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Thursday, watch the walls instead
Mar. 2nd, 2006 11:59 am
High today, here: -3. Dewpoint then: -7. High dewpoint: -7.
High today in TO: -2. Dewpoint then: -9. High dewpoint: -8.
Low today on the balcony: -8.3. High: -3.3. Currently: -8.3.
One goal against between Huet and Emery. Empire resurgent!
I learned yesterday that CanWest Global has purchased a chunk of The New Republic. Which is either superficially odd, and less superficially ... you know, oddly, there's really no particularly good antonym for "odd". L. likes to say "expected", which I don't particularly like, but really, there aren't any generally better options. In this case, maybe "natural". Anyway: it's either superficially odd, and less superficially not odd, or superficially not odd, and less superficially odd, in several different ways. CanWest Global is politically odd itself. It owns Canada's Other National Newspaper--the right-wing one--and runs the national newscast which I affectionately call Fox News North. But the Aspers, who own it, are a Liberal family of long standing--though I see Izzy Asper was out-doing Paul Martin as a Paul Martin Liberal before there was any such thing as a Paul Martin Liberal. And, perhaps, is, after. Is he after, Izzy Asper? Yes. Anyway: I was poking around the net yesterday looking for details on the New Republic thing, and found Antonia Zerbisias, the Star's media writer or somesuch, calling TNR "neocon (although socially progressive)". Which goes to show that all you need to do to be "neocon" these days in the eyes of THAT DAMNED LIBERAL MSM is be somewhat more in favour of the Iraq war, and/or the War On Terror (WOT?), than, say, I dunno, Howard Dean.
Which brings me around to something I was thinking about the other day, looking through New Left Review, wondering if I might ever, conceivably, fit in the pages of New Left Review ... because, really, I'm not that terribly sure whether I'm Left, New or otherwise, anymore--but what is? And I think of Hitchens, the reconstructed Marxist liberal "neocon", who probably would very much fit in the pages of New Left Review if he wasn't so frequently so busy slagging "the left". The thing about strange bedfellows, which you come to acquire when you're in a position like Hitchens's, is they tend, slowly, to become less strange. Once upon a time, I started reading National Review and the American Spectator, out of the enemy of my enemy principle, and almost, after a while, started to think I was a conservative, or something--although I'm probably far more conservative now, but, to put it mildly, far less inclined to vote Conservative (for a while, I expected my first electoral vote was going to go to the Kim Campbell PCs, but by the time the election came around I was, uh, disengaged altogether, and thought it might be nice if we tried to eliminate the deficit through yogic flying, so it actually went to the Natural Law Party (come to think of it, what ever happened to that Maharishiland they were going to build in Niagara Falls?) instead) or read National Review and the American Spectator.
Which brings me back to my original point, which was that it's a good thing, as it turns out, that Hasek got hurt. By which I mean, what does it take to be a leftist, these days? So I thought, maybe, the minimal leftist position is something like Rawls's maximin: choose that distribution of goods which most benefits the worst off. Well, OK, but then you can be a Reaganomist and a leftist, if you truly believe that trickle-down is the way to benefit the worst off most. But then, I bet you can, actually, find some old British Revolutionary Communist Party folks who do think that, and also think they're on the left. The conclusion I come to is that it's all about attitude--it's like (very much like) my vocals-determine-pop-music-genre theory--and it has a lot to do with Cheney shooting that guy. Harper also hunts, allegedly. People who kill things for fun are on the right. That's pretty much all there is to it.
It looks like everyone thinks the Dominican Republic is going to waltz (or, you know, samba, or whatever) to the World Baseball Classic, uh, Classicality. They will be the class of the Classic. But surely the smart money's got to be on Cuba, although they will not get any money, because they are evil. They are highly motivated, and nobody else gives a flying fiddle. Bernie Williams says he doesn't know, he just doesn't know, if he could bring himself to take Jeter out at second in the late innings of a close game. (You think Bryan McCabe wouldn't love to have thrown a Flying Ass Check on Kaberle at the Olympics?) Fer cryin' out loud. Speaking of fiddles cryin' out loud, there was a guy playing the violin at York today, next to a table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross. I believe that his purpose was to draw attention to this table, and I believe that he purposed to do this by deliberately playing badly. He had, I don't know what you call it, a very nice, say, tone colour, or what have you, and there was no squeaking and squawking, but there was a lot of something like sudden key shifts of an augmented fourth or so. The effect was fascinatingly excruciating, and certainly did succeed in drawing my attention to the table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross, which is why I can report that it was a table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross. I can report in no more detail than that, however, because I was not about to be played that far.
