All the Best Superheroes in the World, Defeated in One Fell Swoop

Disney Buys Marvel

Without emitting a single particle beam or firing a single nuclear blast, the greatest comic empire of all time has been sucked into the vortex of hell. In a day when "Disneyfication" is widely used to mean "turning something into crass, commercial crap," the entire roster of mighty Marvel superheroes has meekly succumbed to the greatest evil of all time: that bottom line-watching, focus group-obsessing, innovation-destroying, suit-wearing, glad-handing, gormless, cultureless, Essence of Big Corporation.

It would have been better if Nick Fury, Thor, Spidey, Wolverine et al. had just died and gone away. Instead, their copyright is now the exclusive property of Disney (along with thousands of other once-proud independent characters - Disney even owns the image of the RCMP). My heroes will be distorted and disgraced, exploited and over-exposed.

Marvel's edge was its edge: its superheroes were unhappy; they were failures; they were plagued by doubt and fear. At their best, the stories and drawings sprang from a deep well of geeky angst, and demonstrated that the strength of independence is sometimes the result of the weakness of loneliness. This wonderful art form was born because the audience was prepubescent and the writers connected with that time of frustrating powerless life on the cusp.

For the last few summer seasons, the cinematic extension of the superhero genre has got more and more interesting. The commercial potential is there for the genre to continue, but what form will it take now? The fear is that Disney will take it down the path of big budget pablum (X-Men, Transformers) vs the innovation of the very best (Watchmen, Iron Man, Hancock).

###

The $9T US Deficit is All Bush

Interesting article in the New York Times today: Who Gets the Blame for the Deep Deficit?

The conclusion: all (or at least most) of the estimated $9 trillion US deficit was caused by George Bush. In particular, Obama's health care proposal and environmental proposals do not increase the deficit at all (as they are paid for by cost cutting and tax increases).

This may be the case where facts get in the way of conventional knowledge.

###

Bodies

It has long been my belief that the only way to make something good out of dying is to give your body to help others. I signed up as an organ donor ages ago, but that only uses part of the body, so today I called the Chief Coroner's Office to see how I can go about giving away my entire body.

It turns out it's not that easy, at least in Canada. There is no central registration: you have to register with a school of anatomy. Then after you die your family or estate has to pay to have your body shipped to the school, and it could be expensive if you die far away from the school you use.

In my case, I live in Waterloo, and have a few problems. The first is that the local anatomy school is not one I want to donate to; it's for kinesiology students and allows non-majors to work with cadavers, and I don't want to donate to it. The closest medical school that takes bodies is in Toronto. The second problem is that I can't rely on having any family alive when I die to follow my wishes, so to arrange for having my body shipped to a school, I need to change my will. Also, I travel a lot and work in different cities, so the shipping could be a real issue.

But the biggest problem with Ontario's body donation policy is that it can't be integrated with organ and tissue donation. Other than your eyes, if you donate your body to an anatomy school then you cannot donate any organs or tissues to help sick people.

Another problem is that you can't just register to donate your body - you have to contact a school and ask to be sent a package of information. I don't want to read about what they do with the bodies or how they treat them (and I am very sympathetic to medical students who may cope with the difficulty of learning to cut human flesh by making light of the bodies) - I just want to sign up, at a distance, impartially.

All this might explain why schools of anatomy don't get enough bodies. (They get about 300 donations a year, in total, at the ten schools that are looking for bodies.)

It's a shame. For example, a few years ago I read about research into female sexual organs and some breakthroughs in understanding how female orgasms work. The researcher said that very little was known about the subject because researchers virtually never had young female cadavers to examine, and the anatomy of elderly women is quite different.

More info
Ontario organ and tissue donation: Trillium Gift of Life Network
Office of the Chief Coroner (Toronto) 1-877-991-9959 or 416-314-4000

###

1984

The scariest thing I ever read is an account (I read decades ago) of a torture training session in a Latin American country. Prisoners were used to demonstrate and practice methods of torture, which took the inhumanity of torture to an even higher level than the torture itself.

That level of inhumanity is almost matched in recent revelations about the Bush government's policies on torturing Muslims suspected of anti-American activities. Every act was scrupulously proscribed, monitored and reported. There was little random abuse. Every detail, down to the number of calories a day they were kept alive on, the temperature of the water used to torture them, and the number of hours they could be kept in various sized boxes, was detailed.

As details of the practices leaked, the public rose in angry protest, to no avail. The Bush administration even ignored a 2006 demand by the the US Supreme Court to stop torturing prisoners and follow the Geneva Convention.

It's a tricky political road for one president to preside over the prosecution of his predecessor (as we have found with our inability to prosecute Brian Mulroney), but Obama must bring justice to this case. As a New York Times editorial says today, "Only by making public officials accountable under the law can Americans be confident that future presidents will not feel free to break it the way Mr. Bush did."

###

Driving Around Mennonites

There were two stories this month about Waterloo Mennonites being killed in their buggies by cars. (Here's one: Woman dies of head injuries after horse and buggy crash.)

