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Currently at Toronto Pearson: 2. High today: 2. EC has "Thunderstorm with rain" down at 10 p.m. That seems unlikely. But not impossible. Supposed to get to 7 by morning.
The TV weatherpeople--I can't say the weather gerbils, because Michael Kuss, God love 'im, was doing it too--have come up with a new way to annoy the hell out of me. I suspect it is actually Environment Canada's fault: recently (at least, I think this is recent) its website started listing, not only the record high and low temperatures for the current day, but also the most rainfall, snowfall, and snow on the ground. This means that every day of the winter now has a "record snowfall", just like it has a record high and a record low temperature. This means that just about every significant snowfall in Toronto is now a RECORD-BREAKING SNOWSTORM! The "old record" for last Friday was 8.1 cm, which we blew away with 16.4 cm! We more than doubled the record! Woo!
There are two ways to look at this, though. One is that it's ridiculous for just about every significant snowstorm we get to be "record-breaking". The other is that it's no more ridiculous to have three record-breaking snowstorms in a season than it is to have three days of record-high temperatures in a season, which also often happens when you have daily records. Really, it'd be better to just forget about daily records altogether. At least until we have a few hundred more years of history.
Some more poking around on Kenya reveals that the internets are really still not up to serving all your research needs. There is not much out there, and a lot of it is conflicting. One thing I had wrong at last report was the bit about the proposed constitution making the president a figurehead. That's what a constitutional commission recommended, but the recommendation was amended to make the president more powerful again. It would, however, have moved the president out of parliament and created a position of prime minister, which did not and does not exist in Kenya. This was apparently the key to Odinga's alliance with Kibaki in the 2002 elections: Kibaki would get the constitution amended to create the position of prime minister, and he would make Odinga his prime minister. Apparently Kibaki didn't move on this as quickly as he had agreed to, so Odinga left the governing coalition; then, the constitution that Kibaki brought to the referendum had the balance of power between president and prime minister tilted more toward the president than Odinga wanted, so he led the opposition to it. Something I read somewhere yesterday suggested that the way out of the current mess would be for Kibaki to make Odinga the prime minister--but if Kibaki could do that, there wouldn't be the mess in the first place.
An interesting subtext that's mentioned in only one thing I've seen (I think from the U.S. State Department) is that the Anglican Church of Kenya opposed the proposed constitution, because it would have given Islamic courts a formally recognized position in the justice system. It's a somewhat odd feature of the current situation that the cleavages are entirely (portrayed as being) along "tribal" lines, whereas before the 2005 referendum, the important cleavage apparently was Muslim vs. non-Muslim. But, apparently, the Muslims live along the Indian Ocean coast; the current violence, apparently, is taking place inland.
One other thing that has to be noted about the December elections, which has not been widely reported at all: Odinga's coalition won more than twice as many seats as Kibaki's in parliament, though still not an outright majority. (Another crucial fact about the presidential election is that a splinter candidate from Odinga's coalition took enough votes that his votes and Odinga's combined would easily have beaten Kibaki, maybe so easily that the count couldn't practically have been rigged as it probably was.) You would think this would make it difficult for Kibaki to govern, particularly since, under the current, old, constitution, Kibaki is a member of parliament and directly accountable to it.
So you see how many things I seem to think I know, based on all the conflicting reports I have read on the internets.
I have periodically, though not intensively, been trying to figure out why I have taken an interest in Kenya (as opposed to, say, Chad, or Sudan, or whatever), and then again, why I'm writing about it here. I guess the point of writing about it here is to try to see if I can tell a coherent story about it. But why Kenya: I guess it's because Kenya was a somewhat decently functioning democracy, and its leading politicians seem--at a quick glance and from a long distance--not at all unlike those in established liberal democracies. There is a striking incongruity between the images, on one hand, of Kibaki and Odinga together with Kofi Annan, smiling and shaking hands, and, on the other hand, the bunch of guys in a field aiming arrows at each other that the Star ran on the front of its World section today.
Anyway.
We all know who the living Kennedys are endorsing. I think what we want to know is, who are the Dead Kennedys endorsing? (John McCain had a holiday in Cambodia, right? Something like that?)
