Jean Georges Restaurant (review)

Two of us ate at Jean Georges (the formal restaurant - there is also an informal one) in the Trump Tower, New York City on Friday, July 20 at 8:15 PM. We each had a tasting menu (7 courses, fixed price $150) and we each had the accompanying wine tasting menu (a very small glass of wine with each course, fixed price $120 and $100 for the "Summer" and "Classic" tasting menus, respectively). The total bill was $650 (all prices in US dollars). The amount of food was good - all the courses were very small, so we didn't leave feeling bloated (although we might have done had we eaten the desserts, which we didn't care for).

The room is very pleasant and elegant. The tables are widely spaced and comfortable, with one exception - our table, which was much too close to the table next to us. I shared a bench with the woman at the next table and we all heard every word said at both tables.

The wait staff is extremely knowledgeable and correct, but they were not pleasant or welcoming - when we had questions they answered them correctly but tended to back away as if talking was to be discouraged. We had to ask them to slow down the pace because the first two courses came out much too quickly.

(I didn't have the feeling that we were in the Reject's seats, as the people at the next table were moneyed New Yorkers and the man even seemed to be a regular. I also didn't feel that we got worse service than anyone else... if anything, I think we got better service than the norm.)

I describe all our courses and wines below. Our overall rating for Jean Georges is B- or C+. It's not a ripoff; they are trying to be a good restaurant, but the food just doesn't taste very good. They are particularly inept at desserts (which they tried to make up for by serving way too much). The wines were very interesting and were probably the best part of the meal, although the amount they poured was too little - it wasn't even enough to sip through the course. Also, the "Summer" menu wines were much better than the "Classic" menu wines (although my companion felt that she should have got more than one glass of red out of her seven glasses). At the end of the meal I asked for a list of the wines and then I did a little google research on them... unfortunately, the list is apparently not completely correct, as I detail below. It was also full of typos.

One last thing... despite the problems with the food, we had a really good time. I chose not to complain about some of my dishes (such as the raw egg in my caviar dish) in part because I didn't want to sour the mood. I definitely do not recommend Jean Georges, but the evening was fun and if nothing else, educational.

Here is the meal for each of us ("Summer" and "Classic" tasting menus):

For each:
Amuse bouche: a plate with four tiny items: a baby radish with coriander butter; a cherry that had been marinated in Sake; a clear green tomato gazbacho; and a tiny shrimp-toast. After it was all over we both agreed that this was the best part of the meal (excepting the cherry, which was not enhanced by the Sake).

"Summer tasting menu"
(my companion)

Course 1: A sandwich of slow-cooked egg yolk, American Sturgeon caviar and dill on slices on brioche

My companion was very happy with this dish. I found it too salty.

Wine: Champagne Delamotte, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Brut NV

This was a good champagne but we didn't find it to be particularly exciting. They filled our flutes only half-way, which was not very festive.

(Info: Wine Enthusiast score 93. Rated 91/100. "One of the best buys in exquisitely crafted champagne, this wine smells of fresh bread dough intermixed with buttery citrus. It reveals light to medium body, extraordinary precision, and a lingering effervescence with tiny pinpoint bubbles." - Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate ...The House of Delamotte is the fifth-oldest Champagne house in the region, founded in 1760, and located in the heart of the Côte des Blancs in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Delamotte is small (just 25,000 cases annually) and one of Champagne's best-kept secrets. It is the sister winery of the legendary House of Salon. The two wineries sit side-by-side and are both run by Didier Depond." It costs $39 a bottle.)

Course 2: Sliced hamachi, opal basil, cherry tomato

This raw fish didn't really work. When the man at the next table got it, we saw that he had a layer of something else under the fish. This layer had been left off my companion's plate. Perhaps it made it more interesting.

Wine: Gruner Veltliner, Alzinger Muhlpoint Smaragd, Wachau, Austria 2005

(Info: "Sleek, clear, winsome yet authoritative wines from the kindly hands of the newest Wachau superstar, Leo Alzinger Sr... Every vintage since 1995 is amongst the best collection in Austria. Alzinger’s wines are uniformly threaded into skeins of nuance and even when they’re at their biggest they’re always shapely and lissome. They aren’t delicious because they’re great; they’re great because they’re delicious. (The 2004 is $43.50)")

Course 3: Green asparagus with morels in cream sauce

Lightly cooked asparagus, simple morel cream sauce. My companion could see the reason for pairing these two (they are in season together) but she didn't feel that the cream sauce worked with the asparagus. Note also that we buy fresh Canadian morels in our local grocery store ($5.99 for 3.5 ounces) and make a similar sauce very easily.

Wine: Sauvignon Blanc, Brander Au naturel, Santa Ynex Valley, California 2006

We loved this wine!

(Info: 92 points (for the 2004 Au Naturel). "California's top Sauvignon Blanc specialist continues on a roll with this wonderfully pure, clean wine. It's crisp and bone dry in gooseberry, lemon, lime and fig flavors, with an intense cassis flavor that's unusual and thrilling in a dry Sauvignon Blanc. You'll savor every sip of this exceptional wine.")

Course 4: Seared sea trout, watermelon, paprika, lime

The trout was mushy, a real disappointment after the fabulous sea trout we ate at Commander's Palace in New Orleans recently. The watermelon was very good. They had marinated the watermelon to make it spicy, and then had vacuum-packed it to remove the juice and condense it - that's the kind of innovative and delicious cooking we expect from a restaurant of this caliber.

Wine: Vogelsang, Heidi Schrock, Weinbaurin, Austria, 2006

When he brought this wine, our waiter described it as a blended wine (the first grape started with "Welsh" but he said it was not from Wales). I am taking the wine names from the list given us by the sommelier and I'm not sure that we got the Heidi Schrock... in any event, this wine was fabulous: full of layers of wonderful flavors.

(Info: "Named "Austria's Wine-Grower of the Year" in 2003 by renowned wine magazine Falstaff, Heidi Schrock is the coolest female winemaker in Austria. Heidi has gathered experience from places like South Africa & Germany and brought it all back to her hometown of Rust. She took over the winery from her parents 20 years ago and has since spend much of her time reviving traditional wines of her Austro-Hungarian forefathers. The family motto states that tradition should be honored but also mixed with progress; for it means keeping alive the fire, not adoring the ashes.")

Course 5: Maine lobster, grilled corn gnocchi, sweet garlic nage, Jalapeno-parsley relish

This dish was delivered to me although it should have gone to my companion. I didn't like it at all. Some of the lobster was tough and hard to cut, and some was unsweet and slightly mushy. The broth just didn't taste very good. We switched plates for this course and my companion liked it better than what she got.

Wine: Viognier, Yves Cuilleron, Rhone, France, 2006

A really, really delicious wine! (I saw the 2005 on another restaurant's wine menu for $47/bottle, so it is not an expensive wine, probably under $20 in a store.)

Course 6: Rack of lamb with Thai pepper and mint, sweet pea puree

This was the second appearance of the sweet pea puree for my companion. She felt that the lamb was pedestrian. There was a nice pile of sweet peas and peanuts on the side. This was just okay.

Wine: Guidalberto, Sant Guido, Tuscany, Italy 2004

Very pleasant red wine that perfectly accompanied the lamb.

Dessert: We had four choices for dessert: chocolate, citrus, rhubarb or summer. Each was a selection of four small desserts.

My companion chose the "summer selection", which had four items: a tomato dessert salad; plum sorbet; sliced peaches with farmer's cheese; and a cooked cherry pudding with cocoa-based mousse on the side.

The tomato salad was not edible. The plum sorbet was so thin in flavor as to be uninteresting. I liked the sliced peaches very much but my companion did not. The cherry pudding was good.

Wine: Recioto De Soave Classico, Gini Col Foscarin, Veneto, Italy, 2001

A lovely white dessert wine!

(Info: Made from 100% Garganega, the name 'Col Foscarin' comes from the hillside where these vines for this wine are grown. Full golden yellow color, Intense and elegant bouquet with a note of ripe citrus fruits and apricot jam. Rich on the palate, full bodied, refined and with excellent persistence. The grapes are harvested in small wooden boxes and only the best bunches are taken for drying. These boxes are put into a special drying room (fruttaio) where there is natural ventilation. After five to six months the grapes are pressed after being selected once again.")

"Classic menu"
(I had this selection)

Course 1: Egg caviar

Served in a brown hen's egg, this is supposed to be lightly scrambled eggs on the bottom, with a dollop of vodka-infused whipped cream on top of that, with American sturgeon caviar on top. Unfortunately, the egg layer was completely uncooked and liquid, which tasted sort of yucky and also the two top layers fell into it and dissolved, making a mess. This course was not edible. I should have said something but our waiter disappeared at this point and a bus boy removed our plates.

Wine: Champagne Delamotte, as above

Course 2: Sea scallops, caramelized cauliflower, caper-raisin emulsion

An odd dish. Maybe I just don't like sweetened cauliflower, but it totally wiped out the tiny partial piece of scallop and didn't taste good at all.

Wine: Savennieres, Chateau de Chamboreau, Roches aux Moines - Cuvee d'Avant, Loire, France 2001

My first sip had an unpleasant aftertaste, like gasoline or maybe fingernail polish remover. This aftertaste diminished somewhat but never completely went away.

Course 3: Young garlic soup with thyme, sauteed frog's legs.

The soup was pleasant but a little bland. The tiny frog's legs were crispy and very lemony and quite nice.

Wine: Pinot Auxerrois, Albert Mann Vieilles Vignes, Alsace, France 2006

The waiter described this red wine as a "thin skinned grape that should be served cold." It was interesting. I enjoyed trying it very much (but might not order it if I have the chance). It tasted a bit like a Beaujolais Nouveau. Once again I'm not sure if the sommelier gave us the correct wine when he gave us a list of what we drank.

(Info: This goes for about $13 a bottle in a store. For info see the Albert Mann web site.)

Course 4: Turbot with Chateau Chalon Sauce

The turbot was very plain but well cooked (nice and firm). The sauce was okay but didn't really hit the spot. It had an odd sweetness to it. This course was just okay.

Wine: Chardonnay, Patz & Hall, Dutton Ranch, Russian River Valley, California, 2005

Nice oaky chardonnay.

