Windchill Warning

It’s minus 14, but with the wind chill it feels like minus 24.What if you don’t go out? How does it feel then? It feels like you should get a real job, that’s how it feels. It’s minus 28 outside, but it feels like you are blessed, because your old boiler is working its heart out, it thinks this weather is just dandy. Your apartment is so hot that you open a window and suck in the cold thin air through your nose. You are outside in the stillness of minus 43, but you feel like you are on the moon. You wonder what it’s like to be dead. It’s minus 27, but it feels like you haven’t done your creative work this winter, again, and soon you won’t have the cold to keep you in, pinned to your desk. It’s minus 9, and yes it does feel like minus 25, because you’re not smart enough to dress warmly enough unless it’s minus 25. Other days the conditions can be exactly the same, but you feel like a winter animal, something fat, a seal or a polar bear, happy as a clam and warm right down to your tootsies. It’s minus 20, but it feels like a normal, pre-climate change winter, and for that you are grateful. It’s minus 21, but the sun is coming up so much earlier now, you’re not sure you can face another spring, you just had summer, it seems. Time goes so much faster when you get older. It’s minus 22 and the conditions are perfect for the creation of crystals in the snow. There are diamonds everywhere you look and you wonder why this wasn’t on the weather report, like “Severe Risk of Wonder,” and jokesy admonitions like “Boy it’s looking pretty magical out there folks, better take care out there, don’t want you to get hurt in any flights of fancy.” It’s minus 27, but the rabbits love it, sitting in silent contemplation of the moonrise. You and the rabbits feel gypped: some stupid groundhog somewhere has said that winter is almost over. If it’s true, the rabbits will have to start changing into their spring pyjamas. You will just have to cope with the absence of cold, the promise of spring. It’s minus 33, and you wonder why they keep telling you how you feel, how they never even come close.

(photo depicts a Regina bunny in warmer times)

Stephen Harper Is Still Prime Minister

Ignatieff's Liberals help the Tories pass the budget. What was it Tommy Douglas said about white cats and black cats?

Nobody Ever Dies Of Boredom Covering The Saskatchewan Court System...

Color me gobsmacked.

Jim Hopson's press conference told us nothing, which was understandable, because (a) he's not privy to the police investigation, (b) anyone facing charges is innocent until proven guilty, (c) nobody is really going to know anything until the trial starts, (d) the alleged incident involved a minor, so it's more than likely that the judge will impose a media blackout, and (e) there's a one-in-a-10-million chance that the accuser is from the Rachel Marsden School of Attracting Attention To Yourself.

The first media stories said the RPS investigation began last August or September, but charges weren't laid until today (3 February) which means ... what? The sex crimes division is understaffed? The investigation dragged on? The investigating officers wanted to make sure their case against Tillman was air-tight?

There'll be a lot of ink spilled between now and the trial date, but little of it will comment on the two groups most affected by this -- the claimant (assuming, once again, that she's not making this up, and given whatever claim she lodged with the RPS has withstood the five-to-six month investigation) and the family of Eric Tillman (he's married, and, I think, the father of two children). Instead, Roughrider fans and the Leader-Post will be more worried about what this does to the team, as if the whole club was involved in these escapades.

On Pittsburgh, Home Of The Championship Steelers

This, my friends, is a sandwich.

Pittsburgh is basking in Superbowlular glory, so it seems like a relevent time to sing the city's praises (have I mentioned I've been there and really liked it?).

Pittsburgh is great. It's got a dynamic, compact downtown. It's got the Warhol Museum. It has one of the best dinosaur fossil collections on the continent at the Carnegie (promounced "car-naggy") Museum.

It's got the Penguins, even if they're having a stupid year. It's got the sublime Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, where I had an amazing wasabi bloody mary last February.

It's got the Superbowl Champion Steelers.
Best of all though it's got regional haute cuisine in the form of sandwiches stuffed with French Fries and coleslaw. They're the pride of place dish at Primanti Brothers Restaurant, a downtown sandwich shack a few blocks from the hotel that says they invented 'em.

Truly, the food of champions! (And yes, I did eat it.)

Legacy Study Lays Groundwork for North Central Neighbourhood Plan

Spent Monday evening at the open house presentation of the draft of the North Central Community Legacy Study. Fun stuff.

Ostensibly, this study is about integrating the North Central Shared Facility (NCSF) into the larger community. What we got instead was the foundation for a new North Central neighbourhood plan. From the sounds of things, the time is ripe for such a thing. There've been a series of studies done on North Central over the last five years and all the while there are a myriad of community groups on the ground who're committed to improving the neighbourhood. The Legacy Study and any neighbourhood plan it could inspire appear to be a good way to help focus all those energies.

The presentation involved an extensive list of recommendations around issues such as sustainability, land use, housing, leadership and transit. It was very comprehensive, getting down to things like recommending strategic placement of community gardens so that no one will ever have to walk more than five minutes to get to one.

Might sound like overkill considering what was being considered was the integration of the NCSF, but according to Bruce Rice, the city’s Manager of Housing and Neighbourhood Planning, you can't just plunk a facility like this into the centre of a neighbourhood and expect it to succeed. (For the record, I don't think he actually used the word "plunk".)

For instance, he pointed to the fact that the NCSF will have a daycare that services 90 kids, and for that to work you have to have a neighbourhood in which people feel safe as they'll walking their kids to and from the facility. That's why the recommendations are so extensive and reminiscent of plans put forward for the downtown and the Core Neighbourhood.

The study is being shepherded by some familiar faces. Office for Urbanism, the crew heading up Regina's Downtown Plan, were brought on board in November so it's no surprise the study hits a lot of the same notes.

Other highlights include recommendations to preserve the Albert Library Building (which will be vacated as the library moves into the NCSF) and turn it into an active public use; establish an urban design framework; integrate Crime Prevention through Environmental Design principles into a neighbourhood plan; and advocate for a regulatory framework for rental housing which could include landlord licensing. Mention was also made of the need for enhanced transit and pedestrian linkages with the rest of the city and of the importance of small schools in building and sustaining communities like North Central.

Once feedback is incorporated and other stakeholders are consulted, a final report will be prepared and could be released as early as March.

Six In The Morning

And not just ANY morning. Monday morning! Hooray!

1 FOOTBALL HEROES The Pittsburgh Steelers win Superbowl XLIII. Didn't watch the game, don't particularly care but I am a fan of that city, so...yay! I guess. (TSN)

2 MALIGN MEAT MONEY Twenty-seven million dollar settlement to listeriosis victims, pending paperwork. (Globe And Mail)

3 HE SMOKED THE "MARIJUANA PIPE"! OMG!!! Fishman Michael Phelps gets flack for using a performance un-hancing drug that should be legal (and taxed, and regulated, and yadayadayada). (Toronto Star)

4 GODLESS HORDES Remember this post? They're coming to Canada! They're invading Toronto! They've targeted Calgary! Eeeek! (Various media)

5 AFGHANISTAN COPS KILLED Twenty-one police die in a suicide bomb attack. (CBC)

6 RECESSION REFUGEES Chinese migrant workers leave the cities because there's no jobs there. How many people are on the move? Try 26 million. (The Guardian)

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.