I live in Mennonite country, and given the callous driving I see every day, it's a wonder that more buggy riders don't die.

Many, many people drive carelessly around horse-drawn buggies. There is simply no excuse for it. Part of the problem could be in a lack of public education.

When I went to driving school, I was taught that you pass a horse-drawn buggy you must give them wide berth, and only return to the right lane when you can see the entire buggy in your rearview mirror. I rarely see anyone else doing that these days. If there is oncoming traffic you just have to slow down and hang back. It's monstrous that many people seem to value a minute or two of their time more than the lives of other people.

###

Manufacturing Controversy

In a breathtaking display of bad taste, Niall Ferguson and the Financial Times have likened President Obama to a black cartoon cat. Ferguson recently wrote, "President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. ...Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky." Um, Niall? In North America in the 21st century, black cats are unlucky, not lucky; and Obama's starting his presidency saddled with a war, a world that is mad at hell at the US, a financial crisis, an impending depression and an unprecedented deficit is the opposite of lucky.

When there was some expression of dismay at the article, Ferguson shot back with Why My Comparing Obama to Felix the Cat Is Not Racist, an almost wholly irrational defence. But rational argument is obviously not the point for Ferguson: he seems to be aiming to (1) gain celebrity through shock-jock tactics, and (2) publicize as widely as possible the Obama/F-t-C comparison.

I grew up watching Felix the Cat every Saturday morning; this is an extremely disrespectful comparison, to say the least. And yes it is racist. Comparing an African American to a black animal is like saying a Chinese person is a yellow fish.

Paul Krugman thinks this was a mistake by Financial Times editorial staff. I disagree. This reeks of Republican strategy: I bet the goal is for Republicans to start playing the Felix the Cat theme song (the article quotes lyrics from the song and Ferguson refers to Obama as "Felix the Pres"). This could create a musical equivalent of the racist code words that southern Republicans have used for decades. The Republicans have apparently decided that instead of shying away from racism, they'll embrace it.

Ferguson is a right-wing libertarian nutter who wants to abolish income tax, social security and most social service spending. He is best known as a defender of colonialism. As a TV personality he has been able to popularize his extremist views in a series of picture books and media appearances. He is known as a contrarian. The only good side to this stunt is that people might wake up to what a sleazebag he is.

The insidious brilliance of the plan is that there's no real defence. Complaining about it only further publicizes the trick (I don't have enough readers to do any damage.) If Democrats fight back the Republicans will say that Obama is "polarizing". The only effective response might be, eventually, for both sides to drown out productive debate with insulting songs that can be reproduced as simple, catchy tunes. The Democrats could, for example, blast the Woody Woodpecker song at Republican candidates. That would be just another step away from substantive debate - a tactic that definitely favors the Republicans.

###

The High Price of Medicine

More money is spent in the pharmaceutical industry on advertising than is spent on research.

- Devra Davis, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer.

So to reduce the price of medicine, why not restrict advertising? We used to restrict advertising on booze and cigarettes. It seems like a sensible solution to drug costs.

I was listening to Davis in a December 17, 2007 episode of The Current that I downloaded from the CBC podcast site. If I heard her correctly, the average cost of a new drug is $800 million, and half of that is marketing costs. If we want to control the cost of life-saving medicines, we could restrict the costs of the companies that make them.

A counter argument might be that the drug companies advertise because it increases their revenue. It also creates inefficiencies in the system. For example, when the patent runs out on a drug they make a minor change, re-patent it and advertise the hell out of it, trying to make it seem like something new.

I don't know enough about the pharmaceutical industry to argue this completely, but my thinking is... In labor law we have the concept of essential services; why not extend that concept to products? If I am unable to strike because I'm a nurse, why not say that there are also extra sorts of restrictions on the companies that make the drugs nurses hand out? Some life-saving drugs costs thousands of dollars a year, and not everyone has health insurance. In fact, it's a wonder that private health insurers aren't agitating to reduce drug costs. We in Canada have already reduced them by having better bargaining power with drug companies, but drugs are still arguably massively over-priced.

###

How Americans Spend Their Stimulus Dollars

I'm all for fairness in free trade, and I know protectionism caused problems during the Great Depression, and I don't want to see a rise in protectionism, and I've criticized the Buy American program before, but...

The Buy American program applies to US stimulus spending. That is money the US government is spending to stimulate the US economy. Why would they use it to stimulate other economies?

To put this in context, imagine not that the US stimulus was being spent on projects for Canadian firms... imagine it was being spent on Chinese imports.

Stimulus of the US economy will pull up everyone else, and Canada in particular, in any event.

At the least, I don't think this issue is as black and white as many are making out.

###

Pseudo-Specialists Defining Policy

A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street...

- President Obama

The culture of irresponsibility wasn't restricted to greedy guts who were reeling in hundreds of millions in shady financial dealings. It extended to policy-makers, media, and the civil servants who worked in the regulatory agencies and bond-rating companies. It was born in universities. It was the direct result of the way Economics is taught. Economics, at least as I was taught it in Canada in the 80s, is an indoctrination into simplistic free-market ideology backed up by complicated math based on dubious assumptions.

