I share two links that should not be overlooked:
Warm Water flowing into the Arctic.
Hymalayan glaciers aren't melting, afterall.
So the science is settled. Marge Atwood could sing it to you to the tune of "Your so Vain". But the song is actually about her.
There is a slice of people at any time and place in human experience that feels the evils and horrors of the world are directly connected to our moral crimes. We commit these crimes whenever we stray from that slice's strictures for good living. As with global warmers this time, inevitably, the bullshit blows up in their face.
This was never a call to guzzle gas or make believe about dinosaur bones. Only a plea to accept one unforgiving, unrelenting fact of life: change happens. Islands sink. Glaciers melt. Some summers burn a little more than others. Rain clouds shift. Rivers carve. Mountains crumble. My greasy body, if the timing is perfect and the compression sufficient, will power some future subaru a mile or so. Or not.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
TV Shows and TV Ads (Liberal ones, both)
From Yankeeland, they piped into my tv a preview of the show that will replace Parker-Spitzer on CNN: Spitzer-Steele. Michael Steele is unemployed, Kathleen Parker is a dud. Swap the two and you have the spectacle of too obnoxious men trying to out-obnoxious one another. That's basically a distillation of the finest moments in the history of reality television. If CNN didn't realize this before hand, it should by now and their lawyer's should be drafting a contract with Michael Steele's lawyers.
Meanwhile, I got to end my twenty minutes of telly with a couple of anti-Harper ads from the Liberals. From the gist of the ads, Liberals expect a revolution over fighter jets and corporate tax cuts. As always, Liberals are charging to defeat before anyone started playing.
Individually, neither of these issues are obvious wins for Liberals. Fighter jets fly over wide expanses of arctic. Making the fighter jets an issue plays into Conservative hands by reminding voters that the government is acting on the citizenry's top priorities. While Liberals will look empty-mouthed when it comes to our foreign policy worries. Meanwhile, giving Canada kick ass corporate tax rates will pull in additional foreign investment and keep a greater portion of our own capital at work here at home. Liberals, by contesting the corporate tax cuts, look wilfully clueless about the foundations of job creation.
Together, these issues point to another problem. These two issues are about as stale as bread in a rue Prince Arthur restaurant. Tories have been long-term planning military assets for half a decade now. The vision to have hyper-competitive corporate tax rates has been in the wind for at least the last three years. Liberals have to go back into the archives to raise a couple of issues from the dead?
The ads both end with the question: is this your Canada? Or Harper's? My answer, yes.
Meanwhile, I got to end my twenty minutes of telly with a couple of anti-Harper ads from the Liberals. From the gist of the ads, Liberals expect a revolution over fighter jets and corporate tax cuts. As always, Liberals are charging to defeat before anyone started playing.
Individually, neither of these issues are obvious wins for Liberals. Fighter jets fly over wide expanses of arctic. Making the fighter jets an issue plays into Conservative hands by reminding voters that the government is acting on the citizenry's top priorities. While Liberals will look empty-mouthed when it comes to our foreign policy worries. Meanwhile, giving Canada kick ass corporate tax rates will pull in additional foreign investment and keep a greater portion of our own capital at work here at home. Liberals, by contesting the corporate tax cuts, look wilfully clueless about the foundations of job creation.
Together, these issues point to another problem. These two issues are about as stale as bread in a rue Prince Arthur restaurant. Tories have been long-term planning military assets for half a decade now. The vision to have hyper-competitive corporate tax rates has been in the wind for at least the last three years. Liberals have to go back into the archives to raise a couple of issues from the dead?
The ads both end with the question: is this your Canada? Or Harper's? My answer, yes.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
By the pricking of my thumbs, someting Palin this way comes
Our man Tiger has links to Sarah Palin's facebook video. She posted it yesterday as a "response" to the Arizona political assasination over the weekend.
