Canuckopia

There are, Evidently, Some Things Money Can't Buy

2008-03-26T06:21:00.001-07:00

Like brains for Tories and Liberals, f'r'instance.

Paul McKeever looked at the new Ontario "budget" yesterday:

REVENUES (Billions)

Income/Property Taxes:

* Personal Income Tax $25.2
* Corporations Tax: $12.3
* Employer Health Tax: $4.8
* Ontario Health Premium: $2.8
* TOTAL: $45.1

Retail Sales Tax (8%): $17.2
Gasoline and Fuel Taxes: $3.1
Other Taxes: $3.5

KEY EXPENSES (Billions):

Government Health Insurance Monopoly $40.4
Tax-funded, government-owned/operated schools: $13.1
Post-secondary education/training: $6.2
Welfare of various sorts: $11.8
“Other Programs”: $11.9
…oh yeah, we almost forgot “Justice”: $3.7

Allow me to be only the second snarky Objectivist on the internet, and add to that list:

*You, the taxpayer: a goddamn sucker.

Paul makes the important point that most of the budget, and all of the revenue from income taxes (and then some), goes to the two idiot brothers, education and socialized healthcare. If we were to end these daily excursions to failure, we could save Ontarians, collectively, over 45 billions dollars. $45 billion can buy a lot of cancer treatments and bachelor's degrees - or it can buy a lot of research into new drugs that make cancer treatment redundant. As Milton Friedman once said, "Nobody spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own."

EDIT, 4:00PM: Clarified a few things.

Dallas's Red Light District

2008-03-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

Via Instapundit, msnbc reports that Dallas is shutting down a number of their red light cameras because they aren't actually preventing people from running red lights.

Oh wait, that's not the problem; the problem is that the cameras are working:

The city said the cameras are failing to generate enough red-light-running fines to justify their costs.

Well, smack my ass and call me Stalin - it wasn't about saving the children. Well, fuck.

Dallas News elaborates:

That leaves Dallas government with a conundrum. Its red-light camera system has been an effective deterrent to motorists running red lights – some monitored intersections have experienced a more than 50 percent reduction. But decreased revenue from red light-running violations means significantly less revenue to maintain the camera program and otherwise fuel the city's general fund.

Of course, there's always this clever solution to the red-light problem: randomly shut down a few of the cameras for a while. Sure, they won't be there to catch the people who zip through busy intersections like a bat out of hell, but that's not the professed goal of red light cameras, is it? The claim was that they were necessary to make the roads safer for driver and pedestrian alike. And they've done that, evident in the Dallas News article quoted above. Now, logically, if it wasn't really the presence of red light cameras, but the threat of red light cameras that reduced running the lights, then people would be just as safe even if the cameras weren't on. If we kept the cameras operating on a random basis, joyriders wouldn't have time to adapt to which lights were safe and which were not.

It's the same effect seen with communities where concealed carry of guns is legal: criminals are convinced to ply their, err, trade with a little more discrimination, because anyone could be packing heat. Patrick Mullins wrote for Capitalism Magazine back in 2001 that:

Nondiscretionary concealed-carry permits deter crimes against persons because criminals -- fearing for their own lives -- don't know which potential victims in a right-to-carry state are armed and which are not. National polls suggest that there are as many as 3.6 million defensive uses of handguns by private citizens each year. There are no hard numbers available, because these incidents are rarely reported to the authorities and because 98% of them consist merely of brandishing the gun rather than discharging it. [John] Lott's landmark study now confirms the bountiful anecdotal evidence for deterrence.

...

Lott's conclusions shattered the conventional wisdom about the correlation of crime to gun ownership by responsible citizens.

"National crime rates have been falling at the same time as gun ownership has been rising. Likewise, states experiencing the greatest reductions in crime are also the ones with the fastest growing percentages of gun ownership."

"Allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crimes, and the reductions coincide very closely with the number of concealed-handgun permits issued. Mass shootings in public places are reduced when law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed handguns."

Because someone else has chosen to equip himself with a tool for self-defense, everyone else in the community is just a little bit safer. Does it eliminate crime entirely? No, but neither do red light cameras.

But safety was never their primary concern anyway.

Selflessness to Blame for Recession

2008-03-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

The Toronto Star attempts to twist reality to fit it's ideology:

As is well known, Adam Smith, the 18th century author of that groundbreaking economic treatise, The Wealth of Nations, decreed that the motivating force of economic growth was selfishness.
The desire of businessmen and shopkeepers and entrepreneurs to make money benefited everyone, he argued, because others picked up part of this extra money in the form of jobs or sales or whatever.
Less well known is that Smith himself assumed that selfishness was self-regulating, or at least had some decent limits.
In a second book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, now little-read but that Smith himself regarded as the more important one, he wrote: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him."*
Would that Smith were right. But he wasn't.
...

This recession, if confirmed, will be unique. It will have been caused by selfishness unconstrained by any of the moral sentiments Smith thought would act as a brake on social destructiveness.

Oh hum. Another day in Red Toronto. We're even seeing the same insipid arguments - sorry, smears being trotted out with a new coat of paint to hide the rust:

Thus, Merrill Lynch CEO Charles Prince walked away after being dismissed with $161 million, including $38 million in a bonus and stock options, at the same time as his company lost $10 billion.

Hello, envy, my old friend! It's another "zero sum" fallacy rearing it's ugly head, once again seeing the economy as a concrete pie, rather the amorphous, increasing blob that it really is. Ever wonder what the phrase "to make money" actually means, Gwyn? Yeah, I didn't think so.

I'm sure this will be a familiar refrain, but does the author of the Star's piece, Richard Gwyn, offer any - what's the word? Oh yeah: proof to back up his assertion that it was selfishness that caused the recession? Nope. Not one fucking iota of evidence is given to back up his claim. The article is impotent, its thesis stillborn, its words just random noises: gutteral screams from the throat of a recently beheaded turkey.

Since Gwyn hasn't bothered to look for facts before adopting a position, allow me to show him how it's done.

If anything, when I saw the headline, I knew that I would be able to refute whatever dreck this wretch was going to present, but I was expecting him to at least blame it on the selfishness of the people who realized that they were suddenly free to grab all of the low-interest loans they could, loans that they would never be able to afford were it not for government intrusion into the market in the first place. But for a writer on the staff of the Toronto Daily Worker, he couldn't even admit himself to say that much: he had to insinuate that it was the fatcat CEOs, making their billions while somehow screwing the economy by handing out what has now become free money, that were the problem. It takes a lot of twisting and covering of the eyes to achieve this one, folks. It also takes a lot of cowardice to use the words "selfishness" and mention how much CEOs are getting paid, without actually coming out and saying that he thinks the fact that somebody, somewhere, is actually being paid is the problem. If that's the problem, Dick, why don't you just come out and say it? If it's true, you can defend it, right?

What Gwyn hopes to evoke with his use of the word "selfishness" is what Ayn Rand identified as the "intellectual package deal:" (from The Virtue of Selfishness)

In popular usage, the word "selfishness" is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends,who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word "selfishness" is: concern with one's own interests.

The concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil... it is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

Gwyn hopes that the minute you hear "selfishness" your brain will shut down, and you'll come up with all the marvelous things you thought he said, even though he hasn't said a goddamn thing. Then, you'll be ripe for the picking of the next politician who comes along promising to curb corporate "greed."

