Cause and Effect

A study has found a correlation between the number of fast food restaurants in a city and the city's comparative obesity rate. The study's author draws what I find to be a surprising conclusion:

The strong relationship really suggests that access to fast food may indeed be one of the issues that may explain increasing obesity rates.

Why do I say "surprising"? Isn't it equally possible that a city filled with people with bad eating habits might be able to more successfully sustain a couple of extra Burger Kings? Or perhaps cities that are more designed for cars than for people have both a positive impact on the drive-thru business and a negative impact on physical activity?

But never mind these questions, local television news program! Send out a camera crew to shoot some footage of fat torsos and asses belonging to nearby pedestrians - you've got a story to run!

Upgrade to Windows Irony, Service Pack 1

Coding Sanity has taken the plunge, upgrading to Windows XP from Vista, and he finds the performance improvements staggering. This might be the article that finally convinces me as well - if I wasn't in the IT support trade, and didn't feel like I should know my way around it, I would have kicked Vista from my laptop to the curb months ago.

Estimates accurate to within plus or minus 88%

American right-wing rabid dog Michael Savage explains why Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize - 90% of the selection committee are into child porn, "according to the latest scientific studies". I thought the last bit was a really nice touch, myself - if Science says so, it must be true! I'm wondering how those studies were passed over for the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Hey, wait a minute - of course! Savage is right, it must be some grand conspiracy! That, or he's a moron.

Domain and e-mails are all back in action

Now I just need to get back to writing. Unfortunately, I'm only slightly more interested in Karlheinz Schreiber than I am in the Leave Brittany Alone kid, so I'll have to look elsewhere for my fodder.

Thank you all for your patience - I'll look forward to the cards and letters once again.

And I'm back

E-mail is still not functioning properly, but I'm back and ready to bitch about the news of the day again. Maybe this host could do me the favour of remaining in business?

My webhost is definitely out of business. I should have the entire site restored to a new host by the end of the week... thankfully, I'm a huge believer in backups.

In the meantime, plesase don't attempt to e-mail any addresses at revmod.ca - I hope to have those addresses restored by Wednesday, but you never can tell. I'll keep you all posted via here, and thank goodness my name registrar was somewhere else, or I might have lost the domain totally.

My webhost hasn't been operating for three days. I haven't received e-mail at revmod.ca for three days, and that continues to be the case. If this lasts a few more days, I'll be looking to replace my webhost. Any suggestions you might have along those lines will be happily received in the comments.

Thanks for your continued patience.

Nothing you haven't heard from me before

As POGGE points out, Jack Layton is entirely capable of being a moron. Had he become the leader of the NDP twenty years ago, no doubt prairie right-wingers would have found a friend on the vital issues of the day, such as Sikhs in the Legion and the RCMP.

Canada filled with disappointment and pain

The UN has published its annual Human Development Index ratings, and it turns out Canada is only the fourth-best place in the world to live. We may be comforted in our meagre existences of quiet desperation, however, to learn that what put Iceland, the winner, over the top was its score on the Bjork Scale - Iceland scored an impressive 0.32 Bjorks per 100,000 population, compared to Canada's disappointing 0.00.

Also, a lot of our native population lives in staggering poverty, and our life expectancy is dropping because some of our citizens are dying through playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban. So, you know, fourth isn't bad.

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Royalties Day

To listen to some of the media, and some of the Tory caucus, you would think the Royalty Report was written by some anonymous group of Marxists (The People's Revolutionary Royalty Front?) sending it as a manifesto to select media outlets from their secret lair. In fact, it was written by a panel of primarily businesspeople, some from the energy industry, hand-picked by the Premier specifically to re-examine royalties in Alberta in the fulfillment on one of his leadership campaign promises.

Any cries from the oil industry about the unfairness of the findings are nothing but short-sighted NIMBYism. We all know that as buyers of this resource - owned by Albertans - these companies naturally want to get it at the cheapest price possible. But we're the sellers of the resource, so we should be interested in getting the best possible price for it. The Government of Alberta has a responsibility to get that price for us. The Royalty Review Panel attempted to determine how much that price could be, based on what the market can bear and what other jurisdictions charge.

This is why it's been so disappointing to me that the government has taken this long to announce how much of the report they're willing to accept, and (judging from the hints dropped so far) that they won't take the entire report:

The premier says the government's response will be balanced between what Albertans deserve for the province's resources, and the interests of the big oil and gas companies.

Wait - what? The government has a responsibility to the former, and none at all to the latter. If a government anywhere said that they were offering their unions a contract that strikes a balance between what the workers deserve to be paid based on what the market will bear, and the workers' desire to become independantly wealthy, the voters would rightfully scream bloody murder.

But it's been almost as disappointing to me that Kevin Taft wouldn't come out in full-throated support of the report at a minimum until yesterday, when it became clear that supporting the report would tactically be a position that would put the Liberals at odds with the government. Had he taken leadership with that position much earlier, would the government have felt more pressure to accept more of the report? It scares me more to consider that had the hints coming from the Premier indicated the report would be accepted wholesale, the strategy of differentiation pursued here by the Liberals might have led Taft to suggest that the report went too far.

Regular readers know I don't spare criticism for the NDP just because they're my chosen party. But in this, I'm proud that Brian Mason came out early and strongly to say that accepting the recommendations of the report is the minimum the government could do in order to execute their responsibility as custodian of this non-renewable resource.

A collection of random stuff

- In the wake of the Ontario referendum vote, I'd half-written a post about my opposition to PR. And then I had a conversation with an old friend, and now I'm rethinking it. I would have posted "I dunno", but that doesn't sound very engaging.

