". But it is not the first time technology has been used to offer people a sneaky peek at sex.

The "adult entertainment" industry embraced video cassettes, DVDs and the web more quickly than its mainstream counterparts because these media are tailor-made for private viewing. Consumers eager for a glimpse of skin, but afraid of being found out or of being spotted in a seedy blue-movie cinema, helped drive the demand for more of these technologies. In the process, they are making the internet a more hospitable place for those promoting racial, ethnic or religious hatred, or even organising terrorist attacks. But it will also help political dissidents and whistle-blowers, so technologies created to help porn enthusiasts today are the human rights' tools of tomorrow.

Yet another way that the NEOVICs are wrong, wrong, wrong. A free society needs fewer social controls over behaviour that does no harm . . . and the modern drive to censorship is creating a less-free society.

Hat tip to Colby Cosh.

PM announces next Governor General

Paul Martin kept his promise that the next appointed Governor General of Canada wouldn't be any of the names that were under media discussion last week. He has announced that the new GG will be Michaelle Jean.

I had to Google for information on Ms. Jean, as I was not familiar with her background. She will be the first black head of state in Canadian history, and has been working as a journalist in Quebec for most of her life. She was born in Haiti and her family came to Canada to escape the violence of the Duvalier regime.

Update: Paul Wells is delighted with the choice.

Update the second: Kate at SDA begs to differ with Paul Wells, and the name of Irshad Manji is mentioned. Now she would be a candidate I'd really approve of. Nobody could accuse a government of tokenism if she was the appointee . . . well, I guess they could, but then Ms. Manji would hand them their figurative heads. Manji for GG!

Kim du Toit solves the British Army's small arms problems

Jon also passed along a pair of links to Kim du Toit's blog, discussing the looming problems the British army will have when the get around to replacing the current SA80 rifle:

I would have thought that making your country self-sufficient in terms of its basic weaponry would be somewhere in Chapter One, Page One in "Strategy For Dummies". I can understand if you don't have the technology skills to make, say, radar-guidance systems. But small arms? Good grief. [. . .]

After WWII was over, the socialist Brit government of Clement Attlee didn't return those rifles to their American owners. In an act of spite and ingratitude which has never been forgotten by Americans, Attlee ordered those guns simply taken out to sea and dumped overboard. Lost were untold thousands of P-14s (which had been made by American companies to help you fight the Huns in the First World War) and other fine rifles.

The replacement Kim recommends? The standard weapon of insurgencies, rebellions, and third-world dictatorships, the AK-47:

Here are the advantages to my suggestion:

1. This is called "war on the cheap": cheap rifles, cheap (and possibly even free) ammo. As your rulers seem to think that defence budget cuts are limitless in depth, this is no small point.

2. You have to buy your rifles and ammo somewhere, and the Russkis need real (non-ruble) cash badly, so they're not going to go all Belgian on you and refuse to supply the rifles, just because you're invading some far-off country filled with brown people. Recent events seem to indicate that they're not that fond of brown people, either.

Eminently satisfying

Jon passed along a link to a Kim du Toit post on the backlash at the state level against the US Supreme Court's farcical Kelo ruling:

I emphasized Connecticut, because that state was home to the horrible Kelo decision which led to all this.

The Washington Times article notes that this backlash against the Supremes has not had much play in the "established" media — no doubt because of new developments in Aruba — but I'l bet that the state politicians have had a storm of letters and calls from irate citizens to tell them to pass laws which restrict "eminent domain" abuse by towns and cities.

If the response from my Readers is any indication, both in terms of volume and intensity, the lawmakers suddenly were confronted with the fangs of the beast, and rushed to fix the problem.

QotD: Canadian Soldiers

In the field in summer, [Canadian] soldiers wore bush clothes, which were adequate enough, though multi-hued depending on how often they had been washed. There were no winter field uniforms, and soldiers wore U.S. Army field jackets. On exercises, black coveralls were the usual dress, the sloppiest uniform in any army at the time. Until the army introduced combat clothing in the mid-1960s, Canadian soldiers looked as though they had been kitted out by a second-hand clothing store.

J.L. Granatstein, Canada's Army, 2002

Imagining the unimaginable

Gerard Van Der Leun continues a story he's been working on for some time. I think calling it apocalyptic is not too far off the mark:

The truck pulled over and parked along North Harbor drive and the technician took out some binoculars and scanned the harbor beyond the Navy Region Southwest Complex whose entrance was less than 100 yards away. Intelligence was correct. The USS Ronald Reagan was in its home port and riding comfortably at anchor.

The technician opened his case and took a wire that ran from the back of the truck along the floorboards. He plugged it into a jack in the simple switching device in the case. He looked at the driver and smiled. The driver smiled back. They both began to recite a prayer in Arabic while looking over the San Diego harbor. At some point in the prayer, without really thinking about it, the technician threw the switch. In the next instant, at the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway in San Diego, California on a warm August morning, a miniature version of the Sun appeared on the surface of the Earth.

Chilling doesn't even begin to describe it.

