(a) sell, offer for sale or purchase any goods or services by retail; or

(b) admit the public to any premises where a retail business is carried on,

"Sunday"?

The Act, and the Retail Business Uniform Closing Day Regulations, allow for all kinds of exceptions for different types of retail business operation on Sundays.  But, any large retailer, just about every store in a shopping mall, and large grocery retailers are not permitted to open on Sundays.

Some of the support for this law comes from people, religious or not, who are happy with the status quo and think Sunday should remain a "day of rest" (unless you work at a laundromat, pool hall, bar, restaurant, book store, used clothing store, corner store, etc.).

Some think that this is part of Nova Scotia's "charm".  (Maybe it is, but can't we be charming and free to do retail business on Sunday?)

Another group of opponents to any change in the law come from owners of small retail businesses themselves.  Their line is that it's too expensive to open the extra day, and that people who don't visit their store on Sunday will just come back another day.

Fine.  You don't want to open on Sunday.  Why should everyone else be forced to refrain from doing business just because you choose not to?  Shouldn't retailers be allowed to decide if they want to open?

But, I think we're getting close to having the law changed.  Of course, there's an election next week, so who knows what kind of government we'll have in Nova Scotia.  I believe there's been noises about at least permitting a trial period leading up to Christmas, allowing businesses to open Sundays at noon or something.  We'll see.

If/when the situation does change, I would hope that it does not impinge upon the freedom of retailers who have stores in shopping malls ~ that is, if the retailer chooses to remain closed, then the mall doesn't force them to open.  Maybe existing mall tenants can be grandfathered in, with new tenants being required to open if they and the mall agree.

I would really like to see this situation change.  The retail business community in Nova Scotia should have the freedom to open on Sundays if they choose.  Nova Scotia consumers should have the opportunity to shop on Sundays.  People who oppose can themselves choose to either not open their businesses, or, if they are consumers, stay home and not shop that day.

Gosh, who knows, could economic liberty possibly be good for our economy and society?

9:07pm ADT

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Marxism

I had missed seeing Joshua Muravchik's article, Marxism, in Nov/Dec'02 edition of Foreign Policy.  It's well worth reading.

No other idea so enchanted the 20th century as Marxism. To this day, one often comes across assertions that Marxism retains value as an "analytic tool"-- the use of which does not necessarily make one a Marxist. [...]

Yet just at the moment that the theory had thus been rendered nugatory, it gained a cachet far beyond any it had previously enjoyed. The Bolshevik seizure of power rescued Marxism from the wreckage of its economic and social predictions by seeming to validate its most seductive claim--namely, that history had a foreseeable end. However far trends and events had strayed from the forecasts, this much was certain: socialism of some kind had risen in Europe's largest country. The Russian Revolution seemed a powerful vindication of the prophecy that humankind was striding from the capitalist past to the socialist future. Even such profound anti-Marxists as Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter and U.S. journalist Whittaker Chambers conceded this directionality, much to their despair.

Communism's rise endowed Marxism with a brilliant new allure, even while it demolished anything that remained of Marxism's theoretical structure.

Muravchik's book, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, is one that I hope to soon read.

4:34pm ADT

Trying to reason with moonbats

Commiserations to The Flea who has experienced frustrations in trying to talk facts and arguments with folks of the moonbat persuasion.

I had a fascinating conversation with a voice of Moonbat Central the other day. A long lost friend of the Flea claimed to be in favour of "capital punishment for Bush" (that's President Bush to you), spoke favourably of Animal Liberation Front terrorism (she relished the word "terrorism") and spoke volubly against, and I quote, "imperialism, racist genocide and war".

Not actual imperialism, actual racist genocide or the actual war inflicted on the people of the United States. She had not heard of the Marsh Arabs and was baffled when I suggested the Guardian's Iraq death-count might usefully include a number of children buried with their toys by the recently defunct regime. No, her outrage was reserved for representative democracy which enacts the opinions of the majority of people who disagree with her, the views of FOXNews broadcasts she has never seen, and for the concept of freedom itself which she claims is nothing more than an "empty word". She then wondered how I could typify her opinions as fascist. Not just sympathetic to every fascist from Serbia to Cuba to Iraq but explicitly fascist opinions in themselves.

I read something clever some time ago. It was to the effect that "liberals" tend to think "conservatives" are evil while "conservatives" tend to think "liberals" are stupid.

I know what you mean.

4:19pm ADT

A Rare Gem

What the film-maker accomplishes here is both exuberant and poignant, both radical and classical, both brilliant and lame, both funny and extremely serious.

My only question is ... where the hell's Daisy???

4:14pm ADT

Toronto Rocks

CBC's website is carrying the MuchMoreMusic coverage of the Rolling Stones Toronto Rocks concert.

(although there doesn't seem to be much of the concert, over the last little while anyway)

4:04pm ADT

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Blair and the ICC

This had to happen sooner or later.  What a bleeping joke. (via The Corner)

At the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Athens Bar Association has filed 22 charges against Tony Blair and senior British Cabinet Ministers for 'crimes against humanity'.

"The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 Convention of The Hague as well as of the International Criminal Court's charter constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," said the group.

The case is based on press clippings and news reports, many from Greece's anti-American media. [...]

