Weather Report

The Irony That Is Shakira

2006-07-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

An interesting irony occurred to me today, and it goes something like this:

Shakira is a hot babe. In fact, her music and especially her videos are so sexually inticing that they serve almost as an instruction manual for how to attract men. Ironically, the more "into" Shakira you are, as a man, the more you look like a homosexual trying to learn how to get a man. Therefore, very few heterosexual men are actually fans of Shakira, even though we all think she's really hot.

I've put very little thought into this (obviously) but I've also managed to come up with a scale of Shakira involvement and how it relates one's sexuality to those who observe it:

Level 1: caught watching Shakira video on music channel, acts guilty = blatant heterosexual

Level 2: owns poster of scantily clad Shakira = probably heterosexual, depending on how it is displayed eg. weightroom, behind toilet, etc. vs. next to Duran Duran poster in bedroom

Level 3: owns Shakira video collection = borderline; either the guy has a total Shakira crush or he's studying her moves

Level 4: owns Shakira CD and listens to it by choice (without female prompting) = heterosexuality can be openly questioned at this point

Level 5: drives around in a Mazda Miata in an Izod teeshirt with hair slicked back and Shakira blaring from radio = gay, gay, gay (not that there's anything wrong with that)

Feel free to test my scale as the opportunity arises. I'm sure you'll find very little enthusiasm for Shakira among your hetero male friends, even as they admit to having uncontrollable carnal brain freeze just looking at her. She's kind of the twenty-first century equivalent of Olivia Newton John that way.

There's something genetic at work here, because straight men don't even have to be told that constant exposure to that level of girliness will sissify you somehow. The lizard brain just knows these things.

You're Known By The Company You Keep

2006-04-19T12:07:00.000-04:00

Just a short post to link to this post on Creating Passionate Users about the recent discovery of "mirror" neurons in the brain, and the impact that this has on all sorts of fields of scientific inquiry (and philosophy, and economics, and cetera). We're getting closer to an owner's manual for the brain every day.

Johnson DeLonghi, On Why Sixties Music Sucked But MP3s Suck More

2006-04-02T08:33:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, who I'll call Johnson DeLonghi, has a recording studio build into the basement of his house. His years of study and experience have left him highly knowledgeable about many aspects of the music industry, and especially about the engineering side of creating recordings. Whenever there's something about the music industry that I don't understand I write him an email, and his replies are always an awesome read. This particular exchange was so enlightening that I thought I'd post it to the old bloggeroo (with his permission, of course).

First off, here's my email to him:

I think you've final gotten through to me. And I have a question. First, the background story.

So I'm doing up a load of dishes in the kitchen tonight. I usually put on music on the satellite when I do household chores, and lately it's been a lot of classical again.

Not being in the mood for baroque (gag) or chamber music (which I dearly love, but just didn't feel like ) I put on the masterworks channel, which showcases entire symphonies, tone poems, whatever. What's on? A symphony by Gorecki, who I don't know at all. Apparently he's Russian, because there was a soprano caterwauling in Russian along with the dirge. Not wanting to risk that this was the first movement of an hour or more of this stuff, I switched to the seventies flashback station that I also normally enjoy.

Well. At some point during the past few days a switch was thrown inside my brain. I think it was a combination of closely listening to your production values foiled against too much Lighthouse, but I'm really starting to despise pre-digital recordings. Half of the stuff I'm hearing tonight sounds just awful, and I know that a week ago it wouldn't have bothered me at all. I also remember that you've said you respect the Motown stuff but you can't listen to any of that era any more because of the shittiness of the recording quality.

So my question is this: what is it about the Eagles recordings that makes them sound so much better than their contemporaries? "Take It Easy" (recorded 1972) came on in the middle of all of this soppy, plunky bassed crap, and it sounds years and years ahead of it's time. What did they do, what did they know, that put them so far ahead of everyone else? (Joni's Court and Spark is equally good. Is there a connection?)

Maybe you disagree and you think the Eagles are garbage too. But to my newly unleashed listening powers they sound distinctly better.

I'm breathelessly waiting for your answer to this, so if it's too long and complicated to write down right away, be sure to send a short answer to provide an iota of relief. I mean, it is partially your fault after all.

Thanks in advance for your soothing pronouncements.

Please note: I don't really hate the Baroque period, but certain elements (continuo in particular) start to grate after a while. I readily admit that some of the music written by Bach and Vivaldi are as yet unequalled in beauty and complexity, and count among my favourite pieces.

Anyway, here's JD's reply*:

OK Marty, here we go. It's going to a long one, but you asked for it.

In the beginning, there were analog, reel-to-reel tape machines. The tape ran at slow speeds and didn't work very well. They were originally mono, and soon became two-track stereo, but generally had poor fidelity.

Very early on, engineers at places like RCA and Bell Labs learned how to build very excellent microphones, some of which are still the very best around today. Many had tubes inside them for amplification. Indeed, early chamber and jazz (and even pop) recordings consisted of one of these excellent microphones and a shitty analog tape deck.

As time went on, engineers learned that by increasing both the tape width and the tape transport speed, fidelity began to improve dramatically. At one point, the 4-track reel-to-reel tape deck (multitrack recording) was invented - either by Les Paul or Leo Fender, I can never remember which.

Very clever engineers began to experiment with "ping-ponging" (as you know) which was the process of recording a drum kit, say, on 4 tracks and then mixing the whole thing down to one track, leaving the remaining three for something else. And so on. Problem was, whatever was "ping-ponged" to the single track left the mix permanent and unalterable. Usually, it sucked.

In these days, there were no effects, no compressors and no sophisticated noise-reduction techniques. Every time you "ping-ponged" you would also transfer all the tape noise and distortion (x 4) to the single track. The result was usually awful.

I am told that some classic albums like Sgt. Peppers, Band On The Run, Smile, etc. were all done on 4 track decks, using ping-ponging. Well, these guys must have had sacks of cocaine and endless patience, because some of them turned out not badly at all. However, you can have the best mikes and performances in the world, but if your decks are shitty and your label has left you no budget, things are going to sound like crap. Those turds cannot be polished.

Enter Motown, early Stones, most of anything done at Sun or Delphi records, and you know what I mean. A classic example is "La Bamba", the Ritchie Valens version. As with most great vocalists of the day (especially doo-wop artists), their voices were so powerful that the shitty decks and great mikes couldn't handle the dynamic range and sound pressure levels they were recording. "la Bamba" is a great example, because not only can you hear the equipment self-destructing, there is also a biblical train-wreck by the band before the final verse that is beyond belief - clearly the label had no more dough to re-record it.

The frequency range of this equipment, at the time, was not much better than AM radio. And it sounds it. Therefore, I cannot listen to it. Plus, the distortion and noise levels are like nails on a blackboard for me. Sure, the songs were great, but I can't get past it.

At some point in time, the engineers started developing effects. Phil Spector is a good example of a pioneer in this field with the "Wall Of Sound". He use to shoot a lot of people and was a paranoid schizophrenic. Get this - do you know how they first invented reverb? It was called a "plate". Literally, they hung a giant piece of tin from the ceiling, perhaps 10 or 20 feet in length, oriented vertically. They placed a microphone at one end, while the vocalist sang his lungs out facing the piece of tin at the other end. The microphone picked up the reverberations carried along the tin, and that's how they did it.

Echo chambers? No, they didn't have 'em. On a reel-to-reel deck, there are three heads. One, the erase head, clears the tape in advance of the incoming signal. Next, the record head applies the signal to tape. Then, the monitor head plays back to the monitor what actually went on the tape, just microseconds later.

The way they used to achieve echo effects (Steely Dan included) was to pull the tape out of the deck, in a loop, at the point where it left the record head but before it reached the monitor head. Then, they would pull the tape out into an adjoining room, or wrap it around a lamp stand, or whatever, and let it run great distances around the studio until they got a satisfactory time delay before the recorded signal came back to the monitor (or playback) head. Again, massive amounts of cocaine had to be involved.

Finally, in our trilogy of shittiness, analog tape has a condition called "saturation", which can be very pleasant, or it can be like a root canal. Analog tape isn't restricted by the limitations of digital recording, in that, it's perfectly OK to exceed a 0 Db signal level when recording to tape. In fact, nothing sounds nicer to me than a nice, punchy snare drum recorded to analog tape with a bit of saturation. Nothing in the digital domain has ever approached that warm, fat sound. Digital guys have gone to their grave trying to replicate it, but it can't be done. The reason is, saturation is a physical process, not an electronic one.

Having said this, the downside of saturation is that, when it's too much, it causes distortion of the most heinous nature, even worse than the digital equivalent - clipping. The early vocalists and bands, without the advent of compression, almost always pushed saturation to it's breaking point, and for this reason also I can't listen to the old recordings.

