Yet another blog for me

Lessons from the Power Outage

2011-12-30T11:45:00.000-08:00

There is plenty of hot water in the tank, and it will keep reheating as it runs on gas. Unlike the furnace, the water heater does not need mains power for its control or ignition.

The phone does not work. Even though I have corded phones, I use Shaw home phone which relies on a modem on the cable. And that modem has to be powered to work. If you are debating the virtues of buying a package deal between Shaw and Telus, that might be the decider. Telus land lines work in power cuts - as long as you have a simple corded phone.

The cell phone of course works and can also be used for internet connectivity as long as its own battery is charged. I have now bought a spare wall charger and another for use in the car.

The alarm clock-radio still works (it has a back up battery) even though its display is off: so the alarm will sound even though you cannot tell the time from it. I have several clocks which run on batteries and of course an old fashioned wristwatch which winds itself.

I have emergency candles: I have no candlesticks. Saucers work and are essential to catch wax drips. The candles should be kept with the saucers and matches.

The flash light batteries died almost as soon as I turned it on. It uses rechargeable cells, but I also have spare non-rechargeable cells. When the rechargeable fades, it fades fast. I had forgotten that I had put rechargeables in it and had not recharged them as a standard practice.

Skier dies after avalanche in Pemberton, B.C.

2011-12-30T08:27:00.000-08:00

Last night I expanded my use of new media. The Vancouver Sun is offering a free download a day on iTunes. This is not a service I have used very much since I do not own an iPod nor do I feel like paying for downloads. The great success of Steve Jobs was getting people to people for downloaded music, which changed the distribution of recorded music and now video too. Up until now I have been limiting the amount of video I watch on my computer, as I regard it as a personal device, though my MacBook Pro has a 17" screen, that is quite small by tv standards. It dies of course play HD - something my tv and DVD cannot do.

For home movies we mostly borrow from the library or rent from zip.ca who send the discs by mail. But I cancelled my zip subscription since they seem to have fewer and fewer hints I want to watch. I suppose at some stage we will have to consider an HD tv and a device to download or stream from internet, but my partner was persuaded that we could try out this free documentary I had downloaded from the Sun. I was about snowboarding - something one of her sons does, but within the confines of the ski resorts. This was about the extreme stuff. Back country heli-skiing - or rather "riding" - we had seen something rather similar quite recently and the photography of the mountains was spectacular.

"The Art of Flight" is said to be "a new breed of sports action film from Red Bull Media"

"Equal parts action and adventure mix with the inevitable drama encountered along the way. Two years in the making, "The Art of FLIGHT" gives iconic snowboarder Travis Rice and friends the opportunity to redefine what is possible in the mountains. Experience the highs, as new tricks are landed and new zones opened, alongside the lows, where avalanches, accidents and wrong-turns strike. For the first time, viewers are immersed in the sometimes successful, often trying quest to open up new, unexplored mountains in remote corners of the world. "

What Red Bull is doing, of course, is promoting a product to a specific demographic - young, single, adult males. And of course as much youth as they can get too. Young men have excess testosterone and an unshakeable belief in their own invulnerability. They strain against the restrictions and rules of society - and all societies have rituals and activities designed to channel their energies and enthusiasms. Some of which are successful. I will not get into the role of the product Red Bull is selling. In my own view it is unnecessary - but it is not illegal. And the way that we regulate food and drink as well as additives and supplements works in the interests of the producers not the consumers. As one would expect by a state which has been taken over by corporate interests.

Watching the movie we were struck by the avalanches caused by their penetration of back country areas where there are no ski patrol or snow grooming. Indeed in one sequence the young men stamp their boards on the top of a crest and watch as the top surface of the snow below them sheers away and slides for miles, gaining strength as it goes.

The cbc story that the title links to includes details of the very high avalanche risk in BC at present. No-one going into the mountains should be unaware of such risk. I cannot comment on the specifics of the four young men involved in this incident, not am I any kind of winter sportsman. I do not and will not slide on any surface voluntarily. But those who do must understand the risks.

The juxtaposition of the cbc story and Post Media's use of what is really a 1 hour 40 minute Red Bull commercial featuring very dangerous snow boarding in back country areas is possibly unfortunate. But is does cause me to wonder the extent to which corporations should be encouraging young people to put their lives needlessly at risk. And others who may take a more objective editorial stance but would still be happy to accept advertising material - and maybe even programming - material from them.

UPDATE The CBC is now ( 11:45 Dec 30) reporting that the skier who died after being caught in the avalanche was a ski patroller from Whistler

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2011-12-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Last night we finished watching the DVDs (from zip.ca) of the BBC series. The new movie is now showing in Vancouver, and it is on my to do list, but for me George Smiley is Alec Guinness. Just as before the tv series started (many years ago) I re-read the novel, because something once seen cannot be unseen, and if you hear something on the radio first (like The Hitchhiker's Guide) or read it you already have a clear visual memory of what you have not seen, that is going to be replaced.

The six part tv series seemed slow going this time around- even though thanks to DVD we could watch two episodes back to back, and zip was careful to send us the disks in sequence. With the book - and yes I re-read that too, having to buy an new copy (why do otherwise honest people never return the books they've borrowed?) - I often stopped reading to think about how the plot was working. Even though there was no "who dun nit" by then. The movie is going to have to be very compressed to get all that plot in. The book is a bit like a dance of seven veils. The opening chapters of Jim Prideux as a school teacher appear to have nothing to do with spies. Jim just seems paranoid. Or perhaps a bit shell shocked.

If you have not seen the movie I will not spoil it for you. But you should know that there really were moles in the British Secret Service. One of them even turned out be the Keeper of the Queen's Pictures (Anthony Blunt). Kim Philby is the model for le Carre's mole, I think.

I was a lad from the East End. Went to grammar school. Left wing politics were part of my being. When I started encountering the upper classes they were still very snobby about background, and questioned my loyalty simply because I was not a Tory. I spoke BBC English - but not the strangled vowels of the "public schools" (which in England are, in fact, private). "A thizeand pinds in my trizers". Somehow the treachery of the aristocracy - the donkeys who lead the lions - the self serving of every villain in English Literature from Shakespeare onwards - the cruelty of the bullies, the selfishness of the rich, the double standards - "the law is for the guidance of wise men and the instruction of fools" meant that I was hardly surprised at all at the revelations of real double agents, who came from privilege and Oxford.

And besides, Deighton had already covered the territory of the lower class, smart lad in Intelligence in a masterly counterpoint to the myth of James Bond.

Reading le Carre now - especially his newest books - he does seem dated. But one thing that did strike a chord last night was the denunciation by the mole of "the Americans". Substitute "the 1%" or "multinational corporations" or "the elite" and you have a very good justification for why someone who cared about social justice might indeed be willing to spy for the Soviets, and would feel quite justified betraying his colleagues. All of whom have some very unpleasant characteristics. The Circus is populated withe real, fallible human beings and is a much more credible account of the workplace than The Office.

And where did this bit of dialogue come from

"I question your loyalty sometimes"

"I question it all the time"

All Inclusive Resorts

2011-11-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

The front page of the travel section of today's Vancouver Sun is about all inclusive resorts. In fact, most of the section is about Mexico - and as it happens I have just returned from the Mayan Riviera where we stayed in two such resorts - the Hotel Catalonia Yucatan Beach and the Grand Serenis Mayan Beach. In fact both hotels are in large enclosed developments ('gated communities' in US speak) and both have two hotels sharing their sites.

The article claims that all inclusive resorts are now better than they were ten years ago. In the fourth paragraph Celeste Moure states "Neither one of us had ever stayed at an all-inclusive" - yet she has just spent three paragraphs ripping them apart. She also claims that additional charges are a thing of the past. Based on one hotel she has experienced - or two that I have. Both hotels practice the art of up selling from the moment you check in. Whatever standard of room you bought, there is the potential to go better - for an extra charge. At the Hotel Catalonia they also charge extra to use the in room safe ($3 a night) and both charge extra for internet usage (Catalonia's wi fi is at least free in the lobby if you brought your own computer).

Serenis is the most aggressive having a "Premium Travellers' Club" they want everyone to join, to get better suites, better booze in the mini bar and a special section on the beach equipped with four poster beds. The sales pitch is more like a time share - and in fact if you do join the club you can use the fee as a downpayment on some swamp land they have for sale. They told us we would get free internet and a beach bag if we listened to a 90 minute presentation - which actually took three hours before we got up and walked out. They were also unable to improve on Corona - why there is choice of all drinks except beer I do not understand.

Both hotels will provide special meals at extra cost - the Serenis even has one of its "a la carte" restaurants charge extra. And at any dinner anything other than house wine will cost plenty. Bottles of Chilean wine that retail here for $13 (with BC Liquor mark ups and taxes) are sold for over US$40.

The tips may have been included in the price, but as with cruise ships, if you show willing to hand out dollar bills, service dramatically improves. The tour company's rep also recommended tipping the maids, bell boys and bus drivers.

All that being said, the holidays are still excellent value for money. Serenis does have a new room service menu that it introduced just as we left - again, most of it at extra cost. We did not try that, but I was charmed to find that behind the bar they do have a genuine 12 year single malt. Glennfiddich. And there was no extra charge for that.

"Happy Hallowe'en"? I don't think so

2011-10-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

I will not be at home this evening. So when your children come knocking, the door will not be answered. I have now learned by bitter experience that this will be an excuse for the "trick" bit of "trick or treat". Last year the front of the house was comprehensively "egged". I just hope the damage they do this year will be no worse.

I learned this weekend of a day care that now has no toys for their children to play with when outdoors. Some idiot - armed with hallowe'en fireworks - set them alight. They were stored in a locked, fenced compound, so it was an easy matter to poke a firework through the mesh. They would, of course, claim ignorance that a propane cylinder was also stored there. The subsequent fire must have been especially gratifying for their pyromaniac tendency. The damage to adjacent buildings was significant.

The CBC attempted to deter by running a fire department demo of fire crackers - and video of a boy displaying what was left of his fingers after an incident last year. They followed up with the very useful information that legal fireworks - bear deterrents - are sold to anyone by outdoor outfitters. This also included video of how these devices work. They are, of course, explosives.

It seems to me foolish in the extreme to allow the sale of fireworks to the general public, in light of the record in recent years. Quite why fireworks and hallowe'en got associated in the first place baffles me. But then I do not see why we need "celebrate" this odd jumble of old superstitions. It is a bit like getting alarmed by potential zombie invasions. But if there must be fireworks, why not confine them to properly regulated public displays?

For the last couple of nights my sleep has been disturbed. The new generation of firecrackers seem to me to be not only louder but also designed to mimic the firing of automatic weapons. Sadly, this is something we are becoming familiar with here, as the gang wars move into populated areas and even busy streets in broad daylight. Why anyone thinks letting off fireworks past midnight in an urban park is "fun" also defeats me.

On the news tonight there will be yet more reports of the increased load on fire departments and emergency rooms. There will probably also be accounts of property damage - and quite possibly other malfeasances committed under the cover of the "festivities"

We love the scary bits of Hallowe'en. The dreadful warnings of the tainted "treats" are greatly over done. Much more to the point would be the damage that the untainted candies will do, but that of course would offend those who profit so greatly from this over consumption of confectionary.

REVIEW: Vancouver Opera West Side Story

2011-10-27T08:12:00.001-07:00

From the Program Notes "From the beginning, the team [Bernstein, Sondheim, Laurents, Robbins] was adamant that this not be an opera"

Perhaps that might explain the large number of empty seats at last night's performance. Are people put off by the word "opera"? It was a Broadway show - groundbreaking, revolutionary but highly successful - and then a block buster movie. Which was when I discovered it for myself - just as I was entering the teenage phase of dating. This was actually the first time I had seen the stage show - which has many notable differences to the movie, and is in many ways stronger. Though dated, of course. The story is "Romeo and Juliet" reworked but it is the music and lyrics that captured me - and, last night, the dancing.

I got very emotionally involved - really to my own surprise. I thought I was past that, but I felt like a teenager again - anxious, nervous, and emotional all at the same time. Yet this is a very stagey presentation. It makes a virtue of the need to move people on and off the stage and there are no stage hands to move the scenery or props. The cast does that. But it all works brilliantly. There are only four performances left. If you can, you should not miss it.

And, honestly, I would suggest that you ignore the surtitles: they are quite unnecessary and also very inaccurate.

Incidentally the Opera has taken a real risk with this show - see the Globe article

"Chef Sampler" sushi from Thrifty Foods

2011-10-19T14:57:00.001-07:00

"Chef Sampler" sushi from Thrifty Foods, a photo by Stephen Rees on Flickr.

A new store opened today in Sapperton. Thrifty now have seven stores in the Lower Mainland with "more to come". They are no longer the independent Vancouver Island company I got to know when I first moved to Victoria but part of IGA - which means that there are growing numbers of "Compliments" brand goods on their shelves replacing the Alex Campbell brand in some cases. However, it is still a store worth driving a distance for - especially for their fresh foods. In store made sushi been one of the attractions (this selection was $9.69, which compares favourably to most take out places). Indeed the people working the sushi counter recognized me from the Tsawassen store. New Westminster is about the same drive time - and their traffic is no worse than getting stuck on the wrong side of the tunnel in the pm peak. Moreover this store will be open 24/7 which means that is will be relatively convenient for shifts at the bridge - and much to be preferred over Wal-Mart, which is close but unacceptable!

The store is located on the former brewery site and, of course, does not show up yet on Google - so roughly on East Columbia between Alberta and Simpson Streets on the east side of the street. There is underground parking - but you will need to pay and get the ticket "validated" (this was not the case today as a concession on opening) and remember your stall number.

Restaurant Review: Nelson the Seagull

2011-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Nelson the Seagull has been open since May of this year. In their own words, they are about bread and coffee - and they do both exceedingly well.

They are located on Carrall between Hastings and Cordova which you might think of as Gastown but is still the Downtown Eastside, and definitely raises the tone. Even so, I would be cautious about parking my bike where I couldn't keep an eye on it, if I were you. Carrall is one of the streets that has seen its cycle facilities upgraded recently.

