Prayers Malfunction

A study reveals that not only does prayer not help the sick, the knowledge of stranger praying for them actually makes coronary bypass patience worse off. One of the major attractions of religion is the promise of favouritism—being the chosen, a place in heaven with eternal pleasure, getting rich in this life, protection from all things evil… The belief is that god will do things for the believers that he/she will not do for others. It seemed a good investment. Now that it seems prayers does not get believers, with a lot of believers praying for them to boot, out of surgery better off is certainly disappointing. If group faith cannot make something as common a surgery as coronary bypass, what can it really do? Millions of people pray for the Pope and the Pope still died because god wants his servant at his side; that is acceptable. But what does he want from uncle Joe and his blood deprived heart muscles? Oh, I forgot, surgery is science, so god may not want to have anything to do with it. Sports! Now that is god’s domain and where the power of prayers should be directed. So, let’s not only cheer for the home team but pray for them, unless it is for their health.

Hypocrite Bill

The B.C. government has introduced what can only be called the Hypocrite Bill. This bill, if becomes law, will allow governments, organizations and individual to apology without any legal implication. Maybe I have learnt English incorrectly but I thought to apology means to admit wrongdoings, express regret and look for forgiveness. The admission of guilt is central to an apology. It means nothing if one is say “I am sorry that I have done you wrong, but I do not do it.” The only way an apology makes sense is when the apologist admits to the injustice fully and accepts its consequences. What this bill wants to say sorry but not admit guilt and responsibilities. When one apologizes, one put oneself in front of the wronged party for mercy. There is no two ways about this. What my own provincial government wants then is to have it both ways—looks and feel good about itself without consequences. Good thing few of them are Catholics because their priests would have told them there is no absolution without penances.

Great Wall of the U.S.

The argument for granting citizenship to illegal immigrants in the U.S. has been that they provide workers for jobs Americans themselves would not do, and, implicitly, at a salary well below what is fair and legal. The irony in this is that if illegal immigrants become citizen, with full rights and choices, why would they want to do these jobs and for that money? What business really wants is for the non-enforcement of immigration laws. That way their workers remain underground and unable to choose their works and demand for better pay. The true benefited of the immigrants’ illegality is the businesses and, indirectly, all the consumers. So, granting citizenship would not do what it professed to accomplish. The opposite side of the argument does not work either. The proposal to build a great wall along the southern, or even the northern, border simply increase the illegality of these immigrants but would not stop their appearances. It is simply another layer of chains that is on the illegals tying them to undesirable and underpaid jobs. Smugglers will demand much more money, employers will offer less and the illegals will be much more desperate.

Mismatched Narcotics

Our social life is mediated, almost entirely, by drugs. Here, I do not mean various forms of cocaine, marijuana, or substances like ecstasy. I refer to alcohol and caffeine. We meet elderly relatives for tea, get together with friends for coffee, and try to get laid with alcohol. Maybe because of we are high, the occasions and the drugs seems to be mismatched. Elderly relatives are usually way down on the list of people we like to spend time with the most. The mild stimulation of tea seems to offer little help on the matter. When we are with friends, people whose company we enjoy the most, we should hardly need something dark and powerful to keep us going. Coffee seems to be a bit of overkill. And when we are trying to get laid, we had better had our eyes wide open to steer clear of coyotes. Alcohol famously does quite the opposite. We should instead binge drink to get over the boredom of relatives; have tea so as not to be distracted from stimulating conversation; and, down coffee to hone our shape hunter instincts and keep us up deep into the night. The lesson is that we should choose our drug with a clear head; because once the choice has been made, we are not in any shape to do it anymore.

