We on the right seem to spend a lot of time bashing Canada. How about, just for a change, we talk about some of the things we like about living here? Here’s my short list:
What do you folks like about Canada?
I’ve currently got 100 Gmail invites sitting unused. Anyone who has been wanting an account there only has to send me an e-mail at digiteyesed [a+] gmail dot com and I’ll slip you an invite. It’s a shame to just let them sit there and gather dust.
(I’ve turned off comments on this post to keep people from putting their e-mail addies where a spam harvesting ‘bot can find them.)
Update
I have 87 invites left. I have sent one out to everyone who asked so far. If you have a Hotmail account, you may need to check in your spam folder to find a reply as I heard that’s where Hotmail dumps them. Kirby T, I sent out your invite but your e-mail provider bounced it back with a 550 error (mailbox not available), so you may want to look into that.
More pictures, these from Hershblogger;
The attention has been on New Orleans and the levees, but here are some pictures of what the storm surge did on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain.
Steve Vaught, a roughly 400-pound man, is walking from Oceanside, CA to New York City, because, as he says, he wants to “lose weight and regain my life.” According to his website, he has made it over a thousand miles so far and is now in Texas.
An imaginative approach. He’s dropped quite a few pounds already, though he’s getting tired of the media hounding.
Which reminds me – ever since hearing about this little tromp, It occurred to me that those high-priced weight loss spas that ask clients to pack bathing suits might consider providing parkas instead.
Arthur Chrenkoff is signing off. A step up the professional ladder requires that he discontinue blogging.
Few other bloggers have achieved what Arthur has, in almost single-handedly bringing balance and context to the greater progress being made in both Iraq and Afghanistan. If you have been framing your opinion on post-war Iraq through the lens of the mainstream media, you owe it to yourself to read Arthur’s final installment of good news. You’ll be astonished at how much there is. If you search the archives, how much there has been in all these months of car-bomb-a-day reporting from the “green zone”.
The good news is that the series will continue – the team at Winds of Change has taken up the torch, and have established a new site devoted to the series, titled Good News From The Front.
Bookmark it!
Feeling sorry for yourself when you fill your tank these days?
My ’86 Dodge truck (318, 2WD) manages to squeak out 12 miles to the gallon. However, it’s paid for, costs $36 a month to insure. Not making payments adds up to a lot of “free gas”. Even at over $100 a fill, I can’t justify replacing it with a newer, more fuel efficient vehicle. It’s not as though I can manage with a Prius – something around here has to be able to haul my crap around.
And well, to be honest – I’m cursed. After years of van and truck ownership, I long ago accepted that I would never own a vehicle that managed more than 14 miles to the gallon. Indeed, for many years I drove across the continent in a Chev van that averaged 8. Mercifully, it ran on propane. That’s what you get, I suppose, for not doing your “due diligence” and asking if the previous owner (and enthusiastic engine rebuilder) used it as a tow vehicle for his racing boats.
So, when I was able to pick up my little vintage motorcycle a few years ago, I considered it a sensible decision. The Gas Gods were about to have a little mercy on me. I thought, “Finally, something economical to run around on in the summertime!” Not perfect, but it’s a start.
Uh. Yeah.
(Click for full size)
What can I say? There are SUV’s that get better milage.
Big earthquake today northeast of Australia, in Papua New Guinea
Interactive seismic monitor
Now, this is starting them young….
More context in one post by a Saskatchewan blogger than Charles Adler, Pierre Bourque and Stirling Faux combined were able to scrape together over an entire week;
Now imagine the British trying to cope with their entire Island in shambles, and having to evacuate an entire city under horrific conditions and provide housing and care for the flood of displaced people.
Or, imagine the entire bottom third of the province of Saskatchewan being without infrastructure; in other words all the roads in the populous part of the province being either blocked by trees or under water, with power and most utilities out. And then, imagine having to evacuate a million plus people� and then some.
Another way of looking at the scope of things might be to imagine the coastal countries of Belgium, Holland, and Denmark, with all coastal regions of Germany being either destroyed or compromised to the point where most infrastructure was unusable. How well could the EU respond, and how quickly?
This is sobering. The opening page is a graphic map of areas affected by Katrina. Clicking on the boxes brings up a breakdown showing smaller boxes, each of which represents a satellite photo. The detail is more than adequate to see individual buildings. (For even more detail, simply increase the text size of your browser.)
