Non!

Jacques Chirac walked out of an EU meeting when someone from a francophone country spoke English, one of the official languages of the EU.

Chirac, who looks imcreasingly like a caricature of himself (like one of the spitting image puppets), took the whole French delegation out with him. This is the President of France - one of the G8 and a country in the middle of a crisis over its ability to compete in the modern world (hence their new labour laws and the resultant resistance to change). This is the country who insists on sabotaging the World Trade Organization's Doha round of talks by refusing to really consider rethinking farm subsidy.

France is looking to isolate itself politically, linguistically, commercially and economically. They are doing very well at this. C'la vie!

Goodbye and Good Luck, Mr Oberg

(Yesterday, the Alberta Conservative MLA's stripped a cabinet member (Lyle Oberg) of his position and his caucus membership. It has no rght to do so - only the Premier can appoint and dismiss cabinet members. Earlier another cabinet member left to fight a leadership race that doesnt begin until 2007. Here is a response, with acknowledgements to Oscar Wilde)


Losing one cabinet Minister, Mr. Klein, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Lyle Oberg’s “suspension” is a consequence of a political party which sees unity as more important than policy and performance and a leader who does not tolerate challenge within his own party.

In other jurisdictions – the US and Britain, for example – opposition within a ruling political party is normal. If Klein’s “obey or die” rules were applied, Britain would lose up to six cabinet members and Blair would not be on the way out. What is happening in fact is that Blair has more opposition within his party than he has from the official conservative opposition. In the US, many republicans oppose many aspects of George W Bush’s presidential policies and actions and don’t mind going on television to say so.

Oberg was right. A leadership review is not a coronation – party members should use their conscience to decide whether its time for Klein to go. Oberg was right to imply that he wouldn’t support Klein’s long goodbye – no one should. The Conservative Party should not tolerate this behaviour from their MLA’s and should let Klein know that intolerance is unacceptable. A smart caucus would have challenged Klein’s long goodbye and his leadership rules – both are party matters.

The Coming Pandemic

Three years ago I purchased a DVD recorder – a must for every serious watcher of The Soprano’s (HBO’s) and Swiss Tony (BBC). Now the only thing I record religiously is Charlie Rose (PBS) – the best in depth conversation show on television. Rose, a former lawyer, is well read and traveled, genuinely interested in the world and is very engaging. His interviews are in depth, thorough and yet are compelling, most of the time.

Today, he looked at the bird flu (H5N1) threat. He had a range of people, but asked Sir Paul Nurse (Nobel prize winner, President Rockefeller University) to help him push the debate with Peter Palese (Mt Sinai), Julie Gerberding(Director, Cenre for Disease Control), Laurie Garrett, Harvey Fineberg, Michael Levitt (Health Secretary, US Government) and David Nabarro (now senior UN official). Here is what came up:

• Some 50-75m could die if this thing takes off, though to date just 96 people have died (out of 165 infected) – this is about the same level of death as occurred in the very early stages of the 1918 pandemic (in 1918 50m died, as far as we know, with 700,000 deaths in the US).

• We don’t know infection rates, death probability or speed of transmission about this new bird-flu virus. If these were the same as 1918, then 150m or more could die under the most optimistic scenario. Right now, though, there has yet to be a case of human to human transfer.
• Not all bird species react in the same way – chickens die in larger number than ducks, for example.
  
• We don’t know if the virus will move to human : human transmission.
  
• We don’t have an antidote that is effective against this virus.
  
• It may be fast developing in Africa as a killer, given that many have weakened immune systems due to HIV/AIDS (yet, no one with HIV came down with SARS).
  
• Don’t get sucked into this being imminent – it could take some time.
  
• The key is to build effective surveillance, public health plans and speed up vaccine production and to engender a strong sense of personal hygiene.
  
• The economic consequences could be very serious – communities struggling to operate normally, when a significant portion of their peers are ill or dying.

My previous impressions have been that there is a lot of fear mongering going on. This show didn’t do this. It was a serious, calm and not Oprah like exploration of the issues. So now, wash your hands and keep an eye on the news.

The Last Days of Tony Blair

These are the last days of Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The signs of decline: a scandal involving backroom financial deals in exchange for favours and peerages, now being investigated by the British police; back bench disaffection over proposed reforms to the education system; the failure of public health reforms; Britain’s support of the US in Iraq; concerns over the undue influence of his wife, Cherie Blair – all are hallmarks of his last days.

A charismatic, inventive speaker and politician, he became Prime Minister in 1998 after the collapse, through disaffection and sleaze, of the Tory government of Sir John Major. Promising to clean up politics and to live by the highest standards, Blair proceeded to move quickly into a more Presidential style of government, speaking over his Ministers and using a small cabal of close advisors to drive policy and manage the media message.

Pushing public sector reform by increasing accountability, pouring billions into education and health in the hope of achieving dramatic performance improvements, Blair spoke the language of effectiveness, efficiency and reform. The National Health Service is now running massive deficits and performance has only marginally improved after £45b injection of funds. Schools continue to produce weak performance in comparison to other systems in other countries – hence the current call for reform.

The secret of Blair’s electoral success were an apparently strong economy, the massive investment in the public sector creating close to 1.8m new jobs in eight years (only 400,000 private sector jobs were created since Blair came to power) and the fact that there were no real alternative choices for a national leader from any of the opposition parties. Another factor was Blair’s art of denial - denial of the fact that Britain is now a high tax economy with growing public sector debt (now over £400b), denial of the pension liability Britain now faces and denial of the failure of the US:UK Iraq strategy. His own denials helped others deny reality too.

His legacy will be more about style than substance – about how to create and manage images, messages and the media. There are some specific achievements – enabling the IRA to disarm, a partial reform of the House of Lords, forgiving a large portion of African debt, creating an enhanced role for the private sector in the delivery of public services. But when set against the rhetoric of policy announcements, platform speeches and media messaging, these achievements are shallow. They will be greeted with the sound of one hand clapping.

Another reason for recognizing these as the last days of Blair is the arrival, just over 100 days ago, of a new leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron. Modeling himself after the early Blair and reinvigorating his party, Cameron presents real policy alternatives, a true alternative to Labour and an opportunity for the electorate to change leaders without a knee jerk change in the way Britain runs. Blair, seeing this, will soon make his call and move on.

Blair’s likely successor is Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a dour Scot from the Kingdom of Fife. Though he too will be tainted by the Labour Party’s current financial scandal, he is a classic tax and spend labour party leader who will have no new ideas to revitalize Britain or its ailing public services. He is now behaves as if he already is the Prime Minister, laying out policies on foreign affairs, security, the future of the European Union. HE may well win the leadership but be a short serving Prime Minister.

As the British Labour Party stares at bankruptcy – financial and intellectual – the British Conservative Party faces a new opportunity and a new challenge. Blair’s departure will put the spotlight on Cameron, the Conservative Prime Minister in waiting.

Blair may seek office elsewhere – some have suggested the UN Secretary General position, available in 2007 or the EU Presidency – but he is more likely to follow the Bill Clinton’s money making lecture circuit, at which he will excel. Meantime, we can all begin to watch the final decline and fall of a leading G8 political figure.

A Collection of Quotations...

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself
"Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."
Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)
.
I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
Victor Borge

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.
Mark Twain

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and
then she stops to breathe.
Jimmy Durante

I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
Zsa Zsa Gabor

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world
owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain

What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.
Henny Youngman

Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was Shut Up.
Joe Namath

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish
do in it.
WC. Fields

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty, but everything else starts to wear out,
fall out, or spread out.
Phyllis Diller

THE TALKING CLOCK

A drunk was proudly showing off his new apartment to a couple
of his friends late one night, and led the way to his bedroom where
there was a big brass gong and a mallet.
"What's that big brass gong?" one of the guests asked.
"It's not a gong. It's a talking clock," the drunk replied.
"A talking clock? Seriously?" asked his astonished friend. "Yup," replied the drunk. "How's it work?" the friend asked, squinting at it. "Watch," the drunk replied.
He picked up the mallet, gave the gong an ear-shattering pound, and stepped back. The three stood looking at one another for a moment. Suddenly, someone on the other side of the wall screamed, "MANIAC! IT'S THREE-FIFTEEN IN THE MORNING!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A POEM

He didn't like the casserole
And he didn't like my cake.
My biscuits were too hard...
Not like his mother used to make.
I didn't perk the coffee right
He didn't like the stew,
I didn't mend his socks
The way his mother used to do.
I pondered for an answer
I was looking for a clue.
Then I turned around and smacked him...
Like his Mother used to do.

Thanks Mike Scally..

The Nigger Boys Sunset Saloon and other Stories..

The title of this blog is the name of a barbers shop in Butare, Rwanda's second city - and a very popular place it is too. If I put such a sign up in Edmonton, the political correctness police would be all over me like a tonne of bricks.