No Wimpiness in Fantasies

The reason most often cited against the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports is the damage these drugs have on the human body. In North American professional sports at least, this is not a valid reason at all. If everyday sports are about health, professional sports are just the opposite. How many professional players go through a career without major surgery? Is there any successful player retires without some sort of handicap? And as fans, do we not urge them, pressure them or praise them into ignoring and thus deepening the injuries from which they already suffer? If there is a profession that after five, maybe ten, years, the workers will, almost without exception, have problems walking and will develop severe arthritis, we would insist criminal investigations and stringent regulations. This is precisely what happens in professional sports, except the investigations and regulations part. We, as fans, for our gratification, make the athletes damage their bodies beyond repair. How can we then say they should not use drugs because drugs damage their bodies? We should instead insist that the health of the athletes be the most important factor. But then, that is not very fan like, is it? Our quarterback wants to rest because there is no soft tissue in his knee anymore? We can’t this kind of wimpiness in our fantasies, can we? How would we feel when we stay home from work with the slightest hint of a cold? We would have to live entirely in our own world of wimpiness. That just simply will not do!

Fake Out

We live in a world of sleight of hands. We watch TV but pay for it in the stores when we buy advertised merchandise; and the TV stations show programmes but sell advertisements. You go to buy electronics and they really really want to sell you the extended service plan. Nothing is more so than restaurants. Restaurants try to make fantastic food, dazzling atmosphere, perfect service, promises of sex, and even impossible fantasies. We talk about these things, read about them, and most importantly patronize them. The strange thing though is that restaurants do not really make much money from these things, a few percents of the bill at best. It is like television, all these things are just like shows that get you into the door. What they really want you buy and can make real money on are drinks—the one thing they sell that has nothing to do with them. Someone else pressed, brewed, infused and distilled all the drinks and bottled them somewhere else. It really does not matter where a bottle of wine is served: how good or bad it is has little to nothing to do with the restaurant. The profit margins of drinks are many times of their famous food. So, if you want you favourite restaurant to last, do not go eat, just order drinks.

Men Don't Yap

I am a sports fan. I grew up watching soccer; and when I came to North America I started watching Ice Hockey (early eighties Islanders), then Baseball (86 World Series), then Basketball (late eighties Piston) and College Football (University of Michigan) and then American and Canadian Football (Lions and Lions). These sports are great to watch live, may the arena be the Coliseum, the Palace, Yost, the Big House or GM Place. Watching on TV is not as good, but if there are good people with whom to watch the game, it can be almost as good as live. The greatest attraction about sports and being a sport fan, however, is the discourse—the talking, writing, reading and thinking about teams and players and games. It is somewhat ironic that the defining activity of modern masculinity is perhaps the most fanciful and endlessly verbal, i.e. feminine, of all activities. Men like to complain about how women, particularly ‘their’ women, talk and talk. Men are supposed to be all about action and no talk. This all changed when the conversation turns to their favourite sports. The most inarticulate of manly men would talk with passionate and floral language about the sport, the team and the player that they like or hate. These grand dissertations usually have very little to do with reality. A team that has not won a championship in forty years can be the greatest hockey franchise with the proudest history. Or, a basketball centre can average a career double-double and still be call a bum and disappointment. The discourse of sport makes most men at once Homer and Cicero. So, men do yap and yap and yap, they just do not call it yap and they usually end up fighting rather than giggling. Fighting over fantasies, now, that is the true masculinity.

Please, Save the Specie

New York City inspectors found what they believe to be a nuclear fallout shelter from the Cold War era. We hear about this sort of things quite frequently, a bomb shelters here, a room full of supply there. The thing I never quite understand is that why these sorts of things have to be found? They were supposed to be used when the end of the world came, when they were to support human lives to ensure the survival of the specie. What we learn now is no one really knew where these things were. If anything had happened, it would certainly puzzle aliens who visit the deserted earth in a few millennia later and found unused survival material with no survivor. That would certainly create a great mystery that would be broadcasted all over the universe. Some may speculate that there must had been a conspiracy to hoard and hide all the emergency supplies to ensure the extinction of the specie. It is fortunate that, for the time being at least, that danger has passed. But then, maybe a few thousand years later aliens will find millions of doses of Tamiflu in corporate warehouse on an empty plant. Our great leaders are such excellent planners of disasters.

