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31 January 2002  

Abuse Bowl Bunkum

eye, a weekly alterna-rag here in Toronto, has an article in the current issue headed "The most violent day of the year: The cash-starved shelter system for abused women braces for Superbowl Sunday". It contains the following:

As we approach Superbowl Sunday Feb. 3, arguably the day of the year with the highest rate of violence against women, the city's cash-starved shelter system will no doubt struggle even harder to help those in need.

11:45 PM |

30 January 2002  

The SOTU

Harry Roolaart was not impressed with the State of the Union address. I can't disagree that all the things Roolaart lists were horrible, but I would not be so hard on Bush. For one, plentiful good stuff on the war and his future plans for it made up the bulk of the speech. Perhaps I am being too complacent, but I see the national service thing (which is voluntary, after all), along with all the other crap about selfishness as bad and sacrifice as good, as nothing new or unexpected. These are standard cliches of our time. Yes, it's sad that the President of the United States of America is using his pulpit to perpetuate these ideas, but hardly surprising. What potential presidential candidate can you even imagine that would not make these same kinds of statements? And God knows, if Gore had won the election we'd not only be hearing these platitudes, but seeing the worst logically consistent applications of them enacted into law.

11:43 AM |

The Demise of MetaFilter

I've been reading MetaFilter very rarely these days. During a "Sites of Note" reorg this past weekend, I came close to deleting its link. Today, Lileks nails the reason for my growing disenchantment:

If you combined Noam Chomsky and Emily Post at age 22 and set them in front of a computer after their 89th consecutive dateless Saturday, you’d have a perfect example of the recent MeFi member.

07:06 AM |

29 January 2002  

Kent, the Cute Teller

Banking's blissful for Brad:

My bank, presumably as a cost-efficiency measure, recently installed a phalanx of automatic teller machines adjacent to the lobby and in all but one of the drive-through lanes. These new marvels of banking techology will never be used, however, because my bank has made a fatal mistake.

They hired Kent, the Cute Teller.

06:06 PM |

28 January 2002  

Tim Sanders Responds

Yahoo exec. Tim Sanders dropped by to comment on my recent criticism of the Fast Company article he wrote, "Love is the Killer App." He wanted to make it clear that his book, upon which the article is based, "attempts to create a solution whereby being a 'nice smart person' in business is done WITHOUT any self-sacrafice." Plus, he says he's "a believer in some of Ayn Rand's body of work". Thanks for the response, Tim! I may just have to go out and get the book now.

09:26 PM |

Hebetudinous

Word of the day: hebetudinous. For a usage example, here's Moira Breen's commentary on Molly Ivins' latest usa-bashing.

03:24 PM |

Dalai Lama Hypocrisy

Does Richard Gere know what a hypocrite his idol is?

After missing numerous prayer sessions last week due to an illness, the Dalai Lama decided that he wasn’t all that crazy about “nirvana” after all. The 66-year old mystic, instead of embracing the much-anticipated opportunity to die, admitted himself Sunday to a medical hospital.... As soon as he is healed, the Dalai Lama is expected to go back to criticizing reason and praising the mindless pursuit of death.

11:45 AM |

Spiked

Fellow Canadian David Janes has introduced me to Spiked, a British site that bills itself as "online, off-message." Don't know how I missed seeing these guys until now. Their list of likes and dislikes (scroll down) will give you an idea of where they stand. Here's a good article from them on why nature's not all it's cracked up to be:

Ironically, today's praising of nature is possible precisely because we have pretty much conquered nature. Just as the British started to romanticise the Scottish Highland tradition in the 1750s - shortcake, bagpipes, tartan and all - as soon as the Highland hordes were finally vanquished, so we can romanticise nature because we no longer live at its mercy.

11:09 AM |

27 January 2002  

Lite Version

There's now a "lite" version of this weblog, available through the link on the left. It's mainly intended for use with PDAs, but those of you with older browsers may want to use it if my stylesheets don't result in a coherent rendering. Or, you may simply long for those halcyon days when men were men, links were blue and purple, and text was Times Roman.