As you can see the interior is welcoming and does have the air of a home.

The menu is short, but the choices are still adequately varied, though since I like to eat lunch at noon, when I arrived not all of the items - the stew for instance - were ready.

This came with a knife and fork, so I ate it that way. It would have been quite a mouthful if I had put the components together. Cilantro pesto is a good idea, but I would have preferred that the cheese be identified. This is going to sound like carping, because the white bread is truly very good. But I try to get as much whole grain into my carbs as I can (to lower the glycemic index) so I am hoping that they will introduce some greater variety of bread in future.

I haven't ordered a "flat white" before, since I haven't seen it on a menu, but it turns out that is what I have been making for myself at home. My partner likes to eat the fluffier foam from the top of the pitcher with a spoon - and I am happy to indulge her. Of course, I use a much bigger cup, and I have never managed to produce latte art.

Wikipedia says "A flat white is a coffee beverage from Australia and New Zealand. It is prepared by pouring microfoam (steamed milk from the bottom of a pitcher) over a single shot (30 millilitre) or double shot of espresso. It is similar to the latte and the café au lait and like other espresso based beverages it can be interpreted various ways.

The beverage is typically served in a small, 150–160 millilitre, ceramic cup. Microfoam is used, resulting in a smooth and velvety texture. A flat white may incorporate latte art."

Up to now, when in Gastown I have seen little reason to go beyond the Water Street cafe - but the number and quality of establishments is certainly rapidly increasing. I no longer have kids at home so the Spaghetti Factory has not seen me for a while despite its in house tram. Nelson will certainly see me more often

WINDmobile: The saga

2011-09-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

I got a bill in the email from WIND today. I would like to say I am surprised but I am not. You might want to read my reasons why I left WIND before going further.

As far as I am concerned I ended my relationship with WIND on September 13th when I sent them this email (some personal identifying data has been redacted)

I have been on hold for a "cancellation agent" for half an hour. That is beyond unacceptable. Indeed if the customer service agent I had been speaking to had not said "I am going to transfer you and wait on line with you until the cancellation agent answers" I would have hung up sooner. Instead I heard the same tune and the recorded voice promising a "real person" would answer in a minute over and over again. In all that time I heard nothing further from the customer service agent. I assume he was forced to answer other calls and could not wait with me.

My account number is xxxxxxxxx

My phone number was xxxxxxxx

Stephen Rees
xxxxxxxx Highway
Richmond BC
V7x xxx

On Friday of last week I unlocked my phone. Since then the SIM card for WIND will NOT connect to your service. I have therefore gone to a new, more competitive service provider.

The customer service agent told me that my account shows a balance owing of 50c. However, your payment system cannot accept payments under $1.

That, it seems to me, is your problem not mine. I think that a company that expects its customers to go out of their way to make payments in cash is out of touch with current reality. If you had paypal, for instance, I could settle easily. If your on line system for credit cards actually worked - or if the agent could have said either that the amount would be waived as a gesture of good will, or some acceptable payment method suggested, then we would not have an issue.

[here I inserted a link to my previous blog post]

I would also commend the customer service agent for being the first WIND employee who actually tried to win back my business. Sadly, he was too late and had nothing to offer that I wanted. The interminable delay that was imposed on me because I wanted to close my account settles the matter for me. I would not come back to you now even if you paid me to.

When I tried calling WIND's customer service number today on my cell phone I was first cut off, then found that my phone dialler could not select any of the options on their system. So I had to call them on a land line.

When I got through, the customer service agent confirmed that they had a record of my previous conversation, and the email I have quoted above. Note here that they have never replied to that email. She insisted that I had not closed my account since I did not stay on the line after being kept on hold to speak to the "customer loyalty department". She also said that she did not have the ability to cancel my account either. I explained that I was using a land line at work, and that I could not tie up that one while on hold to speak to someone who COULD cancel my account. After some asperity on my part, I suggested that she write down my new cell phone number and ask the cancellation agent to call me on that, since I cannot use their system on my cell (as described above). She agreed that she could ask them to call me. That was an hour ago. I have yet to hear from them, so I decided to start writing this blog post.

As things stand at the moment, I have a cell phone that is incapable of calling the WIND system - even if I put back their SIM card. I am being required to pay for a month of service on this phone that I have not used on their system. Since I have been unable to talk to a cancellation agent, billing will continue until I can. But now I am simply waiting for them to call me.

UPDATE September 27

I had a call today from Kathy at WINDMobile. She said "this should have been handled better. I will take care of it for you." She then "took it off the air" and closed the account, confirming that it now shows a zero balance. She also said "I apologize" and hoped that they would have an opportunity to better in future.

Book Review: Lonely Planet's 1000 Ultimate Sights

2011-09-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

Did you see the Bucket List?

"Two terminally ill men escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die."

They have a list of places one of them wants to see before he "kicks the bucket". It helps that the other one is very rich and has no other way to spend his money. Jack Nicholson revels in such roles - not dissimilar to Melvin Udal, for instance.

Lonely Planet publishes the sort of guide books that appeal to me, since if you use one you do not necessarily end up at the same sights as every other tourist. For instance, one of the things I like to do in a new city is seek out local beer - preferably microbrewery stuff or even brew pubs. That and LP is why we ended up one lunchtime in a biker bar in San Francisco - close to downtown but far from the ordinary.

They have sent me a pdf of a new venture - and also a hard copy - which is I suppose a way of helping you to chose your own bucket list. It is a lavish production but not something you would stuff in your bag to take on a trip. More something to leaf through on a cold evening when there is nothing on tv. The photography is stunning and the quality of reproduction excellent. For each one of the 1,000 sites there is a 100 words summary - and some basic info on how to get there - usually a URL. They are grouped into categories "Greatest Wildlife Spectacles" for instance. Of my personal favourites "Most Interesting Subway Stations" - Baker Street is their first choice (been there) and Montreal (yup) - for its art.

And, of course, even though they have a thousand "ultimates" I expect we will all be in disagreement with some of their choices. I went to Washington but the National Cathedral was not on my list of things to see - they chose it because it has Darth Vader gargoyle! But then think of all those tourists who go to the Louvre because they have read the Da Vinci Code. By the way the only other site in the American capital they mention is the Renoir painting "Luncheon of the Boating Party" at the Phillips Collection. Drat, missed that too.

The index, by the way works as most indeces do by page number, even though each of Sights is numbered sequentially.

Most Iconic Trees mentions nowhere in Canada - much less Cathedral Grove, BC - but of course Sherwood Forest is in there (cross that one off) and California Redwoods get mentioned. Done that too.

Canada does get some mentions: Niagara Falls (been there many times) Green Gables, polar bears in Churchill, Burgess Shale in BC (I have been trying to get there for a while - forest fires stopped me last time) and Drumheller, CN Tower (check). Of Vancouver - nothing at all. Not prettiest baseball field, or greenest city or (of course) most liveable city. I guess we have nothing ultimate to offer - so perhaps we are not world class after all.

Not many people will be able to claim all1,000 but it was intriguing in my first flip through how many I had seen - and also the number that were already on my own bucket list. But mine is much shorter, more eclectic (I think) and more affordable. For instance the upper falls in Cypress Falls Park - this is the lower one, and the lack of a good guide at the time meant we missed the upper one.

Targetted ad misses

2011-09-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

The screenshot above was taken from my computer this morning. It appeared at the top of the Guardian's web page - but you won't see it if you click the link. You will see something else. You will get to an article which talks about what the Guardian hoped to achieve. The ad gets inserted into a space and is supposed to reflect who you are, where you live and what you buy. It is the technology that has made companies like Google extremely wealthy. These ads are actually from Rogers Digital Media (I know that since a banner from them replaced the one above). I do not know what technology Rogers is using, but it is not very good at doing its job. I have complained about this before when, having bought a cruise holiday, I then got bombarded by ads for Celebrity cruises - at the time before I had had the cruise but when my willingness to buy another one was at its lowest.

I hate the big banks. RBC is no better or worse than any of them. But mostly my french is nothing like as good as it was when I was 14 years old. And Google translate means I no longer worry about that. Ads I usually ignore anyway - ads in french are no worse than ads on tv with the sound muted (as long as the tv does not automatically insert subtitles when you hit the mute button). Anyway the Guardian got a bit of revenue for my page view and the RBC got screwed so that's alright, isn't it?

..

Mobilicity - teething troubles

2011-09-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

On Friday I went to the mall and paid off my WINDmobile bill. I asked the young man to unlock my phone. He declined and said the only way to do that is to call 611. While I was at the mall I checked out the competition. The young woman at Koodoo admitted they were really Telus (end of conversation) and the salesman at Wireless Wave gave me a lot of rather misleading information. I think he really wanted to sell me a phone. He said that there are some outlets in Richmond that will unlock phones for $20, but the practice was "illegal". While there may be such outlets, the illegality seems to me to be unlikely. You can, of course, find out how to unlock phones on the internet.

In any event I could find no better deal currently than Mobilicity's "back to school" offer of $25 for unlimited local calling, text and data. It's that last one that wins me over - since the availability of open wifi seems to have declined very steeply in recent weeks. With WIND I was able to tether my smart phone to my MacBook - but I ran up a data bill very quickly that way. Convenient but expensive.

I visited the nearest Mobilicity store at No 2 Road and Blundell - and while they were willing to unlock my phone it turned out they didn't know how to do it either. So I called 611 and got the unlock code from WIND. They wanted the phone's serial number and to get that you enter *#06# on the phone key pad. That enables them to calculate an unlock code which is of limited validity.

I then walked over to Starbucks for a nice cup of tea, a table with a 110v outlet nearby and (of course) free wifi. So to save you looking up how to unlock a WINDmobile Nokia 5230 smartphone here is the process in 4 easy steps

1. Turn off the phone

2. Remove the SIM card (to do that the battery has to come out too, but you put that back before the next step).

3. Turn on the phone. Since it does not have a SIM card it will not connect

4. Using the phone keypad enter the following #pw+[the unlock code from WIND]+1#

note: do not enter the square brackets. Since you do not have a p or a w on your keypad use the * key

tap *** for P, **** for W and ** for +

The letters and symbols will appear on the screen. If they appear as **** delete (using the C key at bottom right of the pad) and do it again. Once entered correctly the message "SIM Restriction off" will appear. I was a bit surprised that after I had done this, putting the SIM card back did not re-establish a WIND connection. I had not at that time cancelled my account, so it seems that unlocking the phone did that automatically.

So now I had to get a new account somewhere and Mobilicity was closest. They set me me up for the $25 a month deal plus $20 for a new SIM card. The phone worked for voice and text - and they left it at that. I should have stayed and checked some more but I was now running late, so I left. I later determined that the smartphone would not do email or the web. I got the message "Packet data connection not available".

Now, when the phone was connected to the Mobilicity network for the first time, it spent a while sending and receiving text messages which were supposed to reset many things: including the home page of the web browser and so on. I assume that the staff at the store thought that these set up signals would turn my unlocked phone into a replica of the Nokia 5230 model that they sell. That certainly seemed to be the intention - looking at the messages I got on it. But once again I had to spend time talking to someone at a call centre. For Mobilicity this is *611 - and I had to enter the correct WAP information into the phone set up menus manually. Then I had to remove the SIM card and battery and leave the phone like that for five minutes, so that when I reconnected it would reset and a new signal be sent to it.

So now I have internet connectivity and can do email and web on the small screen. Good. By the way, the browser web home page is still WINDmobile! However, talking to Mobilicity support provided all the necessary information about how to change that - and the web page and passwords needed.

What took longer was to tether the Nokia to my MacBook. A call to *611 gave me some information, but not enough to establish a connection initially. Mobilicity does not "support" tethering - because it requires expertise that they think only Nokia or maybe Apple can supply. Indeed, the only way I established tethering in the first place was by using information from the Nokia support web pages (three different ones). I had, foolishly (it seems) assumed that the same settings would work for Mobilicity since none of them were site specific - like a web addresses. But by thinking through what I had done to get web access, the changes I had to make to the Macs connection settings were straightforward. Leave the telephone number as *99# and enter the identity and password as advised by Mobilicity for web access. I took a little while to get this sorted, but it works now.

WINDMobile - I'm leaving

2011-09-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

I tried to email them from their webpage. It doesn't work. No surprise there I called them. The person at the other end (after the usual "two minute" wait that always takes much longer) doesn't know who I am from call display, yet I am calling 611 from the phone they supplied.

For several months recently, their web page - and their phone system - has been rejecting my credit cards. It never accepted Amex (of course) but usually if VISA was rejected Mastercard would work. Now even that has stopped. They think it may be because the address record they have for me differs from the one the credit card company has. Of course, the fact that I pay for many other things by credit card on line - and on sites in more than one country I might add (all three cards work faultlessly on sites in the UK and US as well as Canada) does not influence them. Besides, there is only one address. The only possible glitch might be that since I live in a town house some people put the unit number first, ahead of the street address, others afterwards. Every other system seems to cope with that. Not WINDmobile's, apparently. They have been aware of the problem for months - but they just blame the customer. So much easier than coding a web page properly.

They also once had the temerity to insist over the phone that I visit one of their booths in mall and pay by cash! As though my credit was no good!

I was really pleased when WIND came to Canada - and cheered when they won the case about "foreign ownership". Something to do with Egyptian banks. I don't care. I wanted an outbreak of real competition in a market dominated by three players (Telus, Rogers and Bell) and their surrogates - all those other names like FIDO conceal the fact that they are owned by one of the big three. WIND doesn't want a three year contract. Or any contract come to that. It rates are really competitive. You can change your plan for a $20 fee anytime you want to, if your calling pattern changes.

But then there are the inevitable glitches a new entrant to the market is bound to trip up on. In Greater Vancouver, WIND home coverage does not extend to Delta. If I go shopping in Tsawwassen, I get a text message welcoming me to the US - and the roaming charge that goes with that. Oddly, when I first went to San Francisco, my phone worked. It didn't in New York. But everyone recognizes that there will be slip ups, and they were simply helping me to defeat the risk that my phone would get snitched and used to run up a huge bill with overseas calls. Quite a common problem apparently. And easily prevented by putting a password on your phone if you think that is a good idea. Depends if you like to actually answer calls, I think.

