Ranting and Roaring

Robert Fulford writes today on the inability of the news media to deliver anything resembling perspective because of their rush to deliver the news only as bad news. I’m excerpting the part on the Iraqi museum, but there’s much more to it.

The report that 170,000 objects were looted from the National Museum in Baghdad in April, while American military forces stood idly by, demonstrates how bad news overcomes prudence, common sense, and the skepticism that journalists are supposed to possess. The story was wrong, it was invented out of malevolence (by an Iraqi cultural bureaucrat angry at the U.S.), it was doubted by no one, and it quickly inspired many expert opinions, all wrong. Historians and archaeologists lined up to assess the damage and denounce those responsible. Professor Piotr Michalowski of the University of Michigan established the high-water-mark for gullibility when he said the looting was a disaster unparalleled in history, like the wiping out of the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington “in one fell swoop.” A few weeks later it developed that there were not 170,000 but 3,000 items missing, most of them shards of pottery. Among significant works, 50 were lost, or maybe 47. Eventually the bureaucrat responsible for the figure of 170,000 was saying that 33 pieces were unaccounted for.

This bizarre and revealing incident should appear in all journalism textbooks and remain engraved forever on the hearts of editors and news producers. But it seems likelier to be forgotten. When the startling truth emerged on June 9, the reporting of it was muffled, in the U.S. as elsewhere. Not one national American paper put it on the front page, and the Washington Post buried it on page 22. It was good news, therefore of little interest.

Mike Campbell is still MIA in Halifax after Hurricane Juan swept through and I still haven’t been able to reach my sister (who lives in Dartmouth) by phone: “All circuts are busy”. Not to worry: I’ve heard from my parents and she and her house, which had a slight flooding problem last year, are fine.

Peaktalk nails the problem of Canada’s negative, destructive, and unnecessary mythologies:

Although there are many sound explanations for Canada’ problems, the fundamental problem that the country has, is that it has erroneously started to believe that it is unique, that it is different from the Americans and that by perpetuating that myth it would be able to create a self-sufficient national identity that could weather political and economic storms and would allow it to prosper in its own right. [...] What to make of a government that interferes with “culture” by financing, regulating and overly influencing content production and distribution in order to protect some average homegrown writers and moviemakers? And while the national healthcare system is delivering decent services to most Canadians, the dogmatic approach to its existence has prevented any creativity to ensure that the very system itself can survive. I mean, how can anyone reasonably argue against private MRI clinics that can absorb the overflow from long-waiting lists and thus alleviate the pressure on these public facilities?

[...] Relax foreign ownership rules, allow bank mergers, abolish wealth transfer payments, and allow some flexibility in healthcare. All of these are sweeping changes [except for the wealth transfer part, I don't think these are "sweeping" changes at all, nor in fact, as dangerous to the comfortable status quo as the Toronto Star or Globe & Mail would make out — dpj] but they are necessary to ensure that the country sustains its newfound spirit and maintains and increases its wealth to stay self-reliant. If it doesn’t it will be relegated to the sidelines and become an impoverished and irrelevant nation.

[...] There are days that I go without touching a Canadian newspaper as it very often disrupts my day and my good mood, so negative is some of the reporting on social, economic and political issues here. Negativity in the press breeds negative attitudes and often results in apathy.

Sorry for my absence from this blog. I’m afraid it’s probably going to continue for a couple of more days due to the realities of figuring out some very intricate finance mathematics.

At least one more post coming today though…

Looking for something to read this weekend? Head on over to Switching To Glide and read the latest on Canadian music. And don’t forget to add it to your blogroll!

… to beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, where I shall spend the entire weekend on a boat being rained upon, being pushed around by the current, and generally being miserable.

Robert Palmer died of a heart attack, age 54. Via Damian and Andrew.

Here:

On the way back from the office, Medved was interviewing Susan Lenfesty, a Minneapolis writer who birthed an execrable slab of overheated nonsense that ran in Sunday’s Strib. To sum it up: Bush evil, people screwed, nation hijacked, but! There’s a silver lining! Like the passengers of Flight 93 we know what’s going on, and we can do something about it. She ended the piece with “let’s roll.” I thought it was a particularly stupid analogy when I read it, since it seemed to say we should all storm the White House, throw scalding water on Cheney and Wolfowitz, and then drive the nation into the ground.