A number of people have been writing lately about Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who repeatedly blew the whistle on subprime mortgages and other financial shenanigans prior to the financial industry collapse last year, but was shouted down and is still shut out by the powers that be who are planning America's financial industry reform.

A prevailing argument is that Bair was able to see beyond the paradigm of the day because she's female - not part of the old boy's club, wired differently, more caring, whatever. I don't know about that, but I can see one thing that Sheila Bair has that sets her apart from the rest: an undergraduate degree in philosophy with no formal economics training. (She's also a lawyer.)

Economists have taken over too much of the policy area. Social scientists should provide input, but not set policy. We live in a world dominated by pseudo-specialists, when what we need is pragmatic generalists.

###

Bubonic Plague in China

The pandemic du jour, now that H1N1 has lost its ability to scare the pants off us, is bubonic plague, which has recently cropped up in a very small way in China. To read some news reports, you'd think it was the first case of bubonic plague since 1350.

Actually, it's not that uncommon. For example, bubonic plague is endemic in the Usambara Mountains (Lushoto District) of Tanzania. I have visited the area... there were no travel advisories against doing so, at least in the mid 90s. A recent study of the sparsely populated area found that in the period 1986-2002, "there were 6249 cases of plague of which 5302 (84.8%) were bubonic, 391 (6.3%) septicaemic, and 438 (7.0%) pneumonic forms." Plague has been there for decades and illness from it is a seasonal phenomenon, like flu (although it's more deadly).

I mention this only because media seems to get stuck on a topic and ends up distorting reality - like making it seem that crime is rising, when it's actually falling; or clobbering us with every instance of abductions of pretty white girls, which are actually pretty rare.

###

In Memory of Duane Allman

A few days after the October 29, 1971 motorcycle accident that killed guitarist Duane Allman, the Allman Brothers recorded the song Melissa for their upcoming album Eat a Peach.

The song, written by Gregg Allman in 1967, was a favorite of Duane's, and the band played it at his funeral. I don't know if they altered the lyrics when they recorded it, but the song is not at all about a woman named Melissa: it's about a man who dies. The Eat a Peach version is the saddest song ever recorded, it seems to me: not just the vocals, but even the guitar playing is the saddest guitar playing I've ever heard. While the song was written before he died and I've never seen it claimed that the song is about Duane, it seems to be, even to the Robert Johnson reference in the first line and the depiction of a musician who's always on the road...

Crossroads seem to come and go.
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none,
Bearing sorrow, having fun,
But back home he'll always run
To sweet Melissa...

Freight train, each car looks the same.
No one knows the Gypsy's name
No one hears his lonely sighs,
There are no blankets where he lies.
In deepest dreams the Gypsy flies
With sweet Melissa...

Again the morning's come,
Again he's on the run,
Sunbeams shining through his hair,
Appearing not to have a care.
Well, pick up your gear and Gypsy roll on.

Crossroads, will you ever let him go?
Will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Will he lie beneath the clay,
Or will his spirit float away?
But I know that he won't stay without Melissa.

I couldn't find a version of Melissa on YouTube that I liked, but here are Duane and the boys doing In Memory of Elizabeth Reed:

He's Gone

Rat in a drain ditch, caught on a limb,
You know better but I know him.
Like I told you, what I said,
Steal your face right off your head.

Now he's gone, Lord he's gone, he's gone.
Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track
He's gone, he's gone, nothing's gonna bring him back...
He's gone.

Nine mile skid on a ten mile ride,
Hot as a pistol but cool inside.
Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile,
Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile!

Now he's gone, Lord he's gone, he's gone.
Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track
He's gone, he's gone, nothing's gonna bring him back... He's gone.

Going where the wind don't blow so strange,
Maybe on some high cold mountain chain.
Lost one round but the price wasn't anything,
Knife in the back and more of the same.

Rat in a drain ditch, caught on a limb,
I know better but you know him.
Like I told you, what I said,
Steal your face right offa your head.

Now he's gone, Lord he's gone, he's gone.
Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track
He's gone, gone, nothing's gonna bring him back... He's gone.

Ooh, nothing's gonna bring him back.

Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
First recorded on the Grateful Dead's album Europe 72

They wrote it about Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's father, who had been their money manager but stole from them and took off, but it could have been written for Karlheinz...


###

We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us

A recent poll found that Canadians are feeling more positive about the US: 68% of Canadians view the US favorably, compared to 55% two years ago.

This surprises me, because our little country is taking a mighty drubbing in American political circles and media these days. They have decided that our approach to health care is shite. It's not just the health care lobby and Republicans who are describing Canadian health care as a failed system: even many pro-reform Democrats are saying ignorant, negative things about Canadian health care.

Americans aren't just critical of our health care system. They're not just disdainful. To hear some pundits, our health care system is the boogie man: the health care equivalent to the Axis of Evil. We're the North Korea of the health care debate - the Iran, the Sadaam Hussein, the Hitler. We're the Red Menace. Our health care mistakes must be avoided At All Cost.