- It's municipal election day in Alberta. If you haven't given it any thought at all, and need to rush a decision, Daveberta likely has the links you'll need to do the reading before you head to the polls, at least here in Edmonton. For the record, it's pronounced "mu-NISS-i-pull", and I will not cast a ballot for anyone that pronounces it "mewn-i-SIP-all".

- The Sunday Family Circus actually made me laugh. Out loud! Surely, the apocalypse is at hand.

- Confidential to Caribbean Cutie: One piece of cake won't kill you.

Once a year, I can be bought

Notwithstanding my "ad-free" declaration on the left, once a year I let my poker freak flag fly. Here we go:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 5248482

Wish me luck.

Small Potatoes

Maybe it's because the smaller sin is easier to understand, or because it was more obviously unethical. But honestly, in the face of giving away our resources at fire sale prices, foregoing more than enough revenue to make Alberta Health Care premiums disappear, how can anyone get worked up about Ron Stevens' little three-day Hawaiian vacation on our dime?

Another reason to get out of that car. Or city.

Toronto has long been known as The Boringest City in History, at least in my circles. I'm sure maintaining that reputation is a full-time job. As Torontonian Bruce McDonald over at Canuck Attitude points out, the Dullification of Toronto is currently being perpetuated by the Toronto Parking Authority, because can you imagine a more Kafkaesquely-appropriate wing of government to be the iron hand of The City That Flavour Forgot? (Be sure to follow the link if only to see the great Leonard Cohen)

Torontonians, am I being unfair? Prove it, and stand up to this plan to mow down a great old club in favour of twenty - twenty - parking spaces.

Metapost

I'm attempting to get my domain registrar switched over, over the course of the next week. Expect glitchy nonsense to ensue, as normal. If I go missing, I'm optimistic I won't stay that way for long.

In case you missed it

Which you certainly did. Who stays up late enough to see The Daily Show?

Last night, the correspondent piece was about the Mexican immigrant invasion - of Canada. The story featured jackass Paul Fromm, of "Canada First". (I debated about putting up that link, but honestly, does anyone come to RevMod who might be swayed or sympathetic to this guy's viewpoint?) As always, it reinforced my belief that hate shouldn't be criminal, but we should take seriously our responsibility to stand that hate up in the public square, and gut it of power by mocking it relentlessly.

Plus, I almost pissed myself when Raffi Torres was interviewed, which made it all worthwhile.

Bear604 has recently posted about "comedy" that divides. The best comedy makes people rethink their ideas and prejudices, not reinforce them. Paul Fromm wasn't the butt of the joke here - he was the funhouse mirror being held up to the rest of us.

Welcome, Canadian Tourists! We accept Canadian Dollars at par!

There's been a lot of ink wasted talking about this, so let me hop in with a little of my own. One question that arose from the story isn't being answered very well.

How did this happen?

The basic answer in the media to the first has been that the US dollar has collapsed. That answer, while true, is not the whole story by any stretch. On the last solstice, March 21, as well as buying 86.37 US pennies, a single Canadian Dollar bought 22.48 Russian roubles, 101.77 Japanese Yen, 64.92 Eurocents, 1.05 Swiss Francs, and 57.74 Icelandic kronas. Against every one of these currencies today, the Canadian dollar buys more: 25.03 Roubles, 115.50 Yen, 70.98 Eurocents, 1.17 Francs, 62.46 Kronas. For the record, that's increases of 11.34%, 13.49%, 9.33%, 11.43%, and 8.17%, in the same time as we've gained 15.78% on the US dollar. Pick a currency, and you'll find this same approximately 10% gain in a loonie's buying power in the last six months.

I personally think this has more to do with the fact that we've spent the last few years discovering that no matter how much turmoil our government is in, no matter how many minorities we elect, no matter what stripes our provincial and federal governments are, things are going to be generally managed competently. We're not going to play out any extreme weird theories either of central planning or of extreme laissez faire barbarism. We're predictable, and money markets love predictable. It hasn't hurt that the United States has put themselves deeply into hock to the Chinese in order to "fight them over there" ("over there" being anywhere bin Laden isn't, apparently), but that hasn't been the driving force of our own gains.

Peace. Order. Good government. Money markets love that stuff!

Robert Jordan, 1948-2007

Like, as of Sunday. Am I the only one who hadn't heard about this?

I've been reading this man's Wheel of Time series for sixteen years. And rereading it. The prose was... well, it was a bit much. And later books in the series advanced the plot almost not at all. Nonetheless, the world he'd created in the series was engaging and complex, and there were enough questions raised that we as readers were sure there would be answers to; in fact, we were sure that the answers were already there if only we managed to puzzle them out.

He was working on the book that he had been promising for some time would be the last of the series. I'm sure that his publisher has enough of an eye to the revenue side of the ledger that something will come out with Jordan's name on it, something called A Memory of Light, that will wrap up the series. I'm also certain that given the lengthy illness that led to his death, he's made sure that there are notes, that there have been conversations with family and friends and editors about how he'd like to see the series concluded, so what is eventually published may actually be very much what Jordan himself would have written. It won't be quite what we all wanted: there will be puzzles that seem minor to those left behind, that Jordan himself may have forgotten he'd planted, that will now never be solved, and the text won't have the same feel - whatever else you might say about the man's writing, it was distinct - but it will give us some closure on this world we've been so invested in for so long.

