Ta-Mah!

I must have been gravely misinformed all those years that I thought the best way for a government to be accountable is to have its records opened to the citizens. So, when Stephen Harper came up with the Federal Accountability Act, I thought, good, a more accessible and open government. Little did I know how foolish I ended up feeling. Instead of opening the government's records and make them easier to access, the 'Accountability Act' will make them far harder to get to. So, the 'Accountability Act' is not pro-accountability, like health care, but anti-accountability, like crime bills. Oh, yeah, Harper is far more fond of crime bills than health care. I should have known. Treasury Board Chairman John Baird called Information Commissioner John Reid's criticism of the Act “85% of these concerns are tomato, tomahto.” They must be two very different kinds of Solanaceae. If Mr. Baird like tomato/tomahto so much, may I suggest we all go into our cold storage to find a couple buckets of very soft tomatoes and simply land them on his head. That is the very least that we can do in respond to being shut out by our own government.

I want my ... Enemies!

Every now and then I come across things that make me think enemies may do more for me than friends. Take Jean-Daniel Lafond, the husband of Governor General Michaelle Jean, for example. Lafond made a documentary on an American terrorist who murdered an Iranian diplomat in 1980 and is now hiding in Iran. By newspaper accounts, Lafond takes a sympathetic view of his subject. As one would expect, there are a lot of claims and theories of American evil plots and conspiracies. Anyone who is not totally gullible would view all these with suspicion, if not a laugh. In fact, very few would have a chance to see this film if not for the “outrage” from such publication as the National Post. Columnist John Geiger, for example, wrote in Wednesday's NP that it is an embarrassment and all the fault of Paul Martin. Sure, some may not like the appointment of Michaelle Jean's appointment to the GG but I do not think Martin is responsible for Lafond being a bad filmmaker. Geiger does not only think Lafond a bad filmmaker and a nauseating elitist, he thinks the film embarrasses Canada. The question is in front of whom does he thinks Canada is embarrassed? The U.S., of course. As far as I know, very few people down south, including those in government, know who Jean is, much less Lafond. Certainly when told of this most American would blame it on the crazy French and not Canadian as a whole. It is strange when Geiger, a Canadian, would be more upset by this than most American. Sure, most of the theories in the film are probably wrong but who cares? There are crazy people spilling crazy talks everyday. The GG is supposed to be representing our sovereign Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second as our ceremonial head of state. Lafond is just following the crazy ways of The Prince of Wales! Geiger shows his own craziness with what he said about Lafond's advocation for Quebec sovereignty: “Better that than what he is now doing to the United States with one finger.” Why does he think the breaking up of our country much better than some minor conspiracy theories about the U.S.? This man has some funny sense of priority. He ends his piece with this: “Thanks to Paul Martin, it is a discussion we must now all be subjected to.” No, not thanks to Paul Martin but John Geiger. Without Geiger bringing this to our attention, most of us would never have heard of this film or its content. Now, I want to see the film to find out what is really said. If I find it a horrible waste of my time, I would blame it on Mr. Geiger instead of Martin or Jean or Lafond. The audience of this film must have increase a hundred fold with Mr. Geiger's effort. With enemies like this, who need friends.

Keep on Walking

Maybe it is a sign that I spent too much of my formative years in cities like Hong Kong and New York when I was surprised to read that 80,000 Belgians marched on the street in protest of a young man's murder over his MP3 player. Maybe this is worth a section B report but the largest march in a decade? Isn't that a little over doing it? That was my first reaction. It is, of course, a horrible reaction to a tragedy. The sad thing is that the strong reaction the Belgians showed invokes not so much sympathy but nostalgia, nostalgia for the mythical time murder was a remarkably horrible thing. I am not sure how many of the 80,000 marched because they thought, mistakenly, that the killers were North African, but for a little country like Belgium, that is still a lot of people when discounted the racists. After feeling bad about my initial reaction and feeling sorry about the young man's death, I still find the demonstration puzzling. I understand putting out flowers, building monuments and holding vigils, but a march? What are they marching for? If they were all racists and they march against immigrants, that is a reason, wrong but a reason nonetheless. But to remember someone who they do not know? Is that not overdoing it a little? If this murder is a common place event, an unremarkable part of our everyday experience, there may be a good reason to march, to urge all into action to combat it. The strange thing is this kind of marches happen mostly in places where there is no need for it. Murder rate in Belgium is very low so they feel something must be done when one happens. This is good news for them but bad news for places with high crime rate--because you can use a march, you won't have one. That is truly the sad part.

