Friday, July 31, 2015

Shut up, Jake, its election-time!

Everybody is talking about the Harper Cons fiscal advantage if he calls a mid-October election this weekend.

I have another question about such an early election call: what information will Canadians NOT be hearing about during the next eleven weeks?
Does Stats Canada still get to release or update unemployment rates during an election campaign? What about government economic forecasts and updates? Both would, I think, prove that Canada is in a recession. And what about other types of information -- in 2008, DND restricted interviews with the military during the election campaign.
Not forgetting, of course, the League of Extraordinary Canadians has already been silenced, along with federal scientists and any other reality-based federal employees.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Watching Gawker implode -- grab the popcorn

I have often enjoyed reading Gawker, particularly for goofy posts like this:


Not to mention how they single-handedly made Rob Ford's cocaine use into a major story in the United States, where it would otherwise have been ignored.
But what I don't like about Gawker is its juvenile and parochial tendency to start little wars with other New York media organizations -- Reddit, for example, and the New York Post, and now Conde Nast.
I haven't done any research on this because I don't want to affect my amateur status, but I would think these bizarre wars are a combination of 1) the Gawker organization hiring executives and/or reporters with grudges against former employers, and 2) inadequate editorial judgement which allows too many stupid stories to be posted by people with agendas instead of news judgement.
And now it has all come tumbling down. Last night I was shocked to read Gawker's mean-spirited and gratuitous "outing" of a Conde Nast chief financial officer -- I wasn't the only one, and Twitter death rays roasted Gawker all last night, resulting in Gawker removing the story earlier today, issuing a non-apology apology which was apparently misleading about how the removal decision was made, and now its own editorial staff is flipping out about the removal.
This isn't going to end well.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Things I didn't know

Did you know there is an "anti-vaccine" movement now for dogs? Today I Learned About The Anti-Vaccinating Dog Movement. How incredibly stupid can some people be?
And I didn't know that judges could be this stupid -- there are three children in Michigan who were "sentenced" in June to an indefinite stay in a juvenile detention facility because this idiotic woman decided they should have a relationship with their father. Yes, I know.
And I've been busy watching Wimbledon and Vasek Pospisil's incredible run there, in singles and doubles. I must admit, after the way Pospisil was treated in the quarterfinal -- Murray's disdain, the referee's interference -- I was more than a little glad that Murray did not make the Wimbledon final this year.