If I were to say that homosexuals are "not acceptable" and are "immoral" and that same sex marriage "damages the very fabric of society" and suggest that these views were the views dominant in the Muslim world, I would probably be told I needed to educate myself about the Muslim faith. But these exact statements were made by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, one of the leaders of the Muslim faith in Europe, and are seen by most Muslim's as moderate statements. (Interestingly, the arabic language does not have a term for "gay" - instead those who are gay are referred to in terms of "shouzouz jinsi", which means unnatural love, though more modern arabs refer to gays in terms of "Ahrer el jins" which means "queers").

Sir Iqbal is now been investigated by British police for the hate crime of homo-phobia. Think about this for a moment. Sir Iqbal is outlining the views of his religion - for which he can now be prosecuted. Pope Benedict beware.

It gets worse. Birmingham University's Christian Union has been told that it must admit people from other faiths, since it is not permitted on a University campus to exclude people by virtue of their religion. This after 76 years of doing precisely that. They have also been told that it is now illegal to advertise the Union as open to "men and women", since this disadvantages and discriminates against transgender and transexual individuals. The advice is to advertise as being open "to persons of all genders and persuasions" - not exactly inline with most Christian thinking.

This all rather reminds me of Diane Rvaitch's book The Language Police (NY: Knopf, 2003). In an assault on political correctness, Diane looked at what happened to school text books in America in the 1990's onwards and she documents how the language police have radically changed the way in which events and realities are described. Classic works by Shakespeare, Poe and many others have been sanitized so as not to cause offence.

Ray Bradbury, a great author, ranted and raved against these developments, but to no avail. Censorship is rife throughout America and Canada and is growing in the developed world.

And then there is the liberal education industry, well described by Dinesh D'Souza in the book Illiberal Education (NY: Vintage Books, 1992). The development of political correctness, especially in terms of race and sexual orientation and relationships, has been rife in our Universities.

So then we come to the idea that newspapers protect free speech. I dont think so, since they too are constrained and not just by the laws of libel, but by their "best guess" at what political correctness looks like for their readers. While this is "self censorship", it is growingly the case that hate laws and related laws of human "rights" (sic) act as points for censorship and caution.

Here are some of the changes voluntarily imposed by the media and others:

• The term server is increasingly used for a person of either gender who waits tables.
  Chairman was replaced by chair, chairperson (or president or some other term). (The term chair has its own history within academia.)
• Fireman was replaced by fire fighter.
• Fisherman has been replaced by "fisher".
• Congressman was replaced by member of congress. The former remains in use for male members of congress, however.
• Policeman became policewoman when referring to females; then the term police officer was introduced for both genders.
• Likewise, Army wife, Navy wife, etc., are now Army spouse, etc. (Occasionally male civilian spouses of military members will ironically refer to themselves as Navy wives, etc.)
• "To boldly go where no man has gone before", from the introductory sequence of Star Trek: The Original Series, was changed to "To boldly go where no one has gone before" in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• "Man does not live by bread alone" became "People do not live on bread alone" in the 1996 NIV Inclusive Language Edition of the Bible, Matthew 4:4.
• Airlines no longer use the term stewardess (nor steward for men), partly due to disparaging stereotypes and the condescending nickname stews. Thus they have replaced it with the gender-neutral term flight attendant. As is the case within nursing, male members of the profession, who are the minority, are typically referred to by their gender (e.g. male flight attendant as opposed to flight attendant for females.)
• The word sex has largely been replaced with the word gender, though gender classically did not mean male/female, but rather it referred to grammatical masculine/feminine constructs ("steward" vs. "stewardess", or "actor" vs. "actress", for example). The word sex seems to have become an impolite or emotion-charged term, at least in part because it is prevailing verbal shorthand for sexuality and sexual intercourse.
• Lacking a gender-neutral alternative, many actresses now prefer the term "actor" when defining their profession, thus eventually likely rendering the term gender-neutral through common usage.
• TIME Magazine's Man of the Year became Person of the Year regardless of which gender wins it (there had been "Women of the Year" in the past).
• The phrase "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me", attributed to Jesus, is frequently changed to "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me."
• Miss and Mrs. have been supplemented by Ms., providing a word that does not indicate marital status. The term was ridiculed by many when it was first introduced in the 1970s, but over time it has become common usage.
• The 1960s-1970s TV show The Dating Game needed terms for unmarried contestants; bachelor was obvious, but the feminine "equivalent" was the negatively-charged term "spinster", which was only more slightly polite than "old maid"; so the show either coined or popularized the term bachelorette, which has since come into common usage.
• The time-honored "I now pronounce you man and wife" at weddings has largely been replaced by "I now pronounce you husband and wife". Some etymologists find this amusing, as "wife" is Old English for "woman", while "husband" is Old English for "householder"; the original expression was meant to define a moment when both members of a couple officially and legally became equally committed to adulthood.
  Generalized uses of man when referring to humanity (mankind) are frequently replaced by gender-neutral terms.

I will not mention the cartoons of the prophet which have led to riots, burning of the Danish embassy in one country and other problems world-wide. But the idea that we have free speech and we are trying to defend it is absurd. We lost it a long time ago. As one of my hero's has said political correctness "is the language of cowardice" (Billy Connolly).

By the way, colleagues in the UK are running a Campaign Against Political Correctness - for details see http://www.capc.co.uk/ - I may even start a Canadian chapter..anyone interested?

The Coming Pandemic

Bird flu cases have been reported in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Nigeria, Asia and China. Human deaths in these areas are minimal No deaths have occured in Nigeria that can be connected to the infected birds. Since 2003, a total of 88 people have died of a flu seen as a human form of the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The WHO and others (see Oprah with Frey's blog entry here for Jan 27th 2006) still advance the view that: (a) a pandemic is inevitable, it is just a matter of time; (b) that once the mutation from animal to human form occurs in a major population centre, all bets are off; (c) between 50 and 350m will be infected and between 50 and 150 million will die; and (d) the world's economy will collapse. They are also clear that we dont have an antidote - Tamiflu (the drug every country is stockpiling) has already been seen to be ineffective against N5N1, but may slow the speed of the spread of the disease.

So what to do. The key issue is whether the virulent strain of H5N1 avian flu that has now killed dozens of people from China to Turkey mutates so that it can be readily transmitted between humans, leading to a global pandemic. The problem is that no one can know whether this will happen. What is certain is that there is a sufficiently grave risk that the H5N1 virus might mutate in this way that we need to confront it, and the potential consequences, with great seriousness. Flu viruses mutate readily, morphing into new strains as they spread and reproduce through processes that scientists call genetic drift and shift.

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Michael Osterholm (the man who was on Oprah) reports that there have been ten influenza pandemics over the past three centuries and, although some were more severe than others, the lethal potential is clear. The 1918 “Spanish flu” killed between 50 million and 100 million people. Moreover, Dr Osterholm points out that, although the 1918 outbreak is often seen as an anomaly in its severity, the pandemic of 1830 to 1832 was, in fact, equally virulent.

Against this background, sensible policymakers will examine worst-case scenarios. So, if the unthinkable happens, what might be the economic consequences? Although Sars proved far less dangerous to health than was feared three years ago, its economic effects are instructive, and ominous. Sars infected only about 8,000 people worldwide, killing 775. Yet Hong Kong was tipped into recession. and in Toronto, where just 44 died, the economy also shrank.

The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has attempted to construct some meaningful scenarios. Based on a severe flu pandemic on the scale of 1918, it estimated the economic effects of an outbreak in which 90 million Americans, just under a third of the US population, became sick and two million of those died, a fatality rate just under 2.5 per cent.

On this basis, the CBO projects that a flu pandemic would cut US GDP by 4.7 per cent — a blow slightly harder than that inflicted by typical US recessions since the Second World War. In fact, the impact would be exceeded only by the US recession of the early 1980s, which cut American GDP by more than 7 per cent. More comfortingly, the CBO also projects that a milder flu pandemic would probably not trigger recession and even could be hard to trace in economic data.

What can I do - wash my hands frequently! Clean my teeth and take care of personl hygene. That's about it. Will I worry - no. Should you - no. There's nothing much one can do. Will it turn out as bad as Dr Osterholm thinks - definately not (he's not been right on any of his predictions to date).

[With thanks to Daily Telegraph, BBC, Washington Post and The Times]

Royal Deaths

Many of you may have missed the fact that there has been a recent spate of royal deaths. I mention this, in case it hastens the opportunity of succession for you.

Just this week, Her Imperial Highness Princess Dürrühsehvar, Princess of Berar, died in London on Tuesday night aged 92. She was a member of the Turkish royal house; after her family had been sent into exile, she married an Indian prince.