Tiger may find what she has to say rationally compelling, let me tell you what Tarkwell thinks:
I think Sarah Palin would rip a suckling baby from her breast and bash its brains out if it would make her King.
She scares the be-jeezus out of me. Not because her head is full of scary right-wing ideas; like Tiger, I accept her basic premises and most conclusions. But words aren't everything. Timing, delivery, circumstance - the context matters too. In those things, ambition, lust and greed can be unmasked.
A politician has survived an assasination attempt. Many bystanders did not.
Just like it is wrong to apportion some guilt from the crazy bastard's acts on Sarah Palin; it is wrong for Sarah Palin to apportion some victim-ness from the crazy bastard's acts. But that's just what Sarah Palin is doing - using the occasion to point out how mean people have been to HER.
A weak and prickly person is a weak and prickly president.
Further, one of the sickest displays possible is rehearsed remorse. There was a chilling roboticism to her address - it was so bad, even Tarkwell Robotico could have looked more sincere. In the "grieving" half of the speech, Palin gives this weird, non-sequiter smile when she talks about the United States: she's reminding us all that she loves her country the way simple country folk love old and loyal horses. Victims get a shrug, the United States gets a wink and a nod; real emotion only barely surfaces when Palin finally gets to talking about her favorite subject, Palin.
A robotic and solipsistic person is a robotic and solipsistic president.
Sarah Palin cannot be president. She is weak, prickly, robotic and solipsistic.
Her advisors a idiot boobs who, if they had any sense, would have told her to shut up and take the cheap roughing up at the hands of the usual slithering pricks in silence. The adivsors should have told her to stick to grief and maybe say a kind word about the Rep. Giffords. Look human, they should have shouted!
Instead,she turned Andrew Sullivan's lunatic ravings about her into prescient forewarnings.
Tiger may find what she has to say rationally compelling, let me tell you what Tarkwell thinks:
I think Sarah Palin would rip a suckling baby from her breast and bash its brains out if it would make her King.
She scares the be-jeezus out of me. Not because her head is full of scary right-wing ideas; like Tiger, I accept her basic premises and most conclusions. But words aren't everything. Timing, delivery, circumstance - the context matters too. In those things, ambition, lust and greed can be unmasked.
A politician has survived an assasination attempt. Many bystanders did not.
Just like it is wrong to apportion some guilt from the crazy bastard's acts on Sarah Palin; it is wrong for Sarah Palin to apportion some victim-ness from the crazy bastard's acts. But that's just what Sarah Palin is doing - using the occasion to point out how mean people have been to HER.
A weak and prickly person is a weak and prickly president.
Further, one of the sickest displays possible is rehearsed remorse. There was a chilling roboticism to her address - it was so bad, even Tarkwell Robotico could have looked more sincere. In the "grieving" half of the speech, Palin gives this weird, non-sequiter smile when she talks about the United States: she's reminding us all that she loves her country the way simple country folk love old and loyal horses. Victims get a shrug, the United States gets a wink and a nod; real emotion only barely surfaces when Palin finally gets to talking about her favorite subject, Palin.
A robotic and solipsistic person is a robotic and solipsistic president.
Sarah Palin cannot be president. She is weak, prickly, robotic and solipsistic.
Her advisors a idiot boobs who, if they had any sense, would have told her to shut up and take the cheap roughing up at the hands of the usual slithering pricks in silence. The adivsors should have told her to stick to grief and maybe say a kind word about the Rep. Giffords. Look human, they should have shouted!
Instead,she turned Andrew Sullivan's lunatic ravings about her into prescient forewarnings.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
2012: The Year of Right-Wing Miracles
Last weak, news leaked that President Obama and Prime Minister Harper were secretly negotiating a step towards something I have long advocated: eliminated the border between Canada and the United States.
Our opposition, led by celebrity academic Michael Ignatieff, is confused - nay, wounded - that the government hasn't come clean with them on the secret negotiations. Iggy asks, "Why does this government want to impose a secret agreement on Canadians without debate? What do they have to hide?"
