Ranting and Roaring

Interestingly, Cosh is taking heat from the right for his defence of Spencer. David Janes weighs in…

Counterfactually Speaking asks:

And now, I have to ask firearm owners what objections they have in principle to registration. Saying that it costs too much is not an answer because this is an objection in practice. The reason that registration has such a hefty price tag is that it is retroactive. Once in place and running smoothly, firearm registration in Canada will become a non-issue economically.

I believe there are two basic objections:

1. Many firearms owner believe that owning them is an inherent and fundamental right, akin to freedom of speech. I don’t agree with this position (or very very weakly, anyway) but folks such as (for example) the Samizdata crowd do. Following from this thought, they believe that registration is the prelude to general confiscation of their weapons, as happened in England and Austalia (I belive). Though I do not believe this will happen in Canada, I believe it’s a plausible fear. Certainly many supporting registration here would like to see the extra step taken.
2. Many belive as a general principal that the government should not take actions to infringe a citizen’s liberty without a clear and compelling case for doing so, and that case must take into account the costs. This is my position (toward all government regulation!)

   For firearms, many (and I) believe the case is not there. The primary justification for general and centralized registration of weapons is to control gun crime; yet most of these cases involve illegally purchased weapons, often handguns which have long been outlawed in Canada. The secondary justification is for dealing with domestic issues, such as spousal abuse or honest citizens becoming criminals. The spousal abuse case is particularly galling, as it relies on the same form of logic of ‘men are to violence against women’ as ‘Negroes are to lazy and shiftless’: i.e. pure vicious hate and prejudice.

It’s worth mentioning that one should take into account the costs of any program, no matter how compeling the case for legislation is otherwise. Firstly, because if the argument is “saving lives”, one could ask “how many lives could we save by doing something else”. One can buy a lot of medical imaging equipment, or pay for many Search and Rescue personal (for example) with a billion dollars. Secondly, because if you don’t take cost — and missed opportunities — into account, it’s easy to “save” lives: for example, save tens of thousands of lives cut short a year in automobile accidents by banning private vehicles.

Disclaimer: I’m not a gun owner myself (though I grew up around them), but I’m a proud friend of many proud owners of unregistered firearms

Here’s a new word for the blogger lexicon: plaster saints. Sweet; spread the meme. (Via Joanne Jacobs, who — just like my wife Joanne — has a superhero-girlfriend name).

As you might have heard, I’m leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they’ve waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging.

I just posted an extensive comment on command line argument handling over on Danny Ayers’ blog.

Is this excessive? Discuss…

I bough the first two seasons of The Family Guy on DVD the other day from Amazon.ca. Good stuff. As Damian noted several days ago, they’re considering restarting the show after a two year hiatus because of the strong DVD sales. National Post media critic Scott Feschuk weighs in also:

Many Family Guy enthusiasts believe Fox cancelled the show because it was too controversial, or too edgy, or some other word as clichéd and overused as “controversial” and “edgy.” In truth, network executives supported the program well after its ratings decline had achieved Hermann Maier velocity. But now there’s talk that Family Guy will soon be going back into production. The first edition of the show’s DVD was the top-selling TV release of the year and the fourth most successful ever. Fox’s chairman says the show may simply have been ahead of its time.

I’m not so sure. It is perhaps more likely that there will always be a limited, albeit passionate, audience for a show on which the lead character, upon discovering his neighbour is handicapped, gets flustered and hollers: “Holy crip! He’s a crapple!” But by all means, Mr. Fox Honcho, do go ahead and produce more episodes. Many, many more. Having endured the unsatisfying methadone of most other sitcoms, the legions of Family Guy addicts are desperate for a fresh hit.

Something very interesting is going on here. Read this Michael Jennings’ lengthy post over on Samizdata about how the economics of movies have changed in the last two decades, especially recently due to the introduction of DVDs. A similar shift may be happening on the TV world, where the direct-to-consumer aftermarket may end up being more important economically than the fragmented “first showing” TV market. I’m committed to spending several hundred dollars to getting all the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Why? Why not? I like them a lot and I can watch them at my convenience: very important with a toddler running about the house.

There’s lots of shows with small but hardcore followings — Brisco County Jr comes to mind — may be worth the while to do if there’s plenty of money to be made from the fans. [There was also some SF show from the middle 90's where Earth was at war with some bug-like aliens. Anyone remember what that was? Not Starship Troopers!] TV shows may become just be an advertisement for the DVDs, coming soon in Christmas stocking near you.

This is all great for creativity on TV also, allowing niche shows to flourish instead of just mass-market pleasing pabulum. In the early 90′s, Fox was willing to give new and strange shows a chance. Now, it’s just another network, shuffling excellent shows like Futurama around willy-nilly to suit their sports and special events schedule, thus never picking up a stable audience. If something didn’t take off after as season or two, well, it was off to the chopping block. Now they may live on because there’s money to be made letting their fans see them when and how they want.