The Princess was born at Tchamlidcha-Scutari on March 12 1913 (or possibly 1914 - the reference books are not clear), the only daughter of Abdülmecid II and his third wife, Mihisti. Her father was Caliph of the Faithful, with the additional titles of Successor of the Prophet Mohammed, Commander of the Faithful and The Shadow of God on Earth. A cultured man who spoke Turkish, Arabic, French and German, he composed music and was a highly proficient painter, producing landscapes and scenes from Ottoman history (which his daughter went to great lengths to buy when they came up at auctions). He succeeded as Caliph in 1922, and the family resided in the Dolmabahçe Palace on the European shore of Istanbul. In 1924 the family was deposed and moved to Paris.

In mid January another Royal death. HRH Prince George of Hanover, died in Munich on January 8 aged 90, was a grandson of the Kaiser, the brother of Queen Frederika of Greece and the brother-in-law of Britain's own Prince Philip. At the time of his birth, Prince George was technically a Prince of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with the British title of His Highness, due to his direct male descent from George III. The first world war, however, put paid to that.

A few days before, His Highness Sheikh Jaber III, Emir of Kuwait, died aged 79. He fled into exile when Saddam Hussain invaded his oil-rich emirate in 1990, returning a year later. Sheikh Jaber led his country, which produces 10 per cent of the world's crude oil, from his accession in 1977, as the 13th ruler of a 245-year-old dynasty. Decisive in his early years, Jaber was traumatised by the invasion and rarely appeared in public after his family dynasty was restored.
Unlike the flamboyant race-going princes of the Lower Gulf, Jaber liked to live modestly, and before a failed attempt on his life in the mid-1980s often liked to go shopping incognito in the souk dressed in street clothes.

At the start of January there was the death of another mid-east Royal. HRH Sheikh Maktoum Al Maktoum, died on a visit to Australia aged 62, was one of the principal architects of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but better known to the race-going public in the Britain as a leading owner and breeder of racehorses. On succeeding his father as Ruler of Dubai in 1990 Sheikh Maktoum, helped by two of his younger brothers, steered Dubai from dependence on dwindling crude oil sales to what is now a globally recognised brand for enterprise, tourism, sport and financial services. Thousands of shoppers will be said to know of his death.

Also this week, HRH Prince Carol of Romania, who has died aged 86, spent much of his life in the quest to prove his legitimacy. His paternity was never in doubt. He was the son of Crown Prince Carol of Romania (later King Carol II) and Jeanne Marie (Zizi) Lambrino, an aristocratic Romanian girl whom the future King had married in contravention of the rules of the Royal House. His father was the eldest son and heir of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie (daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh - later Duke of Saxe-Coburg - and thus a granddaughter of Queen Victoria). The Crown Prince was handsome and intelligent, but not without an element of instability in his character. He was also highly sexed, some believing that he suffered from satyriasis. Anatomical descriptions, when overheard, were mistaken for descriptions of the Eiffel Tower (according to the obituary in the Daily Telegraph, London).

In 2003, after a long court case, a Romanian court recognised Prince Carol's legitimacy and his birth certificate was altered accordingly. The former King Michael contested the decision; the Romanian Supreme Court has yet to rule on his appeal. Prince Carol earned his living in London as a bookbinder and picture framer while his claims were being pursued.

With all of these royal deaths occuring, the loss of a few other people of fond memory may have been missed: Sir Freddy Laker, founder of the low cost airline movement died yesterday; Ron Greenwood, former Englanbd football manager died this week; Al Lewis, who played grandpa in The Munsters; Moira Sheera, dancer; Henry McGee who was Benny Hill's straightman; and Shelley Winters, actress and fearsome lady - all gone since Xmas.

The Professor, The Computer and the Big Fat Lie..

Professor Jasper Rine lectures at UC Berkeley. Recently his laptop was stolen by a thief who was after exam data. Unfortunately for the thief, Professor Rine had some important stuff on that laptop.The webcast of last Friday's Biology 1A lecture gets very interesting at timecode 48:50. I've transcribed Prof Rine's comments here, so you can see what a world of shit the thief is in:

• "Thanks Gary. I have a message for one person in this audience - I'm sorry the rest of you have to sit through this. As you know, my computer was stolen in my last lecture. The thief apparently wanted to betray everybody's trust, and was after the exam.The thief was smart not to plug the computer into the campus network, but the thief was not smart enough to do three things: he was not smart enough to immediately remove Windows. I installed the same version of Windows on another computer - within fifteen minutes the people in Redmond Washington were very interested to know why it was that the same version of Windows was being signalled to them from two different computers.

• The thief also did not inactivate either the wireless card or the transponder that's in that computer. Within about an hour, there was a signal from various places on campus that's allowed us to track exactly where that computer went every time that it was turned on. I'm not particularly concerned about the computer. But the thief, who thought he was only stealing an exam, is presently - we think - is probably still in possession of three kinds of data, any one of which can send this man, this young boy, actually, to federal prison. Not a good place for a young boy to be.

• You are in possession of data from a hundred million dollar trial, sponsored by the NIH, for which I'm a consultant. This involves some of the largest companies on the planet, the NIH investigates these things through the FBI, they have been notified about this problem.You are in possession of trade secrets from a Fortune 1000 biotech company, the largest one in the country, which I consult for. The Federal Trade Communication is very interested in this. Federal Marshals are the people who handle that.

• You are in possession of proprietary data from a pre-public company planning an IPO. The Securities and Exchange Commission is very interested in this and I don't even know what branch of law enforcement they use.

• Your academic career is about to come to an end. You are facing very serious charges, with a probability of very serious time. At this point, there's very little that anybody can do for you. One thing that you can do for yourself is to somehow prove that the integrity of the data which you possess has not been corrupted or copied.Ironically, I am the only person on the planet that can come to your aid, because I am the only person that can tell whether the data that was on that computer are still on that computer. You will have to find a way of hoping that if you've copied anything that you can prove you only have one copy of whatever was made.

• I am tied up all this afternoon; I am out of town all of next week. You have until 11:55 to return the computer, and whatever copies you've made, to my office, because I'm the only hope you've got of staying out of deeper trouble than you or any student I've ever known has ever been in.I apologise to the rest of you for having to bring up this distasteful matter, but I will point out that we have a partial image of this person, we have two eyewitnesses, with the transponder data we're going to get this person."

Important Update: The Professor admits he made it up to try to scare the thief - who has not, incidentally, returned the laptop. Wonder what this will do for the Professors credibility in the future - seems to me the loss of credibility is bigger than the loss of the computer.

(This story is from the blog Blast Radius which you can link to from any of the underlined areas in this blog. Thank you James Murgatroyd for drawing this wonderfully weird story to my attention. The question, then, is whether the Professor is more stupid than the thief).

Bottled Water..and Botox

If someone had told me when I was growing up that there was a lot - and I mean a lot - of money to be made from putting water into a bottle and selling it, I would have thought the person telling me this was simply nuts. Show's you how much I know.

Last year some 41billion gallons of water was sold in bottles at a cost of US$100b.

For this same sum, everyone man, women and child in the world could have access to clean water.

Its not as if bottled water, in most of the developed world, is better than tap water. In some cases, bottled water has been found to be either not as safe as tap water or (at least in one case in the UK) it actually is tap water.

What makes all this even more amazing is that we are willing to pay more for bottled water than we are for a litre than for gasoline.

Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances--and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders--by boat, train, airplane, and truck. This involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. By way of example, in 2004 alone, a Helsinki company shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) to Saudi Arabia. And although 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically, some Americans import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy demand for ''chic and exotic bottled water.''

More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ''Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,'' according to one source. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.

Once it has been emptied, the bottle must be dumped. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic by-products such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals tied to a host of human and animal health problems. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

Of the bottles deposited for recycling in 2004, the United States exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as far away as China--meaning that even more fossil fuels were burned in the process.

Meanwhile, communities from near which the water came in the first place risk running dry. More than 50 Indian villages have complained of water shortages after bottlers began extracting water for sale under Coca-Cola Co.'s Dasani label, EPI said. Similar problems have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America, where farmers, fishers, and others who depend on water for their livelihoods are suffering from concentrated water extraction as water tables drop quickly.

''Bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit,'' EPI said. France's Senate, it added, ''even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.''

To be sure, many municipal water systems have run afoul of government water quality standards--driving up demand for bottled water as a result. But according to the study, ''in a number of places, including Europe and the United States, there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water.''

So there we have it..

Now I am looking for really odd ideas that might just catch on. Like just yesterday, as I empted my fridge, I was wondering if there was a social use of the toxin from saussages that have gone off ? I know that this very toxin here has been used in biological warfare but what about..... oh, just a moment, that's already on the market as BOTOX. Something else I find simply amazing...

Maybe I should stick to reading..

