Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

One of the gadgets on my custom Google homepage is the “Top Nova Scotia News” feed. It displays the three “top” stories for Nova Scotia at any given time.

Usually my eyes scan over the headlines without paying much attention, but lately there have been a rash of headlines that serve to highlight just exactly where it is that I live.

Please, allow me to share.

On October 2nd I noticed a headline about a “wayward moose” troubling Pictou county. I can’t tell you the actual headline, since later that day the story was updated and all I have is the current headline. Here’s that current headline, with a snippet of the article:

Moose dies during relocation attempt

The wayward moose near Pictou has died.

Officials from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources shot the endangered moose with a tranquillizer gun Thursday, then used a helicopter to airlift the animal out of the area.

“The team worked pretty quick,” said Alan Blinn, DNR area supervisor.

By the time they lowered the moose onto a trailer two minutes later, however, it was dead.

“Moose are a highly stressful animal, and of course it was very stressed out when we were trying to catch it and tranquillize it,” Blinn said. “A combination of the stress and drugs might have done this.”

The later half of the article contains most of the text that was originally there when it was just a “moose on the loose” story. What’s been edited out was the background on how moose are in danger due to brain worms. That really caught my eye because it’s sad, and also–to be totally honest–because any combination of “moose” and “brain worm” triggers my Invader Zim neurons.

There was a write up that paragon of journalism, The Truro Daily News, late last month about moose and brain worms, triggered by the wayward moose. You can check it out. (Also, the Michigan DNR has a more technical writeup).

Anyway, on October 3rd, one another of the top stories was this shocking followup:

Pictou County moose fell from chopper

It turns out the moose that died Thursday was dropped from a helicopter.

The Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources initially said the endangered moose likely died of a combination of drugs and stress.

But on Friday, a spokesman for the department admitted the net that held the moose came loose from the cable as the helicopter took off.

It’s terribly sad for the moose, of course, but the idea of a cover-up here just cracks me up.

And what were the other two headlines that day?

Police seize 200 marijuana plants in Cape Breton

This one’s worth reading just for the classic CBI grammar displayed by the Staff Sgt.

Another prisoner mistakenly released in N.S.

I think the first word in that headline says it all.

And today? Well, let me pick out just one of the top three stories.

Starving kittens, puppies abandoned in Glace Bay

’nuff said?

When I was playing with YouTube last night, in order to pull out the music for that wildly dissimilar mix, it occurred to me that essentially everything is on YouTube–a revelation that’s been brewing at least since I found Closet Land on there.

So I decided to see if there was anything there featuring my brother. (See my retrospective post on his hockey career for background.)

Surprisingly, there are. Unsurprisingly, they feature my brother in fights.

For instance, there’s some new coverage of the time my brother, then a 23-year old rookie with Philadelphia, decided to go gloves down with the team’s superstar–apparently he was a bit of a conceited ass, and it never occurred to my brother that the rookie probably shouldn’t potentially injure the highest-paid player on the team.

While it was news at the time–and didn’t surprise me at all–I am kind of shocked that this is still on YouTube eleven years later.

There’s also footage of another of his fights–this time he takes a pretty brutal punch in the head from one of the league’s enforcers, but then comes back to pretty decisively win the fight. I remember hearing about this one, since Steve was sidelined for a while after it.

Again, it’s weird to see this, since it was years ago, and since the “why” of putting this online, much less watching it, escapes me. But that clip has had more than 22,500 views, so someone’s watching.

I actually Googled that story and found an interview¹ with Steve’s opponent. Here’s the relevant bit:

Singer: In regard to you being a power-puncher, a fight that comes to mind is the one you had in the AHL against Steve McLaren. You do a punch count on that one and he easily tops you, but then he skates away and his face is just busted…

Parker: Well, he didn’t play for two months after that also because he had to have surgery I can’t believe he didn’t go down from that first punch. You gotta give him credit for staying up. I was expecting him to go down and when he kept punching, I was like “woah, we’re not done? Ok…” He’s a tough man, especially for him to be able to stand up like that after I gave him that shot.

