Obama to Visit Ottawa

Last week, it was announced that Barack Obama would make his first trip outside the U.S. as Prez to Ottawa on Feb. 19. It's not an official state visit, media report, more of a working visit with a limited number of public events. Parliament won't even be in session, so he won't be making a formal address there. Nonetheless, Whitehouse communication strategists have implemented a rigorous program to prepare Obama for his debut on the international stage. The above picture was taken Jan. 29. It shows Obama, after truck-loads of ice shavings were brought in from Verizon Center (home of the Washington Capitals) and dumped in the Rose Garden, practicing walking in the type of slush found in Ottawa in mid-February. Later that day, he received a primer on ice hockey, curling and the differences between NFL and CFL football. Today, Obama was scheduled to listen to a playlist of 49 songs that CBC listeners selected for him as an introduction to Canada, and begin reading Margaret Atwood's novel A Handmaid's Tale. In the weeks to come, he will watch films by Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Deepa Mehta and Patricia Rosema, along with select episodes of Corner Gas and The Trailer Park Boys, and will be quizzed daily on arcane Canadiana like who invented the game of basketball and the vital role Canada played in the famed pre-Civil War Underground Railroad. Finally, to attune his palette to Canadian tastes, Obama will sample numerous national delicacies like beaver tails, poutine, fiddleheads, nanaimo bars, bannock and tourtiere prepared for him by a noted Canadian chef.

Downtown Plan Moving Along

To an outsider like me, Regina's Downtown Master Plan Project has seemed pretty quiet lately. So, I was glad to get an email today saying things are moving along and we can expect it to be presented to Council this spring. From the email:

We have seen great progress on the Downtown Master Plan to date and that work continues. Office for Urbanism is now working closely with City staff to fine-tune the plan's technical details. They are also working with the development community to finalize the 'built form framework' that was developed as part of the plan. This framework governs the specifics of building design for the area, including how high buildings can be, how far back they should be set from the sidewalk, etc.

We anticipate bringing the Downtown Plan forward to Council in the spring. The date of the Council meeting will be communicated to you in the near future. This plan is our chance to create a vibrant downtown that is the heart and soul of our community. We are taking the time we need to ensure it is complete, thorough and tested.

You can take a gander at the Downtown Plan newsletter here.

Talking To Journalists

It should not surprise anyone who's met me or has ever read my editorials that I don't know what I'm doing. Partly I'm just a born dumbass, but this is also a quality of the modern condition. Lots of us work in jobs we don't feel qualified for, struggle with situations we're not prepared for and generally bumble our way through life the best we can. As long as we don't knock too many expensive vases off shelves along the way, we need to cut ourselves some slack.

Aaaaaanyway, one of the things I do to be less-incompetent is read and learn from other newspapers and magazines, with special attention to pubs that are similar to (but better than) prairie dog. For this reason, we have subscriptions to several alt-weeklies, including Toronto's NOW, Edmonton's See and Halifax's The Coast. I keep an eye on more online.

My favourite alternative weekly newspaper is Seattle's The Stranger. Launched in 1991 by Tim Keck, a co-founder of The Onion, and a great cartoonist named James Sturm, it's loaded with personality, humour and at times genuine insight--and at times ferocious stupidity, like when then-editor (now editorial director) (and one of my favourite newspaper writers) Dan Savage advocated for the invasion of Iraq. But that's another blog post for another day).

The Stranger also has an excellent blog, called Slog. I read Slog a couple times a week, sometimes a lot more if there's something important I'm procrastinating on.

All that to get to my point--this post which I found interesting and maybe you will too. The university of Washington student newspaper contacted Savage, who's also gay and a well-known sex-advice columnist for an interview about anal sex in their sex issue. Savage (click for a video of Dan pummelling a right-wing Christian jerk on Anderson Cooper), is leaning toward not giving them an interview because the newspaper previously published a dumbass, bigoted opinion column equating gay marriage with bestiality.