Back to Gwyn's article:

Committee chair Henry Waxman observed, "It seems that CEOs hit the lottery when their companies collapse." Prince and the others explained the bonuses were for earlier performances, and could not be ratcheted back.

Now, I could point out how Congressmen like Henry Waxman continue to earn their salaries while the entire country goes to pot, but I prefer to present facts, and not rely on envy to get people on my side. I will, however, take great delight in saying that this is the same Henry Waxman who masterminded the intrusion into Major League Baseball's privacy, taking a particularly sadistic interest in a man greater than he'll ever be, drug use or not: Roger Clemens.

The fact of the matter is that it was government altruism, not the selfishness of the bankers that caused this mess.

Alex Epstein, of the Ayn Rand Institute, provides a nice metaphor, prompted by Fortune Magazine's assessment of the situation:

Every few days we hear that another leading financial institution has written down billions more on subprime investments gone bad. Nearly every major financial institution, it turns out, had a hand in loans to low-credit borrowers—borrowers whose ability to pay often hinged on endlessly low interest rates or a strong housing market. How could this happen? How could nearly all the leading lights of the financial industry—the experts in assessing and managing risk—expose themselves to such massive losses? Or, as a Fortune cover crudely put it: "What were they smoking?"

A major part of the answer is: government bailout crack.

He continues:

For decades our government has had a semi-official policy that large financial institutions are too big to fail—and therefore must be bailed out when they risk insolvency—a policy that creates perverse incentives for them to take on far more risk than they otherwise would. "Too big to fail" is implemented through a network of government bodies that protect financial institutions from the long-term consequences of their decisions at taxpayer expense—a phenomenon we can observe right now.

Gwyn's slap to the face of Adam Smith in the Star's article is thus returned with the dueling glove: selfishness is self-regulating, tempered by the little-used device called reason. It was not reason that failed; in fact, the banks were acting in full compliance with it. If you know that there aren't going to be any consequences for ill-conceived actions, why would you even hesitate to dive in? If someone has taken the care to make my car out of an indestructible, invulnerable material, do I have any reason to drive safely? Fuck no; I, and my car, are going to be fine no matter what I do! To provide a more down to Earth example, I live in an apartment building: the utilities are included in the rent, and the rent is carefully controlled by the government, even though the price of utilities are not. I, therefore, have no incentive to conserve electricity: I pay the same regardless of how many appliances I run all damn day. Adam Smith opposed such controls because he was an advocate, right there in the damn quote if Gwyn had been bothered to understand it, of rational selfishness .

Rational selfishness acts like Adam Smith's invisible hand in the market. A man isn't going to charge 2000 bucks for a loaf of bread because the government threatens him with jail if he does so. He doesn't do that because it is irrational. No one is going to pay $2000 for a loaf of bread, because they can always make their own bread, buy bread from another bakery, or just go without bread. Then, Mr. Irrational Prices would have to lower the value he places on his bread to a reasonable point - the point at which people are willing to buy it; the point at which he can make the most money, not because he is charging the most, but because the most people are buying his bread.

Now, imagine, that your customers can purchase your expensive bread on credit, and that the government will bail him out when he realizes that he'll never have the $2000 per week that's required to keep his belly full of bread. Your customer's not going to stop buying pastries; he's got a "lifeline." You, certainly, aren't going to stop making bread: you're making - pardon me - dough hand over fist.

So the government prints more money to make the payments to you, the breadmaker. And suddenly, that $2000 isn't looking like such a good price anymore. Now, replace "bread" with "home," and you'll see what I'm getting at here.

Now, imagine if it was the government who made bread cost $2000 a loaf, as genius Thomas Sowell explains:

But why were housing prices going up so fast, in the first place? A number of studies of communities across the United States and in countries overseas turned up the same conclusion: Government restrictions on building. While many other factors can be involved -- rising incomes, population growth, construction costs -- a scrutiny of the times and places where housing prices doubled, tripled, or quadrupled within a decade shows that restrictions on building have been the key. Attractive and heady phrases like "open space," "smart growth" and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land. In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth.

Construction costs were seldom a major factor, for there was relatively little construction in places with severe building restrictions and skyrocketing home prices. In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the "affordable housing" that politicians talk about so much. Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans.

Does it still look like that selfish baker - err, banker is to blame?

Smith, in a line apparently missed by Gwyn in his reading of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, says "We may often fulfill all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing." Indeed, that is precisely what the government should have done back when there wasn't a problem in the first place.

* Gwyn couldn't even get this much right: The Theory of Moral Sentiments was actually published before Smith's Wealth of Nations, and was given an extensive revision shortly before his death.

A Slightly More Devious Side to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

2008-03-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

From the National Post, "University Prof Defends Facebook Penalty:"

Chris Avenir, 18, is set to appear before an appeal hearing at the university next Tuesday on 147 charges of academic misconduct for his role as an administrator for a [Facebook] study group that allowed chemistry and engineering students to share test tips and answers on the popular social networking website.
The computer engineering student denies that he contributed to any of the posts that contained test answers.

If any of the other members of this "study group" had any scruples (or, ahem, balls), they'd come forward and admit that they were the ones who had posted the answers, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to save their fearless leader. But that's not what they were taught - they were taught that the anonymity of the group would provide them with protection, and that ethics are determined not by individual conscience, but by whatever the tribe allows them to get away with. As long as Ryerson University remains content to "make an example" of someone other than the perpetrators (not that I'm excusing the the group moderator - it was his group, and he should have had been aware of the "tactics" that were being discussed, and acted on them himself), the little weasels will sit comfortably, knowing that "society" has once again been allowed to take the fall for their own evil.

Regarding Bill C-10: The Facebook Response

2008-03-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, I talked about the difference between censorship and refusing to fund pornography, or other productions that one might find objectionable. I concluded that the government's job is not to provide enjoyment or entertainment, because, necessarily, people discriminate against that which they find repulsive: for example, I would never buy my neighborhood library 10 copies of "The Communist Manifesto," "Mein Kampf," or "Confessions of a Shopaholic;" but a government that was providing funding for such a library would face the Catch-22 of being accused of "censoring" the library if it did not provide funding, and supporting such vile ideologies as Fascism, Communism, and terrible-literary-tastes-ism if it did cough up the dough.

A Facebook group created to protest Bill C-10 complains:

* It is undemocratic: This controversial new provision to screen the content of productions in awarding tax credits was never debated in the House of Commons, because it was hidden away in a long, technical piece of legislation.

You know, John Milton said "When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation." And I'm distressed to learn that that has happened to the word "democracy." Democracy describes a system of government in which majority rules - no more than that, and no less than that. There is no requirement that the participants in a democracy must know what they're doing, or even be capable of functioning at a low-level of intelligence. If our duly-elected representatives can't be bothered to read something, then they shouldn't be agreeing to pass it. There is no refuge in the excuse of ignorance: when I am handed a contract, I read the thing front-and-back, using a magnifying glass and that fluorescent spray that they use on CSI, just to be sure that there aren't any hidden clauses or fine-print restrictions that would have me inadvertently turning over my power of attorney. If I don't feel like doing that, then I don't sign the contract. So it should also be, I would hope, when you have been given the power to represent the wishes of thousands of people.