This is why, if push came to shove, I contend that the most important tool in the studio is compression devices, for both analog and digital domains, and for very different reasons.

Fast forward to say, mid-1970's. Companies like Studer and Revox (and then, Studer-Revox) became very serious about manufacturing high-end analog tape systems, with big, fat 2-inch tapes, blazing tape speeds, and 16 or 24 tracks on a single reel. Engineers had begun to perfect electronic effects, compressors and microphones as well as having the luxury of doing away with the dreaded "ping-pong". Shit started to sound really good, especially if the label could spring for $250,000 decks and $1,000,000 Neve mixing boards. Noise reduction systems (such as Dolby and, even better, DBX), began eliminating tape hiss and distortion as well as increasing the headroom and dynamic range of analog tape to the point where the high end sparkled, and the bottom end was like waves of warm honey. I was there. I have thousands of albums that sound like my first blow-job felt. Eagles included.

Then, just when all was perfect, someone had to fuck it up. Analog recording (and vinyl distribution) had become an incredibly expensive process. Tape machines were finicky, unreliable and expensive. All vinyl records had to be hand-mastered by geniuses like Bob Ludwig to compensate for the fact that the dynamics of a concentric groove on vinyl alters drastically as the circles diminish in size towards the centre of the disk. These were true artists of the day, and they were obscenely compensated.

Enter the digital age, and the end of the world as I saw it. Spoken like a true dinosaur.

Mitsubishi came out with the X32 digital recorder, oh, I don't know, maybe the early 80's. I had the capability of recording music digitally in 16 bits. It was cascadable. If the artist wasn't happy with 32 tracks, fuck it - bolt on another X32 and give him 64 tracks to work with. It instantly became the rage obsoleting multitrack analog decks within days of its release. The only problem was that, although it was pristine and flawless, it also had the characteristic sterility of digital recordings (especially given the 16-bit dynamic range).

Sidebar - at some point I can go on a tear about dynamic range, anti-aliasing, Nyquist's theorem, sampling rates, quantizing noise and all the other stuff that makes digital music sound like shit. That's a weekend-long discussion sometime over tea and crumpets.

Carrying on: engineers came up with what was not a bad compromise - run the output of the X32 (digital) through some digital-to-analog converters, some 12AX7 tubes at unity gain, and mix down to 2-track analog decks! Cowabunga! It turned out that by running digital signals through tube amplifiers replaced all of the warm, lovely odd-harmonics that are lost in the digital recording process, and the analog tape with some sweet saturation sort of restored the sound. I have experimented with this and know it to be true.

This went on for a while, with great success. Quite possibly, the best sounding records of the late 70's and 80's were exclusively done this way. One problem though - the end result (to the consumer) was still these nasty, expensive, hand-tuned vinyl records. This would no longer do, cried the record companies.

Enter the Compact Disc. By eliminating the 2-track analog tape at mixdown (and going strictly digital), mastering (as it was then known) could be eliminated, and the music could be purchased on a little aluminum-spattered plastic disc and could be manufactured for less than 25 cents.

Yeah, it was pristine. It was noiseless. It didn't degrade over time or use. It was rugged. It had many great features. The only problem was, it sounded like shit.

Guys my age are in the worst possible situation because, although we can tolerate listening to CD's, we lament the analog days when music truly sounded great, plus MP3's are just not an option. Marty, you have to believe me, when you were raised on the recordings I was, MP3's sound absolutely awful. I can tell you precisely why, but that's another sidebar. So, on the bell curve of fidelity, we are nearing the bottom. Again. I am sad. I am going to to hug some of my records and have a good cry.

Pretty awesome, eh? And when he says he can talk all weekend about this topic, it's absolutely true. And he wouldn't repeat the same facts twice. And he'd pull out, oh, five hundred albums on a variety of media for comparison's sake to prove his points. I alway's enjoy a weekend's worth of tea and crumpets at JD's house.

*JD: if you're reading this, sorry it took so long to post.

Pro-Test Movement

2006-04-02T08:30:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting development in the world of protesting, via Instapundit. If you've ever seen a bunch of idiots protesting something and wished there was a way you could effectively express an alternative view, you maybe ready for the Pro-Test movement. It's a an amusing idea, and I kinda hope it catches on.

Compelled By Melete IV

2006-03-11T05:42:00.000-05:00

Bistro 44
01/02/06 - Kicked off the new year's sobriety effort by meeting Mick and Judi for mid-morning coffee and chit-chat at Bistro 44, a place I've come to thoroughly despise. It combines all the charm of a back-alley brothel in Amsterdam with the menu pricing of the toniest cafés of Nice. I mean, five bucks for a biscotti? A cookie? A dense, bitter, flavorless cookie?? A cookie that tastes stale fresh out of the oven??? I usually get two. And don't even ask how much the no-fat caramel latté I get with them costs.

We sat at a small table by the biggest little window in the place, near the front but not too close to the door. It's one of those old windows with stained glass on the bottom and clear on the top so that you can sit and sip without having to look at the hoi-polloi out on the side street, all held in place by enough lead to poison half the city. At night the unused tables are completely cleared. But the day manager, an angry, hulking showboat queen in his early thirties, decorates each table with a cheery vase and fake flower arrangement, strictly to express the irony-laced loathing he feels toward this place and by extension the world in general. It's completely appropriate and everyone who goes to the Bistro gets it immediately. Our vase this morning held enormous daffodils, so tall that they partly obscured Judi's face for much of our get-together. I was kind of grateful for that.

The clientel of the bistro are your typical no-job-out-of-college, still-living-at-home rich kids in their mid-twenties, slumming it on the West Side using daddy's platinum card. The sort of people who like a place that makes them feel dirty even as they maintain perfect hygiene. They dress themselves in a caricature of free-wheeling bohemia while shopping only at the best boutiques. (They sneer at the Gap and just the sight of a Walmart-style bigbox store gives them hives. Or it would, if they'd ever seen one.) Every now and then, when our own conversation dies down, I catch snippets from the other tables and I puke back into my latté bowl. They remind me of me at their age so much that I want to crawl into the bowl with the puke and drown.

Anyway, the Bis definitely has that dirty/clean thing going on. The bare 25 watt lightbulbs, the palid violet walls and shiny black trim, and the two-tone tile arrangement in dingy red and putrescent green combine in a way that would normally hide how dirty the place was. But at the Bis the opposite is true: the dank interior inconspicuously hides the owner's germ phobia-inspired cleaning binges. Only the occasional faint wiff of Dutch Boy gives it away.

Bistro 44 is the first of many small establishments in the same long row of old attached red brick masonry buildings. Except that the Bis' red bricks were painted black some time in the sixties and have stayed that way ever since. It's the same width front to back so that the washrooms, located behind the main seating area, are down a short hallway against the side of the building (which also leads to a mostly unused kitchen door marked "KEEP OUT"). The small black awning over the front door acts as an umbrella for the inevitable guantlet of smokers that other patrons have to pass through since the by-law started being enforced, a group usually lorded over by the day manager, who apparently gets to take a smoke break every ten minutes as part of the terms of his employment. A fresh coffee alway takes twice as long as it should because he's invariably outside when it's ordered, and he's the only one in the place who can properly run the antique espresso machine behind the counter.

In the back corner, opposite the hallway to the washrooms and kitchen, is a stage barely big enough to hold the microphone and music stand that sit on it. I've never seen it used and my personal opinion is that it's just for show, a half-hearted attempt to give the Bistro some real coffee house bona fides.

On the wall behind the counter, next to the espresso machine, is a yellowing reprint of a late 19th century French poster showing Balzac in a greasy apron standing outside of his own dingy little hole-in-the-wall in Paris, looking as proud as would any fellow whose name sounded like "ball sack". That and the Mapplethorpe photo hanging behind the toilet in the men's room are the only artwork in the place. I'm guessing the day manager, who slightly resembles Balzac, selected them both.

Mick and Judi have just gone through another rough patch in their relationship. They were subdued company and left me to make up most of the small talk, which I'm not really good at even under ideal circumstances. (Which these were not. Other friends of mine who know them secretly refer to them as "Punch and Judy", though if anyone gets tossed around it's usually Mick.) Judi was still nursing a New Year's Eve hangover. Must have been a real blow-out, to have her post-partydom depression last more than twenty-four hours. I didn't really ask for details. I already know more about their private lives than I'm comfortable with as it is. Suffice it to say that when Judi interrupted Mick shut up and stayed shut up.