05:21 PM |

26 January 2002  

Marcus Gee on Western Superiority

Marcus Gee, responding to this essay by John Gray, says we ought to have more confidence in the superiority of Western values and not back down in the face of critics. What's more, he says, we should be campaigning to export those values to the rest of the world.

If much of the non-Western world lives in misery, it is because the rights and values that have made the West so successful barely exist there. Democracy, economic freedom, religious tolerance, the rule of law, freedom of expression — these things are all but unknown in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

People in those countries are angry at the West because they are poor and unfree, and they are poor and unfree because they lack basic democratic and economic rights. If we want to calm their anger, the last thing we should do is swallow John Gray's apparent belief that the rights we enjoy should be denied to them just because they were born somewhere else.

07:24 PM |

Peter Gzowski

Speaking of the cbc, I have to mention the death this week of Peter Gzowski, host of Morningside for so many years. As opposed as I am to the cbc and as much as I disagreed with Gzowski's politics, I can't deny that Morningside meant something to me. Hearing that introductory music and that familiar cigarette-enhanced voice was somehow comforting. In particular I remember one experience driving back home from Nova Scotia several years ago. I'd stopped in Edmunston for the night, and as I set out the next morning, Gzowski was my company. I'll never forget how Canadian I felt as I listened and drove through the scenic landscape of northern New Brunswick and along the St. Lawrence. Canadian in a positive sense — a cultural, non-political, Canadian-ness. Even now, I can't quite put my finger on the source of this feeling. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the voice in strange surroundings combined with the realization that it was as familiar a sound here as back home in Toronto and in thousands of places across this vast country. Whatever it was, I felt it again this week as the numerous tributes were made on TV, radio, and in print.

rip, Peter Gzowski.

01:15 PM |

Michael Mandel

I awoke this morning (in a cold-induced achy, fuzzy-headed state) to hear Michael Mandel, a York University law professor, on cbc radio saying that not only is the us treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay illegal, but so is the war against Afghanistan. The interviewer, while nowhere near as hard on this guy as he should have been, did ask what he thought the us should have done if not attack Afghanistan, "serve a subpoena in Latin in a cave somewhere?" Mandel's answer was that the matter should have been left to the un Security Council to decide. He further noted that the un rules outlining when a country may attack another are essentially pacifist, allowing action only in a the very narrow circumstance of self-defense against an immediate danger. Therefore, he says, the us is guilty of war crimes and Canada is an accomplice due to our failure to denounce them. Mandel was making the same points back in October, when he said "The bombing of Afghanistan is the legal and moral equivalent of what was done to the Americans
on Sept. 11."

A few observations:

• The whole idea of international law, if it means that free countries must surrender to pacifists their right to defend themselves, is a sham.
• That anyone (let alone a law professor) can actually believe (let alone stridently defend) this plainly suicidal course continues to stun me.
• I want the money back that paid for the cbc to air this garbage.

Update: Damian is similarly incensed by the Mandel radio interview.

01:08 PM |

25 January 2002  

Brutal Cuban Winter

Mark Steyn:

Run for your life, it's the latest meteorological monster. After four months of cowering in fear at the impending arrival of the brutal Afghan winter the media have now moved seamlessly on to the horrors of the brutal Cuban winter: Oh, my God, how will these poor al-Qaeda boys -- you know, the ones who could supposedly hole up in the Khyber Pass eating scorpions all winter -- how will these fearsome warriors survive the Caribbean nights and the hordes of malaria-infested mosquitoes?

08:08 PM |

24 January 2002  

Team Bleh

I have to read Tim Blair more often. Laughter is good.

11:09 PM |

Chernobyl Chicanery?

According to this article, UN scientists have determined that the negative health effects of the Chernobyl disaster have been vastly overstated.

