Because I can’t resist, this is great. I totally did find this by googling myself — this is obviously not me, but a guy who shares my name. (Side note, that other Matt Griener’s dad’s name is Paul – which is my uncle and late grandfather’s name.)
Links for the Week
December 9, 2008 at 4:03 pm (Links)
A fairly disturbing story about international adoption from Foreign Policy. This should not, on its face, be surprising, but nonetheless it did surprise me:
“There are simply not enough healthy, adoptable infants to meet Western demand—and there’s too much Western money in search of children. As a result, many international adoption agencies work not to find homes for needy children but to find children for Western homes.”
This is kind of a neat story about Beethoven and the Bavarian Illuminati — an Enlightenment secret society and all-purpose bogeyman for 18th and 19th century governments.
Back in the day, Michael Ignatieff wrote regularly for The New Republic, and now that he’s soon to become Leader of the Opposition up here, one of their blogs has posted a list of articles he wrote for them over a thirty-year span. So you know, if you’re the kind of person who likes to decide for yourself, have at ‘er.
Oh, and this is almost too funny to be believed. In the words of Ms. Krabappel, “Pretty lame, Milhouse.” Dignity and honor of the office, my ass.
Quote for the Day
December 5, 2008 at 6:26 am (Uncategorized)
There is hardly anything in the world that some men cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper and the people who consider price alone are that man’s lawful prey.
– John Ruskin
Nits to Pick
December 3, 2008 at 3:07 pm (Uncategorized)
The plural of governor-general is governors-general, not governor-generals. “General” is an adjective in this use. Governor is the substantive part of the compound, so it’s the part that gets an ‘s.’ On the principle but with a different result, the plural of lieutenant-governor is lieutenant-governors.
I hate the abbreviation “the G-G” for the Governor-General. And yet, I accept the abbreviation PM for Prime Minister. Go figure.
On other abbreviations I hate: CPC and LPC for, respectively, the Conservative and Liberal Parties of Canada. I don’t know why. I liked the Tories and Grits. I’m an old-fashioned guy. Furthermore, I enjoy a bowl of delicious grits in the morning, especially with bacon. But again, NDP doesn’t bother me.
So, in summary: you should feel free to ignore me on the matter of abbreviations, but not on how to pluralize the Queen’s representative (representatives) in Canada. That is all.
The Lighter Side
December 2, 2008 at 3:19 pm (Food, Morning)
Having got this morning’s rant off my chest — and I wouldn’t blame you for deciding to just keep walking and not make eye contact on that one — it’s time to talk about grapefruits. It seems to be the beginning of grapefruit season, which is my favourite fruit season of all. In part, this is because I enjoy grapefruits, but it’s also because I do not enjoy having to choose between toast and cereal for the three hundredth breakfast in a row — since last grapefruit season. Save-On had them on at two for a dollar on the weekend, and they’re good. I always go by weight for all citrus fruits. My mom goes by smooth skin. More often than not, I think those are the same fruits.
The one downside to grapefruit is that they’re not easy to eat gracefully in front of the computer. So don’t eat in front of the computer, you say. Fine. I’ll just be over here, trying to clean sticky dried-on grapefruit juice spots off the monitor with spit and my finger. We’ve begun the slow journey towards convincing ourselves to buy a new computer anyway (which means it may well happen in 2009).
A question for the comments (ie., me and Andrew): what is the best fruit season?
The Little Dude’s vote, for what it’s worth, would be pear. They’re soft, the skin’s easy to chew, plus I’ve had good luck recently on buying very juicy ones. Now that we’ve bought a house with a south-facing backyard, I need to look into whether hardy pear trees exist and if their fruit is worth eating. But another question: what is the deal with Bartlett pears? They seem inferior to Anjou pears in every way, but stores still stock them. Why?
Constitutional Crisis!
December 2, 2008 at 9:17 am (Links, Politics)
First off a confession: I spend way too much time reading newspapers online and political blogs. I’m home all day, so whenever Little Dude is sleeping or playing contentedly by himself, I’m usually scanning for new posts. It’s a bit of an addiction. If I put just some of that time into hockey blogs, I might not have had to rename my fantasy hockey team “Last Place.”
In any event, here I sat down at the computer this morning, having hashed out in my own mind what I think about this current business in Ottawa, and the Globe and Mail put my exact thoughts in this morning’s really really long editorial. Anyway, it’s great. Go read it. But since you’re here already, here are my own words:
For one thing, everyone needs to take a deep breath and remember grade ten social studies. Or, at the very least, remember what your ballot looked like when you voted six weeks ago. I know we all make our decision based on things like national party platforms and leaders, but the fact is we elect directly our riding’s member of parliament. A government is formed, based on the make-up of that parliament. But the House is the primary thing. The government cannot operate without the confidence of the House. If the largest party cannot maintain that confidence, it’s perfectly legitimate for the governor-general to ask if the leader of the opposition is able. And I know that conservatives understand this because (a) conservative intellectual heroes like Burke and Bagehot wrote about the Westminster system and its virtues at some length, and (b) because Stephen Harper made exactly that point four years ago when Paul Martin led a minority government. I realize politicians have short memories on this kind of thing, but there’s no reason for the rest of us to fall for it.
Secondly, all systems of government are designed to broker compromise between competing interests. There seem to be two main ways that could have worked and hasn’t over the past three years. Harper could have governed by appealing to centrist opposition MPs in the House — he needs ten out of 165 to vote with him on money bills (or twenty to stay home), they’re most likely to be Liberals, and party discipline cannot possibly be strong in that caucus. Or he could have convinced centrist voters to elect a majority of Conservative MPs in the general election. Basically: either win over at least part of the opposing parties or shift the public discourse. Great politicians do both, successful politicans do at least one. Stephen Harper has done neither, he’s had five years to try, and it should have been easy given the state of the Liberal party.
