Work in Progress

Teach Your Children Well

The world will mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in a few days but some folks have decided there's no time like the present so they're released a colouring book, aimed at children 10 and up, to commemorate the events.

From the Toronto Star:

The publisher of a controversial new children’s colouring book entitled We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom is defending the publication, saying it is simply an educational tool for teaching kids about “what a group of radicals did” to the United States.

The book purports to tell the story of the September 2001 terrorist attacks from the planning stages through to the assassination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden earlier this year.

It encourages children to colour in accompanying pictures, including one of the burning twin towers and one of a Navy SEAL soldier shooting a bullet at bin Laden as he cowers behind a woman dressed in a hijab.

Wayne Bell, publisher of St. Louis, Missouri-based Really Big Coloring Books Inc. and author of the new “graphic novel-colouring book,” says its purpose is to explain what the events of 9/11 were about “in a very clean, honest read that does not shy away from the facts.”

“We call the 19 hijackers what they were: radical Islamic Muslim jihadists. That’s what they were, and so that’s the language we use,” he told the Star. “This was the man-made terror event called war that was brought to our country and we responded in kind and we will continue to respond. That’s what this book is about.”

But Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says he believes the book was designed to generalize and stereotype Muslims and Islam in a way that portrays all Muslims as linked to radicalism, extremism and terrorism.

“America is full of these individuals and groups seeking to demonize Islam and marginalize Muslims and it’s just a fact of life in the post-9/11 era, but hopefully the parents would recognize the agenda behind this book and not expose their children to intolerance or religious hatred,” Hooper said.

Read the rest here.

I don't know what I can add to this piece that doesn't already speak for itself.

ok, what. the. fuck.

 

Please pardon my ignorance, I'm not sure if the speaker here is Malaysian or Indonesian or from where he hails, exactly.

However, the language he is speaking is irrelevant because what matters is how the lady manages to convey her message without using any words.

Hilarious.

Let's hear it for Ford nation, Honda nation, GM nation, Toyota nation...

From today's Globe & Mail:

A new study suggests the vast majority of commuters remain reluctant to use public transit, despite public campaigns encouraging people of its environmental and cost benefits.

The Statistics Canada study found about 82 per cent of commuters travelled to work by car in 2010, while 12 per cent took public transit and six per cent walked or cycled.

“Of the 10.6 million workers who commuted by car, about 9 million reported that they had never used public transit for their commute,” says the 2010 General Social Survey.

“About 7.4 million of these people thought public transit would be somewhat or very inconvenient.”

About 1.6 million car commuters, or 15 per cent, said they had tried using public transit to get to work; 53 per cent of them considered it inconvenient.

And the numbers suggest their complaints may be justified.

“Commuters who used public transit took considerably longer to get to work than those who lived an equivalent distance from their place of work and went by car,” says the study.

Nationally, users of public transit spent 44 minutes travelling to work, compared with 24 minutes for those who went by car.

Commuting times are door-to-door, StatsCan notes. Times for public transit are generally longer because its use can involve walking to a transit stop and waiting for a bus, it says.

In the six largest cities, the average commuting time was 44 minutes for public transit users and 27 minutes by car. The gap in average commuting time was slightly larger in mid-sized metropolitan areas — 46 minutes on public transit and 23 minutes by car.

“The gap was not a result of distance travelled,” the agency says.

In Toronto and Vancouver, it took public transit users about 20 minutes longer than car users to get to work. In Montreal, the difference was much smaller, about 10 minutes.

While satisfaction with commuting times was generally high (85 per cent said they were satisfied or very satisfied), big-city residents were more than twice as likely to be frustrated with their commuting times than those in smaller centres.

“Public transit users were more likely than car commuters to be dissatisfied with their commuting times (23 per cent versus 18 per cent),” says the study.

“This was primarily because it takes them longer on average to get to work.”

As commuting time increased, however, StatsCan found the pattern was reversed. For example, 21 per cent of drivers with commuting times between 30 and 44 minutes said they were dissatisfied, compared with 10 per cent of public transit users.

Furthermore, the study says “the connection between commuting times and stress was clear.”

All of that may be true but why has anyone considered the difference between wasted time and useful time?

When one drives to work, almost always alone, the most one can do is listen to radio or podcasts.