The case is highly unlikely to reach court since it can act only in cases where national courts are unable or unwilling to pursue abuses. The ICC already has more than 500 complaints to review, at least 100 involving the war in Iraq.

There is no evidence that Mr Blair deliberately targeted civilians in Iraq, regarded as the most plausible trigger for a war crimes prosecution.

Good luck with that.  Ah, but the members of the Athens Bar Association feel pretty good about themselves, and that's what's really important after all, isn't it?

5:38pm ADT

Winston and the Beeb

Via Andrew Sullivan and the Churchill Centre listserv, it seems Winston Churchill had his own problems with the BBC.

Winston Churchill's access to the radio broadcasting state monopoly in the 1930s was blocked by John Reith, the BBC director, who was an admirer of both Hitler and Mussolini. Radio broadcasting was then the only way Churchill could reach the masses and inform Britons about the growing Nazi threat. But Reith was an appeaser, like Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Reith wrote in his diary that the Nazis "would clean things up," and about Churchill: "I absolutely hate him." He must have turned in his grave when, last November, it was announced that Churchill was the winner of BBC's poll on the greatest Briton ever.

Heh.

In discussing Reith as an appeaser of Nazi Germany, the article seems to imply that the BBC blocked one or more of Churchill's wartime speeches.

However, a quick check in Martin Gilbert's "Churchill: A Life", mentions two instances where the BBC refused to allow Churchill on the air.  One was in 1930 and the address was with respect to Britain's India Policy, and the other was to Paris on British monetary policy.  Would be surprised if Gilbert was silent on the BBC blocking one of Churchill's wartime speeches.  Not sure if the Beeb ever blocked one of Churchill's wartime speeches ... will keep checking.

Update: On the Churchill Centre listserv today, Rafal Heydel-Mankoo writes:

Sir John Reith was infamous for trying to prevent anti-Nazis from broadcasting on the BBC.  I know for a fact that he denied airtime to Sir Horace Rumbold (former British Ambassador to Germany) and Harold Nicolson on the grounds that they were 'anti-German'.

I still haven't found anything that indicates Reith prevented Churchill from making anti-Nazi speeches on the BBC.

12:39pm ADT

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Churchill, My Early Life

For summer reading, or reading in any old season for that matter, one could do a whole lot worse than picking up Winston Churchill's classic autobiography of his childhood, education and early career as a journalist, soldier and politician, My Early Life: A Roving Commission.  I'm reading a 1948 printing, which I would guess (I would hope) is the same text that you'd find published today, My Early Life: 1874-1904.  But you never know with publishers and their abridgements.

Churchill gives a lot of detail and writes with a joyful, sometimes cheeky, exuberance on his early life and adventures.  Reading about Churchill's early life on the pages of a Martin Gilbert or a Roy Jenkins is one thing, but reading Churchill's own remembrances are indeed something more.

Churchill was seven when he was first sent off to school, St. James School.  He didn't enjoy his time at St. James, and perhaps had some prescience regarding his first few years of schooling when he first learned that he would have to go.

... I was perfectly helpless.  Irresistible tides drew me swiftly forward.  I was no more consulted about leaving home than I had been about coming into the world. [...]

The fateful day arrived.  My mother took me to the station in a hansom cab.  She gave me three half-crowns, which I dropped on to the floor of the cab, and we had to scramble about in the straw to find them again.  We only just caught the train.  If we had missed it, it would have been the end of the world.  However, we didn't and the world went on.

As Churchill passed on to Harrow School, his studies turned to preparing for entrance examinations for Sandhurst, Britain's Army academy.  The world can be very thankful regarding the choice of certain Civil Service Commissioners who wrote Churchill's preliminary exam for the Army.  As his preparation time drew to a close, Churchill randomly picked one country on which to cram.  He picked New Zealand.

Sure enough the first question in the paper was: 'Draw a map of New Zealand.'  This was what is called at Monte Carlo an en plein, and I ought to have been paid thirty-five times my stake.  However, I certainly got paid very high marks for my paper.

While Churchill loved history, English and poetry, he never had much success with either the Classics, Greek and Latin, or with mathematics.  We can also be thankful that Churchill happened to have previously seen a calculus problem on his third exam for Sandhurst, having just reviewed less than a week before.  He did have trouble with his mathematics exam to pass into Sandhurst, a very rudimentary examination.

I suppose that to those who enjoy this particular gift, Senior Wranglers and the like, the waters in which I swam must seem only a duck-puddle compared to the Atlantic Ocean.  Nevertheless, when I plunged in I was soon out of my depth.  When I look back upon those care-laden months, their prominent features rise from the abyss of memory.  Of course I had progressed far beyond Vulgar Fractions and the Decimal System.  We were arrived in an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' world, at the portals of which stood 'A Quadratic Equation'.  This with a strange grimace pointed the way to the Theory of Indices, which again handed on the intruder to the full rigours of the Binomial Theorem.  Further dim chambers lighted by sullen, sulphurous fires were reputed to contain a dragon called the 'Differential Calculus'.  But this monster was beyond the bounds appointed by the Civil Service Commissioners who regulated this stage of Pilgrim's heavy journey.  We turned aside, not indeed to the uplands of the Delectable Mountains, but into a strange corridor of things like anagrams and acrostics called Sines, Cosines, and Tangents.  Apparently they were very important, especially when multiplied by each other, or by themselves!  They also had this merit -- you could learn many of their evolutions off by heart.  There was a question in my third and last examination about these Cosines and Tangents in a highly square-rooted condition which must have been decisive upon the whole of my after life.  It was a problem.  But luckily I had seen its ugly face only a few days before and recognized it at first sight.