If you believe US television, Canada is a hotbed of commie craziness where zombyized citizens sit in hospital hallways, desolate in cracked plastic chairs, waiting for death while government bureaucrats shuffle stacks of paper and discuss union action. And we have crap quality drugs, too. Even so-called balanced stories leave the impression that wait times for medical procedures are peculiar to Canada, while in reality there are wait times in both systems.

The only safe haven for sick Canadians, according to many pundits, is the free world's leader and beacon: the United States, where we flock by the million to buy the best health care in the world.

My second cousin Bubba in Memphis even called my mother to ask how we survive it.

There isn't any reasoning with the Canada-bashers...



But for the record: the World Health Organization has ranked Canada significantly higher on both the level of health care service and the overall health of citizens.

The life expectancy in Canada is 80.7 years, compared to 78.1 in the US. For every 1,000 live births in Canada, 5.0 infants die; in the US, it's 6.7. A recent study found that 92% of Canadians are happy with their primary health care.

Government-run health care is also much more cost efficient. Canada spends US$3,895 per person on health care; Americans spend US$7,290. Narrowing that down to government spending, the Canadian government spends US$2,120 and the US government spends US$2,724 per person. And no, the discrepancy is not due to malpractice, which accounts for less than half of one percent of US spending. Universal health care hasn't left us without doctors: there are roughly the same number of doctors per capita in Canada and the US (2.2 per thousand in Canada; 2.4 per thousand in the US).

Compared to Canada, "U.S. residents are one third less likely to have a regular medical doctor, one fourth more likely to have unmet health care needs, and are more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines." The US has 45 million uninsured citizens and 16 million who are under-insured.

All indicators prove that Canada has better health care than the US. And yet Canada has nowhere near the best health care in the world: most European countries do a better job than we do.

The larger issue is the appalling level of public discourse in the United States. The odious health care debate is just one example. Another example: This deeply racist country elects its first black president, and when a distinguished black scholar who's a friend of his is roughed up by cops in his own home, Obama is pilloried for speaking up about it?!

But I'm not interested in that right now. What I'm steamed about is why Canadians aren't mad as hell about this relentless slagging of our health care system. Sure, we'll never convince them south of the border, but there should be a furious dialog in this country about being the target of ignorant and malicious defamation of our national character. We are damn lucky that most of the time Americans forget we exist; we can't let them redefine our reality. That American koolaid is something we don't want to drink.

###

Jane Jacobs on LRT

Thanks to Mona Lynn for sending me this excerpt from Jane Jacobs' book Dark Age Ahead. This is Jane Jacobs' description of a discussion she had with Paul Martin. Jacobs doesn't provide a date for the conversation, but it must have been after he became prime minister in 2003 and before the book was published in 2005.

[Paul Martin] told me that he intended to announce a program of federal grants enabling municipalities to install light-rail public transit. Now it was my turn to demur.

I told him that unfortunate experiences already showed that fixed transit routes were expensive failures when they were not preceded by evidence of sufficient demand. Underused routes not only are a drain on transit systems but are ill-suited as contributors to the needs and convenience of users. In the past, designers of transit systems had usually chosen to locate rail routes by observing which bus routes were most heavily used, a pragmatic method that worked well in Toronto and elsewhere. After it was apparently lost to transit engineers' memories in the 1960's, Toronto and a number of other cities, among them Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago, tried rail routes justified by other goals and these have been unable to pull their weights, literally or figuratively. They don't have enough passengers.

I asserted that a prudent program to promote transit must be flexible enough to encourage experiments with routes, should that be what a city wanted to do, and possibly experiment with bus sizes, before settling on fixed rail routes. Why not specify grants for transit? I wondered aloud. Why specify from on high what form the transit must take?

... [Mr. Martin] pointed out that the mayors of every large city had asked for light-rail transit grants. I told him that I had attended the meetings where they arrived at this unanimity; they reasoned that asking for light-rail grants was politically more realistic than asking for other kinds of public transit equipment or more general transit help, such as grants for operating costs, the most desperate need in some municipalities.

Mr. Martin perfunctorily conceded that flexibility might be worth taking into consideration. Again I saw that our points of view were different. What he could contemplate as attractive bonanzas for clamoring cities and perhaps for complaining corporations producing rails and streetcars, I feared as foregone fiascoes.

###

Questions about Imagine Adoption and Conservative MP Gary Goodyear

Further to my previous post.

The police are now conducting a fraud investigation of Imagine Adoption. I have some questions I'd like answered about the possible involvement of Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear.

Background:

Gary Goodyear (a chiropractor by trade) and his wife Valerie Goodyear own a company called Constant Energy. This company owns a property at 382 Queen Street West, Cambridge, which it has rented for the past three years to Imagine Adoption for a fee of $3,000/month. The property is occupied by the Hespeler Community Chiropractic Centre. Constant Energy has apparently not collected any rent from Imagine Adoption.