(Info: "Rated: 91. Bright yellow. Restrained, pure nose hints at lemon ice; quite Chablis-like. Juicy, sharply delineated, if more tropical fruity in the mouth; but the flavors of pineapple and guava are refreshing rather than heavy. A nicely gripping chardonnay that conveys an impression of texture without weight. Finishes fresh and persistent." About $35 in a store.)

Course 5: Lobster Tartine, lemongrass and Fenugreek broth, pea shoots.

They mixed up this course (giving me my companion's dish), something we didn't realize until we checked the menus later. However, we both disliked the dish we had been presented so we switched and I ended up with the Lobster tartine. The broth was very tasty, not unlike something you'd get in a Thai restaurant. The lobster claw was not sweet and was a bit mushy, like a lobster that has been in a warm water holding tank for too long and then overcooked, but overall I enjoyed this dish.

Wine: Trousseau, Frederic Lornet, Arbois 2004

Again, I'm not sure that the sommelier gave me the correct name for this one. What I got was a white wine that was served fairly warm, which was suitable. It was an interesting wine and I'd like to try it again, so I'm sorry I don't know what it was (the Trousseau appears to be a red).

Course 6: Broiled squab, onion compote, Corn pancake with fois gras

Good squab (although the skin was not crispy). The corn pancake was mushy and sweet (not very good). The Hudson Valley fois gras was bland... I'm a huge fan of fois gras and had some great Hudson Valley just recently, so I'm not sure how they could mess it up so... it was nearly raw, which I like.

Wine: Syrah, Qupe Bien Nacido Vineyard, California, 2004

Nice full-bodied red.

(Info: Rated 92 points. $28/bottle.)

Dessert: I chose the "chocolate selection", which was a chocolate cake/souffle with vanilla ice cream; a salty chocolate "donut"; a chocolate brownie-like thing; and a little glass of two-layered chocolate liquid. I didn't care for any of them. The donut and brownie-type thing were both excessively salty and weird tasting. Between the two plates there was too much cocoa powder used.

Wine: Banyuls, M. Chapoutier, Languedoc-Roussillon, France 2004

A red dessert wine, it was okay, not exceptional.

(Wine Spectator said: "Fig and dark plum flavors dominate this rich and ripe dessert-style red. Balanced and fresh, with a good structure and a mint chocolate finish. Drink now through 2008. 270 cases made." About $17 a bottle.)

For each:
Friandises: homemade marshmallows (vanilla, strawberry and peppermint); homemade chocolates; homemade berry and orange jellies; and tiny macaroons (about the size of my small fingernail) filled with cream.

Great selection! However, we only enjoyed the macaroons. The jellies were very good but didn't go well with coffee. The rest just didn't taste very good. Even the little chocolates were odd-tasting.

On leaving they gave us each a tiny gift bag. In the bag was a fancy little box. In the box were two tiny chocolates (like the ones that came with the friandises). This seemed a tad precious.

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Joyful Death

That masterful negation
and collapse of all that makes me man.

- John Henry Newman in a poem set to music by Edward Elgar as The Dream of Gerontius

No, I'm not on my deathbed. I just attended the opening night gala of the Elora Festival.

The poet was a Roman Catholic cardinal and Elgar a staunch Catholic, but I have to wonder at the title. The work describes the death of Gerontius, followed by the judgement of his soul and its installment in purgatory, but the piece is called The Dream as if this is Gerontius's fantasy.

It also doesn't sound very Christian to say that death is the "collaspe of all that makes me man." Scholars may roll their eyes at my ignorance, but it's possible that a cardinal could be unwittingly unchristian. An author never completely understands the values he embeds in his works, and... paganism will out?

Christianity flourishes in Elgar's exuberant, joyful music depicting death. I'm not a believer but I like that attitude towards one's own demise. It is inevitable, natural, and unknowable, the thing that defines everything else we do, the ultimate. It does seem to be a state of grace to be able to embrace it.

I attended a full rehearsal before the performance, so got a double blast of the brilliance of Noel Edison, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Elora Festival Singers, Festival Orchestra, and soloists Kimberly Barber, Michael Colvin and Tyler Duncan. The music was sublime.

Noel Edison got in a good zinger during the rehearsal. After they rehearsed God Save the Queen, Noel said, "That one's for Conrad." (Conrad Black, aka Lord Black of Crossharbour, was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice today.)

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SiCKO (Review)

I really enjoyed SiCKO. Like most Michael Moore films it's engaging and thought-provoking. The movie goes beyond condemning US health insurance, so my reaction as a Canadian was not smug complacence. The real message of the movie is that the people should have more power in society, a theme that applies to Canada as well as the US. (We especially need stronger employment regulations, a theme I tend to harp on about.)

Those who don't agree with Moore will call the film propaganda, and that's not unfair. His arguments are emotional, to say the least. But boy is he effective. Tonight on CNN I saw uncredited shots from the movie of confused people in hospital gowns dumped on skid row (some US hospitals kick patients out of their beds when they can't pay, no matter what physical state they're in). Anderson Cooper said, "We have been reporting on this issue for over a year and a half." Well I sure missed it. And haven't you noticed that all of a sudden you're hearing about how well France runs things? That's straight out of SiCKO.

I remember the left-wing films of my youth. Many leftist activists would twist any issue to try to bring about their ultimate goal - the revolution, the downfall of society, and the start of the socialist utopia. Leftist films frequently were just a pack of lies and conspiracy theories spooned out to the gullible. It was like there was a worm in the movement making things rotten and reducing credibility. (Nowadays the Right has taken over the role of uncredible ideological extremist, and the Left has taken over the role of pragmatist - even to the extent of being fiscally conservative. Funny old world, isn't it?)

Moore isn't like those old Marxist lefties. Agree or disagree, he is working honestly and transparently to make his case for what he sees to be a better world. And I tend to agree with him. When he says, "How did we become like this?" with a note of despair, you know he's speaking from the heart.

The only Moore film that didn't hit a right note with me was Bowling for Columbine, which was confused and uncredible. (I don't think Canadians will ever quite forgive him for saying that we don't lock our front doors - not that we wouldn't want to live in a crimeless state, but it just ain't so.) And his ultimate conclusion for why there is so much crime in the US - the nightly news - was just silly.

But of his oeuvre, Moore has produced three marvellous, world-changing films: Roger & Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and SiCKO. And on the basis of SiCKO, I'd say he's getting better and better.

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Why Vote for Dalton McGuinty

Here are three reasons to vote Liberal in this fall's Ontario election, just as a start...

1. Check this out: http://dalton.ca/en/. It's a wee bit boring, but he says some good things. I especially recommend the bit about why he implemented the health care premium after saying he wouldn't raise taxes. Dalton's a good premier for Ontario.

2. Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris Mike Harris. Black booted cops at Queen's Park, A cabinet minister who jumped backwards into a bush and then claimed he was pushed, Sarah Polley getting her teeth kicked in, massive layoffs of nurses, health care system nearly destroyed, a huge hidden deficit, Toronto amalgamation, etc etc etc -- You might counter: why blame the current Conservative leader for a Conservative leader four years ago? The answer is that the Conservatives have a lot to answer for after the debacle of the Harris/Eaves years and the horrendous mess they left our province in.

3. The NDP's self-destruction during the years of the great Bob Rae, indicating that the Ontario NDP is not yet ready to run things.

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Libby Roundup

Here are some good reading/viewing sources in the Libby case:

* Dan Froomkin's summary in the Washington Post
* Interview with Joe Wilson on MSNBC
* Joe and Valerie (Plame) Wilson's legal support trust

On a personal note, while I think Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence is of the greatest importance and I agree with Joe Wilson that this is a case of treason and corruption, the brashness of their actions makes it difficult to express outrage anymore. Criticizing the Bush government is like punching a big steel wall. This past Sunday I heard a Republican strategist on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" saying that Cheney is an inspiration to all Republicans because of his audacious actions. She said he makes people mad but he gets things done. Public reaction doesn't seem to matter to these people at all - they are increasingly moving into a world of no accountability.

Plus ca Change

In 1971, 4% of married Canadian women had university degrees. For married men, the figure was 10%.

In 2001, 24% of Canadian wives and 19% of husbands had university degrees.

When the Globe & Mail reported that recently, they thought the interesting thing about the data was that couples are now more likely to have similar educational backgrounds than they were 30 years ago.

But that isn't what is staggeringly interesting about the data. That the incidence of men getting degrees has nearly doubled is pretty good. But six times as many women getting degrees: Holy smokes! And the fact that 30 years ago, men were twice as likely to have a degree as women, whereas now, women are better educated than men: Double holy smokes!

It's not the absolute numbers that are so flabbergasting, but the amazingly short span of time in which this change occurred. It makes me think that we must be on the cusp of some big changes for women and women's equality. So why are so many young women today mired in attitudes from the 1950s?

Here are some of the headlines from today's Globe & Mail Style section:

* War Zone Beauty Tips: Conflict isn't pretty, but you can be
* Low-cut Cook Wear Catches On
* Plane Clothes: What, have you given up on yourself? As the travel season takes off, Leanne Delap prescribes an antidote to the indignities of flying. Get dressed up!
* Here's to Tying One On: Don't leave home without a scarf this summer

This isn't about looking nice: it's about society inflicting norms on women. For example, I'm all for women shaving their legs if they want to, but when they're forced to, we're a little bit too much like the Taliban.

Back in the days when a woman's wealth was based on the income of her husband, you could see why it was so important that women had to doll themselves up. But nowadays, when women have their own careers, it seems bizarre that the female standard is still to be objects of sexual attraction. In fact, in a world where women don't need men to support them, it should be more like the animal world, and men should be dolling themselves up to attract women.

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Dreaming Insight

The last couple of days I've been trying to problem-solve in my dreams. This is a technique I learned from the CBC radio science show Quirks & Quarks years ago. Just before falling asleep you pose yourself a question, and then in the morning you see if a dream has provided an answer. Quirks & Quarks posed a difficult riddle and asked listeners to try to solve it in their sleep: several did, and the way their dreams exposed the answer was fascinating.