I have never met any of these creatures since.  With my third and successful examination they passed away like the phantasmagoria of a fevered dream.

No exams, no Army career, no fame associated with his escape from the Boers, perhaps less of a chance of Churchill being elected to the House of Commons (or perhaps less often), less involvement in military matters during the first two decades of his political career, less likely that he would become First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 and subsequently Prime Minister in 1940.  Much more chance of appeasers and peaceniks holding sway in Britain in the face of Hitler's assault, more chance of a negotiated settlement if not full invasion of Britain, more chance of Hitler being better prepared in his assault on Russia and winning a victory in that first year, much less chance of the United States ever joining the conflict, at least not in time.  The world may very well now be, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, "unrecognizable--dark, impoverished, tortured", but for a few exam questions.

Thanks, New Zealand!!!

4:09pm ADT

Acadia, Cajun

As many are aware, the Cajuns of Louisiana owe their name to the place name Acadia, which was the old name for the area now encompassed by Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and parts of Maine.  In 1755, to their shame, the English expelled the Acadians (those of French descent living in Acadia), with many settling in Louisiana.

I've heard a few origins of the word Acadia, and I'm not sure the ones that appear to be most accepted are true.  One website at U.P.E.I. discusses the matter:

There are two possible origins of the word. One: the European explorer Giovanni da Verrazano was the first to use the name Acadia or Arcadia. It may have come to him from either the Natives that lived in the New World or from the old Greek or Roman classics. The Natives he encountered on his journeys may have used the word.

Verrazano, then may have interpreted this as the land around him. The Greek or Roman word Arcadia means pastoral Paradise. Perhaps Verrazano was completely smitten with the land he saw around him, thinking that it was absolutely beautiful. He may have recalled that name from these classics.

Acadia was the name given to the land that stretched from present day New Jersey to present day Nova Scotia. The word Laracida first appeared on a 1548 map made by Giacomo Gastaldi he stated that it was the area near what is now Cape Cod in Massachuset. Later in 1566 Italian Cartographer Bolognino Zarrlieri located it in the Nova Scotia Region. It wasn't until the French started settling here in the 1575 that the name got changed to Arcadie.

[The name was never "Arcadie" to my knowledge.]

French historian Andre Thevet was the man responsible for that change. It is not exactly known how Arcadia became Acadia and the name of the Maritime Provinces so many years ago. Acadia was then the name of the land that stretched from the St. Lawrence River in the North Atlantic to Atlantic Ocean in the south and from the St. Croix River in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east.

This kind of explanation appear to be the most common ~ that it comes from the mythical land Arcadia.  Romantic, yes, but is it true?

In Thomas Raddall's classic history of Halifax, "Warden of the North", he mentions,

"All Mi'kmaq place names were descriptive, and so the suffix of ak-a-de ("place of") occurred frequently.  This deceived the early French explorers, who considered it the name of the country and marked it "Acadie" on their maps."

Raddall doesn't mention his own source for this info.  It seems at least to be a reasonable possibility ~ there are still place names in Nova Scotia with the "-acadie" suffix, such as Shubenacadie, and Tracadie (also in New Brunswick).  The area where Halifax now stands was called something like Goo-ow-acadie.

1:39pm ADT

Nova Scotia

Now, there's not really any particular reason for this silly little rant, other than it is always a bit of a pet peeve.  Yes, it's nitpicking, but WTF.

I live in Nova Scotia.  I love Nova Scotia.  My province is called Nova Scotia.

Yes, it's Latin for 'New Scotland'.  But it's not called New Scotland.

There are a few proud Nova Scotians of Scottish descent who like to say that they really live in 'New Scotland'.  No, you don't.  You live in Nova Scotia.

In Canadian French, the place name Nova Scotia gets translated as Nouvelle Ecosse, or, New Scotland.  So, you take the place name, which is really Latin, and translate it into French.   Which is odd because Anglos don't use English when referring to it.

I've always wondered why this is so.  Actually, that's wrong too -- I know why it happens, I'm just saying it shouldn't.

Quebec, for example, is not a French word.  It comes from an Algonquian Indian word which means, roughly, the head of a tidal estuary.  Should I now translate this back into my own language?  Do Quebeckers really want Anglos to start referring to their province as Head Land??

But, this would be proper, given the current treatment: if the place name is in another language, particularly a third language, translate it back into your own language.

What about Saskatchewan?  Should I now call this province, Swift River?

No, I suppose not.  And, I'm sure Nouvelle Ecosse is easier to say for Francophones than Nova Scotia.  Don't mind me, just ranting.

1:15pm ADT

Strategic Overview

Steven den Beste has an excellent strategic overview of the War on Terror.  I only just noticed this today, but I think it's been alive in a few iterations for some time [update - oh, ok, since last week anyway], and that Steven plans to maintain/update this page.  A good one to bookmark.

We are winning the war but we have not won it. It will take decades to win, just as the Cold War took decades to win. The greatest danger facing us now is that we'll lose heart and give up before we do win.

