Watching the digital watchers

Banking on the Apalachicola

2010-05-31T16:59:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons I've been so lax in regular updating has been the work that I've been doing on the British Fort at Promontory Bluff on the banks of the Apalachicola River in 1816. The nickname for the place was "the Negro Fort". It was destroyed by an elite squad of US Army officesores sent south from Georgia to officially protect supply ships but secretly designed to obliterate the facility. Almost done.

Dalliance of the absence

2010-05-11T09:32:00.001-04:00

I should apologize for the long absence from the blogs. I've been taking the Farce Book hiatus. Its good communicating with relations, old friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Not much unexpected has happened really. To that point the mundane, the expected and the opinions expressed by others mimic my interpretation. There was no urgency to replicate the mundane.

And I have been doing more work on the Ft. Gadsden/Negro Fort which was destroyed on July 27th, 1816. Its a simple topic about one of the single greatest immoral crime or war crime in the 19th century. Yet this War Crime occurred in a time where this brutal behavior ruled human morality. Whether the winner or the defeated little mercy demonstrates. Torture and death held hands with military action.

The worst crime occurred after the time of the actual event which gives a result far worse than the crime itself. Both American and British authorities swept the crime under blankets of obvious excuse, lies and inaccuracies. Economic health and the greed of the rich created a situation where the magnet of greed conquered all ethics. And the worst crime appeared, humanity as a whole forgot this terrible episode.

Off blog

2010-04-03T10:54:00.002-04:00

I have been working on a special project which takes away from blogging. I am almost finished with that project. It will be published here and on other blogs.

A warning though. That blog entry will be long and for some tortuous. The ideas expressed in this work embrace a new approach to a century old question.

Leaving it to Beaver

2010-03-25T09:41:00.001-04:00

Are the memories of the falling skyscrapers full of innocent peoples of all nationalities, cultures and religions plunging in mortal terror into the dust, so far. Those flying bombs were not just pointed at those towers, they were pointed at you, your loved ones. The very same evil persons who perpetrated that deed are the very same people who committed that act.

It doesn't matter that one is a pacifist or not. The terrorists are total evil. So long as they breathe or walk free, they are committed not to steal your land, or steal property. They don't grow or sell drugs. These aren't rapers. These are ruthless, callous killers. They are trying to kill you.

Canadians have a volunteer army. And they volunteer for the combat. And they are committed to that view. They are there, on the ground, doing the very best that they can.

Whether or not one agrees individually with the grand strategy of getting involved or not in Afghanistan was exactly the brightest thing to do is irrelevant now. Canada is a democracy. Which means, that outwardly we must be united regardless of our internal doubts or personal disagreement. The Prime Ministers put this country into history as supporting the action to bring those terrorists to account for their terrible deeds. This is a question of historical accountability.

At the moment, that job is not done. An action like this isn't on a schedule or timetable. It is task oriented. It could've taken an hour. It could've taken a week. A decade seems like a long time, but in history it is but a blink. In a thousand years from now in an electronic library some student scribe will be authoring an article on the character of the people known as the Canadians. What they write then will be about the action we take now.

People around the world watch how Canadians behave in the action to protect the Afghan people from these terrorists. It does nothing for global reputation, whether the observer is friend or foe, to see a country waive its commitments on the battlefield. Withdrawal from this particular theatre of conflict, whether by end of contract or simply leaving while the conflict burns, is a defeat. There is no middle ground. No grey area. If Canada leaves next year, it was a defeat. You want that title impressed on your children, or their children.

Every thing that Canada stood for or now stands for becomes tainted with the name of loser, coward, lukewarm. We become like so many European little powers like Denmark. All mouth. All vanilla. Not worth listening too.

Look I am in complete favour of leaving Afghanistan to the Afghans. These terrorists that bomb innocents around the globe in their quest to impose a twisted vision of a religious utopia on the rest of humanity also terrorize and cruelly oppress Afghans. Our troops remain willing and able. I say, ...stay and finish the damn job.

Check this out... Hibernating

2009-12-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

With it being winter this blog will not be updated until later in April when the weather is better. The only working blog at the moment is over at Wordpress. Photography in the parks is about as much as fun sewing underwear.

Check out this working blog at the this time.

http://gordeecampbell.wordpress.com

Snowbourne conspiracy

2009-12-18T12:33:00.002-05:00

I was drifting though the photo albombs last night and came across an image of one snow drift on the guard rails of the front porch. Lot of snow.

Unbearable choices

2009-12-11T12:00:00.001-05:00

Confronted by choices this week, my bloggong ratio decreased. If the Canadian political leadership declares that they will abscond forwith on Holiday seasons ungreetings then it should be an allowance for the plebes such as you and me.

Without the need to wake and volunteer gives me more choice also. At the moment I feel like hibernating. Black Bears have this right. Instead of whining about the cold their species evolved a biological answer to winter. Humans opted to try to increase brain capacity. The primates might have gotten it wrong. At the moment the bears are quite content.

uPdaTe truck ruts

2009-12-05T10:56:00.003-05:00

Someone repaired the front lawn in Moss Park where the CityTV media TV truck got accidently stuck. Good on them.

I don't know if they did it or someone else repaired it. The thing needed fixing. I appreciate the work the fixers did. They are heroes.

Scanning

2009-12-03T12:15:00.001-05:00

Is there anytime that Julian Fantino doesn't try to get his face on the news. As the head honcho of the Ontario Provincial Police, Fantino just made an announcement on the tube to the effect that the OPP now had plate scanning technology which can scan thousands of plates per day.

Fantino claims this a powerful anti-crime tool. Fantino is a tool. What does he think criminals are stupid? Would if the plates are fake? Or duplicates? Or stolen?

Media abuse of park system

2009-12-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago in the late afternoon, a City TV truck got stuck in the front lawn of Moss Park. This happens. Is it part of the good neighbor policy not to repair the damage in the lawn?

Do these guys care so little that people could trip over these ruts in the evening walks? I mean you left a tripping hazard. Of course the area is only populated by poor people. This likely excuses you from any responsibility whatsoever.

Do you guys care so little about the community that you don't repair your mess? You complain over the air about taxes and the waste but here is the case where you cost the taxpayer for the repair you did on a public space?

Fast upladles

2009-12-01T11:44:00.002-05:00

Woke up a half hour ago, and sort of surprise, nothing is happening man. Nothing. Better for reconstruction of started topics but weren't long enough for a decent blag.

This is an occassional digest of concerns which I put into blygs every so often. They are topics that don't deserve major treatment but now for a medley.

Notes: November 1st

Anne Rohmer saw Borje Salming naked. She's bragging since she was one of the first female sports journalist into a hockey dressing room at Maple Grief Gardens. Big deal she's a lez.

I know, I know the - who saw the what?

..............

Last night's TMZ program, present a working theory about Tiger Woods accident. Its identical to the one hypothesis that I had put forward in a blag. And its a story that is emerging, from Woods inner circle. And almost word for word.

I got something right? Your stunned. I'm stunned. I mean its like I got eyes in the front of my head.

.............

The federal, provincial governments are participating in the reconstruction of Maple Laugh Gardens, in order for it to be usable by Ryerson University. They have a hockey team. You know the city core university loaded with journalism professors from Budapest. On the main floor will be a food store.

The provincial and federal governments are kicking in dollars, yes tax dollars. They have to find something to spend the new HST revenues that will be flushing in, in the new year.

Apparently Maple Laugh Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) had a conclave and blew white smoke on the project. Probably part of anything they can do to prevent Rim Jim Balsillie from buying Loblaws and moving the building to Hamilton.
........................

Quality time

2009-11-28T12:18:00.002-05:00

No kidding. Today I go deprogramming. The media and press run amuck while I clean out the bowels of my brain.

Deer me

2009-11-25T12:29:00.002-05:00

The event got front page news, the lead story in the television news. You would think it was a murder or a political scandal or a sex porn corn tale. No.

A stupid deer, wound up in the middle of the stupid city. Around seven in the morning someone spotted this doe sitting patiently in some brush hedge downtown. The animal obviously must be a threat to the general civil population.

They had squad cars of police, plus the SWAT team. Obviously, deer and human interactions are violent events. The media had helicopters and teams of video people, reporters, and on and on. All the numbers of humans and it still took three hours to catch the dumb thing.

They used a dart gun. When the animal began to run, the cops joyfully tasered it, ... twice.

If this would have been rural Canada, it would have been one cop, one gun, one pickup truck. And the humanitarian place they moved the animal too? A Conservation Park north of the city? Nope. Algonquin Park? Nope? Toronto Zoo? Nope.

They moved the animal to the Leslie Street Spit. Which is attached to the middle of the city. Which will work until breeding season or when the ice forms enough to allow the animal to move. Such dickheads.

Skeptical prescription

2009-11-24T13:04:00.002-05:00

Today the skeptical sailor. The eyes have seen a lot. Perhaps too much to remain optomistic.

Today, the government went into catch the evil doer mode. Catching child pornographers, is laudable. However whenever a federal government program is invented to address public concerns, I am reminded of the gun registry, and Ontario's E'health.

Well the federalis have decided to compel all the ISP's to report individuals who get and spread child porno. While a laudable effort, the skepticism begins.

It is the same software that would be used by a government to control the internet, to control the information flow, to filter out political opposition. And when the self righteous get their grimy little paws on these technical controls even for the best intentions like the extinction of child porno, it is always a first step. Control this, they can control political opinion.

Maple Leafs the next level

2009-11-21T10:48:00.002-05:00

Tired and lonely the Maple Leafs ponder a fall to 3 wins in 20 games. Ready in the wings lies piles of other Leafs waiting to take their place. Piles and piles of replacement workers. The combination of Burke and Wilson brought a new culture to a hockey team. They succeeded where few could never do worse.

Greed and the phonies

2009-11-19T10:26:00.002-05:00

Over the last few weeks, Canadians got exposed to two spurious sides of a debate. The television networks want cable companies to provide funds for local television.

In Canada, Cable TV companies swipe local broadcasts and programs out of the air. It has been going on for years. They do not pay for the signals. But they are totally willing to force their cussytomers to pay for cable, everything on cable.

Now at first glance this is all very simple. Yes the larger television stations broadcasting locally should get funding from cable. However most of their broadcast purchases are from the USA. Not much of their program broadcasts are homegrown.

And the cable companies have a legitimate argument. Why should they pay for free air broadcasts for programming that already exists, and they pay for on competing cable and USA television channels.

It should be noted that the CRTC has turned the broadcasters down twice already. This is the third strike. Broadcasters are threatening to close down the smaller local stations. For the cable companies this is idle threat because their revenue derives from distant sources in the beginning.

The CRTC commission doesn't want to be the bad guy and impose an additional fee. And everyone else is blaming the other participants. The CRTC wishes the two sides to negotiate and play nice. The buck stops at station greed.

Purple pecker pucker pet

2009-11-18T16:17:00.003-05:00

Robin Gill of some local Channel. Was yackin on the snow board of authority. I was startled.

Gill remains an intelligent beautiful woman. But this night she was God Damned Purple. Her jacket was purple. Her lipstick was purple. And her eyeliner was purple.

Oh please, don't let this happen. Maybe it was a flu snot side effect?

Goose that gander

2009-11-18T16:08:00.003-05:00

The Fan590 has a double standard. In the recent firings of coaches throughout sports, this Roger's Communication Company yikes it up. However, when surreptitiously canning their own staff for questionable corporate reasons, they stand very silent.

Stand up and tell us why Mike Toth, and Stormin Norm Rumack were fired in the dead of night. While they were media people which caused aggravational circumstances. This was no cause to dismiss them so callously.

One guy has a wife and young child and a newly bought home. He moved all the way here from Calgary to appease the corporate wishes. Now a couple years later he was turfed for little reason.

And the latter.... Rumack... All those strippers who dependent on his lungs and voice. I mean really.

NEW NORMAL

2009-11-16T13:42:00.003-05:00

Normal?
You want normal?
Slap Neat hair remover
On the top of your head.
Try pulling your hair.
Stick your thumbs into your eyes
Ten times light and fast.
Get twenty pound weights attached to fish hooks.
Skewer them through the meat of your cheeks.
Feel gravitas drag on your facial skins.
Stick pins in your neck and shoulder joints.
Slug back a mickey of whiskey.
Sit on your hands for ten minutes,
On a block of Lake Winnipeg ice.
Stick earplugs in those drooping ears.
Now look in the mirror.
That's your normal,
New in twenty years.

G. Duncan Campbell

Dictated

2009-11-15T13:39:00.002-05:00

The single impediment to sanity is being told how to vote. George Smitherman, seen here with husband Christopher, proclaimed his intention to seek the Toronto Mayor's job.

With incumbent David Miller, visualizing reality and not running again after the Toronto Garbage Strike debacle, Smitherman seeks to run against former leader of the provincial Conservatives, John Tory.

What is really annoying is that all the media are painting this as a two face race. The election is still a year away. Other mayorality candidates are sure to toss the vomit of their promises into the political carnage as well. So why let only two names harbor the press as the leading contenders.

On examination, there are people more skilled and qualified than these two rather tepid political animals. I just don't like being dictated that I only have two choices.

