Why you should fill out a best of regina ballot

You should vote in our Best of Regina reader's poll because there really, truly are good people in this town doing all kinds of things that make life here better--making art and music that enriches, volunteering in the community, running awesome restaurants and feeding me, ah, I mean us.

These people deserve to be recognized--they really, truly do--and our dumb write-in Best Of Regina popularity contest is a great way of doing it. SO! Vote!

WHAT? You say you're not motivated enough by civic duty and the urge to publicly praise the worthy? Gadzooks! Well then, what about choclate? Are you motivated by chocolate? drop off your filled out ballot at our office (#201-1836 Scarth St.) and you can grab a couple (or I dunno, a handful) of candy eggs from the basket on our reception desk.

WHAT? NOT ENOUGH??? Well, what if I told you...

...one lucky person who enters this contest will win...

A $500 SHOPPING SPREE AT CORNWALL CENTRE?

It's true! Fill out a ballot* and you could win a $500 gift certificate for a reasonably awesome Regina mall. How many people fill out Best of Regina ballots anyway? Five hundred? A thousand? Fifteen hundred, tops? Good odds--better than the lotto, that's for sure.

VOTE NOW! Deadline to recieve ballots is 5:00 p.m., Thursday April 2.

*or e-mail bestof@prairiedogmag.com for a digital ballot

Best Of Regina!

You wouldn't know it from the total lack of blog posts, but our world-famous super-awesome Best Of Regina reader poll is going on right now. Maybe you didn't hear me--it's going on RIGHT NOW!

But there are only four days--FOUR DAYS!--left to vote for Regina's Best Restaurant, Best Shoe Store, Best Veterinarian, Best Hairstylist and, erm, like a hundred other categories.

You can vote in one of two ways: you can pick up a copy of prairie dog, fill out the ballot and drop it off at our office--we have chocolate Easter eggs! Yum! Or, you can e-mail bestof@prairiedogmag.com for a handy digital ballot.

More on this topic later.

GEORGE VS. GEORGE

Kooky British MP George Galloway won't be coming to Canada. A federal judge has upheld the ban.

Last time I was ranting about this I said it was ridiculous to bar Galloway when we were welcoming George W. Bush, whose administration endorsed torture, flouted the Geneva convention, launched a massive domestic spy program, bombed and invaded Iraq (a country that has never attacked the U.S.), bankrupt the U.S., denied global warming, undermined science while pandering to faith-based psychopaths and, why not, probably killed and cooked goddamn kittens.

But why focus on Dubya? Surely we must've let other thugs into Canada.

Well of course we have. One such thug is the late, unlamented Indonesian dictator (oops, soory, leader sounds much respectable) Suharto, welcomed into Canada for the 1997 Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. You might remember the event: RCMP pepper-sprayed protestors (and jouralists, including, famously a cameraman) who were quite reasonably miffed that their country let a (western-backed) tyrant implicated in genocide in east Timor in.

Remember? Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked about pepper spray at a press conference. At the time I fully expected the government to fall. I was so silly and naive.

You can read more about Suharto, and the West's relationship with him, here (the Guardian).
You can revisit the CBC's coverage of APEC here.

So, to review:
Warmonger/torturer/idiot: that's okay.
Tyrant/genocidal dictator/good old-fashioned imperialist puppet: that's fine
Obnoxious, belligerant pacifist politician who criticizes Israel and sometimes pretends he's a kittycat: NOT ALLOWED IN CANADA!

Even the United States let Galloway in. This is ridiculous and unacceptable and unbelievably selective. And if it turns out Minister Kenny Vs. Spenny directed officials to restrict Galloway's entry, he'll need to resign.

At least the judge recognized there are problems with the prohibition on Galloway, which is sort of a partial victory, I guess.

But overall: not cool, Canada. Not cool.

Tune In!

Mitch Diamantopoulos, head of the U of R School Of Journalism and a founder of prairie dog, is on the CBC right now, defending the need for a well-funded independent public broadcaster. Go listen! Links to follow.

UPDATE: Listen online here.
UPDATE 2: Listen old-school at 540 a.m., 102.5 FM.

Hilarious moment: a caller (a CBC supporter) was just asked by Blue Sky host Garth Materie to take a guess at the average salary of local journalists. The caller guessed $80K. (Possible correction: publisher Terry says the guy said $60 K.)

And everyone working in local journalism laughs, and laughs and laughs.

I don't have numbers but I guarentee if we're talking about average, we're looking at well south of $40 K. I wouldn't be shocked if it was under $30, on average.

UPDATE 3: Some stupid asshole caller is calling the CBC biased against conservatism (oops am I using loaded, non-impartial language here?) and is using as his example the CBC industry's alleged non-coverage of a recent phoney scientific conference in New York denying man-made global warming. Uh huh. Well, maybe consensus theories about global warming are incorrect. Also, maybe Jesus rode dinosaurs, evolution is just a crazy hypothesis and gravity is all wrong--we're really held to the planet by underground magnets buried 2000 years ago by angels.

Apparently CBC opponents = global warming deniers. By the way, that conference was briefly blogged about on dog blog, here.

The CBC is a lot more polite to anti-fact terrorists than prairie dog will ever be, let me tell you.

UPDATE 4: Well, the show's over. If I can find out about a re-broadcast time, I'll let you know.