Recently my data bill at WIND has risen - because more and more people are protecting their wifi networks, which cuts down on the opportunity for causal use of the laptop away from home. But also because using the smart phone is an easy way to locate a Car2GO. Just not a cheap way. I was seriously thinking about their latest unlimited voice, text and data for $29 a month offer (for 12 months then rises to $45). But if they cannot make it easy to pay my bill - and refuse to accept any responsibility for the problem they are well aware of - then why would I stay with them?

In any relationship based on buying a service, the customer who has a choice to switch service providers needs to feel wanted. It costs eight times more to win a new customer than retain an existing one. And existing customers are reluctant to make a fuss and put up with the inconvenience of switching. But there is a limit and I just passed mine. I am now researching the competition.

Tax - who pays and who doesn't

2011-07-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

The story that inspired this post comes from the Guardian - about a campaigner in Britain concerned about tax avoidance, and tax havens.

The following quote that caught my eye

...when this government came into power almost the first thing it did was raise VAT rates so that ordinary people would pay more tax and then cut corporate tax rates.

"What's happening here is that the tax burden is being shifted from capital on to ordinary people."

VAT stands for Value Added Tax which is the UK equivalent of our HST.

Large corporations - and the people who run them - pay very little tax. Indeed the amount they "earn" has been steadily increasing at the same time as the amount they pay in tax has been declining. That is true in general - not just in the UK but nearly everywhere. This is the Bilderberg/Hayek/Ronald Regan effect. It has been adopted enthusiastically by governments all over the world: the places that don't do it are regarded as quaint eccentrics at best. But it was not enough to have the tax regime shifted from progressive (the rich pay more, the poor less) to regressive (the poor pay a lot, the rich pay very little) but the wealthy corporations and the rich have also taken advantage of the growing number of tax havens around the world, and the ease with which money can be moved between them. If the amounts are big enough.

So even though I have found an article about Britain and how little they are doing to fight tax avoidance, I will bet that exactly the same thing is happening here in Canada. CRA will be breathing down your neck if you are on a low income but have little resource to chase after the truly enormous amounts of money that are being shunted off shore to avoid paying tax.

I still don;t know how I am going to vote on the HST, simply because whichever way the decision goes it will cost us, the ordinary tax payers, plenty. But you can be sure that the sort of people who can afford to hire tax specialists will be laughing all the way to their money's hiding places.

Nigiri at Sushi Han

2011-07-04T14:28:00.001-07:00

Nigiri at Sushi Han, a photo by Stephen Rees on Flickr.

Top row l to r: Tako Salad (octopus, ginger, green onion) Maguro (tuna) Sake (salmon) Amaebi (sweet shrimp) Toro (tuna belly)
Bottom row l to r: Unagi (bbq eel) Crab Tempura, Hotate (scallop)

www.sushihan.ca

This small sushi restaurant has been at the corner of Blundell and No 2 for as long as I have lived in Richmond. It is very popular both for eat in and take away. In my opinion it is one of the best places in terms of sushi quality. Service can often get overwhelmed by the sheer level of demand. Even so, if I am in the neighbourhood close to meal times, I will still head there. If you are in the mood for something other than sushi then I recommend Nabeyaki Udon: the broth alone is worth travelling for - it seems to have some miraculous property that restores me when I am feeling less than cheerful.

By the way the selection above is my own choice of nigiri: their own combos work out a bit cheaper - this came to $13.72 with tax

Canadians: Prime minister should act like a CEO

2011-04-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

This story is profoundly depressing. It shows how successful the corporate/right wing mindset has become. Most CEOs have none of the qualities identified "Having vision and leadership" not being exactly necessary. On the other hand most corporations behave like psychopaths - ignoring every human emotion except greed and aggrandizement. A corporation need only deliver one thing - a satisfactory rate of return to its shareholders. Indeed by law that is required of corporations - its only duty of care is to the people who invest in it. At one time successful companies had to take care of their employees and their customers, and there was indeed a careful balancing act. Many great companies even found ways to actually set an example to governments. The first "public housing" for instance was built by the quaker owned chocolate company Cadbury's - whose employee housing was far better when first built than any tied housing seen before. Port Sunlight - built by a soap maker - is still visited by urban planners an an example of best practice in built environments.

These days it is only the bottom line that matters to most CEOs - and the share price. Many companies now simply trade on the basis of the prospects of future earnings. The dot com boom (and bust) seemingly taught investors nothing: huge values are ascribed to enterprises that produce nothing and have nothing like an adequate revenue source.

The psychopath has no empathy. Nor do the companies that send their manufacturing off shore, to exploit workers in sweat shops in conditions that are illegal in the markets where the goods are actually sold. They destroy the environment, acting with callous disregard not just for the health and safety of their employees but everyone in the immediate vicinity - or indeed the whole world. The corporations fund misinformation campaigns, carefully building distrust of scientists or anyone who objectively reviews their operations. The tobacco industry has been found guilty of misrepresentation of the harm its products causes, but they still trade. The same techniques are now employed by big oil and coal companies who fund the climate change denial lobby. They are responsible for the inaction of the world's leaders to deal with the biggest risk that all life as we know it now faces. The fishing industry simply eliminates entire species - throws away much by catch - and then moves on into deeper waters having rendered the best fishing grounds deserts. The only difference between PG&E or Bernie Madoff and most large corporations is that they got caught. Most of the offenders are not even investigated let alone charged. many simply move off shore to avoid paying taxes or being subject to regulation. And desperate small countries offer them shelter in return for pitiful sums to allow them to survive: the flag of convenience comes very cheap to the company but at huge cost to sea farers. All of us pay more taxes (and these days fees and charges too) and suffer from withdrawal of essential services in order that the wealthy and the corporations they operate can get richer. It is possibly very telling that John le Carre - the pen name of an author who used to wrote spy fiction about the evils of the KGB and CIA - now writes about big pharmaceutical companies: if anything their behaviour is worse.

A Prime Minister ought to have regard for the well being of all of the citizens of the country he is elected to govern. He should be scrupulous, and be aware of the problems of other countries and peoples as he is called to represent us on the world stage. Our present PM has been responsible for the catastrophic drop in Canada's reputation. We were once seen as an example. We are now seen as a puppet in the hands of the multinational corporations as these are the only interests that are recognized as valid by what we are taught is no longer "The Government of Canada" but "The Harper Government ".

We do not need as CEO as PM. We need a statesman. Or woman. But of course the only one of them that is running is not even allowed into the debates

The green thing

2011-04-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

This got circulated on an email list I subscribe to. The person who sent it failed to provide the link from where he got it. I did not write this - I stole it. I make no apology for that. I will go do a search to see if there is an authentic original somewhere, but perhaps it is already viral. I hope so.

==============

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older customer: "you know, plastic bags aren't good for the environment". The elderly lady apologized to the young cashier and explained, "You know, we didn't have the green thing back in our day."

That's right, we didn't have the green thing in her day. Back then, we returned our milk bottles, Coke bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, using the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But, true, we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

In our day, we walked up stairs, because they didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and we didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But that's right; we didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the disposable kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Hey, you know, wind and solar power really did dry those clothes. But, no green thing.

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not all brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right, we didn't have the green thing back in her day.

Back then, we had one TV, or maybe just a radio, in the house - not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a pizza dish, not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up newspaper to cushion it, not fancy Styrofoam or brand-new plastic bubble wrap. But, we didn't have the green thing.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working, so we didn't need to drive the car to a health club, in order to run on a computerized and electrically powered treadmill . But that old lady's right, we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty, without resorting to a new plastic bottle of mineral water for each new sip. We refilled pens with ink, instead of buying new pens, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But the old lady's right, we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from a satellite 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But that old lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in her day.

Restaurant Review: Jolly's Indian Bistro

2011-02-23T12:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't done a restaurant review here for a while - if at all. But I was so impressed last night that I thought I should pass this along. I like Indian food but it has been a while since I went out looking for one. Indeed, it was Groupon that brought me here. I have signed up for their email - but months went by before I saw something I might actually use. Fortunately, this Groupon lasted six months, so we did find a way to use it eventually. Jolly's is small, and very popular already, both for dine in and take out. One Friday night around six or so we saw lines to the door. Obviously no chance of a table that night - but there is plenty of choice a short walk away. Not Indian, but all sorts. Early Tuesday evening it was a different story. The place was nearly empty and the few of us there were regarded as secondary to filling a huge take out order. One guy (presumably Jolly himself) working hard in the kitchen. But when our starter came (we shared) it was very tasty - pakhora. I ordered lamb rogan josh, my partner chicken biryani. That comes with a small salad on the plate, and a pile of basmati rice - even with the order of biryani - a rice dish. And two naan - so quite a blast of carbs. The lamb was tender and tasty - and quite mild. The biryani quite the best I have ever tasted - fragrant might be the best word. There was quite a lot of biryani to pack up for lunch the next day. The bill - including a pint of draft Okanagan Springs IPA - was around $60 - ignoring the coupon and including the tip.

One niggle of mine is the serving of food that is supposed to be hot on cold plates. The lamb came in a metal bowl, and the side salad was already on the plate. That did mean we could easily share - something many people like to do. But maybe it would work better the other way round if they have a plate warmer.

The decor is modern and tasteful - not a sign of red flock wallpaper. And even on Tuesday it was filling up fast by the time we left. Groupon obviously spreads the word across Vancouver, but one thing I have heard from a merchant is that small businesses can quickly get overwhelmed and may not have adequate margins to withstand deep discounts at high volumes.

If you are a Kits local, you probably know all about this place. if not, call ahead and reserve. I will be going back even without a coupon.

Sigh of relief

2011-01-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

When I learned about Shaw's limit on bandwidth, and the usage charges, I got worried. I could not find anything on their web page, so I wrote to them - and tweeted about it. This is the reply I got to-day

Good morning Stephen,

Thank you for your email dated January 20, 2011.

After reviewing your account I can confirm that you have not exceeded the limit within the last 6 months (that is as far back as we can see). With our High Speed Internet connection you have a limit of 60 GB/month. You were between 6 GB and 11 GB over the last 6 months and nowhere near the limits. The majority of our customers will never exceed their bandwidth limits. If you continue to use the internet as you have been, you will never have to worry about being billed extra for your internet service.

There is a process in place for customers who exceed their limits. The second consecutive month they go over, they will be notified in your monthly invoice and a monitoring tool will be enabled within our Online Customer Care website https://secure.shaw.ca/. The invoice will include a graph that shows the usage over the last few months too. At this point there are no charges for the overage, we will simply work with our customers to reduce the amount of data or adjust the services on the account for more bandwidth to suit their needs. If the usage limits are broken after this point, the account will be billed.

I understand that we may enable the monitoring tool on our website for all customers rather than only for those who exceed after they exceed. I’m hoping this is the case and it will be available shortly.

Please let us know if you have any additional concerns, or feel free to contact us through our Live Chat . Simply go to www.shaw.ca/chat. When sending a reply, please remember to include all previous correspondence. Thank you.

Juanita - 3719
eCare Team

Shaw Cablesystems GP
| www.shaw.ca |

ACCOUNTABLE BALANCE CUSTOMER FOCUSED INTEGRITY LOYALTY POSITIVE, CAN DO ATTITUDE TEAM PLAYER

Help & Support: http://www.shaw.ca/help
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Oh Canada

2011-01-26T14:54:00.001-08:00

The following post is inspired by a tweet - I just could not find a way of getting this down to 140 characters

"Budweiser will be the Official Beer of both Vancouver @WhitecapsFC and the @BCLions #BCPlace"
from miss604 (Rebecca Bollwit)

Frankly I care little about sports - soccer or football mean little to me. I perceive them to be part of a process by which the populace are distracted. The coverage and analysis of sports is part of "news" - and arguably more thorough and certainly more keenly followed.

I grew up near the Boleyn. The home of West Ham FC. And many people I have met have assumed that in some way that must mean I am a "supporter". Actually no. The behaviour of soccer fans in Britain in the sixties and seventies was horrific. Slicing up the competition was taken literally: razors were taken to away games by the InterCity crew.

Local loyalty actually means less and less. Even in places like Green Bay - where (NFL) football is practically a religion.

Budweiser is weak American beer. It resembles only the authentic article - lager brewed in Budvar, in the Czech Republic - only in name. The US brewer has even taken the brewers of Budvar to court to "protect" their brand name - derived from that town but traduced by a drink that could not be sold as beer under the German "Rheinheitsgebot".

"Budweiser has placed an even greater emphasis on its American heritage since early 2009, describing itself as "The Great American Lager". " source

But BC Place, the BC Lions and the Whitecaps are Canadians in a Canadian city. Where we are a bit particular about our beer. In fact I know many Americans who used to come to Canada for the beer. They themselves are increasingly turning to craft beers -which is very good indeed.

Many of our own brewers have been absorbed by international conglomerates. Business only recognizes national boundaries when it suits their marketing purposes.

It is all about money. Anheuser-Busch has plenty of that - and they bought up Labatt.

The one thing that all Canadians have in common when it comes to defining our identity is that we are NOT AMERICANS. Of course, our present government in Ottawa has been very happy to be seen as America's little brother for the last five years. I doubt many Canadians are actually very happy about that. Even the ones who measure our success in terms of the value of our dollar against the greenback because it gives them more buying power when they go cross border shopping.

I won't be attending any Whitecaps or Lions games. I will be surprised if there is anything to attract me back to BC Place, despite its new roof. Been there. Didn't like it. Their choice of beer means that I would not even be able to take solace in something nice to drink while I am being bored. I would like to think that some other Canadians will agree with me.

