April 22, 2008
Hot Broccoli, Hide Yer Smokes, Peak Oil Again
Happy Earth Day! Take the strike-less TTC today in celebration.
Brazen thieves stole a truck containing about $11,000 worth of broccoli from a parking lot near the 427 on the weekend. Police are warning residents to keep their delicious vegetables under lock and key, and to keep an eye out for some healthy, but gassy, bandits.
The Province is moving forward with plans to force retailers to remove all cigarette displays and hide the offending smokes behind the counter. The move is expected to lend an extra frisson of excitement to the whole smoking experience, like going to a speakeasy or buying porn in the 50s.
World oil prices hit another record high of US$118 a barrel this morning, and your life just got a little more expensive.
Disco-era U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in the Middle East on some kind of peace mission, says that Hamas is willing to live alongside Israel in peace but not to recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. Well, that problem's solved then.
The Canadiens helped keep Canada's Stanley Cup dream alive last night by beating the Boston Bruins 5–0 in game 7 of their first round series. Downtown Montreal was warmed by the festive glow of of burning police cars as Habs fans celebrated with the traditional riot.
Photo by mischiru.
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I've never understood the whole "recognize the right to exist" thing. I mean, Canada doesn't have a right to exist either, if you think about it. All arbitrarily drawn nation-states are just someone's imperialistic abstraction.
What I'm saying is, they could be a little more diplomatic about the whole thing.
Aren't the Flames still playing in a Canadian city?
@ Green Sulfur:
yep, that's why I said "helped" instead of "became uniquely positioned to".
The way the divisions are aligned, it always insures that only one or two Canadian teams will survive the first round. Not to mention there are too many teams in the league.
In any case, I can only hope to get the scores here in Tokyo. With satellite TV, I now get 84 football (soccer) matches a day and zero hockey games.
Tuds
Skippy:
Far too many of the states that exist today have been drawn along artifically constructed borders irrespective of separate groups/tribes/nations. I interpret this to be one of the reasons why there are many ongoing separatist movements around the world.
A perfect example is the Kurds, whose traditional homeland straddles the Turkey-Iraq border. Why was the border drawn to divide the Kurdish people and why were they not given their own independent state? Arbitrary colonial borders.
Is Eye Weekly really running cigarette ads now? I hadn't picked one up in over a year, but a week ago there was one sitting on the subway seat next to me and I leafed through. 2 or 3 full page tobacco ads, towards the back. I was shocked and wondered if they were parodies or something, because I didn't recognize the brand names.
The comment that Canada doesn't have a right to exist is disingenous at best. Canada's sovereignty is not challenged and its international borders are recognized.
That the commenter thinks that the comment "Isreal has no right to exist" is benign is either a deliberate misreading or shocklingly stupid.
Can someone please explain to me how a riot comes out of a win? It's just something I've never been able to understand.
x: I read Skippy's comment as a reflection on the simultaneously specific and abstract concept of "right to exist," with its implication of moral certainty but lack of concrete requirement.
But I suppose that I could just be shockingly stupid and not cheering loudly enough for the right team.
You can cheer for any team you want.
Your attempts to characterize it as such notwithstanding, there was nothing in my characterization of the comment as shockingly stupid that was a defence of either "team".
Forgive me, but I don't think the debate, such as it is, is helped by deliberately misleading or obtuse facts.
What "deliberately misleading or obtuse facts" are you talking about?
I read Skippy's comment to be an interpretation of borders and how many supposed historical state lines were arbitrarily drawn by the colonial powers of the day. I didn't see it as an attack on Israel in particular, or Canadian sovereignty, or the current international recognition of borders. I saw it as questioning the history of borders worldwide.
I think I see how the Holy Wars started now...