I'm interested in all this partly because I fouled campus newspapers with my crap for 10 years and still have an emotional attachment to the student press.

But more importantly, there is an issue here. An issue, I say! When media outlets print/broadcast something vile, does that mean people they've enraged should refuse to give interviews to them thereafter? Yes, no or "it depends"?

Well obviously the correct answer is "it depends" but it's fun to talk about.

Something similar but more important happened in Sask last year when the SFL declared a boycott of CJME because of allegedly biased and hostile coverage. I don't listen to CJME so I don't know if this is still in effect. We covered it last year though. You can read Paul Dechene's article here.

[Edited by author because post had some cutsey, coy writing. Coy must die.]

Robert J Sawyer Interview

As a bonus feature to this issue's article about life on Mars, here's the complete interview with Robert J Sawyer. In it he discusses the possibility that life down here began out there and he argues that we actually discovered life on Mars back in the early 70s.

For those who don't know who he is, here's his bio...

Called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days" by The Denver Rocky Mountain News, Robert J Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the science-fiction field's top honors for best novel of the year: the Hugo Award in 2003 for Hominids, the Nebula in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment and the John W Campbell Memorial Award in 2006 for Mindscan. Rob has an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University. He was born in Ottawa and currently lives in Mississauga. His latest novel, Wake, will be published in April of 2009.

You can check out his website here.

Any Leaf Fans Out There?

Pretty funny article in The Toronto Star on the sorry state of the Toronto Maple Leafs--and, less directly, on head coach Ron Wilson's big mouth and propensity for insulting his players. Wilson apparently told reporters the team was "a garden full of weeds" after losing badly to Minnesota. The Star goes into more detail about these weeds. A sample:

"MILKWEED (Nikolaiva Antropovora): Not an invasive species and does not pose threat to its environment. Physically tepid despite long frame, may finally be yanked from first and only NHL team for frustrating inability to dominate."

Good for a chuckle. Full thingy here.

Six In The Morning

1. Don't Let America become France: So you're a captain of industry and you've just been promised a big wad of corporate welfare, what's your first order of business? Why, fund an assault on the union movement of course. As reported on Tuesday in the Huffington Post, Bernie Marcus, co founder of Home Depot, participated in a Bank of America hosted conference call with several conservative activists in which he characterized the Employee Free Choice Act as "the demise of civilization" and urged massive donations to the fight against the bill. As of today, you can listen to the entire conversation via Wikileaks.

2. Downsize that Venti Decaf Misto: Starbucks is laying off 6,700 employees and closing 300 stores. Now, if we can just find some way to get the Broad Street Crossing and its Tim Hortons bulldozed.

3. Council Urged to Consider Extending Shovelling Bylaw: Monday's Regina city council meeting wasn't all condo conversions -- oh no, that was just the first three and a half hours -- there were also presentations by community groups and Canada Post criticizing the state of city sidewalks in winter. They urged council to extend the shovelling bylaw to cover residential property. Nothing seems forthcoming as long as city staff are in the process of doing some sort of new snow removal survey. Maybe next year those of us who number among the carless can expect to see some relief from Regina's pedestrian moonscape.

4. Regina the Not-So Cheap: Regina has dropped from the most affordable place in Canada to the 18th. Cape Breton has claimed the top spot.

5. Obama Throws Down Weather Gauntlet: Worried that coverage of American politics will become as slight as TMZ? Worry no more. The Globe and Mail bravely blazes a trail deep(er) into tabloid trivia land by making Obama's coatless winter jaunt a top news item.

6. Wanking Causes Cancer: File this under "Things I Wish I Didn't Know." Apparently, men who have too many orgasms in their 20s and 30s are at a higher risk for prostate cancer. And yes, that means orgasms by any means are a problem. But they're saying that orgasms achieved by "spanking the monkey" (or do you prefer "choking the bishop"? Or something else maybe?) are especially deadly. Well, that's it. I'm doomed.