You aren't in high school anymore - you can't just eschew the reading of "Brave New World" and hope that the Coles Notes will get you through the exam.

Regarding Bill C-10

2008-03-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

A shocking new bill has been passed:

A new bill that would give the federal Heritage Department the power to deny funding for films and TV shows it considers offensive is creating shock waves in the industry.
Changes now before the Senate to the Income Tax Act that would allow the federal government to cancel tax credits for projects thought to be offensive or not in the public interest. The amendments have already been passed in the House of Commons. (CBC)

David Cronenberg comments: "It sounds like something they do in Beijing... You have a panel of people working behind closed doors who are not monitored and they form their own layer of censorship."

The denial of funding or tax-cuts is not censorship. It is unfair, but only because my tax dollars shouldn't be supporting such exemplary programs as those that John Ivison describes in an article for the National Post:

...I'm outraged as a taxpayer. Telefilm Canada handed out $158-million last year, including to such productions as Sperm and The Masturbators. But while they or the other yet-to-be-released movies and shows may well prove to be the next Away from Her, Barbarian Invasions or Trudeau, all of which were award-winners and received substantial Telefilm funding, they are just as likely to be the next Web-dreams, Kink or G-Spot, titillating late-night fare designed almost exclusively to provoke hand-to-gland combat.
These three shows received substantial public funding over the years through Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund. But why? Telefilm's mission is to foster productions that reflect Canadian society, with its linguistic duality and cultural diversity. Where's the Canadian distinctness in the G-Spot episode Sexorcist, where Gigi (Brigitte Bako), experiences a visit by a ghost that leaves her extremely "satisfied"? It's not that it's a bad show -- if it's on, I'll watch it because I'm Scottish and I know I'm paying for it. But the only connection to the Great White North is that Gigi is a struggling Canadian actress in Hollywood.

Why, indeed?

Part of the problem is that the broadcasters control where the Canadian Television Fund spends its $250-million. Not surprisingly, they direct funding toward shows they think will make them money. The new policy on tax suggests the government will, sooner or later, impose the same guidelines on Telefilm and CTF.
But that's not censorship. If the makers of Bliss or Webcam Girls want to continue to produce their shows -- or if they have a vacancy for a backscrubber -- then that's terrific. But they should do it without our tax dollars. As Pierre Trudeau so rightly said, there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

The system by which "the arts" gets funding has been seriously flawed for some time. Naturally, I would prefer that the government simply stop funding all arts, no matter the content. If an artists wants to make something, they'll fund a way to make it; if the people want something, they'll find a way to get it. The good doesn't need the government to provide for it, only to protect it.

Calling the denial of a tax-cut to a production "censorship" means that you would have to also call refusing to buy a ticket to one of Cronenberg's latest "censorship." At the very least, it is mutilating the word, degenerating it to mean whatever you wish it to mean. Do they have censorship in Beijing, as Cronenberg says? Yup, they do. They also put you in jail for protesting the government's decisions. They also, reportedly, take organs out of prisoners for transplantation. This is not the kind of thing that Beijing would do - this is something Beijing would laugh at, giving it an inferiority complex.

Withholding tax credits only counts as censorship if you also consider the theater patron with discriminating taste to also be engaging in censorship when he doesn't buy a ticket to your performance. As has been repeated, ad nauseum, elsewhere, the right to free expression is not the right to an audience. Simply because you have a half-baked, poorly-considered idea for a TV series does not obligate the CBC to fund your notion, or to provide it with air-time. There are plenty of places on the internet that will happily host your mediocrity. If you can't convince anyone with money to fund your artistic endeavor, or convince those able of giving loans that enough people will want to watch your masterpiece that you will be able to pay them back, then your idea, for all intents and purposes, is worthless.

The free market always has been, and always will be, the best arbiter of the worthiness of ideas. Any program which does not provide the giving organization with a method of "discrimination," so that they can decide which projects get funded and which do not, will not survive for long. When people are left to their own devices, they decide which projects are worthy of funding by buying tickets to movies, comedy shows, and plays; by tuning in on their televisions; by visiting the websites. The quickest way to ensure that the Canadian public is not forced to pay for something that it objects to is simply not to presume to act on behalf of the Canadian public. There is no better steward for my choices than me.

I expect no government hand-out or tax-break from my artistic endeavors. As I sit in my apartment, tapping out my first novel unremittingly, I search out no government grants, no special privileges that I have not earned with regards to my work. Sure, I get a GST credit every now and then, but that's not related to my writing in any way. If the public likes my writing, then they, on an individual basis, will determine if I am worth supporting - no government agency will take over their decision-making processes, their value judgement, and decide for them. Like all values, the individual must decide which will help him to survive, and which will kill him. A man on deserted island in the Pacific Ocean must rely on his own reason to determine which of the island's fruit will poison him, and how to take the salty sea water and make it drinkable. There aren't any government bureaucrats to come along and tell him, as decided by majority vote, what he will do for food, or how to build a shelter. There is no replacement for individual judgement.

Anything you can do, the government can do worse

2008-03-01T20:48:00.000-08:00

To quote Ronald Reagan, as I regard the concept that businesses will face no consequences if they act irresponsibly, and we thusly require a benevolent government to take care of us: "if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" Essential tax-payer sponsored incompetents once again proved that the government is as human and fallible as everyone else is in the case of the "largest beef recall" in the history of the United States.

From USAToday:

LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has suspended at least two federal meat inspectors following the largest beef recall in the nation's history, a union head said Friday.

...
The USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef from the Chino slaughterhouse on Feb. 17. The recall came after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video showing plant workers trying to get so-called "downer" cows — sick or crippled animals — to stand by shoving and dragging them with forklifts, zapping them with electric prods and aiming water hoses at their faces and noses.

...

The recall launched a series of congressional hearings and close scrutiny of the USDA's meat and poultry inspection system. The agency has an average national vacancy rate of 10% and has said it is short about 500 inspectors.

That recall was recounted and commented on by Mike's Eyes, as it happened. He argued that not only are the regulatory organizations unnecessary, as they prove to be just as prone to error and apathy as the businesses themselves, but are actually counter-productive to the cause of consumer safety:

I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of this particular case. My point is that many people will use this incident as evidence to support the idea that we need regulatory agencies like the USDA to keep us safe. I say just the opposite is true. We would be much safer in an unregulated economy where the commodity of safety is provided by the market. In point of fact, the USDA did not protect the consumer in this case. It happened despite the regulatory agencies, despite the fact that a USDA inspector was there for a few hours every day. Why did regulators fail? Because they are not self-interested, they have nothing to gain by doing a great job and nothing to lose by doing a poor one. In a laissez-faire economy, producers would have everything to lose from a bad reputation and everything to gain from a good one.

And don't forget that, even if regulations somehow bypassed reality and somehow became helpful, they would still be inherently immoral: they violate the individual rights of consumers to make their own decisions about which companies they will support with the mighty vote of their paycheques. As Mike elaborates:

They represent the starting of the use of force against producers and consumers by 1. destroying the need of consumers to focus on the reputations of businesses and 2. by encouraging producers to be concerned with following certain rules rather than following reality as dictated by the market.