Book Review "Unbroken"

2011-01-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading a new book. New in the sense of recently published and excerpted in the Observer. I liked the excerpt so much I went in search of the book and was really pleased that not only does the Richmond Public Library have a copy but I could put a hold on it. Which reminds me, I had better take that hold off now, because I have read it. Skimming down the search results, I saw that the library offers ebooks. I suppose I had known that but I hadn't gone there for a new ebook - I usually get old books from Project Gutenberg, and put them on my Palm. Yes, I know, I am a technological dinosaur, but it is more portable than either of my laptops and easier to use than my smart phone - and without any of those data fees. The last two I downloaded were "Howard's End" - because I had at last caught up with the movie (it came out when my children were babies and we didn't get out much then) - and before that "Don Quixote". I had seen the Arts Club dramatisation, and wondered what else might be in such a huge book. Ebooks on a Palm are much more portable than any print edition - and can be read in bed without disturbing anyone since you don't need any additional illumination. Reading at night is one of my preferred methods of dealing with insomnia and books like "Tristram Shandy" seem guaranteed to have me nodding off again quite quickly.

So - back to the topic - "Unbroken" is a remarkable nonfiction book. Hildenbrand's first book "Seabiscuit" was based on the same formula. Extensive research. lots of detail but a writing style more like a novel than a treatise. She is highly readable - not to say addictive. The version available from the library did not appear to be available for Palm - but I could be wrong about that. I downloaded the software (Adobe Digital Editions) to my MacBook and read it on that, seated at my desk. I suppose I could have carried it to an arm chair - but I was hooked, and didn't even think about it. Louis Zamperini grew up as a bit of a tearaway - but became a distance runner. He might have beaten the 4 minute mile long before Bannister, had not the war intervened. He did run at the '36 Berlin Olympics. He served as a bombardier in the US Army Air Force - bailed out over the Pacific - survived a record time in a life raft (it was that bit that I read as the excerpt) but was captured by the Japanese. They did not treat prisoners of war well. That bit was very difficult to read. It was psychologically and physically very damaging to Louie - and he had a very hard time. He was also very famous - so his life story was common knowledge in the US in the post war period. I must admit I had never heard of him - any more than I had heard of Seabiscuit, who was even more famous in his time.

I like reading text and up until now I have preferred paper to electronic editions. I did take advantage of a so called "free offer" on facebook which give me a copy of an audio book. But not only could I not make it work on the Palm - though other "samples" did work - I also found that I could NOT listen to a book and do something else at the same time. I suppose if I copied it to a CD I could play it in the car. After all, I found that the offer was not really free at all and since I did not do something - probably returning to the web page I got it from - my credit card was charged for what I thought was free a month after I got it. So I think I can justifiably make a copy. Audible keep emailing me to try more, but I really don't think they can expect me to fall for the same gag twice.

Downloading a library book presumably means that it has a limited life on my hard drive. I suppose it must auto delete or something. I will update this post if anything interesting happens. But for now not only do I recommend you check out Unbroken, I suggest you try it as a free download.

Ad sense? No sense

2010-11-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

I have noticed a change in my web use recently. The pages I visit regularly nearly all seem to have targeted ads by Google. In other words, it is not the Guardian that is choosing the ads I see when I read their newspaper on line. Sure they get some revenue, but Google is picking the ads to show to me. Based on what I have been up to on line. Which in the last couple of weeks has been planning my winter vacation. So now every time I glance at an ad it is either for Celebrity cruises or one of the big US hotel chains. But I actually have zero interest in these sites now, since I have (some time ago actually) completed all the arrangements. I am not "in the market" for buying these services. I have made my choices and paid my money. So showing me ads for them is a waste of effort. I am not about to click on them now, especially if I learn that the price I paid has now gone down some more. That won't add anything to my happiness.

Indeed it was seeing such ads for my former cell phone company that offered new customers a much better deal than they would offer me as a well established client with a good history. They even cheekily suggested that they would need a credit check. So now I am with a new cell phone company.

Google's algorithms are very clever indeed. But the basic idea of a successful advertisement is to alert me to a product or service, convince me to use one brand over others and then make me a customer. If I am already a customer - and not yet ready to consider repeat business - the ad is of no use to me - or the advertiser. If I was Celebrity Cruises or Westin Hotels I would be rethinking my on line strategy. Because I don't see this one winning any new business from me.

Cooking with Italian Grandmothers

2010-11-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

When someone offers me a book to review, I think twice. I get offered more than I can comfortably deal with, and not all of them actually fit in with either my blogs' concerns or even my own. In this case, my interest stems from the development of the slow food movement originally conceived in Italy as a protest against fast food in general and McDonalds in particular. There are common themes here with rediscovering the pleasure of good food - locally sourced ingredients - a more connected way of life with a greater sense of community. It has been fascinating to me to discover how much of our local green activists' time is centered around food. This started with ideas like harvesting the fruit that neighbours were not bothering to collect themselves from their own gardens - which could be delivered to the local food bank. Community gardens have been shown to play a key role in increasing neighbourhood security. And here, offering to cultivate the gardens of others that were otherwise an expensive burden just to maintain as lawns, is producing local food and at the same time reducing the need for artificial weedkillers and fertilisers.

This is a big book. I put in on my kitchen scales and it came in at 1.5kg or 3 and half pounds. 295 pages - large format - with 150 colour photographs and 25 original illustrations. This is the sort of book that I probably would not buy for myself, but I would give to as a gift, and the timing of its publication is obviously aimed at the Christmas market. Because of its large size, and beautiful format, I would be hesitant to actually have it on my counter while I am cooking. There are cookbooks on my shelves that have been treated this way - and they fall open to favourite recipes where the pages are grease spattered. One of them - Delia Smith's Cookery Course - has for a long time been a staple. And that includes Osso Buco with Risotto. That offers a clear comparison with one of the early menus in this book. Delia aimed for simplicity and ease of replication so those unfamiliar with the dishes - and not having a handy Italian Granny - could be sure of producing something acceptable. Jessica Theroux is more interested in authenticity. The recipe she got from Mamma Maria has twice the number of ingredients as Delia's. That being said there is, of course, never just one way of cooking any meal - and I regard most recipes now as merely starting points. It helps if you have a good idea of what you are aiming for - and this is the sort of meal that is very accommodating to both the needs of the household - it won't hurt if it is kept waiting for a while - and adaptation to what is at hand. My partner noticed that Delia's version is almost bereft of vegetables - a great loss she thought. There's certainly more in Maria's.

This is not food for the faint of heart - or those concerned about their diet. "After two weeks of cooking with Mamma Maria, I had mastered the basics of Lombardian cuisine and added two inches to my waistline."

The recipes are only part of the book. The main attraction for many will be the narrative of how she met the women, and what they talked about. "This is a book about women and food and listening" is right at the front - and there were times when as a man I felt that I was intruding on the sort of discussions that woman have in kitchens - that they stop as soon as a man puts his head around the door. I am not sure I really wanted to know about some of the more intimate details discussed here, though I am sure that the people involved were consulted before their personal histories were published.

Theroux used the Slow Food Movement as a major resource in her explorations and according to her much of the content of the book was due to contacts and the willingness of people to recommend those of like mind. This makes reading the book much more pleasurable than the average recipe book. It is not only literate and informative, but full of stories - and we all love stories. For several evenings in a row, I simply settled on the couch and read them, delighting in the sense of belonging that they created. Sadly these days I am not called upon to create meals for many people. The recipes have to be scaled down for my kitchen. The quantities are given in the American fashion as volumes (not weights) so it is quite simple to adapt them. I somehow doubt that Italian Grandmothers are quite so precise. In my experience - especially with things like bread dough - the variability of such things as temperature and humidity can have significant impact on say the amount of flour needed to produce the sort of dough that will work easily. And whenever I talked to my Granny's - or my Mother for that matter - about cooking there was usually quite a range for many ingredients.

It would take a lot of time and effort to do this book justice. Trying out the recipes alone might take a year. Assuming one could source all the ingredients readily. Perhaps in major urban areas with Italian populations this will not be a problem, but I can see it causing some effort further afield. But worth trying, nonetheless. I am certainly going to try the sourdough bread next.

One thing I feel bound to comment upon is the disparity in pricing for the US and Canada - common to most books. While our currencies may be at par at present, book prices are not. This book retails for $40 in the US but $47 in Canada. Though you might, of course, find bookshops that will discount those amounts. It is certainly well worth $40 -and I can think of several members of my family who would be happy to find it in their stocking.

Oranges

2010-10-07T14:10:00.001-07:00

At one time I used to keep the receipts for everything. Just in case. The litter that created I have been recycling. But I may have to start again, as so many things that I buy disappoint.

Not that this is a Big Deal - but when did it become standard practice to sell oranges with no juice in them? They look fine on the outside - and feel firm. But when they are peeled and segmented each one is simply a bundle of fibres. With almost no liquid. You cannot squeeze anything out of them at all. And this seems to be as likely with large Australian navels as small Peruvian mandarins.

Telus offer

2010-10-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

I have decided to revive what has been dormant for a while . This blog I set up for things that were not transportation or planning. Maybe that's not specific enough - and may need to be changed. We will see but right now I have some things bugging me that i think are worth sharing with a wider audience.

I got an offer from Telus in the mail this morning. I have been looking at what I pay for tv, telephone and internet and this looked very tempting. Until I turned it over and started to read the tiny grey print on the back. Actually the fact that the print is so small and difficult to read is a red light for me, but the details are not at all encouraging. To get the promised low prices you have to sign a three year contract. They offer something really cheap in year 1, but say nothing about the rates in future years - but they do specify penalties for breaking the contract. In other words, the deal will turn out to be so poor that they expect people to want to get out of it once they find out what the prices are for the second and third years.

No, I won't switch. And if you want me as a customer, I want to know that i will be treated respectfully - not to be treated like a sucker.

And just in case anyone at Telus reads this the offer code is PZR01

Cell phone rant

2010-07-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

This all started when AirMiles sent me some promotional information from Primus. I was already a Primus customer, so I compared their offering to new customers to what I was paying, and the savings were significant. But the offering was only to new customers. And when I tried to get these new rates, I got the run around.

Some background first. So you can skip this bit if you like. I switched to Primus long distance some years ago, when it was still known as AT&T. The introduction of competition in the long distance market was welcome - at that time I was a BCTel customer (weren't we all) and the cheaper cost meant I could switch providers for ld service only and save money. At some stage, AT&T changed its named and joined the AirMiles "customer loyalty" program, so I had quite an incentive to get a cell phone from them, when they started offering that service. My first cell phone got lost - and I used it so little I didn't replace it, but other subsequent changes in my life seemed to indicate that a cell phone would be useful. When I last moved house, I bought a bundle from Shaw for home phone (including long distance) internet and tv. But I stayed with Primus for the cell phone since I had a three year contract. That contract expired last December.

Cell phones in Canada have for a long time been some of the most expensive in the world. Recent changes designed to bring in more competition - rather than the current proliferation of "resellers" (like Primus) and alternate brand identities for the three major carriers (Bell, Telus and Rogers) suggested to me that rates would finally start to come down, and some of the grinding restrictions customers faced here that are absent in other markets would dwindle. Actually, that has still to happen, as the barriers to entrance like setting up a new network of transmission towers is not trivial.

I was also carrying around a Palm Pilot - that no longer was any use at at picking up wifi - and a digital camera. So if I could get a new device like an iPhone I might be less encumbered with devices. The delay in bringing the iPhone 4 to Canada, the spat about antennas and its high cost deterred me from switching providers when my three year cell phone contract expired. But now I thought I should talk to Primus. So I called "customer service"and asked what i had to do to get the new rates offered to new customers. I could tell this did not fit into the script that the customer service rep had been given. The sticking point for me was that since I had to be treated as a new customer to get the new rates, they would do a credit check.

I paid Primus through pre-authorisation on my credit card and, for the period of the new contract, was willing to continue that arrangement. The rep agreed I had been a good customer - pre-authorisation means I never missed a payment. She also had to concede that a credit check was indeed insulting, but would occur automatically, and I would have been even more insulted if I found out afterwards that one had been done without them telling me. But she was helpless to do anything about it. So I suggested she get one of her managers to call me back. That took another 24 hours, and whoever called me was more emollient in tone but not actually capable of doing anything different. I talked to her about why customer retention should be important. Why getting emails from a company that claimed it valued me as customer, but charged me more than people "fresh off the street" and then told me they would check my credit - without cause -made me doubt the sincerity of that declaration.

So the next time I was in the mall, I started picking up cell phone rate cards. I already knew - from the experience of my son on a recent visit - that there was no such thing here as a disposable phone with a cheap pay as you go option. But there is a new company recently opened in Vancouver. Wind is just getting going so its network coverage is not yet Greater Vancouver wide, but will be soon. The main things they had to offer were no contracts - and thus no "free" phones - and no inexplicable fees. So no "network access" (Primus) or "government regulatory recovery fee" (Rogers wireless) and no "activation fee" (Fido).

I could get an Android phone (actually a Nokia 5230) which does much of what any smart phone will do, though the camera has limitations, of course. There are various rate plans - but it is important to note that none of the add-ons like US unlimited long distance is available on the lowest price voice + text $15 plan. That is also, by the way, not mentioned in their literature.

Now one thing that I wanted to do was hang on to my old cell phone number. And the WIND rep at the mall told me that would get me a rate discount too! What she did not say, but I learned today, is that only applies to land lines, not cell phone "lines". For a week or more I have been paying for two cell phone accounts since "porting" the number was what would have cancelled my Primus account. It has taken me over an hour - mostly on hold - of calls to both Primus and WIND to find out why and what I could do about it. Actually not much - cancel the Primus account and lose my number was about it. The tone of the operators convinced me that moving from Primus to Wind was still a good idea, even if Wind obviously has its own limitations.

As Joe E Brown says as the last line of "Some Like It Hot" - "Nobody's perfect!"

Amy Goodman speaks

2009-11-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

This woman was stopped at the Canadian border. American citizens do not need a visa to visit Canada. But the people who guard our border to keep us safe detained her, questioned her, searched her papers and the computers she and her colleagues were carrying. She was coming to Vancouver to make a speech. The border guards did not believe that she did not have speaking notes - and that she would not be talking about the Olympics. She had more important topics to speak about. Thanks to the Vancouver media co-op you can now see and hear her speech. This is what the Canadian government worries about you hearing. They insisted that she and her companions enter on a two day visa to ensure that they would know when she left.