ChewBackIt

2009-11-11T10:30:00.003-05:00

The fans of murder CSI dramas manifest a wide acceptance for coincidence. As long as the TV program has a hot babe, the malodorous plot templates gets a higher level of tolerance. But I reached a limit.

In all the programs one statistical anomaly is the high percentage of killer DNA that winds up under victim’s fingernails. “Oh yes your DNA wound up under the Vic’s fingernails.” – investigator.

“But I couldn’t have murdered him, I shot him with a M-16 at 100yards.”
Blig secret. According to our scientific survey, one can avoid getting murdered in the USA by chewing your fingernails.

Under the hat. Keep it secret.

Poppy U Lar

2009-11-09T10:49:00.002-05:00

Take away the veneer of glory. War hunts in horror. On November the 11th , 2009, Canadian Remembrance Day comes again. In this year, 95 years after the outbreak of the First World War, the Royal Canadian Legion's Poppy campaign continues. The campaign contains important values in a simple symbol. Remember them.

More than a symbol, I first wore the poppy as a Cub Scout at a ceremony on the dirt floor of a town hockey arena. Artificial ice didn't exist. The whole town seemed to be inside that place, at that ceremony. Many of the surviving veterans, militia, cadets, police, and volunteer firemen assembled there. The only exceptions, those who were on shift in the local pulp mill.

Sorrow swam in everyone's eyes. While poppies for me represented all those who gave their lives, in the eyes of the war veterans the poppies also meant individuals, buddies, and friends. It meant that they were physically free from the horrors haunting. It symbolized neither victory nor defeat, political leanings, racial bias or shopping. A poppy represents soul to soul far beyond the clutches of time.

Over the years, I witnessed the Legion Poppy ceremony many times on Remembrance Day and at individual funerals. One individual ceremony given to my father contained that Poppy Ceremony. Of the whole funeral, that is the only scene that sticks in memory. A lot of people liked and respected old Ziggy. I knew this. But the poppies were special for they were from his companions, co-workers, and men of his generation who shared a necessary horror.

The Poppy Ceremony is extremely simple. Friends and colleagues wear a poppy to the funeral. At a certain point they line up and one by one they approach the coffin and places his/her poppy into a special pillow. The last member places their poppy, picks up the pillow and presents the poppy filled pillow to surviving family members.

And through two decades after my father's passing on, each funeral used fewer and fewer poppies. In the early part of this century, there was only about three poppies in the pillow to be presented to the widow. This thought also occurred to surviving Legion Members. One can tell.

As one ages in Canada, that poppy so cheap to buy, so easy to wear, haunts in wealth. Now like those survivors I stand with memories of those people, friends and other souls lost to duty. Of course those souls are not only soldiers involved in the Afghanistan conflict, but police, firemen and volunteer heroes who gave their lives to make Canada and the world just a little better place.

Bananada!

2009-11-07T12:51:00.004-05:00

Welcome to the new country of Bananada. Half Canada, half Bananas, now merged. Let's fire off straight ahead.

David Miller and his scurvy piratical gang of councillors, jacked up the TTC Fares, increased the garbage collection fees, skimped on hundreds of maintenance infrastructure repairs, all the while claiming poverty. The province, jacked up the automobile fees, harmonized sales tax which is simply a scam to get a massive increase of taxpayer savings.

The province whistled into massive debt. Its government agencies spend money in personal needs for every privileged board member. Hospital Board Members use their contacts to step way ahead of the cues and shortages to get immunized then pretend that they are actually vital to society.

Now if you didn't have the brand name Canada attached to all these shananigans. Ignore the name Canada just a moment...... Out of the mind?

Okay, now put all that together. You would think this is a tropically deconstructed country government by privilege and elitism. Just a like a banana country.

Kinda figured

2009-11-04T11:25:00.003-05:00

In a post a couple of posts ago, I postulated obtusely that the maker of the Canadian H1N1 vaccine decided there was more money in exporting vaccine. Apparently, this was true. Too true.

Of course they had a ready excuse at hand. Every pharmaceutical company usually does. The excuse was that they didn't have enough little bottles or the little bottle fillers was too slow.

This wasn't the same excuse they used a couple of weeks ago when the company implied that there was production problems in producing the actual vaccine. And you knew that was a fishy excuse, like consider the sources. One source was the pharmaceutical company and the other source was politicians. This a fertile ground for fibulations and verdant truths.

So the company cheerily exported the "surplus" vaccine despite the fact that there were grievous shortages and delays in the immunization process. The company's name is Glaxo-Smith Kline, headquartered in the United Kingdom and in the past subject to investigations including, tax fraud, billing fraud, misleading advertising and other deceptive practices. So diverting vaccines from a contractual commitment is not outside its moral compass.

And to further the Canadian H1N1 mess, apparently the Calgary Flames jumped the vaccination cue lines and had a private clinic for its staff, players and families. Now this is not surprising. What is surprising is that they got caught.

The province of Ontario to top off the scandals with their boondooglingaling at the medical record E-Health followed this up with poorly run flu snot clinics. Only the critically vulnerable people first, children, young women and upscale businessmen types. Yes, Medi-Can a privately operated health clinic on York Street in the downtown core of Toronto was supplied with 3000 doses for the well healed and totally unvulnerable.

Kinda figures.

No straight lions please

2009-11-02T10:10:00.002-05:00

At John Innes Community something. It is a lion. In Toronto. For no reason. There must have been a reason. A squirrel sits. Its a male lion. Of course, this statue may have nuts. I didn't check. And I won't check.

Hot off the presses

2009-11-01T13:33:00.002-05:00

As promised by the webbrain. These are shots of the fire that savaged the interior of the Mirch Masala. Incidently, Mirch Masala apparently is Hindi
for Hot and Spicey.

Now this is just across the street from where I live... sort of.
I will be tracking the progress of the renovations.
It is an evil reason naturally.
I am rather put off by the prolongationatinjg of the Fred Victor Centre.
They had a fire months ago less damaging than this little stove topper.

Anyway back to this fire.
After perusing the interior pictures I have come to the conclusion about how the fire became started. In fact this is a surprise even to me.

You see it had its roots in the sound system buried in the ceiling.
The people who owned it previous to the present owners, embedded a sound and stereo system in the ceiling. The installer was a Russian immigrant who did some electrical work, on the cheap for cash.
Now I couldn't help noticing that the Ruski would join connections with electrical tape only. The present day power connections require turrette connectors and then wrapped in electrical tape.
Of course this is by the code, just the code ma'am.

But then no one asked me.
I spoke directly to the City of Toronto Fire Inspector guy.
That man is useless. He asked me nothing.
As a result. He got nothing.

The fire was an accident sort of. It would not have occurred if the cheapo former owner of the business had employed a proper certified and trade electrician.
Zit,.... Zit..., Kerpoof.

Strange though. The bar did not have a fire sale on the beer or liquour.

Local pub succumbs to fire

2009-10-31T11:42:00.002-04:00

Pictured here in happier times, the Mirch Masala suffered from a burn out. This used to be the Navaron. It went through owners.

Around 5:30 AM I awoke to the sounds of shattering glass and the smell of burning building. I looked up the street in ponderment. But saw nothing. Nothing I say.

No one got injured. The fire started when the place had been closed for the night.

At 11:00am this morning one of the ragingest piss tanks in the whole city shook his head. "A great tragedy."

Moral of story: Remember coat with camera in vest pocket.

Happy Birthday XX

2009-10-30T14:54:00.004-04:00

Halloween emerges tomorrow. The celebration of the perverse and evil explodes into the dear hearts of children baited by the galloons of candy from strangers. People hide their faces. Hide their personalities. They think.

Lets put it this way. I don't like Halloween. It is also the birthday of my ex. ex. girlfriend. I think. Well its when it is celebrated. Here's a picture of downtown Toronto... The horror.

New schools?

2009-10-27T10:23:00.004-04:00

Rather than dwell on planes of existence, which can never exist, Canadians encountered the flu season with a new strain of flu, and few new ideas. Schools should have closed for the duration. Since it is senior medical staff and senior executives and their families have access to the first batches of vaccines.

Schools are so scared of shutting their physical doors. In reality, with modern technology schools require much less space than schools thirty years ago. The computers and the internet have permitted the concept of students learning at home.

Schools and the concepts of education appear antiquated. It should be very possible for a student to learn something from miles and miles away without being physically in the room with teacher. The spread of the H1N1 virus was wantonly unnecessary for that very reason.

Yes I believe in having actual schools and classrooms. But mandatory presence of the student is not. School students must access real classes and central services frequently. The schools' systems are the last sector of society to undergo significant technological improvements.

Meowing the yawn

2009-10-23T11:51:00.002-04:00

Current with our study of the decline of the media, the day the last part of the study was posted here, here was this on the front page of the Toronto Sun. To make matters worse, the editors of this particular paper like this story.

The editors claim that these sorts of stories spur circulation on the days that they are printed. If true that says a lot for the modern Toronto readers.

Boggle, gobble

2009-10-21T11:44:00.004-04:00

Tally this fussifying. Turkeys suffered from H1N1. Yesterday the story led all the television produced news. Its not a big deal. Nor expression of any surprise over this be made.

No turkeys got sick enough to be culled. Frankly, the wrong species is being scrutinized.

Runner's up

2009-10-18T12:39:00.000-04:00

Another Toronto Marathon? Having two isn't really all that bad. Driver's appear upset but after all its only a Sunday morning. Still some people complain.

One must ask though. Why the downtown all the time? People should have a change every so often. Can't they run in Etobicoke from North to South? How 'bout Scarborough?

Here's an idea. Run from Etobicoke to West Hill along Lawrence or Eglinton. Maybe run the other way next year. Let's get pumped with a little variety every so often.

Ambling respect

2009-10-18T12:18:00.000-04:00

At the first instant, I held off making a blog for several days before tacking this blog into the site. Making a blog every day as I had hoped to do, makes for panic writing sometimes. I am not a professional writer at this moment. There are no absolute publishing deadlines.

I should point out that while making barbs at a persons political stance or viewpoint this means in no way means any rant means entwines a personal distaste for the person. After being on the inside of the political process, I hold a very high level of respect towards those who run for elected political office and those who put their names forth for any elected post. I've appreciated even if the political views of the candidate appear disagreeable.

Even those involved in some sort of discordant political scandal deserve respect. Unlike others who complain from the deep shadows about political scenarios, these people put out beseeching the unwashed masses to select them. One such notorious was Edmonton, Alberta's, the late William Hawrelak, who didn't mind lining his pockets with atypical bonuses and publicly admitted such actions. At least the electorate held him in high esteem because unlike some, he delivered on promises.

In so many ways, I hold a Hawrelak in a far greater esteem than the environmentalist mercenary David Suzuki. The latter preaches but never backs his mouth. For instance, his cross country environmental tour a few years ago was done in a diesel fueled mobile home bus.

After being involved in several political movements where I truly believe he had been mentioned as a candidate, he always reversed himself at the last moment. Suzuki made a commitment to the defunct National Party then backed out in order to continue receiving his annual two hundred thousand dollar CBC salary. He would've easily became a Canadian Prime Minister. In the end, his bank account came before global future.

One key to political impact, is participation. If you want to ingrain your ideas and views into the fabric of a national culture, personal involvement on some level emerges as necessary. Especially in the modern era, this proves true. The internet achieves a wider democracy than ever before. But a democracy only succeeds when all voices sound to the issues and when all stand willingly for that view.

When critical of a politician or political spokesman, express and demonstrate your opposition. Just keep those ideas separate from issues of personality. One only respects an argument when that respect is exchanged.

Decline of the print media ... III

2009-10-14T14:27:00.000-04:00

In this final part, economics plays the prime role. In our image is a small bank of street newspaper boxes. Not so long ago there was the regular dailies also in this group. You can see the scratch marks of an absent box on the concrete to the left of the nearest (Now Mag) box.

One of the most important influences on the physical circulation is the increasing use of the internet as the primary source of news information. Most newspapers use revenues from the print media revenues to sustain the online version of their news papers.

The challenge is that most newspapers do not understand or appreciate the power of the internet. First it is growing. Second, it is not going away. Third the revenues of generated by the online is not as lucrative per story as the old style print media was.

News papers and news letters are not going to disappear completely but clearly they are going to have to change their format, their information resources and their revenue models to survive. A lot of papers are contemplating turning their online sites to pay sites. It has been tried before. And it has not worked, nor will it work in the future.

Revenues over the internet can only be generated by the numbers of people seeing their stories. Ad revenues depend on the numbers of hits. This is not all that much different in the print media. Advertising rates depend on the numbers of subscriptions per day. It depends on the numbers of eyes that see the page.

The downside of print media is that circulation is an arbitrary number. While online pages and sites clearly get statistics far more precise. One only has to log the numbers of visits or hits to the page in order to determine a rate.

Another challenge to the print media is the ability to gather content. Good journalistic type of sites or printed publishings depend on content. In recent decades, accountants moved to control media companies and the journalistic side of the control of print media has drastically declined.
Bean counters only envisage the area devoted to commercial ads. Ads have become more important to newspapers than the news content than ever before.