(All this reminds me of my mother's reaction to pantyhose (called "tights" in Britain). In the 1950's and 60's women were still wearing stockings and garter belts (ah...yes..) and then tights appeared. Mother didn't think they would catch on... well, what if one leg has a ladder, you'll have to throw out the good leg as well....no, it'll never catch on...". Show's you how much she knew as well....)

UBC - Home for Lost Luggage

If an airline has ever lost your luggage, even after your claim has been settled and the matter closed (at least as far as the airline is concerned), you can't help wondering, "Where did my bag go? Red Deer ? Dudley ? Ramsbottom ?"

The chances are it went to Scottsboro, Alabama.

Every year thousands and thousands of wayward suitcases end up in Scottsboro—specifically, at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Once an airline has tried and failed to reunite suitcase and owner (a process that varies according to airline), it will compensate the owner and sell the suitcase—and all its contents—to the UBC, which buys suitcases by the truckload and hauls them to its 50,000-square-foot complex in Scottsboro. There the UBC staff sorts through the bags and puts their contents in a showroom (or some of them: others are given to charity, still others discarded), where they can be seen and bought by members of the public. Just as people flock to chairty stores in the UK to look for bargains, so they flock to UBC (also the name of the University of British Columbia - a kind of place of lost concepts). Some 2.5-3m people visit UBC (the bags centre) each year.

UBC started in 1970, with a rented old house, a borrowed old truck, and a $300 loan. Today the center gets nearly 7,000 new items every day, and the owner says that people can't seem to get enough. "It's a treasure hunt," he says. "Every day is like Christmas here—we never know what we're going to find. Just last week we found a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar tennis bracelet and a one-point-six-karat diamond ring. We've had a medicine-man stick adorned with a shrunken head, and a Nikon camera that was in the Space Shuttle. Back in the eighties we got a well-traveled Gucci suitcase that was packed with artifacts that dated back to 1500 B.C. And once we found a guidance system for an F-16 fighter jet, in a shockproof case from the Department of the U.S. Navy. It was labeled 'Handle With Extreme Caution—I Am Worth My Weight in Gold.'"

The UBC sent that one back.

I wonder if Lord Lucan is hiding in a suitcase there ? Sir John Mortimer (Rumpole of the Bailey's creator) reports that he was once approached by a very close friend of Lord Lucan to ask whether there was a statute of limitations on murder cases - "a closer friend would like to know". He gives the impression that it was abundantly clear to both of them who they were talking about. Since there isnt - murder is murder whenever it was done - Lucan remains elusive. This is more a lost Lord story than a lost luggage story.

Whenever I check in at Air Canada I indicate that I would like one bag to go to Calcutta and the other to Calgary. When they say "we can't do that Sir!" I quickly point out that this is exactly what they did the last time.

With thanks to the Atlantic Monthly.

Calling God...

An American decided to write a book about famous churches around the world. So he bought a plane ticket and took a trip to Orlando, thinking that he would start by working his way across the USA from South to North.

On his first day he was inside a church taking photographs when henoticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read"$10,000 per call". The American, being intrigued, asked a priest whowas strolling by what the telephone was used for. The priest replied that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God. The American thanked the priest and went along his way.

Next stop was in Atlanta. There, at a very large cathedral, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it. He wondered if thiswas the same kind of telephone he saw in Orlando and he asked a nearby nun what its purpose was. She told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 hecould talk to God. "O.K., thank you," said the American.

He then travelled to Indianapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston and New York. In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same "$10,000 per call" sign under it.

The American, upon leaving Vermont decided to travel to SCOTLAND to see if the SCOTS had the same phone. He arrived in SCOTLAND, and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it read "40 pence per call." The American was surprised so he asked the priest about the sign."Father, I've travelled all over America and I've seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I'm told that it is a direct line to Heaven, but in the US the price was $10,000 per call. Why is it so cheap here?"

The priest smiled and answered, "You're in SCOTLAND now, son - it's a local call".

Oprah with Frey's

Oprah did an interesting thing yesterday. She had been widely criticised for supporting author James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces - A Memoir following the disclosure that many parts of the book are either fabrications (two wisdom teeth extracted without novocane) or distortions (suicide by hanging versus suicide by wrist slashing) or fiction. So, she had the author back and his publisher and confronted them. Good television.

However, Frey's point was simple. A memoir is his recollections and understandings of something. It is not "truth", in just the same way as Churchill's memoir of his dealings with de Gaulle differ radically from de Gaulle's. A memoir is just that - one persons view of what happened to them. I doubt that Bruce Chatwin's memoirs would stand rigorous fact checking.

Part of the problem here is that the book is so powerful because it is fantastical. Another part of the problem is that the book's author says on the dust jacket "The Truth - Its All That Matters". The final part of the problem is that the book was originally offered as fiction, no takers - so it was then offered as a memoir.

Oprah's naiveté showed. She asked if every fact in the book had been checked, since its non fiction. What a daft question. When you read Hilary Clinton's account of her life to date, I doubt that the publisher had every date, fact, detail checked. When A J P Talyors books of history were offered to a publisher, are they expected to hire another historian to check every fact. When someone writes a biography of Graeme Greene, are they supposed to hire another biographer to check all of the facts. When I sign a contract with a publisher, this is my responsibility as an author.

She asked if the lawyers had checked it. They had - for libel - they are not fact checkers. She asked a Washington Post reporter what he thought and he suggested that all such books should be fact checked - this from a paper that authors 2,350 corrections to errors each year and from an industry where people fabricate news or embellish daily.

The world is messy, Oprah, get used to it. But keep on giving us good televison.

But dont get so easily misled. Talk about fact checking, on her own show the day before she had Professor Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota, talking about the possible bird flu pandemic. He claimed that the best estimates were that some 350m would be infected and between 75m and 150m would die (who did the fact checking here?). He claimed that the global economy would likely collapse (who did the fact checking here?).

He made similar claims about SARS a few years ago. In fact, 600 people died from SARS (not the 50m which the WHO predicted would die). He predicted that world trade would be disrupted and, while Toronto and Hong Kong experienced some disruption, some very minor preturberance of trade was there, it was small. So why should we beleieve this guy.

Give me Frey anytime.

Limbo

Canadian's elected a new Government on Monday. The old government is still in place. We practice this strange thing here called "transition". The new and old governments agree on a time-table and the old Government works to make sure that things are in order for the new team. Harper doesn't take over until Feb 6th.

Its bollocks. The public service should be ready for a new government, with briefing books on key issues, an analysis of the actions needed to make the policies of the new Government happen and a team in place to support the new Ministers in their new portfolio's. In Britain, the transition is over in a matter of hours - here it will take days.

There are great stories of the new British Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) walking in the front door of 10 Downing Street while the old Prime Minister (Edward Heath) was helping the movers move his piano out of the back door.

So what will be happening now shouldn't be called "transition" but rather "sanitization" - cleaning up and making things look better than they really are. You'd better believe it..

Getting the Environmentalists Angry

Environmentalists are going to be upset with Stephen Harper’s government. This is not a bad thing. It is about time we all faced up to reality and looked beneath the rhetoric of the Kyoto religion and asked “what can we really do about global warming and sustainable development?”

Environmentalists have ignored the last twelve annual reports of the federal Commissioner of the Environment who observes each year that the Government of Canada is strong on rhetoric and weak on action. The new Minister of the Environment will soon recognize that Canada has no strategy for the oceans, no strategy for clean water, no real strategy for achieving the Kyoto targets, no commitment for Government to leverage is $13b in annual procurements to buy green and is exceptionally weak on accountability measures of progress. This is why the OECD ranks Canada 24th out of 24 countries on its environmental policy action.

The commitments of the Conservative Party are clear. They will require a 5% bio-fuels content in all gasoline by 2010; create incentives for the use of public transport; pass a Clean Air Act to improve the quality of the air we breathe; support and enable the faster adoption of technology by industry so as to reduce green house gas emissions; pursue a range of actions to improve water quality and protect water supplies and clean up the 10,000 polluted land areas in Canada.

They also intend to join the US, Australia, India, Japan, China and South Korea in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on clean development, energy security, and climate change and intends to recognise that Canada will not meet the Kyoto targets. We will follow Japan in retaining our role in Kyoto while at the same time partnering with our polluting peers to leverage technology in pursuit of a greener environment. This will anger many environmentalists who see Kyoto as a sacred text.

Canada signed Kyoto in 1997 and proceeded to increase green house gas emissions at a faster rate than any other signatory. The US, who didn’t sign, has slowed the growth of its emissions and is pursuing a strategy based on city (195 US cities have committed to reductions at least as demanding as Kyoto) and industry adoption of new technologies. China, which burns a great deal of coal, will likely be first to achieve dramatic results in clean coal technology for no other reason than they have to. Treating Kyoto as a sick solution is the only sensible thing to do.