She has such an important message that I have decided to revive this long dormant blog just to bring it to you

See the video at the Straight

Greens Advocate for BC Police Service and Commission

2009-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Victoria – The Green Party of BC today announced that it advocates for a BC Police Service (BCPS) to oversee policing matters in the province that are not related to federal areas of concern.

“BC is at the stage where we need to take back our responsibility for policing and work in conjunction with municipal and federal forces,” said BC Green Party leader Jane Sterk.

“Greens would regionalize police services in the Lower Mainland and the Capital Region", Sterk continued. "We need to rationalize and streamline the current patchwork of municipal forces, provide consistent province-wide training and procedural standards, and avoid costly infrastructure duplication.”

The Green Party of BC will support the appointment an independent Police Services Commissioner, to oversee investigations into police conduct for all BC, municipal and regional jurisdictions.

"The Green Party believes internal police investigations should be in the hands of an independent commissioner," Sterk also stated.

"The BC public perceives a lack of transparency in internal police investigations," Sterk said. "This is eroding trust in our law enforcement system that must be rebuilt. Nobody believes that organizations are able to act impartially in matters involving themselves and the police are no different. The only way to ensure transparency and unbiased results is to form an independent group to manage that task."

You might think that the Green Party had been reading this blog. As it happens I had nothing to do with the Press Release above, but it is nice to note how congruent my views (expressed here more than once) fit in with the Party

Harper appoints 18 senators

2008-12-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

“Our government will continue to push for a more democratic, accountable and effective Senate,” said Harper. “If Senate vacancies are to be filled, however, they should be filled by the government that Canadians elected rather than by a coalition that no one voted for.”

I have come to expect hypocrisy from politicians of all stripes - but Stephen Harper hit a new low this morning.

He knows that he does not command a majority in the House and that if he had not pulled off two very undemocratic stunts - cancelling an opposition day and getting the prorogation - he would be out of a job. More people voted for the other parties than voted for conservatives - by a ratio of 2:1. So the idea that "no one voted for" the coalition parties is just a lie.

Of course we need a second house - elected, effective and all the rest. And yes Mr Harper could have started that process - back when he was convinced that he had a workable majority and that the economy was fine thank you very much.

He has demonstrated in recent weeks that he has no more moral sense than the average skunk. And if we have an election next spring he should suffer for his perfidy.

Males of All Species Are Becoming More Female

2008-12-10T17:24:00.000-08:00

For quite a long time now I have refrained from comment on those people who point to all our environmental ills and blame it on the exploding population. Malthus was wrong - or at least centuries ahead of his time - and population control is often a flag of convenience for various kinds of fascism.

It seems that humans may well have managed, indavertantly, to come up with a solution to population growth. It is indeed unfortunate that this applies to all the other species too. Since we do not appear to be capable of dealing with our emissions, and will therefore face a planet much more hostile to human life, this may be, quite literally, the end of human life on this planet. It would have been some comfort to think that the other species we have preyed on and brought close to extinction might have survived us, but that is not to be either.

In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that the planet will manage to regulate itself back to the point where life can resume. None of us - or our decendants - will be here to see it of course.

But meantime, we will remain focussed on re-starting the failed economy. The environment is just such a low priority these days.

Attacking Alzheimer's with Red Wine and Marijuana

2008-12-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

Passed along as a public service.

The red wine thing is not surprising. What is depressing is that the researchers have to skate around the ridiculous restrictions placed on marijuana. The time for sensible drug policies is long past, and demonizing of pot is plain stupid.

Copyright

2008-11-30T09:47:00.000-08:00

This image is itself an example of copyright theft. It is not mine. I have not provided a link to the source - though if you know what you are doing you can find out easily enough.

The FBI does not scare me since I live in Canada. And I always thought that reference to an aged statement by Interpol was laughable. But that does not mean that the greedy people and their lawyers won't try civil proceedings

Eyewitness

2008-11-30T08:43:00.000-08:00

Strasbourg, France, November 8 2008: MEPs discuss the EU response to the world fi nancial crisis and the G20 summit
Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters

"Crisis? What crisis?"

Mount Baker

2008-11-25T10:54:00.001-08:00

Mount Baker
Originally uploaded by Stephen Rees

Cold clear weather and a stray beam of sunlight through the overcast. Remarkable clarity. Taken from the eastern end of Steveston Highway

This picture featured on the CBC Vancouver News at six on Tuesday November 25

CRTC to rule on Bell's throttling on Thursday

2008-11-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

All internet users in Canada need to watch the results on this one.

Bell has been throttling "its own Sympatico retail customers [since] October 2007, and extended the practice in March to" smaller internet service providers. Bell is both a wholesaler, retailer and competitor. For instance it sells telephone services for which Skype is a direct competitor.

But many ISPs throttle their customers - did you know that Rogers and Shaw do too? This is mainly aimed at peer to peer file sharing which while it is famous for illegal file sharing is also widely used for perfectly legal file sharing

Regulators in the United States have taken decisive action against throttling by service providers. The Federal Communications Commission in August ordered Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, to cease its throttling of peer-to-peer applications.

UPDATE Bell won - but the CRTC is going to look at the whole issue of throttling next year

Third Tuesday

2008-11-18T21:12:00.000-08:00

Because someone I know was speaking, and some I know sent me an invite on facebook I went. Rebecca Bollwitt was speaking on Building Your Personal Brand

The meet up site has a link to what was said, and all I am going to talk about is the place - not the event itself. It was held in the Vancouver Room. Rebecca was standing in the middle of the long thin room with her back to the bar and managed to make herself heard. The bar did not have a working microphone - though it did have a very loud sound system which got turned up as soon as the meeting was over, which chased a lot of us out. They also had an espresso machine - and that did not work either, and an inability to deliver alternative non-alcoholic refreshment. Somehow I got tap water which was not even offered to one of my companions. I got the impression that this location may be unused to hosting this kind of event. Staff seemed overworked and generally unenthusiastic about this clientele.

Of course it does not help when the people who come to "meet up" do not really want to listen, and keep their conversations going even though that means all the questions were completely inaudible. Which I think is, at the very least, discourteous.

This end of Granville has always been the tackier end. And that I think is not coincidence that it is the section kept open to traffic. It is also now one of the highest densities of seats in establishments licensed to sell alcohol in the City. Which actually has lead to it being closed to traffic when the bars tip out at weekends. New developments seem to be trying to raise the tone. A couple of doors down, on the corner of Nelson, is a new Blenz which has a distinct "new coffee house" smell, nice furnishings and a state of the art computerised system for its display screens. These carry the menus, promos and a very large read out at the the till. One very prominent display was unfortunately also featuring a Windows update pop up in the lower right hand corner - which staff of course were unable to do anything about.

Dying of hopelessness: A case against assisted suicide

2008-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

I am going to take the contrary view. I think that the good people of Washington were right to follow the example of Oregon. And whoever Leonard Stern might be, I somehow doubt that he is as caring as he would like to present himself.

The researchers discovered that in 2007, not one "of the people who died by lethal ingestion in Oregon had been evaluated by a psychiatrist or a psychologist."

I have been treated for depression for some years now. I have never "been evaluated by a psychiatrist or a psychologist" either. I suspect that is true of most of the people who are prescribed anti-depressants. They are evaluated by the use of a simple questionnaire, which can be administered by all kinds of people including counsellors. Many people live in very depressing circumstances - and the way out of those circumstances may or may not be clear cut. But by picking up on this one study, and indulging a bit of sleight of hand, the realities can get nicely sidelined.

He also picks a "hard case" - and as the saying goes "hard cases make bad law". A young athlete could not face life after a catastrophic injury. And his parents took him to Switzerland where he could die comfortably and legally. And of course we would all like to think we can be Christopher Reeve were such circumstances to afflict us. But he was an exceptional case too.

Euthanasia is something we have no trouble with when it comes to our pets. And indeed it may well be true that many people have a closer relationship to their constant companion than many of their family members. And it was not so very long ago that people with terminal illnesses were given a merciful overdose of pain killer by a sympathetic doctor. Of course, some more recent cases such as Dr Harold Shipman have made that informal practice much too risky for the average GP.

But a couple of years ago I had to watch my dog die by lethal injection - and also my brother died from an inoperable brain tumour. I know that I made the right decision in my dog's case. I also know that my brother did not have that choice. And that is a right I think we all should have. And people like Leonard Stern should not be allowed to keep that choice from us.

But, at the same time, I support the Samaritans and people like this

Religious right requiem

2008-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

I am an atheist.

But I quite like that famous quote from Ghandi: "I like your Christ. I don't much like your Christians"

And I really do not like the American religious right. Which has, over the last thirty years, demonstrably failed in its objectives, and at the same time kept in power some of the most incompetent administrations on the planet.

Cal Thomas used tp work for them, became disillusioned and has been writing about them for some time. This is in Friday's Washington Times and I Stumbled Upon another blogger's take on it. Here are his own words

If results are what conservative evangelicals want, they already have a model. It is contained in the life and commands of Jesus of Nazareth. Suppose millions of conservative evangelicals engaged in an old and proven type of radical behavior. Suppose they followed the admonition of Jesus to "love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison and care for widows and orphans," not as ends, as so many liberals do by using government, but as a means of demonstrating God's love for the whole person in order that people might seek Him?

Such a strategy could be more "transformational" than electing a new president, even the first president of color. But in order to succeed, such a strategy would not be led by charismatic figures, who would raise lots of money, be interviewed on Sunday talk shows, author books and make gobs of money.

I think a lot more people (whom he might label "liberal" but I think of as "progressive") have also stepped up to the plate as the right wing rhetoric flew and disgraceful policies were introduced. For instance, food banks were introduced into BC as a way of disgracing the Social Credit government's welfare cuts. Sadly, we still have food banks and welfare rates well below the poverty level. Other people I know spend their retirement and their own resources on trying to make up for Canada's cynical withdrawal from aid to impoverished countries. Of course there is much less one person can do than a country as wealthy as Canada when it did devote a percentage of its GDP to international aid. And these people certainly do not live in Mansions and drive SUVs. Oddly enough enough, such people do not tend to talk about politics or religion. But you can judge their character by their actions, just as I judge Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

2008-11-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

CBC Journalist released after kidnap

2008-11-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

The CBC's Melissa Fung was kidnapped in Afghanistan a month ago. She has now been released safely - and no ransom was paid. The press was asked to keep quiet about the story while she was in captivity - and they did. The story linked from the Title explains why.

This unusual reserve and respect for the individual must be applauded and shows that not all journalists are devoid of ethical principles. Standards have definitely slipped in recent years - with more than one news organisation leading the charge into the gutter. This rare story restores my faith a little.

US war on cocaine failure

2008-11-06T23:02:00.000-08:00

A multi-billion dollar US anti-drugs programme has failed in its plan to cut cocaine production in Colombia. A US Congressional report says coca cultivation in fact rose by 15 per cent between 2000 and 2006. As a result Colombia remains the world's top cocaine producer and is reportedly the source of 90 per cent of the drug in the US. The report says the aid programme did succeed in reducing Colombia's kidnapping and murder rates. The programme, started in 1999, trained Colombian forces and provided equipment and intelligence to combat drug-traffickers and eliminate coca crops.

NO surprise there either. The whole "War on Drugs" has been a colossal failure in terms of its stated objectives, but it has been one of the major pillars of imposing ever more draconian restrictions on liberty and civil rights - just as the war on terror has been.

McCain’s biggest mistake?

2008-11-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

CNN have already closed the comments on Cafferty's blog. But I could not resist reusing one of my favourite quotes from Manny Shinwell here if not there

Cafferty wrote of McCain
"he quickly became his own worst enemy"

which of course needs the response

"Not while I'm alive he isn't!"

In all seriousness, he did produce a good concession speech. But of course the yahoos in the audience let him - and Republican Party - down. Maybe that was the big mistake. Playing to the worst elements of the ill educated, ill mannered and uncouth.

Ottawa plans to shake up duty-free shops

2008-11-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

I must admit I was unaware of the byzantine rules that beset land border duty free shops - which are different from airports apparently.

The article says the idea is to make them "more consumer friendly" but that is not the case. Canada offers very little consumer protection compared to other places, and one of the weakest areas is labelling. For a start "duty free" means nothing of the sort. If the goods sold in these shops really did pay no government levies of any kind than they would be much cheaper. But of course governments have a monopoly in liquor wholesaling. The price for booze in a Canadian "duty free" shop may look a bit cheaper than a Canadian liquor store but that does not mean that government has forgone much revenue.

The proposed inbound duty free at airports is not so innovative either. London's Heathrow has had this for years.

What would be really good is if the stuff we can buy on the way to visit our friends and relatives really was local. All kinds of imported stuff is labelled as though it was of Canadian origin but that is simply not true in many cases. For instance, Chilean wine is bottled here and labelled Canada

For a long time I have wanted to take BC wines to my family in England - but all they had in the YVR store was Ontario wine. I do not know if they have ever responded to all the complaints I made since they never replied to me and I gave up going into the duty free at YVR. The variety of things I can buy outside the airport is much better and the prices not so different.

The best protection consumers have here is being market savvy and shopping around. Do not expect any government in Canada to care about you.

Sunday distractions

2008-11-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

Nothing serious - just the fruits of some idle surfing.

Richmond's sister city is Wakayama in Japan. Which is fine, but I think we should have more contact with all the other Richmonds in the world - and there are plenty.

This piece of news comes from Richmond in South West London. TfL are finally going to do something about the computer screens in the stations there which have been misdirecting passengers for years. This comes from Your Local Guardian which I doubt has anything to do with the national paper who certainly would never go for the creepy animated hand in the heading, which I suppose is to celebrate Hallowe'en.