Oil Wagon

Recently the media's focus on U.S.--China relation has shifted from trade and human rights to a single thing: oil. This is understandable since the U.S. is fighting a war, admitted or not, over the control of a major oil producing nation. Add to this high gasoline prices, no wonder there is only one thing in their minds. Alarmists are of course running around like headless chickens screaming doom everywhere. Even the optimist are looking concerned in front of the camera. There is an unprecedented sense of there is not enough of oil to go around. This is what environmentalists and conservationists have been saying for decades and either ignored or "rebuttaled" by the 'mainstream.' It is a good thing therefore that people are starting to take the issue seriously. The reaction, however, is blind and negative. Regardless of what the Chinese are doing, sooner or later there will not be any oil anymore. What the Chinese are trying to do is to use diplomacy to accomplish what the U.S. accomplished with carrier battle groups. If the Chinese government cannot secure enough supply of oil for China, they will fall out of power regardless of what political system under which they operate. The backward lookers of Europe and North America are feeling threatened and start to contemplate extreme scenarios of conflict over oil. Mad Max slowly becomes the metaphor for them. This is however a good chance to recognize that oil is quickly becoming the energy source of the past, like it or not, and move wholeheartedly to the future, the next major source(s) of energy. For fifty years, the U.S. has hitched its wagon to oil. Now the question is will the great U.S. empire goes down with oil? There is a minor revolt of oil producing countries that is getting more and more major everyday. It is not China that the U.S. has to worry about on this matter; it is their inability to coup with change that is the problem.

Productive Procrastination

I really should find more things that I do not want to do so I can get more of the things I have been planning done. Take tax filing, for example. As we start on the final week of tax filing, I really should finish it and get it over with. What I just did was to rearrange my living room. Sure, I have been thinking about it for a few weeks now, tired of the old and finding more appealing arrangements. It is not a pressing thing like filing my tax return. As the deadline approaches on filing, rearranging furniture quickly takes on a kind of urgency, a sort of aesthetic desperation. True motivation suddenly urges me to move large pieces of furniture. Even the dust bunnies behind and under everything are singing their songs of siren. I must thank Revenue Canada like Odysseus must have thank Poseidon. Without their inspiration, neither Odi or I would have heard such wonderful songs.
Now that I have rearranged the furniture, what is next? Tree trimming, perhaps, anything but counting T-3's and T-5's.

Hey, Mine!

It has been said many many time in the the last few months that the land dispute and subsequent protest in Caledonia, Ontario resembles the 1995 clash at Ipperwash. That may be the case but it is not just Ipperwash and not just Ontario but many others. The problem of this is the absurd amount of land claims and disputes better different levels of the Canadian government and the Native Nations. As the Nations press forward with their claims, the government has by and large ignored them. If press, the government, no matter it is federal or provincial, can only say that it would cost too much to settle these claims. This is extremely worrying since the government is in fact admitting wrong in the matter and refuse to redress it. If the government does not think it is wrong, there would be no compensation, i.e. financial consequence. Take Caledonia for example. The land the Six Nations settled on is either given out right to them by the British or being held in trust for them by the British and then Canadian government. In either case, the government(s) has no right to sell the land with the objection of the Six Nations. And if there were breach of trust, the sales would have to be void and compensations be paid. Even in the case of holding for trust, if the government sold the land against the interest of the Six Nations, the government must bear all consequences, legally and financially. No wonder the government has always claimed that it is too expansive to deal with the matter. The reason it has gotten so expansive is time. If all these were fix a hundred years ago, we would not have this problem. One day the bill has to be paid, and it will only cost more the longer we wait. We have all been taught from childhood that ignoring a problem does not make it go away. Oh, I forgot, Prime Ministers and Premiers are there for only a few years each. Ignoring things do go away for them. But then, where are we all going to go?

