December 12th, 2005
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written on December 12th, 2005.
hard on the heels of the indigenous insurgents call for participation in the upcoming election, Norman Podhoretz rather convincingly demonstrates that the ideas and ideals which have drriven in the war and the reconstruction are coming up trumps.
Much to the chagrin of the American left, Democratic party and lefties the world over as well, of course, as the “realist” school which kept the Middle East the happy haven of despots for fifty years.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on International and Terror.
Mr. Harper has not spoken about same-sex marriage since the first day of his campaign, but prominent evangelical Christian opponents of same-sex marriage appeared at his campaign rallies on Friday and Saturday, apparently to ensure he does not stray on the issue.
On Friday, former television evangelist David Mainse, of 100 Huntley St. fame, showed up at Mr. Harper’s whistle-stop rally in Cambridge, Ont., and slipped a letter into the Tory Leader’s hands.
Mr. Mainse said the letter was advice, but he declined to describe the contents. Mr. Harper’s handlers began telling reporters their bus was leaving — ahead of schedule — as they interviewed Mr. Mainse.
globe and mail
Great, theocon minders bearing witness, silent or otherwise and the best the CPC can do is get the buses to pull out early.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with 3 comments.
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A few of you use and I hope find useful my Canadian Bullet. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t: at the moment it has dropped my feed. I have been working on it and I am hoping it will work better as the election draws near.
This is affectionately known as an aggregator. I try to make sure that it only shows short excerpts and that the links go to the blog the excerpt comes from. This does not always happen; but that is the intent. It has ads and, without violating the Google terms of service, I can happily report that I may well make a beer a month if I stick to domestic.
In God blog land in the US it has dawned on the great and the good that RSS contains within it the possibility of the “splog” - that is an automated blog which takes content, slaps ads on it and sends it out into the world. This is seen as evil.
But, and who would have thought it, it seems that some people are taking whole blog entries and republishing them. Steve Rubel is pissed. But,
Beyond going to partial text RSS feeds - which I am loathe to do - I have really no other course of action right now other to email the site operators, which I have done.
micropersuasion
I can’t quite see what his objection to partial text, aka excerpts is; but the fact is that he has that option and chooses not to use it. He should because the aggregating software is not that brilliant. I always try to get excerpts for the Bullet, partially for copyright reasons, mainly because it is not that interesting to have great chunks of text on a summary site.
Mark Cuban, owner of Icerocket.com goes a step further.
At icerocket.com , we define a splog as any hosted website that only uses redirected or copied content and doesnt add any unique value. Aggregation is not value add. Why ? Because a search on any blog engine should uncover the unique content on their original source. If a blog isnt updated by human hands, we dont want it in our index.
blog maverick
Well, it’s his search engine and he can do what he wants to; but he is missing the point of excerpt aggregators.
If I want to find out what is going on in the Canadian blogosphere I can take a boo at the Bullet or Canconv. If I want to check out tech, www.memeorandum.com, where I got this story is untouched by human hands. Digg.com is all about gazillions of human hands. diggdot.us puts slashdot and digg together. Welcome to Web 2.0.
The thing of it is that automation, particularily when it comes to assembling summaries, is a critical and useful task for the web.
Aggregation is in its infancy. Right now people are trying to get a handle on how to present the information. Once that is mastered the real skill is going to hit - editing. Choosing the feeds, editing the product, fashioning commentary.
The blog Gods seem to want to strangle the creature at birth. They see the aggregators as scam driven attempts to grab Adsense dollars - if only. In fact, aggregators are going to quickly become the clearing houses for new media that the public needs to make sense of the firehose of information pouring down their cable connections.
One thing which the aggregators will do is make search engines less necessary. For people with a time budget, three or four key aggregators with editors they have come to trust will replace hours of searching. Which is not good news for search engines but may be excellent news for freelance editors.
In web 1.0 we had useful spots like Arts and Letters Daily and Blog Critics which were human edited and built. This was, to a degree, both a virtue and a necessity. At the time there was no other way. Now there is.
The Blog Gods will just have to get over it and learn to excerpt.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with 10 comments.
Read more articles on Web 2.0 and blogging and media and tech.