Product Misplacement

The most effective means of advertisements, we are told, is product placement. With once product fully integrated into the plot and actions of a hit movie, the product is believed to be more memorable and acceptable to the audience. This is probably true but sometime it may backfire. I just saw a brand new Mercedes Benz with only one passenger driven by a trained security officer failed to outrun a delivery van loaded with half a dozen fully armed masked men on a empty straight away. The guy survived the summersaults down the side of the mountain, so that is good advertisement for its safety, but the episode has little good thing to say about the power and handling of the car. Ford makes nice vans, but they have a lot of room, little ‘go’ and hardly any agility. If I were Mercedes Benz, or Chrysler, I would sue the pants off the producers of the show for defamation. I would like to sue them myself for breaking the illusion of reality and thus damaged my enjoyment of the show. Wait, it is 24, what reality, never mind.

Squirrel Love

Of all the billions of dollars of spending on the Ontario provincial budget, the Tories (both the party and its leader John) singled out a $150,000 over three years study on squirrels for ridicule. The reason is simple—they can deduce it to a ‘make-funable’ headline. The study is on the impact of environmental changes has on the reproductive habits of flying squirrels. This is a useful study in understanding the environmental impact of developments. The only problem with it is when Mr. Tory called it “squirrel sex study.’ Sure, in order of squirrels to reproduce, they must have sex, since they do not have the benefit of artificial insemination or cloning technology. If, say, noise can make squirrel fidget, there will be no more squirrels in noise areas. And if that can happen to squirrels, it can happen to other animals also. This is not a study that will change the world, but it is useful and does not cost the world. There got to be some other waste in the budget that has few more zeros in the numbers for Mr. Tory to complain about. If a $50,000 a year grant is all he can find, I am very happy for the citizens of Ontario

Blood Feuds

A couple of hockey playing boys coming to Vancouver is a lead story in local newscasts. It is surely a feel good story that everybody love—boys from different side of the religion track in Belfast become friends because of their shared love for ice hockey. To bring hope and understand to a murderous feud with our national game, what can be more Canadian than that? While we are all feeling great about ourselves, it is good to remember 1984 in Sarajevo. Sports bought the world to the haven of urbanity, civility and beauty that was known as Sarajevo. By all account it was a great time and the city was held up as example for the world when it came to ethnic peace. Just eight years later, million were dead and the city was reduced to rubble in religion/ethnic hatred. There is a reason civil wars are the most brutal of wars—you have to be close to someone to hate them so much. Blood feuds are not between people who do not know each other but between once close friends and relatives. It is good and important that these boy become friends and it is certainly a symbol of hope. It is also worth remembering that friendship, of two boys or of an entire town, is not enough, but itself, to safe us from the worst of ourselves. It takes the feuding parties to give up a part of their identity, part of themselves—the way they set themselves apart from the others. And that ain’t so easy.

Bread Riot

There used to be bread riots around the world. The rioters were poor people, often housewives, who were angered by the high price for bread. This is understandable as bread was, and remains, a main stay on the kitchen table. I think a new bread riot is called for now. Just look at how bread is priced. The simplest of breads, a ‘Tuscan loaf’ for example, usually cost four, five dollars a loaf, with hardly fifty cents of material cost. That is more expansive than most cuts of meat and almost all vegetables. They are nothing but flour, water and yeast, some of the cheapest material available to us. The mark-up then is clearly outrages. Some may say these are boutique bread made for the pretentious, so who cares, really. That is true to an extent, but isn’t it the price that make it so? Factory breads are cheaper but use more expansive ingredients like milk. But then these breads can be rolled into little pill size balls, and so, in reality, there is very little food in them. In both cases, then, the price of bread is extraordinarily inflated. Is it not time for a correction?