Valerie Goodyear is a senior employee at Imagine Adoption. It seems that the directors of Imagine Adoption have been into some serious fraud. Their big salaries, luxury cars and first class travel are one thing: using agency funds to renovate their homes, take non-business related trips, and buy clothes and horses is another level of inpropriety - and all the information we have so far is just from reported expenses.

Questions:

1. Is Goodyear (through his company Constant Energy) claiming a tax loss on the unpaid rent on 382 Queen Street West?

2. How much rent does the Hespeler Community Chiropractic Centre pay, and to whom?

3. What is Goodyear's relationship with the people at the Hespeler Community Chiropractic Centre?

4. What about the other properties Imagine Adoption rents but doesn't use?

5. Do Gary Goodyear, his wife or their companies own any other properties?

6. How much salary did Goodyear's wife Valerie get from Imagine Adoption, and what were her expenses?

7. What about the other charities owned by Susan and Rick Hayhow?

8. What is the real policy of our federal government on ensuring ethical behavior by cabinet ministers?

###

Free Market Civil Society

After the Asian tsunami, Ian Smillie proposed a new system for disaster relief, modeled on the British system. He made the observation that there is so much competition among relief organizations in most countries that it results in (1) unnecessary fund-raising costs and (2) lower donations due to public burnout from too much solicitation.

By contrast, in the British system, which has been operating since the 60s, the 12 main disaster relief organizations have formed a Disasters Emergency Committee. This committee:

- Maintains a fund so they can respond to disasters immediately.
- Coordinates their activities.
- Has relationships with TV networks, banks and the post office to streamline and hasten the donation process.
- Keeps fund-raising costs low.
- Gives the money to organizations deemed most likely to be effective in that particular location/type of disaster.

Smillie is a level-headed, pragmatic fellow who is always coming up with good ideas and insightful comments. His suggestion that other countries adopt this approach is bang on.

But the other thing that interests me about this idea is the depiction of the civil society as a competitive free market (which of course it is). While all of us who are bombarded with junk mail from NGOs know this, we don't normally think of it that way.

For example, Wikipedia defines civil society as being "the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force-backed structures of a state (regardless of that state's political system) and commercial institutions of the market."

Part of the problem with the Wikipedia entry is that it's wrong to say that civil society is voluntary. Many positions within NGOs are paid, and some command some very hefty salaries. (To be fair, the British word for NGO is VCO, Voluntary and Community Organizations, which may explain the Wikipedia definition.) But the other problem is the distinction of civil society and the commercial market.

We have an idealistic view of NGOs (charities, advocacy groups, church organizations, community groups, unions, professional organizations) that they are somehow selfless, outward-oriented organizations. Of course they aren't. Their goal, just like corporations, is to meet payroll, grow, provide services, and improve their brand. Many have endowment funds. Like corporations, most have boards of directors and auditors. Operationally, the distinction from for-profit corporations is often not great.

Many charities have a lot of influence over very vulnerable people, whether at home or in poor countries, and many have enormous resources. They may have do-gooder intentions, but they don't always do good - such as when they go to countries with high rates of AIDS infection and tell people they'll go to hell if they use condoms (Catholic church) or they tell women who've been raped that they'll go to hell if they have an abortion (American evangelicals) or when they have general tax exempt status but only help people who profess to be of the same faith (of which there are tons of examples, but just one is many groups that work in prisons).

They might just be incompetent, like charities that bring canned fish to disaster areas where starving people think of fish as gross and inedible (many non-coastal parts of Africa) or they may do good works that have unintended but dire consequences, like setting up refugee camps that lead to deforestation and destruction of roads (giant UNHCR trucks) or arriving at a disaster zone without a plan and impeding real help (everyone but the Red Cross). Then there are leftists who like to go to Africa to tell people that all their problems are caused by colonialism, which disempowers Africans and wrecks attempts to solve their problems.

None of that even touches the issues of lack of coordination, obnoxious and expensive fund-raising, inefficient duplication of efforts, and so on.

There are some attempts at coordinating NGOs, but not enough. (I worked at an umbrella organization for NGOs in Tanzania in the 90s so know a bit about the difficulties of doing that - we had physical altercations sometimes among warring factions.) There are some attempts at collective disclosure, such as web sites that compare NGOs on percentage of funds that go to the intended targets, but not enough. Tax exemption rules have some built-in safeguards. There are attempts at self-regulation within civil society. I wonder if there should be more direction provided to this competitive arena by government. Smillie says (link above) that it was the BBC that made UK charities coordinate their efforts. Perhaps our government should be regulating, or at least playing a role in advising, our NGOs.

Buth there are problems. For example, it's not true that the best-run charity is one that spends the maximum percentage of its funds on its targets - because you have to have adequate planning and auditing, and that costs money.

When the UK government commissioned a large study on this issue in 2005 (Better Regulation for Civil Society), they found that regulation dampened enthusiasm and innovation in civil society. It was red tape that many NGOs don't have the resources to maintain.

So it looks like small steps are the way to go, like the Disasters Emergency Committee - and more clear-headed thinking about what NGOs really are and what they should be doing.

