Dymaxion World

Why, oh why, do I read the Globe?

2009-11-06T12:42:00.001-05:00

The Toronto waste department lets you put out overflow garbage if you mark it with a yellow tag, purchased at Canadian Tire for $3.10. But the garbage has to be bagged. So, on a cold and rainy night, I found myself trying to stuff the laundry hamper into a wet garbage bag, muttering curses as the broken edges of the hamper reduced the bag to shreds.

It was a minor hassle and I would have been happy to endure it if I thought I was helping to save the planet. The trouble is that I don’t. Most recycling is a giant waste of time and money...

Oh, goody. It had been so long since Gee had written something asinine about waste disposal, I was starting to forget what unadulterated stupidity looked like in print.

Money aside, recycling gobbles up time and energy. In effect, the city has outsourced garbage sorting to households, turning everyone, from banker to housewife, into domestic trash workers.

Welcome to Canada, the classless society, where in 2009 major newspapers sneer at the implications of upper-class bankers and middle-class housewives being struck down to the level of trash -- pardon me, trash workers. Gee would never call another person trash. Heaven forfend.

Unlike me, most of them do it quite cheerfully, believing they are combatting a dire threat to the environment.

In reality, recycling is a bust for the planet. The materials we recycle – paper, plastic, glass, metal – are not running out. Most metals are in abundant supply. Plastics come from readily available chemicals. Glass comes from sand. Paper comes from trees, a renewable resource. In fact, most paper comes from trees grown specifically for pulp.

Ah, the abundance fallacy. Because human destruction of the biosphere isn't yet total, we should just go ahead and use it all up. But, to go down the list: The price of commodity metals are still at historic highs. (At $6,000 per short ton, the price of copper is higher than any time since the oil shocks, (PDF), excluding of course the last two years of economic frenzy. High prices, for those of you who neglected to take Econ 101 [1] are usually an indicator of relative scarcity, not abundance. But then, we're not privy to the subtleties that come from working at the Globe and Mail, who I'm told have a pretty substantial business section that could explain these things to their columnists.

Quickly, now: plastic manufacturers are leaving North America and moving overseas to places where natural gas actually is cheap and abundant. Glass is extremely energy-intensive to make, which is why the Beer Store and LCBO now recycle and reuse as much as they can -- it's cheaper for bottlers to recycle than use virgin stock.

Paper may be the exception to the general rule -- depending on your interpretation of the data, though you won't be surprised to learn that I side with those who argue that, on a life-cycle basis, recycling paper is better than merely landfilling it. But suppose my side is wrong, and it would actually be better for the planet to dump heavily bleached cellulose into holes in the ground by the kilotonne every year. Here we come to Marcus Gee's perennial complaint: that communities outside of Toronto are unwilling to act as our toilet.

All these materials are relatively harmless if buried in modern landfills equipped with clay foundations, impermeable plastic liners, drainage systems and gas-capturing technology. If there is a shortage of landfills near Toronto, it is only because governments refuse to show the courage needed to convince local NIMBYs to host one in their backyard.

I'm happy to criticize NIMBYism in some forms, but this is really strange. We just had a strike in Toronto which halted garbage collection, and people who live near public parks where temporary dumps were formed went apeshit. Setting aside whether I agree with them, you'd think Gee could at least acknowledge that nobody wants garbage in their backyard, not just yokel NIMBYs that he wants to caricature.

Meanwhile, recycling is an industry that increasingly is being handled in our backyard -- the compost plants that Toronto wants to build are being sited on municipal land, without the Province having to strong-arm anyone. And Gee spurns it.

Why, you'd think that Gee is actually just an irrational crank, with nothing of value to say on this matter. But that can't be right, because he's been given some of the most valuable real estate in Canada's print media to say basically whatever he wants. Surely they wouldn't give such a position to anyone, would they?

[1] I of course did not take Econ 101, as columnists like Marcus Gee used to explain to me during the earlier part of this decade when he was a cheerleader for globalization. So my high-prices = scarcity theory must be Communist gobbledygook.

UPDATE: Should have googled this earlier, but in his column Gee makes much of the $54 million price tag for Toronto's waste diversion plan. The cost of buying the Green Lane Landfill in 2007? $220 million. And that was just acquisition, not including the costs of actually dumping there.

But yeah, recycling is the waste of money.

