Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Vancouver Sun: Reduce Pay for Senators

The Vancouver Sun is totally correct. It'd be best to just get rid of this bastard institution already, however at least this suggestion is an improvement on the present situation.

With no one showing any appetite to reform the Senate, the government should change the pay to reflect the duties

After 17 years in the provincial legislature, including a long stint as the minister of energy, Richard Neufeld is due a gesture of appreciation from the public he served.

It's also understandable that at 64, an age when most Canadians are contemplating retirement, he looks forward to slowing down from the sometimes grueling pace of a cabinet minister.

So for his sake, it's nice to see that he was able to land one of the lucrative and not too taxing seats in the Senate that Prime Minister Stephen Harper handed out as early Christmas presents to 18 more-or-less deserving Canadians.

The two other British Columbians who were similarly blessed have also demonstrated public spirit and are no doubt worthy of some recognition.

Still, their appointment to a part-time job with a salary that would comfortably support the families of two unemployed forestry workers does nothing to elevate the low esteem in which the Senate is held by most Canadians.

Nancy Greene Raine, who became a national hero 40 years ago when she won two skiing gold medals at the Grenoble Olympics says she'll be able to continue with her current positions as chancellor of Thompson Rivers University and director of skiing at Sun Peaks Resort.

Yonah Martin will likely only be known across the country to Canadians who read the agate pages following national elections to see who lost. She was the Conservative candidate for New Westminster-Coquitlam and lost the Oct. 14 election by almost 1,500 votes to the NDP's Dawn Black. Despite her record of local community service, Martin's appointment reeks the most of old-school patronage and at her relatively tender age of 43, she can legally collect her senatorial salary -- currently about $130,000, for another three decades before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

The political spin around Harper's appointments -- the most in a single day since Confederation -- is that they are somehow less odious that those made by the Liberals because first, he tried without success to make Senate reforms including elections and term limits, and second because the people he appointed are committed to those reforms.

True though these process arguments may be, they don't change the result. The women and men sworn in as Harper appointments will still be senators, part of an institution that exists at great expense but little purpose.

The problem with the Senate is not even that it couldn't be useful, but there is no appetite by any governing party for it to do anything other than rubber stamp the work of the House of Commons.

So the Senate exists primarily as a monument to the failure of Canadians to amend our own constitution, which is the only way it can be reformed or abolished.

What we can do without a constitutional amendment is revise the pay grid to reflect the service being performed.

Rather than a set annual salary, senators could be paid $1,000 a day for the days the Senate actually sits -- which averages around 70 a year.

That would still be enough to attract qualified candidates looking for a cushy part time job on their way to retirement, but not so much as to continue to scandalize taxpayers concerned about getting value for their money.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Pinter's Nobel Acceptance Speech

Excerpt:

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time....


The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour.

Sage Words

From Jean Vanier:
"Now, I'm free to do what I like, and what I like is to announce the message: That people who are weak have something to bring us, that they are important people and it's important to listen to them. In some mysterious way, they change us. Being in a world of the strong and powerful, you collect attitudes of power and hardness and invulnerability."... "It is vulnerability that brings us together."

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Movies to See of 2008

Milk
Ghost Town (check, not bad)
Chop Shop
A Christmas Tale
Happy-Go-Lucky
Cadillac Records -- Darnell Martin's story of the founding and flowering of the legendary Chicago label Chess Records elides some of the facts -- and yet gets the spirit exactly right. It doesn't hurt that the performances -- from the likes of Eamonn Walker, Columbus Short, Mos Def, Jeffrey Wright and, especially, Beyoncé Knowles (as Etta James) -- are superb. This is what it means to make a picture that's alive.

"The Class" -- Since Laurent Cantet's "The Class" took the top prize at Cannes earlier in the year, I've heard a surprising number of my fellow critics talk about it as a typical "triumph over adversity in the classroom" story, a highbrow "To Sir, With Love." But Cantet's drama, which stars real-life teachers and students and takes place over the course of one year in the classroom of a tough Paris suburb, is less about the big victories of teaching than it is about the frustrating imperfection of even the small ones. In "The Class," the classroom isn't a safe place isolated from the outside world, but a miniature universe where disparate people from that outside world come together, with all the conflicts and revelations that that kind of messy mingling implies. It's a hopeful movie -- but not a smug one.

"The Visitor" -- Because marketing campaigns and marquee names are always jockeying for our attention in the movie universe, sometimes we forget that acting and filmmaking are two of the things we go to the movies for in the first place. Tom McCarthy's "The Visitor" -- in which veteran character actor Richard Jenkins gives a marvelous performance as a 60-ish widowed professor who befriends two illegal immigrants living in New York -- helps put everything back in perspective. Eloquent and unassuming, "The Visitor" hits home precisely because it doesn't overreach its grasp.

"Before I Forget" -- In "Before I Forget," Jacques Nolot (the French actor who is both director and star here) plays Pierre, a 60-ish former hustler living alone in Paris who's been HIV-positive for more than 20 years. He's survived many of his friends, but what does it mean to be a "survivor" when, in the end, the aging body you live in is going to betray you anyway? Pierre faces that inevitability with grace and good humor, but also with a realistic dose of mournfulness. Nolot has made one of the loveliest and most unflinching films about aging -- and about makeshift families -- I've ever seen.

"Trouble the Water" -- Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal went to New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina, to make a film about the National Guard. They found an even greater subject when they ran into Kim and Scott Roberts, two self-described "street hustlers" from the Ninth Ward. Kim, an ebullient aspiring rap artist, had captured the hurricane's before, during and after with her video camera. Deal and Lessin helped shape the footage into a document that explains, without spelling it out in so many words, what it means -- or what it ought to mean -- to be an American.