I have consulted with Susan and am relieved to find that under the Tory plan we would be able to fill our house with popcorn on a monthly basis and still have money left over for a case of beer. OK, I’m bribed…
If Martin had any wit he’d fire Reid simply because Reid let the sheer arrogance of the Liberal Party show through.
But as it is unlikely to matter Reid will probably end up in the Senate.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with no comments.
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“I cannot accept that Quebeckers would talk about Quebec in such terms,” Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe said while campaigning in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region last night. “I cannot accept that we would be proud of being dependent. That is why we want to become independent, to put an end to dependency.”
globe and mail
Duceppe was commenting on the remarks of a Liberal candidate who noticed that Quebec was not the milking cow of Canada. (Er. we know.) I suspect that becoming less dependent is one option; but, hey, if independence is the only way to go then you go Giles.
Meanwhile Martin is suffering from the traditional Liberal delusion that only the Liberal Party understands Quebec. It certainly understands Quebec well enough to have broken every election law Quebec had in the last referrendum and committed numerous other legal and ethical violations only to nearly lose that vote. But for money and ethnics I guess Quebec would be dependent no more.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with no comments.
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A top Liberal strategist is suggesting Canadian parents could blow their child-care money on beer and popcorn under a funding proposal championed by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.
Scott Reid, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s director of communications, says there’s nothing in the Harper plan to make sure that cash allowances intended to pay for day care would actually be spent for that purpose.
CTV
It is a pity that the CPC’s pandering to the socons has made it largely impossible to just nail the Liberals on remarks like this. But when your leader seems bent on meeting every fundy evangelist who crosses his path:
For the second straight day, Harper also met with a leading evangelist. After being buttonholed by former 100 Huntley Street host David Mainse at a rally in Cambridge, Harper met briefly with Dr. Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College and a central player in Defend Marriage Canada, an initiative to overturn the same-sex marriage law.
the star
it is awfully tough to say you believe in individual choice rather than government diktat.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics.
Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.
In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.
Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.
“We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote,” said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam’s Baath party.
“Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters.”
el reuters
Of course we know that the Arabs, especially the Sunnis are entirely incapable of democracy or electoral politics. It’s inherent ya know. So elections are pointless and we should be wishing for the return of Uncle Cuddles or, better still, the promotion of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from murderous butcher to head of state — anything, anything, just so long as the Americans, or Bush, are defeated.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with 1 comment.
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The time-line seems to be something like this:
* Last weekend some people, probably Lebanese Muslims, bashed a bunch of lifeguards at Cronulla Beach, including knocking one unconscious. They also harassed girls and women on the beach.
* Residents, pissed off by the violence, got angry at the lack of police attendance and presence.
* The anger morphed into a rage that the beach was being “invaded” by people from the western suburbs (i.e., a euphemism for Lebanese Muslims).
* Some people started texting to incite others to “defend the beach” from thugs.
* Today they did that by forming a violent, rowdy mob.
To be honest with you, I was quite surprised that such a group of chavs and bogans was able to organise themselves, let alone through the weak social network of SMS. The anthropological implications are fascinating.
splat guy via Tim Blair
The comments are fascinating. No love for the Muslim Lebanese, not much for the white yabbos. Best comment so far:
To be honest with you, I was quite surprised that such a group of chavs and bogans was able to organise themselves, let alone through the weak social network of SMS. The anthropological implications are fascinating.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on International and Uncategorized.
The day before the Goodale income trust announcement, the volume of Medisys shares traded for the day went from 5,714 on November 21, to 203,953 on Novemeber 22. On November 23, the shares traded dropped back down to 6,220.
mk braaten
Medisys is the income trust set up by Paul Martin’s private sector doctor to capitalize the private clinics he runs in Quebec. Braaten has done sterling work digging out the ownership and the trading activitity.
So now what?
This is the moment of truth for the CPC war room. They have a new scandal which needs to be explained to the public. They have a clear chart thanks to Braaten (and why were they not all over this a week ago) and a clear suspicion of leakage.
Handled properly this is a huge and entirely unearned gift to the CPC. Brought to them by a blogger. I am hoping they will have the wit to make something of it.
But I doubt it.
Written by jay on December 12th, 2005 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics and Uncategorized.