Basic Math Education Day

There are few “movements” that use fake data as well as the Frazer Institute's “Tax Freedom Day.” Even with Neil Brooks' paper debunking Frazer's math a few years ago, newspapers still bring it out this time of the year. Sure, no one want to pay out money; but to say that we are grossly overtax is just wrong. I have lived in a few countries, under different tax systems and I have no major complaints about the Canadian system. In Hong Kong, the personal income tax is relatively low and that make people happy. The trick there is that the government gets its money from land auctions. By keeping land value artificially high, the government racks in shocking amounts of money. High land value means housing is by far the largest expanditure of anyone living in Hong Kong. Consequently, rents, home price and morgages are psuedo-taxes that people pay to not just the government that provide them services but developers and landowners who do nothing for them. Money is still out of people's pocket, just under a different name. In the U.S., over a decade ago, I paid thousands of dollars a year on health insurance as a young man. I received worse service there than I do here now. And I do not think I pay more, percentage wise, then than now. It is easy to get blinded by officially sounding names and fancy numbers, but one must look at the whole picture. Canadians, over all, are as wealthy as any other country and receive better services from their government than most. The problem is not how much we pay but how we make sure the money is spent correctly.

Sleeping Dogs

My last entry garnered some very nice comments. I thank the commentors for contributing. I agree with them that better understanding of each other, particularly at the top level of both government, is desperately needed. Zakaria's suggestion at the end of his article is therefore an excellent one. The problem is that direct dialogue between the two leaders would not serve that purpose very well. As strong as both leaders want to appear, their powers are limited to a great degree by their personal and domestic circumstances. I seriously doubt the ability of George W. Bush to understand the situation across the pacific. He has not displayed any ability to understand subtleties and nuances in anything. The problem with the U.S. government is not that they have no one who has some good understanding of China but that those people are always under suspicion. Hu Jintao seems to understand, or at least formulated some ways to deal with, the U.S. better, but he is not in a position near absolute power, like those before him, but as the front man for a collective. Their concerns are practical—how to work the U.S. political system. Most would agree they have been doing a pretty good job in the last few years. The immediate and most important concerns of the Chinese government is not the U.S. but their domestic issue, and to them, that include Taiwan. The government of China has no desire to be friend or foe with the U.S. They just want to keep the U.S. out of their affairs. There is also no desire for Washington to have any special relationship with China at the moment because, frankly, they are too occupied else where. This results in the oddness of this state-maybe-not-so-state visit. China wants to do business and photo ops and the the U.S. wants to look imperially disinterested. That is a bit of a role reversal. All the noises we hear are from neither government, they seem to be fairly happy with the state of affairs. As much as some people want to bring the relationship between the countries to the forefront of the political agenda, it does not seem either governments are eagered to do so. Maybe they know it is a can of worms that is better left closed. In the long run, this may serve the Chinese government better but the U.S. cannot afford to make another enemy, much less one as powerful as China, right now. It is a postponement that may not turn out to be a bad thing. As wages continue to rise in China, the trade balance will no doubt decrease in time. If the DPP fails to win the next election in Taiwan as expected, the temperature on the Strait will cool considerable. And if the Chinese government can manage the growth of the economy in the next few years, resisting dramatic rise of the Yuan's value being the most important, there will be no major instabitlies domestically. All these mean the Pacific will continue to be stable. If, however, a ideological or economic war were to start, the consequece is too horrible to contemplate.