Misperceptions

Every now and then someone in the newspaper would compare perception with statistics and tells us that our perception of reality is not entirely correct. What they usually forget is their parts in creating that perception. It is like looking at everywhere else but the eyes when there is a vision problem. Take yesterday’s article on the Vancouver Sun ‘Despite Public Perceptions’ for example. The article compares a survey result of Vancouverite’s perception of various ethnic groups’ responsibility for crime with police statistics. The result is of course shocking—while most people seems to put the blame on visual minorities, the vast majority of the arrests are Caucasian. This is very typical everywhere. The majority does most of the crime but the minority takes most of the blame. The article confesses a bit of confusion and uncertainty on the cause of this misperception. Many speculations are made but the most important is not considered. We perceive incorrectly, so the first place we should look at is the means with which we perceive. In this case, that apparatus is news—newspapers, television and radio. The medium with which these media use is language. In commonly used language, the majority is invisible. When the Hells Angels committed hideous crimes, they are not a white criminal gang. They are just simply a criminal gang. But when a South Asian kills another, it does not have to do just with gang activities but Indian gang activities. The Hells Angels are perceived as an evil external to the majority Caucasian ethnic group. The murdering South Asian kid is perceived as a defining representative of the South Asian ethnic group. The cause of this effect is the language used. Just as when the food of the majority is just food but the others are ‘ethnic’ food’, so is criminality. If the news media want to identify the ethnicity of criminals and criminal organizations, they should identify all ethnic groups including the majority with equal enthusiasms. That would help clear up our perception a great deal and makes it much closer to reality.

A King Without Court

When the U.S. government appointed John Bolton to be ambassador to the U.N., its propaganda machine tried to put a good face on the man and claimed that he can get things done. Unfortunately, as the vote on the creation of the Human Rights Council shows, he does exactly as the sceptics around the world expected—isolates the U.S. further from the rest of the world. The vote was 170 for, 4 against and 3 absent. The four against are the U.S., Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. The absentees are Venezuela, Belarus and Iran. The three absentees avoided the vote because they do not want to appear to be voting with the U.S. And amongst the yes votes are most of the U.S.’s staunchest allies like Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. This can only be considered a complete diplomatic defeat, one that leaves no room for face. If this is the “effective” diplomacy the U.S. is going to practise, it may very well become the most irrelevant super power in history. But then, can an irrelevant country be considered a super power? What is a lead when no one, even it friends, agrees with it?

'They'd better start killing each other fast..."

Some people on U.S. television are speaking about the impending civil war in Iraq with barely contained glee. They reason that if there is a civil war in Iraq then the U.S. military can leave Iraq because they will have no part in a civil war. To quote a certain church lady: “Isn’t that convenient!” This is like killing the dad of a family, setting the children against each other over inheritance, and then wash ones hands of it. That is beyond misguided and wrong, it is evil and cowardly.

Citizen Protection

The U.S. has arrested a Canadian who went AWOL during the Vietnam War in one of his frequent crossed border trips. The only reason for arresting someone whose “crime” was pardoned decades ago seems to be, as we Chinese say, “kill and chicken to warn the monkey,” i.e. set an example for the young people in the military right now. This is fully within the right of the U.S. government to do, however unfair and hypocritical it is. What is so far missing from this is the Canadian government. I am no saying that we should mount an invasion/extraction action, however U.S.-like it may be, but there is nothing that our foreign department is doing—no visit, no lawyer, and no information for the family… Our government intercedes for drug runners but not for an old guys who forgot to file his application for an already announced pardon. Is that not a government we can all be proud of?

Cultural Reduction

It has been said that the secret of sauce making is reducing—to reduce a thin stock to a rich sauce. Unfortunately this cannot be said about cuisine in general. I had a very good dinner at an Indian restaurant tonight. The food was good and the price is excellent. What puzzles me, as I was half way through the meal, is that why Indian restaurants stay with the same menus through all these years. The food of the subcontinent is as diverse as China or Europe. Now, in North America, we have regionalized Chinese and French and Italian restaurants, it is high time to have regionalized Indian restaurants. Here in Vancouver, the choice in Indian restaurant is between “Indian fusion” and “tradition (outside of India) Indian.” While both can be very excellent, why can we not have some restaurants serving just Goa, Punjabi or Gujarat food unapologetically? As good as they can make lamb vindaloo, rogan josh, chicken tandoori and palak paneer, it does get tiresome eating them from one restaurant to the next and then the next. My Indian friends like to tell me how diverse the cooking over there is; I think we are ready to have some of that over here. Since most of us here, Chinese or non-Chinese, are not eating chop suet anymore, we are ready for some more variety in Indian food. Reducing is good for French sauces, but when it comes to a great cuisine, it is not that great an idea.