7:25am ADT

Hitchens on Iraq (where Mafia meets Jihad)

Christopher Hitchens is interviewed by Fox News upon his return from Iraq.

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

And so if no one is willing to take the gamble, as they see it, of saying actually that it's going a lot better than it is, but it is. It's quite extraordinary to see the way that American soldiers are welcomed. To see the work that they're doing and not just rolling up these filthy networks of Baathists and Jihaddists, but building schools, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, there is a really intelligent political program as well as a very tough military one. [...]

I'm serious. I don't consider myself to be that credulous. I'm very sales resistant, in fact. In Mosul where I was, I left too early. I left on Monday early. If I waited 12 hours, I could have been there [when Uday and Qusay were killed]. But they weren't just very confident about the amount of information they were being given and the number of informers and tips that were coming to them. They had more, they told me, than they could sift about that. But one of the palaces, for example, that Saddam built, he'd stolen the land for from Mosul University.

Mosul is the site of a very famous old Iraqi university. The American forces were refurbishing the place. They were going to tear down some of the outer walls, give this palace to the university. They'd also connected the university to the Internet and to the Web. Helped people contact scholars on the outside world. That was all the job of these very good- humored, very thoughtful officers who were really helping to rebuild the place.

GIBSON: You know, Christopher ...

HITCHENS: I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.

With respect to the attacks on American soldiers.

GIBSON: And we seem to be dependent upon Iraqis cooperating… Do you have a sense that the Iraqis, generally speaking, are going to help root out these [remaining Saddam loyalists, or not?]

HITCHENS: Well, these [remaining Saddam loyalists] are the frightened gangsters who until recently were doing the torture chambers, and digging the mass graves and running the execution centers. These are people with nothing to lose, they are the absolute scum of the earth and they're paid from the stolen money from the central bank of Baghdad. You know, $8 million was dug up in the garden of one of the people who was brought in to identify the gruesome twosome, yesterday. Eight million bucks and a lot of jewelry and gold. They pay unemployed kids and imported holy warriors $1,000 in cash if they will just take a pot shot with a throwaway gun or roll a grenade from behind. It's much more like Mafia meets Jihad than any kind of a resistance.

The other side, though, is that lots of people are coming eagerly forward to say not just that they want to help them find these ruffians, but that they want to be a part of the effort to roll them up. There are people who really want to sign up to join the hunt for Saddam and his people. And I actually think that the U.S. Army is probably not doing enough to recruit them.

(via Glenn Reynolds)  7:04am ADT

Abu Mazen Drinking Game

Damien Penny has designed a new drinking game, destined to inebriate much of the anti-idiotarian world.

The Rules: every time the Palestinian PM tells a blatant lie in an interview, take a drink. If the interviewer leaves the blatant lie unchallenged, take two drinks.

If this Washington Post interview is any indication, this game could cause alcohol poisoning. Here are some of the whoppers:

"We have accepted Israel since 1988...The majority of Palestinians accept Israel as a state."

Read on, dear reader.  Read on.

6:29am ADT

Steyn on the "BBC"

Mark Steyn writes on something called the "BBC", some guy named "Gilligan" and a host of "other" "people" and "things".

Thank you, gentlemen. Meanwhile, the turbulent region's only independent TV network, al-Dente, reported that most Italians refuse to believe that the former duce is really dead. Joining me now are French intellectual theorist Michel Foucault and the leading Italian fundamentalist cleric, Pastor Al Forno, a vocal critic of the Allied administration.

Pastor Al Forno: This is yet more Hollywood-style trickery from the Americans. In the bars of Rome they are certain that this is a doctored still from Esther Williams's aquatic ballet in Million-Dollar Mermaid, with Esther and the girls diving off the boards retouched to look like hanging fascists. If you look closely, you can see the outlines of the swimsuits under the blackshirts. And the cheering Italian peasants in the background are Victor Mature and Walter Pidgeon. This propaganda is so crude it's laughable.

But it's 1945 and Million-Dollar Mermaid won't be made till 1952. Isn't that the case, Professor Foucault?

Michel Foucault: Ah, mon cher BBC ami, the very concept of time is a social construct intended to produce effects of reality within a false chronological discourse. For all we know, Mademoiselle Williams's movie may already be in development at MGM.

Thank you, M le Professeur. As the situation in post-war Europe deteriorates, a new poll shows that 20 per cent of Germans believe the British were behind the invasion of Poland.

(via Damien Penny)  6:19am ADT

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Nova Scotia election

Damien Penny links to a story about a candidate who could make the NDP's chances of forming a government go up in smoke.  It's amazing that Nova Scotia allows a candidate to run from behind prison bars ... from another province!  Whatever ~ go Patriquen, Go!

There's been a lot of discussion during the Nova Scotia campaign regarding insurance costs, particularly auto insurance.  This was also a big issue in New Brunswick earlier this year, when Bernard Lord's Tories hung on to power by one seat.  Opposition members, and John Hamm's Tory government itself, are clamouring for ways to control costs, with the NDP calling for a government-run insurance system.

Fortunately, the Insurance Brokers Association of NS has distributed a small brochure outlining "4 Key Myths about Government Auto Insurance".

