Idle thought while vacuuming

OK all you finance and legal professionals who read this (you know who you are):

Listening to an interesting piece on credit derivatives from The Economist. The suggestion, which I think I agree with, is that there's nothing inherently wrong with credit default swaps and other forms of derivatives, but that people have radically underestimated the counterparty risk (a la AIG) and that causes the dangers that we're experiencing now. The fix is to require a central clearing house, similar to a stock market, which spreads that risk - this all makes sense to me.

But if that works, why do we not extend that concept to every form of contract? That is, if there's an inherent problem with bilateral or multilateral risks arising from contracts, then why don't we force all contracts to be pooled? Examples: if I'm afraid to buy a GM car because I don't think GM's going to be around to honour the warranty, isn't the answer that warranty contracts only be issued through a central clearing house of all automobile suppliers and spread that risk? Similar arguments could be made for things like multi-year cellphone contracts. Why do we think credit derivatives (or securities generally) are special in this regard?

Juxtaposition

Just sayin'.

Case 1:

Justice Harry LaForme broke his silence on Thursday over his sudden resignation last month from the commission into Indian Residential School abuse, saying his "moral code" gave him no choice but to leave after his authority was undermined.
LaForme, who is aboriginal, resigned as the chairman of the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Oct. 20 in a letter to Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, less than six months into his mandate.
The Ontario Court of Appeal judge has not granted any interviews since his resignation, but he spoke about the decision for the first time in a speech that was part of a series of ethics lectures in Toronto's Ryerson University.
In his resignation letter, LaForme said the commission was on the verge of paralysis and doomed to failure. He cited an "incurable problem" with the other two commissioners, Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley, whom he said refused to accept his authority as chair and were disrespectful.
Speaking Thursday, LaForme said:
"I could not abdicate or surrender my dreams and visions about the truth and reconciliation commission to the two others — indeed, to two others who are relative strangers to me and to the historical and complex relationship that exists between aboriginal people and other peoples of Canada."
LaForme outlined how he and the two commissioners were given a framework for the commission that detailed their mandates.
"Assurances were given to me that it would be me and my vision that would chart, lead and direct the course of this very important and much-needed commission," he said.
"Thus, everyone knew, or certainly ought to have known, what the respective roles were to be."
Other commissioners disagreed
Laforme said that within months, however, that understanding changed. The two other commissioners felt that Laforme should not be above them and that all three should have equal authority. Laforme said Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, also shared that view.
"Indeed, the two commissioners believed this with such sincerity that they retained a lawyer, who, in turn, presumably on their instructions, wanted me to execute a document that acknowledged my agreement with their position," he said. "My moral code dictated that I could not agree."
His voice often breaking, LaForme then spent the next half hour describing his moral code. He talked about tough times as a youngster on an Ontario reserve, overcoming violence and his father's alcoholism.
LaForme went on to complete an engineering degree and finish law school. He was appointed to the bench in 1994, but even there, he said, he faced racism and allegations that his was a token appointment.
"My moral code includes that I must be always mindful of what it means to be marginalized and ignored, to have despair and no hope," he said.
"I must remember how deafening the forced silence by another on another can be."
He left the stage with tears in his eyes and was embraced by his wife, who was crying.

Case 2:

Let me tell ya something. Nowadays, everybody's gotta go to shrinks, and counselors, and go on "Sally Jessy Raphael" and talk about their problems. What happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type. That was an American. He wasn't in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do. See, what they didn't know was once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings that they wouldn't be able to shut him up! And then it's dysfunction this, and dysfunction that, and dysfunction ma fangul!

More band names that ought to be

Hey everybody it's time for the newest addition of Band Names! As always they are strange and our family came up with them. So here they are without further adieu Band Names. First up Everlasting Flush, next up is Everyone Seems American, thirdly is Rhymes with Feces. The next ones are 4on (fouron), Ants on the Phone, Cake in a Biblical Sense, Methamphetadad, Puffy Unders, Ashley+the LB's, Pukin' Banana Bread, Squeetastic Funk Band and last but not least is the Big Black Underwear. Hope you like these band names, 'cause there's more to come soon so don't go away!