On the subject of taking people seriously

2009-11-05T23:19:00.000-05:00

I just watched V tonight, and I gotta say I enjoyed it. But, should the unthinkable occur and aliens do actually arrive on Earth, I'd like to take this opportunity to list the warning signs for them being our oppressors, not benefactors.

1) They speak our languages perfectly. The US only becomes concerned about whether or not it has enough funny-language-speaking translators when it's engaged in a war of occupation somewhere. An entire civilization of people who are charming, attractive, and take the time to learn our native tongues? Clearly, they must be evil.

2) They claim to need water. Seriously, we'll let you have Pluto. We don't even call it a planet anymore. Just keep on movin', friend.

3) They claim to need metals or some other resource on Earth. Assuming our understanding of the physics of stellar formation are correct, there's no element on Earth that can't be procured from asteroids at far lower energy cost. And given that the Vs claim the desired element is "abundant" in Earth's crust, they could just get it from the moon (again, at much lower energy cost) because the moon really nothing more than a giant hunk of the Earth's crust, torn off and scabbed over 4 billion years ago.

Nice try, aliens, but you'll have to think up a different set of lies. Oh, and most civilized countries already have universal health care. Go eat the Americans, the rest of us don't need your help.

If you ever needed another reason to not take David Brooks seriously

2009-11-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

I'd just like to say a big hooray to Ezra for writing this, apropos of Brooks' curmudgeoning over IMs and text messages:

Columns like Brooks's irk me because they demean not only my lived experiences, but those of everyone I know. To offer a slightly more modern rebuttal, Sunday was my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend. A bit more than a year ago, we first met, the sort of short encounter that could easily have slipped by without follow-up. A year and a week ago, she sent me a friend request on Facebook, which makes it easy to reach out after chance meetings. A year and five days ago, we were sending tentative jokes back-and-forth. A year and four days ago, I was steeling myself to step things up to instant messages. A year and three days ago, we were both watching the “Iron Chef” offal episode, and IMing offal puns back-and-forth, which led to our first date. A year ago today, I was anxiously waiting to leave the office for our second date.

It is not for David Brooks to tell me those IMs lack poetry, or romance. I treasure them. Electronic mediums may look limited to him, but that is only because he has never seen his life change within them. Texting, he says, is naturally corrosive to imagination. But the failure of imagination here is on Brooks's part.

To people like Brooks -- and so many other middle-aged newspaper writers -- communications technology (in the broadest sense) has been something that lets them do the stuff they already did faster, or easier. What they simply don't get is that it lets you do other, totally new stuff, that would have never occurred to a previous generation. Like striking up a relationship between snarky IMs about Iron Chef.

What seems to bug Brooks is that young people have options he never did.

Surfacing

2009-11-02T11:42:00.002-05:00

Moved in, unpacking, got a cat, been busy. But I noticed that the CBC this morning was reporting today is the last day for CRTC submissions on the issue of a local TV surcharge for cable and satellite users. This is an issue that leaves me ambivalent.

On the one hand, you've got the cable and satellite providers who are basically abusive monopolies, and on the other you've got the legacy TV broadcasters, who wave the flag of "local TV" when they spend -- and make -- most of their money buying US content and whine about getting nothing from cable and satellite, when they get the very, very lucrative privilege of simultaneous substitution. (How many ad dollars do they get from Oscars and Superbowl broadcasts that they would otherwise miss out on?)

On balance, I suppose the hypocrisy of the legacy broadcasters bugs me more. But the whole issue reminds me of Henry Kissinger on the Iran-Iraq war: It's a pity they can't both lose.

Worse suckage than usual notice

2009-10-23T13:46:00.003-04:00

Moving tomorrow, to a house that does not yet have Internet access. Blogging will be even worse than usual, as the title of this post implies.

It's been a busy week -- painting the new place, packing the old place, and my Convocation was yesterday. Here's the funny thing: I don't really blog under a pseudonym -- my name really is John. So it was kind of surprising when, about to cross the stage and shake the hands of the Chancellor, the announcer calls out "Joshua..."

Bonus points: when I corrected the announcer, she double-checked her paperwork, as if I was punking her.

Luckily, the correct name was printed on the diploma.

Will (post-)Kyoto climate action keep the poor in the dark?

2009-10-23T13:34:00.002-04:00

No.

I'm tempted to write, "that is all", but apparently the latest talking point is that a lack of electricity is killing the poor, and trying in any way to forestall climate change will prolong the misery or make it worse.

