Ranting and Roaring

38 years old, if you must ask. There’s the making of a Tragically Hip joke here, but I have to get to the boat. More later.

I’ll have to disagree with PeakTalk on this one:

Canadians may congratulate themselves on their country’s liberal attitudes as evidenced by the federal government’s decision not to oppose gay marriage, but if events like this warrant police attention and investigation then there’s still a lot of work to be done.

What’s the issue? Here’s the Globe and Mail article:

Live sex show goes off without hitch

A small art gallery was jammed by the curious, but apparently no police officers, for an event Thursday night that was billed as Canada’s first live sex show.

City police had said earlier in the day that an investigation would take place if two actors went ahead as planned with a mutual oral sex act. But a police spokeswoman declined to say whether officers would attend and lawyers for the art gallery hosting the play, called Public Sex, Art and Democracy, said they doubted police would be present.

This live sex show “issue” was covered several times by the G+M in the last few weeks and John Ince, the art gallery owner, made it quite clear that he perceives himself as some sort of ground-breaking rebel. By investigating the show and by taking no further action, the police gave Ince the attention and sense of faux-victimization he so desperately craves without incurring any major costs to the city coffers. I.e. they were doing their civic duty by supporting the arts.

This entry is about a specific point in the Echo project, an effort to replace RSS with something … else. Better, we think. Feel free to ignore this entry if none of this makes any sense to you.

A little discussion is developing on the Example page about whether to use only the <link> tag to refer to URIs. We’re agreed that the <link> tag is a good thing, that the proper way to use it is with the href attribute to specify the URI, and that the rel attribute identifies the particular relationship. So far, right out of the XHTML playbook.

What I claim is that certain URIs should not be put in the generic <link> container and should be given their own proper XML element (Asbjorn Ulsberg either disagrees or would like a stronger argument from me). In particular, I think the following two URIs should get their own element:

• the URI for a link entry
• the URI for a blog’s “identity” page — i.e. the main page of the blog

Consider the following examples (not exactly following Echo syntax, since the Wiki is down as I’m writing this). The first example is the way I’d like to see it, the second is using <link> only.

 <blog>   <bloglink href="http://blog.davidjanes.com" />    <entry>     <entrylink href="http://blog.davidjanes.com/archives/00000.html" />          <author>       <link rel="email" href="mailto:xxx@davidjanes.com" />       <link rel="homepage" href="http://www.davidjanes.com" />     </author>   </entry> </blog> 

 <blog>   <link rel="bloglink" href="http://blog.davidjanes.com" />    <entry>     <link rel="entrylink" href="http://blog.davidjanes.com/archives/00000.html" />          <author>       <name>David Janes</name>       <link rel="email" href="mailto:xxx@davidjanes.com" />       <link rel="homepage" href="http://www.davidjanes.com" />     </author>   </entry> </blog> 

Now, why do I think the first example is better than the second? For the following two reasons:

• requiredness and optionality: “bloglink” and “entrylink” express required information about the elements they are attached to. The other links do not. One can imagine that the author element could have only the “name” element within it and still be valid — in fact, one can imagine it happening quite easily!
• here and there: the <link> tag is giving a pointer to something external — the author’s homepage on the net or their e-mail address. The “bloglink” and “entrylink” tags are expressing something about the data right here in the feed: this is the blog we are talking about, this is the entry we are talking about.

It would be brave if Rowling did it in the next book. Kind of To Live and Die in LA-ish.

Sluggy Freelance is somewhat different today, and may I say, I heartly endorse this new direction

James Justin Wilson is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan:

Michigan’s attempts to foster diversity are artificial, manufactured, and inauthentic. In one memorable instance, an organization calling itself “Dialogues on Diversity” lured students to an event with the promise of free pizza. (The way to a college student’s mind is through his stomach). My interests — and taste buds — perked, so I showed up with a few friends and was told to sit at a table with other students of conspicuously different races. Then, after a brief introduction, they asked us to “Talk about a time when you were discriminated against.” The “Dialogues of Diversity” turned out to be a series of monologues. As we went around the table, they each took a turn lecturing me, the white guy.

You’re a goddamn musician, why don’t you play a benefit concert for Bunia?

And here’s even a better idea: why don’t you tell us what we should do to stop this genocide from continuing to unfold. After all, you social conscience types were an infinite font of wisdom when it came to lecturing us on what we shouldn’t have been doing during the Iraq war. Or is it possible — I’m just going out on a limb here — there you haven’t found the “angle” to blame the US yet, and until that happens, they’re not of a whole lot of utility to you, are they?