"Sparrow" -- Maybe it's cheating to put an unreleased movie on a 10-best list, but in this case, I think it's justified cheating: Johnnie To's "Sparrow" didn't get a theatrical release in the United States, but at least you can watch it at home -- the DVD is available from DVDAsian.com and other vendors, and it's also available on Blu-Ray. More a musical than an action movie, "Sparrow" -- which details the adventures of a glam but broke gang of pickpockets -- borrows the mood, color and vitality of pictures like "Singin' in the Rain," "The Band Wagon," "An American in Paris" and even Jacques Demy's "The Young Girls of Rochefort." And its finale, a ballet of twirling umbrellas and graceful sleight-of-hand pirouettes, is one of the most gorgeous dance numbers I've ever seen.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Flipping Out

By virtue of being forced to watch TV with my family I have seen the show Flipping Out and "everyone's favorite obsessive-compulsive house-flipper, Jeff Lewis" is actually pretty funny.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Abolish the Canadian Senate

The Vancouver Sun hits the mark here.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Gary Goodyear Pseudoscience Practioner Running Canadian Science and Technology

Great comment here:
Gary Goodyear is a chiropractor. Not only that, but he's an acupuncturist, too. Nothing like putting someone who believes in pseudoscience in charge of science and technology. I wonder how that will work out.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Quote of the Day

"When philosophers follow where argument leads, too often they are led to doctrines indistinguishable from sheer lunacy."
-philosopher David Lewis

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Word of the Day - Adumbrate

to foreshadow vaguely

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

We Remember

Times Colonist

Published: Tuesday, November 11, 2008

We are blowing over $1 billion on the Olympics, just to bring a few tourists into the province, but we can't find $75,000 to honour those who gave their lives to make these Games possible.

Robert Brodgesell

Ladysmith

Liberal Leadership

Apparently "Mr. LeBlanc, who remained neutral in 2006, has many of former prime minister Paul Martin's top strategists on his team, including communications director Scott Reid and chief of staff Tim Murphy." That's all I needed to hear. I think Scott Reid is a hack and he will seriously impede LeBlanc's ability to lead wisely. I will now vote strategically to defeat LeBlanc.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Robertson Unwise to not pay

So a really rich guy, Gregor Robertson, who is running for Mayor of Vancouver, didn't pay the full fare on the city's light rail system, got busted, then didn't want to pay the fine and thought he'd make a crusade out of it. The point though is that it was idiotic for him not to pay in the first place, and to attempt to turn it into a cause is demonstrative of poor judgment on his part. Man, it is particularly frustrating because otherwise he seems like a really terrific candidate.

Transportation minister has some choice words for mayoral candidate
Chad Skelton and Tim Lai
Vancouver Sun

Gregor Robertson of Vision Vancouver.
CREDIT: Mark van Manen/Vancouver Sun
Gregor Robertson of Vision Vancouver.

Would-be Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday he has paid the SkyTrain fare-violation fine that has been embarrassing him this week.

By paying the fine, he avoids a traffic court hearing in December.

He may also be able to escape more of the enthusiastic tongue-lashings Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon has been sending his way.

Robertson was hit with the $173 fine after being caught in June 2007 riding through two SkyTrain zones on a one-zone fare.

Since the then-unpaid fine came to light a few days ago, Robertson had been saying he intended to fight the fine and argue that penalties for SkyTrain fare violations were too high.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Slutty Ghostbuster

One of the sexiest Halloween costumes I saw this year.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Ick! I Can't Stand Naamua Delaney

CNN.com has this really really annoying correspondent Naamua Delaney, it is election night coverage and they won't take her off, what the fuck?! She has a bullshit fake British accent which sounds more Australian than British. SHE IS EXTREMELY IRRITATING!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Quote of the Day

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Law Student Burnout

This is a frank article discussing how med school was the low point in a few medical careers. I think the same can be said for law (at least I hope it gets better) I think they put their finger on the button citing these three areas as deficient: "emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low sense of personal accomplishment".

Friday, October 24, 2008

Victoria City Council Candidates - Sonya Chandler

I have serious concerns about re-electing Victoria city councilor Sonya Chandler.

First this damning assessment from the now former Times-Colonist municipal reporter Carolyn Heiman:
How did they do last term? Here's a summary:

- Sonya Chandler

Achievements: Winding up her first term on council after getting elected on a Green Party slate, she pushes for a wide range of city practices and policies that are better for the environment, including a comprehensive recycling program at city hall.

Needs work: Even taking into account the period she took for maternity leave, she has a high absentee rate at council and often asks questions when the answer is easily found in the agenda papers.

Comments: The least experienced member on council, she was the loudest voice in the cry for higher wages for those serving.
To summarize: to her credit she wants to be progressive, but to her detriment she has a high absentee rate, doesn't prepare for her work on council, and was the most vociferous advocate of increasing the salaries of councilors.

To add to this at a candidates' debate earlier this week she mentioned that she regrets her vote in favour of the city's bylaw which only allows homeless people to put up tents in parks between 9pm and 7am. While I appreciate that honesty what I'd like in a councilor is someone who can think for themselves the first time around.

The above facts, the only ones I have to go on, lead to the conclusion that she does not have the temerity and intelligence to be a good councilor. I say this as a left wing supporter. But in the same way I would hope right wing people would find Sarah Palin unqualified, though she is unquestionably right wing, so too do I find Sonya Chandler an imprudent choice for Victoria city council.