To put it bluntly, this is crap, and not even well-formed crap. Kyoto allows low- and medium-income countries to continue growing their carbon emissions. Any conceivable successor agreement to Kyoto will allow substantial growth in CO2 emissions from the global poor, or it will not come in to being.

More than that, for this idea to be credible, you've got to believe that the Prime Minister of Namibia or his equivalent is sitting around, with tons of spare cash to build coal plants, but isn't because of the fear of Greenpeace or a stern talking to from... someone.

In reality, the poor have bad access to quality sources of energy because... they're poor. Grow their economies, and you'll give them more choices for energy. The way the costs of fossil fuels are going, maybe they'll choose renewables, or maybe they'll go with some legacy energy system. But nothing about the fight to reduce carbon emissions in the industrialized west will be a material factor in their decisions. At all.

Whoa

2009-10-19T23:31:00.000-04:00

There are, of course, reasonable debates to be had on any number of aspects of e-books and e-publishing. But when you find yourself writing that e-books represent a threat of "holocaustal proportions" and that books are the new Jew (!) you should probably just find a pillow to put your head down on.

There are book snobs, who I'm basically okay with -- hell, I am one in a lot of ways -- but book supremacists, for whom text in the form of, say, graphic novels, magazines, or the web are inferior speciments... man. I just don't get it. To cut yourself off from the firehose of human expression because of narcissism. Sad.

A gloomy reminder

2009-10-17T11:57:00.000-04:00

No, I don't write cheery things about climate change often. The reason, quite simply, is that I'm pretty well convinced we're doomed. I wasn't this gloomy in the mid-1990s, when I started learning about climate change, because the pre-Kyoto process seemed to be working towards a political solution. I wasn't even that upset in 2000, when it looked more and more like Kyoto was a dead letter, because I read books like Natural Capitalism and it seemed like, irrespective of government policy, it made good business sense to adopt energy-efficient and carbon-free technologies.

But by mid-decade, it became clear to me that the political and economic obstacles to a truly free energy market (one, I hasten to add, that I believe would truly favour renewable technologies) were too substantial, and the science of climate change became more and more alarming. (I started blogging in late 2004 -- you can, if you like, peruse the archives and watch my slow transformation from "hey, neat technolgy will save us" to "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck".)

It's not that I don't still believe that technical, economical solutions to carbon dioxide emissions exist and could be implemented with relative speed. It's that the political will to encourage such a deployment -- or even to stop hindering it! -- is simply non-existent in the largest emitting countries.

So what would it take to keep the planet safe, and limit our risk to a 2-degree change in global temperature? via DL, the answer:

The WBGU study applies the per capita principle to the world population of 7 billion people and arrives at an annual emissions quota of 2.8 tons of carbon dioxide per person. That's harsh news for Americans, who emit twenty tons per person annually, and it explains why the US deadline is the most imminent. But China won't welcome this study either. China's combination of high annual emissions and huge population gives it a deadline only a few years later than Europe's and Japan's.

The WBGU study, available here, says that we can avoid surpassing what it calls "the 2 degree guard rail" IF: we implement a perfectly-implemented globally pervasive cap-and-trade program which allows the United States to emit only 10% of it's current emissions, and has to buy permission to emit any more than that from countries like Burkina Faso. And even then, America's real-world emissions have to come down 90% by 2030.

So, in 20 years -- relatively speaking, a vanishingly short window -- we not only have to a) mandate a global carbon ration (something I strongly support!) but b) commit the western economies to a decarbonization regime that is presently unthinkable.

Oh, that's all then. What're you having for lunch?

The alternative, of course, is a planet where increasing numbers of poor, angry countries are consigned to starve while the wealthy countries of the world hoard what they have and buy up everything they need. And we've made it clear that yes, we will fight you for things you have that we want.

We should reconsider previously held beliefs

2009-10-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

The guys who wrote Freakonomics have written a sequel focusing on climate change. And everything, it seems, is wrong. Not "I disagree with it", but provably, factually, empirically incorrect. Worse, they seem to have gotten here exactly the same way as they got to their last book -- by being delightfully "counterintuitive."

You can of course draw your own conclusions, but I'm really grateful I didn't shell out for the hardcover of either book. Meanwhile, Daniel Davies had their number from early on.