There’s at least one more of Steve’s fights on there, and probably more–I got bored with looking.

I’m not sure what to conclude from this, except that the Internet is a much bigger place than I understand, even when I’m thinking about how big it is, if it’s got room for archiving local news footage of minor stories from years before the Internet hit the public consciousness, much less streaming video. And that there are some really weird people out there who are really into watching hockey fights, I guess.

1. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was, to find that www.hockeyfights.com exists.(back)

I’m in the mood to put up a mix, but it seems like going to the trouble of hosting MP3s and creating xspf files, etc, is just too much work.

So, let’s use YouTube instead. It’s easier, and it offloads the bandwidth and copyright violation to someone else.

Let’s start with a dedication to Sarah Palin and all her Red State supporters:

Randy Newman - Rednecks (Live)

I’ve been on a Randy Newman kick for a while now, working my way through the reissues. Lots of good stuff. (Oh, and if you need a historical reference: Lester Maddox.)

Next up we can have a flashback to my childhood:

Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy vs The Red Baron

I actually know this as an Irish Rovers song, since I had their (slightly more spirited) cover when I was a kid. I had to dig up some Rovers discs recently because Sarah is fascinated with the Unicorn song¹ and I found myself listening to this and flashing back to 8-track days. I love the idea of using YouTube to stream music across the world that I remember as being on an 8-track.

Also in high rotation this week is Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Buying it got me the immediate downloads, and I’ve been playing it at least twice a day since. I actually wanted to put “Have To Drive” up here, but since Amanda didn’t put a video for that up on Youtube (although she did put eight other videos, plus a 44-part “making of” series), I’ve fallen back to:

Amanda Palmer - Runs in the Family

There are a lot of styles of music on that album, but the overall label of “punk cabaret” seems to fit.

Very far from that is the sparse, almost ascetic style of the Cowboy Junkies. I’ve been a fan ever since catching one of the Trinity Session era shows² and developing a little crush on Margo Timmins. This tune is from just a little later on.

Cowboy Junkies - ’cause Cheap Is How I Feel

Since we’re apparently doing all different styles of music, I guess we might as well end up on something just as different again. And, I should really have something on here to establish me a little bit of “knows cool music from this century” cred with people who won’t rate Palmer. And to that end, here’s one of those “videos” that’s really just music + a still. If you want to see the real video, it’s also online, but it’s not embeddable, so you get the cheapass version here:

D.J. Shadow - Midnight In A Perfect World

And that should probably do it for today.

1. Explaining that was really a trial for my whole “just don’t talk about Christianity” thing. Just like trying to explain who the Devil is when we’re listening to Charlie Daniels.(back)
2. Age 14, hitchhiking to Toronto for a different concert and just happening on that one.(back)

So I chose to watch the Canadian federal debate live, and to record the Biden/Palin show for later.

The Canadian debates were interesting, but didn’t really do anything to change my basic opinions. Actually, that’s not true–my respect for Duceppe went up another notch, but it doesn’t matter as long as he’s the head of a separatist party. And, if I were being totally fair, Dion also picked up a couple of points.

My hatred for Harper continues unabated, and I am completely unable to do any kind of unbiased analysis of his performance or how it might play to “undecided” voters.

And while my policy position is closest to the NDP on most issues, my opinion–my strongly negative opinion–of Jack Layton was only reinforced by his performance here. Not only was he the least civil of the panel, but he was also the most transparent in his use of Rovian talking points rather than measured discourse. This is certainly not the first time I’ve found myself desperately missing Alexa. Also, and I believe I’m going to Cato this onto every mention of Layton on this blog, that moustache has to go.

Now it’s on to the US VP debates–although the web pages I was reading during the other debate seem to indicate I’m not going to see Palin crater the way I was hoping.

