They're all Savage Wars

It is rather unusual that Murray Brewster has selected the recent war in Afghanistan as the one deserving of the title The Savage War  As wars go, it's towards the tame side.  No chemical or nuclear weapons have been deployed and combined fatalities (civilians and combatants on both sides) for the entire war clock in around ~9000 per year.  The mean average DAY in World War One had more fatalities than that. 

This isn't to say that it is full of sunshine, rainbows and smiles.  Ultimately it is still a war, and they aren't pretty things.  People die, get wounded, lose thier property and livelihoods.  Brewster, a Canadian Press reporter, tells interesting tales of some of the casualties, how they impact the people around him and how the civilian population suffers.

Though most interesting are the people who are finding ways to survive and even profit from the war.  Brewster facilitated many interviews through local fixers, and their stories are among the more interesting the book has to offer.  And also among the more tragic, as one is imprisoned and ultimately killed because of the nature of his work. 

Brewster's book does little to place the conflict in the history of the world.  He makes a couple of mentions of the previous Russian invasion of Afghanistan, tangentially mentioning the scorched earth policies of the Soviets and stating that several of the weapons used by the Taliban originate from the communist nation.

To gain a bit of insight to that earlier war, it is useful to watch the ITN (a British TV station) documentary Modern Warfare: Russia in Afghanistan.  It is available on YouTube at  Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

While Brewster focuses on the conflict as it influences the life of an individual or tiny group through his writing, the ITN documentary is made with the old-school macro level of analysis.  There are strengths and failings to both.  It is difficult to gauge just what is going on in the total war effort though Brewster's words but with the ITN documentary it is hard to fell any empathy because you never get to know anyone.

Ultimately, Brewster's work is an excellent glimpse into the war, but paraphrasing his own words, it is looking at a panorama through a straw.  It offers fantastic insight to the political decisions back in Ottawa, gives a face to the Canadian war effort in Kandahar, but doesn't quite feel complete. 

And by it's nature as something published so close in time to the war itself, it does not include any reflection on the events in the book.  Luckily, such things can be penned at a later date and included as a new afterward.  I'd certainly give it a read when it came out.

Aboriginal futures

There is no issue more important (and harder) to overcome for Canada to address issues facing its Aboriginal population than racism. 

Though it’s impossible not to be aware of phenotypic differences between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, it is really time that people stop thinking these differences carry with them a genetic pre-disposition to slothfulness, greed and vice.  I have no idea how this unenlightened position continues to exist or how its subscribers rationalize that a Caucasian drunk is just a person who needs to dry out by an Aboriginal drunk is beyond repair. 

But at the end of the day, a person is a person.  It might be that one has more pigment and perhaps their teeth have a slightly different shape, but these things are overall meaningless.  And although I've never thought otherwise, I was given a nice reminder of this over the weekend.       

I had the opportunity to instruct three Aboriginal grade 10 students on the ins and outs of the workings of a radio station.  Mason, Diandra and Payton are from the Skownan reserve and were in Winnipeg as part of the CareerTrek program. 

They weren't all overly interested in getting jobs in radio, but went through the program and seemed to have a legitimately good time being "on-air" and selecting music to play.  Which is admittedly easy when you don't have to try to adhere to CRTC standards when programming a largely hip-hop centric music station.

The worst I could possibly say of them was their education seems to be lack the knowledge of contributions to the world of music made by Vanilla Ice.  I can’t imagine why anyone would think this an important inclusion in a curriculum, but I can say that the fact that a couple of them through I was talking about icing on a cake which made me feel a great distance from my own days of youth.   

The highest praise I could possibly give is that they all have a fantastic sense of humour.  Some of it is rather dark humour, like a sarcastic assertion that one of the girls might not achieve anything greater than being the First Nations version of the octomom.  And this "most embarrassing moment" story from Mason: http://www.hilderman.info/resource/mp3/mason_story.mp3

And in the end, they were a group of kids probably more connected with the world than some adults I know.  One spoke at length about a former Member of Parliament (I'd hazard a guess that most Canadians probably couldn't name their current MP), there was talk about the need of jobs on their reserve (what's that racist line again? that they all just collect welfare?), and dreaming of the biggest dreams. 

I suspect that none of them will ever have the chance to walk on the moon as they hope, but it's awesome that they aren't ruling it out. 

Take me out to the ballgame

Spring has sprung, the grass has ris

Arizona and Florida are where the baseball is

Real baseball, with commentary, real big-league players and a TV feed.  Look!

Yes, it is only spring training baseball, but with the amount of snow dumped in Winnipeg over the past few days, it will do. 

Baseball is great for stories as there is conflict everywhere.  Each at-bat is it's own little chapter in the game, each run and out are important plot-points.  So here's what happened following the above screenshot.

The 8th inning ends on the next pitch, a flyout to centre.  The Yankees come up in the top of the 9th and add a couple runs.  The score is Yankees 8 and Phillies 2 heading into the bottom on the 9th.  Even the poor Mudville team had a better chance when old Casey was at the bat.