(1) Government insurance is cheaper -- Wrong.  While it may fluctuate less, there can be additional costs: surcharges if you've had a blemished driving record; service charges; higher taxes to pay for the program; and, higher deductibles.

(2) Government insurance is fairer -- Wrong.  By not "discriminating" by age, every other driver has to pay more for the higher risk groups, such as young males, who account for more of their share of total insurance costs.  Accident victims may also be heavily limited with respect to their ability to sue for damages.

(3) Starting a government insurance company is cheap. -- Wrong.  According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, it would cost up to $1.6 billion to start a government insurance company.

(4) Government insurance is 'driver-owned' -- Wrong.  It is tax-payer owned; tax-payers are responsible for any profit or loss.  Mutual companies operate in Nova Scotia's auto insurance industry now ~ these can be said to be 'driver-owned'.

7:25pm ADT

Japanese troops to Iraq

The Japanese parliament has voted to send troops to Iraq, and the Japanese government had to withstand a non-confidence motion to do so.

Opposition parties say such a mission could violate Japan's pacifist constitution and put its troops in the line of fire.

Uh-huh.  Sending peacekeepers violates Japan's pacifist constitution.  Of course it does.  Anyway, congrats to Japanese PM Koizumi, who has been a pretty solid anti-idiotarian over the past two years.

The opposition reacted with a bench-clearing brawl, trying to get at the speaker of the house.

This was a shocking display ~ I mean, where did they think they were, Taipei?

6:29pm ADT

Trainblogging

In my opinion, David Janes is now Canada's foremost trainblogger.

6:25pm ADT

More on The Bloggish Enlightenment

More from Arthur Herman, discussing former Queen's College (Belfast) and Princeton president James McCosh on what McCosh called 'the Scottish philosophy'.

It stressed observation and experience as the primary source of knowledge.  It saw human consciousness as our window on reality, and onto the self.  And it stressed that as human beings, we come equipped to grasp the truth about ourselves and about the world around us, including a sense of right and wrong.

Herman concludes,

The great insight of the Scottish Enlightenment was to insist that human beings need to free themselves from myths and to see the world as it really is.  This kind of intellectual liberation is, they said, required for living a free and active life. ... (The Scots of the Scottish Enlightenment) taught the world that true liberty requires a sense of personal obligation as well as individual rights.  They showed how modern life can be spiritually as well as materially fulfilling.

(OK, those last few words are nothing like the blogosphere for most of us.)

They showed how a respect for science and technology can combine with a love for the arts; how private affluence can enhance a sense of civic responsibility; how political and economic democracy can flourish side by side; and how a confidence in the future depends on a reverence for the past.

When you replace the word 'Scottish' with 'Bloggish', much of this still kinda rings true, doesn't it?

6:21pm ADT

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

The WHA

It's interesting that the Golden Jet, Bobby Hull, is heading up the new World Hockey Association.

Hull, along with Gordie Howe, were the big anchors of league's first iteration when they left the NHL to become WHAers in the early 1970s.

The WHA2 will begin play in 2004/05, with confirmed teams in Miami, Jacksonville, and Orlando, Florida, and Macon, Georgia [Campblog team name suggestion: the Macon Low Salaries].  They hope to get some Canadian cities involved, and also expand to Europe (wouldn't Bettman be pissed at that?).

They've mentioned Halifax as a possibility, but I doubt it would fly.  We love our Mooseheads too much.  Three AHL teams have left Halifax since the 70s; I don't think we'd support a WHA team.

Trivia - who is the only WHA1 player still active in the NHL?

I'm not sure, but I think I used to buy WHA hockey cards.

Oh, man - how can I get me a Michigan Stags team jersey?

The Ottawa Nationals one is hilarious.  Most of these look like they were designed by a 4th grade class.  Here's a list of teams that existed (some extreeemely briefly) in the WHA.  The Toronto Toros ~ now that was a cool name; it's too bad Toronto stopped its famous 'running of the bulls' festival in the late 70s.

5:27pm ADT

Bush

Andrew Sullivan writes on George W. Bush, The Liberal Within - Is Bush a Conservative?

In some ways, Bush is the JFK to Clinton's Eisenhower. After eight long years of fiscal sobriety and foreign policy caution, a young aristocratic president, after a knife-edge victory, cuts taxes and throws American weight around in the world. He has a global vision and some wonderful wordsmiths to craft it. He seems to care less about balanced budgets than moving the economy forward; he's less concerned about the minutiae of intelligence estimates than the broad moral and strategic case for intervention abroad. His typical action is risk-taking - like the war in Iraq or the two big tax cuts. Perhaps his policy mix, like that of many others', is merely a blend of opportunism and gut instinct.

More likely, Bush's conservatism is of a type that is simply more comfortable with the power of government than conservatives usually are. He certainly has little hesitation in using it for conservative ends. That makes sense for Bush, a man who was used to walking around the White House corridors long before he ever won the presidency. To more small-government types and libertarians, it's distressing. To Bush, it's merely full speed ahead. Meanwhile, the government he hands off to his successor will be bigger, more expensive and far more powerful in its anti-terror powers than anything he inherited. Whatever else that is, it's hardly a conservative achievement.

5:04pm ADT

Iraq

The CBC has Kofi Annan front and center with the headline:  Iraq occupation must end soon: Annan.