Compounded with this is the price of printing. While paper companies are awash in inventory the price of newsprint has not declined. The solution the paper makers use is to close mills to maintain the price.

If you look at the newspaper like the Toronto Sun over the years, the size of the paper has slowly gotten smaller, the advertising content has shot over 60% ad printing, the vendor price of each copy went up. The latter has shed readership. With the delines in readership, ad revenues decrease. Its a vicious cycle with no upside.

Within the next five years in the City of Toronto, two of the three major daily newspapers will close print production due to the costs of printing. News publishers are locked into a vicious decline into a model. They rarely notice that search engines like Google assemble the stories and gather them into a set of links providing readers with a option of which version to study.

So when the traditional news media tries to impose a subscription price, search engines like Google can provide a choice of sources for the same information. At least one of those sources will provide the same story for free. The free link gets more hits and more ad revenues while the priced links decline and get less ad revenue.

What the traditional news media must return to is what was their strength which was the skill of their reporters and writers. So many of these people got laid off, and now work on the internet. Ouch.

Print media decline... II

2009-10-14T13:21:00.004-04:00

In the following images, the symptoms of the print media decline appears.
We photo imaged the front pages of two local sheets, scrutinizing them. The reason to use these images allows an impression of the substantive relevance of each.

In this one, the Sunday feature deals with a pathos photo of a cute dog.

While in this one from the Star's front page, another animal story about naked chickens makes the top. These papers didn't suffer from a lack of print quality. Rather the story content is much weaker than years ago. There is just as much front page material around. Newspapers are in the midst of a transitional change.

Starvation holds the reason for change. There isn't a shortage of story material. Rather the numbers of reporters has declined. The emphasis is on ads, not content. Today stories of chickens and dogs make it because they are easy, and not too controversial.

Vive la resistance

2009-10-13T12:43:00.002-04:00

Long lived resistance movements resurrect themselves in the moods of leadership futility. Apparently most of the readership says I have to continue the digital watchers blog.

Which I won't now. Its not a democracy but common sense. Give people what they want, as long as it isn't too expensive. To date though there be no return on investment.

So the digital watchers continue.

Decline of the media

2009-10-08T13:01:00.006-04:00

For the next couple of blogs over several days, the topic of the decline of the media will be examined intensely. Well maybe not that intensely. Several causes lead to inescapable conclusions.

Primary to the decline of the print and internet media quality emerges from this image. It is of course a cup of coffee. And it is good coffee.

Yet one must ask oneself in a detached logical accent of a voice, does the increase of good coffee directly effect the sliding quality of the media reportage?

The relationship appears to be yes. In days gone by, reporters and editors could not get quality cups of coffee. Now that they can, coffee breaks are longer. Which means the storytelling around the coffe tables appears so excessive that it diffuses originality and the creativity of any sort of bullshitting.

So a turbid equation emerges. A theory proposed. Increases in the quality of coffee, leads to a comparative and proportional decline of print journalism.

Not what it seems

2009-10-05T10:34:00.004-04:00

Beware the Hydra's temple. It seems not to be what you see.

Such are the constructions of a city that is used to building movie facades. Its in the pictures.First we have the mottled patchwork of a building in the throes of renovation.

And later the same building converted into a concrete building appearing like a concrete fortress.

Sports and shit.

2009-10-03T12:06:00.003-04:00

Sigh @. The good thing about Toronto and its sports teams is that once the regular season is over... its over.

Balsillie appears to have been shut out from the National Hokey League. Claims that he wasn't qualified, or possessed the moral character to be a league owner. A laugh riot. Guess he had no pending criminal charges.

Chicago got shut out of the Olympics in favor of Rio de Generate. Like who cares. See National Hokey League.

Complaints about Cito Gaston, by the Blue Jay players means a great upheaval over the winter. General Manager of the Blue Jays, J.P. Ricciardi, claimed over the Fan590, a local radio station, that no player approached him with the problem. JP has also acknowledged that he lies.

Sometimes a mess like this is good for a team. It should have happened before. Certainly no one had the courage to approach Cito face to face. That is where the disconnect occurred. I seen it beforehand.

Now for basketball. You think the Jays have problems. Wait for the CRaptors.

2009-10-02T10:16:00.001-04:00

Taking a few days off for rebraining.
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All the help

2009-09-29T12:22:00.003-04:00

Politics haunts the land. For the global problems, us digital watchers seek outside help.

Millertime

2009-09-26T10:02:00.004-04:00

Miller backs away from running again.
People snicker in the knowledge that he wouldn't
have won again.

Its a conspiracy of the left. David Miller abandoned
the left wing and now he can't garner support
from the same group.
The civic strike did him in.
Much like torture though,
it will take 14 months to see
the saloon door slap that ass.

Hidden spignals

2009-09-25T10:02:00.000-04:00

Wifi signals lack strength today. It means no photo. Been conspiring to get goal posts for rugby and soccer. For the park. They are needed.

Back at ya in 24.

uMine

2009-09-23T11:07:00.003-04:00

The difficulty with living in Northern Ontario lies in the precarious nature of modern economy. Rather than build financially independent economic structures, the provincial and Canadian governments tend to ignore the future, while skimming all the tax money with no re-investment. When the only employer in town closes, the town begins to die and people leave seeking work elsewhere.

These are lapses in judgement. Allowing towns to die slowly with industrial closure or resource depletion does nothing for Canada's future. Such a thing happened to the Towns of Marathon and Terrace Bay as the pulp mills shut in due to a downturn in the economy. Peculiar that these communities survived other economic downturns. However these economic cycles cannot be countered when the industry or resource is managed with gross incompetence such as displayed by Tembec and Kruger.

Claiming to be wizards they both had the same sort of profile. They asked for money in hard times and never re-invested. They skimmed of monies and then declared the shortfalls as loans becoming imagined creditors.

They won't be charged or face legal action because the governments of Ontario, Quebec and Canada acquiesce to this business management style. The governments focused solely on the major urban centers could care less to what happens to rural Canada. Government politicians and bureaucrats sit at the same tables in upscale restaurants as the wealthy businessmen.

Marathon, a very small town located on the north shore of Lake Superior, saw Tembec abandon its fiscal promises to the pulp mill it owned. Hiding behind the legal wall of bankruptcy, its pillage moved to offshore bank accounts walks away unscathed while the lifestyle of a community comes to the brink.

But luck exists for this town. A small mining company finally finds the glory hole after years of search. It is within the town boundaries. The mine will stop the money drain like the boy thumbing up the leak in a Dutch dike. But ore bodies end too. Its time for places like Marathon to actually take a stand as a community to stabilize its boom and bust cycle.

Car Freak day

2009-09-22T12:22:00.002-04:00

Today is car free day. I am in there. No car at all. Busy as heck though.

She didn't leave any room on her bench for any company.

So I won't tell her where to pick up the free car.

In memory of a person and the national folly

2009-09-21T07:51:00.003-04:00

Remember the name and face of Jonathan Couturier, who achieved the age of 23, and no more. Couturier represents the worst fear of a Conservative government perilously clinging to political power. In its short mandate, the Conservative government of Canada changed the operational goals of the Canadian military from one of security and reconstruction to one of outright combat and killing. Couturier died because of that flawed strategy. Couturier's words beg to haunt the Canadian government unlike any other critic before.

An obscure Taliban soldier ended Couturier's promising life by setting up an explosive trap. On the one hand, the political supporters of this war would have you believe that this was a cowardly terrorist attack. Nothing could be further from the truth. That Taliban was a soldier who planted a weapon to rid his homeland of an invader. Terrorists attack unarmed noncombatants indiscriminately. This was an attack on another armed soldier who was carrying a weapon pointed at his interpretation of freedom, and his life. Its the type of message not likely to be spread in Couturier's homeland. Couturier, a private, the lowest rank in the army, recognized the patently obvious about this war, he said, referring to his own army in the third person "... they are wasting their time over there."

Couturier appears not to be the only one in the army who died and expressed those same opinions. It appears that their is a schism in the ranks of the Canadian military. In the view of those with the rank of Major and higher, the war is a good thing. It appears that at the company level and down there is growing discontent and another message permeating through the army. One problem that the Stephen Harper led government will be encountering is that in a democracy the word of a Private carries the same validity as the word of a General.

Couturier's words ring true. He was fed up. He did say that we are wasting our time. He died the 131st Canadian casualty in that futile war.

Lets put this into context. It was in 2002 that Canadians entered Afghanistan. Only 131 Canadians have died. This is a terrible number, but compared with most wars, compared with most deadly conflicts it is barely a scratch militarily. It is about the number of a single company of infantry complete with officers.

The problem remains in the original goals. Our original goals were to rebuild their infrastructure to usability and train their army to defend itself. Ultimately its the Afghans who must defend themselves and provide their own security. Its been about seven years. Just how long does it take to train a fucking police officer or soldier. In the Canadian army its eleven weeks of boot camp. In the Canadian police academy, about two years to train a constable. Just what has our military been doing over there. Obviously not what they say they were going to do, obviously they lack the competency to train an Army or that would have been done a long time ago.

It is a good dedicated person just like Couturier who points us in the right direction, much like another hero Terry Fox did. Unlike any other soldier who might desert, Couturier died at his post. He did not abandon his duty. Lets get focused on training up the Afghans and getting the hell out of their country.

Greyhound update

2009-09-17T11:21:00.004-04:00

Good news for a change. Greyhound Bus Lines and the government(s) of Canada are sitting down and talking. The bus company stepped up first and withdrew its ominous threat to withdraw vital transportation service to the more remote areas of Canada. The provincial and federal governments stated they are more willing to help Greyhound if the company was willing to provide it with the financial data on the routes that were not economically viable at the present time.

Greyhound's profit margins have never been over the top. Recent rises in fuel costs and the sudden economic decline impacted the areas that would have seen a cessation of bus service. Economies are cyclic and resources the same cycles and more so. The government(s) supported other sectors of the economy why would Northern Ontario and Manitoba not likewise supported. At the moment, bus service has been preserved.

Warning, warning about H1N1

2009-09-17T07:29:00.001-04:00

Warning, Warning about H1N1

This you should be aware of. It concerns H1N1 influenza or Swine Flu.

The contagious period for Swine Flu appears to researchers to be longer than first thought, and much longer than the normal flu virus. This is perhaps the reason why the disease continued to spread out of Mexico so swiftly despite quick response and detection by local health authorities.

Apparently, humans continue to shed the contagion about two weeks after the symptoms have completely disappeared from the host. Normal influenza hangs on for about 24-72 hours after the symptoms abate.

From USA Today,

"We were a bit surprised to see patients who were still positive on Day 12," Lye told the American Society for Microbiology in San Francisco.

This means that instead of going back to your work, or having co workers return to the work place on short turn around from the flu, companies should keep these employees on a 14 day leave after the disease appears clear in the victim.

So if you do catch this influenza be aware that you are still sick for two weeks after you feel you're not.

Greyhound crisis

2009-09-14T13:31:00.001-04:00

Greyhound thinks its in a driver’s position in its fight to get $15M out of the various governments. Holding peoples of Northern Ontario and Manitoba hostage appears to work for the Limeys and Yanks that now run the bus line. To save a lot of ink, simply they are vile kidnappers and extortionists.

If I were residing in Northern Ontario I would crapping furious. It matters little if Greyhound backs out of its position and maintains service. The thought of it steams me.

For the last thirty years, I’ve been advocating Northern Ontario independence. This stands as another reason to set a course to freedom. A long list of federal and provincial governments, constantly mismanaged the northern economy. Compared with the early 1960s, its in tatters.

There are countermeasures that can the municipal governments in Northern Ontario can take now. They must be united though. Simply put, they ban Greyhound from entering their jurisdictions. If every community on highways 11 and 17 forbid the bus line from stopping, servicing or refueling or switching drivers, this would cause Greyhound second thought.

It all depends on the Cities of Thunder Bay, Sault St. Marie, Winnipeg and Sudbury falling into line. It would mean that every Greyhound bus travelling north of Parry Sound would not be legally able to stop til it reached the Saskatchewan border. No bus carrying people can do that.

Greyhound assumes that it still can keep the Winnipeg to Toronto run going. The province must step up and remove an exemption that Greyhound has always enjoyed. The provincial government could insist that all buses which are not permitted to stop and pick up or discharge passengers, must now stop in every truck weigh scale and endure safety inspection. There are about four stations to the Manitoba border.

People in each community, Greyhound serves now could protest. Having demonstrators meet the bus at every stop carries a powerful message.

In the winter, snow plowing personnel can stall all these units. What the Yanks and Limeys forget is that all these bus routes work fine in the summer and warm weather but it’s a long way from Parry Sound to Winnipeg and back. There are just so many things that people can do.

Of course this may seem weird but I also find that the Greyhound request for aid is totally appropriate. They did give good service to these areas. And the decline in the economy has hit these areas hard. It hit Greyhound similarly. The federal and provincial governments gave out billions to underwrite their stock broker and banker buddies. The federal government sends billions to prop up drug running warlords in Afghanistan.

It would be inexcusable not to help Greyhound maintain essential service during this economically difficult time. Its not the level of support for Greyhound, it’s the method of their request that truly makes one furious.