Colby Cosh:

I won’t deny that if George W. Bush says “Please don’t bayonet babies” on a Monday morning, you’re bound to hear the sound of whetstones in Ottawa by noon.

I finished After by Steven Brill, a book about the “September 12 Era”. It’s pretty good, but if I were you I’d wait for the paperback edition. I expect that Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson is going to show up in the mail today, so I need to have all my free time cleared of distractions…

Due to parsimonious exposure of my e-mail address I almost receive no spam, but somehow the Nigerians have tracked me down and think I speak German. How cool is this? You might be surprised to receive this letter from me since you don’t personally know me…

Sie mögen überrascht sein, diesen Brief von mir zu erhalten, da Sie mich nicht persönlich kennen. Der Grund meiner Vorstellung ist, dass ich Simon Muzenda der älteste Sohn von Paul Muzenda bin , einem Farmer in Simbabwe, der kürzlich im Landstreit in meinem Land ermordet wurde. Ich bekam den Kontakt zu Ihnen über das Internet, daher beschloss ich Ihnen zu schreiben.

Vor dem Tod meines Vaters hatte er mich mit nach Johannesburg genommen, um 8,5 Millionen US-$ in einer privaten Sicherheitsfirma zu hinterlegen, da er die lauernde Gefahr in Simbabwe voraussah, legte er sein Geld in Form von Edelsteinen an. Die Summe war gedacht zum Erwerb neuer Maschinen und Chemikalien für die Farmen und zur Etablierung einer neuen Farm in Swaziland. Die Landprobleme begannen, als unser Präsident Robert Mugabe eine Landreform einführte, die sich vorwiegend auf weiße reiche Farmer und einige wenige schwarze Farmer auswirkte und in der Ermordung und Überfällen durch Kriegsveteranen und einige andere Geistesgestörte gipfelte. Tatsächlich wurden eine Menge Menschen ermordet, eines der Opfer war mein Vater.

Wegen dieses Hintergrundes floh ich mit meiner Familie aus Simbabwe, um unsre Leben zu retten und lebe vorübergehend in den Niederlanden, wo wir um politisches Asyl ersuchen und beschlossen haben, das Geld meines Vaters zu transferieren auf ein besser erreichbares ausländisches Konto, da die Gesetze der Niederlande einem Flüchtling verbieten ein Konto zu eröffnen oder in irgendwelche finanziellen Transaktionen innerhalb der Niederlande involviert zu sein.

Als dem ältesten Sohn meines Vaters bin ich verantwortlich für die Suche nach einem geeigneten ausländischen Konto, wohin wir unser Geld ohne Wissen meiner Regierung, die uns alles nehmen will was wir besitzen, transferieren können.

Die südafrikanische Regierung scheint gemeinsame Sache mit ihnen zu machen. Ich bin konfrontiert mit dem Dilemma, diesen Geldbetrag aus Südafrika zu holen in der Angst, die gleichen Erfahrungen noch einmal zu machen, beide Länder haben die gleiche politische Geschichte. Als Geschäftsmann suche ich einen Partner, dem ich meine Zukunft anvertrauen kann und die meiner Familie.

Ich muss Ihnen noch mitteilen, dass diese Transaktion risikolos ist. Wenn Sie mir und meiner Familie beistehen wollen, möchte ich von Ihnen nur, dass Sie ein Arrangement mit der Sicherheitsfirma machen für die Übergabe (der Fonds) von deren Tochtergesellschaft in den Niederlanden, da ich bereits die Anweisung für die Überführung in die Niederlande aus Südafrika gegeben habe. Vorher müssen die Modalitäten zum Wechsel des Besitzes der Anlagen und noch wichtiger des Geldes, das ich zu investieren gedachte, stattgefunden haben.

Ich habe zwei Optionen für Sie, erstens können Sie wählen, einen bestimmten Prozentsatz des Geldes für die Nutzung Ihres Kontos für die Transaktion zu bekommen. Oder Sie können zweitens in eine Partnerschaft mit mir treten um das Geld sehr viel profitabler in Ihrem Land zu investieren. Welche Option Sie auch wählen, fühlen Sie sich frei, sich bei mir zu melden.