Correction: My dad the philosopher sent the following to me in an email (which shows that I should discuss these things before posting!): "“Voluntary” when applied to civil society doesn’t connect with “volunteering”. Wikipedia was alluding to the classical view of the distinction between society and the state, where the state is said to be coercive and compulsory [you can’t unilaterally withdraw from the state, but it has to let you go and it has a monopoly on force] whereas society is voluntary [you choose to join social groups are not]. So whether people in civil society are paid or not is beside the point. I wrote a paper a long time ago criticizing this standard view of the distinction between state and society, arguing that a state could have only laws that are permissive [promising rewards if people do wanted things] and none that threaten people with punishment for non-compliance; such a state could collect the money it needs not through coercive taxation but through raffles, etc. One might say that such an institution would not be a state, but in my view that would involve circular reasoning or begging the question."

###

Making Information Pop

As a technical writer, I am constantly thinking about how to help readers absorb and retain information. It's not enough for my documentation to be correct and complete; it has to be useful to readers in that it results in a more effective user experience. So the metric of quality for software documentation is how well users can use the software (in full realization that nobody likes to read the documentation and will consult it as little as possible). That means that I have to be very creative when creating help.

Re the above video, it's exciting to see someone who got creative about statistical reporting with such success. They have not only created more sophisticated analysis and a zippier view (using a Google gadget called motion charts), but he has turned a statistical lecture into storytelling.

I have long believed in the importance of an emotional element to help people absorb and retain information. I once read an abstract of a PhD thesis in technical writing that found people retain information better if it makes them happy - but I suspect happiness is just a subset of emotions that will achieve the same end. I recently saw a lecture (I've lost the link, unfortunately, but it was on TED) about how graphics engage different parts of the brain and get people to make connections that words alone cannot make.

Seeing this brilliant statistical presentation approach reinforces something I've thought for a long time: documentation should have graphics: cartoons and photos as well as UML diagrams and screenshots. As an example, I have an old copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Java 2, and it includes a repeated cartoon of a woman yelling out, "Hey stupid!" with a caption underneath that gives a little bit of info about Java. More than once I have flipped through the book reading all the "Hey stupid"s with rapt attention.

On one hand the field of technical writing is prone to a lot of gimmicky ideas and useless bells-and-whistles. On the other, it is held back by localization concerns: many cultures are said to object to representations of humans (even of hands), and Germans are said not to appreciate humor in business, and generally we are warned not to try anything funny in case it offends someone. Nevertheless, I think graphics are integral to engaging readers and should be considered more seriously as core elements of good documentation.

I specialize in documentation for developers, and mostly write reference material, tutorials, and very dense user guides. My books are not read cover to cover, but are generally read piecemeal as the developer needs the info. So not just any graphics will do: like Hans Rosling's statistical presentation software, above, we need to develop really effective, engaging graphics. Graphics that not just provide useful information, but that engage the mind in a novel way.

For more on the new approach to presenting statistics, and lots more examples of it, see gapminder.org.

Update: The lecture I was thinking of is Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning. The comments provide some needed caveats.

###

Parking

It seems to be a prevalent view among City of Waterloo staff that the way to meet environmental goals is to reduce parking in uptown. They want less parking overall, including less convenient parking and less free parking. They think parking reductions will encourage people to "walk, bike, and rollerblade" as well as to take transit. Increasingly, they seem to think that a well-planned urban core is one that has few cars. This has permeated all the recent planning documents - even the draft urban design guidelines, which makes repeated mention of reducing uptown parking.

I have spent a fair bit of time trying to justify their point of view, but I just can't do it, because:

1. There's plenty of free parking at the new Wal-Mart, at the malls, and at the big box store complexes. Reducing parking only in uptown just encourages more people to drive to the outskirts to shop.

2. Economic viability is what makes uptown work. There are some of us (myself included) who live close enough to Waterloo Square to carry groceries home. Most people will not shop at a grocery store unless they can park close by. When we lose street parking on King between William and Erb (the core of our uptown) due to the LRT, it's not clear what will happen to businesses there. Will anyone go to lunch at the restaurants in that area if they have to walk several blocks from parking? Will they continue to shop at great Waterloo institutions like Words Worth Books and Ontario Seed?

Street festivals are an important part of uptown Waterloo's success. In a recent survey I did of uptown shoppers, employees and employers, the latter group cited festivals as a major way of attracting business. They said that even if people didn't shop at their store on the day of the festival, they saw stores and came back later. We are not going to attract families from the suburbs to our festivals if there is nowhere for them to park. They are not going to have a positive feeling about uptown if they end up driving around looking for a spot.

3. At the moment, residential projects are booming in uptown. For a healthy uptown, we need a balance of residential, commercial (shopping/restaurant), and employee growth. The expansion of uptown office space is being curtailed by the lack of parking - and that's before further parking reductions are implemented (due to LRT, the new hotel on Willis, the Balsillie School, etc). Uptown's big employers - such as SunLife, KPMG, Allen Square, and the Bauer Lofts - are all having problems because of the parking crunch. There's plenty of employee parking in the industrial parks - which, by the way, encourages companies to locate in places not well served by public transit.