Scientific Breakthrough

This humble blog has the honour to introduce an entirely new unit of measure - the Jeffrey.

The Jeffrey is defined as the distance one is at any given time from a Jeffrey-Tambor-in-"And Justice For All"-style meltdown in which one shaves one's head and becomes a saffron-robed Hare Krishna, with one Jeffery being defined as the equilibrium position in the normal population, so that one is twice as far from that meltdown at two Jefferys.

It is great fun to place people into this system. Of course, each of us may be at a different place on this scale on any given day. But a list of the rating in Jeffreys of selected persons will appear (for a while at least) over there on the right side of this page. Feel free, by comment, to suggest others and their Jeffrey ratings or to take issue with the ratings given. Decisions of the judges are final, and manifestly right.

Oh, and by the way - the Jeffrey is copyright of this author, and may only be reproduced with reference to this page. Keep your mitts off, SI!

No, it is not cliched to blog about your cats. It's Blog Classic.

I have to take a small break from the politics of Canada's health care system (don't ask) to comment on another small outbreak here. I'm talking Desk Cats. I have a plague of 'em. It all started with this one, who lives on my desk. Why, one might ask, does a cat live on my desk? Well, this is our little Special Needs Kitty. Her meow sounds like something between a throaty goat and Silence of the Lambs. She once typed "67ukill" when left alone with my keyboard. We think she's secretly operating a telemarketing business and shuffling her money around various off-shore accounts. She launches Windows Media Player at every opportunity. She requires me to complete the same feeding routine in the same order every day in order to be able to eat. She is roundly thrashed by all other cats in the house. No wonder we called her Sybil. Actually, she was named for this Sybil instead.


Nevertheless, attracted by the bowl of cat food constantly on display, I have inherited a variety of other feline disasters. This one is famous for constantly walking across my keyboard. He once typed "loki", causing us to momentarily consider re-naming. However, he remains Otto.

This one is a cat version of Miss Piggy. She flirts outrageously, especially with men, but has a hair trigger and a wicked right hook. Here's a picture of her engaging in her favourite activity.

Finally, the Big Orange Man - aka Franktastic Wonkylegs. He's tall enough and demanding enough to stand on his hind legs and tap my shoulder while I'm working on the computer. Most of the time, though, he prefers to sleep. Needing a little stint in boxhab perhaps... Well, at least they don't spend hours on personal calls at the office....LAWL

Congrats to Nephew/Cousin Michael

OK, I couldn't wait for the official game report so I went here to see the 0-1 result for Ontario Power Generation.  While you'd always rather win, that's a great result against a team that was 10-0 with 58 goals for and 7 against!  You guys should be very proud!  As are the Red Boys, whose league clearly uses the same ISP...

One question for coach/guest blogger Darren.  Why are the scores so low in that league?  I'm really struck by the fact that OPG's average game score was a 2-1 win, while the Red Boys on average won their games 5-4 or maybe even 6-5 (we don't post as many stats for some reason).  Shorter games?  Better defence?  Or do they make you guys play on skates?

Vote for Tom Cheek

You should vote for long-time Blue Jay broadcaster Tom Cheek for the Ford Frick award.  You can do so here.  More info about Tom is available through that link or here.

This will be annoying in a couple of ways.  First, the Baseball Hall of Fame requires an insane amount of information to let you vote, so uncheck all the follow-up spam that you don't want.  Second, this is not a direct election but rather a pre-screen - the top candidates in the online voting are assured only of being in the group of ten that get final consideration by a 20-person committee, mostly made up of past winners.

The award is to recognize service by baseball broadcasters (it's not to actually put them "in the Hall of Fame" - though since they do get a display area of their own it's kind of a moot point).  However, it's hard to think of anyone more deserving and Tom's been a finalist four straight years now and should finally win.  Current broadcaster Mike Wilner has reasons why here.

Honey, let's order dinner tonight....

On the other hand though, fast food isn't all that healthy for you and the portions are getting so big....

Got a hoard of small change?