"When future generations ask the economics profession 'What were you doing while the great bubble built up ahead of the Second Great Depression?', and we have to reply 'Lots and lots of quirky little working papers about sumo wrestling and speed-dating', it is going to be really, really, fucking embarrassing"

And we did, and it was; thank God nobody told the truth to HM The Queen, or the high brows of the economics profession might be decorating a series of pikestaffs outside Traitors' Gate.

Shut up, that's why

2009-10-08T12:21:00.000-04:00

Antonin Scalia, religious scholar:

He looks particularly queasy when Peter Eliasberg—the ACLU lawyer whose client objects to crosses on government land—suggests partway through the morning that perhaps a less controversial World War I memorial might consist of "a statue of a soldier which would honor all of the people who fought for America in World War I and not just the Christians."

"The cross doesn't honor non-Christians who fought in the war?" Scalia asks, stunned.

"A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins," replies Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

"It's erected as a war memorial!" replies Scalia. "I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of … of … of the resting place of the dead."

Eliasberg dares to correct him: "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."

"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead," thunders Scalia. "I think that's an outrageous conclusion!"

Silly lawyer. Whether they believed in Jesus or not, they died for him. Because that's what Jesus was all about. Other people dying on his behalf.

To think that a justice of the Supreme Court needs to have it explained to him -- a Catholic -- that a cross is a Christian symbol, and really exclusively so. The narcissism of the American right still manages to shock me, every once in a while.

Products and services, reviewed

2009-10-08T11:53:00.001-04:00

--The Saga of the Seven Suns, by Kevin J Anderson. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend these books. That would be a bit much. But IF you have an unquenchable love of spaceships, things that go zoom, and aliens, then this series is decent fodder. But not much more than that -- pretty mediocre SF, really, though never bad enough to make me put it down. And it manages, in seven books, to tell a less interesting story than Dan Simmons told in one. Still, there's some gold in there if you're willing to pan through to get it.

--Rubicon, By Tom Holland. As I said in my post a while back about the Roman Republic, this book is excellent. Insanely readable and well-written, Holland manages to convey the end of the Republic with all the relevance that it has for the modern era too. But two things really sold me on it. One, it was recommended at Balloon-Juice with a hillarious quote. Two, Holland's introduction to the book describes the problems that face a modern historian really eloquently:

Even the narrative of great events and exceptional men, however magnificent it may appear, is in truth a mutilated ruin, like an aqueduct on the Campagna, arches striding, and then, abruptly, fields.

Holland's narrative comes across with a rare mix of power and humility.

Man, it feels nice to read for pleasure again.

Woof

2009-10-08T10:20:00.000-04:00

Lordy. When I wrote -- not even a full week ago -- that I wondered if it was possible for a Liberal leader to go south of 25% in the polls, I didn't actually think we'd get terribly close to it. In all honesty, I actually assumed 27% was the floor for Liberal support -- and further assumed that the 27% was an outlier.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Again, obsessing over every poll is a waste of time -- albeit an amusing one -- but those of us who would like to see Prime Minister Harper be joined by the prefix "former" can be forgiven for wondering when, exactly, the Liberal comeback will start. If 308.com is right, then the Conservatives are now in majority territory, just barely.

One interesting note from the poll is that the news is at least as bad for the NDP as it is for the Liberals. Some have described the trend as the NDP voters switching to Conservatives, but outside of a few areas I don't think that's literally true. Instead, what's probably happening is that conservative Liberals, eager to back a winning horse (and one whom they agree with anyway) are bolting from the party, and the decline in Liberal fortunes is forcing NDP supporters to consider voting strategically, especially in Ontario where the NDP support is still mostly old enough to remember Mike Harris.

Well, now he's sure to win 200 seats

2009-10-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

The only thing I'm going to say about Stephen Harper's little piano ditty is that, when I see the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada playing the Beatles all I can think of is this:

If you want more intelligent commentary, I endorse Andrew Potter's comments here.

Totally random question

2009-10-07T16:13:00.000-04:00

I saw a university syllabus recently (for a course in third year) that, as part of an essay assignment, expressly forbade the use of sources other than the three (!) textbooks required by the instructor. This is totally foreign to my understanding of what a university paper should be, especially one for a later year.

So, because I know at least a few practising academics read this thing, some questions, coming from a total and honest lack of understanding:

1) Why would an instructor make a requirement like this?

2) Is it common to have a three-source paper in Ontario universities?