For those of us who have lived in Jordan's world these many years, I know some of you probably shared my initial reaction: disappointment that he wouldn't finish the series. Selfish and callous, sure, but I know I wasn't the only reader upon hearing about his illness to think "that bastard's had me on the hook for way more books than he's deserved; he better survive this long enough to get to the end." What I'm suggesting above is that he probably did - close enough, at any rate. So take a moment to reflect on what he's actually given to us, the world that he shared with us, and give him his peace.

Thank you, Robert. May the last embrace of the Mother welcome you home.

Good news, maybe

The NDP win in Outremont is obviously exciting news for New Democrats. The margin is shocking.

But the maybe comes from associated concerns. Mulcair was personally popular, and the turnout was tiny, so these results shouldn't be read in too deeply as the beginning of a massive breakthrough for the NDP in Quebec. It's possible that as the Bloc declines (as I think is proving to be inevitable), the NDP might start gathering up some of those voters. The fear is that the party decides the way to do that is to abandon Clarity. Or to abandon any efforts at getting seats in traditional NDP strongholds like Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Layton has tried both of these and been smacked by the party for it. Does a seat in Quebec mean he gets to try again?

You know me - I just can't trust a guy from the GTA. Left wing though I may be, it doesn't change my essential Albertaness. I'll try harder to be enthusiastic about this.

Outremont! Wooooo! Suck it, Liberals! We r in ur provinc, winnin ur seats!!!!1!

Yeah, that felt okay.

Celebrity disses Christ, offends Christians

Elsewhere in the news that doesn't really matter a whole lot: Kathy Griffin, accepting an award (for best non-competitive reality show or maybe celebrity-based reality show or... I mean, does anybody actually know or care?) at the Emmy Awards That We Don't Think Are Worthy Of Live Broadcast told the audience that despite the award show tradition of celebrities thanks their Lord and Saviour, she was going to pass. "I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. So, all I can say is, "suck it, Jesus." This award is my god now."

Catholic League President Bill Donohue, a man who has never met a microphone he didn't like, called this "hate speech":

"It is sure bet that if Griffin had said, "Suck it, Muhammad," there would have been a very different reaction from the crowd and from the media who covered this event. To say nothing of the Muslim reaction."

Well, needless to say, saying "Suck it, Muhammed" (or Buddha or Vishnu or Moses or select the deity/prophet or your choice) would be a very different joke, and not nearly as funny. Because the joke wasn't aimed at Jesus, it was aimed at the recent tradition of awards ceremonies for celebrity winners to reserve a special place for Jesus in their list of who to thank, as if my Lord and Saviour gives a rat's ass about who gets a little statue for Best Original Song in a Made for TV Movie.

People are dumb.

And life got a little bit slower

60% of Saskatchewan's power subscribers were in the dark this morning. I've been reaching since I heard this for a "stuck in a (grain) elevator" joke, but it's just not coming. I'm sorry - it's disappointing to me, too.

Race from the Legislature

Recent polls have fired a warning shot over the bow of the Alberta Tory ship, and Premier Stelmach has responded by changing direction on at least Marie Lake, stopping F.L. (Ted) Morton's plan to do seismic testing there. I can respect that, just as I respect Tory MLA Dennis Ducharme's public criticism of F.L.Ted when allowing the seismic tests was still government policy.

At the same time, Premier Ed didn't feel he had the political capital to tell the Mayors of Edmonton and Calgary what to do with new money the province will be handing over for the next several years, so he just wrote a cheque.

In the face of all this, you would think the Liberals would be having a field day. And I guess they sort of are, in the sense that they seem be to ignoring the self-destruction of the Tories, and are instead trumpeting their candidate gender equity plan. Don't get me wrong - I think plans like this can play an important role in a party's recruitment and representation. But there were bigger fish this week that have gone completely unfried.

Increasingly, the election expected in the spring (though I hear more whispers of "this fall") is Kevin Taft's to lose. So far, so good.

Note to regular RevMod readers: According to Blogger, this is post #1000 on this organ. According to my recent hit statistics, many of you have faded away as my posting has become more infrequent. My mission remains mostly what I set out in my very first post (I haven't posted nearly enough chess here, but that's another conversation), that I'm write here because I need to write, even as the rest of my life has started absorbing more and more of my time. Nonetheless, I sure do continue to appreciate all of you who stop by, particularly those who make RevMod a regular part of your Intertubes travels. I might slow down, I might speed up, but I'm not stopping any time soon.

Edmonton driving tip #3

Here's a few ideas about how Edmonton City Council could spend a quarter of a billion dollars:

- Along with legislative imperative, subsidize developers building in new communities to add some low-cost and off-market housing, so that people have some choice and won't have to drive as far (or possibly at all) to work.

- Add more buses and greater variety in routes. Lower the cost of using public transit.

- Keep snow and ice cleared off the bike trails at least as well as you do from the main roads. Add paths. If bike commuting was taken as seriously as car commuting by the city, Edmontonians might actually be encouraged to do it.

And here's one idea about how Edmontonians could save a quarter of a billion dollars, bypassing City Council altogether: stay away from the Best Buy and Wal-Mart at South Edmonton Common. Seriously, I don't really want to use my property taxes (dutifully passed on via my slumlord) to subsidize your thirty-cent savings on lead-coated Chinese-made tacky knick-knacks. If they want you there so bad, let them build their own damned overpass.