Chernobyl was the worst possible meltdown of a poorly designed, constructed and managed nuclear reactor, with the release of significant quantities of radionuclides into the atmosphere. Yet, according to the UN committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the death toll from the accident itself and directly related effects is 41. There were no early death cases among the public. Apart from increase in thyroid cancer registry (probably due to increased screening rather than a real increase in incidence) there is no evidence of a major public health impact related to the ionizing radiation 15 years after the accident. No increase of overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be associated with radiation exposure has been observed.

The article talks about how the proponents of the LNT (linear, no threshold, or "no safe dose") theory of radiation's effects are responsible for the hysteria and misinformation surrounding Chernobyl. Indeed, a little research turns up this six-year-old piece of scaremongering (from a U.C. Berkeley professor — surprise, surprise!). But even I, who read and loved The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear almost 20 years ago (oy), am startled by the disparity between the claims of damage compared to what this article is saying. Is it really possible that such a massive fraud has been perpetrated? Can it be true that the countless millions of dollars that have been collected on behalf of the radiation-contaminated children was completely unnecessary? (My own aunt paid considerable sums to bring children from that area over to stay with her family for "recuperative holidays.") I'll be very interested to see the studies when they come online.

10:11 PM |

22 January 2002  

The Power of Love?

The cover of the February issue of Fast Company blares "Love Is the Killer App." The corresponding feature article by Tim Sanders, a senior Yahoo executive, is about how to get ahead in business by being selfless. Well, kind of.

It's maddening and fascinating at the same time to see the attempted marriage of these antithetical concepts. Sanders actually gives some reasonable advice, but having rejected "barracudas, sharks, and piranhas" as role models for business success, he unfortunately feels it necessary to clothe his recommended course with the cliches of altruism. It would have been a better article if he'd dropped the window-dressing and rationalizations and retitled the article "Rational Selfishness is the Killer App."

10:35 PM |

17 January 2002  

New Intellectual Activist Website

The Intellectual Activist has a spiffy new website, including a webloggish Weekly Links section. This coincides with a change in format for the print edition. Can't wait to get my copy!

11:21 PM |

Discerning Thieves

It might be a clue that something's wrong with the world when criminals have more discerning aesthetic tastes than college professors. The work of sculptor Michael Wilkinson, who credits Ayn Rand's ideas with spurring him to integrate the "radical, conciously held esthetic theory" of Romantic Realism into his art, is very popular these days — with thieves. California Institute of the Arts art program director Martin Kersels, however, is not impressed:

In the contemporary art world, Romantic Realism is not something people are aspiring to...I think the majority of this style of art has no cultural currency.... It's not that interesting.... It's popular and commercially profitable because people recognize the images; it's nostalgic and it's not offensive.

01:44 PM |

16 January 2002  

Critics and Doers

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood. At best, he knows the triumph of high achievement; if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

04:30 PM |

'Leftist' verboten at the Times

Further to the Goldberg-inspired and Sullivan-propogated meme regarding ideological labeling, Virginia Postrel relates a revealing incident in the editing of this NYT piece from last year:

If you do identify someone on the left, you can never call them a "leftist." I know this from experience, having once tried to identify LAT columnist Robert Scheer as a "leftist" in a New York Times piece. The editor changed the label to "liberal."

02:07 PM |

Arafat Card Disappears

Fredrik notes that the Arafat trading card I mentioned yesterday is gone from the pokeorder.com site.

09:41 AM |

15 January 2002  

Arafat's the Topps?

From ARI comes this notice:

The American-based Topps trading card company... now has a card for Yasser Arafat. Card #16 in its "Enduring Freedom" series, dedicated to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, shows the arch-terrorist "donating blood to Americans."

Updates: (a) Looks like this is old news, the cards having come out in November. (b) I found the cards on Topps' site.

12:43 PM |

Reductio ad Absurdum Changes

Kevin Whited's Reductio ad Absurdum has a new format, design, and URL.

10:28 AM |

Moira Breen on Pseudo-Feminist Weenies

Do not miss Moira Breen's excellent item on "pseudo-feminist weenies."