CBC is reporting that Deputy Dog PM and Minister of Finance John Manley is going to annouce his retirement today, in advance of the expected pogrom by Paul Martin forces after they assume power in December.

Too bad, he was one good ones. Well, not exactly “good”, but as Bart says:

Bart: I feel so full of…what’s the opposite of shame?
Marge: Pride?
Bart: No, not _that_ far from shame.
Homer: [quavering] Less shame?
Bart: [happy] Yeah…

The story’s over on Switching To Glide.

It’s raining again, hard. Sigh. Happy Thanksgiving shopping to all you guys down there in Buffalo. There’s some really big parking lots with a long long run before you find shelter. Good luck. I know my wife wishes she was down there with you.

I don’t want to become the “go-to” guy for rightie opinion on homelessness, but I can’t pass up blogging on Interested Participant‘s five laws of homelessness (via Amritas):

The First Law of Homelessness
The number of homeless people is directly proportional to the number of homeless shelters. For any change in the number of shelters, there will be a corresponding change in the number of homeless people.

The Second Law of Homelessness
Homeless advocacy groups will exaggerate the number of homeless people by a significant factor. There are no qualms about overestimations of 1000 percent. [see The Golden Report, for example, if you have lots of time on your hands — dpj]

The Third Law of Homelessness
At no time in the future of the Earth, the Milky Way, or the Universe will there ever be no homeless people.

The Fourth Law of Homelessness
There will always be homeless advocacy groups wanting more and more taxpayer dollars to spend on unproductive members of society.

The Fifth Law of Homelessness
The granting of more dollars to homeless advocates produces more people wanting free stuff from the taxpayers.

Posting about this was partially inspired by this Globe & Mail letter yesterday from one Eric Ward:

I am glad to hear that William Thorsell shares my desire to see Toronto become a more beautiful city (We Are Beholden To Beauty — Nov. 24). However, I disagree that our first priority should be pouring public money into such aesthetic luxuries as expensive street lamps. Imagine how beautiful our city would be if we spent this money instead on programs to eradicate homelessness in Toronto. There is nothing more beautiful than a city in which everyone can enjoy a warm meal and a roof over their heads.

Yes true, if your idea of a beautiful city is something like Cairo or any other number of major African metropolii, filled with indolent young men slouching about waiting on the next opportunity for trouble. There’s an infinite demand for free stuff and nearly as much for grossly underpriced items — housing, food and money are definitely included on the list.

We live in a society that demands practically nothing from its citizens (and residents). Is asking that you make at least a partial effort to feed and house yourself — legally — too much?

Previous writings on homelessness here and here.

Seen on Luke Ford.net:

Torah vs Lord of the Rings

Skippy McButter writes: “Which has more meaning to the average Jew: the Torah, or the Lord of the Rings movies? I have much more of a visceral spiritual experience watching these movies than I ever had in shul. Long after Judaism has passed on to the dustbin of history, millions will be viewing LOTR with great pleasure.”

Still, if you’re a percentages player, Judaism has shown remarkable longevity in the face of adversity. They should make a movie about it, or something…

Caution: Well

Regulations announced yesterday by Health Canada, under the Hazardous Products Act, will require warning labels for candles.

“The purpose of this regulatory initiative is to improve the protection of the health and safety of Canadians when exposed to candles,” Health Canada said.

Candle packages will have to carry bilingual labels that say: “Warning: To prevent fire, do not leave burning candles unattended. Do not place burning candles on or near anything that can catch fire. Keep burning candles out of reach of children.”

If the display space on the package is too small to fit that label, the government has an alternative. Small packs need only carry this message in both official languages: “Warning: Do not leave burning candles unattended.”

Steyn on MJ. I’m not going to say much more about that freak, except to add that I’m not a court of law, and thus he gets no presumption of innocence from me.

For a while, he liked to hang out at Disneyland with Mickey Mouse, one of the few A-list celebrities with whom he had anything in common – not least the white gloves, squeaky voice, snub nose, bizarre albino face bearing no relation to the jet black surround, and a penchant for hanging out with kids even though you’re well into middle age. Later, he was friends with Home Alone cutie Macaulay Culkin: they liked to go shopping together wearing buck teeth and false noses. But Macko outgrew Jacko and moved on to broads and booze.

Amritas has a post about usage of Sie and du in German, and similar patterns of formal and informal, singular and plural usage in other languages. It’s interesting to note that in Newfoundland use of “ye” (as a plural “you”) is quite common, especially among older people, and I find myself more than occasionally using it while I’m there. We also use it this way.

Just of the top of my head, here’s a few ways that I would use it (I think — I find it a little difficult to drop into Newfie speak without another one around to talk to):

• What were ye [guys] doing last night?
• I thought he was out with ye.
• Did ye go out?