Simplistic World

For a smart guy, Fareed Zakaria is mystifyingly naïve. Take his article “Adrift in a turbulant world,” he seems to think that country should have clear and enounciated attitude towards each other. What is more puzzling is that he seems to think the attitude consists solely of the choice between friend and foe. This is the position of either a simpleton or an ideologue. I do not think Zakaria is trying to be either but he does play the roles quite well sometime. The relationship in question in the article is between China and the U.S. These are two countries that live in an almost infinitely complicated internal and external world. Both governments have to work very carefully to navigate a course that would be practical both for their perpective countries and the contiuation of their domestic power. Their diplomatic relationships with other countries are no less complicated. All these contribute mightly to the relationship between the two countries. Both are taking a practical approach right now—in some areas they fight and in some they coorperate. The U.S. must rely on China's support in most of its diplomatic initiatives; and China can ill affort to make an enemy of the U.S. If either express a clear cut friend or foe position regarding the other, we will surely head toward a much more chaotic world than it already is. It is to neither's interest to go anywhere near that. I do not know what is Zakaria's objective in asking for this clarity. Is he nostalgic for the cold war? Or is he just too lazy to deal with issues seperately?

Let's go back to foot bounding

There are underground providers of Botox injection in North America and PAAG breast argumentation in China. In both of these cases, people have gotten seriously sick and die after receiving the injections. This proves once and for all that people in both side of the pacific are essentially the same—vain, cheap and gullible. It is a crazy enough idea to have a doctor inject a neural toxin or pints of industrial gels into ones body, but it is quadruple crazy to have your dumber-than-a-bat neighbourhood beautician. I remembered people used to react in horror when the issue of foot bounding came up. The fact that many of those people were wearing heels shows how far we had come. Now, with Botox and PAAG, foot bounding seems very civilized. Surely foot bounding is horrible and unjustifiable practise that causes massive pain and physical deformity, it is at least not lethal. Botox, however, is one of the most deadly toxins; and PAAG is Hydrophilic Polyacrylamide, just the name is scary enough. Most of the women suffered from foot bounding had no choice in the matter. The recipients of Botox and PAAG voluntarily put them into their bodies and cause them to deform, risking severe health consequence. We certainly have progressed, but to a different direction than expected. Now, the foot bounding mentality has been fully internalized—no one has to force it onto anyone. Weather this is forward or backward, I am not sure. Maybe there is an upside to it. If these chemical product leaks out of the body, Botox would cause paralysis and acrylamide damage the male reproductive glands. Perhaps they can serve as a form of birth control. And that is a benefit foot bounding cannot provide.

Not Just The Cows Are Mad

There is another suspected Mad Cow case here in British Columbia. The cow in question is six years old, so the infection may have occurred a few years ago. It is a little bit of a relief since may not be a new infection. It does provide another warning on the safety of our food and the ‘science’ of commercial entities. It was the feed industry that decided to make vegetarian farm animals into cannibals. For years ‘science’ had been provided to the public to rebut calls for this practise. A few years ago, we realize this is not a very good idea when people started to get sick. I wonder what happened to the people who have been providing us with the ‘science’ justifying it? This is not a unique case either. Time and again, industry calls whoever does not agree with them ‘nutcases’ and ‘extremist’ only to find that it is the industry that is mad. We get all up in arms when a toy may fall and hurt an infant but allow industries to put our lives and our world in horrific risk. We cannot be too careful about this sort of things. Take GMO for example. It is not something we can be too careful about. If human existence is depending on it, we may want to move it in the pace we do now. Short of that though, there is no reason we should not take all cautions. We simply cannot afford to go ‘oops’ a few years down the line. The ‘oops’ maybe what put us in disaster.

