Pie Palace

Have you ever wished, fellow blogger, that you had a way to tell your readers when you comment on somebody else’s blog? I have. Whenever I comment on dubroy.com (for example), I’d like my blog to show that I did that.

I’ve put together the Elsewhere plugin to do that magic. When you comment on a blog with Elsewhere installed, that blog will ping the URL you entered in the ‘Website’ field on the comment form. If that website has Elsewhere installed, a link to your comment will be displayed in your sidebar.

Finally.

As much as I try to avoid it, I occasionally get sucked into gadget marketing. The latest toy that has caught my eye is the Agora Pro made by Kogan¹. It’s specs are a laundry list of what I want in a phone:

• it runs Android,
  
• it has an FM receiver,
  
• it talks wifi,
  
• and it has a touch screen.

To top it off, the Canadian price after shipping is less than $375.

Now, if it just had a “democratically depose Stephen Harper” button, I’d pre-order one right now.

1. Okay, it probably isn’t made by Kogan, but it’s being marketed by Kogan, which is close enough for my purposes. (back)

In 2000 the Conservatives made a deal with the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc agreed to support the Conservatives, if they could pull together a minority government. Thanks to some deep investigative work by the tireless Pie Palace Parliamentary Bureau¹, we are able to bring you, dear reader, a copy of that very agreement.

Here’s are the highlights:

We, the leaders of the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois and the Progressive Conservative Party, have met and agree that Canadians have delivered a clear message in the election held on November 27, 2000: [...]
Canadians also made it clear by their votes that they desired ___ Members of Parliament from the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Progressive Conservative Party to govern. [...] we will be required to govern by consensus.

And here’s the original document, from our shadowy parking-lot dwelling informant.

Of course, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, if it weren’t for the bruhaha that the Conservatives are tossing up about the deal.

1. Yes, it was emailed to us out of the blue, but it is from a reliable source. Regardless, please take it with a grain of salt. (back)

So far I’ve heard John Baird and Pierre Poilievre parroting the same lines about the upcoming non-confidence vote: non-confidence votes are back-room deals; nobody voted for a coalition; the opposition parties just care about the subsidies. And now, thanks to a leaked set of talking points (scroll down to the bottom of the story), we can the original source. Just for once I’d like to hear a politician speak and hear something that they had thought of. I’d like to hear them make a coherent and reasoned argument that wasn’t spin.

CBC’s Canadian doctors should face regular testing: medical school head is a great example of poor journalism. The gist of the article is simple: a doctor has recommended that Canadian doctors should be periodically recertified. The journalist has found another doctor else who says “No! doctors shouldn’t be retested.” Without talking to the journalist, we can’t tell if that was to create a sense of conflict, or to make the story more “balanced.”

There are three problems here:

1. The No doctor’s statement:
   

   What we do every day is not really a book learning thing, [...] To say, in fact, that because you pass an exam makes you a good physician every 10 years is absolutely wrong.

   is exactly refuted by the CMAJ editorial:
   

   In Quebec, investigators found that family physicians’ scores on their certification examination and Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination were related to provision of quality care after 4–7 years in practice. More recently, Holmboe and colleagues found that physicians’ scores on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Maintenance of Certification examination was associated with higher rates of performance in care for Medicare patients.

   which goes on to cite the studies in question.
2. The Yes doctor, Wendy Levinson has qualifications as a medical instructor, and appears to study how patients interact with their doctors and is a chair at department of medicine.
3. Meanwhile, the No doctor, Howard Conter does not appear to have any any relevant publications or appointments.

News stories like this are important. They get people to think about how healthcare is delivered in Canada, and how that can be reformed. It’s a pity that the story took the form of “she said, he said” instead of dipping into the empirical studies behind the editorial.

All throughout the US election, Canadian news outlets kept running stories that featured Americans saying things like “I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone with a name like Obama, it sounds too Muslim,” or “I don’t think Obama was raised with Christian values,” or “Should we really elect someone with the middle name Hussein?”

Don Miller has written a brief blessay that may explain this mind-numbing xenophobia. It gybes nicely with Jesus Camp and The Assault on Reason: essentially stating that the unicorn chasersreligious right is born out of a horribly segmented and alienating society.

The same election that made Obama president also denied marriage to millions of Americans. California, Arizona and Florida voted to ban gay marriage. Arkansas banned same sex couples from adopting children. I can’t fathom how the same people who would elect a black man as president would deny consenting adults from making long term commitments to each other. I guess that shows what kind of community I grew up in.

Link to Don Miller via Matthew Helmke.

I’ve long been a fan of Threadless Ts, but RedBubble is edging it out…

This is a very long response to XUP’s post (seen on Blogawa) about stripping titled Peelers and Peelees:

---

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the other side of the degradation equation. What about the customers?

My one noteworthy stripper experience was in Gatineau at a fairly classy club. Being young and foolish, I payed for a lap dance.

Before and after the dance, we chatted. The young woman told me a little about herself, and I told her generalities about my life. When I said I was a software developer she told me how much she loved staying in and playing video games when she was growing up. When I said I had just finished university, she told me that she was saving up to go to school. Funny coincidences, but I didn’t think much of it until after I paid her for the dance – she hugged me, kissed my neck, and told me her “real” name, and said to come back the next time she was working.

I’m not sure if I have a “solid sense of self” (or had one at the time), but that rattled me for a good week or so. Who wouldn’t be interested in a member of the opposite sex who sits in your lap, has a good uh, sense of rhythm, and hangs on your every word? I knew she was tapping me as a repeat customer, but I still wanted to go back. She’d done the equivalent of putting a smiley face on the bill, and I was willing to open up my wallet.

My sweetie tells me that it’s the same story in clubs with male dancers. The dancer treats the clients well, wooing them for cash.

If you want to talk about degradation, remember that the knife cuts both ways. I’m sure some patrons can walk into a club, enjoy the experience, and walk out. But I suspect that a fair number of the regulars are coming back compulsively. They’re being played directly by the dancers and indirectly by the club owners.

As to the question of degradation of the dancers, I can’t help but notice that 100% of our non-scientific sample of ex-strippers enjoyed peeling. I doubt that’s true of all dancers, but to say that “I don’t believe for an instant that a woman with a solid sense of self would choose to [dance] for a living” seems to be painting women with a pretty broad brush. Take a few minutes to skim http://lettersfromworkinggirls.blogspot.com. They aren’t strippers, and it sounds like most of them don’t work on Gladstone, but they sound like the enjoy their work.

Are available online from the US Legion.