So, just to review:

Dark Knight on Friday night. It was well past time for me to have seen it, I know, but having children changes the number of opportunities you have to go to the movies, as well as really altering the economics of the “night at the movies”. And actually the primary reason we went out at all was because Sarah more-or-less kicked us out so she could play with the sitter.

Anyway, quite a good film I thought. The best thing was probably the combination of the writing of Ledger’s role and his performance of it. The worst thing was Bale’s “Batman voice” which just about made me laugh outloud several times–he could certainly take some lessons from Kevin Conroy. Boy, it was long though–too long to painlessly endure for someone who had consumed a large pop!

Saturday morning was Sarah’s first dance class. Parents are not allowed to stay in the room during the class–which was a surprise to me, but makes sense. Sarah seemed to enjoy it, and was delighted to show us her new “moves”. Next week will apparently include some tap-style dancing, so we had to get her some new shoes–not tap shoes per se, but just shoes with a hard rubber sole that will make a noise.

We took our luncheon at Tarek’s, as we have been doing almost every Saturday for a couple of months now. At this point Sarah gets food that’s not on the menu, and doesn’t have to order it–she’s got a “usual”. Saturday afternoon was shopping for some new clothes for Sarah, which I found weirdly exhausting in the same way I always find clothes shopping to be exhausting.

Saturday night was this month’s HGPA Tournament. The tournament reached a $550 pot, which is pretty impressive for the buyin levels and the number of people that were there. Without going into boring detail, let me say that I went out on the bubble¹ in a very frustrating heads up hand where my A9s got drawn out on by A6os. Also, I would love to know the odds of someone flopping the Ace flush in the same hand I flopped the King flush. Sigh. Still, a very good night indeed in terms of fellowship and fun. And I only bought in the once, so it was a pretty cheap night for me as well.

Sunday involved a family trip to the Word On The Street festival. I always expect this to be better than it is–after I’ve seen the Strange Adventures booth, and the Bookbinder’s Guild table I’m usually done looking for myself. Most of the retailer booths seem to be full of overstock and remainders, and the local publishers for the most part don’t thrill me. And in a year when Christy Conlin, Lynn Coady, and Alistair MacLeod all fail to appear, the local writers don’t have much for me. Consequently my experience of WOTS over the last several years is a combination of a small comics convention when I’m on my own, and a children’s book show when I’m going around with Sarah.

The first involves the creators that Cal brings in for the show–often the locals, like Darwyn, Hope and Mal (before they moved), Steve McNiven, etc. plus he usually brings in some people from Toronto. This year’s creators included more of the locals: Mike Holmes, Faith Erin Hicks, and Mark Oakley, among others. I got to the show in time to see Mike & Faith’s panel, and managed to get some books signed/sketched by them. Here are the books I got marked up at the show:

I got Holmes to mark up my copy of Shenanigans, a book that includes many very familiar faces among the crowd scenes:

I also got Faith to do a doodle in my copy of Zombies Calling, while we chatted about her forthcoming book, and her next two projects with First Second:

And then I had a chance to catch up with Mark Oakley, with a chat that focused primarily on his new kid’s book/game, rather than on Thieves and Kings. I picked up a copy of the book, and Mark did a Rubel sketch in it–he seemed a little hesitant about signing a book where he hadn’t done the art, but he got over it:

Sarah was delighted to go to some of the storytelling sessions, and to get her face painted, so the show was a hit for her too.

After the show we walked down the boardwalk to catch one of the free concerts–in this case the Steve Dooks Trio. You may recall that we’re fans of Steve’s. Sarah was the youngest attendee by almost 30 years, and Trish and I were also significantly younger than the rest of the crowd. We stayed for the first set, enjoying both the music and Sarah’s ability to be well-behaved in that kind of scenario (especially when she’s digging the music), but not wanting to push it. In addition to the good music I enjoyed a couple of tropical cocktails and something called a Wasabi Club, which was actually pretty good. The set was introduced by Olga Milosevich–who might be the first radio personality that looks in real life just the way I pictured her.