As it stands now, a company will, like a sub-par student coddled by years of public education, maintain the bare minimum of standards in order to pass. He has no incentive to do any better. That little stamp of government approval is the same whether your company produces the finest cuts or dog food. The public have even less interest than the meat plants do in a company's reputation, and will simply rely upon that stamp as a "sign of quality."

Hello? Lone Gunmen?

2008-02-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range (Popular Mechanics, HT: Instapundit):

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the worlds first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

But... but... surely the big, evil oil companies will "buy" the patents, and work to keep us dependent on oil, right? Like they did with the car that runs on water? I'm growing quite disappointed with these evil empires; they never used to let so much get out.

Elmo Will F*ckin' Cut You

2008-02-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

Elmo doll makes death threats (TBO.com)

I wish I were enough of a bumpkin to believe that, not only can a toy contain the concentrated essence of Satan himself, but also that this qualifies as "newsworthy." I've seen the video of the Elmo doll "speaking," and it sounds like it could be saying any number of phrases: half of a word may be getting cut off, it could be saying "tell," it could even have switched to Spanish for some reason. I see this as just another parent jumping to conclusions, and an idiotic media outlet sensationalizing a story (because it's fun to take a swipe at success), akin to the "Fuck You" Pikachu a few years back. Talking dolls are barely comprehensible when they're speaking properly - you shouldn't be surprised when they appear to be speaking in tongues when they're broken.

Green With Envy

2008-02-21T04:28:00.000-08:00

BC Budget Creates a Carbon Tax (The Globe and Mail)

What is it with the west coast? Whether it's BC or California, it's like these places are geographically predisposed to stupidity.

Yet More Proof of Chuck Norris' Strength

2008-02-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

Chuck Norris can endorse Mike Huckabee while keeping a straight face. (AriArmstrong.com)

SCIENCE!

2008-02-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

In the world of science, researchers have determined the composition of Hillary Clinton's soul:

Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black.

...

By voraciously sucking up all surrounding illumination, it can give those who gaze on it a dizzying sensation of nothingness.

"It's very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night," said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. "Nothing comes back to you. It's very, very, very dark."

(Washington Post)

I Think He's Just Jealous

2008-02-19T21:15:00.000-08:00

Mayor: "God was watching over our city" during tornado ( USA Today)

About 50 people were injured when the tornado ripped through the area Sunday, and about 200 homes and 40 businesses were damaged or destroyed. Two people were listed in serious condition Monday, said Todd Stacy, a spokesman for the governor.

Considering the mayor's comment, it's safe to say that "God" sure has a hell of a lot of contempt for private property. "A lot of those things, like photos and couches and houses and shit? Yeah, they're pretty dangerous. I'll just go ahead and destroy those for you. No, no, don't thank me - I'm just watching over you. It is my job, after all."

Holding Out For an Argument

2008-02-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

Over at the Washington Post, Mike Wise just could not resist commenting, after his ardent research, on the Clemens/Steroid congressional hearing ("Untruth be Told" - ooh, cle-ver, Mike).

This is from the introductory paragraph:

the Texas-size audaciousness to think that his stature in society was big enough to get away with committing perjury.

So, if you were like me, a naïve reader thinking that the venerability of the Washington Post might lend it at least a whiff of credibility, you’d think that Mike Wise would attempt to prove his claim that Roger Clemens said something so audacious as to be unmistakable, something akin to “Only the little people pay taxes.”

Now, I do see some evidence of lying: Roger Clemens is supposedly an ignorant sap when everyone around him his taking steroid and HGH injections, left, right, and all over the place. But that’s not Wise’s claim: Wise claims that these lies show an obvious character flaw of a giant, arrogant ego. So, where’s Wise’s proof?

To put it simply: he has none. He tries to smuggle in a thesis, hoping that because his other points are solid, and because plenty of baseball fans already see Clemens as a jerk, you’ll forget that his evidence does not prove his claim.

Years ago, Clemens gave his essence away on, of all shows, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." He couldn't just renew his vows to his Debbie in a small civil ceremony before their children; no, Clemens had to co-opt Robin Leach and do it up big and right, at a resort in Hawaii.

So Wise’s condemnation comes entirely out of the fact that, oh-no-oh-golly-how-arrogant, Roger Clemens had the audacity to live within his means, to want to renew his vows to the love of his life in a place just slightly above the Mike-Wise-budget-Motel-6-Deal.

There’s a lot of invective, but not a lot of facts. Mike claims that Clemens has a huge ego, a you-can’t-believe-how-large ego, because he talks about his upbringing while being questioned on his of steroids. Well, someone get the goddamn psychologists in here, stat: someone being questioned about THEMSELVES is actually talking about THEMSELVES. Well, fuck, I ain’t never seen such self-obsession in all my life.

Now, I will admit: I haven’t seen ANY footage from these hearings, so I don’t know if Roger was actually “egotistical” or “back-pedalling.” But it seems to me that if you’re going to accuse a man of being something, or doing something, you should probably think far enough ahead to map out some actual evidence, or at the very least, implication, that YOUR words are relevant. I can sit here until I’m blue in the face talking about Mike Wise’s ignorance, arrogance, and contempt for anyone who makes a better living than a Washington Post editorial writer, but unless I back that up with a snippet of a fact or two, I’m not saying anything at all. I’m typing, and words are appearing on my laptop’s screen, but they aren’t actually saying anything; they are worthless.

In addition to the aforementioned, and quite irrelevant, remark about how Clemens had chosen to spend his second wedding (foregoing the Mike Wise Monastery Experience™), Mike sees fit to mention the political affiliation of his defenders and attackers: obviously, questioning the man bringing the charges up is an absolutely “ridiculous” suggestion (I’m surprised, and you’ll see why in a moment, that he didn’t manage to invoke the “McCarthy” incantation), one fit only for the stupid, witch-hunting puritans we call Republicans. You should note that he doesn’t actually call them “Republicans,” though – they are far more useful, loaded terms, for him to stick to them: “Red Staters.” They are not just his political adversaries, they are from those “deep south” states, those squalid wastelands where the citizens, red of neck and large of brow, head from industrial job to beer store while dragging their knuckles upon the dirt road. “Red Stater” describes an entire group of people; “Democrat” describes a specific political affiliation. The former is emotionally loaded with the image of adherence to an ideology, perhaps one that one is born into, such as religion or race – a common assumption made about the south and Republicans. If I might risk heading off on a tangent, it’s a bit like the terms “Ayn-Rander” and “Objectivist.” One just sounds much more irrational, doesn’t it? Even if there’s nothing in the term’s meaning that marks it as being worse than another, Mike Wise is going for rhetorical weight here, and the term “Red Staters” certainly suits that purpose.

Mike Wise would have had a passable editorial if he had just stuck to a semblance of the truth, and condemned Clemens for lying – maybe he could have even thrown in a splash of that good ol’ liberal hate for the great achiever. Instead, he attempted to open up his can of schadenfreude early, and in so doing, betrayed his true feelings: envy of - and contempt for - those greater than himself.