Q: “Where were you when JFK was shot?”
A: Like the majority of North Americans, I wasn’t born yet, so: “nowhere”. And if you they mean “old enough to meaningfully remember”, one could add “vast” in front of “majority”. Stupid hippie boomers. I’d say the world stopped revolving around you a long time ago, but that’d be a bit of a lie, because it never did.

I was sitting in bar downtown on King Street last night next to Nicholas Brendon (Xander Harris from BtVS) for about a half-hour without particularly noticing who he was.

Update: he never noticed me either. I was the one pounding back the Rum & Cokes and scarfing the “hot” chicken wings.

The BBC is reporting that the police think there was close to 100,000 people at the protest yesterday. Hmmm. For reference purposes, there are less than 10,000 people in this picture. If you want to practice rolling your eyes or gritting your teeth, read some interviews with protesters.

From today’s Globe: “Child-poverty rate fuels call for policy changes“. They should have appended “from the usual suspects”.

Fourteen years after Ottawa signed a resolution with “the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000,” more than a million Canadian children live in families earning less than what the government says is needed to get by.

Keep in your mind that last phrase “needed to get by”.

And Canada’s international reputation for action on child poverty is far from stellar.

As if we’re supposed to give a shit about what Botswana thinks about child poverty in this country.

A report this summer from Unicef’s Innocenti Research Centre put Canada near the bottom of the list of English-speaking countries when measuring the percentage of children who come from financially disadvantaged homes.

Oh, English speaking countries. Let’s count the ones with statistically meaningful populations: The United States, England, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Not hard to be “near” the bottom of that list when Hannibal Lector could count the number countries involved on one hand.

With 16.8 per cent of its children living in households that make less than half of the national median income, Canada surpassed only the United States and Ireland, while all of the English-speaking nations examined lagged far behind countries in continental Europe.

And there’s the rub — what I have defines what you need to get by. If you can put food on the table at night, dull their little minds with video tapes rented from BlockBuster shown on your 30″ colour TV and have the occasional beer to make it all a little more bearable makes no difference. The Audi A4^* sitting in my driveway makes you poor, you “can’t get by”. There’s the core new Canadian values defined: spite and jealousy.

But if poverty is defined as living below Statistics Canada’s before-tax, low-income, cut-off line, then 15.6 per cent of Canadian children lived in poverty in 2001. That’s 1,071,000 children, Ms. Rothman said, and it’s higher than the rate of 14 per cent recorded in 1989.

And if you define poverty as being poor, well Jeez, I bet it’s a lot less than that.

This being the Globe and Mail, they have to haul out a extreme value to offer as an example to prove their point:

Erika Klein’s six-year-old daughter, Morgan, is one of those children. At 27, Ms. Klein and Morgan live in Toronto on $6,800 a year. Ms. Klein, who was homeless at 16, has no high-school diploma and says she suffers from depression that makes finding a job nearly impossible.

“I’m a fucking loser! And I’m fully prepared to do nothing about it!” Not that Klein lives in Toronto on $6,800 a year, oh no, there’s at least a couple of freebies to be added to that total.

“I do live in subsidized housing,” she said yesterday. “The rest of the month is how do I buy food, how do I buy clothes, do I have enough money to get to the doctor? I go without food regularly.”

Health care’s free here, Erika. It’s barely worth it, but it’s there for the taking. And you’ll find there’s these food-handout places too, if you get off your ass and fight your way past the university students to get it. Oh what’s that? You want us to deliver it to your door? Should we chew the food first too for you, just in case there’s too much effort involved?

But the most heartbreaking part of her tale is what happened to her other daughter, Emma, who is now four. Two years ago, Ms. Klein moved to Quebec because she thought the rent would be cheaper. She found she no longer qualified for benefits, so she put her two children in foster care on what she thought would be a temporary basis.

“That was the choice I had to make, put them in foster care or watch us all starve,” she said.

Or not have children you’re incapable of feeding. Or, get a job. Or a clue.

Because of her economic situation, the Children’s Aid Society persuaded her to sign over her younger daughter for adoption, Ms. Klein said, although she fought that decision and insists she felt she was being told she had no other choice. “I feel like I had to give up the younger to save the older.”

I’d like to hear Children’s Aid’s side of the story.

However, this all said we can probably agree that — self-inflicted or not — Klein’s living in poverty. The median family income in Canada in 2000 was $55,000. Half that median value — the Spite Line — is $27,500. Klein earns about one-quarter of that. Hardly illustrative of their point, is it? Question: why didn’t the Globe find some Mom and Dad family with one child earning $30,000 [half the median in Ontario] to illustrate their point? Answer: because we’d be rolling on the floor laughing.

Ms. Rothman said major policy changes, both to the public policy and to the labour market are needed to reduce the plight of children such as Morgan and Emily.