Ban the bike part 4

2009-09-12T12:44:00.002-04:00

The interview with Prof. Rellim Van Otnorot continues. Part four.

Otnorot finishes:

Factual evidence provided by the pro-bicycle lobby is spurious at best. One instance of the deceptive information is the issue of bike lanes. To support the argument they trot out the example of Holland to be applied to the Canadian context. The only thing similar about Holland and Canada resides in the people and culture. Out of 180 nations in the entire world, they trot out Holland? In geography, climate, topography, and sheer size generates no comparative whatsoever.

They want bike lanes along narrow routes dedicated, exclusively to the few bicyclists that commute in Canada. They cite road safety as we discussed before. What most cyclists really want is a free pass through traffic. They pay no road related taxes. They are not required to have any liability insurance. The vast majority of cyclists run stop lights, run stop signs, and open doors of street cars. The vast majority of cyclists use sidewalks beyond necessity. They will only adhere to laws when it is convenient for themselves.

The police practice lazy fair when it comes to enforcing traffic laws. Oh sometimes the senior staff has a brain wave and conducts “a blitz”. Blitz is bureau speak to encourage their staff to actually do their work which is to enforce the law. Never mind the blitz. When a bike is stolen, the police rarely makes any move to recover it. Law enforcement practices discretionary enforcement in the area of cycles. A stolen bike, is stolen property, period. For the victim its as serious as if a bank was robbed. The attitude of police sucks.

The other users also practice lazy fair. Call the police and politicians when there is any infraction by someone on a bicycle. Pedestrians do the same. They can't take the trouble. Police and politicians only when compelled by complaint. To solve the bicycle issue it takes a drastic social change. The reason is that the problem has gotten this out of control is that society has ignored it.

The solution to the issue is neither complex nor difficult. It appears drastic. The solution demands that it change attitudes in a very short time. The first step is to Ban the Bike.

To some it appears drastic. It is. Unlike the failed efforts at registration and attitude change, changing the attitudes of cyclists and society, requires a shock treatment. I never said Ban the Bike permanently. Desirably the date of the ban would begin in a November.

As of that date, driver licensing changes to include all ages and all vehicles. Every driver must be tested. A special category on the license to permit the operation of active or human powered transport. To encourage the license of young riders, allow good penalty free ridership means a reduction in the probationary period to obtain a motor vehicle license and a reduction in the insurance rates on the first ownership of motor vehicles. This allows youth to accumulate a good traffic behavior before they ever drive a car and own one.

Every vehicle using public roads must be registered, plated and possess valid liability insurance. It includes bikes. A call reporting center be set up for a period of five years to take calls on all complaints regarding bicycle law breakage and theft.

This will give most riders time to establish those criteria. For the very few, professional riders like bike couriers in Toronto and Ottawa special transition times and methods can be negotiated if they apply for the time exemption to take a driver's test. Then all cyclists must now have a driver's license, registration and insurance on their vehicles.

The reason for this type of social action resides in observing the failure of the gun registry in Canada. It would have been far better to set a ban date for guns than the complex bazaar of critical dates involved. In a way setting the Ban the Bike day, then preparing the groundwork to bring the vehicle back into a new regime is easier on the psyche of the society and allows the public road users a definitive direction of choice.

FMPD: So your saying Ban them. Then let them come back on the streets. Yes.

Better shoot that dog

2009-09-12T12:09:00.004-04:00

Greyhound Inc. is not only changing colours, its changing. After going through several ownership changes in the last twenty years the stability of the venerable company appears threatened. Presently it is owned by a limey company with the unlikely name of FirstPlace PLC. PLC must stand for pretty lousy company.

Historically, Greyhound fought Via rail subsidies to bring passenger transport to those communities along Hwy's 11 and 17. It also backed the 1987 deregulation of the National Transportation Act.

Before that, it was a law in Canada that no company may serve a route for less than the operational cost per passenger, or seat, or per parcel pound. Since Via Rail of that time was government owned it could receive government subisidies on fare schedules under cost. No more Dominion or Canadian on the Superior routes and only spasmodic rail passenger service outside that corridor.

Now a past supporter of deregulation, becomes a victim of that deregulation. More efficient small firms have emerged like Mega Bus which cherry picks the good routes so much that they have rates between Toronto and Montreal lower than the cost per seat. Before Greyhound got bought by Laidlaw, they were doing very good in the markets they served in Canada.

Greyhound kept expanding to the point of inefficiency. At if you cannot see it, above the two buses in the picture is a wall mural ad for MegaBus flogging a $1 standby fare to Montreal. Now instead of admitting that this is where the main problem is, Greyhound prefers to have vulnerable people in Northern Ontario and Manitoba held hostage.

The reason for this political kidnapping is not the high costs of operations in Northern Ontario. It is the heat from the competition in the major intercity routes.

The solution is simple actually. Greyhound should be given $15M for the next three years. Government must reintroduce a new National Transportation Act where the fares charged to passengers must compensate the operational cost of that seat. Second, if any new bus carrier enters service between major cities it must also service all points in between at least once a day each way.

For passengers it might seem more expensive, but in the longer term it will bring stability to the transportation market. Or if Greyhound continues to be troublesome, shoot that damn dog.

Occupational hazard

2009-09-11T12:26:00.002-04:00

Walking along Dundas,

Waiting for the street car,

Hoping to connect,

But with three blocks to walk,

Why wait I said strolling along,

Looking back,

Seeing the street car roll on by.

Ban the cycles part three - Injury pronation

2009-09-10T10:38:00.000-04:00

The interview with Prof. Rellim Van Otnorot continues. Part three.

FMPD: Moving on from the arguments regarding environment bicycles are efficient designs. It was bicycle mechanics that invented the airplane after all.

OTNOROT: Yes and flying in an airplane is far safer per passenger mile than a bicycle. Bicycles do efficiently convert human power into motion to move a single person. Yet, like I said before, they would not be approved for use on modern roads if the device was introduced today.

The standard bicycle has a very high center of gravity. Two wheels means the stability is determined by the athletic skill of the rider, not by any mechanical stability. Three wheel vehicles are more stable. Four wheel vehicles are the most stable.

Clothing entrapment occurs in the exposed power train. The steering mechanisms can be knocked off by road dangers and curbs. No passenger protection exists on the vehicle in the case of accident or collision. Many accident injuries occur due to entanglement in bicycle features.

We demand by law that other vehicles using tax payer funded public roadways to have passenger protections. To date the political leadership of North America have not legally demanded that bicycles be made operationally safe. Clearly the leading unsafe vehicle on those roadways is the bicycle.

Yes bicycle fatalities are far less due to the lower usage and lower speeds. But all the various accident statistical records point to the fact that one is far more likely to be injured on a bicycle than any other commonly used vehicle. Many bicycle accidents are not reported because the injuries are not severe, but injuries do happen.

Bicycle couriers, very experienced cyclists tumble off of bicycles frequently. Yes some don't but many do. They almost never report any injury unless they must be hospitalized. Per capita, a committed cyclist will suffer some sort of cycling injury once every five years. Inexperienced cyclists are the most likely to suffer injury on a per kilometer basis.

From a health cost standpoint, bicycles add extra burden to health care costs than most other vehicles on a per capita basis. If cyclists equaled the numbers of motorists health costs would be doubled. The goal of getting people out of cars onto bicycles isn’t economical. The future of bicycles as a mode is rather limited as you can see.

Ban the bicyle Part II

2009-09-08T10:44:00.000-04:00

The interview with Prof. Rellim Van Otnorot continues. Part two.

FMPD: Ban the Bicycle?

OTNOROT: Ban it. Statistical and factual evidence indicates such a drastic path. The advocates of bicycles provide enough evidence for this themselves.

FMPD: They do?

OTNOROT: Yes they do. By simply lobbying for exclusive bicycle lanes they provide evidence support banning the bike. Understand one thing. Bicycles were only meant to be an interim step of human mobility.

As soon as the small motor evolved, it was mated to the bicycle. The technology of the motorcycle still exceeds the quality of any modern bicycle. Over the years motorcycle design substantially lowered the center of gravity closer to the roadway and broadened the width of tires to provide more stability. One of the most dangerous aspects of the bicycle has been its vehicular instability due to the very high center of gravity.

Bicycles only predated the motor car by only fifty years as a mechanical substitute for the horse in an urban environment. Its all in the timing. If the invention of the bicycle was today, the vehicle design would never be approved for use on the tax payer funded roadways. No question, these are unsafe vehicles.

Recumbent bicycles which do have a low center of gravity, are operationally uncomfortable and a paradox to the physical aspects of animal mobility. Where physical exertion is required the head should be comfortably level and vision unimpaired.

In the recumbent design, the head follows the body. I didn't like the knees bouncing up into my sightlines and my feet pumping up and down. Recumbent position during physical activity in the passive attitude diminishes the biological advantages of traditional animal evolution. All this counters all genetic evolution. In all animal design since the Cambrian epoch, where the body is close to the horizontal during the physical exertion of movement, head goes before asshole.

FMPD: Are you saying that bicycles aren't safe?

OTNOROT: No. The bicycle lobby points to this lack of safety.

FMPD: How do you mean?

OTNOROT: Carefully examine the issue of dedicated bicycle lanes. Its all how you interpret all the data and evidence usually provided all by the bicycle lobbyists themselves. The cyclists insist that they should have exclusive use of the public roadways in dedicated lanes.

They insist that they are the champions of society and the environment. When it is easily proven by their own statistics that the bicycle is actually far more inefficient per mile in the terms of fuel use, and hydro-carbon emissions than the automobile.

Now understand, that due to my studies, I believe that the hydro-fueled electric vehicle is the most efficient energy vehicle outside of the electric rail locomotive. But in the energy profiles conversion provided by the cyclists insist that their mode of transport is environmentally more sound. Humans are terrible energy converters compared with the mechanical reciprocating engine.

The classic court case for all this is found Scott vs. the Queen. Wayne Scott, an advocate of active transport, challenged Revenue Canada to allow bicycle couriers to receive equal treatment to contract motorized couriers. Contract car and truck couriers received a tax exemption related to the energy consumed in delivering cargo. The long and the short of it is that Scott won the court battle and Revenue Canada was compelled to let contract bicycle courier an energy cost exemption of about $11.00 or the daily cost of food in receipts.

The concept was called food as energy. And a very valid argument it is because bicycle couriers do eat more than most other people because their occupation requires food energy. Yet, where one carefully examine the energy cost profiles of gasoline powered vehicles versus the profiles of human powered vehicles (e.g. bicycles), gas engine power always proves far more efficient than the latter.

Cyclists always cite the emissions of gas motors. This is true, but when discussing that environmental aspect they never, ever, never, ever let the human powered energy cycle into the equation for equal scrutiny.

Their arguments in this fact and other facts are always dramatically one sided. Almost always no one has the gonads to challenge their contentions. Their planks should be contested. Its always their facts, and always a position of severe bias. Here is my contention. In the end result, human power vehicles probably produce more air pollution than the motor vehicle.

Human power needs food. Almost always that food is brought in by truck, ship or airplane from distant places. That extra food, that extra energy, already costs more. The calorie fuel cost of food exceeds the calorie benefit to the human powered vehicle.

And, one cannot use the total calorific nutritional benefit of the food intake. One must discount the fact that most of the food value is not absorbed by the body. Rather, most of the material is passed through the bowel. Cyclists, in their version of the universe seem to eat more but don't shit as much. In short, the cyclist's lobby expounds total crap.

Using the dollar value of energy illuminated by Scott vs. the Queen, a cyclist can safely move about 15kg per day over about 100km. These figures you must understand are estimates. Locations, routes and specific vehicles vary. Cyclists always exclude bicycles from the energy cost equations. Always remember that there is a fuel cost per dollar of food already in the equations. A courier driver can move 200kg(plus) over 200km per day at the same dollar/energy unit value.

Bicycles must move cargo and the operator/motor. The laws of physics demand energy versus weight to lift. Once you include all the energy cycles. Once the sources of energy are included, then one can see the inefficiency of human power. The ultimate fuel in the blood is glucose of some sort. Muscle cells burn oxygen in a oxidizing chemical reaction and that sugar burns to an energy unit to provide sufficient power.

Cyclists always state that they do not pollute the urban landscape. Horse feathers. Any oxidation of hydrocarbons regardless of the type of energy converter, produces carbon dioxide. And for cyclists their exhausts come out of two systems. Lung respiration expels carbon dioxide a global warming gas. Extra effort to move cargo delivers that much more carbon dioxide. Their digestive tracts expel all sorts of gases like all other animals. More food means more fart gas.
The energy cost per Kg is more expensive when delivered by the bicycle or any human powered vehicle.

FMPD: And this means!

OTNOROT: It means that as energy converters in transport movers bicycles are very poor. Bicycles require human power. Humans barely possess the power to move their own weight. The fuel consumption of human power exceeds the comparable gross fuel consumption of motor vehicles. The environmental damage in the real equation regarding mass per kilojoule is worse for human power vehicles than motor vehicles. Humans are enormously inefficient energy converters.