UNITED NATIONS - Iraq's sovereignty must be re-established and the "military occupation" ended as quickly as possible, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday.

To that end, the U.S. should set out a firm timetable as to when that will happen, he told the UN's security council.

"Iraqis need to be aware that the current state of affairs will come to an end soon," said Sergio Vieira de Mello, Annan's special envoy to Iraq, echoing Annan's remarks.

Mystery Lyrics

It's 36C on the old humidex as I write; unusual for The Fax to be warmer than the Big Smoke, but here we are.

In Janesian fashion, here is part of a lyric from 1982, from one of my all-time favourite albums (saw this artist at the CNE in '87, opening for U2 along with Los Lobos).

Where does all the smoke come from baby
Ain't it hard to see through it
Don't it hurt your eyes to try
It was so much easier yesterday
When all we had to do was survive

Can you guess?  It's the first song from this album.

4:32pm ADT

Update:  Dave and Doug were at that same concert!  In a belated birthday update, David advises that, as we've just recently turned 38, we have now passed the 20 millionth minute since birth.

Monday, July 21, 2003

The Bloggish Enlightenment

Further to my recent post, I just wanted to add a few thoughts around why the blogosphere reminds me of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Subtracting from human knowledge

The Flea links to Robert Fulford and a few others on the terrible lows of current academic writing.

"In the logic of colonialist representations, the construction of a separate colonized other and the segregation of identity and alterity turns out paradoxically to be at once absolute and extremely intimate."

To commit a sentence like that is to subtract from the sum of human knowledge. But it is not really exceptional, and its authors are much admired for their fresh version of leftist "thinking."

Professor Emeritus Ian Hunter believes he can speak freely now he is no longer employed by a university. He reflects on the description of North American universities as "islands of repression in a sea of freedom" and describes university communication as U-Speak.

This is all in stark contrast to the subject of my current reading, the Scottish Enlightenment, where figures like Francis Hutcheson and William Robertson were encouraging the kind of broad study that would make modern-day left-wing academics reel.

Writes Arthur Herman in How The Scots Invented The Modern World:

The Scottish Enlightenment embarked on nothing less than a massive reordering of human knowledge.  It sought to transform every branch of learning -- literature and the arts; the social sciences; biology, chemistry, geology, and the other physical and natural sciences -- into a series of organized disciplines that could be taught and passed on to posterity. [...]

From the Scots' point of view, the advancement of human understanding was an essential part of the ascent of man in history.

One did not receive a proper education without the balance of all branches of learning.  Robertson: "industry, knowledge, and humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain".

Thanks to The Flea for mentioning my Bloggish Enlightenment post, btw.

Getting back to that, I do see some parallels between what I know of the Scottish Enlightenment and what's taking place on the internet, particularly in the blogosphere.

One of the major things that happened during the Scottish Enlightenment was a massive reorganization of knowledge; this does happen on the web and in the blogosphere, there is an enormous filtering of information and a kind of reorganization.  Certain subjects seem to overlap one another as you travel from one website to another.  Most of the blogs that I read deal with politics, but they also touch on things like travel, history, technology, science, space exploration, archeology, the law, philosophy, social issues, sports, music, film, books and literature.  If you read my blog, there's information on some of these things, with probably a particular focus on history and the life & legacy of Winston Churchill.  You go to one blog to read about one particular issue or subject, and you follow links off to all kinds of other related or unrelated areas.  As with the spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment, one's travels and subsequent education on the blogosphere rarely follow any prescription.

The Glasgow Enlightenment, in particular, promoted a mixture of the practical and the theoretical.  James Watt's ingenious ideas solved a lot of problems and made possible an enormous increase in society's productivity, but this didn't mean Watt couldn't get rich in the process.  Theory applied and put to good use, for both Watt and society at large.

The firing to and fro of ideas between publications like the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review sounds an awful lot like what goes on on the web ... and on the blogosphere, in particular.

Even in the Scottish legal system -- the judge didn't just pass judgment on the evidence presented to him.  The judge's role was to make his own inquiry and actively pursue the truth of the case.

The social clubs that sprang up, particularly in Edinburgh, remind me of blogs, sans the claret.  These clubs, while they made for a lot of fun and excellent cuisine and refreshment, were a forum for the exchange of new ideas and arguments on a wide range of subjects.  There was the Tuesday Club, the Poker Club (named for the fire poker, which stirred up embers into a roaring flame), the Oyster Club (which featured Adam Smith), the Mirror Club, and others.  As Arthur Herman points out, the most important of these clubs was the Select Society ~ this featured the real elite intellectuals of Scottish society.  Adam Smith, William Robertson, John Home, David Hume, Lord Mondobbo, Alexander Carlyle, Hugh Blair, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, and Allan Ramsay.

Another aspect of the Scottish school is 'common sense' (Thomas Reid was at the head of this branch).  The blogosphere cuts through the crap like nothing else.  Sure, there's lots of crap on the web and within the blogosphere, but it doesn't take long for errors, mistakes and omissions to be identified.  Bloggers themselves are pretty good at admitting their mistakes.  It seems to me that, at least with the blogs that I tend to read, there is a major focus on making sense of what's happening in the world and communicating it in such a way that the average reader can easily understand (or at least be placed in a position where they can go off and learn more about a certain topic).  Bloggers attempt to apply common sense to issues in an attempt to get at the heart of the matter.