Michae O'Conner is out to pitch for the Yankees and Juan Pierre leads off the bottom of the 9th for the Phillies.  Pierre gets a single by swinging at a pitch so low that he probably gets his knuckles dirty as he brings the bat around. 

The next batter pops out to centre and then Kevin Frandsen takes a pitch from O'Conner deep to left for a two-run homer.  Can the Phillies come back?  Or will the home run kill the rally, as it is so often said to do?

It certainly seems to start that way.  O'Conner gets a little help from his defence when short stop fill-in Ramiro Pena makes a leaping grab to prevent a lob from Freddy Galvis for dropping into shallow left for a hit.  Not a highlight reel grab, but for the first outing of spring, it is pretty impressive.

But the pendulum starts to swing the other way with the next at bat.  Someone feeling chariatble to the young Yankees hurler says that Scott Podsednik shows a bit of veteran poise in turning 0-2 count into a walk.  Someone less inclined to sugar coat things would say O'Connor is suffering control problems as the four consecutive balls that out Podsednik on base were all well outside the zone. 

But spring training is the best time to see how a player will respond to adversity so O'Connor is left on the mound.  Tyler Gilles is up right after Posednik and the first pitch his way is errant and comes dangerously close to his head.  O'Connor settles down and again finds the strike zone, but gives up a RBI double to deep left field. 

Even though the Yanks' lead is cut in half and the tying run is on-deck, nobody motions to the bullpen for another pitcher.  It is the first spring training game that is on TV and in just this half an inning there's already this awesome story line.

Then it all falls apart when the pateience the Yankees have with O'Conner is rewarded when Cesar Hernandez strikes out on three straight to end the Phillies' chance at coming back.  O'Conner has a 27.000 ERA but he is out of the inning and his team wins.

OK, it's a bit "what could have been" from where the Phillies stand and it certainly doesn't come close to the awesomeness that was game 6 of last year's World Series, but it will more than do for the first  spring training game.

Taking numbers and making pictures

One way to measure some amount of economic success is to compare the imports and exports of a place.  So let's do just that for all of Canada from last year and then break it down provincially.


Statistics Canada makes available the total international imports and exports of each province on a monthly basis.  With that, it is no great trick to get yearly totals and then calculate the surplus or deficit of trade.  Since it stands to reason that more populated provinces will have more in raw numbers, a comparison is most easily done on a per capital basis.  So, a quick check of the census numbers that have been just recently released and a comparison can be done. 


All that math breaks down to look like this: 

Region	Per Capita Trade Surplus or Deficit (2011)
National	-$806.56
Newfoundland and Labrador	$16,441.80
Prince Edward Island	$4,773.76
Nova Scotia	-$4,275.02
New Brunswick	$1,590.72
Quebec	-$1,550.74
Ontario	-$7,745.24
Manitoba	-$3,650.51
Saskatchewan	$19,465.71
Alberta	$18,809.29
British Columbia	-$1,716.68
Territories	$14,873.44

Well, hey, that's pretty neat, though the numbers just kinda float out there by themselves.  The quickest explanation for the disparity between provinces comes down to how much oil or fish a province has available for export.  If the answer is: "lots", that province will have a massive trade surplus. 

It isn't that simple, there's plenty of sustainability talk that probably needs to happen there.  Manitoba or Ontario could likely rocket to the top of the standings if every tree in the province was cut down and shipped elsewhere for pulp and paper.  But that's a really bad idea.  But as a birds-eye view, it is useful.

Tables are nice, but here's a neat thing that IBM let me do:


That should be clickable, so check it out. 

Now, here's the thing about the IBM Many Eyes tool: it's pretty awful.  For a couple of hours, I couldn't get the visualizations to work.  Turns out that I needed to update Java, but there was nothing on that site to tell me I needed to do this.  That's a really crappy thing to do to a user.

Next, it is pretty rigid.  As you'll note from my data set, I combined the territories and included a national average.  These are not things Many Eyes is capable of handling.  It's easy enough to exclude them, but it means some of the picture is missing.  Yes, I could have done the independently, I didn't because their populations are really small.

Finally, don't blame me for the colour choices.  If there is an option to change it from horrible brown and overused blue, I can't find it.  You take what you get with Many Eyes, which is better than nothing.  But it is hardly perfect and kinda skirts the territory of "not very good".

Saving the seven words you can't say on television

Another Super Bowl half time show, another celebrity behaving badly.  Thankfully it wasn’t Madonna.  Perhaps 30 years ago the viewing audience would have wished otherwise, now many of us are probably glad there wasn’t a tunic malfunction on Sunday.
No, it was M.I.A., a British songstress who used a bit of sign language during the performance, a gesture urging viewers to give themselves a gentle caress.   

People saw and were outraged then apologies were made and fines were levied.  And now we can be certain that the next half dozen Super Bowl half-time shows will feature acts closer to their government pensions than the impetuousness spontaneity of youth so embodied in Miss M.I.A.

But what’s really missing in action is a reason for her to urge the 114 million viewers to love themselves just a little bit more.  She didn`t seem mad, upset or perturbed.  No, just casual cursing, just because she can.

