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30 November 2003  

In Defence of Old Farts

If you can stand one more thing on Spencer, Jim Elves at BlogsCanada takes issue with Colby Cosh's leniency toward the MP:

I'm not quite as old as the bigotted Spencer but I'll submit my credentials as an old fart, codger-blogger. I'm straight, I was born in the 1940's and I'm old enough to be Colby's dad. In fact, my son was born in 1971 and is a few months older than Colby. I do not subscribe to the argument that just because someone is of a certain age, their close-minded opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.

In fact, I find Colby's acquiescence to Spencer's bigotry fairly insulting. It's as if he's saying that the opinions and statements of those of us over 50 don't really matter much.

12:03 PM |

28 November 2003  

Some Old Farts Are More Dangerous Than Others

Colby Cosh on the Spencer affair:

Peter Mackay inadvertently confirmed yesterday how insane our approach to these little dustups is: "I'm shocked, frankly, that a person would have those thoughts, let alone express them in such a fashion," he said. Q: is Peter Mackay a retard? He's shocked that anyone could contemplate proscribing homosexuality by law, despite having been born in a country where it was illegal. He's shocked that an old man confused by the rapid acceptance of gay sex would be attracted to nutty explanations for it, or that anyone would believe homosexuality is inculcated by nurture rather than nature, which was a near-universal belief until about last week. Sorry, I call bullshit. This is not a case of being "shocked": this is a case of a country, and a political class, having arrived at a certain moral position and trying to secure it by pretending that things were always this way.

But even aside from that quibble, I don't get Colby's "frustration at forty-year-old people pretending that they've never talked to a batty older person in their f***ing lives." Speaking for myself (and while neither shock nor even surprise is the emotion I am feeling) what bothers me is not that a batty older person went off on a homophobic rant. Given that alone, yes, amusement or maybe even understanding and sympathy would be more appropriate reactions. What bothers me is that this particular senior citizen is a prominent member of a party that hopes to become the government in the next election. There's a difference in what I will tolerate from "some old fart" and an old fart who might soon be writing laws in Ottawa.

09:06 PM |

Church and State

I said in last night's post that Larry Spencer had "apparently advocated the locking up of" homosexuals. It turns out I was wise to include the weasely "apparently." In fact, while saying he would support a bill criminalizing gay sexual activity, he also said:

I wouldn't even suggest that there would be a penalty. I just think it's so sad that we have to take an issue like this and be asked to put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on it without being allowed to tell the truth and talk about facts.

02:08 PM |

Confusion Corner

tenet. n. An opinion, doctrine, or principle held as being true by a person or especially by an organization.

tenant. n. 1. One that pays rent to use or occupy land, a building, or other property owned by another. 2. A dweller in a place; an occupant.

Challenging someone's tenants, therefore, is very different from challenging his tenets.

That is all.

10:12 AM |

27 November 2003  

Goodbye Larry

Larry Spencer, the Canadian Alliance member who apparently advocated the locking up of people who dare to engage in consensual sex acts he finds unacceptable, was out of the party's caucus almost before the words were out of his mouth. This, I hope, is a good omen for the merged Conservative party's stance on personal liberty issues. Alarmingly, however, Damian Penny's post on this development has elicited a good number of comments in support of Spencer, a man who "suggested that homosexuality should be outlawed, and that there has been a 40-year gay conspiracy to recruit children into the homosexual lifestyle." It's not completely surprising, but still scary, to know that there's this ugly emotionalist authoritarianism (and an audience for it!) just under the surface of some conservatives, waiting to be exposed when they feel the monolithic "gays" are asking for too much.

09:16 PM |

25 November 2003  

Choice Words

Did you know:

The Rot13 method of encrypting text is performed by rotating the alphabet by thirteen characters. Because there are 26 letters in the alphabet, the decryption process is the same as the encryption. The longest words to form other words when Rot13 encrypted are the seven letter words abjurer and nowhere, which become each other.

08:48 PM |

The Artist's Studio

Artist Bryan Larsen walks us step-by-step through the evolution of one of his recent paintings, bloggishly, taking comments and questions along the way. You can see his other stuff here. (I think this is my favorite, with this a close second.)

08:30 PM |

23 November 2003  

And Now For Something Completely Different

North Korea isn't all bad.

12:08 AM |

21 November 2003  

Ass Warfare

Speaking of Iraq, how's this for an eloquent summing up of the nature of the battle going on there:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Rockets fired from donkey-drawn carts struck two major hotels used by foreign journalists and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil Friday in a barrage that shook downtown Baghdad.