The other sensible thing to do is to focus on a few alternative energy sources – bio-fuels and solid oxide fuel cells, for example – and minimise others. The German government is the largest user of wind power in the world. They have recently recognized that this has not been a great investment and that they would have been smarter to invest the same funds in incentives for every home in Germany to be fully insulated. We need to be smart here too, and focus our resources on those actions which will have most impact. No more “one tonne challenges” and a strong focus on real incentives and results.

The environmental portfolio is a good example of the way in which the conservatives will be different from the Liberals. In this portfolio, the Liberals talked a good story and preached to citizens, but did very little. They berated the US on moral grounds, but quietly admired them for actually doing something. The conservatives will act decisively, partner with communities, cities and industries and will achieve results. Rather than berating the US, we will partner with them and co-operate on research and development. They will also hold themselves accountable for action. And this is what those of us concerned with the environment actually want – action and results.

Its All Over Bar The Shouting

So its over. Canada has a new government, well kind of. We voted (wel,, 65% of us) for a minority Conservative Government with a surprisingly strong Liberal opposition, a 50 seat Bloc Quebcois party and a rejuvinated NDP.

The questions we ask now are "who will be in Stephen Harper's cabinet", "who will lead the Liberal party now that Mr Dithers (a.k.a. Paul Martin) has stepped down?" and "how on earth will the Government work?".

So here would be a smart thing to do. Form a Government of national unity (as we are asking the Iraqi's to do) with Belinda Stronach in cabinet. Do a deal with the NDP over key issues they have in common - accountability, for example - and make the promised GST cuts fast. Gain traction.

It wont happen. But it would be interesting to see some imgaination...

Taking the Register

The original idea was simple. Anyone who committed a sex related crime would be recorded on a register of sex offenders. Anyone applying to work with children - especially in schools, social services, foster care, health care - would be subjected to a vetting process, including a review of whether or not they were on the register. The UK was pioneering this (though California has been doing it for many years).

It emerged last week that 298 individuals on the list were allowed to work in schools. Well, technically 210 were given permission and 88 were not disbarred (go figure). The decision in the end was made by a Minister on the advice of the local police.

Not quite what people thought was happening. In fact, it looks to me like it may actually help you get that extra attention needed to secure a job...

"Don't Turn Your Back on the Liberals"

Mark Oaten, who just two weeks ago was a candidate for the leadership of the UK Liberal party, resigned following his acknowledgement of a newspaper story that he had an affair with a "rent boy".

This is all in the tradition of the UK Liberal Party. Many years ago, Jeremy Thorpe was a charismatic leader of the party and he too had an affair with a rent boy. But he was smart, he hired someone to kill him. They took the boy and his dog out on the moorlands and shot the dog, but missed the boy. The boy sued and Thorpe was in court.

At the very time this was happening a massive poster campaign ran throughout Britain. The poster said "Don't Turn Your Back on the Liberals" - a gift to all comedians, especially the late Dave Allen...who added "especially if you are a young boy walking around Kings Cross late at night!".

The leadership election has been caused by the resignation of Charles Kennedy, the best leader they have had in many a year. He resigned due to the impact his drinking was having on his ability to lead. Sometimes he didn't show up. Sometimes, when he did people wished he hadn't. Sometimes the drink really helped him give outstanding speeches, such as his admission that he had a drink problem.

The front runner is Sir Menzies Campbell - another Scottish MP (Kennedy was Scottish, Joe Grimmond who was also a leader many years ago was Scottish). A genial old buffer, he is as unlikely to want to bugger a young boy as he is to get drunk with some ladies of the night. Boring, dull and a safe pair of hands who will confidently lose many of the seats Charles Kennedy successfully helped to win since 1999.

The real choice is Simon Hughes. He doesn't have the kind of support amongst his peers that is needed to win. The reason: he is a gifted, natural leader. So this leaves those who aren't jealous.

There is another candidate. His name is Chris Huhne. A brand new MP, elected at the last general election in May 2005. A fellow journalist, he is more boring than Sir Menzies....so all he is doing is positioning himself for status within the party.

I hope they do the right thing by Charles Kennedy - a peerage (a knighthood certainly) and a significant strategy role. Oh, and a bottle of Scotch..

The Next Big Thing..

Canadian's are about to elect a new government (except, as one little girl told me many years ago "it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in"). It looks like a very new government. One way or another, we will shift from a Liberal government which has been in power for 13 years to a Conservative government, none of whom have ever held office in a Federal Government. The only issue is whether it will be a minority government or a narrow majority government. Either way, our new Prime Minister will be Stephen Harper.

Our official opposition will almost certainly be the Bloc Quebecois - if the Liberals are truly trounced, as looks likely.

Canadian Conservatives are nothing like "real" conservatives - Margaret Thatcher's team for example with Sir Keith Joseph. Here conservatives are bland, modest people who believe in a slightly smaller government with slightly less tolerance of such things as gay marriage (a nonsense which Canada has adopted). There are a few nut cases in the Tory group, but there are even more in the NDP. So I predict no major change.

The problem I have with the election here is that not a single candidate has connected with this house by telephone, pamphlet or in person. When I ran the 1974 Cardiff West campaign we canvassed every house in person 3 times in 4 weeks. We leafleted every house three times and we ran local meetings and paradades. This is like taking a valium.

On Tuesday when the results are out, expect various worthies to be shocked and alarmed at change - don't panic.

25 Things to Worry About

Give a moments thought to these "deep" questions:

1. Can you cry under water?
2. How important does a person have to be before they can be assassinated instead of just murdered?
3. Why do you have to "put your tuppence in".. . but it's only a "penny for your thoughts"? Where's that extra penny going to?
4. Once you're in heaven, do you have to wear the clothes you were buried in for eternity?
5. Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
6. What disease did cured ham actually have?
7. How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
8. Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up like every two hours?
9. If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?
10. Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?
11. Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
12. Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway.
13. Why is a bra singular and panties plural?
14. Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
15. If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?
16. Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?
17. If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?
18. Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom is?
19. Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!
20. If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?
21. If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
22. Do the 'Alphabet' song and 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' have the same tune?
Then why did you just try singing the two songs?
23. Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, But call it a haemorrhoid when it's in your butt?
24. Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad At you, but when you take him for a car ride; he sticks his head out the window?
25. Do you ever wonder why you gave me your e-mail address in the first place ?

Rain

Vancouver. Rain. Cold. Damp. Like London on a wet week-end. It has rained here every day for 30 days now and parts of the City were under evacuation alert - in danger of land drifting due to the water levels in the ground..while the danger has passed, it tells us something about the way in which rain permeates this place.

I like Vancouver, but not in this kind of weather. Staying in the hotel, reading and watching TV is not my idea of fun.

Golden Globes last night - nice show. Good responses from Hugh Laurie (House) and Gina Davis (Commander in Chief). Oscars coming 5th March.

The big news is that Michelle - Glyn's lady - was denied access to the US on Sunday. They didnt believe shw was just going for 6 months - looked like she was setting up for a permenant stay. Three choices: (a) collect documents etc showing that she will only be there for 6 months; (b) Glyn works a reasonable amount of his contract, but gets a job back here; (c) marriage. I think they are working on (b), though I think (a) is the better option. We'll see.

You'd never know that the US is facing labour shortages and that lawyers (two - count them) advised that there would not be a problem.

I feel sorry for these two. Its been a hassle. All character building, I know, but..

Red Priest

A packed baroque concert last night with a wide age range (10 - 90 years) to see British/ Canadian group Red Priest. Dressed as pirates (they'd seen Pirates of the Caribbean!), the concert began with examples of how composers (Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi for example) stole music from others - "they stole from the poor to give to the rich". It ended with a fun version of Bach's Cello suite leading to some folk violin playing by David Greenberg (Cape Breton and a visitng member of the group replacing their normal violinist, Julia Bishop) and ended with Corelli.

The group performed. I mean really performed - putting on a show that was fun, engaging. This is a tall order for a cello, violin, harpsichord and recorder quartet. Its helped by the fact that they were having fun (at one point mimmicking a rock band - and by the fact that they are all virtuso performers in their own right. Piers Adams is widely regarded as the best recorder player in the world (including by himself) and the violinist plays both classical and folk. The cellist, Angela East (who plays a 1725 British made cello) is very skilled and the continuo playing of Howard Beech was outstanding (if you like that kind of thing).

For a baroque concert, it was over the top - but then, "if you haven't been over the top, how do you know what's on the other side?" (George Pratt, english musicologist and broadcaster).

Women..

My memory is full of films, music and other encounters with stunningly beuatiful women. Yet my friend Barrie Hopson has just pointed out something....well, see for yourself..