A small section of one of the aerial views of New Orleans. (Note to self – if warned of flooding in an urban area, move vehicle to top floor of parking garage.)
They are large images, so if you’re on dialup, be patient.
This should be a very valuable site for those who were safely evacuated to view their homes to get a rough idea of the state of flooding, etc. For those of us who have the good fortune to be mere observers, I suggest you spend some time with it to get a sense of scale.
As someone who has transversed the continent on several occasions by road, I have come to believe that many in politics, government and media fly too much. Like the “destination oriented” urban business or leisure traveller who generally lives and works within a relatively confined geographical area, their excursions to far flung locales are experienced almost exclusively through airport terminals.
Flying distorts one’s sense of scale. There is an unreality about the little images on the ground and the vast distances they represent. Imagine the experience becoming so routine that the window seat ceases to be your first preference. Imagine not looking down from a cloudless sky to try to identify geographical features and places you once stopped for coffee in. Imagine napping over the vastness of South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa – and awaking a couple of hours later to ready your tray for landing.
Of course, many of you don’t have to imagine anything of the sort. It’s your normal flying experience.
Flying from Saskatoon into Los Angeles for the first time, there is a sense of astonishment at the endlessness of the great, smoggy city and her suburbs. Landing at night, the sense is even greater, as the lights of the city flood out into the Pacific, carried by boats.
Yet, make the same journey by road (ideally, with windows open and air-conditioning off) and the City of Angels appears as a mere oasis at the edge of a dry, rolling ocean of emptiness.
The second perception is accurate and appropriate, while the first is a distortion created by a sudden burst of speed.
So many people have so little appreciation for how large their country is, no realization that their great metropolitan areas are just miniscule dots on the map when placed within the great expanse of the continent. They have little understanding that there are hundreds of thousands of miles of infrastructure that connect us to each other in fragile threads of asphalt and cable and that their very urban lives depend on them.
As capsulized as the world becomes to the habitual air traveller, even more so is that of those who seldom travel at all. I know of Canadians who have never been south of Minot who can tell you with utter authority all about that great country – based on the flickering images that come over their television sets.
Returning to Katrina – some of the unthinking and uninformed criticism by media punditry of relief efforts may be due, in part, to this phenomenon. The size of the area devastated by Katrina and the subsequent flooding, relative to the size of those assets that are struggling to respond, is difficult for them to scale.
And virtually impossible for those whose view is contained within a 36″ screen.
Stephen Taylor notes the statements from party leaders in Canada in response to the destruction in the gulf states. Of course, there isn’t a sizable American immigrant community voting block in Toronto-Danforth or Montreal….
Michelle Malkin and Instapundit are continuing to serve as central clearing houses for blog reporting and mainstream news alike.
If you want to help, but prefer “micro charity” to clicking a button at some faceless organization, consider Paul, from Wizbang;
Every natural disaster I send the Red Cross my standard $100 donation. I have no idea how to get money from them. It is a grant or a loan?
If I don’t actually cancel my phones and my bill is auto-debit do they still bill me?
If I shut off my phone will I lose my number?
Heck- Somebody make an “Evacuee survival guide” with laser precision information on how to get help without clicking 50 links or waiting on hold 2 hours. If you can save 25,000 people 5 hours of looking up the same information, think of the power in that!
Think of the simple things- Thousands of people lost their glasses. Somebody set up a website where they can coordinate donations of (known) prescription glasses from people who no longer need them. Get a freight company to donate the freight. I bet FedEx will give you an account number that will route all the glasses to some agency in New Orleans.
If you do something to help the victims, ping this post… If there is a lot of people helping out, Kevin will set up a post with the links. (I just volunteered him 😉
Think about it for a second from my chair… (I’m not whining but) I’m almost 40 years old…. Here is the sum total of all my worldly possessions: 4 pairs of shorts, 5 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of underwear, 1 pair of blue jeans, a box of family pictures, 2 flashlights, a piece of trench art my grandfather brought back from WWI and my father’s hammer. (Hey, it means a lot to me!) That’s it. Everything else is gone. And BTW, I’m unemployed.
I think that’s where mine will go. Click here for details.
Michelle Catalano is going against the tide and trying to find positive news. Pickings are currently slim, though there is word coming in that damage to the oil platforms in the gulf may have been somewhat less severe than initally feared. That’s important from more than a gasoline price standpoint – getting the industry back up and running will be critical to restoring the regions’ economy.