The other story comes from Dallas and advises that you may actually be able to carry a bottle of liquid through airport security soon. I have never thought that this "threat" was actually very credible - and the idea that you could start mixing up chemicals to make bombs on a crowded plane and NOT draw attention top yourself is highly improbable. And of course we will have to wait until everytbody buys new machines - which is what is, I think, really driving this nonsense. That and the fact that people who are scared are less likely to question authority.

No its not mine - but I like it

2008-11-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

CBC Radio Orchestra to live on with new name and mandate

2008-10-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

This is good news. The decision to axe the orchestra made no sense - and what is going to happen to it the CBC could have done themselves, and made themselves better off at the same time. Radio 2 is, except between 10 am and 3 pm weekdays, mostly not worth listening to any longer. Exceptions being the Vinyl Cafe, Jurgen (who is now on Sundays) and the occasional concert. There is streaming classical and concerts on demand from the cbc web page, but if you already have a program like streamtuner, why bother?

Youngster kills himself with Uzi at gun fair

2008-10-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

In the movie "The American President" Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning) hurls abuse at President Andy (Micahel Douglas) for legislation to "keep Uzis out of the hands of 8 year olds".

In Real Life such legislation - if it exists - didn't work. But somehow if a "responsible adult" allowed an 8 year old to have a loaded machine pistol that's alright.

The US constitution does allow the "right to bear arms" but only to provide for a citizen militia. In any event the Bill of Rights is a series of Amendments - in other words the founding fathers recognised that the constitution being a human creation is imperfect. And thus mutable. It may not be always right and can and should be changed.

How many more innocents have to die before the NRA wakes up?

Carbon offset program a sham, says B.C. MLA

2008-10-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Kansas. I booked the trip through the Air Canada web page and while I was there clicked the button that enables me to offset the carbon emissions. It cost me $10. Now I have read this story, I feel I have been swindled.

The box and the battery

2008-10-22T17:01:00.001-07:00

The box and the battery
Originally uploaded by Stephen Rees

I got one of those cards through my letterbox today telling a parcel could be picked up at a local post office. The parcel would not fit through the letterbox. It contained a new battery for my pda. That's it underneath the packing box. It would have fitted easily in a small padded envelope - which would have cut the shipping cost and would have easily slid through the letterbox.

The truth about Acorn

2008-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

While I was in Kansas last week I heard a lot about Acorn. That is because CNN and FOX seem to dominate the public tv screens in USA airports. I do not know who decides which channel to tune these tvs to, but it is never PBS, for example. And of course it came up once again in the third presidential debate. It is an old and dirty trick to accuse your opponent of the very underhand tactics you are employing yourself. The Republican Party has always worked as hard as possible to prevent people from voting, if they come from the sort of groups who may favour their opponents. It is a long and dishonourable tradition in the US to try and stop people who are black or hispanic from being allowed to register to vote. Acorn has been fighting this and is now being smeared. The Republican Party stole the 2000 election. If they can they will steal this one too and if they can't they want to be able to discredit the result. The Republican Party cares nothing for truth, justice or The American Way.

Mobilien in Paris

2008-10-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

I do not usually put transit stuff on this blog - but I liked this video but Wordpress is not happy with this embedded flash video

We were going to have something like this - we called it Richmond RapidBus - but it died the death of thousand cuts against intransigence from the City of Vancouver and a small but vocal band of citizens. The Province of BC likes promising this to outer suburbs who want SkyTrain but do not (in the MoT's) view justify that and something like this might happen in Surrey. Eventually.

I really liked listening to the Parisian engineer explaining why it works the way it does - all in plain English which is something most North American engineers cannot manage

Bulking up Pentagon North

2008-10-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

I have been taking the line "Anyone but Harper"

I take this view simply due to Harpers abysmal environmental record. Linda McQuaig produces another strong reason we need to get rid of this goverment.

He plans to spend $500 billion on defence: the plan is on the Department of National Defence's website – called Canada First Defence Strategy

In a 2008 pre-budget survey conducted for the finance department, Canadians were asked which of 18 different issues they considered a high priority. "Increasing spending on defence" ranked last.

There's a rich irony in this ramped-up military spending. In the election campaign, Harper has accused Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion of "reckless spending" for his plan to invest $70 billion in infrastructure over the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, Harper claims to be a thrifty economic manager, even as he quietly plans a massive spending spree on military hardware.

The Vinyl Cafe

2008-10-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

Every Saturday morning I listen to Stuart McLean on the http://www.cbc.ca/vinylcafe/home.php. This week he was giving out his Arthur awards, and the one that caught my attention went to a gentleman in Edmonton. He owned a building that houses a restaurant where he liked to go to eat. A developer offered him a large sum of money for the building but instead he decided to sell it to the owners of the restaurant. I think you should be able to download a podcast of the show - it is quite the story.

So the restaurant is called The High Level Diner and it is at the south end of the bridge.

I had hoped to find out a bit more, so I poked around on Stuart's blog where I found an even better story on Tyler Aspin's Canada Tree.

Radio Two has been overhauled - and made much worse in my view. But Stuart McLean is a national treasure and at least they had the sense to leave the Vinyl Cafe alone.

This crash was predicted and could have been avoided

2008-10-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

The link is to an article by Katrina van den Heuvel in The Nation - but the source is a piece in the New York Times. She decided to highlight the role played by

a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading -- was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments.

Definitely worth a read

Palin abused power, violated law in firing commissioner

2008-10-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

She is not going to shake this one off with a wink at the camera.

An ethics inquiry in Alaska has found Sarah Palin abused her power as governor and violated state ethics law when she fired the state's public safety commissioner, according to a report released Friday.

The news came shortly after Alaska lawmakers voted unanimously to make public a report about the abuse-of-power investigation into Palin, the U.S. Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Palin was accused of firing the commissioner because he refused to dismiss a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce and custody fight with Palin's sister.

It occurs to me that should the unthinkable happen, and the Republicans return to power, then there is at least an escape route. Once McCain dies and Palin steps forward, she can be replaced. The plot is laid out in a movie that starred Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. We simply replace Palin with Tina Fey - and just like that we have someone in the White House who is a real live sentient human being. Wouldn't that be a change for the better?

Harper has the edge in economic management

2008-10-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

At this point, it's pretty much all about the economy, stupid.

But possibly it should not be. The need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions dramatically and in a very short order has not gone away. The economy depends on the environment, not the other way around. Our current practice of simply ignoring "externalities" is not good economics - or even good business. It is willfully stupid, since costs to our health and well being - let alone of other species - is so apparent.

Polls show nearly two-thirds of Canadians now expect a recession and 70 per cent anticipate a budget deficit. Still, a plurality believe Harper would be the best economic manager. Indeed, there's something to be said for steady-as-she-goes and stability which may give an edge to the Conservatives.

Which just shows how stupid and gullible voters can be. The current recession is not simply a market being cyclical - it is the result of eight years of idiocy in the White House. A set of "policies" straight from the same right wing think tanks that Stephen Harper still listens to. Deregulation of American financial markets went too far, and the result was entirely predictable. Just as the earlier Savings and Loan crisis was produced by deregulation of that sector under Ronald Regan. The current banking crisis mirrors that of 1931 and the legislation that was brought in subsequently was repealed by Senator Phil Gram's bill so enthusiastically supported by the conservative ideologues. In fact Gram now works for McCain. If he gets re-elected expect more of the same.

When you are steering into a hurricane "steady as she goes" is not at all a sensible choice of course. Change is needed here as much as in the US. Drastic, dramatic change that abandons failed policies.

When you find that you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

War on Taliban can't be won, says army chief

2008-10-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

Exactly

In an interview published today, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said "we're not going to win this war" and the aim was not total victory but reducing the insurgency to a low level, something which could involve talks with the Taliban.

Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said the objective was to enlarge the Afghan army so it could take over the security of the country.

While paying tribute to his troops in Helmand province, and describing successes against insurgents, the brigadier told today's Sunday Times: ""We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."

And the Taliban's position is that they will not negotiate until all foreign troops have been removed from Afghanistan.

Yes, they are indeed appalling - but so was the IRA. And indeed every other group of guerillas willing to impose their views on their own country by force of arms.

Canada's position is that we will stay until 2011 - and then someone else has to take on our job. In other words, tacit acceptance that occupation - as in Iraq - will continue indefinitely. This is not something we can afford to do, nor will the position in 2011 be very much different to what it is now. Our troops have been there4 for far too long and they are not a peacekeeping force. They are a token from our government to enable the US to keep more troops in Iraq, since we at least once upon a time had the ability and spine to maintain our own foreign policy.

It is time to bring our troops home. The Afghans need to determine their own future. It may well be not one we would like, but it is not our choice to make for them.

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind

2008-10-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

And now a word from our sponsor

2008-09-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Another poke at Palin

2008-09-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

Not original - just something that came into my in box

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old rancher, who's hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle.'"

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle.'"

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."

Nope

2008-09-23T17:03:00.001-07:00

Financial Bailout: America's Own Kleptocracy

2008-09-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

The events of the last couple of weeks have been amazing. Amazingly bad that is. The deregulated trading in securitized debts has brought America to its knees - and threatens the world's economic system. But instead of all that free market discipline that was supposed to protect us the "hidden hand" remains hidden - and it is the people who pay taxes who are on the hook - not the crooks who engineered the collapse.

But don't take my word for it - click the title of this piece to read what Michael Huddon has to say about it. Who's he?

President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972 and 2003) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).

Hong Kong is world's most free economy: Fraser Institute

2008-09-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

There is something endearing about how the Fraser Institute continues to bumble along blissfully unaware of the pillars of the free market economy collapsing around it as it pronounces. There is a network of these right wing "think tanks" across North America. Except that they are not supposed to think too deeply - or indeed question the wisdom of the right wing agenda. "the importance of letting people get on with their lives" i.e. without interference from government.

Except they don't really mean that either. It is not people they are concerned about but corporations.

The collapse of Wall Street - and related financial institutions in other countries too - is the direct result of deregulation. During the Bush administration almost all the regulatory framework surrounding banks and other financial institutions were either relaxed or removed altogether. Many of these rules had been put in place in the wake of the last great crash (1929) and the subsequent banking crisis (1931) with a view to preventing such events recurring. So it should come as no surprise that recent events on Wall Street bear a very strong similarity to what happened then.

And, of course, the only solution to these financial problems is for the government to step in and prop up these worthless banks and insurance companies with taxpayers money. The government is expected, always and everywhere, to come to the rescue of the free market titans when they demonstrate their herd instincts and basic foolishness.

Deregulation has now been shown to be a very silly thing to do - and even John McCain is advocating tougher rules. He really couldn't do anything else, could he. And while we get to watch AIG pulled out of the muck, and Lehman Brothers' assets get snapped up at firesale prices by Barclays (how much longer before they need to rescued like HBOS?) there is the Fraser Institute bleating on about economic freedom.

Crisis? What crisis?

Medical Service Plan Premiums

2008-09-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

I got a bill in the mail today. I get the same one every month and it is not trivial. $54. Everyone in BC has to pay this fee. Many people have it paid for them by their employers - who often will also chip in to a private plan to cover the essential healthcare costs that are not covered by our public health care plan. Prescription medications, dental and eye care. All of which are not some kind of bonus benefit but essential to maintaining good health.

We Canadians like to think that our system is better than the Americans. Which is true, but hardly remarkable. The Cubans have a better heath care system that the Americans!

It is not as if BC is desperately short of money - we have even managed to find our way out of being a "have not" province and every year, isn't it marvellous, we have another budget surplus bigger than was expected. Yet seven (out of ten) other provinces levy no fee at all. Because we have a publicly funded system that is based on taxes, not flat fees. Because income based taxes are progressive. Those who have plenty pay more than those who have little. Yes there is "premium assistance" for those who cannot pay - but that is not the same as health care that is free to everybody but paid for out of taxes.

There is a provincial election coming up next year. Any party that promises to scrap MSP premiums will get my vote

Federalists welcome to vote for the Bloc: Duceppe

2008-09-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

This could only make sense in a place like Quebec.

By definition, someone who is a "federalist" supports the idea of Canada from sea to sea to sea. The BQ thinks that Quebec should separate. So as far as I can see if a "federalist" votes for the Bloq then they have switched sides and are now a separatist.

This is not just semantics - separation is a principle - but not one that federalists share. And I think it shows that Duceppe is really not thinking very clearly right now - probably too much coffee and not enough sleep.

New weekly treatment for type 2 diabetes works better than twice-daily injections, say researchers

2008-09-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

A weekly treatment for type 2 diabetes has proved safe and effective for patients in a trial involving 259 volunteers.

The formulation is a version of a previously available treatment called exenatide, which mimics one of the body's hormones. The existing version must be self-injected by patients twice daily. The trial showed that the slow-acting form was more effective than the original at keeping glucose levels in the blood under control, and more convenient to use.

"There is currently no available therapy for type 2 diabetes that patients can receive once a week," said Dr Daniel Drucker at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto. The new formulation will need further clinical trials before being licensed for use by patients.

Penalties for partners who block child access

2008-09-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

About time too.

Fathers have been campaigning for this for a long time. The courts nearly always give care and control to the Mother. And while there are stiff penalties for fathers who default on their responsibilities - usually payment of child support - there have been none for mothers who do not allow fathers to see their children. And sadly use of the children as tools in post marital disputes is only too common.

Of course community service is the last resort, but that these women need is a better understanding of what the absence of their fathers does to their children. It is essential to the children's well being that they are not in the middle of a fight. But some people are too wrapped up in their own concerns to see that

New Radio 2

2008-09-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

So far pretty much as expected. From 1000 to 1500 you get almost continuous classical music from a somewhat predictable play list, with much less talk than before. "Here's to You" was requests and Eric Friesen loved the sound of his own voice. So this is now probably an improvement over old Radio 2 in terms of "audible wall paper". Not particularly original or engaging, and not really "company". Eric did get regular studio guests who were worth listening to, and regular live performers too. One of the good things that radio can do is introduce you to people and music you have not heard of before - like Gabriella Montero. Somehow I do not see this happening now. And while I am talking about company, Tom Allen former host of "Music and company" is still on the morning show - but what a load of old pop - and again there are much better sources if that is what you want. Rock 101 would be my first choice here.