However, if you're on transit, someone else is driving and you can read a book, do a crossword, Sudoku, catch up on email, snooze, watch your iPad/iPod, listen to music, read the paper, work, knit, whatever. If you can do it sitting down, you can probably do it on a bus, train, streetcar or subway and that is meaningfully more productive time than sitting in the car, listening to a DJ or a call-in show.

Not to mention it's way cheaper and better for the environment, etc.

But whatever. The more of you drive, the more room on the subway for me...

 

So, you think YOU had a tough week?

  

Hilarious.

Canada, you know it's true

Canada: Land of Ontario and the 9 wannabe-Ontarios & 3 territory wannabe-Ontarios. Suck it.

TED talk: Marco Tempest on truth, lies & beauty being in the eye of the iPod

Amazing.

Ted Tevan, icon, mentor, friend

I guess I'm really not too young for my heroes to die.

A few weeks ago, I made the remark on twitter when Clarence Clemons passed away but it really struck home today when I read the news, on twitter again, that Ted had passed away.

It's hard to overstate the impact Ted had on me in my adolescence.

For those of you who don't know, Ted Tevan was a Montreal institution in the 70s and 80s. His radio show, Sports Rap, was the first of its kind: an intelligent, wildly bombastic & charismatic host who knew more about sports than anyone and who delivered the most entertaining radio most anyone had ever heard at a time when the city was pretty much the centre of the sporting world.

Bob McCowan? Ha. A pale imitation of Ted.

How good was he? Ted's commercials were special. He made his sponsors famous in ways it's hard to imagine today. Montrealers grew to know Leo the Lion-hearted and the Fabulous Phil and the folks at Chenoy's as characters in their own right. To this day, I bet there are tens of thousands of Montrealers who remember the Dorion Suits commercial Ted made with Tony Perez.

Let's face it, this was a great time to be a sports radio host in Montreal: home of perennial Stanley Cup parades, the ascending Expos, the 1976 Olympics and world class events like the first Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran fight. And Ted was in the middle of it all.

If you dared call in and you were a straight arrow, Ted had all the time in the world for you but, Lord, if you weren't... if you were a mooch... Oh my! Out came the machine gun and with a fiery You're Gone!  The bullets would fly!

It was, without exaggeration, hilarious and entertaining radio.

Along with his trusty sidekick producer Dan McGarrity, Ted made regular listeners of people who had no interest in sports and bestowed on the music of Neil Diamond an almost mythic seductive quality, as he whispered his opening night after night.

However, Ted would never refer to his program as a mere sports show. That would never do, far too limiting a topic. He considered Sports Rap to be about "The Game of Life", as only this would grant him the appropriate canvas on which to paint his nightly opus.

One night, a man called in and said he held the phone in one hand and a revolver the other and that he was going to kill himself on the air. Ted kept him on the line long enough for the police to trace the call and listeners could hear them break in to the man's house. That was the kind of show he had, it truly was the Game of Life.

As a kid, I spent years, literally years listening to his show, which followed the Canadiens games on CFCF. Every night, following another Habs win, Ted would come on and tell us over and over how his adopted city was the city of Champions.

Oh my. Heady stuff for a 12 year-old with a self-confidence issue.

I never called in, never even considered it really; that would have been like reaching out to a God and frankly Ted wasn't really into the cute kid thing so until I knew I had something really interesting to say, I figured I'd keep a low profile and call in when I was a little older...

Well, life has a funny way of changing our perceptions and the next thing I knew, Ted was sitting in our living room and for the next few years, he became a fixture in our lives.

And for me, these were a transformative few years. Ted was astute and connected and he did not suffer fools, either gladly or otherwise. Ted had hung out with Ali & Bundini Brown & was close friends with ballplayers like Mack Jones and here he was, sitting in a chair across the coffee-table, sharing stories about those days and telling me what a good writer I could be if I wanted to be. 

um, what?

I could be a good writer?

I could be a good anything?

For real?

This was not happening. Because this was impossible. Ted Tevan was not sitting in my house telling me I was good. Telling me to "keep my hat size constant" because he predicted big things for me.

When I turned 16, I was a counsellor-in-training at a summer camp when I got a telegram from Ted for my birthday. I still have it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the huge impact reading The Boys of Summer had on me when I was 16. Ted gave it to me.