This is my point: Stephen Harper wants a fundamental realignment of politics, so he can build a permanent Conservative majority? Good for him. It drives me crazy that people get offended by the very idea. But on the other hand, we have a pretty robust system for getting reasonable governance out of ambitious and strong-willed politicians. The system makes it in their interest to compromise judiciously, to respect alternative viewpoints, to win broad public acceptance for their philosophy. Stephen Harper can’t or won’t do it, and that’s why despite being dealt the best hand for a Conservative leader in twenty years — first AdScam, then Dion and a totally disoriented Liberal party — he hasn’t won a majority government in three tries.
So this is what bothers me: it’s just the political incompetence. Yeah, I’m of the liberal persuasion, but I honestly don’t care if we get prudent and responsible government from the Liberal party or from the Conservative party. In fact, it seems prudent to replace one with the other every once in a while. Why shouldn’t Harper have a political agenda? But it maddens me that he’s incapable of pursuing it without being petty and small, and that even in his petty and small gestures, he’s not taking the long view.
And that said, speaking of the long view, this coalition in the works just seems like a horror show. Sure, it would be constitutionally legitimate, and there’s precendent. It may even better reflect the will of 62% of the electorate than a Conservative government unwilling to earn the confidence of the House. But politically, I just don’t see how it wouldn’t be a disaster. There must be a way for the Liberals and the Tories to save face here. It may be as the Globe suggests; it may not. I certainly hope it gets found.
Paper Route
November 27, 2008 at 6:39 am (Morning, Uncategorized, Work)
I’ve become an early riser — 5 am every morning. This started a week ago today, and I’ve managed it every day except Saturday which I think is a reasonable exception. It works for me because I get a couple hours of quiet time — to read, enjoy my coffee, stretch (because I am old: see below), and even to blog — before the Little Dude is up and demanding my constant attention. Something about this morning, in particular, reminds me of my paper route.
I used to deliver the Edmonton Sun. This started in 1993, the summer before grade nine, and I only quit when I went on exchange to Germany for three months in the spring of 1996. Almost three years that the papers had to be out by 6 am on weekdays, but I got an hour to sleep in on Sundays. When I first started, there was no Saturday Sun, so that was my night to stay over at friends’, but after a few months they filled that in. And I always got screwed out of daylight savings: in the spring they’d tell you to set your clock forward before going to sleep, but in the fall you were supposed to finish your route and then move the clock back.
Every so often, I’d wake up in a panic thinking I’d slept in until 7:30 and ride my bike out to the corner and find my papers hadn’t been dropped off. So I’d whip back home to call the office and find out if there had been a problem at the presses and the papers were late (as sometimes happened), only to see — now that I had my glasses on — the time was actually 1:30.
But when all went as planned, I’d stumble upstairs around 5:00 where my dad was up and reading the Journal which, as a serious paper, was delivered earlier than the Sun. Then grab my coat and bag, out the door, fetch my bike from behind the garage, and head out to the corner three blocks away where a pile or two of papers were sitting on the sidewalk for me.
The five a.m. air is always cold enough to wake you up, no matter how tired you are; that and the quiet are the best parts of this time of day. But there’s cold enough and then there’s cold — and most winters days by the time I got home my ski mask was frozen solid from 13-year-old-boy-unbrushed-teeth breath. The worst was snow, because by 5 a.m. not even the retired old men have been out to shovel their sidewalks, and there’s been no traffic to pack down tracks on the street that a kid can ride his bike in. Days after a heavy snow, the route took twice as long, I fell two or three times on every block, didn’t get finished until it was almost light out, and barely had time to shower and get to school on time.
Anyway, that was my first job and until Hosanna, it was the job I’d held the longest. As much responsibility and work ethic as I have now — and I am a lazy man — I suppose I earned it out in the cold before dawn. Who knows what the future will bring, but it doesn’t look good for newspapers or paper boys. Will they still print the news on paper in 2020, when the Little Dude is a bigger, more awkward and gangly dude? Maybe not, and there’s no sense being too wistful about that — he’ll come to learn about work somehow.
Unless our robot overlords no longer have use for us.
Links for the week
November 26, 2008 at 9:05 am (Links)
The New Yorker reviews Patrick French’s biography of V. S. Naipaul, “The World Is What It Is.” The title of the review — “Wounder and Wounded” — is pure insipid cliche, but the article is worth reading anyway. I finally read A House for Mr. Biswas this past summer, and it set me on a Naipaul kick. Nevermind the other fiction, which by and large repeats the themes of Biswas, but read the non-fiction. In particular, find a copy of The Writer and the World for his piece on the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.
There’s an interesting profile in Esquire of the guy who invented Segway, and his current projects. A little light on thought, maybe, but the writing is frenetic and fun.
Nobody likes an angry rant, so I’ll keep this brief: this might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. But, as I said to my brother, it’s noteworthy that the comment board on the page has reasoned and calm responses to the story. Apparently internet comments can be insightful, it simply requires something appallingly stupid in the offline world to prompt it. (In addition, it must be said, to the usual stupidity; it’s just diluted in this case.)
Finally, here’s a remarkable comparison of this year’s US government bailouts and major spending projects of the past two hundred years — the Louisiana Purchase, the Marshall Plan, etc. It’s irrelevant to the question of whether the bailouts are necessary or effective, but the numbers are staggering.
Quote for the Day
November 24, 2008 at 8:33 pm (Quotes)
In a democratic society, one must be continually on guard against the desire for popularity. It leads to aping the behavior of the worst. And soon people come to think that it is of no use — indeed, it is dangerous — to show too plain a superiority over the multitude which one wants to win over.
- Germaine de Stael, On Literature and Society (1800).