While we were watching that show Hurricane Kyle was warming up outside, and the walk back to the car was pretty fiercely upwind. We got home before the rain started and settled in for a lovely night of listening to the gale force winds. Apparently most of the rain was on the west side of the hurricane, and we just got the winds. Shockingly, we managed to keep power through it all.

And that’s the weekend that was.

1. Non-poker people, this means “I was the best loser–everyone after me go a slice of the money”.(back)

While thinking about the use of torture by governments today, I found myself wishing I could just make everyone watch Closet Land¹. Of course, I’ve lamented before about the fact that there is no DVD edition–at least no english one, although I did get my hands on a spanish one that at least lets me have a copy in my collection–but this being the age of the Internet I figured I’d see if I could find at least some key scenes on YouTube.

Well, it turns out that someone going by the name “raremovies” has put the entire thing up, in 9 parts. And I’ve made a playlist of those parts in order. So I can tell everyone to watch the movie. It is disturbing and important. Less gravely, it is probably the career highlight for both Rickman and Stowe–how often do you get to do a feature-length two-hander?

Turn the volume up. And yes, the first three and a half minutes are supposed to be black.

1. The “why” here is obvious if you’ve seen the film. If not, then here’s a quote from the creator’s site: “The film captures the psychological landscape of those who engage in torture and aggression, while also defining the nature of courage and resistance. Its gripping, unflinching scrutiny of both, and its sweep and power, has earned the film the status of a cult classic.”(back)

So, the Clarion fund, which exists to “educate the public about the threat of Islamic terrorism” has massively distributing their DVD, which sure seems designed to make Americans afraid of brown people.

Interesting, the fund seems to have done this massive distribution in the swing states only. I wonder what objective they could hope to achieve by fanning the flames of fear and xenophobia in the swing states a few weeks before the election?

Of course if the goal was getting support for McCain by creating that good old Rovian fear of the other, then the people setting that goal are probably quite willing to take on some collateral damage to do so. They probably aren’t worried that building this kind of xenophobia leads pretty quickly to children getting tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed…

Yeah, you read that right–some bastards in Ohio sprayed a “chemical irritant” into a room full of children and infants. The report I linked to above is pretty dry–try reading an email from someone who was there.

Since becoming a parent I know I am much more sensitive to threats against children, and all my carefully crafted veneer of civilization just drops away when stuff like this happens.

I don’t understand why I don’t see this story in the major media. It would be the headline on every paper if it were white children and brown criminals.

And I bet if the police do catch these guys they get charged with something relatively minor. Certainly not charged under the terrorism statues that would be used if it were brown criminals and white children.

And you know, it might be nice if someone besides DKos drew a line between those DVDs being distributed, and the gassing of those children.

It is now a matter of record that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Powell were all directly involved in authorizing the use of torture.

The group called itself the National Security Principals Committee. It held dozens of top-secret decisions in the White House. This according to an ABC News investigation, sourced with unnamed, high-ranking officials. The Principals included Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, also the CIA Director at the time, George Tenet, and then Attorney General John Ashcroft, who according to a top official said, quote, why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.

The Principals signed off on exactly how the CIA would interrogate supposed top al Qaeda suspects and approved of combined techniques, including, but not limited to, water boarding. A choreography, if you will. Such meetings began in the spring of 2002, according to the ABC report, after the CIA had captured a top al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, who the CIA has since confirmed was one of the three al Qaeda suspects who were, indeed, water boarded.

Yup, that’s the same rage I’ve been sitting on since Abu Ghraib was first brought to light, and Hersh made it obvious to anyone who wanted to know the truth that this stuff went all the way to the top.

What’s making it worse today: even with everyone agreeing this is fact, no one seems to care.