Our visit lasted for just over an hour, and was punctuated by too many uncomfortable silences. I left earlier than I'd intended to and felt relieved for doing so. I've got to find a new crowd soon. Eric called from LA again, offering the same deal as last time but with a bigger retainer. Maybe I'll take him up on it.

Compelled By Melete III

2006-03-10T15:34:00.000-05:00

Helpful Hints
The discerning individual can determine whether he's being kept in a basement CIA holding cell or the hull of an alien spaceship using the following three criteria:

1) Paint: CIA holding cells are painted grey, usually two coats and primer over plaster parging, which itself is spread over poured concrete.

The hulls of alien spaceships are just grey, the way a sugar cube is white. Grey, grey, grey.

2) Resonance: gently tapping the wall of a CIA holding cell will produce a dull thud. Again, plaster parging over poured concrete.

Gently tapping the hull of an alien spaceship produces a strange, hollow tinkling, like tapping two charred sticks together in a bonfire. (Warning: don't go overboard with this. You don't want to be making a lot of ruckus in the bowels of an alien spaceship. Trust me.)

3) Residue: No matter how much they scour, the CIA can never quite manage to get their holding cells completely clean. A small droplet of dried blood here, a fleck of unidentifiable tissue there, a sooty film in the crack where the wall meets the floor. Not much, but always present.

Aliens use some sort of irradiation technology, combined with whatever composite material their hulls are made of, to completely irradicate all traces of the former occupants of their holding cells. Two minutes after the bloodiest implantation procedure they could safely work on open microcircuitry in the same room. Donald Rumsfeld wishes.

The Oboe Cadenza Enigma

2006-03-10T12:09:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to write about this for a while. So, without having listened to the piece in some months, and having read nothing scholarly on the subject, I'd like to address the oboe cadenza in the first movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony.

Despite it's brevity, the cadenza's importance cannot be overlooked when listening to this piece. There are many potential reasons why the maestro included it, and it's impact is felt on many intellectual levels. I've given the matter some thought, and I've come up with my own short list of potential reasons for the cadenza's inclusion.

1) It's a form of musical joke. It's like the wannabe soloist who strikes out on a third out-chorus when the choirmaster has shortened the piece to two, or the lonely Protestant who adds extra lines to The Lord's Prayer at a mass. The clueless individual is so into his part that he keeps going after everyone else has stopped, with comical results. And just like the former group member who's become an isolated object of ridicule, the oboe cadenza's first notes are strong and logically consistent with the music that preceeded it, but then become progressively confused as it fades into silence and conformity.

It's worth noting that after his first symphony, in which he called the third movement a "menuetto" (standard fare for the time it was written), Beethoven used the term "scherzo" or joke for the third movement of all of his symphonies (except the ninth, of course, in which the second and third movements are reversed in order). Meaning (possibly) that he was not above the idea of injecting humour into serious music, or (again possibly) that he felt himself above following the established rules of composition etiquette.

2) Even if it is a joke, it makes a serious point. The first movement of this symphony is a monolithic display of the severe power of conformity. It turns a chamber orchestra into a unified force to sear it's simple melody and variations into the mind of the listener. The cadenza is a short, quietly juxtaposed off-melody, and can be seen to symbolize the lonely individual following his own path away from the crowd (much like Beethoven himself).

3) Beethoven wanted to create a sonata form movement that even the most basically educated music listener could grasp and understand. Sonata form is fairly simple to begin with: it is divided into three sections, being the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation. The exposition consists of two juxtaposed musical ideas, a strong theme and a gentle theme, presented in their most basic melodic forms and almost always in the strong/gentle order. In the development section the composer derives new music by applying techniques of variation to the two themes. In the recapitulation the composer re-presents the two themes along with some of the newly developed ideas, mounting to a crescendo and finale. However, in many examples of sonata form it is difficult for an inexperienced listener to discern where one section ends and the next begins.

Beethoven was a master of theme and variations, and no concept is more important in his work. His earliest composition, published while he was still a teen, is a theme a variations for piano. The first movement of the fifth symphony is a nearly perfect example of theme and variations, to it's very core. The strong theme consists of eight notes (which in themselves are a four note theme quickly followed by a four note variation) and a simple set of variations based on those eight notes. The gentle theme provides some relief by way of a longer melody designed to soften the dramatic, punchy effect of the strong theme. But even then, it is started by a six note variation of the core four notes from the strong theme, played by a solo horn so as to differentiate between strong and gentle.

Beethoven delineates between the exposition and the development sections is a unique way. When the strong and gentle themes have been fully presented, he stops the music completely and starts over again, repeating the two themes note for note. The effect is such that the beginning of the development section stands out, as it goes beyond what the listener has already heard.

To delineate between the development and recapitulation a different technique was required. The nature of development means that bald repetition could not be used. This is why the oboe cadenza comes in - it is used to clearly mark the boundary between the development and the recapitulation, much the same way the solo horn marks the difference between the strong theme and the gentle theme.

4) More than wanting to write a sonata form movement that was easy to follow, Beethoven wanted to write a sonata form movement that was textbook perfect, but for some reason he balked at the last moment. The oboe cadenza is an intentional anomaly in an otherwise perfect score. Perhaps he was superstitious, and didn't want to tempt fate by creating a work that was perfect, and therefore unsurpassable.

Compelled By Melete II

2006-03-10T00:15:00.000-05:00

Untitled Character Study
My schedule, being as busy as a modern life is in daylight hours, leaves only the night for haphazardly timed visits to the local Y. The treadmills there face windows looking out over what at night is a mostly vacant parking lot, not much to see. But the glare of strip lighting also turns them into semi-opaque mirrors, useful for stealing quick glances at the twenty-nothing gym princesses who, by their general demeanor, apparently own the place. All things considered, I'm not entirely bored.

Directly behind the treadmills is a row of cross trainers, the most desirable of all gym apparati and nearly unobtainable during the peak hours between 5 and 7. During that time there is so much heaving, churning activity in that area that the sweaty narcisists who ride them meld together to become a faceless and unknowable mass. Later at night though, when things are winding down, they remain largely unoccupied and so individual users stand out.

This guy would have stood out even among the aprés-work crowd. He rode the machine almost directly behind me, slowly pedalling backwards, unconsciously cracking his knuckles, his visage an expressionless serial killer stare to nowhere. I'd seen him around at night a few times before, and he always struck me as a natural outsider, a genuine weirdo. But with all of that the thing that was really striking was his hair. Too black. Too long in all the wrong places, and carefully combed to enhance those ungraceful lengths to boot. It was like he'd just stepped out of somebody's 1974 high school year book, the kid most likely to kill his whole family. The first time I noticed him I thought "rug", but another time in the showers it was apparent that if it were a wig, he'd Krazy glued it to his scalp. With this guy, who knew?

Driving home one dreary night, I passed him waiting alone at a bus stop, in the rain, and I thought, "That's just so him."

Compelled By Melete I

2006-03-09T22:53:00.000-05:00

Ilsa the Pirate
12/18/05 - Spent the morning on a closed off section of Bondi doing the SI shoot with Ilsa, using Aussie lifeguards as props, blah, blah, blah, typical stuff. Cloudless sky, hot as winter Down Under. "Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum" the Monty Pythoners once quipped. Hot enough to burst a saline implant in our case. Thank God that didn't happen.

Things went well all morning and we broke for lunch around 11. Ilsa had the usual - a smoke and a handful of paint chips plucked from the base of a lifeguard stand. You think I kid, but she spent her down time slumped on the sand in the tower's shadow, and she was eating something when she came back over to the car, and she didn't have any food with her at all. Most models don't bring food to a shoot on principle. Always with the health, this crowd. I tend to bring at least a bag Doritos and a Yoo Hoo, but then my flabby ass never makes it around to the other side of the lens.

Whatever it was, we had to wait an extra half hour for her to come down from the energy rush that a body unused to calories experiences after food is taken in. She had uncontrollable giggling outbursts that spoiled a couple of shots. After that we had about an hour of productive shooting, and then another incident that I say confirms my paint chip theory: we decided to do a series of shots of Ilsa clenching a disgusting old sabre in her teeth "pirate style" (her idea) and the rusty goodness of the blade put her back into spazz mode. That pretty much canned the shoot, but I think we got enough for the spread.

A few hours later we met the rest of the crews at Mal's winter retreat for a soirée, including the iconic barbecued shrimp and Fosters, which none of the models would touch. Except for Jenna of course, but she's got some sort of farmgirl genetic thing that doesn't let her accumulate body fat and so she eats like a horse. A carnivorous horse. Bitch.