Thursday afternoon, edited to add: An Edmonton Journal letter writer suggests using the HSTF to build the overpass. Today, on the 36th anniversary of the Tories' assent to power in Alberta, I'm sure Peter Lougheed would agree. The Heritage Fund was set up as a legacy of Alberta's resources, to be saved for a rainy day, and who can imagine a rainier moment in Alberta's future than this asshole having to wait an extra ten minutes to get to Ikea?

A public service message from RevMod

Don't put too much personal information up on Facebook, even though you think it's only available to friends. Because it turns out, it might not be so secure after all.

News to make you forget about the housing market

Here's some news to make you forget about the Edmonton housing market: the threat of an American-led, Chinese-caused global recession. Because if anyone thinks that the collapse of the American dollar leads any other direction, they need to think harder.

Oh, well - it should be easier to find somewhere to live after this. If you can afford the staggering interest rates. If you still have a job.

Ideology? Not on this blog!

Tom Tomorrow had some choice words for Iggy on his blog yesterday. Ignatieff wrote the unfortunately-titled Getting Iraq Wrong for Sunday's New York Times magazine. The essay is largely not about Iraq at all, but about how leaders have to make decisions, what they must consider, and how that differs from the "big ideas" that academics toss around with what he perceives as few or no consequences.

I have some disagreements with the piece (notably, the parts about the responsibilities of academics), but not with the sentences Tom focused upon:

We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

Tom sees this as a cheap swipe against war opponents:

Ignatieff essentially promises to do better next time, but until he can admit to himself that the DFH's out marching in the streets were right not in spite of their ideology, but frankly because of it, he still has a long ways to go. [I'll leave you to follow my link back if you're wondering what "DFH" stands for - Don]

Tom, I think you missed it. Iggy's saying, I think, "I was wrong because I let my view of the invasion be filtered through the goggles of my experience in Iraq in the 90s. George Bush was wrong because he saw Iraq through the goggles of the PNAC desire to remake the middle east in the image of middle America (or perhaps more correctly, was and is surrounded by people who see the the world that way). And some people in the anti-war movement were just as blinded when they made their pre-war judgements, seeing through a set of ideological goggles."

Iggy argues that for a leader, having an obscured view is a luxury the constituents cannot afford, something I fully agree with. I place myself on the left because I share a number of baseline beliefs with much of the left, most notably the value of individual human dignity, and the financial and social responsibilities we have toward one another to preserve that.

I think Tom found ideology useful in the leadup to the war, because he and others were thereby instinctively armoured against the vast volumes of bullshit coming from the White House and parroted by a passive press corps. But it wasn't ideology to make logical arguments against war. We didn't need Kreskin to see where the war would lead, to see that the justifications for war were nonsense - the evidence was all around us. Ideology didn't make us right, but it opened us to the possibility that Iggy and others were wrong.

Governments tend to learn from their mistakes - at least the smart governments. I think this actually goes a long way to explaining why many governments tend to become increasingly pragmatic as they govern, moving from the ideologies that they campaigned from. I'm heartened that Iggy has learned this lesson without governing, or at least, intellectually understands it. I hope the academic doesn't let his emotions blind him again.

Edmonton driving tip #2

If you're lost, I recommend pulling into a parking lot, and checking a map, or maybe pulling into a service station and asking directions. What I don't recommend is stopping in the middle of the road with a vacant look in your eyes, as the driver who took a left across traffic did in front of me, leaving the back end of my car exposed to all sorts of oncoming traffic when I followed.

Driver of the red Accord, may I suggest a glance at Google Earth before you depart, next time?

Urban futures

Via The Velvet Lounge, I've discovered what can only be seen as a love letter to Detroit. Not thoughtless or cheering, but an honest view of the very epitome of a industrial city in a post-industrial age.

After reading about the changing face of Detroit in the July issue of Harper's, I'm interested to watch how it's all going to turn out, and the Detroit Blog seems like an excellent place to follow. How much of Alberta's urban landscape will have to be rethought as well, as the world moves past oil?

Daily KKKos

Bill O'Reilly has declared that Daily Kos is a hate site. "It's like the Nazi Party", says Billo. Does one get thirsty from talking out of one's ass? Just in case, Bill, here's a nice big cup for you. Drink up!

Putting aside the obvious absurdity of this accusation, one of the points of evidence he uses is that a commenter (not a contributor, but a commenter) at Kos called the Pope a primate. Shocking!

I haven't found the comment in question, so lets not eliminate the possibility the commenter meant "Primate" in the ecclesiastical sense. This is strictly true, then, because the Pope serves as Primate of Italy.

Or perhaps it was used as Billo wants us to believe it was used, that the commenter intended "primate" in the biological sense. Again, how hateful, to say what is true about the Pope, not to mention Billo's beloved President of the United States, Billo himself, me, HRH Elizabeth II, the Hot Chick from That One Show, That Guy with the Shirt, and very probably you, unless you happen to be a search engine bot or a houseplant that's gained sentience by being placed too close to a leaky microwave for too many years. We're all primates. Fortunately, not all of us are morons.

Why does Bill O'Reilly hate science? Yes, it's a rhetorical question.

In the news today

I found the following on the CBC's website, in the local news section:










Do I have to draw a line through these three stories? A million Calgarians, in the absence of a real development plan, give new meaning to the word "sprawl". We encroach on our once wild spaces. Nature encroaches right back.

It is more than high time we recognized that if Alberta's cities are going to keep growing, we need to stop the "out" and work on "up".

Boy Wizards and such

Here's some fun things to do this weekend:

Go for a midnight trip to your local bookstore on Friday, and buy an armload of books - anything except Harry Potter. For added fun, buy nothing but expensive coffee-table erotica. Tell the cashier "I didn't expect to see you open, but I was passing by. Are you always this busy this late?"