02:18 PM |

Pax Owed Manna?

However commendable Salam Pax's talents as a writer may be, Lileks today gives him something he needed and deserved (scroll down to "Finally: the Guardian..."). Well, what he really needs and deserves is a slap upside the head, but Lileks' tongue-lashing will have to do for now. As for those attacking Lileks for his outburst, my response is here.

Update: And I loved this comment:

Salam does not deserve to have US troops holding his sofa while he says, "No, a little more to the left."

01:41 PM |

17 November 2003  

Dangerously Wondering

Dean Allen at Textism recently praised the WalkyDog, a "device for safely taking the dog for a bicycle ride." Although of the cat persuasion myself, I was intrigued by the idea and the odd name. Thank God I followed that link, or I would have missed their wonderfully bizarre FAQ. I'm both laughing and marveling at the preternatural simulation of the English language combined with a European je ne sais quoi:

What are the main advantaged of the WalkyDog®?
Matter-of-factly, they are really numerous:

1. It grants the full safety of the trinomial biker-bike-dog in each single moment during riding;
2. It allows the biker to safely indicate the change of his direction, since no hand is engaged in holding the dog;
3. It allows the biker to perform several actions, such as smoking, answering the mobile phone, etc ... (of course, always keeping in mind the highway code regulations and the common sense!);

10:34 PM |

15 November 2003  

Posts of the Week

Here are a couple of thoughtful blog entries worth your attention, both with lots of comment activity:

• Aaron Haspel on the the cause of crime. That's real crime Aaron's taking about — you know, the kind where something other than someone's feelings is hurt.
• Noumenalself on music. Ever wonder how music fits the Objectivist definition of art as "a selective recreation of reality"? Even if you haven't, Mr. Self has a couple of ideas that might interest you. (If you get a "server not found" error clicking that link, give it another try or two. Maybe it's just my ISP's DNS, but I always have to do that.)

12:05 PM |

Thought Crimes

Rob Transcinski has another good one out, this on the proposed "hate crimes" law:

Despite its name, it is not "hatred" as such that the proposed law targets. After all, which crimes aren't motivated by hatred? Are assaults and murders usually committed out of benevolence toward the victim? The real target is the criminal's ideas. The proposed law declares that criminals motivated by a government-designated set of intolerable ideas--racism, sexism, religious sectarianism, anti-homosexuality--deserve special prosecution and additional punishment.

But to subject someone to trial and punishment on the basis of his ideas--regardless of how despicable those ideas might be--constitutes a politicization of criminal law. Why, for example, should a racist be prosecuted for the special crime of targeting blacks, while the Unabomber is not subject to special prosecution for his hatred of scientists and business executives? The only answer is that the Unabomber's ideas are considered more "politically correct" than the racist's.

A "hate crimes" law would expand the law's concern from criminal action to "criminal thought." It would institute the premise that the purpose of our legal system is not to defend the rights of the victim, but to punish socially unacceptable ideas. This is a premise that should be abhorrent to a free society.

...

Where will this end? If a man convicted of an actual criminal act can be sentenced to additional years in prison simply for his ideas--then, in logic, why can't someone be punished solely for his ideas? Even if he has not committed a single action against another person, why can't he be tried simply for being a "purveyor of hate"? Indeed, this development is already foreshadowed by campus "speech codes," which bar statements deemed "offensive" to protected groups.

10:58 AM |

11 November 2003  

Luckily, I Didn't Promise to Move to France

Miller won, convincingly. John Barber has an embarrassingly fawning ode to the new mayor in this morning's Globe, in which he predicts a three-term tenure. Please let that be wrong, or at least let me be wrong about Miller.

08:49 AM |

10 November 2003  

I Am So Old

Tom has a nostalgia-evoking post up about BBS culture. Sure does bring back memories. I had a very small hand in running DiSC, one of the larger Toronto-area Fido (then Opus) boards back in the day. I even interviewed Wynn Wagner, the creator of Opus for the newsletter of the ambitiously-named, but more humble in reality, Trans-Canada Sysop Network. ( I just Googled Wynn Wagner and discovered he's gay. Who knew? So was DiSC's sysop. Was I a part of some gay BBS mafia that I didn't even know about?) DiSC eventually turned into Magic, a FirstClass system, where people like a teenaged Cory Doctorow hung out. FirstClass, amazingly to me, is still around.

Anyway, do check out Tom's post, if for no other reason than the fact it contains something I never expected to see: a legitimate use of the <blink> tag.