I had no idea that Ilsa was political. Apparently she joined P(large 'e')TA a few years ago, which led to a brief flirtation with Chomsky. (I'm made to believe that most flirtations with Chomsky are brief, but that's a totally different story.) Then a few tentative Google searches led her to Kos and the DU, and now she does the occasional post on Huffington's blog. She started riffing on Bush, and then the war, but Mal cut her off. Having spent something like a hundred grand to get Howard re-elected, I guess you could say he's for the war. The conversation changed abruptly to gardening for some reason, and Ilsa had nothing more to say. Indeed, she spent the rest of the night in petulant silence, and returned to the States the next morning without her usual goodbye call.

(Addendum: I saw her again a week later in New York and it was business as usual - she was all hugs and kisses. Coincidentally, she had just come out of an Ethan Allen.)

[Ed. I know, it's blasé to write parodies about the supermodel lifestyle, but what the hell. I was compelled by Melete, upon awaking from a dream.]

Linguistic Totalitarianism

2005-12-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

Jeff Goldstein has an interesting post on a topic he revisits on a regular basis, when he isn't molesting armadillos. Here's the money quote:

Some cultures are better at pushing back against this dynamic than are others; but ironically, free cultures, because they are the most willing to appreciate the concerns of its minority groups, are the most susceptible to the kind of linguistic totalitarianism that is the natural end to putting the receiver in charge of determining meaning and converting that meaning into the emotional justification for suppressing particular signifiers.

There's a lot to chew on in that paragraph. Read the whole post.

Thoughts On Publication Bans

2005-11-30T10:10:00.000-05:00

Colby Cosh has posted an interesting item on his blog, concerning a ban on publishing the identity of an accused in the case of a child's murder.

Let me begin by making my opinion clear: this is a preposterous perversion of the intent of these regulations, put in place to protect a child and now protecting the child's murderer. There is absolutely no benefit to the child in keeping his/her identity a secret - there can be no stigma attached to it's future, because it has none. The people who write these regulations really need to give their heads a shake, and rethink this, and make the necessary changes to ensure this doesn't happen again. Protecting the privacy of a dead child benefits no one except the perpetrator (should he be found guilty).

The trend in Canadian courts in the past decade or so (since Karla Homolka's trial, really) is to try to protect the victims and their families by keeping the more prurient aspects of the case away from the greater public by using publication bans. This is a lovely sentiment, but it is contrary to the course of justice.

When a crime is committed, it is not only the victim who has been abused, but the whole of society. We put laws in place for the safety and security of us all. The full weight of the coercive power of the state is used to investigate crime and prosecute the accused. For this reason, special legal procedures are observed to ensure that the accused rights have been fully observed. It needs to been shown to the public that justice, from both society's and the accused's standpoints, has been done.

For this reason, court cases are public procedings. The facts entered into evidence are public knowledge. A publication ban doesn't change this, it merely prevents the greater public from access to knowledge that it would be privy to if it had access to the courtroom. The public nature of a trial is unfortunate from the viewpoint of the victims, their friends and families, but it is necessary if justice is to be seen to be done. The knee-jerk use of publication bans is contrary to this principle.

Please note too that the courts have no problem with the pre-trial publication of details about the accused if the victim is an adult, even though a core tenet of the law is that an accused is innocent until proven guilty. A stock broker charged with fraud, for instance, has a stain on his reputation that he can never be free from, regardless of whether he's found guilty or not. But it is in the public's interest to know who he is, as part of the course of justice.

Crimes committed against children by their parents or legal guardians are among the worst crimes that a person can commit - the violation of society's most helpless by those they are supposed to trust the most. It is a perverse and ironic twist that a person convicted of such a crime has more anonymity than those found not guilty of lesser offences.

Reflecting On Arafat and The Nobel Peace Prize

2005-11-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

When (if) in a hundred years the Palestinian Arabs have their own country, and a stable enough civil society to allow for the honest reflection on the history of how their nation came into being and how things were before that happened, do you think Arafat's Peace Prize will be a source of national pride or embarassment?

Thanks, Fox

2005-11-21T22:13:00.000-05:00

Just like to take a moment to thank the purveyors of some of the crappiest TV fare ever for keeping their track record of blinkered disregard for the truly classic by cancelling Arrested Development. First Firefly, now this. Freakin' pathetic.

I Have To Quote This One Entirely

2005-11-21T22:11:00.000-05:00

From Volokh:

There's a Reason That We Put Breaks Between Words: Check out whorepresents.com, expertsexchange.com, penisland.net, therapistfinder.com, and molestationnursery.com. Thanks to John Morris for finding these.

Pushback Distillate Revealed to Anxious Thronging Masses

2005-11-21T21:57:00.000-05:00

Jeff at protein wisdom has a long post quoting Cheney which neatly sums up the entire pushback argument. Here is what I believe to be the key paragraph, for easy future reference to this historic period of the second Bush II administration:

Clearly, the important administration arguments are beginning to coalesce: 1) Criticism of the war is not by itself unpatriotic 2) Similarly, answering anti-war critics is not challenging their patriotism 3) But opportunistic and cynical anti-war critics who are trying to walk back their own votes and level spurious charges at the Administration (they lied to take is into war) are themselves lying 4) These lies are hurting the country and the troops. 5) The burden of proof, in a post 911 world, was on Saddam Hussein to prove he’d disarmed; we could not wait for the threat to become imminent before acting 6) The cause the troops are fighting for is just and right 7) Iraq is moving toward freedom; and things on the ground are improving daily, regardless of what the MSM and prominent Dems would have us believe.

Awesome

2005-11-21T21:35:00.000-05:00

I wish I could go.

(In case the link is dead by the time you read this, Jimmy Carter is being protested by Americans of Ethiopian descent for his involvement in the recent Ethiopian elections, which they consider to have been rigged under his nose. They're following him around, harrassing him on his book tour. Well done, people!)

Gomery, And Then Some

2005-11-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

I haven't been active much this year in blogging, because I've been scouring (is that the right word?) a couple of different political forums under an unclever little pseudonym that I won't reveal here (for the moment anyway).

Anyhoo, it occurred to me this morning over coffee that 40 years (give or take, if you consider the Mulroney era Progressive Conservatives to have been Liberals in blue suits, as I do) of Liberal corruption may be actually helping the Liberals in their time of need.

There has been so little competition in the marketplace of political ideas in Canada, and each successive government has so closely resembled the last in terms of approach to policy making and stated ideals, that the Canadian electorate has been conditioned to accept the fact that all parties and all politicians are the same.

The upshot is that the Conservatives (and NDP and Communist and Rhino and Marijuana Parties) face an uphill battle convincing the public that, given the circumstances were reversed, they wouldn't be just as corrupt as the Liberals have been. There's no easy way to prove the negative. Which works in the Liberal's favour, as the perceived corruption of all politicians cancels out the Liberals' very real corruption. (Note that the Bloc doesn't necessarily face the same obstacle, as they've managed to cast themselves effectively in the role of Quebec's champion in the fight against federal corruption, which in their mythology is inherent in all other federal political parties, Liberals, Conservatives and NDP included.)

My conjecture: the challenge for the "other" parties is to make whatever political hay the Gomery report will allow* and then move forward with policy propositions that distance themselves from the Liberal positions, even if current political wisdom views such positions to be politically suicidal. The goal at this point has to be to present your party as a genuine alternative to the Liberals, and to emphasise that your proposals are ethical and have merit. Merely complaining about Liberal roguery in the past will have little effect.

One proposal that (as always) immediately comes to mind is that the Conservatives come out forcefully in favour of allowing private for-profit medical treatment as an alternative to the public system. The trick is not to fall into the Liberal/NDP linguistic trap wherein the argument is framed by the term "American-style two-tiered healthcare system". It has to be recast from the conservative viewpoint, as a choice between forcing wealthy people with the ability pay their own way into the queue (and necessarily in front of others who can't pay), and freeing up needed resources within the public system by allowing "people of privilege" to seek their care elsewhere. A few pointed questions: Why are the Liberals in favour of a woman's right to choose, unless she's wealthy and wants the option to pay for medical services? Why is the government in favour of allowing private care for the frivolous (cosmetic surgery) while denying that option for the serious (heart surgery)? Why are the Liberals insistent that the governemt has no business in the bedroom, but has every right to sit in at the doctor's office, and to demand that it be de facto consulted about the correct course of care?

The immediate reaction to this suggestion in some circles will be negative, under the presumption that a forceful stand in favour of private medicine will drive soft conservative voters away from the Conservative party. But will it really? After a decade of conservative infighting and bloodshed, are there any soft conservative voters left? Not many, in my modest opinion. The only direction to go is up, but this won't be achieved by ceding moral and ethical authority on critical issues to people you're trying to portray as corrupt.