Brigitte Bardot 71

Sophia Loren 71

Gina Lollobrigida 78

Deborah Kerr 94

Lena Horne 88

Kay Starr 83

Patti Page 78

Angie Dickinson 74

Doris Day 81

Joan Collins 72

Julie Christie 64

Leslie Caron 74

Carroll Baker 74

Ann-Margret 64

Debra Padget 72

Julie Andrews 70

Ursula Andress 69

Rita Moreno 74

Jean Simmons 76

Julie Newmar 72

Kim Novak 72

Jane Powell 76

Debbie Reynolds 73

Shirley Temple 77

Jane Russell 84

Kathryn Grayson 83

Esther Williams 82

Elke Sommer 65

Gale Storm 83

Jill St. John 65

Liz Taylor 73

Mamie Van Doren 74

Hmm....

Alight

Yesterday, a man receiving treatment at the University Hospital in Edmonton burned himself. He did so by lighting a cigaratte. He lit it adjacent to the oxygen mask he had moved slightly from his mouth and nose so that he could, he thought, get oxygen in his nose while also having a smoke. The oxygen caught fire and burned him. He has 3rd degree burns over 15% of his body.

The good news is that the oxygen tank in his room did not explode. If it did, he may be dead by now (smoking can kill).

The hospital will now treat him for this additional set of medical issues which he caused by his own stupidity.

Can you believe this stuff ? I find it tough to imagine this scenario, but it did happen. All around the hospital there are no smoking signs. Edmonton is increasingly a smoke free zone. What can he have been thinking ? Obviously a candidate for a Darwin Award...

Mencken was Right!

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

There are no real, ideologically substantial Canadian politics. Its shades of centralism - all parties now want big government, want to maintain signuficant levels of taxation and rely on the US for defence, economic growth and security. There are no "radical" plans for anything.

So as to keep the populace alarmed, scandal is found in small things. For example, around $150m was "wasted" on a foolhardy campaign to use promotions and publicity to create a spirit of Canada that might keep Quebec in Canada. Most of this money was used corruptly. It shouldnt have happened, we all agree. So we spend $200m finding out what went wrong. We lose more than this daily on social security fraud.

The most recent alarm is over whether or not the Finance Ministry leaked the fact that it intended to take no action on income trusts before a formal annoucement to this effect was made. Smart people would look at the situation - three days before an election call which we all new was coming, a known set of advice to the Minister recommending no action and a complete inability to enact the required legislation all led to a run on income trust stock some 2-3 hours before close of trade on the day the Finance Minister was due to make his announcement (it was also known that he would speak to the press on that day). Ah, say some, making sure we are all alarmed, corruption. Calls for resignation. Panic, Fear.

Not really. Most Canadian's think an income trust is something you wear to keep your money safe when on holiday abroad. They dont especially care. Its not, as of now, important. But to keep fear alive, off we go with rounds of speeches, sound bites and brooh-ha-ha making it seem as if the sky is falling in.

If this doesnt work, expect more about the coming flu pandemic or the threat of the pine beetle or the dangers of a comet hitting the earth. All will start to appear before January 23rd if our politicians can scare us to vote in some other way. Hobgoblins will be the least of our worries.

Engineering our Future...

Here are a list of some key engineers from China, all of whom have two things in common:

• Hu Jintao - Hydrolics Engineering
• Wu Bangguo - Radio and Electronics Engineering
• Wen Jiabao - Geomechanics/Engineering
• Jia Qinglin - Electrical Engineering
  
• Zeng Qinghong - Control Systems Engineering
• Huang Ju - Electrical Engineering
  
• Wu Guanzheng - Thermal Engineering
  
• Li Changchun - Electrical Engineering
• Luo Gan - Machine Casting Mining and Metallurgy - Senior Engineer

- the two things these people have in common are: (a) they are all skilled engineers; and (b) they constitute the politburo running China. That is, engineers are planning China's future. In Canada, our leaders are largely lawyers, accountants and small business owners.

In this last year, China graduated some 600,000 engineers - the US and Canada between them graduates less than 70,000. By 2010, China plans to graduate 1,000,000 engineers each year.

One of the key metrics Alan Cornford has identified in terms of understanding the innovation supply chain is the need for qualified scientists and technologists to be significantly present in the workforce - around 10% triggers significant adoption of innovation. China understands this, and is working towards this very fast indeed. Canada is "stuck" at around 6.5% of the workforce with and S backgorund.

Some 300,000,000 chineese are now middle class - around the total population of the US. What's more, wages in China grow on average at 6% each year and have done so for the last 20 years. This leads some, notably Harvard's Richard Freeman, to suggest that wages in China will surpass those of the US by 2035-2040 (the wages of India will surpass those of the UK at roughly the same time).

Many dismiss these developments since they see them as China growing through a focus on low cost manufacturing. Its a mistake to do so. China, as is India, is moving up the value chain and focusing on biotechnologies, energy and life-sciences. For example, China will likely be the country that finds the cleanest use for coal and will sell its technology to Canada. India received some $5b in inward investment in ICT from Micorosoft, Cisco and Intel for advanced R

What is shifting here is not manufacturing, but the innovation agenda. Look to China and India for new thinking about what this agenda will become.

Employment by Breast

A rule that women applying for government jobs in central Hunan Province (China) had to show that they had symmetrically shaped breasts sparked a public uproar last year and led to calls for stronger legal protection against job discrimination throughout China. While Hunan scrapped its requirement, China still does not have clear-cut laws ruling out such hiring prejudices. This according to a press release from Reuters.

Doesnt this sound a bit far fetched to you ?

But then this is the week which has seen a restraining order issued in Sante Fe against David Letterman for sending subliminal messages to a lady in New Mexico since 1993 (see earlier blog entry). The same judge who issued the order last week, quashed it this week on the grounds that the original submission was baseless. What a difference a few days makes.

Also, this is the month in which a US trade union hired workers to picket Wal-Mart protesting against their low wages. However, the Union hired the workers at $6 an hour - a little less than Wal-Mart paid their lowest paid employees ($6.75). Go figure.

Also this week, a baggage handler drove his truck into the side of an Alaska Airlines airplane punching a hole in the skin of the aircraft and didn't tell anyone about it. In flight, the plane decompressed and had to make an urgent landing back at Sea-Tac. Since this is the airline my son (Glyn) travels on, this is serious.

But back to "nice tits, you're in, odd tits your out" - I wonder if this is why I didn't get the dream job I applied for recently.

Reflections

Reading Alan Bennett's Untold Stories I am struck by how many similarities there are between his family life and mine. His mother, like mine, was in and out of mental health care for "depression" (sic) and was frequently subjected to shock treatment. He, like me, was the first in the family to go to University - "all that brain work, not good for you son" said my father, could have been Alan's. His father, like mine, was taciturn. He lived in Leeds and me in Bradford, but we share patterns of growing up - school, cinema going, library use, holiday destinations. Interesting.

I dont have his talent. He is, in my view, Britain's greatest living writer for the stage and diarist (now that Lees Milne is no longer with us). He is able to turn his wry eye for observation into drama's that touch our hearts - Talking Heads 1 and 2 are strong examples of this, but so too are Kafka's Dick and Madness of King George III.

But for me, his observations in his diaries are powerful and effective and very funny. Take for example this exchange:

Motorist to Pedestrian: Excuse me, do you know the Bradford turn-off?

Pedestrian: Better ought to, I'm married to her!

Which is a typical Bennet "evesdropping". Another I like is between two elderly women. One asks the other "Elspeth, who was it that painted the Cistene Chappel?" and the other replies "Oh, Edith, I'm not sure - was it Underwoods of Bramley?".

He also comments on the fact that Lord Webber (Andrew Lloyd Webber of old) bought a Canaletti painting for several millions of pounds using a credit card so that he could get the air miles. Talk aboiut cheap!

His reflections on his self and his public image are interesting and powerful.

Just before we returned to Edmonton from our sojourn in Harrogate, we went to an evening with Alan Bennett in which he read and commented on some of his work and then answered questions from the audience. I asked him a question about the rumour I had heard that he was invited to appear on Big Brother, but had turned it down. I asked if it was true, and what excuse he'd given. It was true that he'd been invited, His excuse was this: Mrs Hilda Higginbottom was the last tripe dresser working in Leeds market. For many years he has been asking her to teach him the skill of tripe dressing so that the skill wouldnt be lost - and finally she had agreed. The only time she could "fit him in" conflicted with the start of big brother, so he had to make a choice...

Another little story. Following the appearance of Untold Stories, Britain's Daily Telegraph had arranged an interview with him. A few days before the interview, the Telegraph published a review of his book in which the reviewer used the phrase "the winsome Alan Bennett". Bennett cancelled the interview with a note saying "winsome, lose some". Ah Alan.