10:15 AM |

Leftist Free-Speech Committment Test

At the end of a great rant, Damian asks:

You want to know just how committed the left is to freedom of speech? Go to a trendy neighbourhood in Toronto, stop some anti-globalization protestors on the street, and tell them you think there should be an increased role for the private sector in the Canadian health care system, or that abortion is wrong, or that Big Macs taste good. Let me know if you come out alive.

09:57 AM |

14 January 2002  

Graffiti at Ryerson

I live right at the edge of Ryerson University's campus in downtown Toronto and walk through it twice a day. Yet I hadn't noticed the anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-American, pro-Islamic graffiti this story reports on. They either cleaned it up in a hurry or I'm not very observant. I loved this bit at the end of the article:

The [Ryerson] spokesperson also said the university would post signs stating that hate messages are a violation of Canada's Human Rights Act.

Update: Hmmm. The Star's story on this says "The graffiti... was found in four men's bathrooms in East Kerr Hall" while the Yahoo! story says "the campus was covered with... graffiti." Well, if the Star has it right, that would explain why I didn't see anything.

11:02 PM |

Lileks on Art

Another routinely great piece from Lileks. This one's on art:

Nowadays, art that prompts “controversy” usually has one thing in common: it’s bad. Bad in conception or bad in execution, and frequently bad in both. Many in the arts world believe it is necessary to defend bad art, just like it is necessary to defend unpopular speech. On the contrary: it is necessary to attack bad art in the interests of raising the general level of quality in art. These, of course, are nasty code words — “bad” and “quality” are subjective judgments, and cannot be uniformly defined. Well, let me make a start...

02:31 PM |

White House Picture

This is an awfully nice picture of the White House.

01:05 PM |

13 January 2002  

Everybody's Been Shot

Peggy Noonan says "everybody's been shot":

In [a scene from Black Hawk Down], the actor Tom Sizemore, playing your basic tough-guy U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in charge of a small convoy of humvees trying to make its way back to base under heavy gun and rocket fire. The colonel stops the convoy, takes in some wounded, tears a dead driver out of a driver's seat, and barks at a bleeding sergeant who's standing in shock nearby:

Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But I'm shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybody's shot, get in and drive.

"Everybody's shot." Those are great metaphoric words....

Just after the movie, I picked up Ellis Cose's latest book, "The Envy of the World," about the "daunting challenges" that face black men in 21st-century America. I read and thought, Earth to Ellis: Everyone faces daunting challenges in 21st-century America.

Because everybody's been shot.

What does that mean? It means something we used to know. It means everyone has it hard, everyone takes hits, everyone's been fragged, everyone gets tagged, life isn't easy for anyone.

11:17 PM |

12 January 2002  

Running Page Added

I've added a Running page.

10:40 PM |

Logophile Tools

Little Green Footballs has handy bookmarklets for looking up selected words. In related news, check out the tremendously useful Dave's Quick Search Deskbar.

06:38 PM |

Win Ben Stein's Contempt

Ben Stein gives Arianna Huffington the finger. You go, Ben.

02:01 PM |

Ideological Accents

In the wake of the publication of Bernard Goldberg's Bias, lots of bloggers have been picking up on Goldberg's point that the media never fail to label a person or group "conservative" or "right-wing," but rarely make the comparable qualifications in describing leftists. Andrew Sullivan pointed out a great recent example of it that was actually caught by the conservative victim (from CNN's Newsnight, 18 Dec.):

Aaron Brown: Some conservatives jumped on [Taliban fighter John] Walker, saying he is a product of cultural liberalism – the California kind – helping to turn an impressionable kid against his own country. Joining us from Salinas, California, one of those conservatives, Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution. Mr. Steele wrote a provocative article the other day in The Wall Street Journal– a column in the Journal. And here in New York, a columnist who thinks Mr. Steele is making an awfully broad generalization: Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. It’s nice to have both of you here. Mr. Steele.

Shelby Steele: First of all, let me interrupt you just a minute. Is Richard Cohen a liberal?