*Which is scant, in that the average Canadian who hasn't been following the story (about 98% of us outside of Quebec) sees this scandal as nothing more serious than the Liberals pissing another $250 million into Quebec. And for what? The Liberal party appears to have benefitted to the tune of only a couple of million bucks all totalled. Which, I guess, makes them appear to the average Canadian to be inept in their criminality, and loveably so.

Update: Welcome LIB readers! Thanks for the link, Bob. Check out Bob's great take on the same topic here.

Galloway Sets a Record

2005-07-07T11:16:00.000-04:00

You knew it would only be a matter of time before the anti-war left connected the London bombings this morning with Britain's participation in the war on terror and the democratization of the Middle East. Leave it to British MP and union yob Gorgeous George Galloway to be te first, in what I believe to be record time for this sort of thing.

(Via Instapundit)

As Democracy guy notes, London was a target for terrorism before 911. I believe the IRA have dibs, in that it's been one of their premier bombing targets since the '70s.

My take is that these bombings resemble the Palestinian (or for that matter IRA) efforts more than Al-Qaeda, in that civilians (on civilian transport) were targeted rather than some big, spectacular symbol of the evil and corrupt West. Like the Palestinians, these bombers are looking for European moral equivalency to justify their actions. George Galloway's response will do nicely.

UPDATE: scratch that. The planning was co-ordinated on an Al-Qaeda-like level.

Live 8 Non-Tangential Question No. 1

2005-07-02T11:08:00.000-04:00

I started a thread over at SciForums about this concert wherein I voiced all of my opinions about it, so I won't rehash here.

I only discovered the existence of Pete Doherty about a month ago, when I purchased Cool Britannia, a compilation of new rock from England. Do Google image search for him to learn about everything you need to know.

Anyhoo, he performed with Elton John at the concert this morning.

I had originally thought that if I ever had a chance to ask Pete a single question, it would be something along the lines of "So, how does a crack-addicted wad of cheese like you get to boink Kate Moss?"

This question has now been superceded by, "So, does Sir Elton's mouth taste like ass, or what?"

Andrew Sullivan

2005-06-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

As illustrated out today in Best of the Web (scroll to the bottom), Andrew Sullivan seems to be moving back to his natural home on the left side of the spectrum. I don't begrudge him his views, and I refuse to slander the guy, out of respect for the outstanding analysis he did in the years following 911. I think I'll always be a fan, even if he sinks fully into the fever swamps of the Left and never recovers.

Seven Things You Can't Say In Canada

2005-06-21T13:27:00.000-04:00

Colby Cosh takes a stab at his own list of seven things you can't say in Canada, in imitation (flattery, no?) of Margaret Wente's magnificent original, which, I'm almost astonished to say, is better than Colby's. 14 things you can't say in Canada. Well worth a gander. Do it. Now.

He's Baaaaaack!

2005-06-21T13:16:00.000-04:00

Took some time off blogging, if you hadn't noticed. Had a number of projects on the go that made it easier to read blogs than to write one. I'm sure you've all been there, those of you who blog.

Anyhoo, I've just lately joined a discussion site on the web called SciForums. I didn't think I'd enjoy the threading method of communicating, but as it turns out it's terribly addictive. I post under the pseudonym BHS. Give it a look when you get a chance.

I'll be posting here periodically for the two or so people who still pop in and have no other way of knowing if I'm still alive.

Nothing Teaches Like Experience

2005-01-08T11:06:00.000-05:00

Mike Brock has a post up about the Supreme Court's decision to shoot down a bid for the legal voting age in Canada. He makes some good points. I would add that sixteen year olds generally lack the life experience to make fully-formed political decisions. Sixteen year olds base way too many of their personal opinions on what their peers are saying. (That's actually kind of rich coming from a blogger.) Eighteen year-olds aren't much better, but they're at a point in life where their independence is being realized, and I think that has a sanitizing effect on their thinking.

When I was sixteen I was very liberal, because my friends in school were all very liberal. Out views were based on the distorted perspective of the sixties that the MSM has been dishing out since 1970. None of us were even alive in the sixties, but somehow we just knew that it was the peak of Western intellectual and moral development.

When I was nineteen I had moved away from home and lived in Toronto. I was still very liberal and I marched against the Gulf war. Looking back it's not my proudest political moment. But seeing up close that the anti-war crowd was nothing more than a collection of labour unionists (who didn't give a damn about the war and were only there for TV coverage), howling, man-bashing feminists with their own agenda, pot-smoking middle-aged sixties rejects with no agenda and barely a clue about anything else, and Trotskyist loons (who for some reason all had problems with their eyes, which kind of creeped me out) was what set me on the road to the Right. It's also why I'm very tolerant of today's anti-war protestors. I know that at least some of them are receiving a very important education about the nuttier aspects of the Left. Nothing teaches like experience.

2005: The Year in Review

2005-01-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

I'll have to make a mental note to go back to this post at Iowahawk in late December. It'll be a sick year if it's even close. Very amusing. June 21 made me laugh out loud.

The UN's Place in Global Policy

2005-01-03T11:56:00.000-05:00

Andrew at Bound by Gravity has made some interesting points about the UN, and I just like to take the opportunity to chime in with my two cents.

In his post, both he and Balbulican take the position that the UN is an organisation that can or should be "doing" something about the current tragedy in Southeast Asia. I believe that they are missing the obvious - the UN doesn't "do" most of the things it takes credit for, and despite the best intentions of well-meaning member states and individual UN sympathisers, it never will.

The UN is a forum for endless discussion, for hashing out comprimises that last three weeks, and for blaming everything on Israel. Taking contributions and giving directions from the rear aren't "doing" things. All of the heavy lifting in the tsunami disaster is being and will continue to be done by individual member states, with or without the UN's "leadership".

Note that the Kofi Annan's first response to the disaster is to convene a conference. Because that sort of thing is crucial in the first hours of a disaster, when people are dying of thirst and disease caused by contamination. Note how the UN is already taking credit for work done by USAID, while simultaneously decrying the Americans for working outside of the UN. This is what the UN does - talk shops, hand wringing, blaming problems on others and taking credit for the good it didn't do. (See all of the excellent posts at Diplomad for details.)

I believe that Balbulican is correct, that human civilization is approaching a point where we need global institutions. But the UN is not such an institution - it is too corpulent, corrupt and self-interested to adequately serve as the basis for a global government.

There have been rumblings in the past year or so concerning the creation of a League of Democratic Nations. Membership is contingent on being a mature, self-sustaining democracy. I think this would be a better choice as a prototype for world government.

This Guy is Hilarious

2005-01-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

Be sure to read through all of this guy's website - including his bio material. I can see him becoming a regular read. I'd add him to the blogroll on Bounder, but his political leanings aren't obvious and I don't want to be presumptuous.

(Hat tip - Jaeger at Trudeaupia)

Manditory Voting

2005-01-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

Kateland at The Last Amazon has written a post about Senator Mac Harb's plan for manditory voting. She refers to it as a "Liberal recruitment drive", which I think is a fair assessment. Common sense says that a left-of-centre party is more likely to benefit from disaffected voters going to the polls than a right-of-centre party. That's not why I'm against the plan, though.

I'm against manditory voting because it's undemocratic. Refusing to participate in an election is as valid a choice as voting. It signifies that the non-participant is conspicuously unaware of the party platforms or the issues, and is not concerned whether one party or another wins. Low voter turnouts indicate a general satisfaction with the way things have been run, and a lack of concern about potential changes to government. In a free society, it is perfectly okay to prefer to spend your time and energy pursuing other interests. It hurts no one that you don't care, and I think the proof of that premise is that the lowest voter turnouts have traditionally occurred in first world countries, that are undisputably the best places to live in.

Forcing people who don't have an opinion to make a choice based on the opinon that they don't have helps nothing (other than, potentially, the Liberal and NDP vote counts).

On a greedy note, manditory voting waters down the effect of my vote. I care about the political future of my country, my province, and my city, and I resent the idea that my vote will have less effect because of a misguided attempt to inflate the Liberal voting base.

Should manditory voting become law, I hope that at least some of those disaffected people forced to vote against their will take a minute to realize that their inconvenience has been made a reality by the Left, and resent it enough to vote Right.

Update: Alan at Occam's Carbuncle has the same notion.

Cheers to the New Year

2004-12-31T11:40:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, I'll find myself asking the question "What are tenterhooks, anyway?" Then I remember that I have access to Ye Olde Interweb, where all the answers are.