And, as I see it, that`s really the problem here.  It`s not the oft-thought-of-children that we have to worry about here.  Really, can you think of a little one that has the attention span to get through a half time show that is also unfamiliar with the one finger salute?

No, it`s us everyday people that are cheated.  She`s watering down our gesture of frustration, our words of anger.  To do nothing more than pander.

When profanity becomes profuse, it starts to lose its meaning.  Cuss words aren`t commas, they`re really supposed to be reserved for those special occasion when un-salted language doesn`t fit the situation. 

This isn`t just me talking, there`s hard science backing this up.  Professor Richard Stevens of Keele University in the U-K has linked swearing with a reduction in pain. Apparently  A-hem and A-ha are an analgesic for our ailments.

But you probably knew that.  If you’re like most, you’ve had an oral flow of effluent, probably as recent as your last toe stubbing.  You may not be proud, but it made it feel better, didn’t it?

What is it that those people who use these words like they’re going out of style do when they need to make a point?  What is it someone like local Member of Parliament Pat Martin does?  He seemingly can’t help himself from tweeting out words banned by Beauchesne's. 

He’s unapologetic of it, and that’s fine.  I can well understand how the life of a career opposition member might make Martin feel like he needs a gimmick to draw attention his way.  There is, after all, only so often you can call for an axing of the penny before people just yawn and move on.  And it’s not like he’s the first politician to toss out a fuddle-duddle, and nor will he be the last.

But the more often the well is visited, the shallower it will become.  An explicit lyrics warning sticker once meant albums would shoot off the shelves and into stereos.  I imagine if people still bought CDs, the warning would now just blend in with the album’s artwork. 

We can’t allow the dirty words we know and love to lose their status.  And maybe we do have to think of the children the next time we think about contributing to the swear jar.  Because if we aren’t careful to conserve our curses, what words will they have when they need to make a sailor blush?

OAS changes to hit the most vulnerable

Two years of benefits for Canada’s retirees are at stake today as Members of Parliament returned to Ottawa for the first day of session in the new year. 

Unless the government reconsiders, the Old Age Security income supplement will not be available until a person reaches age 67.  This is up two years from the current 65.

“It’s age discrimination in its worst case,” says Dennis Lewycky, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. 

He says that the loss of the OAS between 65 and 67 may not be an issue for people with retirement planning beyond the Canada Pension Plan, “but for those on a fixed income, it’s going to be a big hit.”

 “It’s the difference between buying groceries and going to Winnipeg Harvest or between merely existing and going to visit grandchildren.”

He says people who need to be concerned with the change are beyond those in their mid-60s. “By the time people hit 50 or 55 and start retirement planning, there is a psychological hit.  If they roll back these two years, are they going to roll back the amount?” 

Marilyn Kelly is a 62 year old who hopes to retire this year.  She has spent the past 30 years working for Manitoba Public Insurance and hopes her employer pension will be adequate.

She could opt to work a few more years, but she says she won’t. Her house is already paid for and she wants to enjoy her life instead of working.  “I think if I did, my health would deteriorate,” she says, “I don’t think I should push my luck.”

But Kelly understands what the Harper government is trying to achieve.  “I can see the government’s point, they need the money,” she says, “but I hope they give us some time to make a decision.”

Harper addressed the matter when asked about it by Official Opposition leader Nycole Turmel during question period. 

“This government received a mandate to gradually reduce our deficit to zero,” said the Prime Minister, “At the same time, we will ensure that our vital programs are sustainable for the long term and for future generations.”

Lewycky offers an alternative method for the government to save the money that would otherwise be paid out in the income supplement.   “Take from who can afford rather than those who cannot.  Anyone worth more than a million dollars shouldn’t get OAS.”

Fun on the Internet

There was a time when inventing games to play with the resources at hand was a good skill to have.  It's want gave us stuff like Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon, which is how people would pass the time before IMDB.  The Internet has made that unnecessary as there is always some little flash game just a website away, or whatever bored.com will serve up or anything really.  But for what it takes, it also gives as there are a few news ways to make your own fun.

The Google Game

Type two words, no quotes, into the Google search engine and get only one result.  I haven't had much luck at this game in a few years as there are just too many word lists out there.  I consider it a pretty decent success to have under 500 matches.  Elocular (having but one cell or cavity; not divided by a septum or partition) and variegated (varied in appearance or colour) produce 492 results as of writing.  That's not bad. 

Plecular and variegated produce only one result on Google, if you've ever wanted to see what that looks like (providing this site isn't indexed before you check).  Only problem is, plecular isn't a word.  But it looks like it might be!

The Wikipedia Game

Head to Wikipedia and bring up a random article.  Then bring up another.  See if you can get back to the first one just by the links available on the pages.  It is surprising how often it can be done if you are willing to work at it.

Here's an example: St. Gabriel's Church (Manhattan) to Harpalinae

Harpalinae -> Violin Beetle -> Thailand -> Buddhism -> religion -> Roman Catholic Church -> Diocese -> List of all Roman Catholic archdiocese -> New York -> List of churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York -> List of closed churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York -> St. Gabriel's Church (Manhattan)

Ten steps, not too shabby for such unrelated things.