More:

Clemens hearing a waste? ( This one makes me wonder - if the entire point was to discourage kids from using performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn't it have been easier to ask Clemens whether he was using steroids, get him to say "no, my achievements were all natural," and get him to do a PSA or something? Grilling him in front of a congressional committee that invariably makes him look like a liar undermines your objective: not only has Roger Clemens taken drugs and become one of the best, and most highly paid, baseball players ever, but he's also seemed to have escaped the nasty side-effects they told us about in health class. I, quite frankly, see no downside to taking steroids if Roger Clemens has - they seem to have done exactly what my pusher told me they would do. Geez, "Mission Accomplished," guys. )

McNamee's lawyer predicts pardon for Clemens

A Dog's Breakfast

2008-01-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Dog may be man's best friend, but Toronto is no friend of canines. If it's not a ban on pit-bulls that's forcing a woman to hire a lawyer to prove that her dog is innocent until proven guilty, it's the emergence of a forerunner in an outbreak of rabies. From the National Post,

Toronto Public Health is warning people who may have come in contact with or bought puppies from a busy Etobicoke flea market after one of the dogs died of rabies.

A vendor sold 10 to12 puppies of mixed breeds at Dr. Flea’s near Highway 27 and Albion Road on Sunday, Jan. 13, health officials said.

I didn't even know it was legal to sell animals at flea markets. Flea markets have always seemed unsavory to me, like travelling carnivals: a business could be there one weekend and gone the next, and there isn't a lot of accountability if anyone gets ripped off.

And I mean, really? You bought a dog from a flea market? Dude, I wouldn't even buy clothes from a flea market. Was there no negative connection in your brain between the words "dog" and "flea?"

Toronto May Just Have the Largest Number of Busybody Whiners Per Capita Than Any Other City

2007-12-31T15:07:00.001-08:00

...and the award for paternalistic fucking killjoys of the week go to this site I just stumbled onto mere minutes ago: Illegal Signs.

Oh fuck, am I right? Someone's putting up advertising, goddamn demonic fucking signs of commercialism gone rampant, on their own private property? Well, fuck me! Fuck everyone! How will we all get on with out lives?

These are the same type of people who would cancel Christmas because the lights might be distracting to drivers.

Read this screed, right from the jackass's mouth:

The outdoor advertising industry has a global culture of non-compliance with the law. Advertising companies are erecting illegal billboards all over the world, wherever they can get away with it. In Toronto, this renegade, lawless industry has been acting with impunity due to bureaucratic negligence.

"This renegade, lawless industry?" What are they, smuggling Afghani children to be eviscerated and used in high-priced sex-dolls? They've entered into a private contract with whomever owns the building to put up an advertisement. If you don't like it, tough fuckin' cookies there, sunshine.

Join us as we fight to legalize and democratize Toronto’s visual environment.

Total mis-use of the word "legalize" not worth the trouble to point out to these nut-jobs, I have never seen an invented word so badly used in all of life than "democratize." You cannot "democratize" what you do not own. You have as little right to remove advertising from the subways as I do to tell you what to wear. And don't tell me these fuckwits aren't out to stop all advertising (just the illegal ones), because they admit as much in their "about" page by displaying their total contempt for private property, and their stated wish to have the citizens of Toronto be shielded from the dreaded horror of having a way to promote their business.

Notice how the site enters into no discussion about why the permits are necessary for the city - for revenue, and that's all. The "about" page moans on for the few short sentences their minds can string together to denounce any "monetization" of "civic capital" by selling out to the evil corporations, without once the notion coming up that permits are a way for City Hall to suck revenue out of another creation that wasn't their's.

I have a question How does Mr. Joe Bloggs and Ms. Jane Doe know when an advertisement has gone up without requiring a permit? Oh that's right. They usually fucking don't. They go through their lives, almost blissfully, unaware of the total fucking horror that somebody else's property might be inflicting upon their sensitive, still child-like brains. In fact, it seems that this site may be the only collection of people actually bothered by "illegal" signs - or should we say, pompous enough to want to exert power they haven't earned over property they haven't got. Envy is the worst of the seven sins, guys...

Addendum: to more properly rebut these folks (because I know that I've written this while in a bad mood, and have likely not provided the correct logical and philosophical ammunition to take them on, but mere invective), check out Jerry Kirkpatrick's book, In Defense of Advertising.

Let Me Tell You About Anime

2007-12-28T06:26:00.001-08:00

When there's no more anime for you lunkheads to watch, just remember how much you contributed to its downfall.

From Steve Fritz's latest "Animated Shorts" column on Newsarama:

• Piracy Is Not Your Friend

The fall of Geneon could be one of the biggest and nastiest bits of news this year.

At the moment, the distributor who provided America with such incredible anime and evergreen properties as Akira, Lupin III, Serial Experiment Lain, Last Exiles, Gankotsouo, Samurai Champloo, Black Lagoon, Ergo Proxy and many, many, many more is auctioning off its rights to these shows for whatever little they can get. Very informed sources tell me they wouldn’t be surprised if two more very long-running and equally important anime providers will be out of business by the end of 2008.

The reason? Video piracy. It’s gotten so bad that even though there are statistics that say the actual number of anime fans have increased by 30% over the last two years, the sales of anime DVDs has dropped as much as 50% in the same period of time.

What many of the pirates don’t understand is Geneon is the first domino in what could be an incredibly long chain. According to one source, it could go back to the studios, with at least one major anime studio also going down due to lack of American and international revenues. This can ricochet, too. American studios could savagely cut budgets at the minimum, or cease production altogether, if they don’t have studios like Japan’s Madhouse to pass on inbetweening and other such chores to.

The simple fact is while animation is getting cheaper, it’s still an expensive artform. While I discussed the coming of the one-person studio earlier, it isn’t here yet. Further, the animation is far more, well, cartoon-y, than shows like Avatar, The Simpsons or Legion. Shows like these involve small armies of production people.

Hopefully I’ll have a much more detailed report on this over the next 30 days. Still, it’s something we better stay well aware of.

I Remember the Days When Photoshopping Wasn't a Crime

2007-12-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

Via Local6.com, "Police: Principal Cropped Student's Face Onto Pornographic Images:"

John Stelmack, 60, the principal at Scott Lake Elementary School in Lakeland, was arrested at his home, located at 5749 Deer Track Trail in Lakeland, and charged with five counts of possession of child pornography....
According to a Polk County sheriff's report, Stelmack took routine photographs of children in a school setting, including a 10-year-old who attended Scott Lake Elementary last year, and digitally superimposed their faces onto nude images. The identified girl's facial image was on four of the pictures, and another unidentified female child's face was placed on the body of another nude image, the report stated.

You get a cookie if you can explain to me how faking child pornography for one's own perverted amusement actually constitutes child pornography. If you should succeed in convincing me, then we call ride out together, under cloak of darkness, and hunt out every sicko who's ever even drawn a picture of a girl who could possibly be imagined as being underage. Onward, soldiers!

Next: we talk to Jennifer Aniston and Natalie Portman, as they consider suing every person who's ever photoshopped their heads onto the bodies of pornstars over invasions of privacy.

My Comments Are More Like Essays

2007-11-27T08:08:00.000-08:00

A post on the Raven Entertainment Studio blog incited my ire enough for me to post one of my patented "unnecessarily long comments." I figured that since it was long enough to be a blog post in itself that I should post it here, as well - I'm a cheater that way.