4. When you walk around the uptown core, it's apparent that there is heavy use by seniors and by people with small children in strollers. Many of these people can't get out without cars, and can't walk from far-flung parking lots. Uptown is ringed by eight senior facilities/residences. Residents at Water Park, a primarily senior comlex of two large buildings, tend to be drivers. They are close enough to uptown to walk in good weather, but that's only a small part of the year. We have an aging demographic and seniors must be accommodated.

5. City and region staff who work in uptown have great parking: some underground and some in a convenient, dedicated lot behind their building. If they want to benefit the environment by reducing car use, they should start by shutting their own lots, charging employees hefty fees to park there, or forcing employees to walk several blocks from parking. Once they have done that they can start to talk about imposing parking restrictions on other employees and shoppers.

Staff likes to quote a parking study done a few years ago that found that there was excess parking in uptown. However, (1) much of that parking was inconvenient, such as at the station lot on Regina, and (2) the situation has changed completely since the new public square was built, reducing parking, while parking demand has increased. Both sides of the Waterloo Square parking lot are now regularly jammed, as is street parking. We need at least two multi-story parking structures immediately: one in the Waterloo Square lot near Erb, and one on King Street north of Erb. It would greatly reduce the pressure on uptown if SunLife could be prevailed upon to build a parking structure on their land at Union and King.

Waterloo Park is also being targeted as a car-free zone: the draft Waterloo Park Master Plan proposes closing all the parking lots in the park. Just walk around the park on any given day, and you'll see that many of the regulars have babies in strollers, are elderly people, or are picnicking. In many cases, those people will not be able to use the park when the lots are closed.

Conclusion: Start with Carrots
Parking strategy is truly the dog the wags the tail of uptown development. It threatens to drag us down, and that's a pity because it's so wrong-headed. You shouldn't use the stick before you use the carrot. We still have a long way to go in improvements such as:

* Providing bike lanes and bike parking.
* Creating safe pedestrian crossings (especially Caroline from Willis to Alexandra; Albert between Erb and Dupont; and the difficult Erb-Caroline intersection).
* Removing snow/ice from transit stops and sidewalks so that they meet accessibility standards. (A person with a walker cannot walk from Water Park to uptown in the winter.) Winter walking is treacherous on many sidewalks, such as on Caroline alongside the city lots from Alexandra to Father David Bauer Drive.
* Joining up our trail system (it falls into a black hole in uptown, picking up at Erb-Caroline to the north and Park-Allen to the south).
* Creating a proper walking/biking path along the railway tracks and connecting it to paths into Kitchener.
* Working on innovative approaches such as a cheap shuttle bus that runs through the uptown core.

###

Minister of State Gary Goodyear Moves From Small Time Scandals to the Big Time

It's a story that has all the hallmarks of a full-blown political scandal: small children in desperate need, millions of dollars in fees paid by would-be adoptive parents, the Christian fundamentalists who run the adoption agency diverting funds into their own pockets - and finally, a federal cabinet minister (married to one of the principals at the agency) who got on the gravy train in the form of $3,000/month rent for offices the agency didn't use.

It's a scandal that's exploding, with stories in papers across Canada and the United States. Meanwhile the three directors of Imagine Adoption (also known as Kids Link International) are out of the country and out of touch, leading to speculation that they'll disappear with the money (both from a recent mortgage on a home renovated with the agency's funds and, possibly, fees diverted from the agency).

Macleans magazine has a good, brief summary here. Local papers have stories today here and here. There is a lot more digging to do: Conservative MP Gary Goodyear is a chiropractor, and the office he charged the adoption agency $3,000/month to rent is 382 Queen Street West, Cambrdige, a chiropractic clinic. Also, it appears that early estimates about the amount of money involved are understated: the agency has about 450 adoptive families paying an average of $15,000 each, plus some sizable charitable donations, which may bring revenues closer to $10M than the $800,000 initially reported.

Those of us who live in or near Goodyear's Cambridge riding are not all that surprised at his involvement in this distasteful business. Goodyear's political career has always had a shady undertone.

This isn't Goodyear's first scandal involving rent. In his first election campaign in 2004, Goodyear took a campaign contribution kickback to lease his campaign office. (His campaign manager later admitted to this, although he provided a dodgy explanation that avoided prosecution.)

In his first major parliamentary appointment (as chair of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee subcommittee on Parliament Hill Security), Goodyear behaved so badly that the committee ousted him with a vote of non-confidence.

After being named Minister of State for Science and Technology by Stephen Harper, Goodyear was asked about evolution, and answered, "I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate." Later he clarified, saying he does believe in evolution, but later he clarified his clarification, saying he doesn't believe that evolution was the process by which we were created. This controversy unfolded as Goodyear oversaw $150M in funding cuts for science, including massive cuts to Genome Canada, with both controversies creating widespread outrage in the scientific community.

