Lotuslandianish...
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Tyler Olsen, Fraser Valley Current guy, has produced an excellent series on what's really been driving the flooding in the Fraser Valley...One of his insightful pieces explains the (easily predicted) hows and whys of the Sumas dike failure....Postmedia's Dean of the Legislative Press Gallery, Mr. Palmer of VSun Harbour, has come out of hibernation and produced a solid historical treatise on who's responsible for what and what needs to be done both north and south of the border to mitigate future Fraser Valley flooding.
Bob Mackin, FOIA man about town, has been digging into what the heckfire is going on out in Surrey re: the putative police force's PR push and the pushback attempts by some of the citizenry.
The fine folks at City Duo, who really do a spectacular job at following the development planning process in Lotusland Central, report on what's (potentially) in the works for the Jericho lands.
Data modelling and visualization guy Jens von Bergman crunches the numbers and critiques the graphs on three years of (available) speculation and vacancy tax data.
Andrew McLeod, reporting in the Tyee, explains the politics (of the possible?) behind the provincial Dippers' five day paid sick leave plan that starts on New Year's day.....Also in the Tyee, Katie Hyslop reports on First Call's latest report on local child poverty and concludes that the income gap between parents is growing, which of course filters directly down to kids.
Alexandra Morton explains why, after showing receipts, she has concluded that the BC Salmon Farmers' Ass'n is attempting to discredit her research.
Norm! (Farrell) asks if we can prevent capitalism from destroying the world we live in and suggests that pro-journos can help us do just that by heeding the words of Albert Camus.
Other Stuffing...
David Climenhaga wonders if Alberta taxpayers will be on the hook for Mr. Kenney's legal costs in the wake of his alleged (look, Ma, no air qoutes!) defamation of eight Canadian environmental groups.
Digby wonders if Mr. Trump even knows that Bernie Kerik is not his lawyer given that the good Mr. Kerik is not, you know, an actual lawyer.....Also over at Ms. Parton's 'Hullabaloo', Dennis Hartley runs down his top 10 foodie films for USian Thanksgiving weekend eye gorging...Diner is #4! (I think)...
Josh Marshall, writing at TPM, explains why he has concluded that some of the biggest of the big Tech Bros are maximum force neo-reactionaries.
Emptywheel explains how the uber alleish folks at Project Veritas are trying to Special Master their way out of revealing what was found by an FBI search of the home of PV founder man James O'Keefe.
Pharma guy Derek Lowe, who has proven his bonafides around here many times over, gives us his take on the latest experimental (in mice) Alzheimer's vaccine research and concludes that it is reasonable to cautiously proceed to clinical trials on two fronts.... I'm not so sure given the antigens/targets involved.
Musical Musings...
The folks over at Cover Me list all of their favourite covers of of songs from Uncle Neil's 'Harvest'...Me, I'm a sucker for Motorjesus' build-to-a-crescendo power metal ballad version of 'Old Man'.
And, what do you know.... Irglova and Hansard are going out on tour in the spring...They won't come anywhere near Lotusland but, at the very least, their will be a whole lot of footage on the down the Tubez I reckon.
What I'm Listening To...
A fantastic podcast called Fun City Cinema about movies made in and/or about New York City...If you like depth and research and both familiar and surprising stuff you will like this - It's also really well done...My favourite episode so far is about the No Wave Women scene that sprang from the Lower Eastside in the mid/late '70's (and we're not just talking about the film makers that we're making it happen in $350 per month, 2500 sq. foot loft spaces at the time - all the usual musical suspects and more were part of the mix).
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1 comment:
From e.a.f.--
Mr. Palmer has written something "good", well for a change I'll have to read that. None of what has happened with the Coq or the flooding ought to surprise any one, if they had been paying attention to the province around them or the history of this province. Many may want to blame the current government, but lets not forget for a great part of the last century the Socreds ran this province and built those highways and failed to build dykes in the Valley. This province doesn't have a centralized crisis center to deal with issues such as mass flooding and highways flooding. People would like to blame the government for their houses flooding but what did they do when they bought that house. Its true real estate agents won't tell you if you're on a flood plain or if there have been floods in the area, but many of us know you always buy on the high side of the road. You walk the land before you buy it. You check to see what is under the top soil. You make sure your house is higher than the land and you raise the area you are going to build on. The Coq ought not to have been built where it was. Some said so at the time but Mini WAC wanted it and people thought it was a wonderful thing. Yes, it was great for speeding, really speeding and it was fun, but I never considered it a good highway. Most politicians or the general public have not driven around this province or gone off highways. If they had they would have known this would eventually happen. Most people, until the press started referring to it, didn't know about the Flood of '48. Most people didn't know the flooded area had once been a lake. Where water once was, it can and will return. If the government decides to deal with the lack of adequate dykes in the province, if they can't figure it out, they could check with the Netherlands. They have a handle on it and their water engineers work all over the world. Perhaps some of them might want to work here for awhile. The recent rains/floods in Germany and other countries in Europe did not result in any deaths in the Netherlands. Their dykes worked as did the rest of their water systems. What has been the problem in this province is, governments tried to save a few bucks. this will all cost billions and with the fires we had the past few years and COVID, if new infrastructure is needed, you can bet people won't want it if they have to pay higher taxes. You either pay now or you pay later, but you will pay.
(sorry eaf, had to remove the stuff about tobacco at the top of your post given the business I'm in)
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