If there's a reading of the first chapter or two, sit and listen. Then, ask the reader when you need to come back to hear the rest of it. Ask the reader to sign your copy, and compliment him or her on the writing.

Travel to another bookstore on Saturday. Casually lean against one of the many pallets of Deathly Hallows. Ask a passing employee if they have a copy of the new Harry Potter book.

Ask another employee if they know when Joanne Rowling will be passing through on the book tour.

If anyone during these visits says "Voldemort", put on your best expression of insane fear and scream "Don't! Say! The Name!"

Or, here's a better idea. This book is being sold as a loss leader in the big stores. Go to your little local bookstore, go buy it there for a few extra dollars. Perhaps buy another copy or two from a store you don't like very much that's eating a loss on the book, and donate it or them to your local library. Their wait lists are going to be gross on this book for a good long time.

Spin cycles

Those of you who don't spend quite the hours I do listening to CBC Radio One (current motto: "The Branch of the CBC Even the Tories Think is Good Value for Money!"), you may have missed this lengthy documentary that played on Sunday Edition last winter. Sunday Edition is replaying it this summer, which sent me on a search that led me to this page: all six episodes, fully downloadable. If you've never listened to a radio documentary, and if you have any interest in what I've always felt this blog is primarily about (critiquing and sometimes untangling spin), your time will be well-rewarded .

"Well, we tried democracy..."

"But the west told us we weren't any good at it, and boycotted our duly-elected government. So, maybe we'll have a go at theocratic totalitarianism, and see how that works out."

Seriously, we have no one to blame for this but ourselves.

The byelection to watch

There's a great deal of talk about watching the Calgary Elbow byelection tonight, as a read on the future of both the Premier ("How bad does he suck to lose Elbow?") and the Leader of the Opposition ("How bad does he suck that he can't win in the face of all the disaffection with the Premier?"). I think Drumheller-Stettler may be much more telling.

The Liberals didn't even put up a candidate in D-S in 2004. Shirley McClelland won almost 65% of the vote, with the Alberta Alliance coming second with 14%, the NDP third with 9%, and three fringe parties divvying up the remaining 13%. So, although a Tory win seems inevitable, the results there may be indicators toward a more province-wide problem the Tories are going to face in the next election, and whether the Liberals are the real contenders or not. If the Alberta Alliance makes significant gains, it's a good indication that Stelmach has as much to worry about from the rural base of the party as he does from the cities. At the same time, if the NDP comes out ahead of the Liberals, that tells me that the Liberals will never make a real breakthrough in the rurals, which is probably enough to keep them from winning an election.

Of course, if the Tories can't win in Drumheller-Stettler at all, the serious winds of change are blowing.

Right sentence, wrong criminal

Scooter Libby, who until he started woking for Dick Cheney was widely considered to be an upright, reflective, thoughtful, and honest public servant, took it for the team today. So that makes two friends Dick Cheney has shot in the face.

Failure is an orphan

We aren't going to meet our Kyoto targets. It's disappointing and sad, it undermines our international reputation, and it endangers the quality of life of every Canadian and every citizen of the globe, but it's no less true for all of that. The Liberals would like to tag the current government with the blame for this, of course, but I can't take the party seriously (though I take Mr. Dion as an individual very seriously on the topic) when I recall that of all the years since Canada signed the treaty, the Liberal party has held the reins of power in all but the last.

Then again, the Tories like to remind us of the same fact, forgetting that they were the critics of the science, promising to be obstructionists toward any real steps forward. One wonders if the Tories actually believe the science yet, or if they've simply come to the realization that denying the science would make them look crazy, or at least unelectable in most of this country.

(As for the other sitting parties and the Greens, their unwillingness to acknowledge the huge economic impact that meeting the Kyoto targets would produce only serves to make me dismiss them. I'd have much more respect for a party who would, like a Prime Minister converting to a wartime economy, realistically evaluate the price in jobs and economic activity, and then forcefully argue that the price is worth paying.)

Which brings me to the G8 meeting. Does the Prime Minister really expect anyone to take Canada seriously now? He can tart up his intensity targets as a great idea for developing nations all he wants (and perhaps it is a great idea for developing nations), but what it sounds like to the rest of the world is NIMBYism: we're having phenomenal economic growth in Canada right now, the United States is suckling at the enormous energy-supplying teat of the northern Alberta goop-mining business - we just can't stop!

Here's my point. If Harper wants Canada to be taken seriously on climate change, it's time to stop pretending we've got any cred to be a "world leader". We need to content ourselves with being a follower for now, sign damn near anything put in front of us at this meeting, and get started on the path we should have started on a decade ago. Until we pay the piper, we don't get to call the tune.

Driving tip #1

I've been living in Edmonton two years now, and despite my love for most things Edmonton, there are a few things I just can't get used to, and number one on that list are the drivers. Calgary was populated by some people who became very aggressive when they got behind the wheel, but I'll happily deal with that super-aggression than with the oblivious dimwittery of too many Edmonton drivers. I won't bore you with the tales of close calls and great excitement on the road, but rather, I've decided to begin a new series of driving tips, tailored specifically to the people I encounter during my travels. Enjoy!

And so here's the first tip, intended for the individual in the silver PT Cruiser I encountered this morning. When making a short-corner turn on a red light, unless the street is intended for multiple turning lanes, it is considered good form to both begin and end in the curb lane. If you need to get further to the left than that, you may want to consider changing lanes after you complete the turn, rather than crossing three lanes of oncoming traffic in order to travel 10 km/h under the speed limit in the leftmost lane for twenty blocks. Just a thought.