If so, you might want to check out this site. It's quite fascinating. (Note that the link is for Canadian coins, but the site covers coins of the United States too.)

** Disclaimer: I don't think it's legal to melt Her Majesty's coinage. Obtain competent legal advice before proceeding. **

Credit for the link to Francois Velde's page, which proves again that "economist" need not be a synonym for "boring". Another proof is here.

One comment only

And this will be it for this topic, I promise.

John McCain got the wrong Palin.

Baseball updates

Further updates to this post:

- no, they weren't for real;

- Burnett and Halladay (and almost all the other pitchers) continue to be great;

- the DPs continued to abate in the Cito Restoration: 127 after 136 games, a full-season rate of a mere 151;

- Roy Halladay as of today: 17-9, 2.69 ERA, average run support 4.37 runs/game
- Matt Cain as of today: 8-11, 3.69 ERA, average run support 3.26 runs/game.

Before the Big Game

On Saturday September 6th the U9 Boys North Bay Soccer Youth Soccer League will hold its final game. My team, Ontario Power Generation (and yes, we've got the power), will play the undefeated Kia of North Bay.

Our season was great...we ended the season in second place. While I have had many chances in front of the net, I have been only been able to score once. However, in the final game I am looking for a hat-trick.

The worst word in the world

Strong title, I know, but this word deserves it.

It may be an occupational thing, but this word manages to be insulting, misdescriptive, and misused by most people who employ it, all at the same time.

The word in question is "verbiage". If you mean to be dismissive or disparaging of somebody's prose style, by all means use it. It's pejorative, and that's what it's for. But for heaven's sake, don't use "verbiage" as an equivalent to "language" or "words". I even take issue with Merriam-Webster's definition to an extent - the first definition is fine, but contrary to the second definition "verbiage" shouldn't be just a synonym for "diction", as the etymology makes clear. It's not just expression, it's "chattering" or "trilling" pointlessly or confusingly.

As usual, Bryan Garner's book (the only reference book I use regularly) gets this right. The M-W second definition apparently also shows up in the Shorter OED but Garner calls it an "unneeded sense" (page 676 for those of you who want to look stuff like this up). So if you mean to criticize writing, or speech, that is prolix or redundant, use the word in good health. (Don't say "verbage", though. Geez.)

On the other hand, if you mean to dismiss something in writing because you don't think it's important, or you can't be bothered to read it, or you don't understand it and think it's irrelevant whether or not you do, then say those things and leave this word alone. In particular, if you want to apply it to some or all of a legal document, don't! If it's poorly written, opaque, redundant or jargon-filled, say so - you've got an excellent chance of being right. But dismissing large blocks of text because you've decided only lawyers would care about them just means the lawyers continue to win. Mwah hah hah hah!

Soccer

Hey everybody. What I am about to say is like a modern Cinderella story. My team in Clarkson Sheridan Soccer, the Red Spartans, were last place only four games into the season. But then we started a five game winning streak. And now just last week we went to the championship game. Although we lost the game it was a valiant effort. As I was in goal I played pretty well and the rest of the team played brilliantly even though we were playing against a team who was 13-1-0. The final score was 5-2.

Like a stats textbook

The scatterplot below shows (from the Lahman Baseball Database) the numbers of career stolen bases for all of the 16,500+ players in the database, which tracks statistics for seasons through 2006. The career totals are sorted in descending order.

Two points: (i) the beauty of that curve is why people study sabermetrics in the first place; (ii) do you suppose Rickey Henderson is an outlier? He's that first dot.

Exciting News! Exotic New Breed

As some of you may know, our family adopted a dog from the North Bay Humane Society back in April of 2007. Happy as we were with our new friend, we quickly became tired of the constant demands to know his breed. Here in Southern Ontario, purebreds are a household requirement and "mixed breeds" treated with suspicion at the local dog parks. We tried the standard "He's a German Shepherd mix"; but that was nearly always followed with the next question: "Mixed with what?". "Idiot" didn't seem to satisfy most inquirers.

Happily, we heard about a way to determine the ancestry of our dear Jack. Sparing no expense, we quickly rushed out and had the test done.