Jack Knox beats the war drum

Just in case you still think of Canada as the 98-pound weakling of North America (and let's face it, who doesn't?), Jack Knox thinks the upcoming war with Denmark is a slam-dunk:

The problem with going nose to nose with Greenland is the Inuit think it's foreplay.

Which is why we're going to fight Denmark instead, dropping the gloves in a border war.

This will come as a shock to those who were unaware we even share a border with Denmark, which we don't, really.

Our actual neighbour is the aforementioned, quasi-independent Greenland — the Danish Factory Outlet Store, as it were, way out on the edge of town beside Ellesmere Island and Costco.

Greenland, Denmark, whatever — bring it on, we're going to war.

Hat tip to SOMNIA.

Smoky Smith, VC, 1914-2005

The last surviving Canadian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross has died:

Although his comrades called him "a soldier's soldier," Smith's relationship with the army was stormy.

He built a reputation as an independent-minded man suspicious of authorities. They made him a corporal nine times and busted him back to private nine times. That was his rank when he was awarded his VC, the only Canadian private to win the medal in the Second World War.

Irreverant, sharp-witted and something of a trouble-maker, Smoky Smith and his deeds that night are the stuff of legend.

Already wounded once in Sicily, he had returned to cross the Savio River with his Seaforth Highlanders, the spearhead of an attack aimed at establishing a bridgehead in the push to liberate Cesena and ultimately break through the Germans' Gothic Line.

Smith was far from being the ideal soldier:

Smith heard he'd won the Victoria Cross about seven weeks after the fight. His reputation as a party animal preceded him. Military police were sent to take him to the ceremony with King George VI in London.

"They picked me up in Naples or somewhere and they put me in jail," Smith recalled with his trademark grin.

"'Don't let him loose in this town. Don't let him loose. He's a dangerous fellow.'

"I liked to party. I'd have a big goddamn party and they'd say: 'Where is he now? Oh, he's drunk downtown."'

Royal Navy retires HMS Invincible

Johnathan Pearce links to information on the Royal Navy's impending retirement of the Falklands War veteran carrier HMS Invincible:

The oldest "mini-aircraft carrier" used by Britain's Royal Navy, HMS Invincible, is being retired from service. The vessel, from which Sea Harrier jets can operate — as well as helicopters — is more than 20 years old and was used in the Falklands War, among other theatres of operation.

As I said a while back, I have no ideological issue one way or the other about the exact composition of our armed forces, which must change with the times and respond to different threats to this country. Coming from a bit of a navy family myself and being an enthusiast over our island's naval history, I am nevertheless the first to realise that sentiment must not trump hard calculation when it comes to manning our defences. But it bothers me that our navy has been reduced to a level that makes independent military action by this country a logistical impossibility. It is probably quite unlikely that we could mount a Falklands-style operation on our own again.

I moan on about the state of Canada's remaining armed forces, but clearly the continued shrinkage isn't restricted to this country. The current British government is talking about building some new fleet carriers (bigger and more capable than Invincible), but no contracts have been awarded and there is no prospect of the new vessels joining the fleet for years yet.

Steve H. proposes a solution to the energy crisis

The ever-resourceful Steve H. has cogitated deeply and come up with a unique solution to not just one, but two pressing issues of the day:

Oil prices are out of sight. Liberals have succeeded in banning nuclear plants, which produce the only safe, inexpensive energy. Cows are farting us into extinction. Farts are flammable. Do the math, and you end up with . . . the fart-powered Prius!

It's simple. Cows are used to the indignity of milking machines, so it will be no trouble at all getting them used to wearing collection bags hooked up to their sphincters. We pump the gas into storage containers, pressurize it, and distribute it from ordinary filling stations. Then celebrities and other gullible guinea pigs will be encouraged to buy Priuses specially designed to run on farts.

We are truly privileged to be on the same planet with a mind this, er, fertile.

QotD: Sports Writers

Sportswriters suffer from an eternal inferiority complex. Their media buddies in the other sections of the newspaper get to cover life and death stuff. So on those rare occasions when a sports story spills over to the front page, all of these hacks get the jones to do some real writing on issues even Congress seems to care about. See John Rocker. Ron Artest. Augusta National.

Hence, the spectacle of the mustard-stained ink rat who dines on donuts, ballpark kielbasas and press box buffets using his column to lecture a guy like Palmeiro about what he puts into his body.

Radley Balko, "Palmeiro", The Agitator, 2005-08-02

A blog for woodworkers

The good folks who publish the quarterly magazine Woodworking have started a blog. I mention it in case it's of interest to the one or two woodworkers I know who sometimes drop in. The rest of you can ignore it with a clear conscience.

Aircraft crashlands at Toronto's Pearson Airport

An Air France A340 passenger jet crashed during descent into Toronto's main airport late this afternoon. Canadian Press is reporting that 243 passengers were onboard, but there are so far no reports of fatalities.

Update, 3 August: Updated reports confirm that there were indeed no fatalities, and in fact no serious injuries in the crash. The aircraft's crew performed a "textbook" evacuation of the plane, and all 309 people aboard were able to get out of the burning aircraft within two minutes.