I also want to know whether, if HRC loses the nomination, she will fire Bill. I do not believe she will lose the nomination. I also do not believe she will win the presidency. I do believe that, at some point, there will be a chorus of newsmedia saying HOW WERE WE SO WRONG MR. MCCAIN YOUR CAMPAIGN HAS THE MOMENTUM OF A RUNAWAY FREIGHT TRAIN WHAT MAKES YOU SO POPULAR?
Nurrrrr.
In Aristotle's Politics, after he says the "man is a political animal" bit, he says that anyone who doesn't live in society is a beast or a god. Nietzsche makes a little joke on that; he says Aristotle leaves out the third case: a philosopher. I realized yesterday that when you read that bit of Aristotle in light of the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he doesn't leave out the case of the philosopher at all. The philosophic life, the life of contemplation, Aristotle says, is superior to human life: it's divine. A god is simply a contemplator. It's questionable whether human beings are up to philosophy at all; it's strictly impossible for human beings to live a philosophical life. One of the things that's so great about the contemplative life is that its pleasures don't require other people, relatively speaking; they're non-social. The philosophical life, which is the life of a god, is a life outside society.
I've been teaching Aristotle, this week and last. This is the most seriously I've ever studied Aristotle, and this is the first time that I have ever liked Aristotle. Which is helpful toward my project of being ancient philosophy guy.
Oh dear.
And now, your Interesting Fact: yesterday's Super Bowl was the third consecutive Super Bowl loss by a team favoured by ten points or more. All-time, teams favoured by 10 or more points have a record of 9-5. By my count, the favourite's record is 30-12 overall. So, teams favoured by less than ten points are 21-7. In other words, teams favoured by less than ten points have done significantly better than teams favoured by ten points or more. I think that, from now on, people should say it's a huge upset when a team favoured by a little loses, and not when a team favoured by a lot loses.
Also, for all you Canadian nationalist sports fans out there: this will assuredly be the second year year ever, last year being the first, that the Super Bowl, and not the Grey Cup, is the most-watched sporting event in Canada. I swear, when I was a kid, nobody gave a damn about the NFL in Canada. You know, the days when the Jays were terrible and guys would yell "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar-gooooooooooooooooooooes!" on the way out of the Ex. Those were the days.
The TV weatherpeople--I can't say the weather gerbils, because Michael Kuss, God love 'im, was doing it too--have come up with a new way to annoy the hell out of me. I suspect it is actually Environment Canada's fault: recently (at least, I think this is recent) its website started listing, not only the record high and low temperatures for the current day, but also the most rainfall, snowfall, and snow on the ground. This means that every day of the winter now has a "record snowfall", just like it has a record high and a record low temperature. This means that just about every significant snowfall in Toronto is now a RECORD-BREAKING SNOWSTORM! The "old record" for last Friday was 8.1 cm, which we blew away with 16.4 cm! We more than doubled the record! Woo!
There are two ways to look at this, though. One is that it's ridiculous for just about every significant snowstorm we get to be "record-breaking". The other is that it's no more ridiculous to have three record-breaking snowstorms in a season than it is to have three days of record-high temperatures in a season, which also often happens when you have daily records. Really, it'd be better to just forget about daily records altogether. At least until we have a few hundred more years of history.
Some more poking around on Kenya reveals that the internets are really still not up to serving all your research needs. There is not much out there, and a lot of it is conflicting. One thing I had wrong at last report was the bit about the proposed constitution making the president a figurehead. That's what a constitutional commission recommended, but the recommendation was amended to make the president more powerful again. It would, however, have moved the president out of parliament and created a position of prime minister, which did not and does not exist in Kenya. This was apparently the key to Odinga's alliance with Kibaki in the 2002 elections: Kibaki would get the constitution amended to create the position of prime minister, and he would make Odinga his prime minister. Apparently Kibaki didn't move on this as quickly as he had agreed to, so Odinga left the governing coalition; then, the constitution that Kibaki brought to the referendum had the balance of power between president and prime minister tilted more toward the president than Odinga wanted, so he led the opposition to it. Something I read somewhere yesterday suggested that the way out of the current mess would be for Kibaki to make Odinga the prime minister--but if Kibaki could do that, there wouldn't be the mess in the first place.