So banning the bike means less, not more pollution. Use all the calorie/power equations, not just those inadequate biased arguments provided by the bicycle lobby. To save the environment - Ban Bikes!

FMPD: In your version of the situation, there seems to be no significant energy or environmental savings to use the bicycle.

OTNOROT: Only with the movement of cargo. When a person moves only that person bicycles do fare better. There are savings, although cyclists need more energy food per kilometer, when the rider is compared to the driver.

End of part 2.

2009-09-04T13:42:00.000-04:00

One of the good things about city parks in Toronto is simple watching
and appreciating the finer things in life.

Look at those legs. Look at the rear end. Look at the figure. That is one determined Yorkie.

Ban the Bicycle - Part 1

2009-09-04T13:29:00.002-04:00

Prof. Rellim Van Otnorot, LLB, QC, GL

With the absence of piles, and the legal battles to begin to recover our trash we hired legal expert Prof. Rellim van Otnorot to lead the impending court actions and to register his opining opinions. There was a lot of “to's” in the opening. Regardless here is a transcript of the first discussion.

FMPD: Good day Prof. Van Otnorot.

OTNOROT: (nods) Hello Friends. A fine morning to you. Do I bill for this?

FMPD: No this is not legal work regarding the recovery of our garbage and dump status. The readers would like to know where your brilliant legal mind lies.

OTNOROT: Sounds pretty chintzy to me. Go ahead though.

FMPD: Recently, there was a dispute between a former Cabinet Minister, Michael Bryant and a bike courier, Darcy Sheppard. What do you think Prof?

OTNOROT: Terrible tragedy. Terrible. This is going to be a very difficult legal case to bring to court. Every one seems to forget that a person lost life and he had four children.

FMPD: How would you solve this crisis between bikes and autos?

OTNOROT: The attitude of everyone involved sucks. Cyclists, motorists, police, politicians all are to blame. Bike lanes while an interesting bandage, doesn't address the underlying issues. Also the issues exists in all of Canada and the US.

FMPD: Yes its very complex to take any action on.

OTNOROT: Its too complex to deal with every issue. What is forgotten by everyone is that these are shared publicly funded roadways. This allows a fundamentally basic solution.

FMPD: A single solution to solve all?

OTNOROT: Could solve it tomorrow.

FMPD: Tomorrow.

OTNOROT: Yes... BAN Bicycles. Ban them period end of story.

---Note: This interview continues in tomorrow's posting.--- end of part 1

Morning on Dundas

2009-09-03T10:46:00.004-04:00

Looking for breakfast and a coffee
the hurls and curls of
morning light bounces off the buildings.
Laughing light in a bouncy array of colour and humour.

You won't see this in Wabikoba Lake country.

Canadian Bank Bunk

2009-08-29T13:03:00.002-04:00

Trumpets the Star, which is a daily raggatty rag. "Bank earnings a nice surprise for Bay Street." and "Profits impress". The decaying daily states that this remarkable profitability shows the strength in the Canadian retail sector.

One must be slightly troubled by this. Stand around and look. Pulp mills, paper mills, lumber mills have shut down on a long term basis right across this country. Farmers are coping with high energy costs without seeing a compensatory increase in the price of their products to the food markets.

Consumers struggle with keeping their jobs, or looking for work. Canadian banks appear immune from pain. Indeed it may be that they inflict pain to maintain profitability. Much of this profit stems less from the margin on loans, than those revenues generated by the complex user fees and service charges that banks now charge its clients.

The code words are "retail sector". I found over the years that those words relate to the transactional charges on debit and credit cards. Most money transactions in today's world are plastic and not hard cash. The banks make tonnes of cash on the transaction fees.

Confusing enough (III)

2009-08-28T09:20:00.003-04:00

Well... Made a mistake yet again. Hell no surprise.

Apparently, the NHL is including their $40M contribution in the bid. This weakened their bid by at least $80M. It literally castrates their own bid.

Oh and the out clause quietly inserted into the NHL bid is only a one year term for Phoenix. Now compare the five year term that was rumored to be in the defunct Reinsdorf bid. And the bid by the Ice Edge Sports, the people who will stay in Phoenix and mitigate costs by playing five games in Saskatoon per season.

I mean only 5 games in Saskatoon will support the team playing 35 games in Phoenix. Whow. So they could really make more money in Saskatchewan if they played all 40 games there. It may be better than Hamilton even. After all, the most lucrative CFL team is the Saskatchewan Roughriders. People in the whole province will support any sports team.

Sacre Bleu

2009-08-27T10:38:00.002-04:00

As it turned out, I seemed an idyllic day. An ideal day for a trip on a bus. I realized that the day was a special one. Its day 238 of the year.

As a result, I bought a trip on the TTC. Fun, frivolity and misery all rolled into one.

Confusing enough (the sequel)

2009-08-27T10:29:00.002-04:00

The NHL jumped into the frey with both feet. This is an update to the shannigans.

Apparently the bid is $140M. Since they are a creditor of $50M already, the value comes to about $190M. It still falls short of the Balsillie bid by $20M(plus).

Showing total hypocrisy in the whole process the NHL put a qualifier in their bid which would allow a move of the franchise.

If I shake my head more than I have already. It might lead to concussion.

Confusing enough?

2009-08-26T11:35:00.002-04:00

Recall those movies with the swinging pendulum blades ratcheting slowly down... closer and closer to slice into the victims chest. That's sort of what the NHL and Balsillie battle takes. At one minute things look grim, then on an instant the momentum shifts the opposite way.

Last week, Balsillie's team effort appeared dead in the water when the owner of Dell computers, Michael Dell, a major creditor of the Phoenix Coyotes approved the Jerry Reinsdorf group bid. Despite the setback, Balsillie simply restated the bid.

In subsequent developments, Jerry Reinsdorf pulled out of the deal making a ton of excuse, none of which was his fault. Consequently, the NHL submits a bid for the team. This heaving to and fro will piss of any judge worth his salt.

From the beginning, Jim Balsillie's bid was consistently the highest, the best, the clearest and the most consistent. The NHL consistently resists the obvious. It is a business deeply in trouble.

The NHL committed to a TV deal with Versus proudly. Now Versus will be dropped from Direct TV, which cuts out a lot of viewers in the United States. There weren't that many to begin with. That was very bad news for GB (Gary Bettman).

Now Reinsdorf pulls out of the deal. He isn't like the rest of the NHL ownership group. He's smart.

Now with the NHL coming in with a late bid with eggs smeared all over it. It appears such a shallow aim. After attempting to cause so much harm to Balsillie it appears that the NHL is losing even the low reputation it had before.

The smart thing to do would be to have a rapprochment with Balsillie. Things many untrue things were said. Whether they like it or not Balsillie is now in the driver's seat.

To win the fight the Judge might decide for a full auction. It will cost the NHL at least $300 M to win this auction, since there is now nothing stopping Balsillie from upping the anti if necessary.

Jarvis Jam

2009-08-26T11:30:00.002-04:00

And the city politicians are doing what? This image, taken yesterday looks north along Jarvis.

Due to a memorial ceremony at the Good Neighbours Club, police sealed off one single southbound lane. Time middle of the day.

This portends the traffic headache that will ensue if the idea to designated a bicycle lane on either side of Jarvis.

Earning points

2009-08-21T11:15:00.003-04:00

One wonders whether or not there will be any winner. The vitriol between Jim Balsillie and the National Hockey League (NHL) grows daily. Its a fertile plant. Poison Ivy steps aside for the botanical wonder.

The NHL were the ones that made the issue personal. They were winning legally but Gary Bettman's ego removed the boundaries of common sense by declaring to a court that it was unanimous that all the Governors of the NHL considered Balsillie unfit to be an owner in the NHL.

They do a lot of unanimous votes in the NHL Bored of Governor's meetings. Only a couple of years ago the NHL declared the very same individual more than qualified to be an owner. However the poison started quite consciously by the brat Gary Bettman. Balsillie's group continues to push forward bidding in an Arizona bankruptcy court for the hapless Phoenix Coyotes.

The intention of Balsillie is to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario where for the first time in its entire franchise history, including when the team lived as the Winnipeg Jets, it might actually generate enough revenue to actually break even.

This move has been opposed by the Toronto Maple Leafs who considers all of the southern reaches of the province of Ontario as its very own. It has a veto on any decision although the NHL has said it doesn't. Someone obtained a version of the secret league rules and lo it appears it does. So apparently publicly the NHL has no problem with lying.

Further to the point of character, Balsillie's camp fired back with a list of NHL owner's who conducted themselves badly. One of those mentioned was a Eugene Melynyk, owner of the Ottawa Senators retorted publicly that he now thought Balsillie to be morally challenged.

Quite unlike Balsillie, Melnyk doesn't live in Canada, owns companies facing criminal charges in the United States. He owns a company that committed insurance fraud but faced them in a Canadian court where judges hold little value in sending white collar criminals to jail. Balsillie did commit an indiscretion of miscalculating the value of stock options. He admitted the error, paid all the fines and stepped down from the post he held.

Others in the NHL have committed crimes and the NHL did nothing to censure them from the Board. Harold Ballard was convicted of criminal fraud and sentenced to nine years finally being paroled in 1973. Bruce McNall became the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the NHL in 1992. A couple of years later he admitted bilking investors of $234M. He finally served out his parole in 2006.

Which begs the question of why would anyone of any integrity whatsoever wish to belong to this elitist club known as the NHL owners? At the moment, I hope Balsillie loses his bid. Winning sometimes isn't necessarily winning.

Nuking the brain

2009-08-19T11:44:00.003-04:00

I went to the park. It was a free picnic. I didn't eat anything. I did have some water. It was too hot.

This is a picture in the neighborhood. I took it. It looked like an image that should be taken and not forgiven.

We need a nuclear plant. Water it three times a week. Unless it gets hotter.

Biff

2009-08-17T10:45:00.002-04:00

I am still trying to adapt to the new regime. I have to be more careful with the money now. I haven't seen the internet in a couple of days. I meant to submit something as often as I could. There is little to submit after they "the Man" absconded with the piles of garbage.

Nothing could be as bad as

2009-08-12T11:19:00.004-04:00

Think you have it bad? Think Moss Park has it bad? Compared with happenings in Northern Ontario, its nothing. According to our confidential unconfirmed and not too reliable sources in that remote part of Ontario the Chinese government has released hordes of highly trained spy animals into the municipal matrices of several towns.

These animals are spreading throughout the province unhindered by normal restraints. Police do little to prevent the territorial expansion of these critters. One has just been seen waddling away from Howe Street nonplussed by the light of day.

If seen these animals must be approached with extreme caution as they reportedly have a prickly temperment. While mass extermination appears to be a solution, another is capture. They would be very suitable if introduced to the wilder parts of Moss Park. Spy equipment would have to be disabled but after that they would fit into the park's goals. They would be mascots for the needle exchange programs.

Kane Moot in Knee

2009-08-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

Jockstraps get real problems. Before the New York criminal courts, there stands accused one Paul Kane, a NHL hockey player, from the Chicago Blackhawks. The police in New York have leveled assault charges, theft and mischief charges.

One of the major accusations was that the accused did all this over twenty cents. The cabbie didn't have twenty cents change. So it is alleged that Kane and a buddy beat up the cabbie and took back $15.00 in fare.

Whether or these things are true will or might be decided in a court of law. A man was obviously beaten for some reason. The police have sufficient reason to lay charges without the fancy dance of going through the Grand Jury process.

Yet what bothers me is the absolute double standard that most (not all) Canadian sportswriters apply in this case when compared with the reaction to the serious charges laid against Michael Vick several years ago.

In the Kane case, apologies emerge defending Kane by saying that the cabbie wasn't licensed. The taxi driver had a couple of driving convictions in years past. The writer in the story attached to this blog, didn't refer to Kane as an alleged criminal.

Instead Kevin McGran, alleged reporter, sought to criminalize the victim in the very first line of his writing. "The cab driver who is the alleged victim of a beating..."

The "sports reporter" then goes onto vilify Radecki by citing past indiscretions of this driver. This reporter is not an aberration in sports media. Personal bias runs into almost every story. Facts rarely expose themselves.

The fact of whether or not Radecki had past convictions has absolutely nothing to do with being beaten up. The alleged criminals of which Kane is one, beat up a driver. The fact that the cab was illegitimate gave no right for the alleged to beat the crap out of a driver, steal money that they had contractually agreed to pay which is theft, and that the whole episode evolved over twenty cents.

So here is the comparison. A guy who staving of poverty consents to give two jerks a ride. One of the jerks earns at least a half million after agent fees which is probably about twenty years net wages for the guy giving them the ride. The fact of twenty cents hasn't been challenged.

What also bothers me is the fact that these same writers jumped over Michael Vick almost convicting him before the fact for what he did to dogs. I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of what Vick did, but Kane did it to a human being and is alleged to have done this for the sum value of twenty cents.

Like Vick, Kane is denying everything. He is a hockey star after all. In Vick's case, the NFL suspended him until the court proceedings and criminal punishment had moved through its course. Unlike Vick, Kane faces no suspension until the court matters are settled.

