Is there honestly a fucking point to this? Pretending you don't know what every specific pundit on television and the internet is already going to say about this is like pretending you don't know who the Washington Times is going to endorse.

It's the purple heart band-aids, 2006 edition. No one, save the crazy people Kerry specifically pointed out, actually thinks he hates the troops. They're still going to feign outrage anyway, just as they feigned outrage at Clinton's penis, feigned outrage at Chandra Levy, feigned outrage at Webb's novel, and so on. The Limbaughs and Malkins of this world, and all their little online wannabes, have a sociopathic desire to make politics a game in which the object is actually hurt people. Victory is an icing, but I don't think they're as proud of Bush being re-elected as they are about the idea that they made Kerry, or his supporters, or some left-wing blogger, suffer. These are unhealthy people and as such I don't take their words as sage, rational insight.

Forgive me for being so partisan, but as far as candidate "gaffes" I still tend to think the cover-up of attempted boy-fucking, spousal (and mistress) abuse, and having your staffers beat someone up is a bit more pressing than what a guy who's not even running for anything this election said.

The fact is that the military does not normally get our "best and brightest," but rather our patriotic types, our poor and kinda-poor types, our "my family's been in the military for 5 generations" types, and our "what the hell am I going to do with my future" types. In our military-worshiping American psyche we don't want to admit it, but the idea that most of our troops are some kind of enlightened philosopher-soldiers who chose service over a promising careers at Harvard is just stupid.

The hullabaloo over Pat Tillman and his unfortunate death is a case in point. He was a smart guy who had a chance to make tons of money in professional sports and he chose to become a soldier and thus was considered extraordinary. Were it normal for people with lots of options to choose military service, it would not have been.

Respect for the jobs these men and women are doing is one thing, but there is a tendency in America to go overboard with this respect. Anything said about our soldiers that is not couched in glowing "I support the troops and boy they sure are great and smart and awesome" terms comes into question because of this. It serves a useful function as an additional perk to induce people to join up (if you're a soldier you get respect), but it's all a charade.

After all, how can you really quantitatively describe an experience like driving a sportscar?

With numbers: 0-60mph times, 1/4 mile times, slalom times, skidpad metrics, etc.

But the more I explore sportscars, the more I realize that the numbers only tell part of the story. I mean, a modern minivan can beat a classic sportscar (say, Porsche 356 or Jaguar XKE *) in every single performance category, but it's just no fun to drive -- and it's not a sportscar.

Aesthetics count for more than some of us care to admit. (I'm looking at you, 5-years-ago self...)

* If you want a real sportscar magazine, check out Grassroots Motorsports. It's by no means as glamorous as Car & Driver or Automobile, or as colorfully written as TFA, but it does a better job at diving past the marketing and image into what really is important in driving a sporting car in a sporting manner -- alignment settings, tire pressures, the sort of boring stuff that can transform an understeering pig of a car into a joy to drive. FWIW, there's a back issue that includes the minivan vs. 356/XKE test; I couldn't find the article online.

TV shows by design must be non-hierarchical, so that one can drop in at any point and have it make sense


This is just plain ridiculous. You probably meant to say TV series. The medium of tv is not limited to fictional shows that serialize. PLENTY of programming is centered on documentaries, one subject explorations of nature, specials focused on an event or several events in history, musical performances, live coverage, news analysis, talk, etc, etc etc. Let's not confuse what the major networks broadcast every night during prime time with the medium of TV. You are not going to indict all of fine art because you don't like Damien Hurst cutting up cows.

Besides, TV doesn't only exist in America you know. There are plenty of shows that were on the BBC that didn't give a rat's ass if you were new and had no idea what was going on: Absolutely Fabulous, Fawlty Towers, The Office. These were smart shows none the less and just because American producers may try to dumb down what they are doing is again NOT AN INDICTMENT OF THE MEDIA. Anything made for generic mass consumption, regardless of the medium chosen, is going to tend toward stupid.

If you're going to dump on TV as a whole, you'd have to say that it was impossible to have quality in any of the popular arts - music, film - too.

No, I wouldn't--the difference is in the medium itself. Music and film are completely different media, and different strengths and weaknesses and expressive possibilities are inherent in each. One can go places in other media that are precluded by the nature of television. (Though subscription TV, like HBO, appears to be creating a new paradigm in that medium.) I'm not "dumping on TV"--I'm simply pointing out limitations inherent in the medium.
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This is just plain ridiculous. You probably meant to say TV series.

Nope, I meant TV itself--I'm surprised my point is being widely missed. I'll assume I'm being unclear and let Dr. Postman (whose book I linked to earlier) speak for me on this:

Of course, to say that television is entertaining is merely banal . . . what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. Our television set keeps us in constant communion with the world, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is unalterable. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue all together.

From Wikipedia:

Postman asserted that by its very nature, television confounds serious issues with entertainment, demeaning and undermining political discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only passive information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning.

Again, I highly recommend this book. I am an artist myself (musician), and Postman's writing (among others, but he was my starting point) brought a profound change in perspective for me, and taught me to consider the medium itself. (Marshall McLuhan is the grandfather of this branch of thought, if you want to go straight to the source, but Postman extended some of his work in very important ways.)

Much of the dramatic action in Studio 60, I think, comes from Sorkin's frustration that he isn't able to transcend the boundaries and limitations of his medium. And it's made the show uneven so far.