Ich plane 5% des Geldes für alle Arten von Unkosten im Prozess der Transaktionen zu verwenden. Sollten Sie keine Partnerschaft bevorzugen, bin ich gewillt 10% des Geldes zu bezahlen, während die restlichen 85% für Investitionen in Ihrem Land gedacht sind. Nehmen Sie Kontakt mit mir auf über die obige E-mail -Adresse, ich bitte Sie inständig absolutes Stillschweigen über diese Transaktion zu wahren.

Danke, Gott segne Sie!

Ditto. More on this in the future for sure.

 	BUTCH 	It's a chopper, baby.  	FABIAN 	Whose chopper is this?  	BUTCH 	Said's.  	FABIAN 	Who's Said?  	BUTCH 	Said's dead, baby, Said's dead. 

I’m soooo bored. Why don’t you write something amusing in your blogs? I’d do it for you, if you were bored.

CBC Radio’s Frank Coller reports this morning:

A year ago, Bush warned of the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction.

You can hear it on the hour here at CBC Radio 1 (on the hour).

Bush never said there was an imminent threat from WMDs. In fact, he said — as has been widely reported on the blogosphere — quite the opposite.

It’d be nice if there was even a slight commitment from our tax-funded news service to actually report the news. You know: facts and stuff. As opposed to making stuff up because it makes them feel good about themselves sneering at the dumb Yanks.

As of a few minutes ago. Welcome to Fall.

Currie’s corollary:

“Nothing that works in the United States will work in Ontario.” Negative advertising is risky anywhere in Canada, but Ontario is full of people who really do wait at pedestrian crossings for the little man to shine at 3:00 AM where there is no traffic. They apologize to bank robbers, they are polite to answering machines: they do not like rudeness. They don’t like the hard sell and they will punish a lack of political manners in kind.

The Liberal government in Newfoundland is getting busy handing out Newfoundlander’s money in a last ditch effort not to be sent packing. It’s not a bad strategy — it’s worked in almost every last past election.

Newfoundland Liberals under Premier Roger Grimes have doled out almost $100-million in announcements around the province in the past five months.

A tally of government news releases issued since May adds up to $97.5-million.

Most of the items are routine departmental spending, grant programs announced years ago and moneys to be covered in future budgets, said the Finance Department.

But Tory Finance critic Loyola Sullivan said the recent announcements have more to do with the fact the Liberals are “on the eve of an election.”

The ugly little not-so-secret of Newfoundland finances is that the government may be overspending every year to the tune of over $3000 per taxpayer.

The latest poll:

Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberals are heading towards a massive landslide victory in the Oct. 2 provincial election, according to a new poll.

Tory support has collapsed, suggests the poll, because of voter irritation over the negative campaign being waged by Premier Ernie Eves. Respondents seem especially annoyed by a Tory television commercial that attacks Mr. McGuinty and questions his ability to lead the province.

“The Tories have developed an image of arrogance through self-destructive advertising,” said Conrad Winn, president of the polling firm COMPAS.

Killing the Tory chances of re-election, he said, are negative ads coupled with the well-publicized Tory insult that referred to Mr. McGuinty as an “evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet” and Tory suggestions that the Liberal leader needs “professional” (psychiatric) help.

[...] “People are tired of hearing from the Tories that McGuinty is not up to the job,” said Mr. Winn. “They are saying to Ernie Eves, ‘Don’t tell us why he is not up to the job, tell us why you are.”

Eves continues to grasp at straws. This time, the law and order ticket:

Jails should be a bit more like Toronto’s decrepit Don Jail and less like Club Fed, Tory Premier Ernie Eves said yesterday. Speaking to about two dozen local party supporters, Eves held up a handful of coiled barbed wire and likened it to his party’s approach to crime. He compared that image to an enlarged version of a Monopoly game’s Get-out-of-Jail-Free card that he called the federal Liberal approach.

This would be all fair enough with the average Ontarian — we do like our law and order — except we’re also fair enough to realize that prisoners, especially those waiting trial and convicted of nothing, should not be held in 19th century conditions. How bad is it? Bad. Almost inhuman. There are three times as many prisoners as it is designed to hold. It was announced this week that judges are now going to give a 3 multiplier for time served in this jail. Way to keep the scum of the street, Ernie.