How many people have died in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the last four and a half years? An estimated 3.3 million. It has been described as Africa’s worst war and the worst conflict since the Second World War. And how often do you hear about it on the news? No offense to the City of Toronto, but how many people have perished because of SARS and how dramatically has the economic fallout because of the lack of tourism affected the overall standard of living? Is it comparable to the DR Congo’s 3.3. million dead and its third world living conditions?

No?

If that’s the case then why isn’t everyone playing benefit concerts for Bunia? Or how about the Province of Ituri where 1,000 villagers were massacred?

Because people in the DR Congo don’t buy records

If I’m ever in accident, I really couldn’t give a shit whether the paramedics driver “cares” about me or not. I’ll take professionalism, skill, and effectiveness over concern any day of the week. It’ll beat hand-wringing and self-congratulation every time.

James Lilek’s wife lost her job. Perhaps she should start a blog?

Jim spent the day lazing around in his underwear on couch watching DVDs again. I can’t get that man to do anything: now we have to hire men to come in and mow our lawn for us! And when he’s at the “computer” (if you can call a Mac that), I’m never sure if he’s doing work or if he’s talking to his “friends” on the Internet. And if I find one more half-cooked gelatin-based goop-like meal discarded in the sink…

Philip Seymour Hoffman? I don’t think so:

Update: I know who the goddamn photo is of; it’s on my website and I spent 15 searching, editing, and copying to get it there. PSH is gooey-faced mook; the picture above to the left is JB. More clarity on my part the next time…

Free reign for evil corporations will lead to a world to be ruled by race of giant super-men.

Excuse the language, but What the fuck’s this about? [KL].

Update: do we want to lose this?

The weatherperson told us that there were things we should do when a tornado was sighted, but unfortunately they weren’t loaded in the computer now so she couldn’t tell us what to do, and could (insert name of off screen tech here) PLEASE load those into the computer? Amateur hour. Went to channel 5, which has the new powerful SKY MAX radar that can see storms on Jupiter. More reports of clouds descending and spinning. Good advice: if you’re in the path of this storm, take cover. Yes, we know, it contradicts everything you’ve heard about going up on the roof with a parasail, but trust us.

Colby needs a job. Canada needs a new privacy commissioner. Plus he can fulfill every red-blooded Canadian’s dream of moving to Ontario…

I was originally going to title this post Protect the Queen but it really doesn’t work, does it?

My occasional German-language correspondent, Richard (thanks!), sent me these two links on German spelling reform that you may find interesting: Die Rechtschreibreform and Die Seiten [sic] für Rechtschreibung.

I just wrote, in response to this, a length post on the German pronounciation of tag (day), the spelling in Afrikaans, and who’s the bad guy in WWII and then my $(*$ text editor crashed. Oh well.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it’s ta:k, as in “tahk” pronounced in a clipped voice. Afrikaans seems to use both “day” (occasionally) and “dag” (more so) depending.

Just in case you’re curious, “today” in German is heute (“hoyta”) and in Italian it’s oggi (“ogee”). The Italian word for day is giorno.

Update: a list of English, Dutch, German cognates, a/k/a “friends” — some of the words seem to stretch it a little.

Busy today pricing financial instruments in currencies you’ve never heard of. And I can’t post anything from home, since the city “accidently” severed my cable-tv connection, over which my Internet connection flows. So, talk to you tomorrow.

Colby’s got an update, and the G&M site works fine for me, so here’s the the details. Sigh, and sh*t. Goodbye Post, you were fun, for awhile.

Award-winning journalist Christie Blatchford will be joining The Globe and Mail, the newspaper announced Friday.

Ms. Blatchford is rejoining The Globe from the National Post. She won a National Newspaper Award in 1999 and was previously a columnist for the Toronto Sun. She started her career as a 20-year-old copy editor at The Globe, later writing city and feature stories. Ms. Blatchford also was a Globe sports writer and wrote a sports column for five years.

If they weren’t going to fire anyone over 9/11, why would they fire anyone over not finding WMDs?

Yes, Blatch is still with the National Post (and VDH has an article in there today, as well as Lewis McKenzie, and Liz Nickson seems to be hanging in there on Fridays) despite rumors from the comments sections on certain blogs. However, the rest of her article (no link yet) is absolute crap. Where the hell do repeat sex offenders come from? In every single case, from first-time sex offenders. I mean, you’d have to have been exposed to the concept of natural numbers in grade-school math to understand that! Blatch must have been out in parking lot sneaking smokes with boys when that class was taught.