New Prison Money

Nineteen months ago Alberta banished tobacco from its prisons. That is a pretty scary thought—prisoners get more irritable than they already are. Fortunately when it comes to illegal drugs, there is no better place for the development of an alternative source and delivery system. Inmates are cooking their own cigarettes. They take nicotine patches and cook the nicotine out and then soak it up with toilet paper, which is then dried for smoking. This surely is a testimony to human ingenuity and the power of nicotine. They must have shown documentaries on how cigarettes are made in prison because what they are doing is simply a reverse engineered cigarette production method. The most interesting thing though is this no doubt create not only a new industry in prison but a new currency. Cigarette, in movies at least, is supposed to be the currency in prisons. So, beyond addiction, they need a new form of currency to facilitate ‘commerce’ behind bars. The unintended benefit of the ban may be the creation of a new and more portable money—nicotine patches. It is like moving from gold and silver to paper money. It is going to be a new world inside.

Styling Binners

A cart specially designed for urban bottle salvagers—binners—are being tested here in Vancouver. It is a good idea since the cart is better looking, quieter and more efficient. Sounds like it is something that can make everyone, well, not exactly happy, but happier. Merchants do not have to complain about ‘bums’ making their street ugly. Recyclers can be more efficient and quiet. The binners lives can be just a little easier. And for the rest of us, our environment would improve. The only problem seems to cost. The designers estimate the price for the carts to be about 300. That is quite a lot bottles, 3000 to be exact. They figure that one of the ways to help pay for the carts is advertisements on the carts. This can be an interesting sight—while the binner is digging through garbage tanks for discard beer cans, his cart is advertising Pol Roger! That probably will have happen with champagne but major soda brands would do too. I hope this advertisement idea will come to be and not only pay for the carts but also help the binners’ income. After all they provide an essential service in our cities and they should get paid better.

GURT

It is good that Agriculture Canada has decided to not allow Genetic Us Restriction Technology (GURT) field test for the time being. At first sight GURT seems to be a good idea—it at once protect the patent rights of the companies that created the seeds and prevent cross-pollination. The problem is that both of these ‘benefits’ have serious problems. Patent rights are not perpetual and they should not be, particularly genetic patents. The materials used are directly taken from nature. If we can consider nature property, it can only be considered as share by all. In this case then, the right should be in the combination of the genes, but the material—the genes themselves—are not property of the companies. They should therefore be treated like medicines and have limit put on their patents. Once the patent runs out, anyone should be able to reproduce these seed. With them being infertile, this is impossible without the backing of technology unavailable to most. The result is that properties that we partly own is taken away and then sold back to us without limit. That is akin to theft. When it comes to cross-pollination there is more immediate concern. Gene technology is not 100% reliable. If some seeds carrying the gene but the infertile character is not manifested the consequence is dire when other seeds can then carry the infertile genes. The consequences can be disastrous. There is one more concern, it seems to me. If GURT is generally successful, seeds companies will focus on the much more profitable GURT seeds and the distribution of other seeds will become scarce. In that scenario, the supply of the world’s food will be controlled by the seeds companies and we will have a situation worse than oil supply today. We must not allow the world’s food supply be controlled by just a few organizations.

Dead Art

Classical ‘high’ arts organizations like to complain about their problem in expanding their viewership. That certainly is true. Many of my over-educated friends have not gone to a recital (no their children) much less an opera for years. This is even more the case of the normal educated. This should not have been the case. Consider opera for example; where, other than professional wrestling, can one find such sex, violence and melodrama on stage? There is nothing deep or hard to understand in opera. It is not Sartre or Pinter. When it does Shakespeare, it does the lite version. The language is certainly a barrier, but there are many ways to overcome that. I went to see Mozart’s Mask Ball with a friend who had never seen an opera before. It was not a big production and the singing is rather average. My friend was disappointed and commented that it is sort of like a musical in Italian. To most opera lovers this is unforgivable heresy. When one think about it though, my friend was right. In its heydays, opera houses were not unlike music halls where there were as much going on in the box seats as on stage. The problem occurs when these arts become high. It serves the egos of performers and, more importantly, the patrons of these arts. Now the stars are no long sexy or flamboyant and the halls more classrooms than fun houses. The result is that the performances are boring and the environment restrictive. And, since it is supposed to be ‘high’ arts, people go looking for something otherworldly, something sublime, something powerful, instead they get boring melodrama. Women used to swoon over Liszt and Chopin. Princes used to fall hard for opera singers. The death of an art form is marked by losing its art and being mesmerized by its own importance. For a lover of these arts, it is sad and infuriating to watch it kills itself.