As Arthur Herman writes, The great insight of the Scottish Enlightenment was to insist that human beings need to free themselves from myths and to see the world as it really is.  This kind of intellectual liberation, they said, is required for living a free and active life.

As The Flea mused, so does this make us all blogosophers?  Hmm, maybe.  8-)

7:53pm ADT

More (as posted July26th):

More from Arthur Herman, discussing former Queen's College (Belfast) and Princeton president James McCosh on what McCosh called 'the Scottish philosophy'.

It stressed observation and experience as the primary source of knowledge.  It saw human consciousness as our window on reality, and onto the self.  And it stressed that as human beings, we come equipped to grasp the truth about ourselves and about the world around us, including a sense of right and wrong.

Herman concludes,

The great insight of the Scottish Enlightenment was to insist that human beings need to free themselves from myths and to see the world as it really is.  This kind of intellectual liberation is, they said, required for living a free and active life. ... (The Scots of the Scottish Enlightenment) taught the world that true liberty requires a sense of personal obligation as well as individual rights.  They showed how modern life can be spiritually as well as materially fulfilling.

(OK, those last few words are nothing like the blogosphere for most of us.)

They showed how a respect for science and technology can combine with a love for the arts; how private affluence can enhance a sense of civic responsibility; how political and economic democracy can flourish side by side; and how a confidence in the future depends on a reverence for the past.

When you replace the word 'Scottish' with 'Bloggish', much of this still kinda rings true, doesn't it?

More: Alan McLeod at GenXat40 comments:

... he points out it was not just self-indulgent yapping for yappings sake but discourse to the greater good: [...]

If the net effect of all these blogs becomes a kind of intellectual liberation supporting living a freer and wealthier community promoting a sense of personal and intellectual obligation as well as individual rights, Campbell is right.

Alan points out that James Watt was from Grrreenock.  Let that be clear.  However, it was in Glasgow that the practical side of the Enlightenment was happening (as opposed to Edinbrrrrah! where the more intellectual types were hanging out).  Thanks Alan -- you're probably right about the Seahorse Tavern ~ there was a stretch of years where I'm sure I made an appearance there every night I was out downtown.

David Farrar at Freedom and Whisky likes the term.

Later (July 30, 2004): The Flea says that the high priests of What You Should Know are nervous...

Later (August 25, 2004):  The Flea mentions the Bloggish Enlightenment once again, this time in the context of the internet news revolution ~ the young guns of the blogosphere versus the old mainstream media.

Saturday, July 19, 2003

Library Acquisition

The Campblog Library is pleased to announce the following acquisitions, made this morning from a used book seller in Halifax:

Persons and Places: The Background of My Life by George Santayana.  On the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Best Books of the 20th century list: Like everything else from the pen of George Santayana, Persons and Places is elegant, witty, perspicacious, and profound—a distinguished autobiography relating the tangled transatlantic life of one of the century’s most original minds.

The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830 by Paul Johnson.  Says Johnson: I describe the fifteen years 1815-1830 as those during which the matrix of the modern world was largely formed.

Elizabeth I by Paul Johnson.  A great historian writes on the monarch who raised England to a European and naval power.

Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture by John Lukacs.  "(H)is Budapest, like Hemingway's Paris, is a movable feast," writes Chilton Williamson Jr.  Lukacs is one of our finest historians.  I visited Budapest in 1993 and am always interested in learning more about Hungary.  It's an example of a unique society, one that has suffered one invasion and incursion after another (the Turks, the Austrians, the Nazis, the Soviets), yet has survived each time, picked itself up and dusted itself off, and carried on and continues to prosper.

The price of the acquisitions remains undisclosed.

1:54pm ADT

Train 48

As Week 7 ends, the riders' popularity is as follows:

• Liz and Nicole are rightfully up there at 91 and 90%, although The Campblog would have Liz ranked above Nicole

• Randy continues his rise in popularity at 83 and Johnny is underrated at 80

• Zach and Lucas are ranked too high at 78 and 73 respectively

• Dana's tree-hugger views aren't playing well as she falls to 67

• Brenda gets some sympathy votes, rising to 61 after she got her 2 weeks notice

• Pete, the guy my wife loves to hate, is underrated at 58, but is on the rise

• Shannon's ranked way too low at 43

What will happen to hen-pecked Randy when it comes out that he works on components for cruise missiles?  Will Zach forego his $3,000 in the hand and make up with Lucas?  Will Enzo give Nicole more than a just sore back?  What will happen to Pete's fortunes?  Will Dana move in with her girlfriend?  Will Johnny's daughter be knocked up via Brenda's son? (this last one is merely Campblog speculation)  Will Brenda resort to Pete's suggestion?  Will Shannon find new love?

Only time will tell.  Na na na na na na train.

1:33pm ADT

Subtracting from human knowledge

The Flea links to Robert Fulford and a few others on the terrible lows of current academic writing.

"In the logic of colonialist representations, the construction of a separate colonized other and the segregation of identity and alterity turns out paradoxically to be at once absolute and extremely intimate."

To commit a sentence like that is to subtract from the sum of human knowledge. But it is not really exceptional, and its authors are much admired for their fresh version of leftist "thinking."