Outside of those times it seems classical is not tolerated but any other "genre" is as long as it is Canadian. Sadly, there seems to be very little quality control. And even as a nice noise while driving I find myself pushing the off button. I really do not understand why Country and Western music should get so much air time. There are plenty of stations that do that already, aren't there?

"Disc Drive" is of course gone. And in it's place, the unimaginatively named "Drive" - playing a much less diverse collection of music (though mercifully no Boutine Souriante) and no humour. Perhaps they forgot the L at the end of the title.

But for me today the good news is that London Drugs got a new stock of USB turntables. So right now I am listening to an old LP of John Williams playing some lovely guitar music - it is an old CBS three record box set and somehow the "liner notes" are missing - at least the English ones anyway. It's Villa-Lobos Etude No 8 in C sharp minor. And I am going to have to find some instructions for Audacity to clean up the snap crackle and pop before I burn it to anything. But it is nice to have playing through the computer speakers while I type.

The Passport Office

2008-09-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

Most people write about their dealings with bureaucrats to complain. Not this time.

The process for renewing your passport has been streamlined - and it worked very well for me. You can download the form and instructions on line. You can get anyone not related to you to be a reference (no need to go looking for a registered professional) and if you are just replacing a current or recently expired passport you don't even need to get the pictures signed.

One puzzler for me was that the office in Richmond has moved - something I could have checked on the downloaded form. But I know where the passport office is - I've been there before only a little while ago (in my mental map) - but all there is now at that location is a big hole. Fortunately the photo shop that used to do a brisk trade in passport snaps has a sign on its door telling you where to go.

I was in and out of the passport office in ten minutes precisely. I did not have to wait in any line up and was seen immediately at two separate counters. I don't know why it cannot be done at one, probably some seniority thing. And while there was capacity to deal with lengthy line ups, today at 3pm there were none. And the service was polite and efficient.

Well done.

Amy Goodman Arrested

2008-09-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her.

Following on the earlier post about the seizing of a permaculture bus. The police in the US seem to have taken leave of their senses - or are enjoying the new powers that they have been given. Holding journalists on the specious charge of "suspicion of rioting" would not stand up in the worst banana republic. "a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights"

POLICE SEIZE EARTH EDUCATION TOUR BUS

2008-09-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Martin Niemöller

The good Pastor explains why a Canadian in BC is concerned about the behaviour of a bunch of police officers in Minneapolis - which just happens to be the place where the Republican convention is happening.

Similar overreaction to perceived "threats" also marred the Democrats convention. Mostly all this does is confirm our worst suspicions about what has happened to the "Land of the Free" in the last eight years. Try telling someone that "In God We Trust" is a useful guide to behaviour is a supposedly free and democratic society, when you are apparently not allowed to travel by bus to teach about permaculture near where an unpopular President may or may not be speaking.

A little bit of tax evasion seen as OK, study finds

2008-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

There is of course a double standard at work here. People who run their own business think "small business pays too much tax, government wastes the money it collects anyway and small business people deserve compensation for working long hours." They see it as "their money" that they are entitled to keep. Of course the law does not support this belief.

But exactly the same people are absolutely certain that cheating welfare, or fare evasion on transit, must be severely punished. But that is about the same - or often much smaller amounts - of public funds. If you do not pay your taxes, the public till has less in it. If you get an overpayment from some public source, a tax refund that you are not really entitled to, or EI for a week when you picked up a few hours casual work, or something similar the loss to the public till is exactly the same. And the fact that someone on very low income, on welfare rates that are too low to survive on, when they have to chose between eating or getting a bus ride feels equally "entitled" is not an excuse that would get accepted either.

One of the silliest notions that has emerged in recent years on the far right edges of the political spectrum is "zero tolerance". This appears more south of the border of course, but is based on the notion that every broken window pane or graffittied bus stop sends a message about lawlessness. Canadians in general, and our legal system, seem to be able to survive a small amount of law "bending". We do not go apeshit over possession of small quantities of pot. We think we can tell the difference between a toker and a dealer. People speed all the time - but usually stay at around 110% of the posted speed. Indeed back in the days of photo radar they were told that was alright.

People do not so much "obey" the law as comply with it - mostly. That is not to say they think it is right. For instance, most airline passengers wonder how on earth you could hijack a plane with a pair of toenail clippers, but realise there is no point in arguing. But that does not mean that they do not try to get stuff through - meaning the practice of confiscation of personal property without any due process at all occurs every hour of every day. Most Canadians also will bring stuff back across the border and not tell the agent about it. There are plenty of malls just south of the 49th parallel which depend on people who make day trips - and I doubt if more than a handful actually pay any Canadian taxes at the border on their way back from their day trip.

Catherine Jolicoeur, spokeswoman for the CRA, said the study will help the agency inform and educate businesses about the "risks and consequences" of participating in the underground economy and to refine its strategies for addressing the problem.

Yes it's all about "messaging" and "optics". Ethics, morals or legality are of no concern at all.

It's time government reined in payday lenders

2008-08-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Not the first time I have higlighted the yellow storefront crowd.

But, "In the common parlance," the [Manitoba Public Utility] board said, "payday lenders could be considered loan sharks, albeit minus the intimidation factor associated with the definition. How else would one describe lenders charging rates ... 100 times and more than that of banks and credit unions, to borrowers reportedly unable to obtain credit elsewhere?"

The answer seems to be that it is accepted that their costs are higher than banks and credit unions (which is why they won't touch these kind of loans) AND

"We need to rein in these guys, but not to the point where we drive these services into the hands of organized crime."

Which is the real problem.

So only Nova Scotia has set maximum rates - and BC is looking at it but not doing much other than consulting the industry. Not, so far as anyone knows, actually setting its own house in order, since it is often government's policies towards payments to the poor that creates the need for such loans in the first place.

Limits to China's pledge of change

2008-08-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

There is a thread which joins the Chinese Communist Party, Gordon Campbell's BC Liberal Party and Tony Blair's Labour Party. They all won an Olympics venue - and thought, just as Adolf Hitler did - that it would be a propaganda triumph.

This BBC story uncovers some of the uncomfortable truth behind Beijing's games. In all three cases the chance of a two weeks or more of international tv coverage has distorted priorities. The only thing the media really picked up on this week as a result of the rock fall at Porteau Cove was "what if it happens during the Olympics?"

From our comfortable distance now the most memorable moment - or perhaps the one most replayed on tv - from Berlin 1936 was Jesse Owens win - the Furher stamping out. I don't know if that was the most played scene on the newsreels then. Probably not in Germany. We all know about Tianamein Square - I suspect most Chinese don't.

I wonder what the "unintended consequences" will be this year, 2010 and 2012. As long as there are reporters like John Sweeney, and real news gatherers like the BBC, there is hope that the modern day poseurs will be shown up yet again.

Warning over blood-taking method

2008-07-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

I have blood taken every three months. The techs nearly always complain that they cannot find a vein. I am always told to clench my fist.

But not only is this bad practice which "has been known since the 1960s" - but have you tried talking to a tech at a commercial lab? All the labs in this region are operated by the same company so there is literally no choice in the matter, though I have to admit that in recent months they seem to have increased their staffing. There were not long line ups on the last two occasions - unlike the long established practice hitherto.

I have never been told of high potassium levels.

The weird science of stock photography

2008-07-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

A while back, a friend of mine—a guy who does a lot of directing work—was asked to shoot some rather odd film footage. It was all brief scenes of people ignoring each other. Families talking on cell phones, couples tapping at adjacent laptops, everyone looking in opposite directions.

I wish I had known about this last week. I do not usually take pictures of people, but I have been trying to get into it more. And while in Paris, I had a go at some candid shots (like this one)

But if I had known there was demand for a shot like the one described above, Monday lunchtime I could have obliged. We were climbing the Butte in Montmatre and stopped for lunch half way up. All we needed was to sit down and a cold drink, but since it was that time of day added a croque m'sieur. My daughter likes to sit outside, so we squeezed in to the only available table, which was a bit like sharing. The couple (early thirties, smart) had a small child in a stroller. They ignored each other - and the child - and spent most of the time talking on their cell phones, and juggling more than one caller at a time too.

All I thought was that if I was that guy I would spend a lot more time talking to my spouse and baby - and being a holiday the calls could go to voice mail - at least until the kid went down for a nap. She was a stunner - and he had not even bothered to shave.

Happy Canada Day, Eh?

2008-07-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

The end of the PDA

2008-06-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

I first got a Sony Clie - which in 2003 was a Big Deal. Everyone had a PDA. If you went to a meeting, people pulled them out and coordinated their meetings - beaming their details where once they would have swapped cards. One keener had a little kid's lunch box in which he kept his fold out keyboard, and he plugged that in to his Palm and started tapping away at every meeting. The first one got lifted from my pocket in Green Bay WI, and was promptly replaced - and of course the new one was even better. But Sony could not stand the pace of competition and pulled out of the North American market - so when the second one fell from a table on a train - face down onto a metal bracket, cracking the screen (Nottingham May 2006) it could not be replaced like for like so I got a Palm Tungsten - mainly because it came with a hard metal case. I even got the fold out keyboard, but I must confess I did not use it very much. And I tried wireless network cards in its expansion slot, but they never worked very well. (And anyway most places now use 8012.11G: Palm doesn't.) And the screen is far too small for most web pages not optimised for a PDA. There are some very useful applications - maps and passwords being the most useful - Freecell the one most used, I confess.

But the hard metal case is not all metal and the critical bits are in a type of plastic that gets brittle with age. So two years on and the case is literally falling apart. The metal body is fine of course. But tiny bits of the critical hinges have come off.

Retailers no longer have displays of PDAs like they once did. London Drugs has a few in a back room - and even fewer accessories. BestBuy has one PDA. And Staples has a few - but no accessories at all other than those which could also be used with a GPS or similar box.

What really gets up my nose is that Palm still sell the case - but twenty dollars extra here compared to the US, even though the dollar is at par. And you have to order through the Canadian site even though I am sure it uses the US inventory and database. And with shipping the cost comes to a cool $80 - compared to an advertised US price of just under $40.

The death of the PDA is because phones have become smarter. Once you have a Blackberry or an iPhone a PDA seems quaint. And it is not the utility that matters - it is being at the leading edge.

I had a similar experience back in the 1980s with the Microwriter - which had a really neat 5 finger keyboard - the only one I have ever mastered for touch typing. Sadly the UK company that made it never survived the head to head with Sharp. But it was a lot easier to learn than Graffiti - and you never needed to go hunting for a store with the right size of stylus (a whole lunch hour in Calgary, July 2005 was wasted on that). You can still buy the 5 finger keyboard from CyKey

I am not yet ready to give up my PDA. It is easier to use on a plane than my EeePC - and its battery lasts longer. Its cards switch with the EeePC and my camera too. I suppose one day I will have camera, PDA and phone all in one. But just for now I will buy another case. Familiarity being a comfort. But I do not expect to find anything more in a real store and I am going to boycott Palm's on line store and hang around EBay or Craig's list if I need any other bits and pieces before then

2008-06-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

MAHER ARAR

2008-06-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

There is a short and very even tempered piece by Mr Arar in today's Globe and Mail.

The American government is now in full "cover your ass" mode. It knows that what it did was indefensible and totally unjustified. The grounds for suspecting Mr Arar were "nonsense". The process he was subjected to was illegal, and should never even have been contemplated in a country that claims to be a bastion of liberty. There was no reason to detain him in the first place since he was merely passing through New York on his way home. There was no risk of any kind.

The Canadian government has now investigated and apologized for its own disgraceful role and given Mr Arar some money - though no amount could be enough to repair the dreadful treatment he received.

The Bush administration in continuing to stonewall is simply confirming the view that it is incompetent, stupid and guilty as hell.

Worse Than Fascists: Christian Political Group 'The Family'

2008-06-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Jeff Sharlet's new book, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," offers a rare glimpse of this remarkable network, which is known variously as the Family, the Fellowship and the International Foundation.

Apparently to get the Kingdom of Heaven on earth it is no good dealing with the poor and the hungry. What you really need to do is get the rich and powerful on your side.

I have never liked the right wing "christian" fundamentalist point of view. And now it turns out that all that stuff some Jewish carpenter 2000 years ago was spouting was wrong and what God really means was the you should be anti trade union. Someone in Seattle had vision in the thirties.

This is my problem with religion. All of them. You have to take someone's word that the voices they hear are to be trusted. Now we tend to regard people who hear voices as at best eccentric or at worst dangerously psychotic. Quite why the Norwegian evangelist does not fit that role is hard to say. I suppose you have to buy the book. Or maybe he was just another skillful marketer identifying what his target market segment wanted to buy.

Equally, people who keep digging up conspiracies tend to be regarded as paranoid. But just because you are paranoid does not mean there are no conspiracies.

And that APA book that comes out at regular intervals with newly discovered mental illnesses will have all of us pigeonholed and medicated soon.

But I still refuse to believe anything that cannot stand up to rigorous intellectual and scientific investigation. If there is a Creator he endowed me with commonsense and a capacity for critical thinking and I do not see why He would want me to abandon them as a condition for everlasting life - which is something I think I would rather do without, thank you very much.

German tabloid mocks UK tourists

2008-06-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

Actually this is useful information for others. Becuase what they are pointing to is the archetypal package deal tourist who just wants sun, sand, beer and fish & chips. The sort so ably defined by Eric Idle.

"Yes, I quite agree with you, I mean, what's the point of being treated like a sheep? I mean I'm fed up going abroad and being treated like sheep. What's the point of being carted around in buses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea, 'Oh, they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home', stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh 'cause they 'overdid it on the first day', and being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into the queues and, if you're not at your table, spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there's bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big, fat, bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners, and then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and then, once a week, there's an excursion to the local Roman Ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and then one night they take you to a local restaurant with local colour and colouring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keeps singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos' and complaining about the food, 'Oh, it's so greasy, isn't it?', and then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl sandals and Tuesday's 'Daily Express' and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres, ...

