On Sunday Mornings: A Brief Note

Whoever stuck those "play me pianos" in local community centers, where they can be plinked away at by small children with 0 in the way of musical talent at 7 AM on a Sunday, should be clubbed to death with a goalie stick.  And the children should be punished, too.  Instead of being allowed to run and jump and play, they should be forced to take piano lessons.  Stupid children.  Stupid Sunday.

Ezra Levant's Hearing Before Alberta Law Society Has Been...

...postponed while they consider his application to resign.  Sounds like he wants to swing a trade; he'll quit if he exits with a clean slate.  In the end, though, he won't be able to say he's a lawyer anymore, and he won't be able to make $ from it.  Good either way?

On That Motion Condemning The BDS Movement

...supported by the CPC and most of the LPC (some dissented, and some more didn't show for the vote); opposed by the NDP; and therefore ultimately adopted...It's a stupid thing. Anti-free speech, maybe.  Anti-Democracy, Anti-Capitalist, I'd even argue.  Telling you that you are bad if you have made certain decisions about how you spend your money; and that its bad to try and change things by directing your consumer choices one way or another.  I don't think the BDS movement is inherently anti-semitic, although I am sure some anti-semites find it a convenient method of legitimizing their hate.  But even if it were, I'd probably argue that its OK to be racist with your money; or at least that you have an absolute right to be racist with your money.  You want to protest the homosexual agenda and be clean in my books, then go boycott Disneyland (*).  Its a free country, and you express that freedom through your money.

But the thing is, the HOC just passed a motion.  Just a statement of condemnation.  Everyone in support might as well have dropped their pants and farted in the direction of McGill.  It would have had a similar practical effect, meaning none.  So it isn't really something to get too worked up over. Nobody is going to, because nobody can, force you to buy Israeli wine, or to stop you from trying to convince others that they too should avoid buying Israeli wine.

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(*)  Its been tried, incidentally.  It didn't really work.

Josh Gelernter, Science-y Type Guy

He writes, bitching about The Left, Science, The Earth Centered Universe, Climate Change, and all that:

People tend to think that proponents of an Earth-centered solar system were nothing but intransigent religious fanatics. In fact, they included scientists of Galileo-level genius, like Ptolemy and Aristotle. When their theories were weakened and their opponents’ strengthened, they switched sides — and the “scientific consensus” changed.

From wiki:

Aristotle, 384–322 BC
Claudius Ptolemy, c. AD 100 – c. 170
Galileo Galilei,  15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642

Aristotle and Ptolemy couldn't "change sides", Josh.  They'd been dead over a thousand years.

Exclusive: Slowly Dying Media Continues To Slowly DIe!

From Toronto Sun Family blog:

Layoffs over at 333 King today. 3 advertising coordinators, and I'm sure there will be more to come before the big move to the National Post building.

PS.  The new NP "building" isn't really so much a building as a tent city on the banks of The Don River. The reporters who are left file from a nearby Tim Hortons, using the complimentary wifi there, and pee into the river itself, which is why nothing can live in The Don.

Ezra Levant, The Alberta NDP, And Journosplaining

I guess I should say something about this.  Alberta's NDP government decided they weren't willing to put up with any more disruptions out of kooks from The Rebel (the online HQ of Ezra Levant's personal death cult), and kicked them out of one of their press conferences.  They're rationale was that Ezra was, in his own words, "not a journalist".  Of course, when the real journos heard about this, they collectively shat, and rushed to our lads defense. Not like rational men.  Like Pavlov the dog drooling at his master's bell.  Like chimps chasing a stray banana.

And their arguments were quite silly. There's apparently no way to tell who is a journalist and who isn't; also, its important to allow even bad journalism.  Imagine if someone had applied this line of thinking to cars.  How can we really know which cars are safe?  But we must allow even shitty cars!

But of course nobody making these arguments believes them for one second.  What real media outlet would be willing to hire Ezra Levant after all those lost libel cases?  Let alone the nine-tooth yobos that make up the "contributors" to his cult newsletter.

Theoretically, though, a news outlet is supposed to accept as a journalist anyone who shows up on the front step with a pencil and a notepad.

The fact is, we regulate pork, we regulate cheese, we regulate guns, we can certainly regulate words; we can eliminate whatever kind of talk we think demeans the public discourse in the same way we've eliminated spitting on the floor.  When journos tell you you shouldn't regulate them discount what they say and get to the root, in the same way you would if you were listening to a herring fisherman bitching about new regs on the herring fishery.  "As the herring fishery goes, so goes the nation!  If you destroy the herring fishery, then you will be the ones who suffer!!!"  And etc.

And the thing with the MSM and Ezra, they're not defending him because its a free speech thing. They defend him because accept him as being one of the family, the slow cousin in the basement that they can feel superior too and occasionally decide he's really got a dabble of wisdom in him in his own thuggish way, even if they've seen him eating live baby squirrels or running naked through the woods at night.

Or maybe its like they've been stuck with him so long they've all got a version of Stockholm's Syndrome.

And about this journosplaining nonsense.  Please, journalists, when arguing this issue don't whip out the few lines your remember from On Liberty, or Mencken, or that book by John Milton with the name that sounds like a piece of gym equipment, as though folks on the other side of the issue didn't read them in college 30 years ago and weren't impressed.  D'you know that Mill's arguments for absolute Freedom of Speech rely on the purest form of truth relativism?  We can't deny Ezra's droolers whatever because, who knows, we can't know they're wrong about the ROMA being sub-human.

Or do you (journalists) spout these lines like you're dropping little semantics turds that sound nice but which  you don't know the meaning of.  In either case, it is insulting.  Stop it.

Breakfast At Longos

This morning their store on 7 near Woodbine had a wonderful sample spread.  The highlight was surely their pulled pork floating on delicious smoked Oka cheese set atop Nachos.  Runner up was a yummy smooth avocado spread, also on Nachos.  And they were serving "popcorn chips", which I shied away from, having already given myself salt poisoning once this week.  (It's a long story, but you really can eat too much Italian sausage).  And for dessert they had Jelly donuts.  My only complaints are that their awesome prosciutto pizza had been pulled from the menu, they weren't giving out chunks of artisanal bread, and the cake was a little dry.

So a very solid 7 of 10.