Shock and delight soon followed when we learned that indeed, we had one of the world's only specimens of an extremely rare breed. The rare Icelandic Pukalikan (pronounced puke -a-leakin') combines a hardy love of cold weather with an endearingly neurotic personality that makes walking this Kennel Club star an exercise routine like no other.

We regret to announce, however, that we must disappoint all of you new Pukalikan fans in your quest for puppies since we had our friend "fixed" before we knew the potential value of this glorious breed. However, we invite you to stay tuned for updates as we uncover the hidden assets of the fabulous Pukalikan!

Pollution

It was a "road" day today, as it will be tomorrow, and it's been one of "those" weeks for the past two or three now. So, of interest was the claim on the back of a van advertising a local cleaning service. The service claimed it was capable of "cleaning the fabric of life". Obligatory plug. I had to giggle in the car. Although interestingly that claim doesn't seem to have made it to the website.

What a claim! A company that can clean the actual fabric of life. This one? Or this one? Or maybe this one?

Does this mean no more going to confession (for those Catholics among us)? No more going to the doctor? No further need for written codes of ethics, criminal codes or Kyoto accords? Just the all-in-one cleaning service.

Unfortunately, as someone working in the "social service industry", my experience would tell me that no matter how hard we try, human action and interaction, to say nothing of human inaction, tends to fall far short of the standard of perfection. Witness the previous post on the legal fall-out of the Toronto propane explosion. Witness the multi-faceted fallout of the Beijing Olympics . Witness the new mandate of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Maybe it's the multiplicity of catdom shedding into my keyboard, or just a bad couple of weeks, but I'm thinking that the best we can do is to learn to live gracefully with the stains in the "fabric of life". Save the bleach, pass the tie-dye. Sorry for the bummer post!

Propane and lawsuits

I was just listening to Prof. Garry Watson on CBC Radio very gently trying to explain that it might be a bit early to start talking about how class action lawsuits would proceed relating to the recent Toronto propane explosion.
The whole situation, obviously, is bad. It's tragic for the employee who was (apparently) killed in the explosion, and for the Toronto firefighter who died at the scene, albeit (apparently) of natural causes.
Isn't it amazing it wasn't worse? No other fatalities, no serious injuries, and what would appear to be full coverage by insurance with no resulting rate changes. And we don't yet know and may never know what exactly was the cause.
By the way, it turns out that there might be, oh, 337 propane facilities in the City of Toronto alone. Which arises from our demand for convenience of service - like nineteenth-century railroads, or natural gas piped to our houses, or power generating stations that nobody wants located close to their homes.
On the radio, the gentleman who is gathering signatures for the proposed class action suit said that "it was up to the lawyers" when asked who the defendants were going to be. That kind of sums it up, doesn't it? Since this must be someone's fault, a lawsuit is the obvious way to go, and questions of cause, who might be at fault for that cause, or whether there are in fact any uncompensated damages go by the boards.
The news cycle now is such that this aspect must get thrown in the hopper. It's long been the case that the litigation outlasts the attention to the thing that prompted it - but now I bet that the media will be done with this story before there's even any kind of report that should prompt someone to start thinking about a lawsuit.
Why do we want to rely on private legal remedies when (fairly obviously) the problem, if there is one, is public regulation or the lack of it? For convenience reasons, we ignore both the way facilities like this insinuate themselves everywhere and how (or if) they're regulated and inspected - until something like this happens and the handwringing commences.

The Judges Have Spoken....

And the winner is.....

Iron Chef Flay.

However, I understand that SOMEONE may have stacked the ballot box. Tsk Tsk. Is that the way democracy works?

Summer baseball reading

My vacation reading this summer included two baseball books (and some others which I hope to write on later).

The first (and the one I'd most strongly recommend) is Henry Thomas's biography of Walter Johnson, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train. This is the work of Johnson's grandson, written in 1998. It is thorough, very well-researched, and exceptionally well-written. Imagine a current sports figure whose biography features no scandals, and essentially no one ready to say a bad thing about the subject! The story of the famous 1924 season (in which the Washington Senators, a miserable team for nearly Johnson's whole career, finally won the World Series) is very affecting. I also discovered that, unlike most successful baseball players, he was probably a better manager than generally given credit for. Anybody who's interested in the early era of professional baseball and particularly the transition to the Babe Ruth years will enjoy this book.