Here's what's hiding in plain sight Iggy: a campaign platform. A big idea. A majority-making move from the government. Canada is not a land of Maude Barlows, just because she reacts to the idea like its wheat gluten don't mean the rest of us are as allergic.
Get ready, Iggy, for Campaign 2012. Its polarizing. Its a big idea. And here's the fun-nest of all:
Obama will be campaigning FOR the deal. You and your Obama-worshippers will not only be fighting Tories - you'll be spitting venom the great O's way.
No wait, there's something even more fun about Campaign 2012:
You. Today, you were about a deal to ease border congestion in terms of our charter rights. You lived there. In Boston. I'm not making this up. You were not so worried about your own charter rights and you weren't just crossing the border - you were setting roots in that evil, charter-usurping land. If Beantown works for you, how come I'm not allowed a hassle free visit?
No leader in the history of the Liberal party is as badly positioned to play the hysterical, anti-Yank card than Iggy Ignatief.
Big Idea. Obama's backing. Iggy's inauthenticity. We's in grand slam country now.
Our opposition, led by celebrity academic Michael Ignatieff, is confused - nay, wounded - that the government hasn't come clean with them on the secret negotiations. Iggy asks, "Why does this government want to impose a secret agreement on Canadians without debate? What do they have to hide?"
Here's what's hiding in plain sight Iggy: a campaign platform. A big idea. A majority-making move from the government. Canada is not a land of Maude Barlows, just because she reacts to the idea like its wheat gluten don't mean the rest of us are as allergic.
Get ready, Iggy, for Campaign 2012. Its polarizing. Its a big idea. And here's the fun-nest of all:
Obama will be campaigning FOR the deal. You and your Obama-worshippers will not only be fighting Tories - you'll be spitting venom the great O's way.
No wait, there's something even more fun about Campaign 2012:
You. Today, you were about a deal to ease border congestion in terms of our charter rights. You lived there. In Boston. I'm not making this up. You were not so worried about your own charter rights and you weren't just crossing the border - you were setting roots in that evil, charter-usurping land. If Beantown works for you, how come I'm not allowed a hassle free visit?
No leader in the history of the Liberal party is as badly positioned to play the hysterical, anti-Yank card than Iggy Ignatief.
Big Idea. Obama's backing. Iggy's inauthenticity. We's in grand slam country now.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Miracles of Science, The Al-Quaeda Edition
Like any organization in a globalized, competitive landscape, Al-Quaeda devotes an important part of its budget to advancing science and technology. Medical innovation is a cornerstone of Al-Quaeda's mission and its ambition in that field rivals the Mayo Clinic.
News that Al-Quaeda is working diligently on yet another leap in human medical knowledge should surprise no one. If the Nobel Prize in medicine weren't so biased in favour of life-promoting medicine and against death ennobling medicine, the devoted doctors of Al-Quaeda would be collecting them the way they collect body parts from failed and successful experiments.
News that Al-Quaeda is working diligently on yet another leap in human medical knowledge should surprise no one. If the Nobel Prize in medicine weren't so biased in favour of life-promoting medicine and against death ennobling medicine, the devoted doctors of Al-Quaeda would be collecting them the way they collect body parts from failed and successful experiments.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Joining the Club that would Have Me as a Member: Blogging Tories
In my first act as a member of the Blogging Tories, let me welcome myself to the Blogging Tory family. Getting selected as a Blogging Tory was a gruelling process like nothing I have experienced before.
I believe the hardest part of making the cut was the alien probe. It seems, ever since wikiLeaks, our supreme leader Karplak of Planet 4 is mighty paranoid about us going off message. So he's ordered thought-control implants for his conservative army. Aliens, it turns out, have no bedside manner.
The fitness tests were what you might expect: thirty push-ups under a minute and a 7 minute mile.