Not Very Mysterious Lane

Neighbours are funny people, they can help and annoy at the same time. I have two elderly neighbours, one Italian and one Hungarian, who dislike each other and like talking to me. Both of them have very productive vegetable gardens. This is the time of the year to start the garden and since I started working out in mine, they both talk to me, separately, telling me what I am doing wrong. Their experiences are very useful but, with them talking to me for an hour at a time, I end up getting very little done. Although it is entertaining (they slyly slip in little complaints and expression of distain for each other) and educational (about digging dirt and growing things), I end up with no time to do the things they say I should have done last week. The reason I like my neighbourhood is its neighbourliness and its mix of different immigrants. It can be a bit of a soap opera though, particularly when the weather is good and people are out. Men usually complain about women gossiping and meddling in other’s business, when I look around, I found my male neighbours are meddling in my business much more than female neighbours. The meddling is welcome sometimes and annoying others for sure, but it is still good to have neighbours like these; even though it makes me feel like living in a sitcom sometimes.

Fictional Loans

It should be a great relieve to all fiction readers and writers that the courts in Britain struck down the claim against the author and publisher of The Da Vinci Code. If this claim were valid, no work of fiction can be written again unless writers become illiterate and not read anything. One of the most important things that fiction writers do is to absorb from their surroundings and ideas they counter to enrich their works and thus indirectly enrich the readers’ lives. Shakespeare, for example, borrowed directly from other works of fiction and accounts and theories of people of the past and his time. If writers were not allowed to do what Dan Brown did with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh’s work, there would be no Shakespeare, no Christopher Marlow and no Edmund Spenser. In other words, there would be no English language as we know it. A profession historian would understand this and appreciate the fruit of their works—the friction based on their works. Baigent and Leigh are, however, not so much historians but prospectors of telltales; and as such they first claim what they said to be historical facts and then claim ownership of these fact. They cannot have it both ways.

Let's Propagandize

People are protesting in Toronto against CRTC approval of state run television channels to join our cable stables. The reason for the opposition is that these channels are propaganda tools for the Chinese government. I am not in favour of having these channels on (or should it be ‘in’?) my cable box but not for that reason. I am against it is they are crappy channels that I do not want to take up my channel numbers. If propaganda is reason to stop a channel from being approved, then I do not know how many channels will be left. CBC for one would be out—just look at the ‘Part of Our Heritage’ advertisements; if that is not propaganda and recitation of tired myths, I do not know what is. And what about Foxnews from south of the border? Or, Lou Dobbs! Since many of most popular programmes, including news programmes, from the channels in question are already being broadcasted here, the demonstrators’ reason seems to have come a little too late. This is a country with dedicated religious channels, how can we not approve any channel for being propaganda?

Spaghetti Tubing

Kitchen appliance makers have gotten so out of hands that their products and advertisements border on fraud. Take the electric grills, for example, first was a George Foreman gimmick but now they have become so specialized that they are certainly destined for the deep corner of the garage. I saw a quesadilla grill today. Who on earth need a specialized quesadilla grill? It is dish that is cooked on either a grill or a flat pan. What kitchen does not have a simple pan? It is almost alchemy—making something out of nothing. And people must buy them or all the big stores would not display it so prominently. What is taking this absurdity to the extreme is the pasta cooker they are selling on infomercial now. It is just a double-layered tube that you can put dry pasta in, pour in hot water and wait for it to cook. This maybe useful for people in dorms or hotel room where a coffee pot is all the cooking appliance there is. They are however selling it to home cooks. I never know boil spaghetti is so difficult that it would require a specially designed tube to make it possible. It is either that people are really dumb or these people selling stuff have special powers. Come to think of it, probably both.