Isn't that fun? Stay tuned for more useful driving tips, coming straight from the streets of Edmonton to you!

Oprah, Ehud. Ehud, Oprah.

Via This Modern World, I see that Oprah is travelling to Israel to accept a humanitarian award. I highly doubt she would travel all that way and not spend some time meeting the locals and talking about the Intifada. But Jonathan Schwarz, The author of the TMW post, is right - the last thing the conflict needs is Oprah telling only one side of the story. She's an opinion-setter among her sizable audience. So write, and encourage her to visit the West Bank and Gaza while she's there. I have:

I was happy to read that Ms Winfrey will be travelling to Israel. I hope, even as she expresses her concern and sympathy for Israeli citizens, she'll also take the time to travel to, or at least meet with, regular citizens of the West Bank and Gaza. The last thing that conflict needs is a one-sided representation of it.

I believe that Ms Winfrey is fair-minded and sympathetic to all people who suffer. I believe that she likes to see through to the heart of seemingly intractable issues. I don't know what conclusions she might draw from visiting the occupied territories, but I'm certain she'd find the stories that need to be told, and tell them to a much wider audience. If she doesn't make the trip, I fear Palestinians will remain the invisible villians of the story she tells, and that can't be good for anyone who wants only peace in the region.

Fake Estate

The provincial government is facing its first serious issue since Stelmach became Premier, and it's fun to watch them try, yet horribly mismanage the issue.

It seems the issue started with something small but positive the government did, announcing that they were lengthening the time between allowable rent hikes to one year, up from six months. I'll be honest, this is more relief than I expected from this government, and in fact, serves me very well indeed since my own rent went up a very small amount, very recently. I'm safe for a long time. But not everyone here in Edmonton, or anywhere in Alberta, is. We've all been reading the stories, possibly even know people, facing obscene rent increases, because landlords have come to the conclusion that the market can bear it right now.

Pull that thread, and we come to an overheated real estate market. Not that long ago, anyone who could pay a thousand dollars or more in rent every month could afford to buy a house and pay a mortgage. That was the outlet the free market used to keep rent costs within reason - there was always enough capacity in the rental market, because people who became increasingly successful and financially secure could leave it. Today, virtually no one gets to leave the rental market who isn't already invested in a house - it's one thing to go from $250K condo to $350K house, when you didn't buy the condo for 250K and perhaps only owe 100K of the 150 you paid a few years ago. Essentially, you're extending your debtload, but you also have a bunch of equity in the house, so the debt isn't so intimidating and the bank is happy to talk with you. But to buy that 250K condo to escape your increasing rent? That takes more than a single middle-class income, and it may take more than two.

What's a landlord to do? There are many more people moving into Edmonton, Calgary, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie.... they all need places to live. If the market decides that a 500-square-foot concrete box is worth a thousand dollars a month, who are you as a landlord to argue? Even the friendliest, most generous landlord, though she might maintain the rent level with only moderate increases for current tenants, would be absolutely moronic not to price to the market for any new tenants. People get trapped in their current rental situations. The free market that the Tories believe will help everyone along doesn't serve people who aren't offered competitive choices.

Rental increase caps would still trap people in their current situations, because the government, any government right or left, is unlikely to cap the price a landlord can negotiate with a new tenant. Left or right, though, I think most people would agree that having only one option is better than having no options at all except to leave the province. Capping the increases mean that the one option you, the tenant, are living with now is the one you'll want to (or have to) stick with while the worst of the real estate boom washes over the province.

The government tells us that capping increases would stifle development of new rental construction. Well, this very minute represents the apex of potential rental profitability in Edmonton and Calgary. Where's the new construction? I see lots of houses and condos, but the only new rental units I see coming on the market are condos being bought by real estate speculators and rented out. Construction started on 593 rental units throughout all of 2006 in Alberta. What is that - two decent-sized towers in Ft. McMurray? Where is all this construction that the Tories are worried about stifling? Where are the market forces that are supposed to be producing new buildings for renters in Alberta's two largest cities?

Part of the problem goes back to our overheated real estate market. There are only so many tradespeople available to build in Alberta. They're overwhelmingly tasked with constructing condos and half-million-dollar houses, striking while the iron is extremely hot. What developer is going to give up people to build rental accommodation? Double the rent prices in Edmonton, and it might make economic sense to build, but who's going to do that work? There'd be nowhere those workers can afford to live.

The free market did a fine job of keeping rental prices reasonable when supply and demand were similar numbers. Demand is increasing, as workers move to Alberta cities and the economic bar to home ownership rises exponentially faster than wages. Supply doesn't change at all, no matter the economic theories of our Premier. If we price working class people out of both the ownership market and the rental market, they leave the province, and Alberta's good economic times come to a sudden halt. What's the solution?

A rental increase cap will defer this crisis. It's not a permanent solution, but it's probably a reasonable temporary solution until the real estate bubble bursts. And burst it will, at least in Edmonton and Calgary where real estate speculation, sometimes heavily leveraged, seems to be all the rage. Even if house prices never get any lower than they are today, any slowdown in the market or increase in the interest rate will make some speculators run to turn their properties into cash, and there, you'll see the invisible hand of the market at work, giving the most heavily-leveraged speculators a sound spanking. Defaults and abandonments of mortgages may follow, and that puts upward pressure on interest rates, which may lead to some domino effect - the less-leveraged all of a sudden find that they too are borrowed beyond their means to service their debt. As the speculators leave the market and housing comes available again to the people who want to live in it, some of the pressure on the rental market will ease.