An interesting subtext that's mentioned in only one thing I've seen (I think from the U.S. State Department) is that the Anglican Church of Kenya opposed the proposed constitution, because it would have given Islamic courts a formally recognized position in the justice system. It's a somewhat odd feature of the current situation that the cleavages are entirely (portrayed as being) along "tribal" lines, whereas before the 2005 referendum, the important cleavage apparently was Muslim vs. non-Muslim. But, apparently, the Muslims live along the Indian Ocean coast; the current violence, apparently, is taking place inland.
One other thing that has to be noted about the December elections, which has not been widely reported at all: Odinga's coalition won more than twice as many seats as Kibaki's in parliament, though still not an outright majority. (Another crucial fact about the presidential election is that a splinter candidate from Odinga's coalition took enough votes that his votes and Odinga's combined would easily have beaten Kibaki, maybe so easily that the count couldn't practically have been rigged as it probably was.) You would think this would make it difficult for Kibaki to govern, particularly since, under the current, old, constitution, Kibaki is a member of parliament and directly accountable to it.
So you see how many things I seem to think I know, based on all the conflicting reports I have read on the internets.
I have periodically, though not intensively, been trying to figure out why I have taken an interest in Kenya (as opposed to, say, Chad, or Sudan, or whatever), and then again, why I'm writing about it here. I guess the point of writing about it here is to try to see if I can tell a coherent story about it. But why Kenya: I guess it's because Kenya was a somewhat decently functioning democracy, and its leading politicians seem--at a quick glance and from a long distance--not at all unlike those in established liberal democracies. There is a striking incongruity between the images, on one hand, of Kibaki and Odinga together with Kofi Annan, smiling and shaking hands, and, on the other hand, the bunch of guys in a field aiming arrows at each other that the Star ran on the front of its World section today.
Anyway.
We all know who the living Kennedys are endorsing. I think what we want to know is, who are the Dead Kennedys endorsing? (John McCain had a holiday in Cambodia, right? Something like that?)
I also want to know whether, if HRC loses the nomination, she will fire Bill. I do not believe she will lose the nomination. I also do not believe she will win the presidency. I do believe that, at some point, there will be a chorus of newsmedia saying HOW WERE WE SO WRONG MR. MCCAIN YOUR CAMPAIGN HAS THE MOMENTUM OF A RUNAWAY FREIGHT TRAIN WHAT MAKES YOU SO POPULAR?
Nurrrrr.
In Aristotle's Politics, after he says the "man is a political animal" bit, he says that anyone who doesn't live in society is a beast or a god. Nietzsche makes a little joke on that; he says Aristotle leaves out the third case: a philosopher. I realized yesterday that when you read that bit of Aristotle in light of the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he doesn't leave out the case of the philosopher at all. The philosophic life, the life of contemplation, Aristotle says, is superior to human life: it's divine. A god is simply a contemplator. It's questionable whether human beings are up to philosophy at all; it's strictly impossible for human beings to live a philosophical life. One of the things that's so great about the contemplative life is that its pleasures don't require other people, relatively speaking; they're non-social. The philosophical life, which is the life of a god, is a life outside society.
I've been teaching Aristotle, this week and last. This is the most seriously I've ever studied Aristotle, and this is the first time that I have ever liked Aristotle. Which is helpful toward my project of being ancient philosophy guy.
Oh dear.
And now, your Interesting Fact: yesterday's Super Bowl was the third consecutive Super Bowl loss by a team favoured by ten points or more. All-time, teams favoured by 10 or more points have a record of 9-5. By my count, the favourite's record is 30-12 overall. So, teams favoured by less than ten points are 21-7. In other words, teams favoured by less than ten points have done significantly better than teams favoured by ten points or more. I think that, from now on, people should say it's a huge upset when a team favoured by a little loses, and not when a team favoured by a lot loses.
Also, for all you Canadian nationalist sports fans out there: this will assuredly be the second year year ever, last year being the first, that the Super Bowl, and not the Grey Cup, is the most-watched sporting event in Canada. I swear, when I was a kid, nobody gave a damn about the NFL in Canada. You know, the days when the Jays were terrible and guys would yell "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar-gooooooooooooooooooooes!" on the way out of the Ex. Those were the days.