Here's the news story that ruffled Raven's feathers:

By The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG - A Judo Manitoba official reduced an 11-year-old girl to tears Saturday when he refused to allow her to compete in a tournament wearing a hijab, or Muslim head scarf.
While other children squared off in the match at a Winnipeg gym, Hagar Outbih could only watch from the sidelines and wonder why she was singled out.
"He said that I can't fight. If I want to fight I have to take it off or I have to leave," Outbih said as tears rolled down her face.
Hagar's mother, Khadaja, tried to console her daughter.
"As a mom I feel so bad that my daughter would go through this." she said.
Judo Manitoba president Dave Minuk made the ruling.
He said it was based on International Judo Federation guidelines.
"It has nothing to do with religion, it is a safety issue," Minuk said. "It (the hijab) could be used to strangle somebody. It could fall over her face."
The Judo Manitoba ruling is the latest controversy in Canada over the wearing of hijabs by Muslim girls in sports.
In April an international referee said a Tae Kwon Do team of mainly Muslim girls was kicked out of a tournament near Montreal because the sport's rules don't allow hijabs.
The team, made up of girls between eight and 12 years old, is affiliated with a Muslim community centre in Montreal and five of its six girls wear the head scarf.
Last February an 11-year-old Ottawa girl was thrown out of an indoor soccer tournament for refusing to remove her hijab.
A federal Conservative MP as well as the Liberals and the NDP have defended the right of girl's to wear religious head-scarfs.
Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, who is Muslim, has said that kicking kids out of sporting events is not the way to help communities live together in harmony.
Hagar Outbih agrees.
"I think they should change the rules because there are lots of people in the world," she said as she hugged her mom.
"There is not just Christians, there are other religions. They should be fair to everybody."
Outbih plans to write a letter of complaint to Sport Manitoba, an amateur sports organization whose chairman is appointed by the Manitoba government.
In a bid to mollify the girl organizers of the Judo match offered Outbih a participation medal, which she politely refused.
"Because I didn't deserve it. If I keep it it would just be bad memories."

Here's a link to the post with his response:

"Muslims and Martial Arts"

And here's mine:

Whenever I hear about someone being suspended from their job for refusing to wear the company uniform, or, as in this instance, not being allowed to compete in a sport because they want to wear unsafe clothing, I think of telling them this:

"Right now, you've got to make a choice: what's more important to you? Your devotion to a god(s) who isn't putting food on your table, or your career? If your religion is more important than your goals, then it wins, and you can go home and pray."

I think the most arrogant thing you can do is to expect an organization in a free country to pay a cost in safety in order to indulge you. Swim classes wouldn't allow a person to swim while wearing the hijab, would they? And would they be expected, if they were a co-ed organization, to start holding separate practices/tournaments for boys and girls if the hijab could not be worn? You can't accomodate everyone's whims, and in the end, it's up to the organization itself to decide what is acceptable. If we don't like it, we can always start our own group, or take the easier route and, instead of demanding that THEY accomodate US, accomodate THEM.

Let me share a graphic example: I worked at Canada's Wonderland a few years ago, and it was the typical minimum wage job - which is to say, I learned to look upon everyone with equal contempt. If you've been to Wonderland, you'll know that there is a "Season's Pass" available to purchase which will get you admission into the park for the entire season, May to October - it's worth the price if you live near Toronto and you're chronically unemployed. The pass requires that a photo be taken, because the rules of purchasing the pass specify that it be used ONLY by the purchaser - this is so that a person doesn't come into the park and pass their card back to their friend waiting outside. It's business, and it's the terms of the agreement to purchase the pass: no photo, no use. I think you can see where this is going: a woman in the full-covering hijab walks into the building where the photos are to be taken, and refuses to remove the face covering. This is either clever, or adamantly stupid, take your pick. We explian that your face needs to be visible - no dice. So we tell her she can't use the pass until the picture is taken. Obviously, she gets upset, because how dare we, HOW DARE WE, try to decide the terms of admission into the park? It's not like the owners of Canada's Wonderland actually maintaint he park, or provide you with the fun you so fervently seek. How dare they presume to decide that they can run their business as they please?

No one's forcing you to take part in the martial arts tournament, or get the job, or visit the theme park: if you don't agree to the terms, you can leave. That's the cost you pay for living with other people, THAT'S the key to "harmony:" negotiation and compromise. If taking part in a martial arts tournament is not worth the cost of removing your religious gear, then don't do it, just as if I don't think a litre of milk is worth $2, I don't buy it - I don't demand that the store owner give me the milk for the more-reasonable-to-me cost of $0.30.

If the cost is too high, don't pay the price - just because a hijab doesn't have a price tag on it doesn't mean that it doesn't count.

You've Still Got Your Voice, We're Just Taking Our Megaphone Back

2007-11-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

or, The Public Arts: Artists Working Off Grants Should Learn From Freelancers

There was a very short piece in the Toronto Star's Entertainment section on November 17 that spun off from a main article about the new edition of Life of Pi, a book I've never read, have no interest in, and wondered why it would need an illustrated edition.

Or, at least I think it had something to do with The Life of Pi, and it certainly wasn't some smart-alec "artiste" trying to say "conservatives are stupid."

In the meantime, [Yann] Martel [the author of Life of Pi] is persisting with his campaign to persuade Stephen Harper of the virtues of public funding of the arts. For more than half a year, Martel has sent the Prime Minister a literary classic in the mail every two weeks, beginning with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and, most recently, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

It got me thinking - what exactly does Martel think he's going to accomplish?

Was his master plan to get Harper to say "Wow! These books are great! I think I'll take money from the Canadian public in order to get more of them" ?

The answer to the "starving artist" problem is not the public fleecing of Canadians in order to finance the artists' projects. If an artist's work cannot attract popular support, than what benefit would forced patronage have for the people paying for it? If I don't think that a book is worth buying, forcing me to buy it isn't going to change my opinion of it. If I think a sculpture is particularly ugly, you cannot set it up in my front yard because you think I'm "uncultured."

Have you ever wondered why bad movies get made? It's because the producers, or the actors, or the directors, were able to convince the studios (or the people holding the purse-strings) that their idea had value. Have you ever wondered why sequels to bad movies get made? Because the first bad movie made money, which was an expression of the public's sense of value. Whether you agree the public should find value in yet another installment in the Rush Hour series or not is not the point.

Value is not an inherent quality - nothing is intrinsically valuable. To be valuable, something must be useful for some ends, something must have a purpose, no matter what that purpose is. It doesn't matter whether a forest is valued because it can be cut down to produce paper or because we enjoy the way it looks, the inescapable fact is that it doesn't have value until a human being places value on it. This is especially true of art - the more people that are willing to pay to see it, the greater its value. Hell, it can even have great value with only one supporter, so long as that supporter believes that it is worth more than everybody else does. For example, I thought the TV show The Lone Gunmen was of great value - unfortunately, Fox did not.

Let's look at a classic example, Star Trek: between its second and third seasons, the show hung on the edge of cancellation by CBS. It was only a great outcry from fans, an expression of value, that showed the network that Star Trek did indeed have more value than they originally thought. Star Trek was only kept on the air because the fans convinced the network that the series had value - in effect, they sold Star Trek to the executives, even better than the producers could.

And this is what our publically funded artists must learn to do, and quickly.

Stephen King, John Grisham, and freelance writers the world over have been using the technique of "selling it" for their entire careers. When you write a book and present it to an agent or a publishing company or the future readers of your work, you don't say "I worked really hard on this," you say: "This book will sell, and these are the reasons." Heck, Stephen King does not merely by putting his name on it: "I know you don't think I can write a non-fiction book about the Red Sox, but, hey - the Stephen King brand is hot right now."