06:57 AM |

9 November 2003  

Election Tidbits

I had to laugh this afternoon as I watched the Toronto Star/Toronto 1 debate I'd taped earlier in the week. Each candidate was asked to name his or her favorite intersection in the city and Barbara Hall immediately answered, with smiling insincerity, "Parliament and Wellesley." Now, it doesn't take a former resident of the area like me to know that that is one of the most depressing places in the city. It was run down 15 years ago when I lived on that very corner of St. Jamestown and it's far worse now. But I wasn't at all surprised to hear a politician as savvy as Hall give that answer. After all, the corner is found in by far the most densely populated area of the city.

In other amusing election news, this from my own Ward 27, a transvestite candidate is charged with election law violations and a clown assualts the same-sex husband of a city councillor.

01:29 AM |

An 'Undecided' Decides

Not that I'd recommend this course of action to you, but a distinct advantage of leaving your decision in an election until the last minute is that a lot of potential choices get eliminated by virtue of their remaining at, or descending ignominiously to, the bottom of the polls. In the case of the Toronto mayoral election this strategy has left me with a choice between David Miller and John Tory who are, respectively, at 44% and 37% in the latest poll. The 4% margin of error makes it possible that each has a real shot at winning Monday night.

Of the other three main candidates Tom Jakobek was the only one I'd considered voting for. Barbara Hall is mixed, but still way too far left for my tastes, plus I'd really rather not hear that whiny yet monotonal voice constantly for the next three years. As for John Nunziata, the former Liberal Rat Packer, if his former alliance with Sheila Copps hadn't been sufficient to turn me off, his bizarre behavior in the bribery "scandal" would have been. First he accuses an unnamed rival of bribery in an editorial meeting at a radio station, then he does nothing about it for a week, then he goes to the police, and finally he says he doesn't think any laws were broken. Thanks, but you know, I think Jon Stewart has had enough fun at Toronto's expense as it is, with Mel Lastman's Tourette's-like outbursts.

The choice between the remaining two is easy. Not, unfortunately, because one is clearly so good. A really good candidate — i.e., one who would cut taxes, promote development, privatize city services as much as possible, and get the mentally ill and/or drug addicted people off their sidewalk mattresses and sleeping bags (by force, if necessary) — if such could be found in Toronto, would be unelectable. No, the reason the choice is easy is that one candidate is clearly so bad.

David Miller: Looks like a socialist. Thinks like a socialist. Talks like a socialist. (PDF brochure for those outside the city and who didn't find the hard copy version on their doorsteps today.) It's a no-brainer for even a mild conservative to be opposed to a candidate who is as consistently and clearly statist as Miller. For a freakish laissez-faire capitalist like yours truly, it's as if the decision had been made for me.

I only wish John Tory were someone I could actively get behind. There are good things: He wants to freeze taxes (eventually), hire more police officers, and is in favor of incineration to get rid of a garbage problem that has convoys rolling down the highway from here to Michigan around the clock. Otherwise, he's more of a Liberal than his name and supposed party affiliation would indicate. He wants to build more public housing, talks constantly about multiculturalism, and is very much a central-planner when it comes to development.

But like I said, you learn to lower your expectations when you live in a city where your political views are likely to elicit expressions of condescending amusement from half the population and accusations of fascism from a not-insignificant chunk of the rest.

So, I hope all you fascists (and even you Red Tories) in Toronto will join me on Monday in voting for John Tory. A city run by an unapologetic leftist like David Miller is not something I want to contemplate, let alone live in.

12:38 AM |

2 November 2003  

Harris Out

My tentative choice of favorite in the new Conservative party leadership, former Ontario premier Mike Harris, has dropped out before entering the race. He would likely have had significant support within the merged party so if nothing else it will make the leadership race much more interesting. I just hope someone electable and vote-for-able emerges in the end.

05:41 PM |

1 November 2003  

Toronto Votes

Kudos to Rick McGinnis for coming up with the idea of a short-term blog dedicated to coverage of the upcoming Toronto elections. It's called Last Chance City and Day 1 of its 10-day existence was today. For now I have nothing to say about the elections except to bemoan the lack of inspiring choices in the mayoral race. I need to get more informed about the candidates, though, and fast: election day is November 10th. I expect Rick's project will help me out with that.

(Speaking of Toronto, check out this neat time-lapse video of our fair city. And here's another that's less impressive but more obviously Toronto; i.e., it has the CN Tower in it.)

09:43 PM |