The Blogist

My friend Michele asked me why I maintain this indulgence - the blog.

There is a tradition of ordinary people and some not so ordinary maintaining diaries as reflective accounts of experience. James Lees Milne, for example, wasnt an unusually celebrated person in his lifetime, he just knew a lot of people - Mike Jagger, almost everyone who ever owned a country house - and was great friends with Andrew and Debo Devonshire (the Duke and Duchess thereof) and many others. He kept a diary from the 1930's onwards. It has become a classic read about the social fabric of middle and upper class Britain through to 1998.

Then there are political diaries, such as those of Alan Clark or Anthony Wedgewood Benn (Tony Benn as he became) and those of artists and writers, such as Alan Bennet (whose diaries appear each year in The London Review of Books).

All of these have much in common. Reflective, introspective yet valid social comment on the events which happen to them or which affect their sensibilities.

So too this collection of pieces. Patchy quality - welcome to the world of the real writer - and odd collections of ideas. They are not intended for publication in the sense of profit, but as a basis for sharing the understanding one develops over time for the meaning of the existence we call life.

So blog on it is.

A Slab of Gold?

We are again in Victoria for Christmas and New Year. Reading - this time the final installments of James Lees-Milne's diaries and the Untold Stories of Alan Bennett, listening to music (I have decided that in 2006 I will explore all aspects of French music), watching movies (Wool Cap, Something Stays Behind..), eating and drinking good wines (focusing on Chile and Argentina).

The house - rented by my business partner, Don who is in Kenya - is on the ocean, is very large and stunning - is a restful place, made more interesting by its design.From the window yesterday, we saw a barge ladened with what looked like gold - see the picture. It obviously wasn't a supersized ignot, but nonetheless it was impressive.

Restfulness, peace and quiet. Ah bliss. 

The Hunt, Boxing Day 2005

Britain has banned hunting with dogs for foxes. Instead, huntsmen and women may ride and have dogs following a trail made with a rope covered in fox urine (how one gets hold of a large quantity of fox urine is a mystery to me, but no doubt others know how to obtain such things - I have often suspected that the good folks at Budweiser may know the answer..).

Thousands rallied to the hunt yesterday (Boxing Day) and, by "accident", some dogs chased and caught live foxes. But the police could only control traffic.

Hunting is a tradition going back thousands of years. To seek to "do away with it" is like trying to do away with sex - it will keep on happening, whatever the law. It is, however, an example of city folk who occassionally visit the country deciding what the countryside should be like. Those living in the countryside generally support hunting with dogs and those who live in cities generally see this as cruel.

Given that there is so little understanding between these two solitudes, it does not bode well for the future. As more and more people live in cities, country dwellers are likely to be dictated to more and more by people who know less and less about their lives, their understanding of the countryside and their needs. Coupled with the shifting economic realities, which leads more and more rural post offices, shops and services to be closed and the realities of rural transport, it doesn't look good.

This comment is not just about Britain, but all of the developed world. We are losing touch with our roots and our rural heritage.

One obvious consequence of this is the knowledge and understanding people have of food. Jamie Oliver, in his superb TV series on school dinners in Britain, was shocked that primary school children of 8 and 9 could not name vegetables such as leeks, carrots, onion and had no idea where meats (pork especially) came from. These same children will grow up to be lawyers, legislators and enforcers. Worrying isnt it. 

Secret Messages

A court in Santa Fe, New Mexico has agreed to issue a restraining order to David Letterman. The allegation is that he has been sending subliminal messages to a woman in LA encouraging him to think of herself as his wife, his co-anchor and his lover. The allegation is that each time he uses certain words - one of them is Oprah - he is sending her signals to the woman in question and she has gone bankrupt trying to respond.

The woman involved here is Colleen Nestler. She requested that Letterman, who tapes his show in New York, stay at least 3 yards away and not "think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering." She claims this has been going on since 1994.

This is strange, since I have been getting similar messages from Soledad O'Brien on CNN - suggesting all sorts of things too complicated to put into print. I get similar messages from Kate Winslet, Trish Magwood (from Food Network's Party Dish) and Nigella Lawson. Until now, I had put these messages down to a rich fantasy life, but I guess things really are happening - I mean if a judge is willing to believe this stuff....

Speaking of Letterman, here is his Top 10 list about how do you know if you're a gay cowboy (a response to the film Brokeback mountain):

10. "Your saddle is Versace"
9. "Instead of 'Home On The Range', you sing 'It's Raining Men'"
8. "You enjoy ridin', ropin', and redecoratin'"
7. "Sold your livestock to buy tickets to 'Mamma Mia'"
6. "After watching reruns of 'Gunsmoke', you have to take a cold shower"
5. "Native Americans refer to you as 'Dances With Men'"
4. "You've been lassoed more times than most steers"
3. "You're wearing chaps, yet your 'ranch' is in Chelsea"
2. "Instead of a saloon you prefer a salon"
1. "You love riding, but you don't have a horse"

Lots of hidden messages here, perhaps ?

Catching Up..

Several issues caught my eye these last few days.

One drug company pulled a key cancer treatment from the pharmacies of New Zealand over a pricing issue – they wanted more money, so they used blackmail…the matter was resolved, but it raises really significant issues.

How many episodes of the TV series 24 can one watch at one sitting? We can do 3 at the most, but some we know have done 8. That’s a lot of chips.

George Bush has accepted that he has bugged people making and receiving international calls and has argued that he has a constitutional and a legal right to do so. When we lived in Harrogate (during the Clinton administration) my next door neighbour’s job was to listen to such calls. Its not new. The cynical Senators and congressional leaders who appear outraged have known about it for years. What’s the story?

Conor Cruise O’Brien was reported dead by The Spectator. He is alive and well and dining out on the story of his death.

I have been appointed Visiting Fellow for WCET – nice thing – as well as CEO of The Innovation Expedition and am about to be named Vice President of the Alberta Chamber of Technologies. Not a bad week.

Watched a nice film - Zhou Yu's Train – made in China with subtitles. Romantic story about a lady who falls in love with a poet – very well done.

Watched a dull film – Mr and Mrs Smith with Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie.

Watched more of 24 (see above) and also The Bourne Conspiracy. Pitt was in Edmonton a few months ago making Jessie James (with Casey Afflick and others) – my son (Glyn) met Casey.

Am reading a novel about a woman who cooks whose ex-husband is murdered. It’s the cheese sauce, is my guess.

Its that time before Xmas when you're kind of getting ready (we're off to Victoria 22nd Dec - 5th Jan) and kind of not..so its like limbo. Lots of scotch and food..

Browsing Each Other

There are a lof of internet browsers out there right now - IE, Opera and Firefox all have market share, though IE dominantes with over 86%.

What's interesting about them is that they are becoming mirrors of each other - they copy each others ideas, implement in a slightly different way and then...

One, however, looks like it is very different (or, more accurately, going to be). Its part of a new set of web tools which promote what has come to be known as social networks. With Flock (find it at, guess where - http://www.flock.com/ ) you can easily share your favourites, integrate RSS feeds into folders and share these with others, store and share photographs and many other cool things. Flock is onto something - its in beta now and will develop over time, but it will quickly permit social networking as part of the internet browsing experience. Just to make the point, this short blog entry is written in the blog posting tool built into Flock..

Hmm...by the way, another neat thing is video blogging using Vlog - cool. Look it up and try..

IQ TEST for YOUR AUTHOR!

For some reason I can't quite remember, I completed an IQ test the other day - it was a "pop up" screen from the Washington Post and I just found myself doing it. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I have an IQ of 139.

This is a bit of a relief, really. I mean, if you had an IQ of 65 and were the CEO of a company, then I'd have to switch to banking or radio management. So with my IQ I can stay as a writer, broadcaster (yes I was on Channel 10 this week and had an op/ed piece in the Edmonton Journal) and management consultant.

139 is actually quite good. The average for those holding a PhD is 129 - so I am 10 point above average. Also, IQ testing of nobel laureates shows that the bottom five all had IQ's of 139 - so there is hope for me yet - all I need is a pretty unique idea (I had one once, but it got me in a lot of trouble!).

The entry point for MENSA (the high IQ society) is 133 - so I would be in comfortably, not that I want to be amongst people who, on average, are far brighter than me. After all, they may have better ideas, know my ideas are wrong and have data to prove it and may also just "know more stuff!".

Not sure I would want to do another test - I found it boring. For the last 4 or 5 items, I just made random choices. This means either that I struck lucky and scored well on these or that I am actually much brighter than 139, since if I could have achieved at least 2 or 3 more points if I'd stuck to the work on these items...we will never know.

