This week was the one I hated. While I watched the crying kids with disdain on the first day of kindergarten, each year there was a greater and greater creep of disillusion and anxiety until by high school...well, you know how it goes. Fortunately, all the small people got allocated to the right sorts of teachers this year - not an annual event - so we are expecting a better sort of year.
- News this importance deserves a barfing gumball dispenser blink (...blink apparently no working with IE...sadly). Why did no one notice that the Neorhino Party was, according to wikiality, on 23 August 2007 accepted as a real Federal Party according to Elections Canada. James noticed but I never twigged.
- Update: Again with the Mulroney, I like the way in the good old days conservatism was not ideological but practical business dealing based on trust relationships. Bouchard breaking the trust is far more important than the ideology. Trust and reliance was and remains a better principle than theory and authority.
- The Globe and Mail has raised an interesting and new argument to dump the royals as far as Canada goes. Apparently one of our Canadian lassies is not good enough for them and her husband to be has to renounce his tenth place in the line of succession. Time and reason enough for me. Send them the bill from now on.
- There are now no polar bears in Toronto.
- The Sox have a magic number of 16. A combination of that many wins and Yankee losses sees Boston win the Division. I have a magic number but that means something else. With any luck, the next two series against Baltimore and Tampa will get that number to at least ten regardless of what the Yanks do.
- The beer blog was ahead of Guinness for the google search for "beer" yesterday. How ever imagined such a thing?
- Ontario's Provincial Election 2007 actually took a moment to lift its head off the sofa pillow and brush the potato chip crumbs off its face and chest with the news that the Tories would support public funds being paid to private schools that teach creationism. Then they clarified. I do not know what the fuss is as there are currently schools being funded that teach religious principles being taught that I and most Ontarians don't believe in. Heck, I had a science teacher in grade nine or so who taught us that inter-racial marriage was a bad idea and that if God wanted us to smoke we would have a chimney. But he was nuts. Insane. He was eventually kicked out. We knew he was nuts, too. Kids deal with things in their own way.
Comments
Paul of Kingston - September 7, 2007 10:02 AM
I had a teacher in grade 4, back in NS who tried to teach us to disengage our minds from our bodies and fly to various planets.
Now that was nuts - but better than another filmstrip about Sir John A or Louis Riel.
WCG - September 7, 2007 10:15 AM
See, I remember when I was little and into dinosaurs (yeah, I was a tomboy) a friend insisting that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time. I said no, they didn't. He said yes, that this was the "big dinosaur mistake". Later I found out that his parents were evangelical Christians. The kid was brainwashed from the start. Never had a chance.
Alan - September 7, 2007 10:22 AM
But you have been brainwashed, too, as birds and those nutty fish in the Indian Ocean are just wee dinosaurs. Plus, you are too young for the Flintstones.<p>Schools are riddled with the presentation of belief systems from the influence of MADD-level PC lobbying to civics classes making up stuff about the forces that affect democratic government. Give me the big dinosaur mistake any day. The poor kid was probably talking about Poke-a-roo.
WCG - September 7, 2007 10:29 AM
Man, coelocanths are SO COOL.
Alan - September 7, 2007 10:55 AM
And tasty.
Paul of Kingston - September 7, 2007 12:41 PM
I now have a reason to dig out my old "Vote Rhino" button. Hooray for us.
Paul of Kingston - September 7, 2007 1:54 PM
Hey - when did Rhino become a QC based party? Granted I've been out of the inner circle since about 1982, you would have thought they could let a guy know!
Alan - September 7, 2007 2:13 PM
I think it was always Quebec-based according to this font of authority from April 2005.
ry - September 7, 2007 4:02 PM
I only have one criticism: when exactly was Conservatism not an ideology with dogmatic beliefs and instead a bit more 'pragmatic'? As far as I can tell, true conservatism is what holds for Monarchies. What passes for 'conservatism' her in N. America is, was, and always has been a liberal minded ideological movement centered on at various times different elements of that liberal minded dogma. Or I'm in serious fault and need to be corrected.
WCG - September 7, 2007 4:27 PM
I'm thinking about changing my party affiliation to Rhino. Only because I could use the slogan "She's the Horniest! Vote RHINO!"
Alan - September 7, 2007 4:41 PM
Ry, Tories are pragmatic conservatives. Basically genial authoritarians whether the landed gentry of Ontario's 1820's Family Compact or the 1960s suits on Bay Street. The only ideology is business. No one gives a rats ass about libertarianism or neoconservatism or whatever. Old school. The British navy at the height of the Empire worked on these principles, too, if the Master and Commander series is to be believed. Ideology and conservatism are new pals only introduced through the post-WWII creativity of the religious right to remake American heritage in the form of their own fantasies. We are dealing with the beginning of the end of that rhubarb north and south of the border.
Alan - September 7, 2007 4:51 PM
Make your own blinking text through the wizardry of this web tool.
Rick Pali - September 7, 2007 5:48 PM
When I go to http://www.neorhino.ca/ all the text is in French. I can select English but only the banner and the menus change. I'm wondering if I should take something from this. :-)
ry - September 8, 2007 1:50 AM
Wow, someone's got a real distaste of the 'Religious Right'(and giving them far more credit than they have ever deserved). Though not as much as Herr Flea.
I might buy that for North of the Border(not knowing Canadian history very well), but not down here in the Lower 48. I look at US history and see many moments of liberals(both of the Right and Left) fighting over this or that point of political dogma. The Bill of Rights definitely can be seen that way(libertarians versus a side a little more ammenable to Hobbes' 'Leviathan', with the libertarian minded winning.). The fight over the 'Great Society' and 'The New Deal' are definitely old school fights, both before and after WW2, that centered on points of ideology down here. Not knowing Canadian history I can't say whether or not similar have happened.
And Mercantilism (that which powered The Royal Navy) wasn't all that great a thing, you know. It was, for lack of a better word, flawed. AS practiced here in the US it was called Robber Baron-ism and seen as unprincipled capitalism run amok. Slavish adherence to a principle(making money thru industry) sounds like dogmatism, and that was what 'pragmatism' back then allowed for.
Though I think I know where you're trying to go, Al. Back when conservatives were more interested in how industry was doing than what you were doing in your bedroom, or how you were raising your Child Labo(u)r Units is what you mean. A time when we didn't have people actually talking about religious wars and wars of civilizations in serious tones. Fair enough.
THough many of the 'decency' court cases down here dating back to the days of Vaudville seems to contradict you a bit. Remember when getting banned in Peoria was a big deal? Either 'religionists' have had power down here a lot longer than we both think or maybe conservatism(or a brand of it) has been rather ideological for quite some time. Of course, I prefer to go with what Russel Kirk defined as conservatism, which doesn't really leave a whole lot of room for theocratic tendencies.
But that over reach we both dislike isn't simply a disease striking Tories and Republicans. The idea of a Leviathan like gov't(instead of just the Monarch being the hand that shall set things to right) is rather an over-reach. Like how about banning trans-fats or spanking or having to be in charge of all my health care spending in perpetuity because though I'm a college educated adult I can't do it right?
Doesn't make it right or acceptable, but both sides are slide tackling rather nastily of late.
Ah screw it, let's play some vinyl. (One step beyond....)