Loosefilter: Plato made the point a lot more presciently than Dan Doorstin, that actors on a stage dealt with emotions, and not arguments, and as such weren't as acceptable or worthy (I know that's not what your saying, I'm just pointing out that it's hardly a new idea.)

It's also hardly valid to claim that the only way to express a nuanced argument is through rational text. In fact, the medium of film (and television... more and more these days, television) eclipses what can be argued in all but the foremost of prose simply because of it's efficiency in giving us a thousand ideas at once. Of course, it takes a skillful craftsman (and, in fact, many many skillful craftsmen at once) to make it work to it's full potential, but the way to make it work best isn't to shit on the best craftsmen working and trying their best.

Rewatch, i dunno, The Shawshank Redemption. I like Stephen King's prose style, but even his work, if he'd written a thousand words on it, couldn't have matched what the pictures argued for the affirmation of life in those two hours. Postman is an academic trying to make a name for himself on a premise that he can't refute without perishing in his position. Ditto Boorstin. A different medium, and a different way of recieving ideas, doesn't make them weaker.

alas, though you may speak of leaving your country, I would guess you won't...just being a bit upset, no?

You never know. After the 2004 election I obtained dual citizenship in a EU country.

About the only group left that doesn't have a good reason to hate the Administration is Big Business. And they don't actually have many votes.

But they do have influence.

“To alleviate concerns that the new Congress may not adopt the proposals — regardless of which party holds power in the legislative branch next year — many are being tailored so that they could be adopted through rulemaking by the S.E.C. and enforcement policy changes at the Justice Department.”

. . .and the government stepping all over the 4th Amendment. . .

Did you hear the one about the 4-star General and former head of the NSA who did not know that the 4th Amendment contained the phrase “probable cause”? He actually argued with a reporter about it.

Wait, it gets better! He was promoted to Director of Central Intelligence. You can’t make this stuff up.

As for Cole, where was he in the days after September 7, 2004, when Cheney gave his "vote for W or the terrorists will nuke us" speech?

Correct me if I'm wrong - I had heard that one of the negative things about trusts is/was that they discourage re-investment in long-term infrastructure, research and general engineering improvement.

It depends. Not all trusts distribute all cash, and the cash they don't distribute is taxed at the normal corporate rate.

Some companies simply don't need to re-invest profits. Like the water heater trusts, or aeroplan, or yellow pages, etc, etc, etc. In fact, with many trusts, distributing cash is much better than hoarding it and wasting it on stupid acquisitions or projects that are tangetial to the business (hint hint, BCE). Trusting does not prevent companies from acqusitions for the right reasons, or growing the business. Distributions don't need to be increased if the money could be better used for other things, and trusts can always issue more units to fund anything they may need to do. Good managment can very effectively work within a trust structure to maintain and grow a business.

Ah. Well, then, BINGO!

Not that I subscribe to the theory that the conservatives did this to sell out Canadian businesses, but the trusts that are most vulnerable are natgas, oil sands and energy service trusts.

How else does a publicly traded company disperse profits but dividends?

They don't have to. Google doesn't issue dividends (AFAIK). They re-invest it or simply hold onto it, increasing the amount of assets that underly each share. Also, they can buy back shares on the market which increases the price of the remaining shares (I believe Imperial Oil spends a good chunk of its profits buying back shares for example).

Also, my knowledge is limited to small companies, but small businesses pay less tax on profits (something like 18%) and from a small business owner's perspective, paying yourself salary or issuing dividends works out to be almost equal, with dividends being only the tinyest bit better. So I've never understood the doube-taxation of dividends issue, but I'm not a corporate finance guy.

The big deal with income trusts is when the income flows into a tax-free entity, like a RRSP. The trust pays no tax on profits and all that money grows tax free (until it's withdrawn) in RRSPs. Also, trusts are one of the few high-interest vehicles around. No one wants to retire with their money in a 2% GIC. Trusts have been generating yields of 8% and up.

All this reminds me of Rae's heyday in Ontario... a party that has been in opposition so long that they've forgotten how to govern effectively and they piss everyone off everytime they turn around. Chretien may never have done anything, but that's how he stayed in power so long.

Nice knowing you, Jim.

F-15s don't have the range

Uh. Air refueling. And I'm sure, if they needed too, our nice little air strips in Iraq may do in a pinch.

AS far as Iranian air defenses? There have been, so far, no air defenses good enough to completely stop a determined air attack. The Israelis have some good counter-measure systems, remember. We sold it to them.

The better argument would be; Would an Israeli air attack actually achieve anything positive for them?

The answer is no. It's unlikey they even know what or where to bomb. So they will choose token or secondary strategic targets. Even if they knew where the Iranian sites were most are hardened and underground.

So they will bomb power plants and airstrips and generally fuck up Iranian infrastructure to heap some pain the the Iranian economy. The Iranians expect this.

Iran will hold back on retaliation. Iran will sit a yell "See! See! The Israelis are war mongers!" Iran will let all the terror cells sympathetic to them attack Israel from with-in.

If there are lots of civillian casualties in Iran, Israel is fucked. It's likely world opinion will end up supporting Iran. Iran will get aid and sanctions lifted. And before you know it they willl have all the rationalizations they need for developing a nuke. And fewer nations will be pissed at them for having one.