Is Too Much Schadenfreude Bad For You?

It would appear that the denizens of Richistan are starting to figure out that things are screwed and they may not be able to afford the new solid gold deck chairs for their yachts.

"Money" (if you can call a runaway credit bubble that) is evaporating, China and Russia are threatening to bail on the U.S. dollar and things are unravelling as they should... or perhaps must is more like it.

The money quote:

"Forty percent of the world's wealth was destroyed in the last five quarters. It is an almost incomprehensible number," said Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the leading private equity company Blackstone Group. "Business will be very different."

Read the whole thing here.

This makes me almost as giddy as reading about the Madoff scam.

Oh, and Linda McQuaig lets the banksters, as FDR dubbed them way back when, have it here, in a really interesting piece that ponders the immortal question: "Would the reaction be any different if unions had blown up our economy?"

And... it's always fun to watch a terrified neo-con sell his "convictions" down the river.

This really is better than Christmas. And I didn't even have to rack up the ol' credit card.

Not So Cold

Further to my whining posts yesterday, it is no longer colder than crap outside. It is, in fact, not bad. Minus 11, -20 w/ windchill. Better.

Also, better is this second cup of coffee. My first tasted a little too desperate or something. Mmm. Sequel-coffee.

Wednedsday, January 28

Good morning...well, let's make that afternoon. Here are a couple of brief thoughts from my living room the day after production (which we should probably shorten to just "the day after").

-Budget: Iggy's going to allow Harper's budget to pass. Yeah, it's all up to him. the budget isn't going to go ahead because of consensus in Parliament, it's not going to go ahead because it's just too good to vote against, it's going to go ahead because a deeply concerned, brow-furrowed Liberal leader (or is that king? I don't recall the leadership contest) has deemed it the best course at this time. He shall permitit. At this time. With caveats. Thank you, sire.

Also, I wish Jack Layton didn't sound like such a phony. I think he's far less a phoney than a lot of politicians, but he sure sounds over-scripted and soundbite ready. I heard him on CBC this morning and...I dunno. I expect more from the guy and his party. Passion. Honesty. A willingness to say unpopular things when they're the truth, sometimes.

More on the budget here and here and here and here.

An additional point: is anyone else getting offended by the phrase "working families"? First, a lot of Canadians live alone. Are we not citizens too? Second, many Canadians are unemployed. They're not important because they're not "working"? There's more to being a Canadiana than being a couple, having some kids and holding a job. There is more to Canada than "working families".

-The problem with print: far be it from me to put down my chosen medium but sometime it stinks working on an immutable two-week frequency. Case in point: last night as we're fininshing up tomorrow's prairie dog, Gwynne Dyer files a new column. It's great--an analysis of Obama's (supportive) position toward the so-called "War On Terror", in the wake of the new President's first air strike. Of course, I can't run it. We're on deadline (actually, cough, somewhat past deadline, as usual...). Also, we've already got a Dyer column in this issue that we promoted it on the cover. But it sure would've been nice to run a timely article on Obama right after he orders people killed for the first time. deadlines suck. I couldn't find it online but I expect it to show up here in the next 48 hours, for anyone who's interested.

That's all from me for now, I'm desperately due for another cup of coffee. Talk to you later.

It's Still Cold

Environment Canada says it's -18 degrees C, -29 w/windchill. Better, but not much. But here's some good news on a still-frigid Tuesday: global warming is irreversible.

From discovery.com:

"The study's authors said there was "no going back" after the report showed that changes in surface temperature, rainfall and sea level are "largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after CO2 emissions are completely stopped."

So should we quit all this green-gab and just pack it in? Not so fast, says the study's lead author, Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in the Telegraph:

"Climate change is slow, but it is unstoppable - all the more reason to act quickly, so the long-term situation does not get even worse."

More here.

Hooray?