I'm so fucking happy to be alive at this time in human history, I really am. Epecially living in Canada, where life is easy street every single day. I do my forty hours per in an air-conditioned office, and for that meager sacrifice I live a better life than the wealthiest royalty from two hundred years ago could ever dream of. I eat food that is delicious and relatively bacteria free. I live in a solidly build house that is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The city I live in has low instances of crime and poverty. When night comes I flick a switch and the lights come on. When I need exercise I go to the local gym, which is clean and has well-maintained equipment. I have a lot of leisure time, and a lot of ways to spend it. And when I have a question, I ask all of humanity, to which I am connected through a small glowing box. To my eyes, the future of the world has never looked better, despite what all of the doomsayers have to say.

One of my goals in the coming year is to post more about the positive aspects of the world we live in, from a decidely conservative/libertarian viewpoint. I hope that those who read this blog come away sharing my sense of optimism. I'll still do the occasional fisking, and I'll probably carp and moan about this or that insignificant political development. But my overall aim is to provide a view of the world. Because life is good.

Thanks in advance for your continued reading.

PS - tenterhooks are the hook-y parts of a tenter. Go figure.

PPS - Just so you know, a tenter is a device used to hold up and stretch out a drying piece of material. Used in a metaphorical context, saying someone is "on tenterhooks" means that they are being held up and exposed in a slightly undignified way.

Christmas Cheer

2004-12-27T10:39:00.000-05:00

Hope your respective Christmasi (or whatever the plural of Christmas is) were magnificent. I received approximately three times as much as I deserved in gifts, which surely is some sort of inverted measurement of how good I’ve been this year. Gifts of note: two DVDs that I’ve wanted for a few years, being “James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theatre” and “Jaco Pastorius: Modern Electric Bass”.

A couple of notes: even if you despise James Taylor, this video is a must-see. The opening tune, “You Can Close Your Eyes” is worth the price of the entire DVD. Opening a concert with an acapella number (yeah, I know, calling four part harmony with guitar “acapella” is technically wrong) is risky, but in this case it really comes off perfectly. Surely one of the best concerts ever put on, anywhere. James looks like he’s really having a great time, and he should be, if he can hear half of what the recorded sound is like in his headset.

Jaco, on the other hand, looks like he’s forgotten to take his morning dose of smack. He’s shaky, pale, disjointed in what he’s saying, obsessively scratching his cheek…all the classic cold turkey symptoms. He has trouble playing some older passages. But despite all of that, he’s still incredible. I mean, he’s fucking Jaco Pastorius, right? The video comes with a booklet filled with exercises that Jaco performs in the video, many of which are not song-specific. I wish I’d had this video when I started playing bass. I’d still suck, but I’d have a better idea of why.

Roger Gallaway

2004-12-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

I've learned two things by reading this article in the National Post:

1) There are in fact circumstances under which I'd vote for a Liberal MP
2) Warren Kinsella is a total asshole. Ass. Hole.

Democratic deficit? What dat?

If anyone sitting in Parliament today needs the support of the right side of the Canadian virtual geographic region of the blogosphere, it's Roger Gallaway. If anyone knows where I can contribute to his defense fund, please add it to the comments section. Thanks.

Fine Art

2004-12-11T02:42:00.000-05:00

Bob at Let It Bleed had a link to an interesting article about the modern lack of appreciation for Raphael. Read it all.

More Shout Outs

2004-12-11T02:40:00.000-05:00

I'd just like to say "Hey" to Kelly and Igor. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the blarney.

English Canada's Self-Identity

2004-12-04T19:02:00.000-05:00

Kate has and excellent post over at Small Dead Animals that links to and quotes from an article from The American Thinker that examines English Canada's concept of self. I think it serves nicely as a premise for a larger discussion not only of where we are today, but where we're going. Any takers?

Yippee! I Have A Troll!

2004-11-30T01:40:00.000-05:00

It's kind of a milestone in blogging. You look over your past screeds, and notice that the same person appears to be adding nasty comments to a number of posts. A troll! Somebody loves to hate me! I feel the warm glow that only comes with negative recognition. My troll's name is Anonymous. It's a Masochist Troll - it hates my writing but can't seem to stop itself from reading and commenting anyway. I wonder what Anonymous will add to this post?

Update: I guess I scared him away. The Masochist Troll species must be especially sensitive to light.

Welcome W

2004-11-30T01:14:00.000-05:00

Cheers! Here's hoping nothing horrifying happens during the POTUS visit.

Annoying

2004-11-24T01:30:00.000-05:00

Now I know why I've read so many complaints about Blogger. I noticed a couple of things about my Thought For The Day yesterday, after I'd already posted it. I went in and editted the post, and everything seemed hunky-dory. I skimmed over it tonight, only to find that my edits have disappeared. To hell with it. I could write and rewrite my posts, self-criticizing and nit-picking unto the end of my sanity, but I've got a better idea. I'll just keep writing new posts about the same old topics over and over again. Because it's my blog, and I'll write whatever I like. If the writing seems shaky now, come back in a few weeks and read the latest rendition of the same screed.

Thought For The Day

2004-11-23T23:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's rant, an attempted fisking of an editorial piece from The Toronto Star, left me with a warm, pleasant satisfaction. I'll admit, my writing is not as coherent as it could be, but I hope to improve with practice. So I'll practice. Here's an item that caught my eye in today's editorial section. I don't have time this evening to give it the full treatment, so I'll just interject as the mood takes me:

Sifting through claims on nukes by Stephen Handelman

North Korea could now have as many as 10 nuclear weapons. Iran may be building its first. All of a sudden, the world looks a little more dangerous than it did last month.

Except we don't know whether these allegations, both of which surfaced in the past week, are true.

Here's the scenario: two nations identified by Bush as part of the "Axis of Evil" might have WMD. Or maybe not. The world looks a little more dangerous. Sort of. It's a conundrum.

Blame it on the global atmosphere of mistrust, which is turning out to be one of the most notorious consequences of the Iraq war. Analysts are now paying more attention to the sources of intelligence reports than the intelligence itself.

Damn that Bush! Until this vary moment, I was sure that a lack of trust between different human collectives (tribes, city states, nations, planets, whatever) was a condition as old as the human condition itself. It turns out that it's all a consequence of Bush's warmongering. And to think I would have voted for the guy, if I lived 100 miles south of here. I feel betrayed.

Considering how often "intelligence" ends up being the opposite, that should be healthy. But, in some areas, it can lead to paralysis.

Tee hee. Military intelligence is an oxymoron. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Any other lefty cliches from the seventies we need to get out of the way?

The pseudo-proofs of Iraqi nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the months before the war have done incalculable damage to the science and politics of curbing arms proliferation. That's a shame, because the threat posed by such weapons falling into the hands of what academics call "non-state-actors" (read: terrorists) has never been greater.

There's nothing wrong with damage being done to the endless jaw-jawing that passes for "the science and politics" of arms reduction. The multilateralist hand-wringers who are so fond of UN chit chat will never, NEVER, take the steps necessary to ensure peace. The only thing that ever had an effect on arms proliferation was the will to match the enemy weapon for weapon and then raise production, and thereby prove to him that we had the capacity to continue raising the stakes until we had won. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan won the cold war. The self-congratulatory pacifists of the UN Central Committee for Western Self-Loathing did not.

During the U.S. presidential campaign debates this fall, John Kerry and George Bush were asked what they considered the most serious challenge of the next four years. They each answered WMD proliferation, a remarkable show of agreement that was buried in reporting about the campaign.

Where they differed, of course, was how to deal with the issue. Kerry was committed to direct negotiations with the two most worrying would-be nuclear powers (Iran and North Korea), while Bush preferred to operate on two tracks: first, through a coalition of countries that could offer economic and energy assistance in return for nuclear concessions, and the second through unilateral pressure that ranged from sanctions to outright military attack, in what one U.S. official last week called the "good cop, bad cop" approach.

It is now, of course, Bush's approach that has carried the day, though, since the issue never became part of the campaign, it's hard to claim any electoral mandate for it.

Not that it would matter: No voter was ever asked to approve the "pre-emptive foreign policy" which the president used to justify the Iraq invasion.

That's just beautiful. During the campaign, Kerry promised to negotiate with North Korea directly. Didn't Clinton already go that route? Didn't it turn out to be a miserable failure, leading directly to the current crisis? Bush promised, by running for re-election, to continue pursuing the strategy he'd been persuing since the Korean duplicity was discovered in 2002. The voters knew what Bush was all about, and they voted by an overwhelming and uncontestable majority to keep him. How can he be lacking a mandate on any issue, let alone one he's been dealing with for half of his presidency? Same goes for his "pre-emptive foreign policy" - when the voters decided to re-elect him it was a vote of confidence on all of his policies, pre-emptive and otherwise. Whining that he didn't have public pre-approval for them is moot.