Rather Shakespearean

The most “much ado about nothing” award in the first couple of months of this year got to be Ralph Klein’s “third way.” Millions of brain cells and even more spit have been scarified in the aftermath of its publication. There are praises, accusations, recriminations, indignations galore in all forms of media, but does it warrant such attention? There are a lot of hooplas but the document itself is more vague than diplomatic statement of principles before summit meetings. To quote Lorne Gunther’s article in the Edmonton Journal on the 8th, it is full of “clichés wrapped in enthusiasms inside hollow jargon.” It provided little to none in terms of how to implement this litany of vagueness. Is that what is going to threaten our medical system? Is this going to be the beginning of the road to the hell that is the U.S. medical system? It certainly does not look like it. The thing is not even cheered in Alberta, much less anywhere else. If it were a movie, I would be the biggest flap so far this year. Well, I say so far because my own province’s PM is on his great European hospital tour. Now, that is a Gigli in the making.

New Dredd City

To complain and reject international judgements is used to be the exclusive area for countries like China, the U.S.S.R., Romania and Pinochet’s Chile. The U.S. used to tell these countries, well, not Pinochet so much, that the rest of the world is right and they are wrong. Now, increasingly these countries have become better international citizens in the last decades of two. Maybe the U.S. is sensing a vacuum being created in the world, they has been trying very hard to fill it, punishing good people along the way. As more and more countries are ratifying the creation of the International Criminal Court, the U.S. is doing everything it can to stop it. It makes one wonder why they are doing it. It can’t be that they know that they have committed some international crimes. It cannot be. The world police committed crime? They can’t possibly be afraid of the law, can they? It must be that they have policed the world so why there is no need for courts anymore. After all that is the country ruled by law, they would not think of living above the law themselves. I must therefore come to the conclusion that the U.S. is scarifying itself to play the bad guys so good has a reason to exist. Now, that is heroic.

Exporting Madness

I read a funny article in the Newsweek site today. The article “Globalizing Health” by Dean Ornish, a medical doctor, is not intended to be funny but it is so foolish that it is laughable. The thesis is that since the world is increasingly eating like Americans, the U.S. should “export healthier ways of living.” Unfortunately, in order to be able to export anything, you have to make it first. What the U.S. has to export is schizophrenia—unhealthy obsession about health and complete negligence of it. There is no middle ground on the matter in North America. You either totally dedicate yourself to the latest diet and exercise fad or eat five meals a day at MacDonald’s. There can be no moderation—life is a chase after either physical perfection or the maximum number of Big Macs. Dr. Ornish wants the major U.S. food companies to produce and sell healthier foods for the world. Well, they are the one who go North American to this point. I suppose he learnt his reasoning from his government: “the only one that can drive you out of a ditch is the guy who drove you into it in the first place.” If you ask me, the quickest way to “export” healthier way of living is to limit market access to the companies he mentioned. Young people in Japan will certainly eat healthier if they have less burgers and pizzas.

Champagne de Venoge

I have never liked Champagne much—it is light, expansive, uninteresting and, ultimately, unsatisfying. It is more of a ritual than a drink, more pretension than enjoyment. This year’s Playhouse Vancouver International Wine Festival, however, provided a tasting where I got to try dozens of Champagne in one setting. While most of them are exactly how I remember and expected of them, one I had never drank provided a great pleasant surprise. I do not suppose most Champagne lovers would like the wines from the house of de Venoge. They make their Champagnes with a lot of Pinot Noir and give their wines a depth of flavour and terroir that set them apart from all other Champagnes. They feel ancient, grand and challenging, very much the anti-Champagne. They remind me of the original nobles (connected to the land) and not the latter days nobles (airheads in the courts). I can sit down with them, drink with them and have fun with them. I cannot do that with most other Champagnes. Finally there are Champagnes that I like and for that I must thank the festival and Mr. Gilles de la Bassetière for making and bringing them.

What a MacMinister!