Ancient river found beneath Toronto:

There’s an ice-age river flowing deep under Canada’s largest city. There has been for at least a million years but it wasn’t until last month that anyone saw any real evidence of it.

The discovery of the glacial river happened when workers were trying to cap two artesian wells, part of a stormwater runoff project in High Park, one of the city’s largest parks, near the shore of Lake Ontario.

One well was capped, and then, as the other was being capped, the first well blew off like a broken water main, spewing water 15 feet into the air.

As that cap was being repaired, the second blew off, shooting up water and gravel.

Consultation with experts confirmed the workers had siphoned into the rumored, yet still largely unknown, Laurentian River system running underneath the city.

“We’ve discovered where it probably comes out into Lake Ontario,” said an elated Bill Snodgrass, senior engineer responsible for groundwater quality management for the city of Toronto. “What we never really knew before was where it connected to Lake Ontario.”

Via Boing Boing.

Every morning I get up around 5:00 AM. This is my absolute best period of the day — my brain is going at 110% from almost the second I wake up. Alas, it doesn’t stay this way. During the day my mental powers slowly decline till around two o’clock, when I’m lucky to be able to count to 10 if I’m allowed to use my fingers. Around 4 I start bouncing back again, but an afternoon nap makes all the difference.

Now check this out:

Modafinil—better known as Provigil—is fast becoming America’s newest “go pill.” Made by Cephalon, a small publicly traded biotech firm in West Chester, Pa., Provigil is a central-nervous-system drug that promotes hyper-focus and alertness. Patients using Provigil in clinical tests functioned normally—for example, completing tedious computer tasks—after up to 54 hours without sleep.

In 1998 the FDA approved Provigil to treat narcolepsy, but doctors prescribe it “off label” as a fatigue fighter for airline pilots, long-haul truckers, and medical residents. Users say the drug doesn’t make them jittery the way caffeine does. One 200-milligram pill restores focus and alertness as effectively as three tall lattes and costs $5. And all the clinical data show that the drug has none of the addictive qualities of amphetamines like Dexedrine. Because Provigil has fewer side effects than Ritalin, it’s even being prescribed to some children with attention-deficit disorder.

I gotta find a friendly doctor and check this stuff out.

I just added Jay Currie and Motobia (wireless stuff) to my blogroll. There was an interesting referrer yesterday from a Canadian blog that seemed to have a lot Constitutional stuff in it, but it’s rolled off the end. If you’re you, drop a comment and I’ll add you too.

I thought I’d have lots to blog about this, but it’s a rather boring campaign. Anyone else find this?

Right now my election calculus is based on what do I want Ontario to be like in 8-10 years time. I.e. what will do less damage: 8-10 years of Drifter Ernie, or 4-5 years of Dullard Dalton; followed by a new — hopefully better — PC leader.

Right now it looks like the PC are going to be decimated, unless something big happens in the next two weeks. Yes, they’ve been down before but the PCs are bringing almost nothing to the table except “McGuinty’s an idiot, vote for us”.

After reading Alan‘s (and Michael’s) latest posting, this little puzzle occurred to me. Here’s section 318 of the Criminal Code:

Hate Propaganda

Advocating genocide

318. (1) Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Definition of “genocide”

(2) In this section, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group, namely,

(a) killing members of the group; or

(b) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.

Consent

(3) No proceeding for an offence under this section shall be instituted without the consent of the Attorney General.

Definition of “identifiable group”

(4) In this section, “identifiable group” means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion or ethnic origin.

Consider the following (imaginary) ad:

Our research has shown that 80% of male homosexuality is caused by an imbalance of hormones in 6-8th week of pregnancy. Galaxy-Smythe-Little Pharmaceudicals is proud to offer GayAway, a new pill that taken once daily by pregnant mothers will reduce the odds of your boy being homosexual from 3-10% to as low as 1 in 25000.

Questions (discuss):

• Is this an incitement to genocide under [the recently modified] 318/2/b?
• Independent of of the Criminal Code, is it?