So I've done it the last two nights and had some interesting results. The first night the answer was clear and unambiguous but out of the question... an option I don't want to pursue. So I posed the question again and got another answer, a bit more cryptic and a bit less from left field, but still not a winner. I think I'll give it one more try. The process is giving me some insights into myself, if not providing an answer.

If you tap your subconscious for motivation, should you follow it? Isn't the subconscious all tied up with instinct and hormones and urges to procreate and stuff like that? On the other hand, if you deny your true nature won't you be at war with yourself, with unfortunate consequences?

For many years I kept a daily journal of my thoughts, and I gave it up because I came to feel that I was distorting my development by making overt too many things that should have stayed deep. Once exposed, some things lose their power. Left unexposed my mind can work things out on its own, resulting in preferences and choices that bubble up often without conscious help. Then I can apply rational thought to the decision-making process.

The Lady Vanishes... Into a Smokescreen of Lies

I forced myself to read an article in the current New Yorker on Hillary Clinton (The Lady Vanishes: Two biographies search for the real Hillary Clinton). In a sea of material about the presidential nominee-hopeful the New Yorker is a relatively credible source, and at least one of the two new books that the article describes (Karl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge) is also relatively credible.

Nonetheless, the article is a painful example of not seeing the big picture.

Nothing has emerged that is of any importance whatsoever. She lost some billing reports from her law firm that had been subpoenaed; then she found them and handed them over. She was involved in a real estate scheme that lost money. Her husband fooled around. Yawwwwwn. Just compare that to what Bush has done: overturning the Geneva Convention, altering the US Patriot act to enable himself to appoint partisan US attornies, conducting unwarranted domestic wire taps, outing a CIA agent to exact revenge against her husband, lying to the US people and the UN to get them to support an illegal war, waging an illegal war, overseeing billions of dollars handed out to friends in dodgy contracts, overseeing billions lost to fraud in Iraq, conducting extensive coverups, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

Among Democrats, some of the most pervasive criticism of Hillary is that she is too political; she has no values; she has changed her stripes for political gain; etc. This really seems to bother people. And yet what successful federal politician does not do that? McCain and Giuliani are out wooing the right without being called hypocrites. There is a constant dance amongst all contenders in both parties to address issues in a way that will not lose them votes. Hillary is in a tougher position, as a woman, to avoid negative labels, but I don't think her integrity is any the less.

Some of the criticism of Hillary is blatant sexism, such as the huge preoccupation with her use of her maiden name. For more on this, see my previous post Mother Jones Takes on Hillary.

Some of the criticism of Hillary is a rewriting of history. For example, the article cites the "health care debacle" as one of her most serious blunders. But at the time that her attempt to reform US health care failed, Hillary was widely credited with having done a brilliant job. Congress gave her a standing ovation. The consensus was that the country just wasn't ready for it yet, that noone could have overcome the political hurdles to achieving it, that she had paved the way for universal health care to be attempted again in the future.

A lot of the criticism is fueled by a brilliant conservative campaign to create an image of Hillary Clinton that is unappealing. Hillary, in the growing scenario, is a megalomaniacal ball-breaker whose ambition is so extreme as to be sociopathic.

This is of course just spin. Remember when Al Gore was running for president? He was painted as a delusional liar who claimed to have invented the internet, been the inspiration for Love Story, and a bunch of other absurd things. After he lost the election all that was completely debunked. None of it was true. The brilliance of the lies was that they were so absurd that Gore never knew how to respond to them. How could anyone believe such patent untruths? And yet everyone did - for just long enough for him to lose the presidency.

It reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story about Lyndon Johnson's early career. Johnson is supposed to have told his campaign manager to spread a rumor that his opponent had sex with barnyard animals. "But noone will believe that," his manager responded, to which Johnson replied, "No, but I want to hear the son of a bitch deny it!"

Hillary Clinton is not a megalomaniac, sociopathic ball-breaker. There is no evidence that she has done anything corrupt (and she, along with her husband, has been scrutinized down to her toe nails). The media and US public are once again being duped by a very effective Republican PR campaign.

These campaigns work in many ways. They allow Republicans to demonize the opposition. But even for Democrats who support Hillary, the campaign makes us less enthusiastic in our support. Insidiously, they sow doubt.

Bill Clinton managed to turn the attacks around, in part, by taking such a huge number of hits early in his campaign that people started to disbelieve the attacks. But then Bill Clinton was a dazzling candidate, intelligent and informed and well-spoken, and he blew the competition out of the water on his own merits. There aren't any current candidates, including Hillary, who rise above the pack that clearly. Also, Hillary has the huge disadvantage that her image is distorted by her gender, and it doesn't look like society is changing in that regard.

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It's Time to Start Thinking About Cutting Our Losses

A couple of years ago our local paper asked former Toronto mayor John Sewell to come to Kitchener and say what he thought should be done to improve the downtown (a seedy strip of pawn shops and dance clubs that has resisted years of upgrade attempts). The comment I recall the clearest was about the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum. Sewell said it was a mistake and will be a drain on the city for years to come.

The Children's Museum is a spectacular failure and recent moves to turn it around will probably only increase the drain on city resources.

The museum has an unfortunate history. The brain child of a local artist, the museum's board of directors decided to change direction and fired the originator. The manager who took over was later fired. The planning and creation of the museum was plagued by infighting. No organization should leave such a toll of damaged careers and bitterness.

The result is plain crummy. The museum, probably in an attempt to attract school groups, is too boringly educational, and is aimed too much at science-oriented 9 year old boys. There are way too many signs telling children not to climb on an exhibit or not to touch. There's a great deal of empty space, and many of the exhibits are broken (or at least they were when I was there last year). The location is unfortunate: there are no other tourist sites within walking distance, and the street outside is more comfortable for the many residents of nearby half-way houses than for children. Even the pricing is poorly thought out: it's $7 for everyone aged 3-54, with no family discounts.

When the old Goudy's department store was revamped to make the museum, too much of the floor space was removed, leaving a huge trendy open space the height of the building and lots of railings. How cool it would have been if they had left the old wooden floors and multi-levelled little rooms; the coffee shop in the basement with the exotic wood grain in the high-backed booths; and (if I remember correctly) the pneumatic tubes that clerks used to send paperwork around the store.

Not surprisingly, the museum is not attracting many kids and is hemorrhaging money. Last year it spent over a quarter of its $4M endowment.

Now, in a desperate move to do something, the museum has partnered with the University of Waterloo's Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology to bring a multimedia center to the museum. UW is rumored to be contributing a million dollars to the project. The problem? Most of what they plan to offer is already available on base-price PCs. It may have been a great thrill 10 years ago for kids to have a place to film themselves and edit videos, but now they have access to that technology at home, school, even the library.

The K-W Record reports, "Another area of the new gallery will feature a video-conferencing classroom that would have the potential to link students to other children on the other side of the country or the world." Uh, geeze guys: Computer cameras cost less than a movie on DVD. Macs have cameras built-in. There are a ton of sites that facilitate kids talking to other kids around the world. Given the wide availability of computers, will kids want to go to a museum to sit at a keyboard? I don't think so.

I have been to some pretty cool children's museums, all unique, in Ottawa, Chattanooga and Memphis. The Ottawa one is in the Museum of Civilization, and one of the highlights is a replica cargo ship where little ones can pick up a pint-sized broom and swab the decks, while older ones can operate a crane to lift bales of cotton on and off the ship. Another fun part is an old-timey food market with stands full of plastic food that kids can toss around or juggle or otherwise play with. The Memphis children's museum includes the front end of a passenger plane that lets kids (and adults) try out the pilot's seat. None of this is overtly educational, but it's mind expanding and fun.

I wish the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum luck in turning things around and becoming a good destination for children, but I don't see it happening. There is an art to designing a good museum. Some of the best I've been to are the civil rights museums in Birmingham and Memphis and the Holocaust museums in Berlin and Washington, DC - all of which left me awe-struck at the innovative and varied approaches to being both educational and interesting. I don't have any illusions that I could design a museum, and I wonder whether the people running our Children's Museum have the necessary skills either.

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Report from New Orleans

It has been 21 months since Katrina struck New Orleans, but big chunks of the city are still uninhabitable. Something like 200,000 of the displaced people are still unable to go home. Beyond the damage to the culture, the ongoing human suffering overwhelmed me: people paying mortgages and taxes on their destroyed homes while they are stuck in shelters in other states - two years after the disaster - trying to clean up and rebuild their lives, but being prevented from doing so.

In the days I spent there last week, I could almost believe there was a conspiracy to keep residents from coming home. Things preventing people from rebuilding their homes include:

- Promised government funding that hasn't come through.
- Inadequate compensation by government (I saw a house that was purchased for $200,000 just before Katrina; the house was destroyed by a nearby faulty levee, so the government must compensate the owners, except the government will only pay $70,000 for the house and land, which is less than the mortgage).
- Government incompetence. FEMA paid contractors $44/ton to remove debris. The contractors subcontracted for $34/ton. The subcontractors hired locals at $9/ton to do the work.
- Insurance companies refusing to compensate people even though most people had flood insurance as well as regular home insurance.
- Water, sanitation, electricity and other infrastructure that are still unavailable in some areas.
- Lots of confusion around new building regulations.
- Levees that are still not safe - and won't be safe even after they're rebuilt, because of restrictions on government disaster funds that allows only replacement and prevents improvements.
- No progress in getting rid of "Mister Go" (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), a useless canal that was the cause of much of the flooding.
- Unsolved, ongoing problems with pumps and with flood prevention procedures.

Out in the affected neighborhoods I saw thousands of empty, wrecked houses, some still furnished but made toxic by mold; a boat stuck in a house roof; a car floating in the lake; ruined roads; piles of debris; block after deserted block.

The residents have done a ton to get their city back on track. Locals drive out to the City Park with their own lawn mowers and try to keep the grass cut. People have set up soup kitchens and public washing facilities. People are still rescuing pets. One school is being manned by teachers who live in a makeshift trailer park across the street. Locals also seem extremely well-informed in what needs to be done to protect the city, and have become very politicized - necessarily, after being treated with criminal indifference by their government.