And if the same righteousness, that was applied to Vick, was applied to Kane: He will never get a job in the NHL again. But the sports writers don't believe in consistency, or equality in race, sport or crime, or good journalism.

This article is inserted for the education of the students of the digital watchers.

Patrick Kane's cabbie didn't have licence: Report

In 2008, Patrick Kane, who clocked 46 goals and 96 assists in his first two NHL seasons with the Blackhawks, was given the Calder Trophy for best rookie.

August 11, 2009

Kevin McGran
SPORTS REPORTER

The cab driver who is the alleged victim of a beating by NHL star Patrick Kane and his cousin on Sunday didn't have a valid driver's licence at the time of the incident, the Buffalo News reported Tuesday.

The newsaper said Jan Radecki, 62, also has two drunk driving convictions.

Radecki had a cab licence in the City of Buffalo since May 1996 and became licensed with the city for a Chrysler minivan in 2003. Radecki's driver's licence, however, was revoked in December 1998 after he refused to submit to a chemical test, according to state Department of Motor Vehicle records. He was issued a conditional licence by the agency after the incident.

Four months later, in April 1999, Radecki's licence again was revoked, this time for a driving while intoxicated charge, according to state records.

According to City Court records, Radecki pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated charges in February 1999. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail and three years' probation.

Radecki's lawyer, Andrew LoTempio, told the News:

"I know he went into [Alcoholics Anonymous] and has not drank since then."

His client also served no jail time for the conviction because the 15 days was a suspended sentence, he said.

LoTempio told reporters Monday he believed the incident was blown out of proportion, suggesting Radecki had mistaken the Kanes for college kids when he picked them up at 4 a.m. Sunday in a nightclub district.

LoTempio said it is usual for cabbies to lock riders in the cab to make sure they pay.

The Kanes paid $15 for a $13.80 fare, and got $1 change. The alleged beating and robbery took place when the cabbie said he did not have a further 20 cents for the two.

The Kanes have a felony hearing scheduled in Buffalo City Court on Monday. Patrick Kane has been invited to the Team USA Olympic Orientation camp, starting Monday.

Kane's lawyer, Paul J. Cambria Jr., said he would ask that the hearing be rescheduled for later next week. He also said he believes Kane will be exonerated once all the evidence comes to light.

Role of media

2009-08-11T11:08:00.003-04:00

The irony of being in the fifth estate carries little value nowdays. During the recent civic strike, journalism skewed the story very badly.

Neutrality and the ability to discern facts seems to be a declining ethic of neutrality in journalism. A lot if stories during the strike were enhanced and embellished.

You can get trash off the ground but you can't get get out of television.

Indignancy

2009-08-08T13:22:00.002-04:00

Today I don't feel like chewing my cabbage twice.

Check today's entry over at the dump site in the link. Just look under the August 8th posting.

http://friendsofmossparkdump.blogspot.com/

Hiatus if that is how you spell it

2009-08-06T10:18:00.002-04:00

I am taking a few days off from this blog. I will likely be returning here by next Wednesday.

The reason is that I have a couple of projects that came up which are must do at the time.

The blog is always in the back of my mind but I think you would agree to the value of doing those projects first in priority. Its a Terry Fox kind of important.

Calling Walt

2009-08-04T13:43:00.004-04:00

There isn't a damn thing that I can write in a blog today. Its frustrating. Probably the summer blahs.

With the garbage strike over, and with T.O. World back together like a sicko Disney Production, hopefully the ground known as common sense will return. From what I understand part of it already has.

Grey strike

2009-08-02T11:50:00.002-04:00

Spinning off of a strike, I am want to relax and put up my fingers.... Under the sun.... Watching the sky for weird looking clouds.

Down here in Southern Ontario its all weird looking clouds. My fingers belong to a union. Today they are refusing to pick my nose.

Tortured soil, and a solid waste

2009-08-01T14:22:00.002-04:00

For a place of good charm, the Toronto City Council showed that it could not cope with linear thinking. They mostly stuck to the political guns to ratify a union contract. Whatever was said, few balanced the issues.

Mayor David Miller stated in a news report that he wasn't responsible for the course of the strike. Nothing like leadership accountability Dave.

Remember, the Star is a Liberal paper. Consider the source when you read it. This article is included in this diatribe for the education and edification of the students of the Digital Watchers.

Toronto Star

David Miller finds little fault of his own in strike

August 01, 2009

Jennifer Wells

David Miller is lifelessly draped across the corner of the mayoral couch, an image that presents a fair impersonation of Jean-Paul Marat after Charlotte Corday got her deathly hands on him.

Defeated – if not exactly dead – is what his opponents are hoping for.

"Frustrated" is the statesmanlike word chosen by the mayor after he rights himself and attempts a post-mortem on what went horribly wrong in managing what he insistently calls this "completely unnecessary" strike.

Amend that: "Frustrated and pissed off," is the mayor's state of mind.

He's furious at the cadre of councillors who tried to strike down the deal negotiated with city workers. He's maddened by what he calls the "recasting of history" that in his view has marked the whole sorry affair. And he is off the charts with the level of enmity he reserves for Councillor Case Ootes who, during a July 8 meeting of the city's employee labour relations committee, of which Ootes is not a member, stepped out to give a television interview on how negotiations appeared to be hopelessly stalled.

"Landslide Ootes walks out and does a media interview and speaks about what we had just been speaking about," says the really pissed-off mayor. "We call him `Landslide' sometimes because he only ... ."

It's probably best if we let Miller trail off at this point.

What Miller does not admit are the miscalculations made in positioning the negotiations in the minds of the public, selling them on a deal he now says he knew he could not deliver and exposing his own flank to a collective of councillors calling themselves the Responsible Government Group. Perhaps due to a mayor's office that appears to be structurally sheltered, not nimble, non-strategic, Miller's momentary failure, if it is only momentary, is not so much the deal itself but the politics of the deal.

Through the window behind him, the public square is not exactly abuzz. On the contrary, the city seems motionless, in a state of stasis, absent the verve the mayor promised to bring to the city and the office when he first swept to victory with that broom in the early winter of 2003. He is wearing a shirt with French cuffs, which is only worth mentioning because it accommodates the shiny cufflinks given to him by Infrastructure Minister John Baird, whose "f--- off" response to the city's failed request for stimulus funding will surely be included in the Miller biography, should it ever be written.

All the positive selling points Miller has accomplished for the city – getting Toronto's handling of the environment onto the world stage (he recently had framed a laudatory letter from former U.S. president Bill Clinton applauding Miller's efforts on this score); targeting at-risk neighbourhoods; Transit City – have faded, at least today, in memory. As he sifts the entrails of the 39-day strike he finds little fault of his own. "We always knew we'd have to give somewhere," he says of the negotiations that culminated most surprisingly with the option of the continued accrual of 18 sick days annually for city workers. "We achieved our goal. I really can't accept that anyone can see it in any other light whatsoever."

If there is a disconnect between the mayor and the people, that may well be it.

Let us pause.

On Wednesday, Miller gave a news conference. This is what he said: "The proposed agreement also eliminates the provision of bankable sick days to our employees by eliminating the provision to new employees and providing existing employees an option to take a payout or participate in a new short-term disability plan. This is how the elimination of sick banks has been done before in other jurisdictions ... and is the fair way to do it in the city of Toronto."

It was yet another miscalculation, for he failed to voluntarily lay out negotiated option Number 3 – the grandfathered sick bank accrual – insisting that the provision had been "eliminated." "Okay, so what's a better word?" he asked in our interview. "Removed? Discontinued? Stopped? Ended?"

Worse, the mayor had no upside to offer. "That press conference was supposed to be about telling Torontonians how their services were coming back," he says sourly. Instead, that news was put on hold pending agreement on back-to-work protocols for Local 416.

By Thursday, Miller was fronting yet another news conference, staring down the murder of oppositional councillors arrayed at the back of the member's lounge where the mayor briefs the press. Case Ootes. Karen Stintz. Denzil Minnan-Wong. "To suggest that our negotiations went outside the mandate is not only untrue, it's irresponsible, it's beneath contempt and it's beneath the very offices that these people hold," Miller thundered in oratory to rival Moses parting the Red Sea. By the way, the mayor added, no previous council had even attempted to do the hard work of getting the sick bank out of the contract.

Standing with his arms crossed, Case Ootes laughed lightly. "How does he know?" he said moments later. "In 2002 he was walking the picket line." (There's the trademark attack on Miller's politics.) "There were a lot of issues on the table and if my memory's right, that was one of them ... But we didn't get the opportunity because the province ordered the workers back to work."

Did Ootes think that, given the chance, council then would have been able to undo the provision for existing workers? "I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. That's not the point. This mayor ... made a commitment to the people to get this off the books."

In fact, Miller has gotten it off the books. Not today, but in a process of phase-out not unlike myriad other jurisdictions, including Etobicoke pre-amalgamation. The former city of York had similar provisions. Miller says he was well aware of the pattern in bargaining that had been set, a pattern emphasized in a presentation to council and the public yesterday by Bruce Anderson, the city's chief negotiator. Money will be saved, eventually, thus addressing the current urgency expressed across both the private and public sectors to contain benefits costs.

Miller checks his BlackBerry to recall how and when the turning point occurred. He fingers Wednesday, the 15th, as the day he was briefed that Local 416, led by Mark Ferguson, was prepared to talk about the sick bank. "One of their principles was choice," says Miller, who refuses to see grandfathering as an undoing of the way the city had framed its position. "Not at all," he says. "Anybody on council who pretends to have that position just isn't being honest."

A week earlier, on July 8, the city's employee labour relations committee had approved the city's negotiating mandate, the third such motion since September. "Bruce Anderson said very clearly that grandparenting would be one of those options they would have to consider if they were going to get a settlement," recalls councillor Janet Davis, who sits on the committee. "I find it very difficult to understand how anyone in the labour relations committee could somehow suggest that they weren't aware. It was very clear."

Committee member Francis Nunziata, grabbing a smoke outside city hall, says no such thing was clear to her. "When I was briefed by the mayor this week I asked if sick days are off the table. He said absolutely." And they are – for new hires. If Nunziata was confused, it didn't stop her from moving the motion to approve the July 8 mandate.

On that date, all members were cautioned by outside counsel not to speak about the progress, or lack there of, in negotiations. At some point, Case Ootes left the room. Miller's wife, Jill Arthur, happened to catch the councillor on CP24 and emailed Miller to give him a head's up. Miller was furious. "I didn't talk about the strategy," Ootes says. "I talked in generalities that from what I saw in the meeting that the two sides were so far apart that this strike was going to continue for quite some time." Was that appropriate? "Absolutely ... As a representative of the public, it was my responsibility to tell them what they were in for."

Mark Ferguson, coolly watching council's antics yesterday – and they are plentiful and often embarrassingly schoolyardish – credits the effectiveness of provincial mediators as being "instrumental" in ultimately aiding negotiations. "The framework for the settlement was most definitely a framework presented by the provincial leaders," he says. Mediator Reg Pearson, he adds, was key in bringing the two sides closer together. (Ferguson additionally insists that contrary to Case Ootes's memory, eliminating the sick bank was not proposed in bargaining in 2002.) Ferguson, it must be said, looks like a very contented man with the deal now done, including a 6 per cent wage increase over three years.

Throughout it all, the mayor was regularly briefed. He says he slept pretty well. He kept up his daily runs down to the lake from his home in High Park, past two of the temporary garbage dumps set up during the strike. Is he happy with the way he framed the issues? "Well," he says. "I told the facts ... What would have been easy would be to give the unions 3 per cent and not try to make any changes in the collective agreement. Then I would have been severely criticized by the same critics for selling out."

He believes – well, he would wouldn't he – that the mess of the strike will end up being merely a political moment, and not an election issue. Time will tell that tale.

Is he running again? "Yes." Is he committed to that? "Yes." Will he change his mind in six months? "No."

"I'm not saying this is my career. I'm saying I'm intending to run for one more term. I've always said that you need three terms to do what's needed to be done in the city."

The wallpaper on Miller's BlackBerry is a photo of himself, taken at the Humber River Bridge staring out toward the CN Tower. A good moment. An artful contrast to the bad moment through which he has led the city.

Another planet

2009-07-30T08:19:00.004-04:00

This planet needs another moon to accommodate all the extra lunatics. No one knows when to strike, or not to strike. A deed.

The unionists wallowed in disorganized assembly. Contracts are unheralded. Times to vote. The mayor puts both feet to tickling own tonsils.

I started out on a planet. Got abducted for sure.

Water logged

2009-07-29T13:51:00.005-04:00

People in Toronto appear to be suffering from being too waterlogged. New animal species are invading from the north. Which park was this image taken?

Ponds like this are caused by the presence of garbage piles. And attract vermin like this giant antlered water rat.

Poignant

2009-07-28T14:58:00.002-04:00

The Toronto civic workers strike enters its final stages. Like anything dealing with the Toronto City Council a simple vote can take days.

The unions take two days to ratify the tentative agreement. But it takes until Friday to get the Toronto City Council off its fat arses to vote on ratification. Is there something wrong here?