Brown: Yeah, Richard Cohen’s a liberal. I think he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Richard Cohen: On this issue.

Brown: Okay. Everyone is now branded, I guess.

Steele: Great. If I’m going to be, everybody’s going to be.

A "news analysis" in the national section of today's New York Times mentions several interest groups and advocacy groups. Consumers Union is mentioned with no explanation. Families USA is described as "a consumer advocacy group." The Kaiser Family Foundation is described as a "health research group." And the Heritage Foundation is described as "the conservative Heritage Foundation." In typical Times fashion, the conservative group gets labeled as such, while the liberal groups get labeled as "consumer" or "research" groups or get no label at all. There are plenty of conservatives — some of them even consume things — who think that the Heritage Foundation's policies would be better for consumers than the policies of the so-called consumer advocacy groups. The board of Families USA, for instance, includes not just "consumers" but a doctor, a former president of a union that represents health care workers, an aide to a Democratic congressman, a Democratic state senator, and Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff.

Unreflective people, which definitely includes journalists, are not aware that they have a philosophy at all. But they are inescapably aware of philosophies different from their own. So liberal journalists think that they are not using any philosophy, they are just looking at and describing events "non-ideologically." But when they see conservatives coming to what strikes the liberal journalists as "weird" conclusions, they know that the conservatives are led to them by their political philosophies.

I have likened this general phenomenon to the issue of regional accents. Nobody thinks he speaks with an accent. He thinks he just speaks "plain." But he sure is aware of accents that differ from his own. So a Brooklynite hearing a Texan speak is very aware of the Texan having an accent. But that Brooklynite doesn't think he has any accent—unless he has been repeatedly told he does by non-Brooklynites....

To use my analogy [in the average journalist's mind] the conservatives are speaking with a conservative accent, while the Naderites are just speaking "plain."

01:21 PM |

11 January 2002  

Comments Fixed

Comments are working again.

08:30 PM |

Post-Modern Drip

Brad has post-modern drip.

01:20 PM |

Americans for Self-Defense

The Vision and Purpose statement of Americans for Self-Defense:

Americans for Self-Defense is dedicated to the proposition that the United States must take a strong and uncompromising stand against nations that threaten American lives and freedoms. We believe that above all else, America needs the strength of moral conviction in order to protect its citizens from from these threats. America must be convinced of its own greatness and of the righteousness of its cause.

We hold that America must put its own defense first, and that we must not sacrifice self-defense to win the support of other nations. We fully support the unyielding use of military force to defeat our enemies and defend our country.

Our purpose is to stand up for the right of America to defend itself from foreign enemies. We name the nature of these enemies, the threat they pose, and the action that must be taken in response. Through our efforts, we hope to make the world safer for freedom, prosperity and happiness everywhere.

01:11 PM |

Comments Broken

David has alerted me to the fact that comment posting is broken. Argh. I'll try to get it fixed ASAP.

10:49 AM

We Don't Even Look Alike!

If you're here via DailyPundit.com looking for information on the DoubleTree fiasco, I'm afraid they got it slightly confused. It was Cory Doctorow who got the nastygrams from Joseph Crosby. I just blogged it. Cory's main site is here and his blog is here.

10:38 AM |

10 January 2002  

Noah Grey's Photography

If you haven't seen Noah Grey's beautiful photos yet, you're in for a treat. You can order prints, too.

10:49 PM |

US Armed Forces for Nobel

Fredrik has the correct answer to the question of who should win the Nobel Peace Prize this year. As he also correctly points out, however, there's not a hope in Hell it'll happen.

10:42 PM |

Blogger Code

My blogger code: B1 d+ t+ k s+ u f i o x e l c-. (Via MetaFilter.)