The French Quarter is as lovely as ever, but the problems show. All those great music halls and restaurants were made possible by the people who are the local culture, and many of those people aren't there anymore. One restaurant I went to has managed to hire 7 people, but they had 27 employees before Katrina struck. They get by with a reduced menu and hours. One of the joys of New Orleans is the food, drink, music and architecture of fine old establishments like Antoine's and Arnaud's. Those establishments are hanging on, but I can't imagine they'll last much longer.

The Disneyfication of New Orleans seems to be well under way, with more tourist glitz on top of less authentic culture, but the seedy side is also greatly on the rise. Bourbon Street is worse than ever, a place for drunk college boys looking for the sleaziest of strip clubs. The murder rate has skyrocketed, making New Orleans the murder capital of the US. Until two weeks ago there wasn't even a forensic lab in the city after Katrina. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "wide open city."

Locals insist that the events of August 2005 were not a natural disaster. Katrina passed the city with very little damage. The disaster was a canal to the gulf (the MR GO) that brought a storm surge; levees that were so inadequate that they were breached from below; the entire Mississippi River system being mismanaged (which resulted in the marshes dying south of NO, which in past hurricanes had cushioned the blow); and negligence during the aftermath.

The country was so outraged about government negligence and incompetence after Katrina and was so vocal about it that afterwards we all believed we had been heard and that government (federal, state and municipal) would take this disaster seriously and handle it responsibly. In fact, the government response to New Orleans has only got worse and worse. It's mind-boggling.

See also my collection of emails sent by locals during Katrina: Voices From Katrina

It Must Be Waterloo

If a resident of New York City wanted to bring glory to his home town, would he build a monument in Newark? If a Memphis resident wanted to honor her home town, would she pour her funds into Tupelo?

Of course not.

Waterloo hometown billionaire Jim Balsillie got himself an NHL team, and now he's thinking of parking it in... Hamilton? Cambridge?

Let's not kid ourselves. Hamilton, with the eager folks at Copps Coloseum, is a more convenient location. But sport isn't about business. Bringing the teams back to the fans is about heart and pride and patriotism and all that good stuff. This is about bringing the players back to the country they represent in the Olympics. This is about hometown pride. This is about ending the diaspora.

What more can I say. Come on, Jim, bring 'em home to Waterloo. Please.

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TB

From today's Globe & Mail:

"The World Health Organization estimates a third of the world's population is infected with TB."

Bring 'em Home, Jimbo!

Waterloo's resident billionaire Jim Balsillie has purchased an NHL team - the unfortunately named Predators - from Nashville. It is all we were hoping for and more - not some venerable old team like the Penguins, but an upstart outfit from a town that couldn't care less about hockey.

We have done absolutely none of the heavy lifting, but we're rooting for having our team moved back to Waterloo where it belongs... pronto. We even have some names in mind - howsabout "The Grand"? "The Loons"? "The Great Blue"? The enigmatic "Bento Box"? Or what about "The Diaspora" (check out the Predator roster; over half the team's Canadian).

In a great stroke of luck, it even looks like the Predator team colors are gold and black... just like, Eureka!, the University of Waterloo. (Our motto: "They say "why?" We say "whatever".)

Note: My previous plan to build the stadium on the site of a ski resort or the current Waterloo dump has turned out to be unfeasible. Ideas, anyone?

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Academic Journals Do Not Understand the Concept of Free Information

Recently I've been doing some research on passenger pigeons. My ancestors lived in northern Mississippi, one of the places where passenger pigeons were so populace until the 1880s that the sky would be dark for two days during their migration and tree branches would snap under their weight when they roosted. The ancestral "Big House", as we call it, was on Pigeon Roost Road.

Most people and organizations seem to get the spirit of the web - that information should be universally and freely available. The Mormons supply a treasure trove of genealogical information free on their web site. A variety of sites have made millions of out-of-copyright books available. Most newspaper material is freely available. Even magazines that have subscriptions often post articles after a couple of months have gone by. Individuals devote great amounts of time and effort updating free resources such as wikipedia. We freely offer up information in our web sites, blogs, comments, and reviews.

The sad realization whenever I research the web is that a major category that should be free isn't: academic articles.

Academic journals are not only frequently not free - they're beyond the price that most individuals would pay. They frequently charge $20 or $30 to read a single article, or hundreds of dollars a year to subscribe.

Think about it a minute. The academics who wrote the articles were not paid. Other academics donated time to peer review the article. In most cases the editor of the journal is an unpaid position. And that's not even considering the government grants these journals get. So how do they get off charging so much and effectively prohibiting access to all but a few?

No doubt they have their reasons - the cost of the print edition, for example. (I honestly can't think of another one.) They have all sorts of options beyond prohibitive per-article fees. They could host ads. They could charge for extra features like an index or newer articles. They could make articles free after a year.

The real problem is that they just don't get it - ideas and information should be freely available to everyone. It's not just an ideology; it's an ideology backed up by a business model. They lose on all fronts.

102 Official Languages?

According to CBC Radio's The House this week, the Canadian Senate is looking into providing translation services for their speeches. The translators will cover a number of aboriginal languages so that aboriginal senators can speak in their native tongue in the senate.

The House interviewed a Liberal Senator from New Brunswick who is pushing the idea. When The House asked about the high cost of such a service, the senator said that these are living languages that we should preserve, and compared to the cost of digging up dinosaurs and building museums, this will not cost much.

That, of course, begs the question of how speaking in the senate will help preserve a language.

More importantly, it shows remarkable short-sightedness. We have two official languages, French and English. Will we now add a hundred-odd aboriginal languages to our list of official languages? When asked whether this will set a precedent that the House of Commons will also have to meet, the senator said, "Of course. It will be difficult for anyone to back away from that practice once it is accepted."

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The Fluid Supply of Labor

A year or so ago people were saying that off-shoring had peaked. The argument was that companies were starting to realize that North Americans did a better job. Or that all the best Asian professionals were already hired and so wages were rising there. Or that companies couldn't cope with the problems of time difference and the need to travel half way around the world on a regular basis.

But the decline in hiring off-shore didn't happen. And now even if it did
it wouldn't matter much because Asian countries are developing their own indigenous companies in a broad range of sectors. If North American companies didn't hire Asians, then Asian companies would just under-sell them. The only way to stop the internationalization of labor would be to go back to high tariffs. That's not a winning proposition in any event, but it is unfeasible in the current situation because China, Japan and Korea own so much US debt.

The internationalization of the labor market has happened and it's here to stay. I once thought my job (software technical writer) was immune because the software market is still mostly English and hey - English is my native tongue - but in my company a large part of the writing team is in Singapore. I heard on As It Happens tonight that even journalism jobs are being out-sourced to Asia, and that Reuters has had over a hundred business reporters in Singapore for years - writing about North American business.

All that brings me to the purchase of Chrysler by Cerberus. Some people are arguing that Cerberus is a strip-and-flip specialist, but there's more to it than that. The private equity company makes its money by buying a company that is nearly insolvent, restructuring and making large cuts to the company, and eventually selling it for a profit. Cerberus is dead serious about restructuring companies and it has a lot of management expertise.

Cerberus is not a new investor in Detroit, probably because the US car industry is, in general, completely in the crapper. The Detroit Free Press writes, "In southeast Michigan, Cerberus already has purchased a controlling interest in General Motors Corp.'s finance arm, GMAC, as well as Michigan auto suppliers CTA Acoustics in Madison Heights and GDX Automotive in Farmington Hills. It has offered to invest $3.4 billion in parts giant Delphi Corp., which is in bankruptcy. And earlier this month, a judge gave auto supplier Tower Automotive, also in bankruptcy, preliminary permission to sell nearly all of its assets to Cerberus for $1 billion."

It's like this: The unions and the government have been holding their finger in the US car manufacturing dyke for years, keeping change at bay, maintaining not just high salaries and benefits for workers but also lousy workmanship, lousy design, and second-rate management. Not to mention a steadily eroding workforce as the companies crumbled. The resistance to change also extended to not reforming health care in the US, taking out some of the many profit-takers who contribute to the crippling health costs of unionized companies.

And that's all over now. Cerberus is a private company that doesn't have to disclose its doings to the SEC and doesn't have to answer to shareholders. It isn't going to follow the old car manufacturing paradigms. The future for Chrysler is far different than if Frank Stronach had been successful in his bid.

Change is coming. Not just to US car manufacturers, but to all of us who earn a salary in a rich western country. And isn't that what we always said we wanted? - Better education in developing countries. Equalization of pay scales around the world. An end to the western countries hogging all the world's wealth?

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Bunnies Made of Cheese

Now this is blogging...

Uncertain Principles

(Rant) - We're All Gonna Die

If the world's environmental scientists are correct that the world faces disaster if we don't avert global warming, then we're all going to die.

We are doing nothing. Less than nothing - we're dicking around with irrelevant policies, having arguments, getting into partisan bickering matches - while greenhouse gas emissions continue to go up, up, up.

We pat ourselves on the back for having hybrid car technology while the average fuel efficiency of new cars purchased in North America continues to fall. That's right: year on year, average mileage continues to get worse.

New housing is built with insufficient eaves or attic venting so that air conditioning is required. The widespread use of home air conditioning in Canada is crazy, and yet it grows.

Subdivisions proliferate that make efficient public transit impossible. Zoning allows store placement to require long car trips.

We blame China for pollution, even though Chinese pollution is only high in absolute terms, not per capita terms, and much of the pollution is generated from manufacturing - China is producing all the cheap disposable consumer crap that we cycle through our lives at increasing speed. It is North American consumers who are responsible for pollution caused by Chinese manufacturing.

The only way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is by raising fuel prices. But there is absolutely no public support for raising fuel prices. Just the opposite - citizens all over North America are hopping mad about "sky-high gas prices" and demanding government action to reduce them.

Everyone's blaming Jean Chretien for not doing more to meet our Kyoto targets, but he governed at a time when voters didn't want environmental action. Now voters are starting to panic and they want something to be done, but they still have their eye on that shiny new SUV and they still want to commute 100 kilometers a day.

Europe has done its part and led the way. It is North America that seems hell-bent on destroying the world.