Professor Emeritus Ian Hunter believes he can speak freely now he is no longer employed by a university. He reflects on the description of North American universities as "islands of repression in a sea of freedom" and describes university communication as U-Speak.

This is all in stark contrast to the subject of my current reading, the Scottish Enlightenment, where figures like Francis Hutcheson and William Robertson were encouraging the kind of broad study that would make modern-day left-wing academics reel.

Writes Arthur Herman in How The Scots Invented The Modern World:

The Scottish Enlightenment embarked on nothing less than a massive reordering of human knowledge.  It sought to transform every branch of learning -- literature and the arts; the social sciences; biology, chemistry, geology, and the other physical and natural sciences -- into a series of organized disciplines that could be taught and passed on to posterity. [...]

From the Scots' point of view, the advancement of human understanding was an essential part of the ascent of man in history.

One did not receive a proper education without the balance of all branches of learning.  Robertson: "industry, knowledge, and humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain".

This also reminds me of a recent story on the current state of film theory/studies. (via Andrew Sullivan)

Alexis then plopped down two thick study guides. One was for the theory class, the other for her course in advanced film analysis. "Tell me where I went wrong," she said.

The prose was denser than a Kevlar flak jacket, full of such words as "diegetic," "heterogeneity," "narratology," "narrativity," "symptomology," "scopophilia," "signifier," "syntagmatic," "synecdoche," "temporality." I picked out two of them—"fabula" and "syuzhet"—and asked Alexis if she knew what they meant. "They're the Russian Formalist terms for 'story' and 'plot,' " she replied.

"Well then, why don't they use 'story' and 'plot?' "

"We're not allowed to. If we do, they take points off our paper. We have to use 'fabula' and 'syuzhet.' " [...]

New Left theorists decided film viewers should liberate themselves, bringing their own thoughts, interpretations and responses into the process. Moviegoers should look at films not as the product of a unique creative spirit, but as cultural "artifacts." Films could be analyzed as a series of Rorschach inkblots, providing insights about the collective unconscious of the society that produced them. Thus it was no longer the artists' views of the world that counted. They were merely channeling the zeitgeist. Theorists became the new high priests of culture, and they followed their own concrete, left-wing social agenda. [...]

Roger Ebert: "Film study has nothing to do with film."

Perhaps Western society is in need of yet another Enlightenment.

Update (3:09pm ADT):  Dare I coin a phrase?  the Bloggish Enlightenment.  8-)

1:05pm ADT

Tiger

Just watch Tiger hole one out of a pot bunker on the 7th hole, and then hole a long putt with about a 4 foot break on the 8th hole.

Jeebus.  Jeebus.  Jeebus.

And Freddie just had an eagle!  Go Fred!

12:34pm ADT

Hitler vs Stalin comics

Via David Janes, here's a really wacky look at two of the 20th century's super-monsters.

David deftly works Howard Dean into the fray.  "Totalitarian", "comic" ... yeah, that works.  Well done.  236.  (One of our cats just hopped up and typed that "236" ~ thought I'd leave it in.  Hmm, I wonder what he was trying to tell me.)

Getting back to that Hitler--Stalin comic, you gotta know there are plenty of folks in the West who would instinctively root for Comrade Stalin.  Go Joe Go!  Go Joe Go!

12:33pm ADT

Cost of Government/Tax Freedom Day

Via Discount Blogger, it seems July 11th was 'Cost of Government Day' in the U.S. this year.  This is the day when the average citizen 'stops working for the government and starts working for themselves', as they say.

I was rather shocked to read this, as we tend to assume in Canada that our social and entitlement programs makes us more taxed than our American neighbours.  Now, this may not be exactly talking apples and apples, but the Fraser Institute reports that Tax Freedom Day in Canada this year was June 27th, or about 4% sooner than in the United States.  Looking at the Fraser Institute's Tax Freedom Day calculator, Tax Freedom Day came for me personally on June 20th, 3 weeks earlier than the average American.

I would expect part of the differential comes from the relatively low amounts that Canada spends on defence, however, this is probably only a part of the difference.  The presence of taxation, regulation and protectionism is much higher in the US than it should be.

Here's a look at Canada's defence spending over the past 40 years, btw; as I've said before, hardly a 'Cold War dividend':

As Michael Demmons discusses frequently, George W. Bush is a Big Government 'conservative', and when has Congress been about anything else than spend, spend, spend?  Bush gets big points for his foreign policy, but low marks for domestic policies.

11:48am ADT

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

The Bestselling Classics

Via Colby Cosh, here is a list of 2002 U.S. sales of 'the classics'; classic books, that is.  From what I can see, these are books whose titles are at least 5 years old.  It doesn't include high school or college bookstore sales (though it should; this certainly doesn't mean that part of these sales were not made by students), nor does it include books related to films that were accompanied by major film releases (though it should), so while The Hobbit is there, Lord of the Rings is not.

It doesn't make sense to not include these books that have films out recently ~ are they saying that All Quiet on the Western Front's readership didn't benefit from the film?

How has yours truly fared in this classic book fare?  I'll make a distinction between "in high school", meaning for class, and "during high school", meaning during those years.  I've read just 21 of the top 50 'classics'.