Fantasy RPG for Dummies

Nick Packwood posted a link to an almost-review of a new-ish book called Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies. The reviewer liked it, saying that he

[. . .] was dazzled by page after page of deep discussions on building characters, the ebb and flow of gameplay, tips for running a campaign, great references to pick up, and so on. "This isn't D&D for Dummies!" I said to myself. "This is more like D&D for intelligent, literate people who want to examine and explore the various ins and outs of this exciting and dynamic creative social activity."

Never fear. He leaps into the fray with the first draft of his own book: D&D for Complete and Utter Idiots.

The Presidential BMI

Radley Balko points out some amusing little facts about the US government's addiction to Body Mass Index measurements and the current President:

Critics of critics of the BMI often counter such claims by saying they're aberrations — that when we talk about how the government classifies world-class athletes as "obese," we're being disingenous because most people don't have the muscle mass of world-class athletes.

But the president isn't a world-class athlete. He's a guy who exercises six times per week. He is exactly what the government says we should aspire to. And yet the government still says he's overweight. Which means if we all worked out as often as the government says we should, we'd probably add to the government's overweight and obesity statistics, not subtract from them.

Free market environmental re-interpretation

Over at The Commons Blog, they're re-examining the underlying story to The Lorax by Dr. Seuss:

Paul Feine of the Institute for Humane Studies suggests the Lorax is subject to alternative interpretations. Viewing the tale of the Lorax through an institutional lens, ruin is not the result of corporate greed, but a lack of institutions. The truffula trees grow in an unowned commons. (The Lorax may speak for the trees, but he does not own them.) The Once-ler has no incentive to conserve the truffula trees for, as he notes to himself, if he doesn't cut them down someone else will. He's responding to the incentives created by a lack of property rights in the trees, and the inevitable tragedy results. Had the Once-ler owned the trees, his incentives would have been quite different — and he would likely have acted accordingly — even if he remained dismissive of the Lorax's environmental concerns.

The story ends with the Once-ler giving a young boy the last truffula seed. He tells him to plant it and treat it with care, and then maybe the Lorax will come back from there. The traditional interpretation is simply that we must all care more for the environment. If we only control corporate greed we can prevent environmental ruin. But perhaps it means something else. Perhaps the lesson is that this boy should plant his truffula trees, and act as their steward. Perhaps giving the boy the last seed is an act of transferring the truffula from the open-access commons to private stewardship. Indeed, the final image — the ring of stones labeled with the word "unless" — could well suggest that enclosure, and the creation of property rights to protect natural resources, is necessary for the Lorax to ever return.

Hat tip to Hit and Run.

Equality before the law

The latest Libertarian Enterprise includes an article from Lady Liberty on the topic of equality before the law:

If people really want equal opportunity, the standards for a job should be set and held immovable. Anyone who can pass those standards satisfactorily should then be eligible for hire regardless of their color, gender, religion, or anything else. But to lower the bar so as to hire people who are obviously less qualified results in workers who are quite literally unable to do what the realities of the job require. Sure, a female firefighter who can lift only two thirds of the weight that a qualified man can carry would doubtless be just as brave as that man and just as capable of rescuing a child. But what happens when the only people needing rescue are a couple of 180 pound adults?

It seems to me that there's absolutely zero comparison between political correctness in a fire department and the loss of life when less qualified personnel are hired. There happens to be (at the moment) exactly one woman in the entire fire department of the city where I live. She passed the same physical tests that the men who were hired did, and I have no qualms whatsoever about her ability to do the job. But how much longer will the city be "allowed" to hire only those people who are adequately capable? How soon might it be forced to lower its standards and thus its capabilities accordingly? I frankly don't want to see that happen anywhere because I think that saving lives and property is more important than some woman somewhere saving face.

QotD: "Minutemen"

Ten years ago, America's right-wing paramilitaries were so anti-government, they thought that driver's licenses were an unbearable infringement on their liberties. Now they're out on the border HELPING THE FEDS ENFORCE THEIR REGULATIONS. What the hell's up with that?

Granted, there's not necessarily much overlap between the two groups. But one has supplanted the other in the mass media, the public imagination, and the affection of the right-wing radio hosts — and so help me, I think I miss the days when I felt a certain kinship with the crazies.

Jesse Walker, "More '90s Nostalgia", Hit and Run, 2005-07-28

QotD: Shoes

Mismatched shoes are also nicely subversive. There is somewhere in the clothing code a notion that holds over from the Elizabethan era that says a person's shoes must show that they are in the Elizabethan lingo, unconcussable. Shoes, especially the shoes of the male and the young, are meant to show that the wearer is, all apologies, grounded. (High heel shoes take their semotic precisely from the way they break this rule. The wearer, a female, demonstrates her vulnerability, her fragility, her elegance, her powers of evocation by showing herself not at all grounded.)

Grant McCracken, "Cotton, Converse and co-creation", This Blog Sits at the, 2005-07-27