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A Big Mess is Brewing

China and the US have entered an unholy alliance: China finances the US war in Iraq and in compensation the US keeps its markets open to Chinese consumer goods. Marcello De Cecco, an expert in the international monetary system, calls this Bretton Woods Two. Another way of describing it is that the US is forcing foreign central banks to finance the US trade deficit in order to keep their exchange rates from appreciating and their export-based economies from collapsing.

De Cecco, who is a professor at the University of Pisa, advisor to the Italian government, newspaper columnist and author of Money and Empire, gave a lecture this week at Waterloo's Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

De Cecco argues that the current situation has some parallels to the years leading up to the First World War. Then, the pound sterling was the international currency, backed by gold, but the UK was in decline. The two emerging superpowers were the US and Germany, neither of which had ambitions to replace the pound with their own currency. It was France who challenged the pound as world monetary standard, and France that also threw instability into the system, sometimes deliberately (in 1907-14 there were several episodes where France removed money from German markets for political reasons, forcing Germany to hoard gold). The dollar became the world currency after WWII.

Now, it is the US that seems to be in decline. China is the emerging superpower, but again it is not interested in replacing the dollar as the world currency. In fact, China is behaving very responsibly, doing its best to keep the current system working. The euro is the challenger to the dollar. Half of all world assets are held in private hands in Europe, and European investors may dump the dollar if the dollar starts to decline - as may Americans and everyone else, including even China. Of the many sources of instability in the current system (not the least being the behavior of the US government), Russia, a country that is on the decline and bitter about it, may prove to be a problem.

Professor De Cecco called his talk "From the Dollar Standard to a Multiple Currency Standard: Current Developments in the Light of Pre-1914 Experience" and summarized it as: "The world in which we live today is in many ways similar to, and in other ways different from, the one which existed in the two decades before 1914. New world powers are in the making now, as they were then. Power politics seems to have superseded the politics of alliances based on ethics and values. Is the multiple currency world towards which we seem to be going bound to prove as dynamically disastrous as the one which came to an end in 1914?"

De Cecco ended his talk with the ominous statement, "A big mess is brewing."

Related post:
The Unsustainable World Economy

Update: Gwynne Dyer

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2,4-D Redux

As we head into summer a number of Waterloo Region residents are up in arms about new by-laws that restrict the use of chemicals on lawns. How times have changed. Parents battled for decades to stop the government from spraying 2,4-D on schoolyards. Here's an article I wrote about the issue nearly 30 years ago, detailing what I saw to be a concerted effort by government to dismiss citizens' concerns.

Spraying with 2,4-D
The Sun tries to get to the bottom of the 2,4-D weed spray controversy and finds only one thing for certain: The Ministry of the Environment hasn't been much help.
by Ruth Haworth, Kawartha Sun, July 3, 1979

School is over, and the controversy raging over 2,4-D spraying in local schoolyards will probably fade into memory as another lost cause.

Parents in the Northumberland-Newcastle School District battled all spring with the Board of Education and Ontario Ministry of the Environment, trying to protect their children from the shortrun effects (nausea, fever, pain) and longrun effects (cancer, birth defects) that are the suspected results of 2,4-D herbicide poisoning. The Ministry repeatedly claimed that there is no evidence that 2,4-D is harmful, and so refused to take action.

The Ministry's attitude shocked and puzzled many concerned parents. Environment Minister Harry Parrott not only refused to take action - he refused to take seriously reports of the harmful effects of the schoolyard spraying. The Warkworth-based group PASS (Parents Against Senseless Spraying) compiled and publicized a list of students who became ill after spraying took place, and documented an instance of spray blowing off the school property and on to nearby gardens. They informed Parrott of their findings, but the Ministry has still not investigated.

The battle reached provincial proportion when NDP leader Mike Cassidy argued in the Ontario Legislature this spring that 2,4-D spraying was an unnecessary hazard to children and urged Dr Parrott to restrict its use in schoolyards. Dr Parrott retaliated by accusing Cassidy of arguing without evidence. So PASS sent a questionnaire out to parents in the Warkworth area and received 20 reports of children who became ill after spraying - with symptoms of headaches, fevers, swollen eyes, nausea and sore throats. Mr. Cassidy presented the list to Dr Parrott in the Legislature and asked for an investigation.

Dr Mikel, Health Officer for the Haliburtion-Kawartha-Pine Ridge district, was supposed to undertake the investigation, but he needed the list of names. He said he expected Nick Whitehead, the leader of PASS, to send him the list. Dr Mikel said he waited and waited, but now it's too late to check the children because their symptoms will have disappeared. He still doesn't know who they are.

The Sun asked Dr Mikel why he didn't obtain the list from Dr Parrott. His reply: Dr Parrott told him that the list he had been given was completely illegible - not a single name could be understood. But when the Sun phoned Mike Cassidy's office, we were told that the list Cassidy gave Dr Parrot was fully legible - "and in any event, if they were really serious they could have got the names from us - we have them."

So the Ministry, who has throughout the debate been arguing that 2,4-D spraying should continue because there is no evidence that it is harmful, did not follow up on concrete reports of children suffering from herbicide poisoning.

Dr Mikel argues that the issue really wasn't very serious, anyway. He said that children probably only had the flu, since herbicide poisoning doesn't usually entail fever (which seven of the twenty children had); that the progress of technological society necessitates some risks ("If we worried about the risk of rooves falling on our heads, we'd still be in mud huts," he said); that parents complain about weeds that children are allergic to, and then about the means of killing the weeds ("We can't win"); and that the parents are just troublemakers ("If they were really concerned about hazards to their children... they'd be campaigning against drunk drivers and that sort of thing").

Dr Parrott at one point argued that the children probably only had the flu, and on another occasion accused parents of deliberately subjecting their children to 2,4-D spray so they would develop symptoms.

Dr D.N. Huntley is the chairman of the Ministry of the Environment's Pesticides Advisory Committee. Dr Huntley told the Sun that he had concluded that 2,4-D was safe. He emphasized that the herbicide was legal, had been widely used for 30 years, and that none of the dozens of studies concluding that 2,4-D can lead to cancer or genetic defects are conclusive.

The other investigation urged by PASS concerned the spraying of 2,4-D in high winds. Whitehead has alleged that "the whole town stank after one spraying." One of the Ministry guidelines on the use of herbicides is that spraying be done in winds no higher than seven miles per hour to prevent the drifting of the chemical on to other property. But the Ministry's Pesticide Division Supervisor, Doug Wilson, told reporters that if a licensed applicator does the spraying, "then we can't stop it. He's doing nothing illegal."

PASS continues to fight 2,4-D spraying because it believes that there is evidence that it is harmful.

David Carlisle, a scientist with the federal ministry Environment Canada, has conducted tests in the Warkworth region and concluded that children who played on the grass within 48 hours of of spraying were exposed to 1,000 times the acceptable limit. Warkworth area doctor George Astaphan has commented that doctors would not suspect children they examined to be suffering from herbicide poisoning unless they knew of exposure because the symptoms are not unlike dermatological rashes and the flu - spraying has never been publicized before, so related illnesses likely went unnoticed.

2,4-D is primarily used in agriculture, and particularly in grain production. Saskatchewan's Minister of Agriculture, Edgar Kaeding, has announced that because of the herbicide's suspected hazards he will act to ban 2,4-D when a substitute is available.

The irony of the situation is that only one of the Northumberland-Newcastle District's 55 schools is sprayed for a serious weed - and that is poison ivy. In the other 54 playgrounds, 2,4-D is used to kill dandelions. PASS and the NDP have emphasized that they are not trying to get 2,4-D banned: they simply want to restrict its use on playgrounds. Whitehead has argued that, after accidents, the number one killer of children is cancer, and numerous studies indicate that 2,4-D causes cancer.

The Warkworth Journal recently wrote, "We feel quite strongly that if there is any doubt, or any possibility of harm... then the spraying should be halted." Linda Bird, the Warkworth mother of one of the sick children, has commented, "I don't see why they don't just mow the lawn. There would be no danger in that."

PASS has not given up. on July 11 the group will meet with Mike Cassidy at NDP candidate Hugh Jenney's Warkworth home and discuss their plans. As Mr. Whitehead says, "There's always next year."

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The EVC is Dead (Long Live the EVC)

Over the last year I have been trying to negotiate with my company to start an Employee Volunteer Committee. This week I finally threw in the towel. Perhaps someone else out there may have better luck implementing the idea.

What I wanted to do was start a committee that organized volunteer activities - say one a month for an afternoon. Employees would volunteer on company time (so the company is really volunteering the time). There are three goals: (1) Help out in the community; (2) Improve camaraderie among employees; (3) Provide good public relations for the company in our community. Some months the events could be held on a weekend, but the basic idea is that it's on company time. In return the EVC will try to think of events that provide good publicity for the company.

The EVC should be fairly large and all members should contribute to events so that the volunteer choices reflect the interests of the employee body. Examples might be: packing food a the local food bank; cleaning up a park in the spring and fall; running a children's craft tent at a summer festival; helping an environmental group to clean up a river; judging at a school science fair; and so on.

When I made the proposal to my company I thought they would want to scale back the idea, and I was prepared to do that (having, say, one event a quarter, or having only half the events be on company time). I was quite suprised that HR took a different stance: they wanted to greatly expand the idea and offload some of their work onto the committee. They wanted the EVC to be responsible for vetting all requests for funding that came into the company (not to make the final decision, but to make recommendations) and they wanted to start a program where every employee got time off to volunteer with the EVC finding volunteer opportunities for everyone and running the whole program.

We went around and around on the same points for months and finally this week I said I was out. Luckily the process was congenial so who knows, something might still come of the idea somewhere in the future.

Or somewhere else?

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The Bad Guys Always Win

It was with a deep pang of bitterness that I read that Thomson Newspapers is bidding to take over Reuters plc. I have worked for both companies. In the 1980s I worked for a Toronto company called IP Sharp Associates. Reuters purchased IPSA and I continued to be a Reuters employee until I was laid off in the early 90s. Later on in my career I had a contract as a business analyst in the IT department of Thomson's head office, then in Toronto. I left for a job opportunity in Africa, but my boss at Thomson nearly wooed me to stay as a permanent employee. Luckily I didn't, as Thomson moved its headquarters to the US a few months later and laid off most of the Toronto staff.