Friends of Technology

Another Canadian soldier may have been killed by ‘friendly’ fire. Why is it that it seems more Canadian soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by ‘friendly’ than hostile fire? There are so many easily thing I can say here, “with friends like that…” and such, but what bugs me is that the friends like to tell everybody how advanced and well train they are. That may be true and we have all seen it on the Discovery Channel, but this makes the dead fires more puzzling. I understand the battlefield is a confusing place but now that they have visual aids, electronic sights, computer co-ordinated troop control, satellite monitored battlefield and body armour, they should at least tell who is on their team. My disbelief is not unusual. It is so easy to be blinded by technology and sales materials that one gets completely detached from reality. Technology is the prime justification for Rumsfeld’s decision to send fewer troops to Iraq than recommended. His reaction when things started to felt into chaos must be somewhat like mine: “how could it possibly be, with all the technologies?” As Canadian troops are readying themselves for a major battle, I hope they trust their friends’ technologies less and their survival instincts more.

Science Reality

The Great Condi and Straw show in Baghdad has inspired many witty and sarcastic articles, particularly in Britain. Over this side of the pond, Newsweek has one rather interesting but inconsistent article by Michael Hirsh. His description of the Green Zone in Baghdad is particularly interesting. It at once invokes the images of a gated community and cities in science fictions like Code 46 and Mad Max. I suppose they are all pretty much the same thing, at least in basic ideas, in that they are all despotic locales behind walls and guns, with which they maintain their domination of the outside. Disconnect and misinformation are typical. The power relationship between the inside and the outside is metaphoric and imaginary in science fiction but in Baghdad or Isleworth it is reality. Build a wall, close your eyes and hire someone to subdue the restless natives, that is the whole idea. Now the U.S. may soon build a wall along its border, I guess it is just appropriate.

Learish

You just have to give olde Bill his due—the guy certainly (re-)wrote some pretty timeless story. Just look at the palace of Alberta, is that not a King Lear in full displayed? Who would have known, least of all King Ralph, the children just cannot wait for the old man to go. After thirteen years as the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein announced that he will retire in October next year. As soon as that happened, the kids start to fight and the old man is being squeezed out. To say this is unbecoming is just too understated. Cruel, despicable and traitors are words that come to mind. Sure, I am no fan of Klein but still he deserves some respect and not be removed by a bunch of coyotes that he raised. Okay, may be he deserved it because he raised coyotes. But when Peyton Manning tries to squeeze himself into the picture, that is open feeding time. Poor Ralph, even the loser of losers tries to take a bite of him! Even Lear has a loyal daughter, where is Ralph’s Cordelia. Oh, poor Cordelia dies, never mind.

Spring Where?

Today is the day of Daylight Saving. I never quite understand why do we have to save daylight when there are almost infinite hours of daylight in the summer. It makes sense if we can store the surplus daylight, the daylight before 7am and after 8pm, and use it in the winter when the sun does not come up until 10am and leaves us by 4pm. That would be useful saving. As it is now the whole exercise is just that, a gesture looking for a reason. Some like to tell us that by moving the clock we save energy. It is not only a saving but also a great environmental policy, some tell us. There are much better and far more efficient ways to save energy. Why don’t governments put solar panels on the roof of every building, for example? That sounds like real daylight saving to me. UniverCity over at Simon Fraser University put solar cells on garbage cans to work the built-in compressors. Now, that is a good land and energy saving measure, and it won’t make me lose sleep. Meanwhile, I have to turn on all the lights in my house to find and change every clock in the middle of the night. That is going to make my meter turns; maybe that is the reason for the annoyance.