Just recently Goodyear was back in the news, using his cabinet clout to interfere with academic freedom. James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said, "I'm not aware, (in) the history of granting councils in this country, of any minister doing what Minister Goodyear has done. Almost everyone understands that's crossing the line."

Prior to revelations of Goodyear's involvement in the adoption scandal, I chalked up a lot of his mistakes to inexperience and mediocrity. After all, here's a guy who bombed out of university and is a small businessman, thrown into a political arena where he was clearly out of his depth. Harper has a well-established practice of appointing loyal but incompetent MPs to his cabinet - it's the only way he has to keep such a strong grip on all portfolios. Harper's government has consequently had a much higher than average number of cabinet scandals, and in the end you have to blame the boss, not the dupes who take the fall for him.

But this scandal has the potential to really do in Gary Goodyear. Unless he can explain why a company he owns is charging his wife's employer $3,000/month for an office they don't use, it looks like he is not just associated with crooks, but a crook himself.

Update: MP Goodyear linked to bankrupt agency (The Record, July 22)

###

Planning for Flu Season

In past posts I have made light of the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic, arguing that it's unlikely to be the magnitude of the 1918 or even 1968 outbreaks. I have changed my mind about the seriousness of the situation, because:

1) Lack of immunity to this new strain of flu means that we are facing a problem this fall and winter, even if H1N1 doesn't mutate to a more virulent form. We are facing a much worse flu season than usual, at the very least.
2) When one child died of swine flu in New York City this spring, numerous schools were closed. The same thing happened in Texas, even though the child who died was a pre-schooler visiting from Mexico. We in Toronto should remember the enormous impact of SARS. The reaction to swine flu (whether we agree with it or not) will cause severe disruption.
3) Our precarious global economic condition means that we are more vulnerable as a society: less able to cope, and more prone to negative economic/social impact. This added shock will tip more companies over the edge into bankruptcy. All levels of government will be less able to summon resources. At this point, a bad flu season could send us into inflation, stagflation, and even a depression.

In light of this, it seems vital that we all plan for the coming flu season (December through April). With luck, enough of us will get the flu shot that this year's flu season won't be a disaster. But there's enough of a chance of serious problems that we should all be thinking ahead and making plans.

I remember the 1968 flu season, when I was 10. Kids in upper grades had to help run the classrooms of kids in lower grades because so many teachers were ill. At my school there seemed to be no plan at all for how to cope - and that might have been because the principal was out sick. Planning requires committees and written strategies that don't rely on the health of any individuals.

Companies should be gearing up right now to prepare for a prolonged period when many employees can't get into work. (Employees might be ill, but also their kids might be ill or their schools might be closed; transit could be affected by transit employee absenteeism; the public might be warned against taking public transit due to disease transmission; who knows.) IT departments should be busily setting up VPN so that employees can work from home computers. Some employees should be issued laptops. Everyone should be signing up for Skype. There should be identification of people who must be in the office and they should be planned for: where will they park if transit is down and parking is congested; etc.

HR should be creating guidelines for dealing with new issues that will arise: How to encourage people to come to work? How to make employees take hygiene seriously in the office? How to handle prolonged staff absenteeism, sometimes when not directly ill? There may be opportunities: for example, employees with medical conditions may be higher on the list for the vaccine.

Plans should be made for reducing vulnerabilities: what will you do if your suppliers are unable to provide you with inputs? (Alternative suppliers should be geographically distant in case an area is shut down.) How will you cope if your courier company has no working employees, or your employees and customers can't travel?

Organizations can also take steps to reduce illness. A humidifier in the office might reduce transmission. Plans should be made for getting flu vaccine for your staff (keeping in mind that there's not going to be enough for everyone). Anti-virals (Tamiflu, Relenza) may also help for staff who have to work with the public (although anti-virals may not be the silver bullet we hope, in part because the timing of delivery is crucial and because the virus could mutate to be resistant).

In a bad pandemic, the public may be warned against handling cash, cheques or post because of their ability to transfer disease. If this might affect a business, what can be done?

Companies who foresee problems and plan for them may have a competitive advantage over companies that do not.

Here are some useful checklists.

On a personal level, the main way to avoid getting infected is to practice social distancing: keep more than a meter away from other people. We all need to educate ourselves about how to reduce the severity of the flu. During an outbreak we should stop shaking hands. Cash and mail have been serious problems in previous flu outbreaks. Face masks can be effective but only if handled properly. When sick, you need to stay home, take care of yourself and avoid exposure to other disease. If you must go out while sick, you must wear a mask.

People with kids need to plan for what they'll do if schools close. Adults with some teaching ability might consider applying to be a supply teacher to help schools stay open.

If the flu incidence is high, pharmacies and even grocery stores might operate at reduced hours. There might be days when transit isn't running, or we might be warned against taking it. It is recommended that we all have food, water and medicine to last us at least two weeks.

People on contract don't get paid when they don't work, so contractors should be prepared for some non-paid time. In addition, vulnerable companies might not make it: there are going to be more lay-offs.

Here is a personal checklist.

###