When our cat died, Ted put a 3-line notice in the paper telling Cinnamon just how much Robert, Melo, Yves and Mom missed him. I still have the clipping.

Ted was a special person. He had a knack with people.

After I graduated from journalism school, life got in the way over the years and we lost touch but about 6 or 7 years ago, I heard he was on the air again and called into his show.

When he heard The Shadow was on the line, I could hear the genuine surprise in his voice and when I told him I was doing well in Toronto, with a family, he repeated the names "Emily and Adam" in that tenor bass voice he had and it made me glad for him to know that I'd turned out ok.

This afternoon, when I read he passed away last night, I sat stunned at a gas station for a few minutes and then did the only thing one can do, when clinging the final remnants of childhood: I called my Mom and told her Ted had died. So it goes.

My sincere condolences to his family and to Ted, thank you for all you did for me, dear friend, and may you rest in peace.

 

Thomas Friedman writes science fiction

With apologies to the NY Times for not merely including an excerpt of Thomas Friedman's August 9th column, it appears here in its entirety:

This is a scary economic moment. The response we need is not easy, but it is totally obvious. We need a Grand Bargain between America’s two parties — and we need it right now. Until you read the following news article, we’ll be stuck in a world of hurt.

Washington (AP) — It was a news conference the likes of which the White House had never seen. President Obama stood in the East Room, flanked by the House speaker, John Boehner; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president asked Mr. Boehner to speak first:

“My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies, but also a spirit of compromise and a recognition that both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group — liberal or conservative. I know that the Tea Party activists are true patriots and they will work with us as well. President Obama: Let’s fix the country together and then compete in 2012 over who can best manage a growing pie rather than a shrinking one.”

President Obama warmly embraced Mr. Boehner and then took the podium and said:

“Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell, thank you for your commitment to act in our nation’s highest interests. Let me say publicly what I committed to you privately: I have asked Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to revive their deficit commission and to use their recommendations for how to cut spending and raise revenues as the starting point for our negotiations. But it will now be called ‘The National Commission for American Renewal.’ Because in addition to the original Bowles-Simpson members, it will include Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi, and its goal will indeed be a comprehensive plan for American renewal. Everything will be on the table — spending cuts, tax reform and increases, a framework for restructuring the debts of Americans whose homes are under water and the investments we need to renew the primary sources of our strength — infrastructure, education and scientific research. Each component will be integrated and timed to minimize pain and maximize job creation — and the entire package will be presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote. I am confident that real tax and entitlement reform will unleash billions of dollars in investments.

“But the most important thing that will be on the table will not just be a plan to make our country solvent. It will be a plan to make America great and guarantee that another generation will enjoy the American dream. Any fair-minded person who looks at all the stimulus investments I’ve made in education, clean energy, research and infrastructure can see that this has been my goal from the start. But I know those investments can’t be sustained without a new long-term budget deal. And I, too, have a confession: I’ve done a poor job integrating my nation-building ideas, including health care, into a single vision so people understood where I was going. I also let tactical political considerations — like abandoning the Bowles-Simpson commission — intervene, so Americans lost sight of my priorities. That will not happen again. No one loves this country more than I and my Democratic colleagues. While we will bring our traditional concerns for social justice and equality to these negotiations, we will not quit until a Grand Bargain to ensure American greatness is enacted into law.”

At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.

What’s sad is how much this is a fantasy and how easily — with just a little political will — it could be a reality.

Having read the whole piece, you understand why reproducing an excerpt would not have done it justice.

The US political system is based upon the principle of a separation of powers mandating compromise between competing interests. Without profound compromise, the system is failing its citizens so here's hoping the spirit of patriotism to which Friedman referred finds new life in American politics because this is clearly a sinking ship to anyone with eyes. 

a new hat for the country that has everything, except a perfect credit score

Let's hear it!

USA! USA! USA!

 

TED talk: Richard St. John on the 8 secrets of success

  

This is a fun, short talk from about 6 years ago. 

It's the first talk I've watched in about 3 months, maybe because I just booked my TED flights for 2012, maybe because I needed a shot of enthusiasm as we enter a new period of uncertainty... I figured I'd post it in case anyone out there needs the same.

In any case, I learned a few things: Rupert Murdoch is a TEDster & someone should remind Richard to stand the fuck still when he's giving a presentation. His content is great, his swaying is nausea-inducing.

Enjoy.