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.