This Conservative government is certainly different. Peter MacKay brings out the revolutionary idea that there is no need for a parliamentary debate because how long Canadian soldiers are going to be in Afghanistan will be determined by the generals. Mr. MacKay is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the senior cabinet minister in charge of our relationship with other countries. It is Mr. MacKay’s responsibility, along with the PM, to determine whether they should ask parliament to send troops aboard. This is one of the fundamental principles of our political system. If the generals are going to determine our military’s stay overseas, what do we need MacKay for? Or, parliament, for that matter. Mackay is a smart guy, I assume, so it certainly looks like he and his government are creating plausible deniability. Should things continue to go badly in Afghanistan they can just put the blames on the generals—“they told us to do it!” He is setting the military up for the fall. For a party that likes to say they support the troops, this is particularly despicable.

Kingly Minister

Stephen Harper wants to appoint judges that “are prepared to apply the law rather than make it.” This is a statement against the so-called ‘activist’ judges that fill the high courts these days. Peter McKnight’s article “First, define ‘judicial activism’” in last Saturday’s Vancouver Sun takes a careful look at the issue and come up with some surprising numbers. As it turns out, the Canadian Supreme Court rules far more for the government than against it; and, interestingly the ‘conservative’ judges are far more likely to strike down laws passed by parliament than ‘liberal’ judges. That is to say the ‘activist’ ‘liberal’ judges are far less activist than the ‘respectful’ ‘conservative’ judges. This result is surprising because the right and then the media, who created and popularized the term ‘judicial activism,’ have been telling us that it is the ‘liberal’ elements in the court that are activists. As it turns out, they both either got it wrong or plain lied. McKnight quite rightly pointed out that laws need interpretation to be workable, that Canada is mostly a common-law country (i.e. it works by legal precedent, judgment by judges), that the Supreme Count makes its decision by following the Constitution and Charters of Canada (i.e. applying the supreme laws of the nation). The only reason Mr. Harper complains about ‘activist judges’ is that they make judgements against his wishes. And, of course, that also means that the laws and his interpretations of them are against the Constitution and the Charters. How very kingly of our Prime Minister.

They Really Do Make News

While CNN is quietly and not so quietly laughing at Fox News for doing non-news, it is serving up its own gems daily. Take the Oscar for example. They have been talking about the nominations and predicting the winners daily on every show everyday for weeks now. It would not be an understatement to say they are promoting the hell out of it. The Oscar is an award given by an industry organisation to its members in the profession for good performance. It should be of no particular interest to the general public. Its popularity today is due largely to the constant reporting by the media; that is to say, it is the media that make it important. It is curious than when CNN runs a report on Hollywood’s disconnect with “Middle America.” They interview a senior church group literary in the middle of America about the “gay theme” movie nominated this year. Of course these good people have to go a couple towns over if they want to see a movie, and, understandably, they have not seen any for quite a few years. So, when asked they can only resort to the common answer: “we don’t like all the sex in movies.” The irony is that these “gay theme” movies have little to no sex in them, no in Capote, not in Transamerica, and very little in Brokeback Mountain. The old lady wants to see movies like “The Sound of Music” when asked what would she want to see. Well, she probably has not seen a movie since that Austrian story about a cold and remote father of seven falling in love with a young nun working in his house not entire of her own free will. If these seniors are the true “Middle America” then it is a rather sad statement for the country. The Oscar, as such, has no responsibility to represent the “Middle America”; it represents only the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. It of course has no “connection” with “Middle America” or any America for that matter. It is organizations like CNN that make the award the standard setter of movie achievement. For them to then turn and accuse the Oscar and Hollywood of being disconnected with this mythical place, it is the worst kind of self-serving hypocrisy. If movie is an art then it should not be beholden to any part of society. And if it is a business, then, as free marketers like to say, it should have its financial interest as its primary consideration. The “Middle America” in the report probably would not want to see Théodore Géricault's paintings of severed heads. And Halliburton would not care about anybody unless they hold large bunch of stocks. The question is not if and why Hollywood is disconnected with anyone anywhere. The question for CNN should be why it is important enough for CNN to spend more airtime on it than Bush’s nuclear agreement with India.