My assumption is that a professor might do this because larger class sizes have meant papers need to necessarily get smaller just to be marked. I entered University right before the double cohort, and pecking around it seems like first year students at Carleton have to produce much smaller papers (1/2 length) than I did in first year, but they're at least required to have outside sources.

So, input anyone?

Converging on zero

2009-10-07T13:54:00.000-04:00

David Olive's take on the fall of the House of Asper is, I think, spot-on: an obsessive quest for convergence (which turned out to be disastrous everywhere it was tried, as intelligent observers realized years ago) and a reckless collection of vanity projects doomed CanWest. The only thing I think Olive underplays is the purchase of Alliance-Atlantis. While there's no one thing that you can point to and say, "that was what killed CanWest", the purchase of AA is the single biggest source of debt on the company's books.

This is an all-too-common sentiment among CanWest's supporters, and it's kind of funny:

"There is no doubt that in this environment, CanWest had too much debt," Asper said. A seismic understatement. "However, you should not confuse operational excellence with our balance-sheet issues."

As if there's a bright line between the operational side of the company and the balance sheet. The debt was piled on to the company expecting "operational excellence" -- massive profits extracted via efficiency and reduced consumer choice. You can't say the company has too much debt without saying what "too much" means, in this case: the company isn't making enough money. In turn, the company isn't making enough money because... not enough people are reading the newspapers and watching the TV channels.

It's not fair to say that CanWest is doing much worse than any other network -- indeed, BBM data suggests that CanWest is doing pretty well in terms of nightly viewership, thanks to its heavy spending on US programming -- its just that competitors like CTV or, yes, CBC either didn't get in to the convergence game or got out of it much, much earlier before doubling down on the stupid.

And you all caught the bit about CBC and the National Post sharing content, right? If the Public Broadcaster had reached a similar deal with either the Globe or Star, wouldn't we expect the Post to describe the agreement as... welfare? A government handout to a business that's failing in the market?

Okay, so a lot of this is schadenfreude on my part. But I lost all respect for the NatPo when they reprinted Jonah Goldberg's "Bomb Canada" screed in 2002, which was tasteless and should have been beyond the pale even for the Post. Goldberg, you'll recall, was saying that the US should slap Canada around to man us up -- nevermind that Canadian soldiers were already fighting with the US in Afghanistan, and we had already suffered casualties... at the hands of the US Air Force.

It's official

2009-10-02T23:26:00.001-04:00

Michael Ignatieff: welcome to the Dion Zone.

Interestingly, the Coderre Contretemps seems to have really hurt Liberal fortunes... in Atlantic Canada. In Quebec, the voters have made their displeasure known... by punishing the Conservatives. Canadian politics is weird.

The big question is, has Ignatieff found the basement yet? Or is it possible for a Liberal leader to go below, say, 25% in national polls?

Stay tuned!

BONUS CRUELTY UPDATE: Alternately, we can now say that Michael Ignatieff is about as appealing to the electorate as Alan Keyes, 2004 -- what was once called the crazification factor. But let me give my Liberal friends a freebie here: Jack Layton is as bad as three Ralph Naders!

silent tear

2009-10-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

I know we'll all have a quiet little moment of mourning when the Aspers lose control of Canwest. Truly, no family has done more to elevate Canadian discourse than this clan, and it's a shame that something as petty as "obligations to shareholders" could humble such upstanding believers in free markets.

Politics is a skill, and a hard one at that

2009-10-01T11:45:00.000-04:00

Jim Travers writes one of the clearest, most brutal explanations for why the Liberals find themselves floundering in the polls:

Three times they failed to stare at themselves while looking for a leader. Three times Liberals opted for expediency over renewal.

In each case the party was so consumed with crowning a winner that it ignored red flags waving. It was so sure in 2003 that Paul Martin would sweep the country that it didn't stop to consider shaky leadership campaign performances that forecast his dithering as prime minister. It was so sure in 2006 that voters would soon dump Stephen Harper that it spared itself the tough choice between Ignatieff and Bob Rae by compromising on the obviously inept Stéphane Dion. It was so sure in December that Ignatieff was the new saviour that it aborted a leadership contest that would have hardened the winner and might have exposed the organizational and policy weaknesses now plaguing the party.

I find myself in the odd position of being kinder to the Liberal Party than a columnist for the Toronto Star, but I don't think Dion was anyone's decision -- I really think the party establishment assumed Ignatieff would win in Montreal, 2006, and was as shocked as anyone when Dion pulled out a squeaker.

