Ever won­der about that “three mil­lion dol­lar ear­mark for an over­head pro­jec­tor” that is such an impor­tant talk­ing point in John McCain’s elec­tion cam­paign? Accord­ing to an arti­cle in this week’s Sci­ence News, it turns out that the “over­head pro­jec­tor” is the Zeis star pro­jec­tor in the ven­er­a­ble Adler Plan­e­tar­i­um in Chica­go. Like the oth­er two major Amer­i­can plan­e­tar­i­ums in New York and Los Ange­les, the Adler must replace its fifty-year old instru­ment, which the orig­i­nal Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er will no longer ser­vice. As with the oth­er two, the request for fed­er­al fund­ing is rou­tine, and no politi­cian would dream of vot­ing against it. The three plan­e­tar­i­ums teach the fun­da­men­tals of astron­o­my to mil­lions of urban school chil­dren who have nev­er seen a clear night star-filled sky, and are basic ameni­ties of major cities. The cost of a few mil­lion dol­lars amor­tized over half a cen­tu­ry is triv­ial. No politi­cian in any of the three states involved would have vot­ed oth­er­wise. Could any­thing bet­ter demon­strate the dis­hon­esty and the mind-bog­gling igno­rance of the McCain campaign?

“Lais­sez-faire” is one of many terms that are con­sis­tent­ly mis­un­der­stood, mis­used, and distorted.

The term orig­i­nat­ed in 17th cen­tu­ry France. Under the rule of Louis XIV, France had a cen­tral­ized, state-man­aged econ­o­my. Vir­tu­al­ly all key eco­nom­ic deci­sions were in the hands of Louis’ inten­dant (“man­ag­er” is a bet­ter trans­la­tion than “min­is­ter”), Jean-Bap­tiste Col­bert. Col­bert direct­ed the country’s indus­tries with absolute author­i­ty, pun­ish­ing the dis­obe­di­ent with bru­tal sanc­tions. He sup­pressed what lit­tle labour orga­ni­za­tion there was. He encour­aged the cre­ation of giant cor­po­ra­tions, and he gave out mil­i­tary con­tracts, monop­o­lies, sub­si­dies and priv­i­leges to those he liked. The cor­po­ra­tions grew fat on the pro­ceeds of Louis’ inces­sant wars. France was a sort of Hal­ibur­ton’s Heav­en. As a con­se­quence, after a brief boom cre­at­ed by the ini­tial con­cen­tra­tion of cap­i­tal, France’s tech­nol­o­gy and econ­o­my stag­nat­ed, the gap between rich and poor widened, and those at the bot­tom starved, just as it has tran­spired in all such dirigiste regimes. Read more »

If one exam­ines close­ly the speech that Stephen Harp­er gave to an Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive think-tank, before he became our Prime Min­is­ter [1], one is struck imme­di­ate­ly by this: our Prime Min­is­ter hates Cana­da and despis­es Cana­di­ans. We are, in his own words “a sec­ond-rate country”[2]. In state­ment after state­ment, Mr. Harp­er made it clear that his only loy­al­ty is to the rich and pow­er­ful in oth­er coun­tries, and not to Cana­da or Cana­di­ans. For most of his life, the Rich and Pow­er­ful lived in the Unit­ed States, and that is where his spir­it has hov­ered. The Unit­ed States that he wor­ships, with the most abject and slav­ish ser­vil­i­ty, is not, of course, the real Unit­ed States, the one embod­ied in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, or in its two cen­turies of strug­gle for free­dom and jus­tice. No, what Mr. Harp­er wor­ships is the cur­rent, King George’s ver­sion of the Unit­ed States, the one that has been betrayed, degrad­ed, debauched and bank­rupt­ed by a gen­er­a­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive trea­son. Read more »