One of my coworkers once described how he chose where to spend his holiday. "We get off the plane in Athens and take the first ferry - no matter where it is going to. We then repeat the random ferry selection process until we stop hearing English spoken."

I would also try to avoid organised groups of any nationality. Not because of any xenophobia but because I do not want to be herded about, nor subject to those who like that sort of thing.

But of course anyone who has taken a cheap package tour always complains about how the Germans always claim the best spots on the beach, or the most favoured sun loungers, by getting up early and leaving their towels on them before they go and line up for breakfast. They still are determjed to claim their place in the sun. And the sight of gaggle of fat naked hausfraus slowly frying themselves on a concrete slab is one that I have no wish to see again.

"Don't mention the war!"

Activia and the probiotics scam

2008-06-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

To help further their health claims, the marketing team at Dannon, which makes Activia, took things a step further. Banking on the power of suggestion, they came up with new names for two strains of bacteria found in their yogurt: bifidus regularis, which supposedly helps regulate your digestive system and L. casei immunitas, which, you guessed it, supposedly strengthens your immune system. Probiotics may have some benefits, but most yogurts contain them—the reason why there is a class action lawsuit accusing Dannon of a false advertising campaign promoting the benefits of their yogurt over others. The suit charges that the claims merely convince consumers to pay more.

I pass this along so that you do not get taken in - as I admit I was.

A New Declaration of Independence

2008-06-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

As a Canadian I cannot sign this. If I were an American I would follow the example of John Hancock and write my name as big as possible.

It is a long document but worth reading - here is a sample

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the entirety of humanity, the entire creation, constitutes one family in which no individual has been given the right to hoard wealth while the remainder of the family dies for lack of a handful of grain; in which no individual has been given the right to mass murder, in the name of perverse patriotism, for a small piece of this planet; in which no individual has been given the right to exterminate countless animal and plant species in the pursuit of profit. Rather, we affirm our commitment to fulfill our responsibility to every member of our family as part of our human family values.

Another reason I am glad to call myself Canadian

2008-05-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

Fewer than three-quarters of Canadians believe in a god, suggests a new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.

"Religion in Canada today is not a particularly divisive subject and tolerance levels for different beliefs are high," said Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson. "This is evident in the fact that one in four people feel comfortable saying they do not believe in a god."

This is, of course, is contradistinction to our neighbours to the south, where the figure falls to 8% - mostly due to political pressure.

The separation of church and state that is enshrined in the Constitution, and the freedom of religion (which included freedom from religion) was one of the most important things the Founding Fathers were fighting for. While intolerance is generally frowned upon, that does not apply to atheists. You do not have to spend very long on the web to realise that.

As far as I am concerned people can believe what they like. But they have no right at all to demand that others believe the same things that they do - or make that a condition of any services or accommodations. Yet it would be far harder to get elected in the US for any office, let alone that of president, by declaring that one is an atheist than being black or female. Indeed it wasn't so long ago that Americans were telling themselves how enlightened they were for electing the first Catholic - John F Kennedy.

And we don't do stupid things like printing "In God We Trust" on our money or forcing kids to learn creationism - or fighting court battles over plaques with the ten commandments on them in court houses.

And you think your job's bad

2008-05-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

One of the men who played Jack Sparrow at Disneyland spills the beans on his former employer.

You’d hear that it sucks to work for Disney. They’re Nazis in Mickey hats. But I’d thought, “How bad could it be?” By the time I got fired, half of me was relieved. I was getting sick of constantly being barked at about what to do.

I did go to Disneyland, once. As a visitor it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, and I quite enjoyed it. Though the family refused to go on Magic Mountain. We had the sort of ticket that gets you special early morning entrance - which sounds great until you realize that a lot of things do not open early. And many people have the same type of ticket. The lineups are long - and the locals who have season tickets always bring someone in a wheelchair as part of their group so they can skip the line. And the food isn't bad, and there are no outrageous rip-offs as there are at every other fair or amusement park. And a lot of Disneyland is about transportation, so it was like a busman's holiday. They really understand queue management.

But at the back of my mind all the time was this feeling like I was in "The Prisoner". But then, just because I am paranoid, doesn't mean they weren't watching me closely all the time.

Love is ... a good job and a hefty salary cheque

2008-05-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

With redundancies looming, trophy wives start planning to cash in and get out

Not just trophy wives and senior City executives either.

The piece in the Guardian talks about the top end of the market, but more women now regard marriage not as a relationship for mutual support through "sickness and health, richer or poorer". They take richer and health as preconditions - and there is no such thing as unconditional love. Marriage is so that they can answer their biological imperative - which means not just a potent mate but one with earnings. And even after the child rearing years are over, there is a calculus going on about "is this relationship worth it?" endlessly discussed with friends and relatives as well as the agony columns. Commitment is a quaint historical relic, confined to fiction.

The piece also is confined to jobs, but of course the big bait in all of this has been the huge equity built up in the family home in recent years. As soon as the market starts to look a little wobbly, people start to bail. And that is happening in this region now. Prices have not fallen, but the fear is that they will, so the home is unloaded as fast as possible. There are now more sellers than buyers which makes a price fall inevitable if sales are to be completed. The rule here now is that the equity is split 50/50 - and as most women earn less than their spouses this is as good as finally getting paid for all that housework and child rearing.

And then of course, the imperative is to hang on to what you have got, as women live longer than men. So all those sites that claim to pair up the newly single are full of women looking for "financially secure" men. Not those knocked sideways by the ruinous divorce settlement.

Court Rules That Paper Money Discriminates Against the Blind

2008-05-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

This is one of those "told you so" moments.

My first trip to the United Sates was in 1984, and that was the first time I has a walletful of this strange green money. And compared to the British banknotes I had used up until that moment, I immediately noticed that you could not tell the notes apart unless you were sighted. Though in recent years newer "bills" have got a bit more colourful, they are still all the same size.

Of course when this arose in converstaion with my new in-laws they looked at me like I was barmy.

Just like the waitress at the Holiday Inn at Charlotte NC. I had asked for marmalade at breakfast and she said "This is America, honey!"

Eat your Wheaties, but hold the coffee

2008-05-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

According to the study by University of Guelph researchers, blood sugar levels in people who ate low-sugar cereal were 250 per cent higher if they drank caffeinated coffee before or with breakfast, compared to decaf.

Earlier research has shown that, "whether you're a healthy individual, obese or a Type 2 diabetic, when you ingest caffeine and then follow that with some food that's carbohydrate-based, for a prolonged period of time -- certainly six hours at least -- your body becomes insulin resistant," says Terry Graham, professor of human health and nutritional sciences at the University of Guelph.

So now I know what I have been doing wrong. I tend to have two large cups of cappuccino in the morning -one before and one after eating breakfast. And although I like the eggs and bacon, the lack of good back bacon (why is that?) and the fuss and mess often means I go for something easier - often oatmeal or an oat based cereal. Or, like this morning, a bagel.

There are some good decaf beans out there - I have some - but I have never been clear why caffeine is so demonised. It had seemed to me to be one of those knee jerk responses that you are always told to stop drinking alcohol, and caffeine, no matter what the condition. And people still go on about foods being "high in cholesterol" when all that I have read demonstrates that you make your own cholesterol and it is fat - and type of fat too - that actually matters.

And also I have learned that an espresso has less caffeine that a regular filter ("brewed") coffee, as the ground beans are on contact with the water for a lot shorter period of time.

Communist party membership no longer a fireable offence in California

2008-05-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

Americans - or perhaps I should clarify that to Republicans - seem to have a huge problem understanding the simple concepts of the Bill of Rights.

There is no value in a version of liberty which means you can believe what you want and say what you want as long as the party in power agrees with you. The whole point of the concept of freedom of speech and freedom of association is that you will defend to the death the rights of others to hold opinions that you find abhorrent. Including the violent overthrow of the state. Because that is exactly what the founding fathers advocated.

The American Revolution was an act of violent uprising against the legal government of the day. Its leaders, if caught, would have been hanged for treason. The 13 colonies were part of the British Empire and thus subjects of the Crown. Indeed last night I watched a fascinating interview by Charlie Rose with retired British General Sir Michael Rose, who has just published a book drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the mistakes the Americans have been making in Iraq. (And on his web page you can watch it yourself if you like.)

And it is unbelievable that oaths of allegiance are still a requirement of state employment that continues to be used against Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses. What ever happened to freedom of religion and separation of church and state?

"Land of the Free" - no, not really.

U.S. lists polar bears as 'threatened' species

2008-05-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government has decided to list polar bears as a threatened species under its Endangered Species Act because of the effects of global warming — a decision that could deal a severe blow to the lucrative sport hunt in Canada's North.

Good. Of course you do not hunt a species threatened with extinction.

Hopefully polar bears will begin to adapt to changing circumstances. They are closely related to other bears that are better equipped to deal with a warmer climate, so eventually we may see a different kind of bear. Or we may have to face up to the fact that when we destroy a creature's habitat it starts to adapt its behaviour in ways that inconvenience us. Like urban foxes and skunks.

But if we actually care about protecting species, and having an ecosystem which can adapt, we must stop people from killing for "fun" or "sport". Indeed, it might be a good idea to consider listing the desire to go hunting among urban males as a psychological disorder. Is there really that much difference between someone who likes - as a recreational activity mind - to shoot bears and one who likes to shoot people?

Vancouver Olympics security cameras raise privacy concerns

2008-05-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

I can understand why these concerns are being raised, but they are beside the point.

The British experience (and they have more CCTV than anybody) is that they do not work. Crime has not been reduced and cctv footage is used in only 3% of cases.

It is a waste of money.

Tree Frogs

2008-04-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

There is nothing to see here. Just listen. At night our ditch is alive with frogs. You can hear them but not see them. My first attempt was poor quality as I was not close enough. So in this take I try to approach a particularly vocal group. I cannot see them but they are well aware of my presence. And half way through this take they shut up as I get too close

Loopholes keep Windows XP alive

2008-04-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

Mr Ballmer said: "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments."

M$ had better wake up. Vista is not necessary, and its "features" add sizzle but no steak. I will not upgrade the machine I have that currently uses XP as a back up for the few functions that Ubuntu does not do as well. But that is few and growing fewer.

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP Home until 2010 on low-powered PCs, such as the Asus Eee, that might struggle to cope with Vista's power demands.

This Eee user is very happy with the Linux version it shipped with. I have no intention of changing it to an OS which I know does not work as well. The whole point of machines like the Eee is that they are designed to produce a good computing experience without needless bells and whistles, which helps keep the price low and the machine small. "Power" has nothing to do with it. It is functionality that is important and a cheap small Eee is far better than much more expensive, larger laptops that ship with M$ clunky systems and software.

It Takes 90 Years To Grow A Box Of Kleenex

2008-04-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

I really did not know that. I had heard about the reluctance of tissue makers to use recycled paper. But I have never switched away from old fashioned hankies - and I know I am in the minority. I note too that if you want to buy recycled paper products they are often more expensive, which seems counter intuitive. But I do use tissues when I have a streaming cold - because I run out of hankies too quickly.

Is this an argument like disposable versus washable diapers?

Homeland Security and the High School Robots

2008-04-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

This story was on Global BC TV News at 6 tonight. Some BC high school children won their way through intense competition to the finals of a competition - held in the US.

When they got there they found that the carefully packed robots were not with their baggage. They turned up later - wrecked.

Global's report suggested that this was due to "post 9/11 paranioa" but I think there is a much simpler explanation. This contest was very much publicised and there was only one Canadian team that got through to the finals. It may even be the case that parents of high school children work at the airport - maybe even for Homeland Security. What better way to ensure that the home team wins than some extra thorough attention to the competitor's equipment?

When you consider the number of cases of parents behaving badly at sports events, is too much to think that an over eager parent would be low enough to stoop to this kind of action?

Sorry, no link, the story is not on Global's web page

Whose fault is the credit crunch?

2008-04-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

The DG of the CBI says it is the bankers themselves - and more specifically their bonus payment systejm that rewards risk taking but seemingly carries no penalty for failure.

Solution? Stop paying the beggars in cash but make them accept pay in shares - uncashable for 5 years!

Brenda Martin "guilty"

2008-04-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

Brenda Martin was a chef for

Alyn Waage, who was convicted of fraud in 2006. He is serving a 10-year term in a U.S. prison.

Martin maintained her innocence.... Waage has testified Martin was unaware of his activities.

The burden of proof in Mexico is that you are guilty unless you can prove you are innocent.

In other news, it has been suggested that NAFTA may be re-opened. If that is the case, we could put some other things on the table. As Stephen Harper says, we are now in a stronger position than we were 20 years ago. The model we might like to look at is Europe, which has a very stringent "harmonisation" procedure. This produces much better protection for issues such as the environment and consumer protection. Unfortunately for my example, much of Europe also still uses the Code Napoleon in criminal cases. But if we are at the bargaining table and the US and ourselves have the British, common law based jurisprudence system and a charter of rights/constitution, maybe we should push the Mexicans to get into line with us. It might help their tourism business too. Right now I have no desire to spend any time there.

Robert Baltovich goes free - finally

2008-04-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yet another miscarriage of justice is corrected - after a lot of very obvious reluctance.

The verdict came Tuesday, moments after the Crown stunned a Toronto courtroom with the announcement that it would not bring any evidence or witnesses forward in Baltovich's trial, which had been expected to last as long as eight weeks.

Prosecutors, who had planned to call 50 witnesses to the stand, said on Tuesday they had no reasonable prospect of conviction.

So now we need much, much more in the way of explanation.

Witnesses to what - since he did not do it? Has anyone asked Paul Bernardo if he did it? Since the Scarborough rapist went undetected for a long time while police forces indulged in their usual inter-jurisdictional rivalries, and young women's lives were lost as a result, maybe it is time the whole rotten system is finally opened up to some real reform, and there should be a lot less self righteous posturing and cover up.

We should also be thankful that the siren call of the vicious, vengeful capital punishment brigade has not been heeded.

"Steve is not happy"

2008-04-21T13:32:00.000-07:00