High today in TO: -2. Dewpoint then: -9. High dewpoint: -8.
Low today on the balcony: -8.3. High: -3.3. Currently: -8.3.
One goal against between Huet and Emery. Empire resurgent!
I learned yesterday that CanWest Global has purchased a chunk of The New Republic. Which is either superficially odd, and less superficially ... you know, oddly, there's really no particularly good antonym for "odd". L. likes to say "expected", which I don't particularly like, but really, there aren't any generally better options. In this case, maybe "natural". Anyway: it's either superficially odd, and less superficially not odd, or superficially not odd, and less superficially odd, in several different ways. CanWest Global is politically odd itself. It owns Canada's Other National Newspaper--the right-wing one--and runs the national newscast which I affectionately call Fox News North. But the Aspers, who own it, are a Liberal family of long standing--though I see Izzy Asper was out-doing Paul Martin as a Paul Martin Liberal before there was any such thing as a Paul Martin Liberal. And, perhaps, is, after. Is he after, Izzy Asper? Yes. Anyway: I was poking around the net yesterday looking for details on the New Republic thing, and found Antonia Zerbisias, the Star's media writer or somesuch, calling TNR "neocon (although socially progressive)". Which goes to show that all you need to do to be "neocon" these days in the eyes of THAT DAMNED LIBERAL MSM is be somewhat more in favour of the Iraq war, and/or the War On Terror (WOT?), than, say, I dunno, Howard Dean.
Which brings me around to something I was thinking about the other day, looking through New Left Review, wondering if I might ever, conceivably, fit in the pages of New Left Review ... because, really, I'm not that terribly sure whether I'm Left, New or otherwise, anymore--but what is? And I think of Hitchens, the reconstructed Marxist liberal "neocon", who probably would very much fit in the pages of New Left Review if he wasn't so frequently so busy slagging "the left". The thing about strange bedfellows, which you come to acquire when you're in a position like Hitchens's, is they tend, slowly, to become less strange. Once upon a time, I started reading National Review and the American Spectator, out of the enemy of my enemy principle, and almost, after a while, started to think I was a conservative, or something--although I'm probably far more conservative now, but, to put it mildly, far less inclined to vote Conservative (for a while, I expected my first electoral vote was going to go to the Kim Campbell PCs, but by the time the election came around I was, uh, disengaged altogether, and thought it might be nice if we tried to eliminate the deficit through yogic flying, so it actually went to the Natural Law Party (come to think of it, what ever happened to that Maharishiland they were going to build in Niagara Falls?) instead) or read National Review and the American Spectator.
Which brings me back to my original point, which was that it's a good thing, as it turns out, that Hasek got hurt. By which I mean, what does it take to be a leftist, these days? So I thought, maybe, the minimal leftist position is something like Rawls's maximin: choose that distribution of goods which most benefits the worst off. Well, OK, but then you can be a Reaganomist and a leftist, if you truly believe that trickle-down is the way to benefit the worst off most. But then, I bet you can, actually, find some old British Revolutionary Communist Party folks who do think that, and also think they're on the left. The conclusion I come to is that it's all about attitude--it's like (very much like) my vocals-determine-pop-music-genre theory--and it has a lot to do with Cheney shooting that guy. Harper also hunts, allegedly. People who kill things for fun are on the right. That's pretty much all there is to it.
It looks like everyone thinks the Dominican Republic is going to waltz (or, you know, samba, or whatever) to the World Baseball Classic, uh, Classicality. They will be the class of the Classic. But surely the smart money's got to be on Cuba, although they will not get any money, because they are evil. They are highly motivated, and nobody else gives a flying fiddle. Bernie Williams says he doesn't know, he just doesn't know, if he could bring himself to take Jeter out at second in the late innings of a close game. (You think Bryan McCabe wouldn't love to have thrown a Flying Ass Check on Kaberle at the Olympics?) Fer cryin' out loud. Speaking of fiddles cryin' out loud, there was a guy playing the violin at York today, next to a table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross. I believe that his purpose was to draw attention to this table, and I believe that he purposed to do this by deliberately playing badly. He had, I don't know what you call it, a very nice, say, tone colour, or what have you, and there was no squeaking and squawking, but there was a lot of something like sudden key shifts of an augmented fourth or so. The effect was fascinatingly excruciating, and certainly did succeed in drawing my attention to the table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross, which is why I can report that it was a table advertising the goodness of the Red Cross. I can report in no more detail than that, however, because I was not about to be played that far.