Taki Boris

Boris Johnson, editor of The Spectator until today, has accepted a position as front bench spokesperson for Universities and Higher Education under the new British conservative leader David Cameron. To avoid conflicts of interest, he has relinquished the editorship of The Spectator, but retained a column in that magazine as well as his op/ed column in Britain's Daily Telegraph. He has also agreed to appear less on such comic/satire programmes as Have I Got News for You.

Boris is a chacter - sharp as a razor, creative and courageous. He is also a bit of wild card - he had an affair with one of his columnist (Petronella Wyatt), made unflattering remarks about Liverpool and was made to go there are repent and has stood by his infamous columnist Taki (full name Taki Theodoracopulos - a greek multi millionaire who writes a column about the rich and famous and faced various libel and slander suits. The Greek patrician is an incorrigible provocateur. He is also an iconoclast, a philosopher, a polemicist, a philanthropist, a propagandist, an au contraircian, an optimist, a bon vivant, an aesthete, a hedonist, a sybarite, a cyberite, a Lothario, a crusader, a saboteur and a boon companion. Taki is always courteous and never a bore. Did Imention that he is endlessly controversial?

Taki is 67 (ish). As a child in Athens, Taki was a member of a prominent family. His maternal grandfather was a prime minister and his father, born poor, accumulated great fortunes in textiles and shipping. Taki attended the poshest schools and has been life-long friends with such nobs such as Fiat mogul Gianni Agnelli, the de facto king of Italy. They often sail around New York harbor on the Italian’s 92-foot all-black titanium-filled Stealth, the fastest boat in the world, with a crew of 16.

Taki has been married for 30 years to an Austrian princess, Alexandra Schoenberg. They have two children– Mandolyna, who works at the National Theatre in London, and J.T, who lives in a loft in Brooklyn and fancies himself a "graffiti artist" (he defaces buildings with his "tag").

Taki is a hopeless romantic, a playboy in every sense of the word. He can’t resist a flirt and Alexandra is infinitely understanding. Girls come into his life regularly, but then they go– and Alexandra stays. They have exquisite homes in New York, Southampton, Athens, and London

Taki is mellowing a bit–in 2000 at the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, he ended a feud with the Aga Khan that began 40 years ago over a pretty girl– but not completely. He now vows, "The only man I’ll continue to hate is Hillary Clinton."

Ah, ever the wit.

Boris will be a lively, creative minister when Cameron replaces Blair at the next election and becomes Prime Minister. He may have to be careful about Taki meantime.

Luke 2: The Shepherds in the Fields (Revised)

Luke 2: The Shepherds in the Fields
A Christmas story
(Revised according to recent Vatican discoveries)

8. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night. 9. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people, except for any gay people, who are all intrinsically disordered: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord." 11. The youngest shepherd, a gay man, said, "Wait a minute. What does intrinsically disordered mean?" 12. And the angel of the Lord said to the shepherd, "It means that you are more or less ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil." 13. The shepherd said, "I don't understand." 14. And the angel of the Lord said, "Well, if you were to have sex, it would be evil, so you're disordered." 15. And the shepherd, who was very young, said to the angel, "But how can this be? For I am a virgin. All I do is tend my flock by night and rest during the day." 16. The angel of the Lord said, "It doesn't matter. You're still intrinsically disordered, whether you have sex or not. And, according to Monsignor Tony Anatrella, writing in L'Osservatore Romano, you also close yourself off to others, and you only associate with a clan of persons of the same type." 17. The young shepherd questioned the angel again, saying, "But how can this be? All the other shepherds are straight, and they're all my friends." 18. At this, the angel of the Lord grew angry. "I am an angel and stand before the Lord. Are you questioning the Lord your God?" 19. The boy was terrified and he said, "No, I'm just questioning Monsignor Anatrella." 20. And the angel said, "Look, I'm sorry that you're intrinsically disordered, but that's just the way things are these days." 21. Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favors, unless you're intrinsically disordered!" 22. The rest of the shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem to see the thing that had taken place there, except for the boy, who stayed behind in the fields. 23. And the shepherds returned praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told to them, and they searched for the youngest shepherd to tell him the good news. 24. But when they returned the boy and his flock were gone.

Nice T-SHIRT

Actually, this should be "We spent $9 billion..."
Thanks Tom for this excellent product... 

About Movies

Ming-liang Tsai, the Malaysian director (b.1957), has directed 13 films. These include All Corners of the World, The Last Dance, My New Friends and Fish Underground (A Conversation with God). He has been awarded honours and prizes at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, Cannes, Chicago, Edinburgh and many others. His second feature film, Vive l'Amour (1994), won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival.

We watched his 2003 film Good Bye Dragon Inn (Bu San) last night. The basic story line is simple. A Japanese tourist takes refuge from a rainstorm inside a once-popular movie theatre, a decrepit old barn of a cinema that is screening a martial arts classic, King Hu's 1966 "Dragon Inn." Even with the rain bucketing down outside, it doesn't pull much of an audience -- and some of those who have turned up are less interested in the movie than in the possibility of meeting a stranger in the dark.

It was dreadful. Dull, boring, snoreiffic! Probably the worst film I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot. When it was shown at the London Film Festival, from a packed theatre only a handful of people remained after the painful 82 minutes were over. Nothing happens in this film – it makes Seinfeld and The Royle Family (TV sitcoms about nothing) look like action movies.

Some people love this movie – one reviewer said “What can be said about Ming-liang Tsai's "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" ? “Brilliant", "Genuine", "Honest", "Heartbreaking" are some of the adjectives that come to mind”. Well, she needs to get out more. My list of adjectives cant be printed on a blog for fear of being sent to the “.xxx” domain.

Despite being dreadful, dull, painful it won the Gold Plaque at the Chicago Film Festival, the Golden Horse at the Golden Horse Film Award, the Special Jury Prize at the Hawaiian Film Festival and two prizes at the Nantes Film Festival. Perhaps the idea was that if we give the director enough prizes he will retire and not make any more excruciating movies!

No such luck. Since 2003 he has made Welcome to Sao Paulo (2004) and The Wayward Cloud (2005). Films I shall be careful to steer away from.

Contrast this awful movie with a documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom (2005) about New York Grade 5 students (aged between 10 and 12) who have to learn ballroom dancing and some then enter competitions for the City’s best student ballroom dancers. The kids are enticing and dynamic, the storyline full of ironies and skilled observation and the competition itself compelling. The film brings back to us what it was like to be a kid (and maybe wonder which of those we see here that we would have been most like?), the whole process of learning, of growing up, of the transition of thoughts and expectations kids have about what lies beyond puberty, the relation between caring adults (teachers – parents are noticeably absent) and children, the emotions teachers have about the ones they lose and the ones they win, and about competing.

It is an excellent, compelling movie in the tradition of Spellbound (2002). Directed by Marilyn Agrelo (her first film as a director), working with her collaborator, Amy Sewell, and filmed in such a way that enabled the kids to largely ignore the camera. They captured the kids as they bounce back-and-forth from juvenile to young adult and back to juvenile in a matter of seconds. You feel you are the observer and not the camera. The movie simply looks honest and truthful.

Mad Hot Ballroom won the audience prize at the Philadelphia Film Festival, the best documentary prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and has been nominated for a Gotham. It was also awarded the Truly Moving Picture Award at the Heartland Film Festival. Heartland created the Truly Moving Picture Award in 2000 as a way to honour theatrically-released films that inspire and enrich lives – they picked a true winner here.

The current top 10 US movies are: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (I’ll wait for it on TV), Walk the Line (story of Johnny Cash, so I’ll give this a miss), Yours, Mine and Ours (the Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo comedy – also a miss for me), Chicken Little (animation with an interesting voice cast, including Patrick Stewart but not enough to get me interested), Rent (the film version of the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical about Bohemians in the East Village of New York City struggling with life, love and AIDS, and the impacts they have on America), Just Friends (an avoidable romantic comedy), Pride and Prejudice (which will be worth seeing just for Donald Sutherland’s performance), Derailed (the Clive Owen / Jennifer Aniston movie which is a real drama and probably worth seeing), In the Mix (the less said the better) and The Ice Harvest (John Cusak, Billy Bob Thornton and others in a richly textured movie, worth seeing). So that’s four out of ten for me.

I want to see three specific movies as soon as they are out on DVD: Good Night and Good Luck (the George Clooney written and directed movie about Ed Morrow, the broadcaster), Syriana (starring George Clooney and Matt Damon in a piece about oil, politics, power and passion) and Memoirs of a Geisha (from the book of the same name, which is wonderfully written, this films trailers suggest it is stunning and initial reviews are all outstanding).

The Little Club

The Little Club in Edmonton is one of the oldest clubs in Canada. It meets once a month in the period October -April, has a very nice dinner (with wine) and then listens to a paper given by a member and then discusses this. There are lawyers, doctors, writers, engineers, judges and others. A very eclectic and yet very intersting group. It meets tonight.