We also had a house inspector who came to measure the density of Stephen Harper images in our house decoration. Since his portrait hangs in basically everyone room, I scored high on that part of the test.
I believe the hardest part of making the cut was the alien probe. It seems, ever since wikiLeaks, our supreme leader Karplak of Planet 4 is mighty paranoid about us going off message. So he's ordered thought-control implants for his conservative army. Aliens, it turns out, have no bedside manner.
The fitness tests were what you might expect: thirty push-ups under a minute and a 7 minute mile.
We also had a house inspector who came to measure the density of Stephen Harper images in our house decoration. Since his portrait hangs in basically everyone room, I scored high on that part of the test.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Parker/Spitzer - Diva duel
Today's gossip about trouble on CNN's 8 pm show, Parker-Spitzer, was fun to read.
I do watch the show if the opportunity presents itself. I recommend everyone watch it. And, sad for Ms. Parker, the reason to watch is Eliot Spitzer.
I can understand Kathleen Parker's nervous breadown. She is a brainy babe used to having everyone's attention. She has never before encountered a troglodyte diva like Eliot Spitzer before. Spitzer has turned cro-magnon bad-looks into charisma. He wears more eye-liner than Marylin Manson but still it is his bulging, blooming eyes that have your attention.
Oh. And Spitzer had very expensive sex with a hooker. Of the kinky requests he made, keeping his socks on is the closest thing to normal about him. That fact doesn't condemn him. There he is, jutting his chin out like its the Titanic half-way cross the pond, smiling through it. It becomes another check mark on the charisma charter. Hutzpah ain't nothing.
Case in point. The show cuts to commercial but teases us with a trailer for the next segment. The "political panel" (read: seven shades of commie) are going to say pithy things about how crazy everybody off the island of Manhattan is. The big line comes from some chick in funk-glasses, who says, "Republicans and Democrats are like my marriage. I say, 'no sex until you start washing the dishes.' So now no one in my house is getting laid and the dishes are piling up."
Anywhere, that's just a line. With Spitzer it becomes an awesome, awkward silence. You know his knee-jerk response to that joke would be, "what? your husband should have sex with a hooker. Here are three numbers for him to call. Tell him to tell the people who answer the numbers that Mr. TV sent him."
But he will stop himself. You, in the privacy of your own home, can make the comeback for him and laugh a good belly full.
I do watch the show if the opportunity presents itself. I recommend everyone watch it. And, sad for Ms. Parker, the reason to watch is Eliot Spitzer.
I can understand Kathleen Parker's nervous breadown. She is a brainy babe used to having everyone's attention. She has never before encountered a troglodyte diva like Eliot Spitzer before. Spitzer has turned cro-magnon bad-looks into charisma. He wears more eye-liner than Marylin Manson but still it is his bulging, blooming eyes that have your attention.
Oh. And Spitzer had very expensive sex with a hooker. Of the kinky requests he made, keeping his socks on is the closest thing to normal about him. That fact doesn't condemn him. There he is, jutting his chin out like its the Titanic half-way cross the pond, smiling through it. It becomes another check mark on the charisma charter. Hutzpah ain't nothing.
Case in point. The show cuts to commercial but teases us with a trailer for the next segment. The "political panel" (read: seven shades of commie) are going to say pithy things about how crazy everybody off the island of Manhattan is. The big line comes from some chick in funk-glasses, who says, "Republicans and Democrats are like my marriage. I say, 'no sex until you start washing the dishes.' So now no one in my house is getting laid and the dishes are piling up."
Anywhere, that's just a line. With Spitzer it becomes an awesome, awkward silence. You know his knee-jerk response to that joke would be, "what? your husband should have sex with a hooker. Here are three numbers for him to call. Tell him to tell the people who answer the numbers that Mr. TV sent him."
But he will stop himself. You, in the privacy of your own home, can make the comeback for him and laugh a good belly full.
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