If you have other items of interest related to this story, use the comments or send a trackback.
Update Damian Penny has compiled a list of Canadian charities taking donations.
Update Another post at Cerberus.
I wish my nephews were younger.
Suggest a new license plate motto for Ontario.
If your sky includes scenes like this…
You might be in Saskatchewan.
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah*
Best sung inside a helmet, laying on the tank, while riding the powerband through 5 gears.
Hallelujah.
If you check the seismic map, there has been a 7.2 mag earthquake near Honsho, Japan just over an hour ago.
Active map is here.
Google news has reports trickling in about injuries and a tsunami warning, but nothing over the local radio news at the moment.
Interior shot of a backwoods cabin in rural Georgia. The room is tastefully decorated with Bruno Mathsson lounge chairs, Eero Saarinen side tables, a rebel flag and moonshine still. An old bearded man lies on a vintage midcentury Alvar Aalto death bed.
“ow”
Dr.Louie: “Are you ok?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Dr.Louie: “You want more freezing?”
Me: “Let’s see how it goes.”
Dr.Louie: “OK”
whhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrriiiiirrrrrrr “ow”
Dr.Louie: “Let’s get more freezing.”
Me: “You always end up doing that.”
Dr.Louie: “So I see. I put in one tube. Last time we gave you three tubes.”
Me: “Sounds about right”
[…]
Dr.Louie: “You can sit in the chair for a while if you want.”
Me: “I think I”m OK”.
Dr.Louie: “The tooth will be tender for a few days. It needs to recover.”
Me: “That happened with the last one. No problem.”
Dr.Louie: “All that freezing will take a long time to go away. And don’t eat anything for a while.
Me: “I’m painting the rest of the afternoon, so that won’t be a problem.”
Dr.Louie: “Painting? Your house?”
Me: “Lawn sign. I do airbrushing. It’s out in a warehouse north of town”
Dr.Louie: “Airbrushing like on cars and motorcycle tanks?”
Me: “Yup. That’s what I do.”
Dr. Louie: “I’ve always wanted to get my car painted with that. But it’s so expensive.”
Me: “About like dentistry.”
Dr. Louie: “ha ha”
Me:
Dr.Louie: “Let me see you to the front …
Dr.Luoie: “Catherine needs another appointment”
Receptionist: “We have openings next week.”
Me: “Maybe in October”
Dr.Louie: “That sounds good. You take care now.. thankyou.”
Me: “you too.”
Dr.Louie: “Bye now”
Me: “Thanks”
Receptionist: “So, how would you like to pay?”
Me: “Sadist”
A Toronto Sun article highlights one consequence of Canada’s new laws allowing same-sex marriage that should have been obvious.
Bill Dalrymple, 56, and best friend Bryan Pinn, 65, have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation with a twist — they’re straight men.
“I think it’s a hoot,” Pinn said.
The proposal came last Monday on the patio of a Toronto bar amid shock and laughter from their friends. But the two — both of whom were previously married and both of whom are still looking for a good woman to love — insist that after the humour subsided, a real issue lies at the heart of it all.
“There are significant tax implications that we don’t think the government has thought through,” Pinn said.
Dalrymple has been to see a lawyer already and there are no laws in marriage that define sexual preference.
Precisely – there is no sexual orientation means test for marriage. The issue of same sex marriage has never been one of “equal rights”, but of changing a legal definition. Homosexuals have always been allowed to marry members of the opposite sex (and do so successfully enough to raise families) – and conversely, heterosexuals had been prohibited from marrying others of the same sex, for whatever the reason.
Predictably, there’s a “warning” from Toronto lawyer Bruce Walker, a gay rights activist.
“Generally speaking, marriage should be for love,” he said. “People who don’t marry for love will find themselves in trouble.”
Whatever, Bruce.
Having convinced a majority of Canadian MP’s that the “ability to procreate” isn’t a defining characteristic of “marriage”, tell me – -what’s so damned special about “love”?
Update – Blogosphere’s first known use of the term “platonophobe”.
“We need more such consumer advocates out there identifying such opportunities, opportunities that our hate-filled platonophobic society has previously arbitrarily denied to pairs of people who neither love each other nor happen to engage in sexual intercourse.” – Mike, at London Fog