But if we want a longer-term solution, one that will insure that the forces at play today don't come around again, then we need to legislate the building of rental property. As new communities spring up all over Edmonton, it's obvious that high-density housing is part of the community planning, because there are always condo complexes tucked in among the mini-palaces. Why can't development approval be dependant upon a certain amount of rental accommodation, too? It doesn't all have to be within the complexes, either - a duplex on every couple of streets legislatively forced onto the rental market would serve just as well.

Economic prosperity in this province depends on the working class. Turning the obvious rental crisis into a ideological battle is stupid beyond belief - a practical solution is required. Cap or no cap, there's no non-legislative incentive to increase supply. Any rental cap introduced would have to be seen as a short-term, stop-gap measure, and that's exactly what's needed right now - a short-term, stop-gap measure. In the medium term, the levers of government have to be used to increase supply to the rental market, particularly now, while building is at its craziest and that lever will have its greatest positive impact. Without these steps, we're gutting our own prosperity.

Almost wants to make me add her to the Gaffe-o-Meter. Almost.

Via the always-attentive Calgary Grit, who rips off Stephen Colbert in his McKay v May matchup (it's really more Tale of the Tape than Better Know a District, but I'll forgive), I see that dimwitted Green Party leader Liz May says Canadians are stupid.

Well, I know one who is.

The Quiet Restoration

Back in my university days, I counted among my friends an ardent, full-on left wing Quebec separatist. We tended not to talk about that particular leaning of his, because we knew it was a point of fervent, angry disagreement, and we weren't going to convince each other. However, we talked about it a little, because I was genuinely curious to understand the attraction of Quebec nationalism. He was certainly a believer that as "masters in their own house", Quebec would not have to play along with the right-wing-leaning Rest Of Canada he perceived the rest of us to be.

I think it's fair to say that the lie of that was readily exposed last night. Until now, the face of separatism has been the BQ and PQ, parties far enough to the left that the NDP don't seem to have the heart to really work against them, or (much to my disappointment) seriously contest the things they say and do. But while the ADQ might be willing to put away separation as a party plank (and who can't agree that it's good for the country that the only Quebec party outwardly advocating separatism was reduced to third party status?), they are built from a side of Quebec nationalism that my old university friend called a rump, or denied completely. Private health care, private schooling (read Catholic), "autonomy" (An independent Quebec within a united Canada, as the Quebec comedian Yvon Deschamps liked to say) - these hearken back to the Union Nationale.

The new ADQ caucus is unknown and untried. It's a new party, it's a "populist" party, and it's an ideological party, and those three facts in combination almost certainly guarantee that they'll have more flakes and nuts than a box of Muslix. For too many years now, the ROC's left has shied away from confronting Quebec nationalism head-on (witness Jack Layton wanting to tear up Clarity, check national unions not attempting to spread into Quebec, for fear of stepping on nationalist toes). Perhaps some inopportune words here and there from the new ADQ members, and we can finally mix it up.

Comments are clearly dead

I'm going to give them until the end of the week to recover before I try the backup plan, because obviously, once Gaffe-o-Meter 3 starts, we can't have the comments falling down on the job.

And speaking of gaffes, and falling down on the job, do you suppose the people of Alberta will exact an extra penalty since this happened in the Premier's own riding? Guess there's no point in asking you, at least until the comments recover.

Amateur Hour

Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Green Party, has decided to run in Central Nova, against the locally- and nationally-popular Peter McKay. She says the move will raise the profile of the Green Party.

I'm no friend of the Green Party. I think the last thing the left in this country needs is to split their vote. The lessons of the Reform Party should be obvious to all involved - how would the politics of the 90s have been different if Preston Manning had decided that the Tories had needed renewal from inside, and started organizing there?

However, I'm still willing to offer a little advice. Liz, are you a moron? Deranged, perhaps? Your party has some profile. What it doesn't have, the one thing the Green Party needs to be taken seriously, is a seat. Any seat. You might win Central Nova - I suppose it's possible. But what's the risk/reward ratio here? You're taking on a far more difficult battle than required, and if you manage to win, in a month people across the country are going to forget who you beat to win the seat. Or worse, if you win the seat in the face of a national Tory majority, people may even blame you for taking a moderating voice out of that caucus. And that's all under your bast-case scenario, that you win. The far more likely outcome is that you run a respectable second, and everyone ignores you and your party again until the next federal election.

You're a national party leader, Ms May. No one will blame you for parachuting into a seat. But by parachuting into this seat, all you're offering your party is more years in the wilderness.

March Madness

Not the US college basketball, which I could care less about, and not even the homestretch of the NHL's regular season and the rush for playoff spots, which keeps my interest only marginally more.

No, I allude to the two most watchable events in sports.

First, the McDonald Labatt Nokia Tim Hortons Brier. This year's Coffee Cup tournament has been marked by complaints about the quality of the playing surface. Now, people have complained about the ice in Hamilton for years, but they generally haven't been talking about curling sheets. I'm sure it's the bad ice that's keeping the crowds away. I don't blame at all the broadcast contract which keeps so many rounds away from the eyes of basic cable subscribers.

