All Shook Up.

OutlawGrrrl
CountryRiotVille


Sarah Shook up that is.

This one's for Mr. Beer 'N Hockey...

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Weirdly (or perhaps not), despite the fact that I first heard it only a couple of weeks ago, the chords 'n stuff in Ms. Shook's tune are pretty much the same as the collab by Beer and me from awhile back...





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Class Size Uber Alles!

AllYourPremiers
'RUsVille


Well, well, well...

Who'd a thunk it:

Premier Doug Ford is warning teachers’ unions against taking any action to protest his government’s move to increase class sizes to save money.

“If the head of the unions want to hurt the children of this province by doing walkouts and everything else, I’d think twice if I were them,” Ford said Friday in Ottawa where he was touting the province’s $1.2 billion investment in a local light rail transit project...

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Question now is....How long before Mr. Solomon and the fine folks running CTV have the good Ms. Clark on to wax Supreme about something she is actually more than just conflicty about.

Because, well....

You know:

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When Business Models Kill...

...We Should All Be Concerned.

What it's all about this time Alfie?

Well, according to Hiroko Tabuchi and David Gelles, not to mention the front page of the NY Times...

This:

As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits.

One reason: Boeing charged extra for them...

{snip}

...Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another...


The thing is, preventing such occurrences, unlike, say, crazy people doing unthinkable things in school houses and places of worship with weapons, is easy.

If you get my drift.



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The Keef Report...Young Barbarian At The Clubhouse Gate!

Link

Gosh.

Doesn't that young whippersnapper know that he is never, ever, allowed,to challenge the conventional wisdom of a senior proMedia Club member, in public, with a contrary analysis based on actual fact?

I mean, if this type of behaviour continues, what's next....

Does somebody start challenging the Dean's pronouncements from the inside?



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And a few more wee not so conventional bits I would like to release from my brain so that it can writhe in throes of last minute science writing free of all thoughts of poli-blogging (ha!) during the final countdown to grant submission day....
Is this (so far) soft landing for the Lotuslandian real estate market not exactly what we need and why, isn't that ever the angle in the tidal wave of stories from the Club?....
When, precisely, will a certain senior Club member be trumpeting the story of a local citizen journalist (a.k.a. 'idiot blogger') who helped change provinical policy on IPP's for the better?....
And finally, why, exactly, do major proMedia outlets, and that includes the MoCo, not state, up-front and explicitly, Ms. Christy Clark's ties to SNC-Lavelin when they bring her on to read the 'Iron Snowbird in Red Riot Act'....
As always, previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.



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A Blessing And A Curse.

TricksAren'tAlwaysFor
KidsVille


I'm pretty sure I've owned this thing since I was a child.

But I didn't become acutely aware of it until I was in college.

Why?

Because it drove my best friend crazy.

In first year calculus.

Here's the thing. We could sit at the back and mess around, nothing bad really, usually just whispering about homework or an assignment that was due in another class.

Inevitably, when it became abundantly clear that we weren't paying attention, the prof would call on us.

And most of the time I flummoxed my friend S. by answering the question because I kinda/sorta had been.

Paying attention I mean.

I've been doing the same thing to my own family since forever and, while I'm not sure it drives them completely crazy (although it probably does),  my kids always laugh when I refer to it as my slightly Rainmanian 'two track' parlour trick.

Weirdly, unlike just about everything else, this two track thing has not started to diminish as I slip and slide toward the end of my sixth decade.

In fact, I now use it fullest advantage in my day job.

Specifically, these days the place where I get a good chunk of my real work done is in those never ending meetings that are all pervasive in the world of academia.

Just yesterday (yes, Saturday!) I was sitting in an all day retreat to discuss curricular renewal. It was was actually pretty important and, to be honest, it's something I'm pretty passionate about.

But...

I also had a colleague who was waiting for a revised sub-aim for a research grant we're writing together.

So, I beavered away on the grant in the back row of the conference room with one ear to program credit  and butts-in-seats ground, until things in the room started to get deep into the course duplication weeds and I couldn't help myself.

So I jumped in, said my piece, and then got back writing up to our grant's transgenic gene knock-in strategy.

I thought I was in the clear until the woman sitting next to me, who works in a completely different field, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, 'What's a knock-in, anyway?'

I started to explain and pretty soon we were having a full-fledged whisperfest.

The chair of the meeting, who is a prof who knows nothing about math, was not amused.



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The Wild, The Innocent, And The JT Shuffle.

IsThisTheDPAOrJustAnother
CountryVille


The good Mr. Butts has now had his say.

And I couldn't help but notice that he conflated the regulatory TMX decision with the criminal SNC Lavalin decision.

And, oh yes, he also brought up the fact that all those innocent Canadians and their jobs were a policy decision that needed to be discussed.

So.

Where were all those wild-eyed innocents when the trial avoiding deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) thingy was inserted into our Criminal Code?

Why, nowhere to be found.

Paul Wells had that story in the pixel pages of Macleans before Ms. Philpott resigned and Mr. Butts whined:

....When the government inserted the DPAs into the Criminal Code, how did it announce the move? With a single paragraph on page 202 of the 2018 federal budget document, under the catchy heading “Addressing corporate integrity.” You really had to go to page 202 to learn anything at all about the scheme. Finance Minister Bill Morneau made no mention of it in his nationally televised budget speech.

And how was the DPA described on page 202, for insatiably curious or insomniac readers who might stumble across it? As a way to get tough on corporate wrongdoers. DPAs would be “an additional tool to hold corporate offenders to account,” the document said. They would “sanction criminal conduct appropriately and deter wrongdoing.”...


'Holding corporate offenders to account'?

With a trial avoidance tool inserted at the behest of lobbyists from a corporation that, based on past performance, was known to offend?

Protecting the innocent, indeed.


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Why The Heart Of Jane Philpott's Letter Matters.

TheRuleOfWhat
ExactlyVille


There has already been a whole lot of discussion of the ethics, the politics and the 'fact' that in the end SNC Lavelin did not get the DPA it wanted anyway.

However, I have heard little of any discussion of the following passage from Ms. Philpott's letter of resignation:

"...The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system. It is a fundamental doctrine of the rule of law that our Attorney General should not be subjected to political pressure or interference regarding the exercise of her prosecutorial discretion in criminal cases..."


Why does this passage matter so much?

Because, if the former AG was was subjected to such pressure and/or interference and if such pressure and/or interference really is regarded as normal  'discussion and debate' around the cabinet table and elsewhere that happens as a matter of course in such matters*, well...

It begs the question.

Are we still a nation of laws or have we become something else?



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*Which is precisely the point that the Minister of Fisheries Jonathan Wilkinson made while he was interviewed by Stephen Quinn on the MoCo's Early Edition this morning....
Paul Wells has more on how 'we' got the DPA  process we may not have wanted in the first place in the pixel pages of Macleans.


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Inconceivable!

Link

That is all.


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Beach Day.

WhereTheBigMuddyMeets
TheOceanVille



The Whackadoodle and I got down to the edge of the North Arm of the Fraser's last gasp early this morning.

When we arrived it was still winter.

Twenty minutes later spring broke out.

Soon it was so warm I could play without the fingerless mitten thingies

We are most definitely on our way to summer.


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Pretty much got the next Sunday Set worked out this morning during the walk....But recording it will have to wait for a bit - have to get back to grant writing...Sheesh.


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