the pod bay door

:: There are times when I am embarrassed to be living in a province with leadership characterized by its collective arrogance and close-mindedness. Actually, it’s 99% of the time. Recently, our premier behaved like a spoiled brat, when he appeared before a provincial public accounts committee. When asked to produce a receipt for a golf trip, he lowered himself to the level of Beavis and Butt-Head:

Klein: “Is the honourable member suggesting I am lying?”
Blakeman: “No, sir, I am just asking for the document.”
Klein: “Oh, why would you ask for the document if you are not suggesting I am lying?”
Blakeman: “Because this is the public accounts committee, sir, and we can ask for that kind of information.”
Klein: “Oh, I see. In other words, you’re saying you won’t take my word for it. I want to know if she’s calling me a liar. She doesn’t believe me.”

Blakeman tried to respond, but Klein cut her off three times, repeating: “You don’t believe me.”

The press Klein received following his whining was all negative, even from his usual conservative supporters. He was ridiculed in political cartoons and on radio shows, but the best response had to be from CBC Radio in Edmonton, which produced a 48-second segment, weaving Klein’s schoolboy outburst with Robert De Niro’s “Are you talkin’ to me”, from Taxi Driver, and Joe Pesci’s “I’m funny how, I mean funny, like I’m a clown” sequence from Goodfellas. Listen and enjoy, and consider that this man runs the richest province in Canada, where the next budget surplus could top $8 billion CDN, erasing the last amount of debt the province owes, but a province in which the roads and infrastructure are deteriorating rapidly, and education and health care continue to deal with cutbacks and layoffs. And my apologies to Beavis and Butt-Head, no offence intended.

Oh, and it just gets worse. This morning, in the 13 May 2004 edition of the Edmonton Journal, comes word of the following: A paper Klein wrote for a communications study course at Athabasca University had been tabled in the provincial legislature recently to counter charges that he is insensitive to Chileans who suffered under Pinochet (another long story), making the paper available to the public. Upon close examination, it was confirmed that at least half of the 13-page paper was skimmed directly from an assortment of websites without proper citation or quotations.

On the last page of the report, the premier lists his sources, including 10 websites. Word for word passages from the essay are found on those sites – and a count found 58.7 per cent of the lines in the essay are the same as those on the websites listed.

It’s time for Ralph Klein to go.

:: Taking a few days off from posting didn’t help all that much. I’m still knee deep in e-mail (aka electronic messages), although I did get the number from 65 to somewhere under 40.

Today I perform in a Mother’s Day concert with Amelia (click the pic on the right). The concert is at 2:00 pm, at St Luke’s Anglican Church, 8424 95th Avenue. $10 at the door if you’re looking for something to do with Mom, or otherwise. A few days later, Amelia is off to Vienna for a few weeks, to visit her brother and his family, and take a break from Edmonton life.

It was quite nice yesterday, warm enough to sit outside for coffee with a good friend I hadn’t seen for at least 18 months. There is a dusting of snow on the ground this morning, and the temperature is -2C. Enough with the sub-zero weather, already – it’s MAY, dammit!

:: The images from Iraq, of American military personnel torturing – er – abusing – er – humiliating Iraqi prisoners are causing much debate in the press and media. On Robert’s site, Den Valdron presents an editorial, suggesting that the pictures represent “a culture of pathological thinking and inhumanity”. Derryl discusses the impact of the choice of words to describe what has happened (is it torture? abuse? frat prank?), and how the military attracts not only the best and brightest, but those who also trip on power.

Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, upgraded its coverage of the war in Iraq from “Mess O’Potamia” to “Giant Mess O’Potamia“. Perhaps most disturbing is how US media giants, specifically those which support the war and the US Administration, are chosing to selectively cover news of the Iraqi conflict. Bill Moyers explains in his column on The Media, Politics, and Censorship. For example:

On Friday a week ago on NIGHTLINE, Ted Koppel read the names of the dead and showed their photographs. But their faces and names were blacked out on ABC stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting. Sinclair accused Koppel of “…doing nothing more than making a political statement.”

But what about Sinclair’s own political agenda? With 62 stations the company is the biggest of its kind in the country and has lobbied successfully in Washington for permission to grow even bigger. Its executives are generous contributors to the Republican party.

