Found this at Deviant Art. Liked it, so I’m sharing it.

via Deviant Art

because Canada’s men’s hockey team just won the gold medal.

People are yelling, cars are honking their horns and the young men upstairs are jumping up and down. I think I’ll stay inside, but I have to tell you, it’s kind of nice that everyone here is so happy.

I understand the transit people are going to run everything all through the night. That’s probably a really good idea since the parties around town are going to be going for a very long time. Downtown will be a zoo.

Thanks, Naren, for the link.

So a cake was commissioned to celebrate a trip to Germany. This is what they got.

Boggles doesn’t it? The text was supposed to read “here we come” rather than “hear me come.” Spelling matters.

From cakewrecks.com. Thanks, Justine, for the site.

In a book by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, two UK researchers present an impressive amount of data to show that, essentially, social responsibility and a sense of obligation to the welfare of other human beings is a requirement of good society.

Not a new idea you say?  Of course not. Necessary to speak it nonetheless.

For a good review/interview, go here. And don’t miss the comments. Some of them are delightfully Heilbrunnian.

This thing is almost over. Wave bye-bye.

peardg, photographer

I read an article in The National Interest about Germany. It struck me a a bit odd and so I forwarded it to my German daughter-in-law for her take.  To put a kind face on it, we agreed that it was all about point of view. Then a few days later she sent me this map. Oh yes, this is exactly the situation.

To say that The National Interest is a conservative news source is a bit of an understatement. It was founded by Irving Kristol after all. The writer of this particular article, Jacob Heilbrunn, has a blog at The Huffington Post, that favourite of Pharyngula.

Here’s a quote from Heilbrunn’s article.

In other words, Vauban, for the most part, epitomizes how Germany would like to be seen abroad—enlightened, progressive, reflective, pleasant and virtuous. And, in many ways, it reflects the tamed and docile West Germany that England, France and America hoped would emerge after World War II.

Rather a nice example of textual inversion (perhaps textual subversion? textural inversion?). What is not said here is far more important that what is. The two sentences at once remind us of Germany’s ferocious past and its danger to us and at the same time suggest its emasculation. They “would like to be seen” next to “tamed and docile.” Nice. It generates a nest of common (but not very mature or reasonable) feelings, an emotional texture, which like the map, says south is the new north.

Here’s another gem:

Gregor Gysi, who has just stepped down as one of the chairmen of The Left, managed the party’s reinvention by grabbing hold of economic and foreign-policy issues. A clever and sinuous rhetorician, as an attorney he represented clients requesting an exit visa from the national prison known as East Germany.

A “clever and sinuous rhetorician?” Lovely. Bring in the snake and every right-thinking American knows exactly who Gysi claims as “Father” for the Fatherland. And the “national prison known as East Germany” – well, not as subtle as the snake reference but I don’t think subtle was the point.

Here’s a quote about Germany from a US government site (Department of State).

Despite persistence of some structural rigidities in the labor market and extensive government regulation, the economy remains strong and internationally competitive. Although production costs are very high, Germany is still an export powerhouse, and unit labor costs have decreased in the last decade. Additionally, Germany is strategically placed to take advantage of the rapidly growing central European countries. The current government has addressed some of the country’s structural problems, with important tax, social security, and financial sector reforms.

“Despite”? Perhaps it is an “export powerhouse” because of the social security net provided the citizens? Perhaps the economic debacle in the US might be partly blamed upon the social unrest within its borders? Could we call the US an “import powerhouse?”

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the CIA files. German unemployment is said to be at 8.20% for 2009. The United States is said to be at 9.4%. Hmmmmm.

And the percentage of the population below the poverty line? Germany 11% the US 12%.

(If you’re interested in German economic stats try here.)

So, I’m losing my cool. Let me just backstep for a moment and say this is about point of view. We need to be careful reading things, thinking things through. We all have a history which guides us in our interpretations. Germany 11% – US 12%. What this really seems to say is that despite rather large ideological differences between Merkel and Heilbrunn, and the represented National policies, the outcome is pretty much the same. The big difference is how the people feel about it and what happens to those human beings when they lose their jobs. In Germany the government steps up to help. In the US this is not something one can take for granted – there really are people who get told “sorry, you’re on your own”.