I overheard one lady in a group of Local #79 workers state what is for me the most poignant moment in the whole sorry mess. This local is CUPE for the inside workers which includes welfare case workers. She said"I hope we settle soon. I can't get along on two hundred dollars a week in strike pay".

Welfare recipients across the street are getting only $50.

Smell complaints

2009-07-24T09:13:00.003-04:00

Complaints about the smell of garbage confuses. It seems a remarkable complaint in a city whose population's popular hobbies are oral and anal sex.

Speech again

2009-07-23T18:07:00.001-04:00

Scoring intelligence, on a overcast day. Bank of Canada declares recession over. They hire Dubyás speech writer???

Experimentation

2009-07-23T09:03:00.003-04:00

Experimentalation is the digital watch word of the day. I am going to try integrating the phone into direct blogging to this web analdress.

It means some really weird postings should show up every so often. I am limited by 140 letter and space characters. Eventually this will become the haiku of media watch blogs. I will stick the photos in later.

Remember the great "E's" of life.

a. Eject
b. Egress
c. Endorphyns
d. Education
e. Ejaculation
f. Employment
g. Evolution
h. Exile
i. Enough
j. Embalmed

In the dumps

2009-07-22T09:30:00.005-04:00

Illness has contracted my full time this week past. Submitting material has been impossible. I must say that being sick is not fun.

Ode to Flu

Devolution confines
Puking refines
Choking basement sump
Seeking the porcelain
I dream the skin
And I am one
With the dump

From MacLeans Magazine six years ago

2009-07-16T09:53:00.003-04:00

This article is published for the education and edification of the students in digital watchers.

There are points of contention contained within this article because the choice of interviewees was spectacularly narrow. If further discussion is needed than okay, ready to rumble. Most of the contents in this article are consistent with what I was able to ascertain in the twenty years of being familiar with the TWNBMB environment.

Due to accuracy the name of TWNBMB is published. It will be the only time this happens.

Pictured is the principle Vice Principal as the subject of the horror, Reeve William Springer. It is the picture of evil incarnate. Standing in back is Member of Parliament at the time, Keith Penner. Investigations have led us to believe that Penner had nothing to do with Springer beyond the political context although they were both members of the Liberal Party. This photo has been provided by the archives of Black River Graphics.

Marathon Sued over Sexual Abuse

PAUL PARENT HAS NEVER before spoken publicly about the abuse he endured as a young teenager. Between the ages of 12 and 14, he was molested by a man who was both his teacher and the top elected official of the small town where he grew up. Two decades later, Parent, now 32, is at the kitchen table of the modest home he shares with his wife and two children. It is a Saturday night and he's drinking Molson Export. He is wearing a Maple Leafs sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing ham-sized upper arms and the outline of a tattoo on his right shoulder. Since last July, he's been working with an artist to create the tattoo's design, based on a concept he's had in mind for years. It is an unholy image of a man, grasped under his arms from above by an angel. From below, he is being clawed by a devil. It will take three sessions to plant the ink under his skin. "This is me - the eternal struggle between heaven and hell," says Parent. "I've always felt like that, like I'm caught."

From 1982 to 1984, Parent was sexually molested by Bill Springer, the teacher and reeve (in a township, the equivalent of a mayor), who died in 1992. Today, Parent is suing the town of MARATHON, Ont., where he grew up, and the school board that employed Springer, for $45 million, claiming they did not protect him when he was a boy. His lawsuit is the second to be filed against the municipality and the board in connection with Springer, a convicted serial abuser, and could trigger more, including a class action suit. It lands at a time when the law regarding past abuse is evolving rapidly - and with the courts increasingly sympathetic to victims, similar cases could spring up across the country, says legal expert Mayo Moran. "There's going to be a lot of calling to account," she predicts. But for Parent, just speaking about what he endured is very difficult. "This is very emotional," he says.

Parent was just one of many. After teaching children aged 11 to 14 for almost 25 years, Springer was charged in the fall of 1984 with 53 counts of sexual assault, indecent assault and buggery involving young boys. His victims are believed to number in the dozens. He pleaded guilty to 10 counts and was sentenced to two years less a day in prison. In addition to being a teacher and Marathon's reeve, Springer, 47 at the time of his sentencing, was active with the Scouts and president of the Minor Hockey Association and of the Lions Club. He was also head of the Thunder Bay Municipal League, director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and chairman of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Advisory Council. In the small, rough-hewn milltown of Marathon, Springer was a big man.

Parent was one of the boys who gave a statement to police. He also travelled to Thunder Bay, ready to testify at Springer's trial. (Since Springer admitted guilt, no witnesses were called.) What Parent wasn't prepared for was his own father's reaction. Tony Parent tormented, and blamed, his son. "I got the comments: 'Why didn't you stop it, why didn't you kill him?'" Paul Parent recalls. He folds a beer bottle cap between his thumb and index finger and drops it into an empty sitting on the table. His children, a boy who has just turned 13 and a daughter, 11, play on the computer in the next room as Parent talks about his father. "He said, 'You must be gay.' He called me a homo, he called me a faggot."

In the early hours of Jan. 12, 1986, six months after Springer went to jail, Parent attacked and killed his father, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and back. His mother and sister were also injured in the melee. Parent, then 15, was given the maximum sentence for manslaughter, three years in a tough juvenile detention centre. The judge, rejecting a psychiatrist's call for leniency, said Parent was under the influence of alcohol, heavy metal music and a preoccupation with the devil. During the trial, the abuse from Springer did not come up at all.

Parent's lawsuit against Marathon and its school board blames Springer's "malicious" conduct for a deterioration in the relationship between him and his father. Parent says the abuse caused him to suffer a breakdown, which in the end led him to kill his father. In his statement, Parent says Springer's misuse of authority "to control, manipulate and extort was cruel and sadistic."

THE TOWN OF MARATHON sits on the north shore of Lake Superior, roughly halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, along one side of a small bay dotted with islands of spruce trees. The surrounding landscape - the humpbacked hills of the Canadian Shield, the sweeping vistas of lake and sky, the seemingly endless forests - is quietly beautiful. Five kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway, and protected from the wide-open side of the lake by a hill, Marathon feels sequestered and remote. It dates to the 1940s, when Marathon Paper Mills Co. built a pulp mill that still operates. The town's first homes, built by the company - and even heated with its steam - cluster around the mill, which spews a white plume high into the sky. In 1985, around the time of Springer's conviction, three gold mines opened in the area, and the town roughly doubled in size as workers flooded in.

Today, Marathon is well-off - at $70,000, the average annual family income is well above the national figure - and its wealth is visible: campers, boats, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles line many driveways. In early December, the wind was blowing out toward the lake, leaving only faint whiffs of the often powerfully putrid mill fumes. Another, more comforting, smell was in the air - smoke from burning wood in fireplaces and stoves in people's homes. Like many northern resource towns, the population, at 4,700, is slowing thinning.

In the 1970s and early '80s, when Paul Parent was growing up, the population was about 2,300. His father, like most, worked in the mill. It was a small enough place that everyone knew their neighbour's business; children walked to school on their own. Even today, back and front yards all run into each other: there are no fences. Wendy Bell, a long-time resident and an early, unsuccessful whistle-blower on Springer, says the tight community made people feel safe. Gerald Graham, Thunder Bay's afternoon CBC Radio host, grew up in Marathon and recalls a carefree childhood, building tree forts and listening to the Beatles. "It was an isolated little town along the shore of Lake Superior," says Graham, now 50. "There was an innocence about it."

Perhaps the isolation, and the innocence, was part of the appeal to Bill Springer, who arrived in 1960 at age 23, hired to teach Grade 8. By 1969, Springer was called Marathon's "voice of minor hockey" by the local weekly, and he was running for a seat on the municipal council. He'd already become involved with Cubs and Scouts, and was the school's vice-principal. By the time Parent was in his Grade 6 class, Springer had been reeve for 11 years, a pillar of his community. Former students who, like Graham, weren't molested remember Springer as a flamboyant, jovial teacher. "Marathon," says Graham, "was the perfect place for a guy like Springer to pick - it was miles from everywhere and everybody had young kids. He preyed on the naïveté of people like me."

Springer was often around adolescent boys, says Bob Cheetham, a police officer in Marathon from 1978 to 1985 and one of the three cops who busted Springer in 1984. "There was always a kid in the front of Bill Springer's pickup truck," he says. Just over a year after arriving in Marathon, Cheetham says he began to hear "little things about some improprieties, that Bill Springer was involved in sexual activities, but nothing very tangible." Still, Cheetham mentioned the rumours to his chief, whose advice was to keep an ear to the ground. No formal investigation was launched.

Stephen Boon, who grew up in Schreiber, a nearby township with an intense hockey rivalry with Marathon, had heard about Springer, too. Boon, who today is a friend of Parent and who remembers brawling with him on the ice as a teen, says Springer was well-known among hockey players because he offered board to the visiting teams. "He made an attractive environment for those kids he lured," says Boon. "It was common knowledge among players. He offered 15-year-old boys everything they wanted: booze, porno, the run of the house."

Springer also brought groups of three or four boys to his cabin on Lake Wabikoba, about 45 minutes from Marathon. Parent says they'd start drinking around noon, and the boy who was most drunk would sleep with Springer. Parent has a recurring nightmare, still: he is a boy, back at Springer's cabin, and is very drunk. He's stumbled outside to throw up. He is trying hard to convince himself that what just took place in Springer's bed didn't actually happen. He returns to the cabin and pauses: just inside the door is a rifle, and he considers picking it up and shooting Springer. But he doesn't know if it is loaded and is scared to death of what Springer would do to him if it doesn't fire.

In recounting the story, Parent stops and says the dream, to this point, is a replay of what really happened to him as a boy. As the nightmare continues, though, he picks up the rifle, aims and pulls the trigger. There is nothing but a dead, empty click. He wakes up, panicked and in a cold sweat.

PARENT HAS A WAY of creating an impenetrable, guarded look about himself, as though he's pulled an invisible hood down low over his eyes. He is six-foot-four and weighs 250 pounds. His shoulders are enormous. He has a temper, he says. Until last fall, he wore his hair long, to his shoulders. His friends call him Banger, because he's a fan of heavy metal. Like many men his age, he has a goatee, but Parent's is long and shaped low on the edge of his chin, almost like a tufted lion's beard. Grey has begun to creep in on one side. For years, he says, he tried to bury the horror of the abuse. A social worker raised it about a year into his sentence, but he refused to open up. "That's the last thing you want people inside to know - that you were molested," he says. "I just sat there and looked at her and said, 'You know what? Nothing happened. Let it go. I don't want to talk about it.'"

Speaking out is very hard, still, and it is risky. He is concerned for his children, and worries about how other kids will treat them. He requests their names not be printed and forbids photographs. Last fall, he sat down and told them the truth about their grandfather's death. It was the hardest thing he's ever done, he says. But he has launched this lawsuit, he adds, partly for his children - to protect them from ever being abused.

Joe Rule, a 36-year-old man who has spent much of his adult life in jail, launched the first lawsuit against Marathon and its school board, claiming $12 million. He was abused by Springer from the age of 12 to 17, he says. He has had severe substance abuse problems, but is now sober and working hard to get his life in order. As a child, he was hit in the head with a baseball bat by another child and suffered brain damage. There is often a blank look in his eye. Like Parent, he lives in Thunder Bay. Parent launched his challenge after reading of Rule's lawsuit - and learning through it that complaints about Springer had allegedly been ignored by police and school board officials. He was appalled. "I had 19 years of suppressed - I don't even know what you call it - a ball of emotion," says Parent, his voice dropping into a low tone, seething with disbelief, "that just nailed me between the eyes. Somebody actually told them? They knew?"

He strokes his beard. And pulls the invisible hood over his face. "The cops knew, the board of education knew, town councillors knew." His voice is filled with contempt. "I want the people who knew and failed to do anything to know what I went through." He stabs a rigid finger at the table. For a moment the hood is lifted, and his eyes are burning. "They will know my pain."

Bob Cheetham believes Springer abused as many as 100 boys. He thinks different generations of the same families were molested. Thirty-odd children were involved in the police investigation, conducted in 1984 and 1985, he says. Their names, of course, were never released. In a small town, this doesn't make a lot of difference. While they don't know who was abused, people think many of Springer's victims are still close by - they are bound to be neighbours. Bonnie José, 39, looks at a photo taken in 1976 of her Grade 8 class trip. Springer stands in the bottom left corner. She scans the faces in the crowd: "I'm sure someone here was affected." Like many in the community, she was stunned to learn about the extent of the abuse. "I felt sick and shocked and shameful. I didn't really know," she says. The town has, at least, a moral responsibility toward Springer's victims, she says. "This did happen here. Yes, the whole community has a responsibility."

Not all residents are so sympathetic, and already the town is beginning to split over the lawsuits. Last fall, Artie Cooper, a one-time friend and business associate of Springer, received an envelope in the mail, postmarked in town. Cooper, now 54, was in Springer's Grade 8 class and later became a colleague, teaching at the same school. They led many class trips to Toronto together. In the envelope were paragraphs cut from local newspaper reports about the suits. While he had heard rumours about Springer, he "never, ever" saw inappropriate behaviour, he says. He thinks the mailed missive is "a call to come forward as part of the healing process." But he has nothing to offer, he says. "I don't have anything to hide and I don't have anything to come forward with." He has no clue who sent the envelope.