Sinclair’s web site as of May 8, 2004, has an explanation for why it chose to pre-empt the April 30, 2004 broadcast of Nightline, in which Ted Koppel read aloud the names of US servicemen and women killed in Iraq. Also included is a letter to Senator John McCain. Ted Koppel insists that the decision to read the 721 names of those who died “was to elevate the fallen above the politics and the daily journalism, to let their names and faces remind us of what has always been true: When the American people fully understand the cause for which our troops are fighting, and when they accept that it is essential to our national welfare and security, no burden is too heavy, no cost is too high.” Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, writing in the New York Observer, responds to Sinclair’s actions.

:: With dozens of e-mails an ever-increasing number of electronic messages to answer, together with work, home and musical projects requiring attention, I’m taking a short break from posting. Be back soon.

:: It is another late night. I am very restless. Just finished a lovely phone call with a good friend in Florida; it’s nice to visit on the phone, with someone who lives far away and talk about whatever. Tomorrow I am driving to Jasper to attend the ALC, where I am co-presenting a session on blogs with Geoff.

:: This is hilarious: Cindi posted a link to The Cowbell Project, a growing database of songs that feature a cowbell. Inspiration for this idea seems to have come from the infamous and brilliant SNL parody of Behind The Music, about the recording of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Don’t Fear The Reaper, which featured Christopher Walken as a high-powered record producer encouraging Will Farrell Will Farrell to play with more passion, advising him that “I need more cowbell”

:: Last night’s episode of Law & Order: SVU starred Marlee Matlin as a researcher who is put on trial for helping someone commit suicide. While being interrogated, she tells Detective Munch that she “has a blog”. What fascinated me was no further explanation is offered in this scene, i.e., neither Munch nor Tutuola asks, “what’s a blog?”

It’s another small piece of evidence that blogs have entered the mainstream of pop culture, and the term “blog” has entered the vernacular. The episode authors decided that spending airtime having Matlin’s character explain blogs to the detectives wasn’t warranted – fans of the show would understand, or ignore the reference.

Speaking of Law & Order and blogs, The Ledger is a blog devoted primarily to the flagship series at the moment. The site’s creator is working on writing “detailed summaries for each of the 320 (and counting) episodes of the original series.” When this is completed, he’ll turn his “the 170 episodes of SVU and Criminal Intent I haven’t written about yet.” He’s written summaries of at least 170 episodes from the original series so far. Having started in December 2003, that’s a lot of work in a short period of time.

Jerry Orbach is leaving the original series :-(, but he will be appearing in the third spinoff, Law & Order: Trial by Jury., hopefully as Lenny Briscoe. The Gothamist was there when he filmed his final L&O scenes. Also referenced is this amusing article on being addicted to All Things Law & Order.

:: Today, Geoff and I completed revisions to an article we wrote, for the journal, Science & Technology Libraries. The article is about applications of blogs in an STL environment. As well, Geoff is fine-tuning a presentation on blogs, which we are co-presenting this Saturday at the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper. I was amazed as I watched a short animation that he designed and embedded into one of the powerpoint slides, which demonstrates how to create a simple blog entry using Moveable Type. The computer we use for our session will not be wired to the Internet, so the animation will suffice nicely in its place.

:: Deadwood has quickly become my favorite show on television. Sunday night, with The Sopranos and Deadwood back-to-back (at least in Canada), has become the definitive night for quality television viewing. The language on Deadwood is graphic enough so as to make comparisons with The Sopranos moot. The actors are outstanding, with Ian McShane as Al Swearengen and Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane, giving career-defining performances week after week. The colourful language (to put it mildly), combined with the actors’ deliveries of their lines, provide for much “water cooler discussion” every Monday at work with my friend Debi, and the HBO website for the show has a list of the “Best Lines” from each episode to date.

HBO continues to present most of the best television on television, if you will. But in Canada, we are not permitted to subscribe to HBO, but instead to limp, lame Canadian cable stations that advertise themselves as “The First Home of HBO in Canada.” Problem is, no station IS the first home of HBO in Canada. We haven’t seen the third or fourth seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Real Time With Bill Maher is not broadcast in Canada on any cable station.