If your writing's not earning you the money you need to live, you shouldn't be writing - likewise if you're any other kind of artist. You need to convince companies to give you the big advances, not rely on government to pay for your apprenticeship.

Well, since my baby left me, I've find a new place to dwell; it's at the end of a virtual street, at Habbo Hotel

2007-11-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm

A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.

Your comments? I, for one, think this is more of a fraud case than a "theft" case. While the users did pay for the virtual items using "real money," the entire world that was set up is still owned by the maker of the game. If they stopped supporting the online capabilties of the game, for instance, users would have their virtual belongings "destroyed," because they would no longer be able to access them. In fact, what the users are paying for is not virtual furniture and knick knacks, but ACCESS to those particular snippets of code. If users stopped paying to access the game world, or otherwise abused their accounts, they would lose their right to access the game, and they COULD NOT argue that they should be able to keep, somehow, their unreal bedroom set.

My TTC Is... Filthy, smelly, frequently late, a waste of money, not worth the fare, horribly uncomfortable, grossly incompetent...

2007-11-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

(photo from http://torontoist.com/2007/11/rightwingers_us.php, although I fail to see why being pissed off about the incompetence of TTC employees should be the exclusive domain of "right-wingers." Maybe "left-wingers" enjoy wastes of tax-payer money?)

The TTC (an acronym for "Toronto Transit Commission," or alternatively, "Take The Car"), that big swirling vortex that people who just really hate money like to support, has announced that, despite yet another fare increase a week ago, they're still hemorrhaging cash:

http://www.thestar.com/article/276279

If you thought last week's TTC fare increase would be enough to solve Toronto's transit woes, think again.
The TTC is already projecting a $32 million shortfall on its $1.2 billion operating budget next year.
Although the gap is pegged at only $14 million officially, the TTC's contract with its unionized workers expires in March and a new agreement is expected to cost an extra $18 million a year.
Unveiling the 2008 budget proposal yesterday, TTC officials said they face significant financial challenges, including $21 million in service improvements, increased costs and continued ridership growth.

So, hold up a second - you mean to tell me that that expensive new automated "stop announcing system" didn't generate millions of dollars out of nowhere, but actually cost money? And that new art project for a few downtown stations didn't generate any revenue either? But...how?

Could you imagine a private company running their affairs this way? Coming up short year in and year out, and yet announcing even more new and exciting projects which are expected to generate precisely zero dollars in profit? That company would fold faster than - and please excuse the cliche - Superman on laundry day.

Why wouldn't you get the system up to "tolerable" levels before adding new features? After all, would you buy caviar when you haven't even scraped together the money to buy the toast?

I am so sick of this. It's as if the heads of the mighty Transit Commission don't realize that they need to take in more money than they spend if they want to keep doing what they're doing. They don't consider future costs, they aren't willing to take a hard stance with their unions, they aren't willing to forgo some new thing-a-ma-jig or pet-project in order to save money, and they definitely aren't willing to consider any sort of revenue stream that isn't forcibly taken from people who don't even use, never mind enjoy the transit system. Instead of getting buses that can seat more than 12 people comfortably, we get buses with bike-racks on the front, or ad campaigns that give themselves pats-on-the-back, or some inane removal of helpful signs for what seems to be no other reason than an excuse to give incompetent employees who can't be fired something to do.

How can the TTC raise some money? For one, I proposed actually privatizing the TTC way back on my Facebook page. Of course, in conjunction with such a proposal, I also said that the system would then need to be opened up to competition, as monopolies are, and I believe I speak for everyone who's ever dealt with Canada Post when I say this, no fucking fun at all. Hell, maybe the system could be opened up for competition without privatization. Don't know how, but I think it's worth looking at.

I also suggested more vigorous advertising: there should be advertisements on subway train seats, subway station elevators, and even over the audio announcement system I derided before. It doesn't have to be elaborate, only a little "the TTC is brought to you by Future Shop," or some other crap. The website should also include advertising, which can be cheap and unobtrusive. Could such advertising be considered be considered obnoxious, or simply unsavory? Sure. But I'd rather put up with a three-second ode to H&M between the announcing of stops than pay increasing prices for decreasing service.

Here's the original post:

Things the TTC Should've Saved Money on...

...before running face-first into the inevitable shit-storm associated with voting in an ex-NDP mayor, and talking about cutting routes and raising ticket prices in order to scare the public into allowing them to raise taxes.

These things should have been done over five years ago:

- refrained from purchasing 800 buses that are cramped, uncomfortable, lurchy, and virtually seat-less.

- refrained from fitting those same moronic buses with bike racks stuck to the front.

- switched over to an all-token system: paper tickets have to be recycled every time their used. Metal tokens can last up to 20 years without wearing out. "Smart-cards" could also have been considered.

- looked into the "driver-less" automated trains like they use in Paris.

-stood up to their money-wasting unions.

- opened the system up to competition.

- worried about running an efficient transit system, not about tarting up the subway stations with "modern" art like 2-dollar whores (or, with fares today, $2.70 whores)

- built subway stations that followed demand, not wishful thinking (Sheppard subway, anyone? Anyone?)

- increased station advertising.

- given up and privatized it.

I don't blame them for not thinking ahead - I mean, they had that scheme to give the homeless free booze and cigarettes, and when you've got such a flawless plan, why would you hedge your bets?

I've also mulled over the possibility of removing the current system of child/student/adult/senior tickets, as would be necessary with an all-token system, and decreasing the fare to $1.50. I figure that a family of four (two adults, two kids) would have once spent (2.70 x 2 + 0.70 x 2 =) $6.80 to go one way on the bus. With 1.50 for everyone? $6.00. Okay, maybe we can make it $1.75. But the point is that you would not be losing that much revenue, considering that so much transit is paid for by students who use, fittingly enough, student tickets, and who are hassled every day by drivers asking for student I.D. This inevitably pisses off the student, forces the TTC to maintain a system of producing photo-ID cards, inconveniences other passengers when a particularly tenacious student without ID will not leave the bus after being told that the ticket he just threw into the fare box cannot be redeemed for a ride, endangers the driver if the student won't take it lying down, and pisses off the 12-year-old who just looks thirteen but is being hassled by a big dumb bald guy who thinks that he can verify age by sight alone. In case you couldn't tell, I have been witness to all of these events, and they never fail to tick me off.

I think that I may have steered a bit off of my initial purpose of this post, which was simply to feign surprise that the TTC is, once more, not in the black, but I take any chance I can to complain about the TTC. Holy fuck, do I hate this transit system.

First Post - Yesterday's News

2007-11-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Canuckopia, a place where I'll be posting the news that I thought was interesting or enraging enough to warrant a mention. After posting no fewer than six items in one day to my Facebook profile, I figured that a blog might be a better alternative to bugging all of my friends.

I'm going to start by re-posting here the news that I posted yesterday, and then I'll take it from there. Excelsior, reader of discriminatin' tastes.

My Comments on the WGA Strike

Some of you who follow entertainment news (or hell, some of you who are actually in the entertainment industry) may have heard about this little strike that the unionists in the Writer's Guild of America have gotten into.