More of a historical curiosity, but a book I'd always meant to read, is Pitching in a Pinch. This 1912 book was purportedly written by New York Giant great Christy Mathewson but really ghostwritten by sportswriter John N. Wheeler, and the latter's introduction to the book doesn't show much of an effort to deviate from "Christy's" style in the rest of the book. It's still interesting but mostly now for students of baseball history or those very keen on the era. Three things about the book jumped out at me as unusual:
- how many contemporary books of the type will include a whole section on umpires?
- where else are you going to find out the proper use of the term "bullyragging"?
- imagine a book whose point (other than to merchandise the nominal author, but in a gentle early 20th century kind of way) is to suggest that pitching success might flow from strength of character!
All in all, very enjoyable, but not profound and not rigorous - think of it as high-class advertising.

What about Jason Bay?

I feel sorry for good ol' Canadian Jason Bay who has now been traded from the Pirates to the Red Sox. Yes, he's got a lot better chance of seeing October baseball where he's going, but he hasn't seen anything like the pressure or wall-to-wall press coverage that he's about to experience - especially replacing Manny in Fenway's left field.

So how's he likely to stack up? Well, respectably, but probably not well enough to keep the fans and scribes happy. Let's look at a few numbers and compare them (statistics derived from the numbers at the incomparable baseball-reference.com; full file on request).

BA / OBP / SLG
Jason Bay, first 5 seasons (616 games)
.281 / .375 / .515
Manny Ramirez, first 5 seasons (552 games)
.304 / .393 / .546

Jason Bay, ages 24-28 (same as above)
.281 / .375 / .515
Manny Ramirez, ages 24-28 (717 games)
.322 / .416 / .611

Jason Bay, last three seasons (incl. 2008 to date, 410 games)
.271 / .367 / .488
Manny Ramirez, last three seasons (incl. 2008 to date, 363 games)
.305 / .409 / .547

At this point in his career, Jason ought to be more durable, he hits into fewer double plays, and he's certainly more of a threat on the base paths. However, he walks less and strikes out more (though maybe being in a better lineup will help there). That difference of nearly one hundred points in the age 24-28 slugging percentage is a bit scary - even though he played 101 games more, Manny had nearly 500 more total bases (1616 vs. 1135).

I hope Jason Bay can continue his drive toward Canadian baseball immortality, but I'm not sure this particular move does him that much good. He'd look good in that Jays lineup, though....

*** Update: Jason was the hero with a 12th-inning triple off the Monster; while the Jays managed to blow 6-0 and 8-6 leads (the latter in the ninth with their ace reliever on the mound) to lose 9-8. ***

*** Further update: as of the games of September 6, Jason was .302 / .359 / .500 in 31 games for the Sox; Manny was .403 / .500 / .748 in 34 games for the Dodgers.  Whoa. ***

It's nice to be the Yankees

Down a potential Hall of Fame catcher? Just grab another one.

Need help in the outfield or left-handed relief? "Madge, get me the Pirates on line one."

Are the Jays for real?

The only answer possible is "I don't know" although it is tough to see them catching all three of the teams in front of them. However, there are signs of hope. If A.J. Burnett can realize that, even if he's apparently not being showcased for a trade anymore, he's still on display for next year's free agent market, he might pitch every game like he pitched last night's. The great Roy Halladay seems back on form. And while the offence is still pretty darn poor, there's even good news there: the plague of double plays seems to have abated. Here's a list of the numbers of DPs for the Blue Jays at selected points this season:

Games / DPs / Rate per 162 games
36 / 45 / 202.5
47 / 55 / 189.6
66 / 76 / 186.5
106 / 107 / 163.5

The major league record is 174 (set by the 1990 Red Sox), and it looked to be in serious jeopardy for a while there.