03:48 PM |

8 January 2002  

A Beautiful Mind

On the recommendation of David, and because I'd heard other good things about it, I went to see A Beautiful Mind the other night. Aside from an ending that left me cold, it was excellent. I was especially moved by the love story between John Nash (Russell Crowe) and his wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), which is portrayed beautifully. In this and elsewhere in the movie, Akiva Goldsman's script and Ron Howard's direction excel at conveying much with spare but eloquent dialog and just a few meaningful touches. Both Crowe and Connelly (who I'd never seen before) are mesmerizing. The supporting cast is very good, too, including Paul Bettany (also brilliant as Chaucer in A Knight's Tale) who plays Nash's college roommate.

David Brudnoy, who I grew up listening to on Boston radio, often said that a successful movie is one that makes you feel something. I agree, and this one succeeded with me. (Incidentally, Brudnoy has a nice review of the movie that doesn't give too much away.)

11:31 PM |

carlhuber.com

This is a neat site design concept. View Source makes my head hurt, though.

05:27 PM |

Steyn Article Link

Here's that Steyn column I mentioned yesterday. (Just to clarify, I in no way meant to imply improper borrowing from Den Beste.)

04:40 PM |

Yours is a Very Bad Hotel

Yours is a very bad hotel. Engaging in bad customer service in age of the Internet is dangerous. Worse for this hotel, they're trying to silence the complaining customer. (Via Scripting News)

Update: Looks like they've actually tried to make amends. Given that, I don't get this behavior.

03:10 PM |

7 January 2002  

Rearden Steel

Rearden Steel is changing its name to Moxi. I guess that makes marketing sense. They're releasing some cool products, too. (More here.) I hope their MediaCenter will be made available in Canada. I've been waiting forever for TiVo to appear here.

12:24 PM |

Steyn & Den Beste on the Afghan Winter

We know Mark Steyn reads war blogs, as evidenced by his coverage of Jeff Jarvis' "fly naked" idea (which he misattributed to another blogger, Ken Layne). So I have to wonder if today's National Post column (sorry, not on the web yet) about the fast-approaching but never arriving "brutal Afghan winter" owes anything to Steven Den Beste's musings just over a week ago:

When, exactly, does winter start in Afghanistan?... [W]e were getting told in October by the aid agencies that the onset of winter was imminent. That was back when they were demanding an end to the bombing to permit the movement of humanitarian supplies before winter made such movement impossible -- only then we were told that winter would begin in the middle of November. Remember that?

Whatever happened to the "brutal Afghan winter"? It was "fast approaching" back in late September, and apparently it's still "fast approaching" today. "Winter is fast approaching," reported ABC's Nightline on September 26th....

...[T]he brutal winter carried on approaching. "Winter is fast approaching," said Thomas McDermott, UNICEF's regional Director, on December 9th.

10:05 AM |

Lileks on "Complexity"

Lileks has rechristened his Rant "The Screed" and has a new one today dissecting a Stephanie Salter piece. I especially like the bit where he addresses her predictable complaint that war is insufficient to deal with such a "huge, complex, global situation."

You know what? A big towering plate of spaghetti is complex, and you can solve it with a simple fork. Especially if you stab hard and turn it repeatedly.

08:04 AM |

6 January 2002  

Update

Some happenings over the last two weeks:

• Mom flew in from NS to spend Christmas. While she was here, we went to see The Lion King (my second time; an amazing show) and Harry Potter (fun; I give it a 7 out of 10).
• I got lots of goodies for Christmas, including this from David. Thanks, David!
• I read Vittorio the Vampire. It was just OK. Interesting for its setting in early-Renaissance Italy, but plot-wise not what I would call engrossing (as Interview with the Vampire was).
• My next-door neighbours have set a record for loud, late-night parties (latest one: last night). Even a police visit proved ineffective at curbing the decibel level.
• A homeless man died in the laneway directly in front of my building.
• My friends Alan & Ivan introduced me to the Dim Sum experience. Yum!

02:53 PM |

I'm Baaa-aack!

Thanks to the fabulous support of Ben at Movable Type and the less spectacular, but eventually adequate action on the part of my hosting service, I'm back in blogging mode again! Sorry for the interruption, and thanks for your patience.

02:19 PM |