In any case, the problem of winning over foreign skeptics — particularly in Asia and the Middle East — overshadows the policy choices themselves. It may even undermine them.

What can we, in fact, believe?

This passage is confusing. Is Stephen saying he's a skeptic from the Middle East? How does his skepticism overshadow US foreign policy? Is he a magical being whose very thoughts can undermine the policy steps taken by the United States government?

The allegations about North Korea's nuclear weapons come from a prestigious international organization, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which lists former Canadian policymakers on its board.

Whoa-hoa, time to bring in the heavy hitters. With ex-pat Canadian policy wonks on board, you just know this group is totally legit. AND they're based in Belgium. "International Crisis Group" - sounds like a gang of would-be Nobel laureates just itching for a cause.

The ICG, which has been paying close attention to the North Korea issue for several years, says now that any doubts about that country's nuclear capabilities should be removed.

"It almost certainly has enough bombs to deter an attack and still have some to sell to other states or even terrorist groups," the ICG concluded in a 36-page report released Nov. 15.

Got that? Let me clarify: Prior to the recent invasion of Iraq, it was the considered opinion of every intelligence agency IN THE WORLD that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Throughout the nineties, international arms inspectors had seen and reported on the weapons. Iraq didn't deny having them. Between 1998 and 2003 the weapons were disposed of by some as-yet unknown method, and there is a reasonable likelihood that they still exist, either buried in the desert or secreted away in a neighbouring country. It may take years or decades for the full truth to become known. No matter. The Left insists on unshakeable proof of WMD N-O-W. Anything less is a total failure on the part of the Bush administration and furthermore BUSH LIED!!!

Now comes a report from a collective of washed-up policy nabobs, slogging through their investigations in the rough-and-tumble quagmire of Brussels, to inform us that all doubt can be removed about the capabilities and intentions of the North Korean regime. Thanks for the input, guys. I assume you'll be taking the blame if the whole North Korean thing turns out to be a dud? No? It's still Bush's fault? But then it's alway's the American president's fault, isn't it?

Anyway, the article continues on like this for a while more, and there's a really good part where the above mentioned ICG policy boobs make the suggestion to try negotiating with North Korea for a change, because we really don't know it'll work unless we try, at which point I put the imaginary gun to my head and pull the trigger. You get the picture.

It's nearly one in the morning, so I'm going to bed now.

Thought For The Day

2004-11-22T21:05:00.000-05:00

Toronto Star has a regular item in the editorial section called "Worth Repeating" which is almost invariably a crock of shit. This piece (originally from The Hamilton Spectator) is a prime exmaple. It put me in the mood for a fisking. And so, here is my first attempt at this 2001st century artform:

Protecting sources a fundamental right

I always get suspicious whenever the words "fundamental right" come up in the headlines of a left-leaning paper. A right is a protection under the law granted to all citizens. Any "right" granted to a select group of citizens and denied to the rest is inherently not a right but a privilege. Too often our friends on the Left get these two terms confused. And this case is no exception.

Spectator reporter Ken Peters has kept his word and protected the identity of a confidential source.

Well bully for him.

In doing so, Peters has reaffirmed the principle that protecting confidential sources is fundamental to freedom of the press. It is also a fundamental component of our integrity as a newspaper and a profession and it is critical to our ability to maintain the public trust.

Whoa, hold on there. Freedom of the Press is the right to express your views in the medium of your choice without government interference. There is no implied right to anonymity there, either for you or your sources. Furthermore, I suggest the "integrity" of the news media is entirely subjective. Anchors, journalists and their editors are free to choose the topics they report on. There is no requirement that they cover all of the news, or that they include all of the facts they uncover during the course of their investigations. An otherwise uninformed reader has no way to determine that the facts that are being presented in a given piece are true, or that all of the relevant facts have been presented in a fair and unbiased manner. This is true even for stories written without secretive sources. There is never a guarantee of integrity.

Peters wrote a series of newspaper stories in 1995 based on sensitive documents leaked to him. He was subpoenaed to testify in a $15.5-million civil suit launched by St. Elizabeth Villa, a Hamilton retirement home, against the former region of Hamilton-Wentworth, the city of Hamilton and public officials.

Last week, he was ordered by the trial judge to identify one of two people in a 1995 meeting at which he was handed the sensitive documents. He refused, testifying that doing so would ultimately reveal the identity of his source. He was cited for contempt of court. He could face a fine or jail term.

I admire his convictions. The world is made a better place by people who stand up for their beliefs. It is made better still by people who are willing to be knocked down for them. Throw him in jail.

It is the kind of tough situation journalists can face in doing their jobs — the sort of decision we in the media hope we never have to make. But we know we may face such a dilemma at any time. And we know that those to whom we promise confidentiality rely on us to keep our word.

Those who put themselves at risk by providing news organizations with information we wouldn't otherwise obtain must be able to count on our promise to protect their identity. Without that fundamental trust, the media would often find themselves hamstrung in trying to fulfill a function as watchdogs on behalf of the broader community.

No one appointed the media to be watchdogs for the greater public good. Freedom of the press extends to all individuals, not just j-school graduates. News organisations are in the business of providing news. They don't do it for free. To suggest that their business is so important that it trumps the justice system is ridiculous. Which truth should have the public trust in regard to integrity: a subjective truth parcelized for mass consumption by a for-profit media concern, or a truth arrived at under strict legal guidelines in a court of law?

(And anyone who even thinks of writing that the CBC is not a for-profit organisation and is therefore impartial, I have two words for you: fuck off. Anyone who has compared what the CBC chooses to report versus the overall facts of any given story knows how partisan the CBC can be. (The Grandmere Inn? What dat?) Besides, their raison d'etre is to provide content that couldn't feasibly be provided by a private broadcaster. With so many dedicated news channels in existence, that surely ain't the news.)

The decision to enter into a confidentiality agreement with a source is not made lightly. It is a step taken on issues of high public interest, when declining to promise confidentiality could prevent critical information from ever becoming public. Important stories could not be told.

The public's right to know is paramount and must be protected. To protect that right to know, the media's constitutionally entrenched right to gather and disseminate information must also be protected. Sometimes protecting those rights falls on the shoulders of an individual journalist.

"Freedom of the Press" is a freedom extended to the speaker, not the listener. There is no such thing as "the public's right to know", any more than there is "the right not to have to hear something I don't like". (That some people are in favour of curtailing free speech on this premise is a rant for another day.) And again, the right "to gather and disseminate information" is not in question; what is in question is the right to withhold the identity of the source of that information, which has no constitutional protection. To suggest that a denial of the latter right is a denial of both is just plain wrong and misleading, which is ironic, being in a piece about journalistic integrity.

The decision Peters made in court was his own to make. He has the full support of The Hamilton Spectator in the position he has taken on this issue that is so fundamental to the integrity of journalism.

(As an aside, I find it interesting that the second sentence offers support that the first sentence implicitly denies. Misleading? No, chock full of journalistic integrity.)

We are proud of his stand and of what it says about our profession.

Public trust is given to a newspaper or TV news program based on it's ability to professionally deliver information. This trust is something that is earned or lost based on a track record of accuracy, and cannot be guarranteed by giving special privileges to a small group of professionals. For all of the reasons I've stated above, I feel it is important that we resist the drive to have this privelege codified into law.

Thought For The Day

2004-11-20T22:36:00.000-05:00

An anonymous reader asked me to comment on a number of issues in the comments section of "Thought For The Day II" posted yesterday. At the risk of pissing off the only person who reads this stuff, I'll play along. I mean, I really have nothing better to do.

1) Gay Marriage From a legal perspective, I don't have a problem with gay marriage. More accurately, I find that the legally oriented (hah!) arguments against gay marriage are weak, poorly reasoned, ad hoc constructions. I don't buy the slippery slope argument that this will set a precedent in favour of legalizing polygamy, bestiality or incestuous marriages. On the other side of the coin, I don't support forcing religious organisations to perform religious rites that run contrary to traditionally held beliefs. (Not that anyone is seriously arguing that that would happen, at least not anyone credible that I know of. Please, feel free to enlighten me in the comments section below.) If a particular church or religious sect is willing to recognize gay marriage, it's entirely their business. Am I personally in favour or against gay marriage? This is the way I think about it: I am in favour of other people living their lives in whichever way they choose to, as long as their choices do not have an overtly negative impact on the way I choose to live my life. I don't feel that two men being married will have any effect on my own marriage, any more than The Raptors paying Vince Carter $10 million a year to put a ball through a hoop will have a negative effect on my finances. And I am not in favour of society making laws to curtail the liberty of others, based only on vague moralistic misgivings.