This Week at City Hall

Tuesday, March 31
Board of Revision (9 am)
Development Appeals Board Hearing (5:30 pm)

Wednesday April 1
Executive Committee (11:45 am): Considering a submission by Jason Hall (yes, this Jason Hall), a Regina landlord who has issues with the way the city's Maintenance Bylaw is being applied. Alongside this, the committee will look at a report from staff regarding bylaw complaints (4,000 of them) made by the Regina Landlord's Association. Also, the committee will reconsider a new Housing Incentives Policy in light of the provincial budget.
Regina Urban Environment Advisory Council (5:30 pm): Considering a volunteer water monitoring program.

As always, you can download complete reports and meeting agendas on the city's website.

Six In The Morning

1 MULRONEY'S MONEY The public inquiry into the former prime minister's relationship to a bags-of-cash-lobbing German arms dealer is underway. First up: Former defence minister Bill McKnight. (CBC)

2 FOXY HARPER The prime minister who's content to let 800 jobs go down at the CBC appears on the cartoonishly right-wing American broadcaster, and brags about Canada's bank regulatory regime which (it says here) he would've probably dismantled had he had the chance before it all blew up.

3 CHYRSLER ME A RIVER Under pressure from the White House, GM's CEO resigns while another automaker is told its recovery plan needs a do-over, this time with more Italians. Meanwhile, the market tumbles. It's all here. And here. (New York Times, the Guardian)

4 JUNO WHAT'S BORING? Nickelback's last record was allegedly the best album released by Canadian musicians last year. Yawwwwwwwwwn. (Toronto Star)

5 MOVE IT OR LOSE IT Canada's biggest city is divided over the fate of an urban coyote. (Toronto Star)

6 BUS BOO-HOO (This one's from Friday but we haven't posted on it yet so I'm putting it up now.)

In a California-esque display of a la carte democracy, University of Regina students voted down a $69/semester bus pass fee (or $17.25/month) that would've been a huge step forward for a functioning transit system in this city.

I understand where they're coming from. I understand how transit funding failures in this city have fueled an unsustainable car culture. I fully recognize that students are being asked to pay to fix a problem that they didn't create. I know--I know--there's a lot of blame to go around for the disaster that is Regina transit's grievous under-funding.

And I realize that high post-secondary tuitions have really fucked student's futures up, so every time they're asked to pay more, they balk. I sympathize.

But the fact is, that fee would've made this city a better place and would've improved connections between the campus and the rest of Regina. It would've been a step forward.

it also would've helped a lot of students get through the year without cars, which would save them piles of money.

Bottom line for me: students who voted "no" to the pass have many legitimate points. But this was a chance for them to show some vision and civic leadership. And, they failed.

Suburb Fun Facts

At Council's March 23 meeting they considered a concept plan for a new development called "Skyview" which is proposed for the lands north of the Lakewood subdivision. Council postponed making a decision on this until their April 20 meeting and seeing as I wasn't there, I've no idea why they did this. But I do know a few fun facts about Skyview!

1. According to the report, Skyview will add 510 units of housing to the city.
2. High density housing will comprise 220 of those units and cover 2.84 hectares.
3. Roadways through Skyview will cover 4.21 hectares. That's 1.37 more hectares than high density housing!
4. All tolled, roadways will cover 18 per cent of the surface area of Skyview.
   
5. Regarding this application, Regina's Transit Department commented that "There is no budget in place to enable provision of transit service to this neighbourhood." Also, the report notes that "The Transit Department also stresses that current operating budgets do not provide opportunity to expand into new areas".

For the record, I'm not picking on Skyview because it's some kind of anomaly. It's probably a pretty typical suburban development -- and a small one to boot.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

They don't make 'em like this any more:



Jonny Quest - Intro
by aemracerex


(Via Daily Motion, copyright violation and the late, great Alex Toth.)

UPDATE: The took the link away, but you can see the opening here as of June 2009.

How soon they forget ...

I remember attending the U of R in the 1980s, when everyone was being collared by social activists, demanding that they stop drinking Carlings beer, South African wines, DeBeers diamonds, anything that could economically benefit the South African economy. Boycotting the economic process that kept a a racist, demagogic government afloat was the only way to bring about social change, the ANC's argument went.

And a generation later ... (New York Times).

New Dog!

The new prairie dog came out yesterday. So what's in this one that makes it worth your valuable time? That's what you want to know, right?

VIANNE TIMMONS Gregory Beatty interviews the U of R's first-year president about the state of the campus and the importance of connecting with the community.

BEST DEFENCE Female circumcision is a tradition in many African cultures. It's a cultural practice where teenagers/girls have their genitals surgically modified as a right of passage. That's a nice way of saying they have their clitorusses (clitorii?) chopped off. The western world generally condemns this as a hienous human rights violation--I sure as hell do--but one academic who's voluntarily experienced the ritual came to Regina to defend it. Vanda Schmockel, who hasn't written for us in a while, checks out the lecture and stays remarkably judgement-free.

TREVOR HARRIOT He's got a beautiful new book about Saskatchewan birds and a bone to pick with conservation efforts (i.e., there needs to be more of them). Stephen LaRose interviews Herriot, and it's a good article.

ALSO: Sugar Ray Leonard, discussed; the Saskatchewan budget, analyzed; The Visitors reviewed; news, insinuations and fears about suburban "parking lagoons"; Gywnne Dyer talks about space aliens; David Suzuki pouts over pesticides; John Conway calls the Saskatchewan Party government a bunch of Darth Vaders (what will Murray Mandryk say?); reviews of new music by Attack In Black, Swan Lake and Willie Nelson; and a strange editorial by a very over-tired yours truly with a couple of glaring boo-boos, including one that kind of wrecks the point of the excercise. Typo-wieners, to your e-mail!

(Cover photo of University of Regina president Vainne Timmons by Darrol Hofmeister/sharpshooter photography)