That said, the entire column is worth reading. The last sentence should be seared in the the eyes of the Liberal leadership:

But should Ignatieff fail, blame will rest squarely on deluded Liberals who persuaded themselves that returning to power was inevitable and no more demanding than a beauty pageant.

via.

The Potomac or the Tiber?

2009-09-30T15:21:00.000-04:00

I had, for a while, referred to Bush-era Washington as "Weimar on the Potomac", a phrase I had retired in my mind until I heard the words "death panels" for the first time. The toxic mix of a victimized, self-pitying nationalism and a belief that traitors in their midst were just aching to stab them in the back reminded me of nothing so much as the late German republic.

But I just finished reading the fabulous Rubicon by Tom Holland, so you'll pardon me if a different metaphor springs to mind when we start seeing people advocate for a military solution to "the Obama problem". (via Balloon-Juice and Chet) Though of course, describing anything as "the X problem" has other, far more sinister, German overtones.

You can still read the full text of the original article here, though its original patron seems to have disowned both the text and the author. What's intriguing to me is less the hypothetical solution and more the grievances. John Perry writes:

Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

They can see that the economy -- ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation -- is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

None of these things, of course, started with Obama himself. Moreover, the idea that the US officer corps is going to displace the elected Commander-in-Chief over the nationalization of GM and Chrysler is... well, funny in many senses. But I suspect that this is an aperitif in the multi-course dinner of crazy that Perry is serving up, because he's just described running for re-election as a sinister plot to "seek continuation in office."

They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

By publicly declaring that the members of the intelligence community who followed illegal orders from their president will face... no consequences whatsoever?

They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America's troop strength is allowed to sag.

Ooh, a double-barreled crazy! First, the missile defense is being replaced with something that works, not eliminated. Secondly, in what universe is increasing US troop levels and military spending synonymous with "allow[ing] to sag?" The crazyverse, that's where. Bonus: the avowed reason for Polish missile defense was the threat from Iran, and Iranian missiles can in no way threatan US soil, unless we define "US soil" as the territory of any US ally, formal or otherwise.

So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?

Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?

Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?

Well, if I were a high-ranking general upset about these things, I might ask myself why I'd stayed silent for the eight years of the Bush Administraion instead of getting so exercised during the eight months of the Obama Administration. But then, I'm not a high-ranking general. And if I were in a room with a bunch of them, I would assume that we would all agree that the only legal, constitutional, and moral answer to give is "we obey the President of the United States of America, or we resign." But here comes the meat of Perry's conspiracy:

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

"Imagine a coup to defend the Constitution..."... from the duly elected government bound by that constitution. Nice. It's all high-octane crazy talk, bound together with the fevered imaginations of the teabaggers and the like. But I note that the list of grievances is pretty thin with actual constitutional violations -- no unlawful search and seizures, no trampling of states' rights, no restriction of the first or second ammendment. Instead, what motivates Perry is the fear that America will be put at risk by losing wars at the frontiers of its influence. And with the crack about letting enemies target missiles at America, he's really associating the desires of the military-industrial complex with the needs of the country.

And of course, this is where we come back to Rome. Rome had a military-economic complex of its own, well before the fall of the Republic. Wars in Asia (really in the Balkans, Turkey, and Syria) made generals and roman agents rich, rich, rich, so there was a constant desire to find new reasons to drum up "self-defense" wars against the next uppity Asian king. The first General to march on Rome -- as a defender of the constitution, of course -- was Sulla, who wanted to ensure that he be given the command of one of an apparently lucrative campaign against the king Mithridates. Sulla had been named General by the Senate, his rival Marius had been named General by the Plebian Assembly. Roman custom held that the assembly was superior to the Senate, but the Roman legions under Sulla's command -- and his conservative allies in the Senate -- had other ideas.

What's interesting to think about in all this, of course, is how quickly things changed for the Romans. The Republic had been roiled by civil strife for some time, but it was only with the election of the first Gracchi brother in the 130s that blood was actually shed in Roman politics. A decade later the second Gracchi brother was killed (and if you're thinking "Kennedy" here, you should really read Holland's book.) Then the great Social War erupts as Italian cities begin rejecting Roman power, and Sulla becomes the champion of Rome by bringing Italy to heel. Then, before the embers of the Social War can even cool, Sulla marches on Rome for the first time. This all occurs within about 50 years -- when the Republic's domestic politics had enjoyed 400 years of peace before that. Or, to put it another way, enough time had passed since the last true foreign threat to the Republic (Hannibal had been defeated in 202 BC) that nobody could really remember a time when Rome itself had been under threat. By 81 BC, Rome had been invaded by Romans, twice. 20 years later, Caesar's inexorable rise had already begun.