Prime is King

Stephen Harper “is loath to co-operate with” the ethics commissioner on the investigation into the Prime Minister’s enticement of David Emerson to change party the day after the election. His office said that the PM wants to “to create a truly non-partisan ethics commissioner, who is accountable to Parliament." This is funny because the one place you cannot possibly have a non-partisan ethics commissioner. If the commissioner were to investigate a Member of Parliament, how could he be answerable to the body control by either his party or his opponents? And when the commissioner investigates a bureaucrat, does the minister responsible for the bureaucrat no a member of the majority of the Parliament? The point of having an independent ethics commissioner is to have his office independent of parliamentary influence. If the commissioner is accountable to the Parliament, is he not really accountable to the leader of the majority of the Parliament—the PM? If Mr. Harper “loathes” co-operation with the commission now, what would he do if the commissioner were under his thumb? Just a month into his reign, Mr. Harper is certainly looking imperial.

Demo-stability

The Australian think-tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a study on the rise of China and its global impact. While economically it provides little new insight, it makes a rare observation that is worth careful consideration. In its contemplation of the possibility of a future more open, or even democratic, China, the study puts forth more warnings than happiness. It argues that a more democratic China will possible give rise to a nationalist and populist regime that would be destabilizing internally and externally. This scenario is certainly highly possible particularly if open election is to occur in China. Nothing in the last ten years has invoke more nation-wide passion than an uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean claimed by all East Asian Countries, any minor more by the Taiwanese government, or the continually failing national soccer team. All these issue illustrates that China has not overcome the national inferiority complex created a century ago. And nothing is more attractive to democratic politicians than easily incitable passions. So, quite contrary to popular beliefs, democracy does not necessarily translate to reasonable government and friendly policies; just look at 1933 German or Palestine now. Democracy is a crapshoot at best. If stability and predictability is what people want, the present political set up in China may be the best anyone can hope for. And if democracy is desired, we must be able to deal with it consequences. What this study makes a mistake on is its presumption that the U.S. government, now or previous, wants a democratic China. It has been using democracy as a bargain chip with China. Democracy is a not even a means must less the end.

Not Free Medicine

The recent firings of editors at the Canadian Medical Association Journal illustrate the inherent conflict within the mandate of such professional associations. The CMA is at once a lobbying group, a medical publisher, a consultant for the unions, a provider of financial services, etc. Traditionally these functions are kept separated from each other. This is especially the case with the CMAJ where research on medical science and practices are published independent of the lobbying wing. It provides a crucial service in not only science but also public policies. Now the CMA wants to rein in the journal and refuse to accept its editorial independence. They are trying to turn an academic science journal into a medium of their propaganda. The consequence of this is dire. We will lose an essential source of medical information. Moreover, it will become a propaganda masquerading as science. This is unheard of in the medical journals of the world.

Perfumed Wine

I understand that most fundraising events are held where the sponsors want it, but sometime you just have to say no. Tonight the Playhouse Theatre annual fundraiser—The Vancouver International Wine Festival—had a Champagne tasting event in Holt Renfrew. It is a nice store with money to spend on a premier event and the thing is done nicely. The problem is, besides designer clothes, they also sell a lot of perfumes. Why would a winemaker want to have people taste their wine, much less Champagne, the most delicate of them all, in front of a perfume counter is beyond my comprehension. Piper-Heidsieck’s table is right next to three large open bottles of perfume which result in a funny conversation about how the wine smell so heavily of vanilla. The most ridiculous thing is as soon as you walked in, they tie a ribbon soaked in a new Gaultier perfume on the women’s wrist. Nothing destroys the olfactory sense than this black ribbon. Every time they raise their glass they inhale not the wine but heavy musky scent of the black ribbon. If I had any fondness for Jean-Paul’s product, this ribbon eradiated it completely. The reason this wine festival is so popular with both tasters and producer is its excellent combination of fun and seriousness. With more events like this, I would recommend that winemakers to not come. What a waste of wine. Otherwise, it was all lovely.