Let's hope that Rolen and Overbay can start hitting, and it might be an interesting September.

SuperHappyFunTimeHooray!

Your blog crashes the interwebz!

Reboot?

Y/N

This is something you may find entertaining if not mildly psychotic.

I bring it up because our dog had the misfortune of being called a 'Pookie Doo' on many occasions before I found this video.

Also, there is a severe lack of video on this blog.

This is a Link. 

This aired.

Like, on television.

I could question the frame of mind these people were in at the time, but it seems a little too obvious .

Hehe. <3

The Coolest Iron Chef

Let's face it, Iron Chef America is so OTT as to be a guilty pleasure for those of us who make it appointment television. Nevertheless, you can't deny that Mario Batali is the coolest of the Iron Chefs (or is that Chevs? No....). Although Masaharu Morimoto comes close - I loved the episode where he had to taste all of the peppers before he used them because he hadn't cooked with peppers before - and what's with the English voice-over when he's actually speaking English? As evidence of Chef Batali's pre-eminence, however, I offer not only his undeniable cooking skill, but also his taste in music, and the fact that his wife works for a goat farm. Goats are, of course, the coolest of the domesticatos. They're cute, friendly, and produce some very excellent cheese, which is also lower in fat than cheese made from cow's milk. So let's all listen to some Joe Strummer, enjoy some goat cheese and get ready for the next ICA battle. I hope it's Battle Goat Cheese.

Breaking legal and language news

It's good to see this sensible decision from a Greek court about the use of the word "Lesbian". Had they ruled otherwise, we could look forward to similar suits from the people of the Caucasus, and maybe even everybody in India. While we're at it, the people of York should look into the use of that word by those "New Yorkers" or at least the magazine of the same name. It's all so confusing.

Harass a Heron

We had another great year of wildlife viewing at Wigamog Inn in beautiful Haliburton, Ontario. We canoed into a nearby marsh where we played a rousing game of "harass a heron" and got some great pictures. We also participated in a few rounds of "distress a deer", "bother a bluejay", "trespass on a turtle", and "frighten a frog". It wasn't until we returned home, however, that we were able, once again, to "confuse a cat" without fear of reprisal. We have been vacationing at Wigamog for about ten years now and recommend it for a family holiday: http://www.wigamoginn.com/.

Frank, a whole different cat

Not quite as motivated, shall we say. Until he sees a chance for escape, that is.

It's all about the beer, part II

In an update to a previous post, all US concerns about the purchase of Anheuser-Busch were washed away by enough money added to the deal. As is commonly the case, The Onion's editorial cartoon gets it right. [If you don't see the cartoon as satirical, please navigate away slowly and delete this blog from your bookmarks....]

Polly, kickin' back

I'm fairly certain that this cat works far too hard and drinks too much coffee.

Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland is a very accomplished writer, he is the writer of the book that inspired the hit T.V. series JPod. And at the end of this T.V. series the main character's girl friend goes into a coma which is another book he wrote entitled My girlfriend in a coma. He has written many other books of the fiction and Non-fiction variety. Fiction titles include The Gum Thief and Hey Nostradamus. The one I am reading now is The Gum Thief. Which is about a girl who works in Staples and is at the end of her goth phase. But her colleague is writing in a diary. The diary is actually her colleague pretending to be her and the scary thing is he is getting her right.

Midgets with Timbits

Yes, there is a real story behind Midgets with Timbits. As part of my job, I travel throughout the Greater Toronto Area. A few years ago, I had to go to Hamilton for a meeting. As you may or may not know, driving almost anywhere and doing almost anything in Hamilton is more than unusually irritating. I say this with love and respect, since it is my father's ancestral home. The city, especially downtown, has, shall we say, a certain "flavour". I don't think it would make an especially good ice-cream flavour. So after my meeting, I'm desperately trying to escape the surprisingly dense gravitational pull of the downtown core, and circling ever more frantically through the maze of one-way streets, confusing street signs, lanes that appear out of nowhere and go nowhere, and looking for a clear path to the highway and freedom . Driving through Hamilton, you have to notice that every corner contains a Tim Horton's. On this particular day, however, I was in no mood for coffee. Stopped, finally, at a stop sign at yet another corner, I caught pedestrians crossing out of the corner of my eye and settled to wait. As I cast around looking for street signs that might give me a clue as to whether I was actually heading in the right direction, at the right time of day, in the right season, I realized suddenly that it was taking the pedestrians an awfully long time to get across the street. In irritation and, let's face it, nascent panic, I narrowed my focus to the offending pedestrians, only to discover that they were, in fact, little people. Carrying Timbits. Only in Hamilton. So, I apologize for the term "midgets". It just makes a better band name.