For the record, Blatchford and the National Post have wondered (so far) if the following are to blame for Holly Jones’ murder: The Matrix, Violent Video Games, and Interent Pornography. Is there any other boogeymen they’d like to drag out of the closet before the story starts getting stale?

Why so many Dutch Jews were killed during WWII. And why I only gave my name, rank and serial number to the last census, and why you should oppose universal identification cards and combined all-encompassing databases.

According to Toronto-based Froot Loop^TM Naomi Klien, Bush has declared war on NGOs. Woo hoo. Good news on all fronts from the war on terror.

The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive war, but it’s not Iran, Syria or North Korea. Not yet anyway.

Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland housekeeping to take care of: it is going to sweep up those pesky non-governmental organisations that are helping to turn world opinion against US bombs and brands.

Jeez, what’s wrong with the NGOs anyway? Aren’t they looking out for their little coloured brothers and sisters, in the down time between cocktails on the international party circut? Let’s see…

The best NGOs are loyal to their causes, not to countries, and they aren’t afraid to blow the whistle on their own governments. Think of Médecins Sans Frontières standing up to the White House and the European Union over Aids drug patents, or Human Rights Watch’s campaign against the death penalty in the US.

Natsios embraced this independence in his previous job as vice president of World Vision. During the North Korean famine, Natsios didn’t hesitate to blast his own government for withholding food aid, calling the Clinton administration’s response “too slow” and its claim that politics was not a factor “total nonsense”.

Such bravery! North Korea starves its people to death, and the NGOs blast the US government. What else do you need to know? Not much. Well, Winds of Change calls the ball

Let’s face facts – the US Army has a far better track record than NGO’s in reforming national cultures. American vital interests and the vital interests of the Wilsonian style multilateral non-government organizations, like the U.N., that make up much of the international system today are fundamentally at odds. One or the other will survive the War on Terrorism and America isn’t going anywhere.

These international NGO leaders are going to force their replacement with American military draftees in the nation-building role. America can build lots of military police, signals, medical, quartermaster, civil engineering and civil affairs battalions for occupation duties very quickly, given the political will.

America is in the chaos elimination business because tyranny anywhere is a threat to Americans everywhere, even at home. That is the searing lesson of 9/11. There is no such thing as defense in this war – only the complete elimination of our enemies. This means killing terrorists and reforming at gun point the societies that breed them. This is why Democrats are dead and damned on issues of national security – the kind of naked military and cultural imperialism necessary to win is against the party’s secular religious creed.

NGO’s, on the other hand, are parasites. They thrive on the open wounds of chaos and disorder in the international system.

I’m still working on it. Amritas gets pole position, and Peaktalk comes a close second because they’re both over-good and under-read (although the later is changing). It’s forming over there to the left, as per usual. If you think you should be here, and you weren’t in my old Blogspot blogroll, please send a note to greenflash /at/ davidjanes /dot/ com.

Mark Fox finished the latest Harry Potter book before me. I’ve about 120 pages left, but I decided I needed a full night’s sleep last night.

Update: If you carefully pick through the comments on Kathy’s site you can figure out that MT has said it’s OK what Kathy’s doing.

MoveableType loses one of its biggest supporters. It’s a shame, that’s for sure: it’s too bad that they couldn’t come to a private arrangement with Kathy, rather than just slapping her down.

I’m betting that the next version of Windows, or the version after that, will have blogging software built-in fully integrated in a drag-and-drop fashion with the file system. Then things’ll get interesting.

Ron’s been writing about Iraq. We’re both on a common e-mail list and he’s been extracting a few of the relevant passages.

From NRO:

[Jared] Diamond [writing in Harper's], however, believes there are some pretty clear lessons for us in all this. “We do indeed differ from the Maya, but not in ways we might like: we have a much larger population, we have more potent destructive technology, and we face the risk of a worldwide rather than a local decline.” What’s more, we have “Enron” (mentioned twice in this survey of Mayan history) and “advocates of tax cuts for the rich.” I’m not going to be so hubristic as to say our own civilization won’t ever crumble, but I’m willing to bet that lowering marginal rates won’t ever be the cause. This is hysterical leftism at its finest–or worst, I should say.

What I find amusing is that so many people take the wrong lesson from Enron: we caught the little feckers and now they’re out of business. Human beings have the potential to be the same rotten bastards everywhere: if a country doesn’t have corruption scandals, it’s either because they’ve got nothing worth mentioning being corrupt over, or more likely, their government is letting their Enrons get away with it, probably because they’re in bed together (cf. Canada, France).