Both Reuters and Thomson are layoff-happy organizations. Layoffs are seemingly part of regular annual plans. They don't just get rid of deadwood. In fact, at least at Reuters my impression was that internal politics were so ferocious that layoffs had little to do with merit.

When Reuters took over IPSA they sent over an HR manager from their UK headquarters who was obviously chosen for her vicious ruthlessness. Layoffs began with tearful employees being escorted from the building by two big beefy security guards. We all knew that layoffs were coming when we saw those guys enter the lobby. By the time I got the axe, a year or more into the purge, the system was a little more humane, but still pretty brutal.

At the time I was laid off I was in a management team of more than half a dozen extremely bright, extremely dedicated people. Most of our careers never recovered. Some went into sales, some took jobs with much lower responsibility. Only a couple eventually worked their way back up to lesser management positions.

If Thomson is successful in taking over Reuters, life does not look good for employees at either company. Lives will be uprooted, people will be traumatized... all for what? Layoffs are inefficient, a quick jolt to the balance sheet with heavy long-term costs. It's bad business and it's a completely unacceptable way to treat a workforce that has given a company loyalty and dedication.

It's insane that as voters we don't demand that there be regulations protecting employees from layoffs, along with regulations curtailing the outrageous compensation of senior managers. France has such rules and still manages to maintain a vibrant capitalist system.

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State of Denial (Review)

Bob Woodward's third book about the Bush presidency, State of Denial, is well written, factual, unbelievably thorough, and a great record of events around the waging of the Iraq war. He had unprecedented access to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a zillion other major players in the White House and military. As one reviewer said, this a book that historians will use as a major resource in 100 years.

And yet, and yet. This book is a dense pile of facts without premise or conclusion. But a book like this must have premises and conclusions. At a minimum, they permeate the questions he asked and how he reported the responses. Either Woodward is hiding his conclusions, or he is confused himself.

The closest he gets to a conclusion is on page 490 (the second last page of the book), when he lists some of the questions he asked. "Didn't anyone at the White House notice that the actions being implemented on the ground in the months after the invasion were almost diametrically opposed to the plan that had been briefed to Bush?" And so on. But most of the questions are not just too obvious, but also dependent on other assumptions. The question "When did they realize that there would likely never be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?" implies that they truly believed at some point that there were WMD in Iraq - a premise that defies credulity once you read other sources.

At other points, Woodward is so deep in the projected world view of the Bushies that he loses sight of how the world works. He seems flabbergasted that in his interviews, Bush and Rumsfeld refuse to admit how dire the situation is in Iraq. But why would they? It's not shocking that the President and Defence Secretary put a brave face on a war during the war. It doesn't mean that they're in a state of denial. Does Woodward really think that he has such stature that nobody would prevaricate when he interviews them? Seemingly so.

Woodward's lack of credulity (or unrealistic belief in his own abilities) means that the book presents (in part) a picture of Bush & co. that is exactly what they wanted him to see. The impression that Woodward gives is that all the three-word slogans used during the war were completely heartfelt. These are a bunch of good guys doing what they think is best. The only reason they invaded is to protect the world from attack by Saddam Hussein. True, Rumsfeld comes in for some heavy drubbing, but I got the impression that Rumsfeld's biggest crime is that the war went badly.

In terms of revelations in the book, the thing that really blew me away is how much of the problem was basic mismanagement. Again and again there were multiple bosses and no clear chain of command. On several occasions in the book Bush gave direct orders that were ignored (it seems that his subordinates have very little respect for him). Bremer acted as if he reported directly to Bush, but Bush said he reported to Rumsfeld. At one time Rumsfeld declares that Bremer reports to him and at another time Rumsfeld says that Bremer reports to Rice. Some of this stuff is just big government bureaucracy, but there are giant gaffes like having a theater of war that had two supreme commanders. Even Condoleeza Rice calls the government "dysfunctional".

Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot from the book and I enjoyed reading it. But when I was finished I had to give my head a shake to correct some misimpressions of Bush and his White House. That's not the way it should work.

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Get Out

US administration officials like to say that if they leave Iraq now, there will be civil war and regional instability. This is untrue. If they stay in Iraq there will be civil war and regional instability. If the US pulls out, Iraq has a chance to pick up the pieces.

Violence in Iraq is aimed against the American occupation. Thousands of people are dying because of this resistance to the US occupation, and the resistance is only going to spread to more and more moderate Iraqis. Here are the casualty estimates as of today:

US military deaths (Iraq): 3,346
US military wounded (Iraq): 24,912
Iraqi civilian deaths (minimum): 62,570
Iraqi deaths related to the war and occupation: 655,000

In addition to the US military deaths, there are untold military contractors on the US payroll who have been killed in Iraq and whose deaths go unreported.

In addition to Iraqi deaths, there are millions of Iraqi refugees who have fled the country, many to Syria.

US attempts to reconstruct infrastructure that it bombed in 2003 have been a disaster, in part because of widespread fraud among contractors friendly to the Bush administration. The New York Times reports today: "In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle."

The US owes Iraq a lot. The illegal invasion and destruction requires reparation. Occupation is not reparation: just the opposite. By staying in Iraq, the US just continues to kill people and destroy infrastructure.

The Bush administration doesn't want to leave Iraq because they don't want to admit defeat. But defeat has happened and it's not getting better. Thank heavens there's a Democrat-led congress now to make the military leave.

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The Scary New World of Irrational US Retaliation

Canada dodged a bullet on 9/11. If the US had uncovered any connection between the 9/11 terrorists and Canada - even a minor one - they would have slammed Canada and slammed us hard.

Even though not a single piece of evidence was found linking Canada to 9/11, many Americans believed for years afterwards that Canada was a major security threat to the US. Even though the US let the terrorists into the country, taught them how to fly airplanes, and missed warnings that they were trouble, it was Canadian immigration and domestic security policies that were under fire.

The American populace suffered a mass derangement after 9/11 that lasted for four years. In their derangement, they thought that invading a completely unrelated country and killing hundreds of thousands of people was a justified response. Hardly anyone in the whole world believed the lies justifying the war - with the exception of the vast majority of Americans. Even Britons didn't believe it.

Over the last year or so American media has finally started to question the war, but now it's too late. The frightening thing is that the Americans could do it again. It might not be a military invasion. There are other ways to attack a nation.

We even know where they're going to do it next time: China.

Other Questions About the War in Iraq

I am baffled not only about why the US invaded Iraq, but also about other things concerning that war:

Why did Tony Blair support it?
Unlike many people, I really like Tony Blair. He's my kind of politician: a pragmatic lefty - fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and someone who knows that the devil's in the details. He talked straight and he knew what he was talking about. He spoke from the heart and with conviction. Plus, he came into power and solved the Irish problem - after more than 100 years of strife and terrorism, he just fixed it. And he gave limited sovereignty to Scotland and Wales - not as much as your average province or state has, but better than hundreds of years of English rule has allowed.

Then he went and got all buddied up with Bush.2. At first I thought that this was a requirement of the US-UK "special arrangement" (or whatever they call it now) - the secret sharing of intelligence info and general quid pro quo between the two powers. But Blair seemed to be legitimately, even passionately, in support of the invasion. If he was coerced, he's the world's greatest actor.

Could it have been naivete and stupidity? That doesn't fit my image of Blair.

The big problem is how to reconcile Blair's war values with what his values seemed to be prior to the war. Was he lying before? Did he change? It just doesn't make any sense. There wasn't even any political expediency. He knew that his support for the war was so unpopular that he was wrecking his popularity and his legacy. And yet... he did it.

Did the Bushies ever really think they could win?
There has been a lot of criticism of Bush for not having an exit strategy. But an exit strategy is just another way of saying you have a vision for how to win and finish something. They didn't.

They didn't have one in Afghanistan either. They started out really well in Afghanistan: without a lot of bombing, CIA agents with bags of cash and some special forces troops managed to buy off warlords and topple the Taliban. It looked good on the news for a little while... until it became obvious that toppling the Taliban isn't the same as defeating the Taliban. Now we're all bogged down in Afghanistan like the Russians and many other invaders before them, and I don't know that anyone has had much success at that strategy.

They went into Iraq with half the troops that experienced war strategists said they needed, they blew up more infrastructure than they should have, and they dismantled all the Iraqi security forces. They never had a chance. They cared a lot - to the point of panic - that they didn't find any WMD to justify their invasion, but did they care that they were losing?

It's as if the Bush gang can't plan beyond the next headline. Like someone who gleefully takes your rook, not realizing that they've opened themselves up for checkmate. But they can't be that stupid. When it comes to outfoxing the Democrats in elections, they're 3 for 4. They have the most highly trained military in the world advising them. It just doesn't seem possible that they could have thought they'd win the war that they planned.

Is it possible that they didn't care whether they won or lost? If their goal was to create a Pax Americana - a new world order based on America being the sole superpower - then maybe winning seemed secondary, and the whole point was just to show the world they would use their military might unilaterally. But if that were true, it has backfired big time. Being defeated by an impoverished country of 30 million (pre-war population) is hardly the way to look tough.

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Why Did They Go to War in Iraq?

Such a simple question... and such a baffling one.

Here are all the reasons I can think up for why American war planners wanted to invade Iraq:

* They really believed Iraq had WMD: None of the insiders could have believed this. More and more US and British officials have exposed just how little evidence there was - and how much counter-evidence. Even George Tenet has said that his "slam dunk" comment only referred to how easy it would be to convince Americans that there were WMD. Insiders knew that Sadaam had not had WMD since 1991, and that UN sanctions since then had crippled him. He was no threat. If anything, Iraq was probably seen as an easy target. (Why would the US have massed its troops within Scud range of Iraq for months before the invasion if they believed Sadaam could attack them?) It seems likely that they thought they could find enough weapons to justify their invasion, but not likely that it was ever a reason for war.

* They really believed Hussein had ties with al Qaeda: Ditto: they knew that he didn't have any such ties and that Sadaam and bin Laden were fierce enemies. In addition, planning for the attack started in the first National Security Council meeting of Bush's presidency, nine months before 9/11. The Bush presidency showed no interest in terrorism before 9/11.

* Bush's floundering presidency: Like Thatcher in the Falklands, Bush used the war to win a second term, but I'm not cynical enough to believe that Republicans would kill hundreds of thousands of people to win an election.