I admire ath­let­ic tal­ent and con­sid­er many Olympic events to be impor­tant expres­sions of human achieve­ment. For that rea­son, I oppose the Olympic orga­ni­za­tion and the peo­ple who run it, espe­cial­ly when they con­spire to hold their spec­ta­cles in lands with­out free­dom or democ­ra­cy, an act which under­lines their con­tempt for the human race. The Olympics debase and cor­rupt ath­let­ics. The Olympics are in their essence about mon­ey, pow­er, and exploita­tion. The cur­rent Olympics in Bei­jing are the worst to date. Their only pur­pose is to put the world’s stamp of approval on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s impe­r­i­al con­quests and assaults on human rights. They are being held to glo­ri­fy and legit­imize slav­ery, impe­ri­al­ism, and genocide.
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I could write, tonight, about some of those things that Nature uses to suck you in, like the pleas­ant sun­set I just saw. It was mel­low, rather than spec­tac­u­lar. A glow­ing tan­ger­ine sun descend­ing slow­ly behind the ridge, with clouds daubed onto the sky by some minor 17th cen­tu­ry Dutch mas­ter. The sort of sun­set that makes you feel the sphere of the Earth rolling under your feet, but does­n’t look like it was con­jured up by Indus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic. But I would rather write about the nas­ti­er side of Nature. Read more »

I took the dogs out after a late after­noon show­er, and there was a quite spec­tac­u­lar rain­bow, con­trast­ed against the retreat­ing storm clouds. I let the crit­ters romp in the wet grass and clover while soak­ing in the sym­phonie fan­tas­tique of smells the rain had brought out.

So when I returned to the house, I felt I deserved a feast. The prop­er ingre­di­ents were at hand. I put on some Haydn, and dined on steamed beets and cau­li­flower, and a fresh­ly made tour­tière. Tour­tière is a meat pie, usu­al­ly game or beef or pork, served by French Cana­di­an fam­i­lies through­out through­out the coun­try, and occa­sion­al­ly mak­ing an appear­ance in New Eng­land or Min­neso­ta. There are hun­dreds of vari­ants (that of the Sague­nay region being par­tic­u­lar­ly bizarre). In some places it is made “à l’é­cos­saise”, with oat­meal added, and some­times “à l’ir­landaise”, with pota­toes added, where Scot­tish and Irish influ­ence made their mark. It is wide­ly said to have been devised to cook pas­sen­ger pigeons — which flew across North Amer­i­ca in great black clouds of mil­lions before they became extinct. How­ev­er, I sus­pect that this was mere­ly one con­ve­nient fill­ing for an all-pur­pose pie brought by Canada’s ear­li­est Nor­man and Bre­ton set­tlers. In Cana­da, meat and game were sta­ples for the inde­pen­dent habi­tants, though back in France, such dish­es would have been only for the rich. In France, today, the word tour­tière means a shal­low pan for mak­ing pies, though I don’t think any­thing much like the Cana­di­an dish exists there now. It doubt­less descends from the Mid­dle Ages, since the meat is slow­ly sim­mered with onions, sage, rose­mary, savory, nut­meg, cin­na­mon, cloves, all­spice and plen­ty of black pep­per before it is enclosed in a thick, flaky pie crust… a very medieval style of cook­ing. True to this archa­ic pat­tern, it should be served with some­thing sweet on the side: pick­led beets, a sweet rel­ish, or even a chut­ney. In this case, I had some beets handy. At a Christ­mas réveil­lon, it would be served as a desert course, com­pet­ing with the apple and blue­ber­ry pies. A doc­u­ment­ed recipe from the year 1611 is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the one used in my family.

Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, imag­ine that a frozen tour­tière pur­chased in a super­mar­ket gives even a hint of this del­i­ca­cy. Those are fraudu­lant abom­i­na­tions, no mat­ter how folksy-look­ing the package.

The Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing is broad­cast­ing care­ful­ly staged fan­ta­sy images of “cel­e­bra­tions” in Lhasa, as the Olympic Flame makes it’s appear­ance in Tibet. In real­i­ty, the city is locked down. All traf­fic is stopped, Tibetans are not allowed to walk about with­out spe­cial per­mits, and a huge for­eign army patrols the streets. Tanks, guns, beat­ing batons are every­where. Near the Pota­la, a hand­ful of hand-picked stooges are present to be pho­tographed cheering.

This is the real­i­ty of the “Olympic Spir­it” — at least the ver­sion of it approved in the Age of Cor­po­ratism and Dic­ta­tor­ship. If I hear even one oth­er per­son using that sick­en­ing phrase, I will turn my back on them and walk away. There is no sense talk­ing to peo­ple who live in a world of lies, and aban­don their fel­low human beings to slav­ery, then spew out pro­pa­gan­da garbage claim­ing they rep­re­sent noble values.