Now, some of you might think that you know my position already - that I'm anti-union. And if this were concerning any other group of workers, like automotive manufacturing worker, nurses, or teachers, you'd be right on the money. But this isn't about those grunts. No, no, gentle reader - read, and be both shocked and awed: I agree with the union this time. After all, was it not a "union" of sorts that went on strike in Atlas Shrugged?

For the most part, anyway. See, I'm only against unions when they engage in the tactics that are described here:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5040

or when they otherwise coerce others by denying them a living (e.g. strong-arming employees into joining the union, paying dues, having those dues invested into businesses or causes that they don't support; not allowing the company to hire temporary workers or replace the lousy ones, even if there are throngs of potential employees throwing their resumes through the front gates).

Okay, I need to go on a short deviation from the flight plan for a second to tell you a funny story about unions. I know a guy who works in a slaughterhouse/meat-packing plant. This is an industry where if you've had experience crossing the street without incident, you're over-qualified. Anyway, the union there are in such a position that they've dictated that an employee cannot get a raise unless everyone in the plant (minus management, of course) gets the same raise. Are you with me so far? That amounts to saying that if a twenty-year veteran employee who's never missed work and has never had an issue with management deserves more money, so does the complete cluster-fuck who shows up once every two weeks and goes home early because he's scared of all the men walking around with knives. So, you'd assume that, naturally, there's no incentive to work harder. Hell, they've made such a convoluted mess of how you can fire someone that there's no incentive to work at all. But here's the kicker: management motivates employees using the union's own machinations against them. Employees are able to get extra pay for over-time, so a frequent practice within this particular meat-packing plant is for management to do some "creative" wage reporting. Since they can't pay a man what he's worth in a straight-forward, honest manner, they'll just add a few hours of over-time to his record. "We'll tell them he came in on Saturday," if anyone asks - but they never do. The union forces people to lie if they want to keep a valuable employee valuable.

Anyway, back to talking about other unions.

The issue at the heart of this strike involves "residual payments." Residuals are the money that a creator is paid when their work (a TV show, movie, song, whatever) is shown to the public. For example, every time a rerun of the original Star Trek is shown, William Shatner makes a little more money.

The process of paying out residuals is usually complicated whenever a new technology comes out. When movies began to be broadcast on television, the Screen Actors' Guild had to fight to get the studios to pay them for those showings, because television wasn't even a consideration when the original contracts were drafted. Likewise, home video and the rise of the VCR created trouble for producers, writers, and actors. The latest method of distribution to cause Hollywood lawyers headaches is the internet. How can creators be paid if there's no physical product being manufactured, and no real way to track "broadcasts?" Obviously, the distribution of entertainment over the internet isn't going to go away any time soon, so this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Hollywood unions are unique in the world of organized labour. The revenues from a Tom Cruise are such that, if he were to simply stop working, or threaten to stop working over a grievance, millions, possibly billions, of dollars could be lost. Even a highly-trained computer programmer can be replaced by an equally talented programmer who'll work for less. But you can't replace Tom Cruise. Lord knows, we've tried. Hollywood unions don't have to resort to the thuggish tactics of their more menial counterparts in other industries: sure, "Heroes" might be able to continue production under a different writer who doesn't mind working for cheap, but it'll definitely not be the same show. There's little difference between an engine put together by a Canadian and one put together by a Japanese, but there are huge differences between a book written by Nick Hornby and one written by Dean Koontz.

That's why I support the WGA strike. Writing is a harsh mistress, and only a few will come close to mastering it. If their contract guarantees them revenues for every exhibition of their work (I specifically used this phrasing to avoid "work for hire" contracts, like those that used to be common in the comic book industry), then they deserve the money, no matter what technological medium is used.

But along with being problematic, this strike is also very exciting. It's a sort of legitimisation of the internet as a method of distribution, and an admission that there is big money for the taking. The industry would not be fighting it otherwise: if it wasn't worth it, the studios would specify residuals in their contracts, but then cut back efforts to use the web as a broadcast medium. And, unlike television, there's really no limit to how many shows can be made or become popular: timeslots would become a delightful anachronism. If five of your favorite shows all premiered at 9:00 Monday night, you wouldn't need to decide which one to miss; you could see them all. And don't forget the fact that the internet is cheap as hell.

This strike is, for now at least, a lot more of an "Atlas Shrugged" type than a "French Riot." It is a strike by creative people who are trying to show that their output can't just be replaced by someone else. They aren't trashing studios, or demanding that they get longer paid vacations, they just want to show that they are what drives Hollywood. Ideas and creative men drive the movie and television industries, just as they drive every other business. And for once, those creative minds can pull a "Wyatt's Torch" and consign an entire summer of blockbuster movies to the flames.

Let's just hope this doesn't get ugly.

Roofie-Dots

The Aqua-dots recall: just another leaky hole in the hull of China's manufacturing "industry."

You would think that a company would have a chemist or a scientist or something who would be able to look at the list of ingredients in a children's product and say, "You know, I think this one may contain a bit too much Roofie. We may need to go back to the drawing board and decrease the level of poison here."

Jimmy Carter is an Idiot

You know, a quotation attributed to Robert Heinlein reads: "An elephant: a mouse built to government specifications." And I really don't think there's any greater proof of the truth of that sentiment (or of the stunted psychology that is required to be a successful politician) than the revelation that Jimmy Carter once thought it'd be within the boundaries of a reasonable response to shoot a cat because he was a little too close to the birdies.

And that hook?

"Lamentably, I killed your cat."

Kills me every time I read it.

So he killed your cat. There'll always be more cats, and besides, his intentions were good. He just wanted to help the little birdies.

CBC - For the Glory of the State

CBC pulls a documentary on the Falun Gung after "concerns" expressed by Chinese bureaucrats.

Ah, the CBC... if it's a "documentary" showing us how Wal-mart is the harbinger of the end-times and only socialized medicine can stop it, it'll get play five nights a week - but we can't risk angering the communists, now can we?

Energy Drinks and Alcohol?

Yes, apparently heeding the warning on the can (you know, the one that says "Do not mix with alcohol") is a good idea. Remember folks: SCIENCE!

From ScienceDaily:

Twenty-nine state attorneys general have already condemned alcoholic energy drinks,” said O’Brien. “We believe the FDA has a responsibility to investigate the health risks of energy drink cocktails, and to make that information available to consumers. Students should be informed about the risks of mixing alcohol with energy drinks, as part of an overall program to reduce high-risk drinking and its consequences. And colleges should reconsider the free distribution of energy drinks at campus-sponsored events.

I have two comments regarding this:

1 - "State attorneys" are, like members of the UN's IPCC, not scientists, so I don't see why their opinion is relevant.

2 - Energy drinks are, as I've already said, labelled with a warning against drinking alcoholic cocktails: Red Bull says right on the can, "Do not mix with alcohol." It is simply unnecessary for tax-payers' money to be wasted investigating the effects of the ever-popular Red Bull/Vodka cocktail when it is already known that mixing the two types of drinks is not a good idea. If a private research company wanted to examine the specific effects of these drinks, then I'd be all for it - but an investigation into the health risks posed to University/College students (a group that would smoke arsenic if you told them it gave you a pretty good buzz), a group that is, collectively, more reckless and dissociated from reality than any other (except for their professors, maybe), should be on the bottom of the FDA's list of priorities.