* They wanted to finish the Gulf war: Embittered Republicans felt Bush.1 had been to soft when he didn't invade Baghdad and they wanted to finish the job. Or: Bush.2 wanted to one-up his dad. Or... various other explanations of the father-son relationship. Sounds unlikely. Most indications are that Bush policy does not emanate from Bush, but from his advisors. And the advisors surely can't be stupid enough to want to fight a war that had been over for more than 10 years.

* US neoconservatives wanted to start a new world order with the US as the global dominator, and they needed to attack someone as a show of force: This is Gwynne Dyer's main thesis in his book Future: Tense, and his arguments are persuasive. It also fits with why they decided to break with the Geneva Convention (the US is showing itself to be above all that on grounds of moral necessity). Still, I find it too cynical to be credible.

* They wanted to undermine the UN: This is related to the last item - they want to supplant the international power of the UN. This is true, although again it seems more of a side-effect or means rather than a motive.

* Iraq was a threat to Israel: It is true that several of Bush's key advisors had close ties to the Likud Party. But again, the lack of immediate threat and the toothlessness of Sadaam's regime make any argument based on threat to seem unlikely.

* They wanted to control Middle East oil: There is no reason to worry about oil supplies anymore. Even Iran has never held back oil sales from whoever wants to buy it. There was a theory that the US needed to invade Iraq in order to build an oil pipeline, but it has been discredited. Instability of oil supply was more of a Cold War issue, and could resurface if the US starts a cold war with China, but it isn't an issue now.

* Saddam Hussein refused to allow WMD inspectors to work in Iraq: Not true. He was very cooperative and they were able to do a thorough job.

* Sadaam threatened the US or US interests: Just the opposite. Hussein was quite cordial towards the US. Sadaam even consulted the US amabassador to Iraq before invading Kuwait, and appeared to get the green light to go ahead with the plan. (This was revealed in the New Yorker shortly after the Gulf War.)

* They wanted to make the Bush oil industry and military contractor base rich: That seems to have been a motivation in the way the war was planned, but it's hard to believe that even this crew would go to war for that reason.

* They wanted to create a permanent military base in Iraq so troops could be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia: It's true that the military presence in Saudi Arabia has caused some instability in the country, but the US could move more forces to Bahrain or Qatar.

* Humanitarian reasons: Bush? Ha, ha. Also, while I don't condone Sadaam in the least, the Americans have immensely overstated Sadaam's atrocities. The nerve gas deaths for which he was executed were part of the Iraq-Iran war. Most of the mass graves that have been found in Iraq were due to a 1993 uprising against him. Sadaam was no Pol Pot, not even a Milocevic.

To me, it just doesn't add up. You might say that it's difficult to see why anyone would start a war, but actually I can think of motivation for most wars, even if they're evil or irrational. You might also say that it's hard to see any reason for starting a war after it has been lost, and that might be my problem. Except I'm not sure that they ever cared about winning this war. More on that later.

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The Unsustainable World Economy

We live in precarious times. The US dollar is the official world currency - around the world, over two-thirds of all national reserves are held in US dollars - and yet it is very, very vulnerable. The vulnerabilities of the US dollar include:

* Supply-side financial markets: Enormous amounts of US debt are being held by East Asian countries, notably China, Japan and Korea. These countries are keeping their currencies artificially low (thus propping up the dollar) to fuel their growing export market. If they change their policies, the US dollar could crash.
* Supply side politics: If countries lose faith in the dollar, they could start moving their reserves and transactions to other currencies, causing the US dollar to crash.
* Demand-side US markets: US consumers are fueling the current world financial system by buying enormous amounts of cheap imported goods. (Ninety percent of Wal-Mart's sales are from imports.) If US consumers reduce their demand, say because of a housing market crash or rising interest rates, the whole financial system could topple.

The current system evolved somewhat by accident. There were a series of financial crashes in 1997, notably in Russia, East Asian and Brazil. Countries responded by building reserves of dollars in case of future crises. This caused the US dollar to rise, which fueled exports from those countries. The countries liked that and started to manage their exchange rates to keep their exchange rates low against the US dollar, which caused them to hold more US currency and debt.

Meanwhile, back in the US an ideological president was elected who didn't believe in government intervention. To be fair, currency exchange intervention had been declining in the US before Bush, but Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, did intervene in the currency market a couple of times. Under Bush, there has been no currency market intervention whatsoever. The US dollar - a key component of economies the world over - has been largely ignored by the US government.

This has had some benefits. The US has enjoyed a ton of cheap goods, and the reliance on cheap imports has helped dampen inflation. East Asia has seen enormous growth. Multinational corporations are making a ton of money off the cheap labor. Stock markets are booming.

But there is a huge downside. While US consumers are getting great prices, this situation is keeping their wages down. East Asian exports are growing, but the wealth isn't flowing to citizens who could in turn create a domestic market for goods. In fact, we're in a bizarre situation where capital is flowing from poor countries to the US.

Furthermore, the whole system is becoming increasingly unsustainable and could result in a huge crisis. If it does, the world economy is very vulnerable. The problems of capital flight which caused the 1997 currency crisis have not been addressed and could happen again, worse. The countries who rely on exports will be devastated if the US dollar collapses. The US currently has a huge deficit and will not be in a good position to help soften the blow for its citizens.

In addition (and this may be meandering into the genre of conspiracy theory), the US could react to such a financial crisis in a very bad way. I'm not just talking about protectionism and nationalism. Is it a coincidence that the Bush administration is trying to position China as a national threat to the US? China holds enormous amounts of US debt and the US seems to be positioning China as an enemy. Who knows what might happen.

I went to a lecture today by Thomas Palley, who argued that the solution is to create a revised Bretton Woods system. He proposes two main mechanisms:

* Managed capital flows: Put in place systems that will avert currency collapse due to capital flight. For example, a "speed bump" law on capital inflows: when someone brings capital into a country, they have to park it for a set period of time with the central bank at a set interest rate. Another example of this sort of safeguard is to require hedging on foreign exchange-denominated borrowing.
* Managed exchange rates: Currency rates should be managed to ensure sustainable trade deficits/surpluses. But the onus must be on the strong currencies to bail out the weak currencies: financial markets are now so strong that they can muster more financial clout than just about any economy, so the weaker currencies can't defend themselves. Also, the stronger currencies are reaping a benefit that they should pay for.

Palley wants these innovations to be put in place before there is a crash, to avert it. However he sees no political will in the US or elsewhere to do so. He suspects there will be a worldwide financial crash, and soon, and hopes that we can put his policies in place at least after the fact.

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Apple Goes Bad

Okay, the Mac-PC ads were funny at first. They didn't start out as attack ads. At first Mac poked gentle fun at PC for thinking that his graphic add-ons were easy to use. The message was that PCs are designed for business purposes but that Macs are better for home use. Very congenial, ha ha, very nice.

The last few weeks the tone has changed. Now Apple is running full-bore attack ads against PCs. They're nasty and unpleasant and inaccurate. (I say the latter as a current Vista user and a former user of Mac. I didn't expect to like Vista but I do - very much. The Allow/Deny dialogs are not a problem, and except for a minor bug in the email import wizard, I haven't had any problems with it.)

It's too bad Apple didn't quit while they were ahead. They had a really good thing going, and they blew it. They started out looking like the cool company, and now they just look like another bunch of big business jerks.

Losing the Lord... and Gaining a Bpllllfff

From time to time, those of us in the Commonwealth talk about dumping the monarchy. Australia almost did it in 1999; even in Britain there was some discussion of it during the hoariest days of the Charles-and-Di soap opera.

Me, I don't mind the monarchy. I liked licking the back of the Queen's head - until they made self-stick stamps. If you have to have a head of state, an empty figurehead is as good as the next guy. At least it isn't Steven Harper.

What I hate, hate, hate is these damn dames. Loser lords. Boring barons. The whole concept of titles is crass and insulting, like expecting us to touch a forelock or drop a curtsey when our superiors pass by.

If we can't stop the Queen from promoting these charlatans and if we have to put up with media outlets like the Globe & Mail using them incessantly, then maybe we can adopt a new pronunciation for titles. My spelling of this new pronunciation would be like this: Bpllllfff. For example: Bpllllfff Elton is throwing an Oscar party. Pllbbfll Paul is taking a private helicopter to the ice floes to stop poor people from making a living. PBlfffff Black Bplf Bplf Bplf is awaiting the jury's verdict.

I was going to suggest how we could salute them but I thought it might seem impolite.

Not NIMBY - Just Good Planning

Today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has a report of a recent public planning meeting. Some politicians are calling for another soup kitchen in downtown Waterloo.

I believe in a strong social safety net, in affordable housing and subsidized services for people who need them. I have done extensive volunteer work at food banks and give generously to my local food bank every year without fail.

But I'm a single woman who lives in downtown Waterloo and in recent years I have felt unsafe walking by myself downtown. The reason is that I am threatened by strange men. Most recently it was after dark (about 9 PM this winter) and I was walking on King Street. Noone was around when a man emerged from the shadows of a doorway and asked me for money. I said no but he continued to walk beside me, pestering me. My mother, who gets around very slowly with a walker, had a worse experience when a man who seemed to have severe mental problems planted himself in front of her, blocking her way on a narrow sidewalk while yelling at her. It doesn't take many of these experiences for a woman (quite rationally) to be reluctant to go out on her own.

AND THAT REALLY SUCKS. Both my mother and I live downtown (in different places) because we like the freedom of walking to shops and entertainment. Both of us are without male escorts. Thanks to these experiences, both of us have limited freedom to go out.

We already have a mess in downtown Kitchener, which has a lot of scary people. I have witnessed fights twice in the last couple of years, once where a bunch of teens were beating up a homeless man in the square in front of City Hall. Downtown Kitchener has several institutions to help homeless teenagers and adults - and that's great and we all praise them for their good work - but a side effect is that downtown Kitchener is no longer a place where most citizens can safely and comfortably spend any time. I do go there (occasionally, always in a group and always parking close to my destination), and I see a lot of shady characters.