Canada is, in many respects, quite similar to Spain and the Nordic countries, which have managed to keep poverty rates under 5 per cent, she said.

Go Veggie! I mean, Go Commie! From what I know of the Nordic countries — admittedly only a little — their “poverty” strategy is to beat the initiative out of anyone who thinks their head should stick up a little higher that the other sheep around them. Unless you’re really smart, in which case you earn the money somewhere else and pretend to be everyone else’s equal at home.

In addition, she said, Canada needs a stronger labour market with reasonable minimum wages and safety nets for people who get jobs on a short-term basis.

Sure, that works: visit Atlantic Canada.

Look, I’m all for helping getting people back up when they fall down. I just don’t believe in standing around afterwards holding them up because they can’t be bothered to put their feet down. And I don’t think what I or anyone else has, has anything to do with how poor you are.

^* coming soon, I hope.

A couple of nice paragraphs in Maragret Wente’s column today:

Not that I hold out hope this message will catch on. I recently had the dreary experience of sitting through an address by the head of Human Rights Watch at the Canadian Club. Naturally, he spent the entire time denouncing the Americans. The audience vigorously applauded.

Why? Because the real subject of the speech was not human rights at all. It was how dreadful they are. We eat this stuff up, and never tire of it, because it pleasantly affirms our own superiority.

Windmills: still mostly useless. In fact, totally useless if you’re worried about killing birds in the neighbourhood:

The vast exposed beaches and wild gales of Sable Island made the North Atlantic sandbar an ideal location for $800,000 worth of windmills — until a group of birds shut down the federal pilot project.

The towers for the five windmills lie in the sand on the remote island, which is about 300 kilometres east of Halifax and is famous for its shipwrecks and wild horses.

Environment Canada officials are trying to figure out how to run the whirling blades of the wind machines without chopping up some of the terns — a type of gull — that nest in the migratory bird sanctuary.

Here’s the amazing thing: the birds are only recently arrived at this particular spot, but they don’t want to spin the blades for fear of huring 100 birds:

When the idea first came up within Environment Canada, officials hoped to reduce the $80,000 fuel bill at a weather station it operates on the island and reduce the risk of diesel fuel spilling when it is airlifted to run the generators on the fragile ecosystem.

An environmental assessment done in the late 1990s showed that more than 2,000 Arctic and common terns were nesting in the central part of the 35-kilometre-long island. None of them were on the eastern end where the windmills would be set up.

But by the time the windmills were flown out to the island last year, a determined breakaway group of about 100 terns had located near the site where the windmills were to be erected. Environment Canada, responsible for protecting birds as well as promoting wind energy, didn’t want to risk a feathery fatality in the blades of one of the large windmills.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the problem. Perhaps they’re that species of flesh-eating terns we’ve been hearing so much about:

The terns can become aggressive toward human intruders, so it would be unwise to try to scare them away, said Mr. Finney, who was attacked by a tern colony in the Arctic.

Brief blogging note: I’m reorganizing my trains and energy posts into a new category called “Policy Wonking”, which seems somehow appropriate.

These thirty-thousand I will sneer at. They’re scum.

According to Fox News, the White House is being (or was) evacuated. Developing…. (Hat tip: Andrew).

Update: it was nothing — just some jackass in an airplane who probably doesn’t know how to read a chart.

The BBC’s UK protest page no longer mentions that 100,000 protesters are expected to show up. The main event starts in 45 minutes time, but theoretically protesters have been gathering for the last two hours. And the main UK page mentions nothing about protests.

Amusing, I guess.

Update [1419 GMT]: They’ve now removed all references to the protests at all.

Update: [1629 GMT]: The protesters are not doing too bad. It looks like a couple of thousand in this picture. BBC has create a whole different protest web page.

That Bush is a clever devil. He arranged to have Michael Jackson arrested on the very same day as his trip to the UK to direct attention away from the mass protests against him. However, the protesters showed him by not showing up, thus making the entire distraction a waste of effort. Take that, you YanKKKi KKKapitalist!

The fact the nobody showed up to protest yesterday got hardly any mention I the news I watch (CNN and CBC) and read (BBC), even though for the last week they were prominently mentioning that 100,000 people were expected. The BBC today is talking about the 100,000 again, and gives a time frame: 1200 to 1445 GMT. It’s 1300 GMT right now, no mention of how many people are protesting.

CBC is also mentioning that number, as the headline (“Massive protest planned against Bush”). If they don’t show up, let’s see if they use that headline (“Few show up to protest Bush”). After all, the former is merely a prediction by some media-savvy commie instigator, the latter is actually news.

By the way, this is my 2,000th post to this blog. Thanks for your patronage.

You can take the boy out of Mount Pearl, but you can’t take the Mount Pearl out of the boy.