OLBERMANN: If there‘s a paper trail regarding this, John, is this—is this a war crimes trial waiting to happen somewhere some day?

TURLEY: It‘s always been a war crimes trial ready to happen. But Congress is like a convention of Claude Raines actors. Everyone‘s saying, we‘re shocked, shocked; there‘s torture being discussed in the White House. But no one is doing anything about it. So what we have is the need for someone to get off the theater and move to the actual in going and trying to investigate these crimes.

I’d really like to see a Special Prosecutor for this investigation, please. Right after the election, I guess, since there’s no way the Democrats have the stones to even start that debate before the election.

UPDATED: Because I just had a discussion with someone who bought into the “torture can make our nation safer” argument, I have to add a few links here. I won’t get into the moral, philosophical, or legal areas, but will stick to just the practical: it doesn’t work.

Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners. Torture will get you information, but it’s not reliable. Eventually, if you don’t accidentally kill them first, torture victims will tell you something just to make you stop. It may or may not be true. If you torture 100 people, you’ll get 100 different stories. If you gain the confidence of 100 people, you may get one valuable story.

—Rear Admiral (ret.) John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General for the Navy quoted (along with many others) at “Military, Intelligence and Law Enforcement Officers Opposing Torture“

No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence. While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives. Exhibit A is the torture-extracted confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda captive who told the CIA in 2001, having been “rendered” to the tender mercies of Egypt, that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda to use WMD. It appears that this confession was the only information upon which, in late 2002, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state repeatedly claimed that “credible evidence” supported that claim, even though a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 questioned the reliability of the confession because it was likely obtained under torture. In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his “confession,” and a month later, the CIA recalled all intelligence reports based on his statements.

—Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine in “Why Torture Doesn’t Work“

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 — long before Abu Ghraib — to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply “not a good way to get information.” In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no “stress methods” at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the “batting average” might be lower: “perhaps six out of ten.” And if you beat up the remaining four? “They’ll just tell you anything to get you to stop.”

—Anne Applebaum in “The Torture Myth“

The US army intelligence manual is clear: “The use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” This military common sense has been abandoned in the past few years in favour of the brutal, politically driven shortcut. Alberto Mora, until recently general counsel of the US Navy, argues: “Getting the information became the overriding objective. But there was a failure to look more broadly at the ramifications… When you put together the pieces, it’s all so sad.”

—Steve Crawshaw in “Torture Doesn’t Work“

Despite fearful anecdotal claims, the effectiveness of torture in generating intelligence is questionable at best. But we do know that torture produces many false confessions and new enemies, and distracts from more effective, legitimate techniques of interrogation and intelligence-gathering. We also know that democracies that have turned to torture in counterinsurgency – for example, the French in Algeria – have lost, while the British found a solution in Northern Ireland after they gave up abusive tactics.

—Alison Brysk in “Torture Doesn’t Work“

I could keep this up all day. (Hell, Bruce has been looking for one single example of it working for years now.)

You know the drill, this is the miscellaneous tab closing ceremony. Since I’m tired of politics today, there will be none in this list.