I am going to close with another quote from Heilbrunn.

Instead of resembling the martial country of yore, then, Germany has begun to reach even further back into its history, mirroring the provincial and musty duchies of the eighteenth century that vexed the German romantics who preached unification and national greatness. It has achieved the first, but it’s no longer interested in the latter for itself or, indeed, for Europe.

So if we are going to back in history for a national snapshot of contemporary intent, what is Heilbrunn advocating? A return to the policies (human and economic) that led to the American civil war? In that case “unification and greatness” came because the powerhouse of the conservative was beaten in war. I suspect this wasn’t what Heilbrunn was thinking of when he brought up the return to history spiel.

Some Americans have a oddly romantic attachment to the slave-states (and their economic and social policies) and with that romanticism, a rather inverted perspective. I mean, there are still people who think slavery a good worker procurement program, but Heilbrunn? Surely not.

Those beaten southern states wanted to control the destiny of the Nation and it seems to me a good thing that they didn’t get the chance to take plantation economics to the world stage. Surely Heilbrunn doesn’t intend Dixie to win this time? Can you imagine the results?

Damn, what a nice face this guy’s got!

Photographer, Aja Dawn

I was browsing videos at wimp.com and came across the one about Mayor McCallion. As videos go it’s funny and fun to watch, but given the size of the woman’s achievement, it seems ever so slightly patronizing.  Sort of like palling around with Stephen Hawking and casually mentioning (while patting him on the back) that he’s said some interesting things about the skies.

I don’t know if it’s the Mayor’s age and gender, her general demeanor or what but anyone who has gotten herself elected to such a normally contentious position repeatedly and without break since 1978 probably deserves a bit more of an in depth look and a little less of the cutsey hockey photo ops. For example, they could have mentioned the whole “transparency” issue with respect to city finances along with the city’s debt free position and how this might be a model for other government bodies. It might also have mentioned that Mississauga tends to have a strong immigrant population (11.4%) compared to the City of Brampton in the same region (9.93%) and interestingly Mississauga sits at 5.78% versus the City of Brampton at 8.73% when comparing the members of the population 25 and more years of age with less than a grade 9 education. It’s interesting that the city and region are more or less comparable with the unemployment rate at 6.5% for Mississauga and Brampton at 6.6% and the entire region (Peel) at 6.4%. (Stats here.) The national unemployment rate, for comparison purposes, is at 8.3%. In Vancouver, whose mayoral history is not so stable or so uncontested, the unemployment rate is predicted to be 8.0% for the period between February 7 and March 13 2010.

Mayor McCallion has not incurred  debt, has kept her city on par with others in her region and has demonstrated a concern for future growth and development consistent with the needs of a energy troubled planet and urban areas with increasing population numbers and needs. It seems to me that this level of achievement requires a bit more sober attention. To be fair, I suppose since the Mercer video has reached 2 million hits perhaps some political writer out there will have been caught by its unaddressed implications and look into it. I would really like to know what kind of power she exerts to have been able to achieve such tremendous victories, and that is what they are.

But really, the pat-on-the-head tone, do you think that was deliberate or just possible because of her age and gender? Am I the only one annoyed by the vid?

(Thanks Shannon for the pic.)

This seems to have come from engrish and if you have a peek over there you will find some howlers. Many of them have a sexual component almost certainly not intended by the product’s or service’s advertiser.  It makes me wonder what those fortune cookies really say. But really, isn’t that the real power of language and its relationship to meaning construction. All of a sudden what is visible are some of the deep webs which bind words together with the fine thread of categorical relationships and it makes you look around for other previously invisible things. If you think about the words “poisonous” and “rubbish” you can see how they really do fit together and if you work at it even a little you can stagger backwards into meaning-folds of the original language and take a guess at how “poisonous” is used more generally.  In other words, it gives us a glimpse of the connotations of “poisonous” in another’s context and by doing that, it makes temporarily visible our own contexts. It’s the difference, the dissonance, between the two that makes this funny.

Now that I find interesting.