Here's my point. Politics are fragile. They are bound, more than we like to admit, by convention and custom, and not by laws themselves. The law itself, of course, can be bent to suit convention and custom as necessary -- so Canadian courts rule that Harper breaking his own fixed-election law isn't actually illegal because "confidence" of Parliament is something defined more by custom than by law. (And the court isn't wrong!) And when actors within our political system begin to start throwing custom out the window, then things can change very, very rapidly.

Since when did Martin go away?

2009-09-29T12:30:00.001-04:00

Anyone else remember, in the heady days circa 2006, how Michael Ignatieff's leadership was key to resuscitating Liberal fortunes in Quebec? Good times.

There's a growing meme out there that somebody's really going to have to explain to me. According to a number of voices -- including, I think [1] Paul Wells [update: listening to it online, it seems this was Susan Delacourt, though Wells certainly agreed] on CBC's The Current this morning -- the problem with the Liberal Party today is that both the Chretien and Martin camps have collapsed, leaving no core of leadership to keep the party from drifting aimlessly.

Except. I can get that Dion was basically a surprise to the Party -- they had their man (Ignatieff) picked, and if he'd actually been a competent politician he probably wouldn't have barfed up all over the silver platter they'd prepared for him. But Ignatieff is the leader now. And Ignatieff was hand-picked and parachuted in to his riding by... Paul Martin. Moreover, wooing Ignatieff in 2004-5 was an explicit slap to the final great moment of Chretien's Prime Ministry: keeping Canada out of the war in Iraq.

The Martin wing, then, hasn't really gone anywhere. It's a bit much to say that Ignatieff was Martin's chosen successor -- for that to be true, Martin would have had to acknowledge the reality that there would be one day when he wouldn't be leader -- but certainly the policies (move right, always right!) and even the staff are largely the same. (Denis Coderre, as just one example, began his cabinet career under Chretien but was elevated substantially under Martin.)

Now clearly I lack the sources that Paul Wells does. But from where I'm sitting, the problems isn't that the Martin camp and Chretien camp have disappeared. Rather, the problem is the Martin camp keeps failing miserably under both Martin and Ignatieff, but maintains a blatantly autocratic habit of forcing its candidates to the commanding heights without bothering with anything so plebian as a competitive election -- because in a competitive election, candidates like Ignatieff and Martin keep, um, losing.

Now, surely Dion is not the poster boy for electoral success either, but I know I'm not alone in thinking that had he not had to deal with a constant barrage of knives coming from his own team, Dion would have put up a better fight in the last election. Not a few people have used the words "treated shamefully" to describe Dion's handling at the hands of his own party. One guess as to who was wielding most of the knives, 2006-2008?

Now, clearly, I'm not an objective observer when it comes to Michael Ignatieff. I am, as they say, not a fan. But I thought it was clear that the Martin wing of the party was very much still in control, having helped ruin Dion and elevate Ignatieff. So people, if I have the basic facts of this matter wrong, please illuminate me.

[1] My apologies if I've misattributed a statement to Paul Wells, but I was just waking up to my alarm clock and couldn't sort out voices and statements right away. [Clearly, I did misattribute this.]

So it's all been worthwhile then

2009-09-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

Another note on that EKOS poll: Liberal supports stands basically where it was (nationally) after the 2006 election, or just a bit under. So despite having jettisoned two leaders, the country is basically as unimpressed with the party as they were when they elected Prime Minister Harper. If Ignatieff drops a bit further, he'll be well and truly in Dion territory (26% last election.) Alternately, he could almost be there now (the margin of error being what it is.)

Scott Tribe notes in comments that polls are snapshots, fickle beasts, etc etc. And he's quite right! Any individual poll is, in itself, meaningless. But my point is that we've seen a steady erosion in Liberal support since Ignatieff's announcement that he couldn't support the Harper government anymore.

The larger point, one that Chet has made time and time again, is that Canadian politics has been in a stunning kind of paralysis, especially since 2006 but arguably since 2004. All the sound and fury has truly signified nothing -- the Liberals have changed leaders, the other parties haven't, there's been a handful of scandals, rising stars in both parties have been privileged or humbled -- but the facts on the ground don't change.

