Pie Palace

Due to my comment form being spammed, I’m disabling it. If those damn bots want my attention so badly, they’ll have to earn it.

The Torino scale is one method of measuring our impending doom. It rates the likelihood of a “near earth object” (read: big rock) whacking into the Earth, and contains handy recommendations like “If the encounter is less than three decades away, governmental contingency planning may be warranted.” SCQ thoughtfully provides us with an abridged version. If you have a sudden upwelling of fear after reading it, check NASA’s listing of recently observed objects.

Sweet! I got linked to by people who speak languages other than English! Now if only I knew what they were saying…

The City of Ottawa is doing an online poll to determine how to prioritize services (etc). You can take part in the poll by hitting the City of Ottawa webpage. I’m not a big fan of this approach: any idiot can spam the thing with responses and skew the results dramatically. A better approach would see a town hall meetings, or a mechanism to verify the identity of the person taking the poll.

Early in the winter of 1997, the PiePalace editorial board took a bold and unprecedented step: we decided to have one of our highly trained journalists shrunk down to the size of a red blood cell, wrapped in a thin layer of teflon, and injected (via blowdart) into Stephen Harper. Those were heady days, back in the late ’90s. We thought we’d have the Internet thing covered, especially with the whole “embedded journalist” thing, but sadly, we blew most of our venture capital on Bre-X stocks, so, after we’d had the journalist shrunk, we couldn’t afford a decent blow-dartist. Suffice to say, the dart missed, Peter Mansbridge was never the same, and our Ottawa bureau never really went anywhere.

So we’re pretty surprised to be able to bring you this journalistic coup: Darrel Reid is back in town. Darrel Reid used to be head of the Canadian arm of Focus on the Family, when it was an a zealous “anti” phase. Anti-abortion rights. Anti-gay marriage. And, if you believe the Xtra, anti-feminist. Reid has been hired on as deputy director of policy and research in the PMO. He already did a stint in Rona Ambrose’s office when she was Minister of the Environment, after his previous employer (FotF) denounced climate change as “environmental theory yet to be adequately established.”¹

I’m made slightly uncomfortable by this hire because of this guy’s CV. Focus on the Family is US-based organization that openly funds its Canadian franchise (if you believe Wikipedia). I’m not sure that I want someone who was effectively a lobbyist sitting so close to our Prime Minister.

Now, just think how much more interesting this post would have been if our little blow-dart gambit had succeeded…

1. From The Hill Times (back)

I saw a guy on the bus with his laptop out last night. He had the ‘doze list of wireless networks out and was frantically hitting refresh. He got off the bus in a hurry, so maybe he found a hotspot that wasn’t secured. His low income tomfoolery reminded me of homeless-looking guys who used cycle around Ottawa on crappy bikes dripping with duct tape, and cheap CB radio equipment. Others termed them “The Radio Shack Cyberpunks.”

Last week(ish) Elizabeth May announced that the Green Party isn’t going to ran a candidate against Stephen Dior during the next election. In response, the Liberals agreed to do Elizabeth the same honour: they wouldn’t run a candidate against her. Since then there has been a certain amount of displeasure expressed at Elizabeth’s decision, including angry emails to local Greens, and various emissions into the blogosphere.

Handily, CBC stepped forward to clear the air. On yesterday’s edition of “The Current,” Elizabeth May took part in a discussion on the move. What she said wasn’t a surprise; it was a reiteration of her stance on the Conservatives for the past eight months. She says that they are bad for Canada, and (if you care about that kind of thing) bad for the environment.

I tend think that she made the right choice. By publicly announcing the (localized) detente she has shown that Greens are willing to converse with other parties and consider conversation over the usual constant bickering. She has also earned our Party front page billing in the national news for a few days.

Some have characterized this as dealing with the devil. I would rather things of her action as choosing conversation over confrontation.

When I heard that Elizabeth May was running in Central Nova, I questioned the decision. Greens seem to do well in urban areas, and running in Ottawa or Toronto would bring her closer to the media. But on reading her reasons for running in Nova Scotia, I have to say that she makes a persuasive argument.

I recently ran across the following Google ad:

Better than a Bidet
The Biffy is a new standard for cleanliness. Free Shipping!
www.biffy.com

As if the ad weren’t funny enough, the front page of the site has an infomercial that is well worth the cost of admission. At least one of the three actors shilling for the strap on bidet can barely contain her laughter. (Warning: the site is somewhat noisy, so turn down your sound unless you want your coworkers to know that you’re looking to “feel clean, all night, and all day”)

Sweet. There’s a War on Terror boardgame. Surprisingly enough, they’re sold out until the end of April. But if we haven’t run out of oil by then, I’m getting me a copy.