The Political Correctness Police can tell me that I have no right to question any help we provide to the underpriviledged, but I'm underpriviledged here too. I know that most people who use soup kitchens are good people who wouldn't cause me any trouble, but it's just a fact that a soup kitchen will attract a percentage of people whose presence will make the downtown more unsafe for me. I know this because of some of the people who live in a halfway house near downtown or who go to a soup kitchen near my house. It's probably the case that the people who cause problems are people with severe mental problems or people with criminal records.

If these politicians (none of whom, I'd bet, walk alone downtown at night) insist on putting another soup kitchen or shelter in my neighborhood, then they should also pay for increased police foot patrols at night... enough police that a woman can walk on her own without fear.

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Improving Medical Research

I recently read an article called Office workers risk blood clots in BBC News, and the thought crossed my mind that this is an excellent reason to be a smoker: you get to get up every hour or so and take a little walk, stretch your legs, reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis. You also rest your eyes, have a mental health break, get to know your coworkers... it seems likely that smokers are happier, more sociable, more laid-back workers with lower rates of certain health conditions. There are people who smoke moderately (4 or 5 cigarettes a day) who might not even be hurting their health. But of course medical stories will never mention such things because they don't want to promote smoking.

But if medical research isn't objective and scientific, then what is it? Just a mouthpiece for things we already believe? It seems too often to be just that. At the worst extreme, organizations fund research that confirms their viewpoint. Hence, all those stories that red wine is good for you are funded by the French government; the Dutch are behind the pro-chocolate studies; and we all know about drug research that doesn't turn up problems with new drugs.

Even at its best, medical research is skewed too much by the beliefs of researchers. Here's another story from recent press: Soft drinks clearly associated with diabetes - report (from the New Zealand Herald). This article starts, "A review of published studies shows a clear and consistent relationship between drinking sugary (non-diet) soft drinks and poor nutrition, increased risk for obesity -- and increased risk for diabetes. There is no denying that sugar-loaded soft drinks are having "a negative impact on health," Dr Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a telephone interview."

Actually, there is a lot of denying it. A study that finds that people who drink soda pop are more likely to have health problems does not tell us at all that soda pop causes health problems. In fact, the likely culprit is that people who tend to drink soda also tend to have other habits that lead to health problems. Like they're more likely to eat meals at fast food restaurants, or they drink less milk, or they're less likely to be interested in diet. Or maybe it isn't the sugar intake that causes the diabetes but diabetes that is causing the sugar craving. Or another condition that causes both - perhaps even a mental condition like depression or plain old teenage angst (overeating as a slow form of suicide).

But okay, okay, it's pretty likely that drinking large quantities of sugary pop (which is high in sugar) is going to have an effect on your blood sugar, and because it's high calorie it's probably connected to weight gain, but did the study prove these connections? Not at all. This study didn't even bother to measure how much sugary pop was drunk, so there's no indication that it was consumed in harmful quantities. How are we going to learn anything new if we just keep "proving" what we already believe to be true?

(By the way, I neither smoke nor drink sugary soda pop, so please don't take this post as an argument for either of them.)

Along with the problems of the way the data is analysed, there are problems with the way it's collected. Why do we have thousands upon thousands of short-term, small studies? Why doesn't our government take most of its funding for medical research and put it into one huge long-term study? It could then make the information available to everyone in a huge database - as it does with economic data.

Broader data collection might reduce some of the biases that occur in research design. Factors that were considered irrelevant might emerge as worth looking into. Where possible, throw in DNA, family history, information about every place the individual lived, and a lifetime of medical data.

For specific issues, researchers could prepare add-on studies. The goal would always be to have as large a sample size, and long a time frame, as possible, so data collection would often go on for longer than the researcher's own time frame.

Allowing many people access to the data would lead to much better, more objective analysis. It would also allow for much better reviews.

* The Scandal of Poor Medical Research
* 500,000 people, a span of decades - and a waste of time and money?

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Eric Reguly's "What Ails Canada"

Globe & Mail articles tend to disappear into subscriberville after a couple of days so I'm reproducing this one in full for posterity. It's worth thinking on.

What ails Canada: My parting shot
ERIC REGULY

Thursday, April 05, 2007

It is Easter. Let us pray for peace and goodwill, but also for a country and an economy in purgatory. The corporate profits, the shareholder returns and the employment figures all suggest we're riding the up escalator to a state of eternal bliss. And if you believe that, you must believe that miracles really do happen. So let us pray that . . .

Executives grow cojones: There is a rite of passage in Canada. When some management suit uses intelligence, passion, conniving, Grecian Formula and ambition to rise through the ranks to become CEO, he (sometimes she) immediately checks into the clinic to get himself chemically sterilized.

Henceforth, the executive trembles at the sight of hedge funds, bows to so-called investors who demand immediate satisfaction, sell when they should buy, dole out great heaps of capital to the rabble when they should invest said capital, blame others and ignore domestic and international growth opportunities. In short, he generally plays it safe. There are a couple of notable exceptions; the bosses at Manulife and Barrick Gold, two home-grown international champions, come to mind.

The result is a G8 country that acts like a colony, circa 1900, waiting to be plundered by the Americans, the Europeans, even the Latin Americans -- Inco went to Brazil's CVRD. The imperial troops meet little resistance from local CEOs, shareholders, regulators and politicians. Among the 100 top brands on the planet, there is no Canadian name (though you've got to think BlackBerry will soon be a contender). The Netherlands, a country you could sink in a northern lake, has no fewer than four: Philips, Shell, ING, Heineken.

Entire industries considered "Canadian" to the core, part of the national fabric and identity, have disappeared. With Molson and Labatt, even little Sleeman, gone, there is no Canadian brewer of any size. With Inco and Falconbridge gone, there is but one Canadian base metals miner left: Teck Cominco. The forest products industry in a land of forests is a mishmash of half-bankrupt zombies. Canada does not even make chainsaws. The steel industry is disappearing. The luxury hotel industry, Four Seasons and Fairmont, are in foreign hands. Hudson's Bay Co. is owned by a reclusive South Carolinian.

Canadian companies will allege any reason for their lack of global success: excessive taxes and regulation, domestic merger barriers in some industries and the like. Forget it. Feckless CEOs are the main obstacle.

Inside traders get punished: Canada is leaksville. Many, if not most, takeovers and mergers are preceded by unusual trading activity -- higher than normal volumes, spiking prices -- followed by the non-surprise in the form of a deal announcement. Take Algoma Steel. In February, takeover speculation sent the shares up. Market regulators forced the company to confirm it was in merger talks with an unidentified buyer. Leaks allowed The Globe and Mail to report the suitor was Germany's Salzgitter. The shares soared to the point that Salzgitter walked away from the deal.

The Germans have no doubt told everyone who will listen that the Canadians aren't to be trusted. Bloomberg News carried a story about Canada's sieve-like markets. Bloomberg stories go around the world. Bad rep for Canada? You bet. Does anyone get punished? Almost never, which makes our rep even worse. The lack of a national securities regulator is another embarrassment.

Infrastructure gets built: Canada's infrastructure deficit is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Everywhere, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, sewers, power generation plants, daycares, public transportation and public housing are lacking or falling apart. Toronto's infrastructure works for a city half its size. The first Royal commission on developing Toronto's waterfront was in 1911. A century later, it's still a disgrace.

There is no political will to fix it. Voters say they want it fixed. At the same time, they want lower taxes. You can't have both. As the infrastructure rots, job creation and competitiveness suffer. International companies will invest elsewhere. London and New York are incredibly expensive. But you can get to the office in those cities without driving because public transportation didn't drop off the priority list.

Carbon emissions fall: American educator Derek Bok said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." The same applies to carbon emissions. You can pay a little now or a lot later. This is not a zero sum game -- one dollar spent to reduce emissions is not one dollar vaporized. That's because energy efficiency creates value as costs are saved, as the mining companies found when they finally cleaned up their smelters. Canada can be a leader in creating carbon-reduction technologies and carbon trading systems. Or it can keep listening to the neo-cons and the climate-change deniers and do nothing.

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50 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy - er, 42

A while back I published a list of 50 sci-fi and fantasy books that's been going around, and I criticized the choices quite severely.

After a great deal of deep thought I came up with my own list of the 50 most important sci-fi and fantasy books, only I only came up with 42 (quite by accident!), and I am much humbled now that I've actually tried to create a list myself. For one thing, it's hard to remember them all. (For example, I vaguely recall reading a series of at least a dozen books about ten years ago and being completely engrossed, but have forgotten everything about them.)

The biggest problem with my list is that I am so hopelessly out of date... there is very little that was published within the last ten, or even twenty, years. (That may say something about the state of the genre too.)

So, for what it's worth, here's my 42. Some guidelines: I did not include children's literature (defined as books that have children as characters and that children might like), horror, or Arthurian or other legend. I only include one book per author, and they're in alphabetical order by author. I don't include books I don't like, with the exception of the Fionovar Tapestry, which I think is important enough to make the list. No short stories.

I would appreciate hearing what you think I've missed.

(Thanks to my mother, Helen Ellis, who taught the first sci-fi course at the University of Waterloo, and my brother, Larry Haworth, who's had the second-biggest influence on my reading. They both helped me compile this list.)

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
4. The Last Coin, James P. Blaylock
5. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
6. The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner
7. To Reign in Hell, Steven Brust
8. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
9. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
10. Little, Big, John Crowley
11. Babel-17, Samuel R. Delany
12. Time Out of Joint, Philip K. Dick
13. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
14. Red Shift, Alan Garner
15. The Rose, Charles Harness
16. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
17. Dune, Frank Herbert
18. Brave New World, Aldus Huxley
19. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
20. Conjure Wife, Fritz Leiber
21. The Fionovar Tapestry, Guy Gavriel Kay
22. Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod
23. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
24. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller
25. The Condition of Muzak, Michael Moorcock
26. Ringworld, Larry Niven
27. Witchworld, Andre Norton
28. 1984, George Orwell
29. The Coming of the Quantum Cats, Frederick Pohl
30. The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
31. Mort, Terry Pratchett
32. Pavane, Keith Roberts
33. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
34. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
35. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
36. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
37. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
38. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells
39. Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang, Kate Wilhelm
40. Passages, Connie Willis
41. The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
42. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

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