Please no more journeys

The Steven Truscott story is one that I remember from a very young age, well before I had any clue what it was really about - my father was from Goderich, became a lawyer, practiced with a Donnelly and was a big fan of Arthur Martin, so it was a big deal in my house when I was a kid. If the whole story teaches us anything it's how bad an idea capital punishment really is, but that's a whole other issue.

For this post I'm really only concerned about one thing: is our Attorney General a New Ager or just possessed of very, very bad diction?

From the Chatham Daily News:

Bentley said there will be discussions with the federal government about sharing the compensation costs as recommended in Robins' report.

"It was important once we had reached a conclusion in this matter that we provide Steven Truscott with our decision as quickly as possible," he said.

"We are doing what we can to bring to a conclusion this remarkable aspect of Mr. Truscott's life journey," Bentley said.

"It is my hope Mr. Truscott and his family will now be able to spend all of their time on the rest of life's journey."

Canadian lawyer and law professor James Morton on his blog reports the same comments as follows:

Truscott's legal saga was an "unprecedented" and "extraordinary" journey, Bentley said.
"We are doing what we can to conclude this journey," he said.
"It is my hope that Mr. Truscott and his family will now be able to spend all of their time on the rest of life's journey."

Does anyone else find reference to all this as a "journey" a bit jarring, let alone the rather odd repetition of the word? Maybe it's more of a forced march through various parts of our legal, political and journalistic systems over a half-century?

Maybe it's Butters

So I'm guessing the creators of South Park owe the Ramseys an apology?

Music

Today I will be talking to you about the newest music on my Itunes Library. The newest thing is Modern Guilt by Beck. This album features ten new songs by Beck. They are Orphans, Gamma Ray, Chemtrail, Modern Guilt, Youthless, Walls, Replica, Soul of a Man, Profanity Prayers and Volcano. Beck's crazy style of music writing is just enough to pull off his latest album. Another of my favourite bands is The Offspring, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace. The southern californian punk band has done it again. The best songs as recorded by Itunes are Hammerhead and You're Gonna Go Far, Kid. Now it's time for me to sign off. Bye.

Band Names

Over the period of about three or four months our family has created a list of band names that we think future bands may find interesting. Some of these are weird albeit pretty strange but here thay are anyway. The first one is Emo Squirrel, next is Midgets with Timbits, Those Darn Young People, Moist Apocalypse, Gooedup, The Screeching Tweens, Cheese to Numb the Pain and finally Heartwash. My top three would be Those Darn Young People, Moist Apocalypse and Heartwash. That's all for now bloggers. Bye.

It's all about the beer

This story is fun too. While neither Molson's nor Labatt's produced anything worth drinking for a few years before they were acquired, it's kind of fun to see the zombified corpse of Labatt's screwing up a deal for the maker of Bud. So let's recap - Anheuser-Busch says that the jolly Belgians and Brazilians shouldn't buy them because InBev acquired a Cuban distributor when they bought a Canadian brewer, and it's not clear how they'll be able to comply with the U.S.'s anti-Cuba laws?

Everything you need to know about derivatives, greed and human behaviour

Just read this article by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books from January. It's excellent reading, and has only gotten more relevant since. Without descending to cliches about hanging together or separately, we're all in deep trouble if the ends of the economic spectrum keep pulling apart - and also if we forget that the "free" in "free market" isn't synonymous with "unconstrained"!

Well, here's a blog, then. Let us see what kind of wacky and/or insightful commentary can be placed here.