Many resent the spotlight on their town, illuminating a nasty part of its past. The abuse happened long ago, before most of the town's current population had even moved in. The man responsible - Springer - is dead, they say. "Why now and why us?" asks Rose Marie Comeau, 50, who was born in Marathon and taught by Springer. People wonder when it will end, she says. "When can we bury the SOB permanently?"

The broader community was victimized by Springer, along with the boys he abused, says community leader Wendy Bell. "He was very, very good at being a predator. He was very devious, a difficult man to catch." She is sitting on a sofa in her spacious living room, her feet tucked up beside her. Bell, who was Marathon's newly retitled mayor from 1985, shortly after Springer's sudden departure, until 1991, had complained about him in 1982. As a parent-chaperone, she had joined a class trip to Toronto and had been told by a student that Springer had pulled down his trousers. The behaviour was inappropriate, she told the board, and Springer should not be permitted to travel with students. When her complaint was ignored, she wrote a letter and hand-delivered it to the regional director of education. Again, there was no response.

Bell doesn't believe the community knew Springer was a pedophile. But she is appalled that the power of his position allowed him to so gravely breach trust. What is most galling to her, and causes tears to soak her cheeks, is that nothing was done to help the boys he abused. "The victims got nothing," she says. "It's the injustice. It's so sad that anyone would have to go through that - and do it on their own."

Cooper, who was shocked by Springer's arrest, expresses sorrow for the damage his one-time friend did to his victims. Still, he doesn't think much of the lawsuits. "How would you go about proving that the powers of authority knew about it - and did nothing?" he asks. "I think it's ridiculous, especially the money they are going after."

THE LAWSUITS are likely to take years to wend their way through the justice system. The key issue will be: who knew what when - and, most importantly, what did they do with that knowledge? Did they turn a blind eye? Mayo Moran is a law professor at the University of Toronto and has a forthcoming book on legal responsibility. Even if, in the past, the blind-eye approach was accepted as the right thing to do, the courts today are likely to frown on the practice, she says. A school board's responsibility to children, she adds, is more clear-cut than a town's. Parent and Rule will have to show either that the board knew or, with all clues out there, that it should have known and did not act; for instance, that it ignored or failed to follow up on a complaint. "It would be enough," Moran says, "to show that the board should have known."

In addition to Bell's complaints, there was at least one other, earlier incident that Parent's lawyer, Christopher Watkins - who is also acting for Joe Rule - will bring forth. In 1972, Springer was convicted of giving alcohol to minors while on a trip to Thunder Bay for a Scouts event. Subsequently, some parents wrote a letter to the school board, complaining about Springer. In a measure of the power Springer enjoyed, the letter was signed only, "A group of concerned parents." Still, he was dismissed from the Boy Scouts - only to rejoin some years later - and was forced to step down as vice-principal of the school, but allowed to stay on as a teacher.

Both the school board and the town say they will defend themselves. School board officials declined further comment. Pat Richardson, Marathon's mayor, says the matter is in the hands of the town's lawyers. "I don't believe the town is liable," she adds. "It was one man who did this damage. This was a person not sanctioned by the town."

In cases where there is merit, the parties often settle out of court, Moran says. Parent is willing to go all the way with this suit, he says, even though a settlement would be easier. The last thing he'd accept, he stresses, is a deal that prohibits him from speaking about the abuse. "I will not allow them to bury the issue. At the end of the day, they'll have to look me in the eye."

See also SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.

Maclean's January 20, 2003

Author KATHERINE MACKLEM

The Canadian Encyclopedia © 2009 Historica Foundation of Canada

McGuinty's needs

2009-07-15T12:03:00.002-04:00

McGuinty needs excuses. He needs a clean slate. MP Geo. Smitherman was caught by almost all the media sweeping up Toronto streets.

One wag supposed that not only was Geo planning to run for mayor, clean up streets, he also planned to scoop up the used condoms he found.

McGuinty needs brains. So much for the rational thinker. Ask yourself, just what does he do? You cannot get the answer from him, he doesn't know either.

Cheapskating quarterback

2009-07-14T11:39:00.000-04:00

Jessica available??? Tony Romo dumped Jessica Simpson. Get this... The day before her birthday!

I smell .... Cheap Skate! Cheap Cheap Cheap Wow.

Trash talk with Big Gord

2009-07-13T09:03:00.003-04:00

Worker tosses one more full garbage bag onto the thousands at Moss Park garbage site. Under the vision of the business people in the towers of power.

This park will be the site of a demonstration by Christie Pits residents.

Moss Park armory in background waits as the slow crawl of the procession of garbage creeps nearer. At present estimates place that this site will be full about November of this year.

Sit on this

2009-07-12T10:25:00.001-04:00

My piles are bigger than your piles. :))

One great idea...

2009-07-12T10:19:00.002-04:00

This was the idea that comes along once in a blue moon. This is the dump site. The idea of putting chips or mulch down beneath the piles of garbage bags was my idea.

I did suggest that Jack Pine Chips or mulch be used because of the high levels of turpentine in that stuff. However the city had six skids of cedar mulch kicking around and its free.

Its a substitute and won't quite do the same job but it will filter out water borne solids and make for a better speedier and less smellier clean up.

I finally had an idea that someone actually used!!!

Twinkies live longer

2009-07-12T10:16:00.000-04:00

Men who meet the following criteria are more likely to live longer, according to the study:
・ Are married
- Are not overweight
- Have low blood pressure
- Possess a strong grip (indicating overall strength and fitness)
- Have attained a high level of education
- Have low blood sugar
- Avoid heavy drinking
- Do not smoke
- Have a low level of bad cholesterol.

This is a list of a study made by some nutbar agency. And here's the mistake most people make. Length of life is not the same as... Quality of life.

You will note the clarification... “likely”.

You will also note “Happy” is NOT on the list.

You will note that social accomplishment or fame... NOT on the list.

You will note that being married is on the list... having kids is NOT and indeed, not even hinted at.

Driving fast... is NOT on the list. Driving in fact is NOT on the list.

Here's one that will shock the females... While marriage is on the list... Romance and Love are NOT on the list.

Here's one for the employer's and biz.... Work, hard work, or any form of employment are NOT on the list.

Golf.... NOT on the list.

Fishing .... NOT on the list.

Take out the garbage... NOT on the list.

So using this little study... what sort of men live long? From the list, apparently its married twinky little queers, who are best described as pet boys.

Yawn care

2009-07-11T09:56:00.003-04:00

Oh the people who outsmart themselves. Toronto people line up largely in the wrong category. Yes according to school standards they are very smart.

For instance in this picture here we have our city dweller returfing his front yard. I also know another thing. This turf was "free".

It is movie turf. Movie turf is shipped in very cheaply from farms in Manitoba usually. It is used on outdoor movie sets to green up the movie. It is often laid over normal turf then removed later. And the stuff is so cheap that it is often left behind or given away for free.

City people do not understand that good lawn turf is three to four times thicker than movie turf. In every sense of the word it is almost grown hydroponically. The type of grass is used for the speed that it grows not for its durability or suitability to be turf. Indeed walking on it the first time can kill it the first time.

Often movie turf cannot survive even Toronto's weather because the roots are way too shallow and the cold gets all the plant. A good turf protects plants. Movie turf doesn't. Also movie turf cannot be walked on for several years and must always be watered three to four times more than regular turf.

A photo record of this poor lawn will be kept. Looking good right now though.

Joining up

2009-07-10T08:36:00.002-04:00

La Legion Etrangere. When I was a kid I wanted to join. Like the only qualification I had was, like I was a foreigner.

The neat thing about young fantasies is the degree of unreality associated with them. However I was at that point where I could look at the fine print.

I wasn't a criminal.

It matter little whether I changed my name because well, no one was looking for me then or since.

I didn't have any love of my life that I particularly wanted to forget, hide from or destroy myself over.

I don't particularly like killing anything. The hunt was fun until the necessity to kill erupted as a road block. Killing some thing is disgusting albeit necessary in certain conditions.

La Legion went to some spectacularly bad climates, all hot. If not very dry, it would be very humid. All climates which scorpions, cobras, and crocodiles love.

Romance is hard.

Go Blue Jays!!!

2009-07-09T08:27:00.004-04:00

The hardline executive managers of the city put up this blue screen mesh around the dump site. This happened only a couple of hours that I posted the recent pics.

Oh woe is the clown that works in secret. Since the blue walls are up, they might as well get maximum use out of the color..

They should put up the Blue Jays Logo on these blue fence walls. The Jays are garbage too.

Cheeks on first

2009-07-09T07:56:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's idea flew past first base. It has everything to do with Jack Pine wood chips and trash talk. Its all positive.

The secret already

2009-07-08T12:36:00.002-04:00

The Toronto City Council decided today to meet with labor officials "in camera" which is government speak for "in secret". Miller decided to finally talk to someone.

In secret? Hey Dave... Big secret? We know they are on strike!

New feathers for Ms. Pigeon

2009-07-08T08:07:00.003-04:00

Speaking to me in pigeon english, Ms. Perle said "Coooo"

Now going back into the bleg a few days you would have seen my entry into the world of pigeon tail feathers. At first I thought the tailless pigeon may have been born like that. But the pins came in and now has a new sent of feathers in the tail section.

Time Collapse photos

2009-07-08T07:39:00.004-04:00

Now today is that day to compare. The top picture is the most recent. It was taken this morning from the very same spot the second picture had been taken from.

The pic below is the second in the record.

Cheek to cheek chips

2009-07-08T07:36:00.000-04:00

Waking up this morning I decided to make this a good day by doing something original, altruistic and brilliant. Another eureka moment. It was sort of hard to do. It was done in the shower.

The criteria. Must be original. Must be altruistic. Must be good idea. Must be done while wet.

One of my childhood heroes was actually Archimedes. What a guy. I mean what the hell anything ever good came out of taking a bath. Think about it. Easy work being a genius.

Guy digging a irrigation canal. He works in dirt and heat. All day.

I’m a genius. I take a bath. Bingo.

Anyway, I got the idea in my ass pocket. Gotta keep those ideas close to the source.

Couchy Couchy amen

2009-07-07T08:58:00.002-04:00

Six years old and lying on Grannies couch. Light streaming in through the front window. You hit the top of the couch. Poof its a cloud of dust.

You watch the dust swirl in the sunlight rays like a whirling ballet then gently fall.

Swat, swat, swat. More dust jumps off the couch into the light rays to join a bigger dance.

Swat, swat, swat. Again and again.

The NHL's recent free agency season for players was much like the couch swatting. All those free agents in ballet falling to earth slowly... And you know what? The couch is still dirty. All that promise. All that physical dance. Not much has changed.

Butter days ahead

2009-07-06T11:26:00.002-04:00

Sunday was a slack day. Miller's Mountains didn't climb by very much. But the smell is starting to waft northward into the quiet streets north of the park.

So minor was the contribution that no photo is required until tomorrow. Tuesday a butter day.

Memorial Wilson

2009-07-05T12:25:00.000-04:00

Change of pace. Get rid of those political enemas for a day. For those who are keeping track yes the piles known as Miller's Mountains on Moss Park grounds continue to grow. Phhht.

I wish to return to yesteryear. A long time ago. Before cell phones, computers, and eight tracks. Yes before the introduction of Sach's vaccine against polio. In the steam age.

This is the picture of a building that no longer exists. I took this picture about twenty four years ago. Come this September, 60 years ago, I was born in the top floor room to the left. That was supposed to be the operating room.

The far left has a major entrance that is an enclosed staircase with a large double door and vertical windows going up the stairwell. Climb up the stairs to the top floor. Immediately to the right.

It was also the very same room that I lost my tonsils about 12 years later. This picture was taken in the morning. Its just one of those things I should mention. Time seems important to some readers.

The building couldn't survive in the modern world. It was an energy pig in a world with cheap energy. It had few insulating components in the wall. In the basement frost used to build on the walls.

The building could've been fixed up for less price than it took to construct a brand new town hall. But there is no historic sense in TWNBMB. It is why I took this picture so long ago. I knew that I would enter it into the blug twenty four years later as something worthwhile to look at.

Think of it as a ... manger.

Couch sportatoes

2009-07-04T09:29:00.002-04:00

Someone told me that I have some USA readers. For that reason I cannot resist apologizing for the recent trash talk. And I have to apologize for this article which involves hockey. But in Canadian terms hockey the favorite spectator sport lies with the American moral attachment to baseball. I try to use hockey as a life allegory.

Look to the rays of the sun streaming in through the south windows. Swat the couch. Watch the dust rise in the still air, and fall back.

Free Agency came to the staggering National Hockey League a couple of days ago. Dozens of players went everywhere. It was like the dust from the couch. When the free agents all were in the air and falling to the ground it became obvious that whatever the frenzy nothing much had changed. Toronto a light fast team that couldn't score goals changed into a tough slow team that still can't score goals.

Like swat a dirty couch. After you will still have a dusty couch.