2)Stem Cell Research (Warning: This one gets unnecessarily nasty.) This is a needlessly contentious issue, in that stem cells exist in the tissues of adult humans as well as aborted fetuses. The research need not be carried out on the detritus of the abortion process, and for the time being it probably won't (at least not in Canada or the US). I guess you could argue that if you allowed research on stem cells regardless of the source then people who require the treatments derived from the research, who are morally opposed to abortion, might refuse the treatment altogether. Which is, in my humble opinion, their problem. (Same goes for Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions. Your needless early death is your problem, not mine.) I don't buy the argument that research conducted on the disgarded tissues of proto-toddlers will lead to a demand for abortions, any more than conducting scientific research using homicide victims will lead to a demand for homicide. I can't imagine a pregnant teenager feeling good about her decision to get a D&C under any circumstances, or feeling that she's somehow contributing to the greater good. So I say, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

3) The War In Iraq The "war" part of the war is pretty much over. The recent fighting in Fallujah may get the "Vietnam/quagmire" crowd moist, but that's as bad as it's going to get from here on in, and by the way, the Marines now own Fallujah so that's over too. 10 years from now, when the rest of the Middle East is drowning in a sea of revolutionary blood, people will look back on the American occupation of Iraq with teary-eyed fondness for the good old days. Best bet for a happy ending in Iraq: keep a large American military contingent on hand to protect the borders from aggressive neighbours, give the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites separate semi-sovereign regions and task the federal government with arbitrating their disputes and not doing much more than that. And then give them time to come together on their own terms.

Osama Bin Laden a) The "I Don't Care" reply: Quite frankly, I was more than a little surprised to see the most recent video extravanganza from OBL, in that up until that point I was comfortably certain than he was dead. I wouldn't be surprised if his sudden emergence from hiding is the real reason that Mark Steyn has gone AWOL, given that Steyn has a record of being insanely confident about his predictions. He also has a record of being right about those predictions, which makes this hard to take. If he had, oh, I don't know, say John Pilger's record of being right about his insights, than I'm sure it would just run off his back like water off a duck. Myself, I'm not really worried about Osama's whereabouts. Osama's apparently got deeper spider holes than Saddam had, but between climbing up and down ladders, finding ways to get to his secret dialysis treatements, and dodging the Marines at every turn for the rest of his life, I doubt he'll have time to make an effective go of running the jihad.

b) The "Conspiracy" reply: (Let me apologize in advance: I don't like conspiracy theories. I'm just throwing this out because it's an interesting take I've come across a few times on the web.) Who benefits from Bin Laden's capture? Not the hawks. Not the people who wish the war on terror to continue. Not the spooks at the CIA. The capture of OBL would provide ammunition to the anti-war folks, who would argue that the war on terrorism could be cut back because the biggest fish had been caught. I wouldn't be surprised if the A/V guys at the CIA are greenlighting everything purported to be Bin Laden as genuine just to keep the pressure up. The peace and prosperity of the Clinton years saw their budgets slashed. Having a big, scary and yet oddly untraceable enemy means job security. Ew. Now I feel dirty.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Words Fail Me

2004-11-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

This is just atrocious. Go ahead. Peruse. But don't say I didn't warn you.

I mean, "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" more than ten places ahead of fucking "Free Man in Paris"??? "Hey Jude" is the greatest Beatles song??? Rolling Stone is just completely fucked. I refuse to go any further.

Thought For The Day II

2004-11-19T22:12:00.000-05:00

Things I've found interesting in the past, that didn't get the kind of attention that I thought they deserved:

-At the same time the US was trying, in vain, to convince the UN Security council that war in Iraq was necessary, and when all of the nay-sayers were touting the line that a Security Council resolution was absolutely manditory for the US to send it's troops onto foreign soil, and at the same time they were saying that all the Americans were interested in was oil, the government of France sent it's troops into Cote D'Ivoire to protect French economic interests - Security Council resolutions be damned.

-Many commentators, before, during and after major combat operations in Iraq, have called American's actions there "unilateral" in nature. This, despite the fact that the American government has always presented it's case openly to the world, and has enjoyed the support of numerous other nations in this endeavour. What is never mentioned is the fact that during the American attempt to get an unnecessary 18th resolution through the Security Council the President of France, M. Jacques Chirac, boldly announced to the world that no matter how much support the Americans could muster, the government of France would use it's Security Council veto to ensure that the resolution would not pass. In other words, he was perfectly willing to act unilaterally to prevent armed actions against one of his country's biggest military clients.

-Osama Bin Laden was captured by the Sudanese government in the mid nineties and offered to the Americans, who already suspected him of being behind terrorist attacks against American targets. Bill Clinton decided for unfathomable reasons that it was too much trouble (not glamorous enough? doesn't turn the chicks on?) and let him go. Interestingly, the Democrats have been able to spin the theory that Bush's eight months in office (receiving his intelligence from a spy network both legally and financially crippled by his predecesor) make him equally guilty for not getting Bin Laden.

This is fun. Me like blogging.

Thought For The Day

2004-11-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

Carolyn Parrish is where she belongs now, an isolated outcast doomed to spend the rest of her waning political career without a political party, and the support mechanisms that come with it. She clearly took it all for granted. God help the Tories or the NDP if they take her in - she's as tainted as a politician can be, and she can do nothing but hurt any politician who sides with her.

I wish I could say that this was the result of her over-the-top anti-Americanism. I wish I could say that her party saw her spoiled-brat attacks on the US president for what they were - counterproductive, ugly and unbecoming a democratically elected representative of the Canadian people.

But this is not the case. Carolyn Parrish' words and actions are in fact representative of a seething philosophical undercurrent within the Liberal party of Canada, a philosophy born of envy and resentment, and a willingness to see only evil intentions in those who are in fact our best friends.

George Bush is not well spoken, so he's an "idiot" and those who stand with him are a "Coalition of Idiots". Those who have not been willing or even able to defend themselves from foreign threats for fifty years, and who cry hysterically from the sidelines about the "illegality" of war are "wise". The world's most generous nation can be written off as "bastards" when they refuse to submit their public policy to foreign scrutiny that no other nation has ever had to endure. (Except maybe Israel, but that's another rant.)

These are commonly held beliefs within the Canadian left, and I daresay within the Liberal party of Canada. Carolyn Parrish gave them voice. Traditional Liberal values gave them life.

Apologies

2004-11-19T21:05:00.001-05:00

I know no one is reading this blog, but I apologize for not writing more anyway. It's tougher than it looks, to come up with zippy insights about the news of the day. And there are so many great blogs to read on the web already. I'll be assembling a blogroll soon. Kirk out.

You The Man, Jack

2004-11-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder why the NDP never even come close to getting elected? I mean, TWINKIES, fer fuck's sake! Haven't you guys got anything better to worry about?

The Incredibles

2004-11-13T22:20:00.000-05:00

The wife and I just got back from seeing Pixar's latest oeuvre, The Incredibles. I'll tell you upfront: the story line sucked. It was tedious and predictable. The dialogue and humour was clearly written for children. I kinda felt like an ass being there without kids.

What saved the movie, and made it worth seeing, was the animation. My, but it was beautiful. It was better than anything Pixar's done to date (including the fantastic underwater backgrounds in Finding Nemo), better than the computer enhancements in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, better than any movie I've ever seen. I'm not into spoilers, so I'll keep this as vague as possible: the action, especially the chase scenarios, had incredible depth without visual incoherence. The lighting (such as it appears in animation) was exceptionally good. And of course, being completely animated meant that sequences could be portrayed that are physically impossible without having to mesh live action footage. No matter how good the effects guys are, there's always an element of, I don't know, wonkiness to those scenarios in live action. In this film the effects were, of course, absolutely air tight. And I felt that it made a difference.

I'm starting to think that the with way things are going in animation, it won't be long before people just stop making action movies trying to blend live action with graphics, because the animated stuff is just so much better.

A final note: One scene involves a bomb going off that is forshadowed by a beeping noise. I would expect an adult, whose seen Die Hard and other such movies, to understand what that beeping sound might mean. But I was a little surprised to hear the four-year-old boy in front of me pick up on it and whisper it to his mother. Trust me when I say that the audio cue wasn't obvious right off the bat, and I was only just thinking to myself that there was a bomb when the kid said it out loud. I just thought it was interesting, the things that kids know about at such an early age.

Shout Out

2004-11-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

Shout out to my friends Len and Blair. If you've found this, well, you're groovy. Thanks for looking.

Which column are you?

2004-11-13T18:52:00.000-05:00

Interesting thread over at Rational Explications. Be sure to read the comments section, particularly the first comment by MMM.

Welcome

2004-11-13T16:10:00.000-05:00

Testing.