If I were leading a political party in the Canadian parliament right now, I'd want to see damn good evidence that something major and structural was changing in my favour before I made a move. I politely submit that anyone claiming to see something like that in the Liberals' favour is either a) wrong, b) lying, or c) reading the contemporary equivalent of chicken entrails and tea leaves.

On unintended consequences

2009-09-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

So last week the Liberal Party maneuvered to have the Bloc and NDP support a confidence motion in the house, and lo how we did hear crowing from our cousins in the middle: This'll show those stupid dippers, they said, and boy won't they look dumb supporting the Harper conservatives. And indeed, it does look silly to have the social-democratic left supporting the regressive right in Parliament. The Liberals seem not to have asked, however, what it would make them look like.

Answer: the Conservatives now have a 7-point lead in Ontario, a five point lead in Toronto, and are seven points ahead nationally.

Lesson for the day: you can make your rivals look bad, but it doesn't make you look good.

Hysterical paranoia -- not just for nervous parents anymore!

2009-09-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, in my new neighbourhood:

Man: Hey, do you know whose dog that is?

(Turns to see perfectly normal-looking black lab, albeit not on a leash and seemingly unaccompanied by its owner.)

Me: Uh, nope. It's got a collar, did you check the tags?

Man: Uh, no, I'm afraid of being attacked.

Me: Come here boy, yes, who's a good dog, aw you're so friendly.... the tag says it belongs to 427. Hmm... I'm standing in front of 427. Looks like the crisis has passed.

Man -- not a boy, definitely a (young) man: Wow, that was really brave of you.

I can't vouch for everything in that dialogue, except for the last sentence, which is seared in to my brain. Are people actually afraid of unattended dogs now, even when they have visible tags and collars?

Lordy, summers at my cottage would've been like the Normandy landings for that guy -- trauma and bravery everywhere! So... many.. dogs...

(Training kids to be wary of strange animals: good idea. Not being able to differentiate, as an adult, between "unknown" and "dangerous": bad idea.)

Hm.

2009-09-22T12:24:00.000-04:00

Okay, read this article in the NatPo and answer me a few questions:

1) Do you see this as (further) evidence that Stephen Harper is an incompetent/malicious PM?

2) Is there any evidence that the upgrades to water services in this country are unnecessary or wasteful?

3) Whose job is it, in the Canadian system, to make sure cities have sufficient resources to operate? (If you answer, "the federal government", go back to school.)

Look, I'm not a fan of Stephen Harper -- newsflash! -- but it is not his job to make sure that cities run well. It is, in fact, his job to make sure that Canadian water is clean and not posing a danger to human health. (It is a settled matter that the Feds have a strong obligation in the environment.) It is, in Ontario, Dalton McGuinty's job to make sure that cities have enough money to do their jobs properly.

Now, I would like to see a federal government committed to lowering the costs for cities. But the Provinces have fiscal resources too, and (to use Coyne's nice formulation) the argument that the feds should pay for Provincial responsibilities amounts to a) the feds have money, and b) we want money.

There is only one true "fiscal imbalance" in this country, and it's between the provinces and cities. When Queen's Park starts sending more of its money to the cities instead of enjoying the proceeds of the Harris-era downloading, then come talk to me.

Tab-clearing, 9/22

2009-09-22T11:42:00.002-04:00

TNC on Kanye, "manners" and all that:

Even Brooks view of the "Greatest Generation" is myopic. In 1948 Strom Thurmond authored the segregationist Dixiecrat charter, while immodestly fathering a daughter with a black women. In 1946, Isaac Woodward, a veteran of World War II, was beaten and blinded--while in uniform--by South Carolina police. The police were prosecuted, but the jury acquitted them, and a court-room full of Americans broke out in immodest applause.

This is history through the veil, again. It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very existence springs from an act of immodesty.

The Internet is not making us stupid. Stop saying that it is.

I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony.

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

Classic book titles, 21st-century style:

Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

Then: Walden
Now: Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany

The ghost fleet of the recession:

"A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth. Now 12 per cent are doing nothing.."

The relative energy efficiency of transport modes, revisited. Cyclists still win! (Thanks, Adam!)
Surface area required to power the world with sun and wind.
And finally, it turns out Ayn Rand and her cultists were kind of weird. Who knew?