Which brings me to the second event: the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup. Canada has qualified again, and drawn themselves into a group with England, who I'm sure we can kick around - what does England know about cricket? Thing is, if the Canadian side does actually pull off this miracle, most Canadians will never get a chance to see it. The only broadcaster here is the Asian Television Network, who in turn is only offering the World Cup as a pay per view on their Cricket Channel. I might consider buying it, but I can't get it though a normal cable connection, so the pay per view price would only be a small part of the cost of buying a mini-dish from Bell and paying their subscription fee. Might as well fly to Saint Lucia and watch it live.

What are Canadian curling and cricket fans to do?

Time to wake up this sleepy old blog

Noises of an election mean that the Gaffeometer III: The Third Iteration will be coming soon. I'm still on the hunt for Dion pictures - headshots, and no photoshop!

Guess I should determine where I need to send my $20 for Gaffeometer II: What's Scott Reid Worth?. Sounds like a weekend project.

Don? Don?

It appears RevMod Don has been hiatusizing for some time, so feel free to join me for all-new episodes of the bear604 Show. This weeks topics include:

Budget 2007: Bust Place on Earth?

Oscar? Who's Oscar?

Vancouver's train to nowhere vs. Seattle's highway in the sky

BC's new energy source: Liberal bullsh*t

The first hundred visitors will receive free admission onboard Walnut Boat. Too groovy to miss.

Eenie, meenie, miney, no.

The government is mailing ballots to begin the process of destroying the Canadian Wheat Board. Fortunately, in their effort to be tricky about it, they may have undone themselves. Or is the point to lose the vote, thereby ridding themselves of another troublesome policy plank? That strategy worked for gay marriage, after all.

The vote, which is a plebiscite (and therefore non-binding), gives farmers three possible recommendations for the future of CWB's role in the barley business. Farmers can elect to keep everything as is, to shut down the CWB's barley business altogether, or to have the CWB continue to operate, but in an open, non-monopsonous, non-monopolous market.

Any farmer who knows anything about their own business knows that the second and third choices are actually the same choice - in an open market, the CWB is castrated into uselessness. The only lever it has is the lever of being the only buyer and seller of Canadian barley. How big an advantage does this situation give Canadian farmers? Big enough that Americans appeal the CWB's existence under NAFTA. Big enough that Canadian farms are able to survive in the face of huge American subsidies (albeit overwhelmingly on corn, but the farmers are the same, even if the crop is not).

Why do I think the Tories might be trying to intentionally lose this one? There was a time when there were two parties on the right in this country, and neither of them fared so well. When you give people two choices that are too similar, that's called vote-splitting. No one knows this better than the Tories. In the meantime, although there's a vocal group who think otherwise, farmers aren't going to ruin a good thing. The open-market thing looks tempting, it might appeal to a sense of fairness, but in the end, farmers know which side their bread is buttered on. They know how the butter got there in the first place. They know who made the bread. They aren't going to screw themselves for the sake of some Fraser Institute free-market experiment.

Is it April 1st already?

It may be remembered as one of the greatest internet hoaxes since I sent that guy some money to help get him out of a Spanish Prison. This hoax, however, costs nothing but your time and eventually some self-esteem.

What is it? Why, it's Google TV! And despite my warning that this is just a little joke at our expense, some of you will watch the video and then try it out. I know - I did. It's detailed, it's plausible, and it's attractive. Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks they can't be conned.

Gosh, I wish it wouldn't suck

The CBC is promoting the hell out of Little Mosque on the Prairie, claiming worldwide media attention, and certainly it's been recieving more than most of the CBC's sitcom clunkers over the years (that is to say, a little). They may be overselling the point, however, since they claim attention from Stephen Colbert, while the No Fact Zone, a regular watcher and documenter of Colbert, can't recall ever seeing anything about it (see near the bottom of the linked page). Perhaps Colbert's attention was attracted, until he realized that there's nothing more likely to encourage death to comedy than an earnest CBC sitcom, unless it's the Air Farce.

(Yes, I know, they've reanimated the corpse of the Air Farce with the sacrifice of some young new talent. But slightly better celebrity impersonations doesn't improve the writing one whit.)

It's generally true that Canadian sitcoms through the years, with a few notable exceptions (Corner Gas, Twitch City, The Newsroom) are just very, very bad. There's a simple rule that's served me well - the opposite of "funny" isn't "dull" - it's "earnest". Canadian sitcoms sure do like to try for "earnest".

So here's a tip for Zarqa Nawaz, as she's writing more episodes of the series: instead of worrying if Colbert is paying attention to you, pay attention to him. When you have a choice between making a point and going for the joke, go for the joke. Pay attention as well to Jon Stewart, who wisely moved the Daily Show away from mocking the stupid but powerless. Don't make characters, even those that show up only briefly, into gleefully rednecked straw dogs in order that you can poke fun at them - as Krusty once explained to a hopeful Sideshow Cecil, the pie-in-the-face gag only works if the sap's got dignity.

Please, please don't suck.

RevMod Year in Review

It started with an election, and ended with a hanging that I believe brought an end to the threat of terrorism, or something (Osama who? Whaaaaa?) - I was still too fat and lazy and marginally hungover from Christmas to figure out the details, so I skipped blogging that last one. Check the archives. Seriously - I keep them there for a reason. Damn lazy readers.

Instead, let me point out my newest distraction: Kevin Baker, freelancer (I'm guessing) often published in the Journal and Post, is Running to Ruin. I found him in a Google search for "The Legend of the Chevy Farm" (don't ask why), with an article about returning as a listener to CBC radio after the strike in 2005, his tastes forever changed by his months listening to commercial radio.

Bottom line, anyone who is that consistantly sharp and funny, and has as his very top link The Great Eastern web archive is a winner in my book.