• I have had several discussions about this recent article on a particular form of elective surgery. All that I can conclude from these discussions is that I have different aesthetic than many of the people I’ve been talking to. Oh, and, I guess, that we’re all pretty convinced that Western Civilization as a whole has some pretty serious body image disorders.
• I recently had a chance to try some Ola Dubh, or “Black Oil” beer–the kind aged in 30 year old Highland Park casks. It was pretty good, although probably not worth the cost all things considered. I also had a chance to try Southern Tier Brewing’s Crème Brûlée Stout. It was pretty much the perfect dessert beer–a category I’m not sure I would previously have admitted existed. You couldn’t drink more than one bottle of it at a time–both because it’s kind of sweet, and because it’s a big bottle that rolls at 10% alcohol.
• I’m not sure if the story about beer brewed with 45 million year old yeast is awesome or not. On the one hand I love that A) the stuff survived dormant for 45 million years, B) that the stuff has a much less evolved “diet” than modern yeast, and C) the first thing a scientist with a 45 million year old pocket of organisms does with them is makes beer. On the other hand, this sounds like the setup for a sub-Carpenter horror movie where all the people who drink the beer eventually become pseudo-zombie extensions of a prehistoric hive mind or something. Even with the B-grade concerns, I’m still more likely to try it than beers made with certain other yeasts.
• I wonder if I can avoid more religion arguments by just pointing people to the Official God FAQ?
• If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ve probably heard me spout off about adaptations one time or another. Hollywood often drives me nuts, especially when the changes they make in an adaptation lose the essential point of the story. I could do a rant here about lots of things, but instead I’ll step aside and let Alex Irvine take this one. The example he’s ranting on is so egregious that you almost have to laugh. It’s the best story since the one about Paul Gross being told that the studios would make Passchendale if he just “took the Canada out of it”.
• The Third Eye–the pinhole camera made out of a skull, is one of the coolest, creepiest things I’ve seen on boingboing. It looks like a prop from a Tim Powers story… actually, no, it might be more from a Jim Blaylock story. And the pictures it takes, would also fit nicely into the story–pictures of what the eye might not be able to see.
• Since I’ve been working for people in Boston for well over a decade now, and have spent a lot of time there in those years, I am, of course, familiar with the various lovely and melodic accents that are to be found in the Boston area. If you aren’t, you can educate yourself somewhat at the recently created blog, pronounced WOO-BIN, where the entires are “illustrated” with sound clips.
• You know, he might be right, that might just be the most random panel in comic book history.
• The most awesome geek t-shirt I’ve ever seen was one with Barney Rubble holding a bloody sword, and the head of a certain purple dinosaur, with the caption “Barney, there can be only one!”. However, that might have been outdone by the Cookie Monster Slayer costume. That’s hilarious, in a “this only makes sense in con-world” way.

I also the The Arts. Of course I’m an elitist liberal scum, but this just gives me one more reason to despise Stephen Harper. I could rant, but let’s let George at BookNinja do it instead, since he’s so good at it:

First, he tried to set up arts and culture producers, from dance companies to music groups to writers to painters, as whining, free-loading lefties taking the Canadian taxpayer for a ride. Then he tried to create a series of bogeymen, fringe artists whose art might scare some people into thinking Canada was being misrepresented on the world stage. And now he’s come right out and said that “ordinary Canadians” aren’t interested in the arts, calling the entire nigh $50billion dollar a year industry a “niche interest”. How insulting. Since when did Canadians let someone like Harper define what “ordinary” is.

More righteous rage and suggestions at the link.

I expect a Harper government to continue to gut the Arts, to do away with or further commercialize the CBC, and to pull a whole bunch more turn-the-arts-into-propaganda-machine stuff.

My certainty that he’s going to win leaves me disappointed and disgusted with my countrymen, and with a plan to lay in a large supply of alcohol to numb the pain come election day.

Did you see any of the new stories about John Jost and teams’s forthcoming research paper? The one about how “behavioural residue” can be used to predict political leanings?

“Conservative rooms tended to be cleaner, more brightly lit, better organized, less cluttered, and also more conventional and ordinary in terms of decoration,” Jost said during a panel discussion on “The Neuroscience of Elections and Human Decision-Making” at NYU, adding: “Conservatives’ rooms were rated by independent raters as better organized and tidier in general.”

Specifically, individuals who reported a more conservative ideology also had bedrooms that contained more organizational and cleaning supplies, including calendars, postage stamps, ironing boards and laundry baskets.

Liberals’ rooms on the other hand were marked by more clutter, including more CDs, a greater variety of CDs, a greater variety of books and more color in the room in general.

I just want to note that by this standard, I must be one of the most liberal people in the world, since my office is all about a great variety of books, a great variety of CDs, and an astonishingly great variety of clutter.