More helpful government information

Fast on the heels of the recent Statistics Canada information moratorium that I mentioned in the last post comes an issue with the opposite problem from the US.

The US Department of State (Hilary's stomping ground) makes public information for American (though the information is accessible to anyone) about countries worldwide. They recently released an update on their profile of Sweden, a known-to-be-relatively-safe Scandinavian country. The best/least useful part of the recent release relates to the potential for encountering terrorist activities in Sweden. They state that

Sweden remains largely free of terrorist incidents. However, like other countries in the Schengen area, Sweden's open borders with its Western European neighbors allow the possibility of terrorist groups entering/exiting the country with anonymity. You should remain vigilant and exercise caution.

Thanks guys, that information is really useful. Why couldn't you have just said something like "As safe or safer than the rest of Western Europe." By suggesting, even if only obliquely, that Sweden may be at risk of a terrorist attack the State Department undermines not only the usefulness of this report, but all other instances in which they pass on information about terrorist threat levels.

Making such a statement is akin to including safe handling instructions with shipments of NaCl (salt), they just encourage people to discount all such warnings as baseless. Given that there are situations in which such warnings (whether they be about terrorism or the dangers posed by chemicals) are important it is important that they not be de-valued and made a mockery of.

A Few Quick Notes 240

-Yesterday and today have both been quite wet. Both days have been marked by periods of heavy precipitation. Fortunately, I seem to have managed to avoid some of these downpours on my way to school, which is nice as I am never a big fan of starting my day wet.

-A few days ago Neil, Rebecca, and I watched the documentary American Movie. The film follows Mark Borchardt as he attempts to complete Coven, an independently produced and financed short film. While there are many moments of humour, the film is in many ways strikingly sad. Not only does the viewer witness the mental and physical deterioration of the the protagonist's uncle, but the viewer also gets a rather close look

-It seems that the New York Times is reporting that in the near future the Christian Science Monitor will transition from a daily newspaper to an online newspaper with a regularly published magazine component. While this is not the largest of daily newspapers in the US, this change may be a sign of things to come in the very near future. One wonders how long other papers will be able to hold out in an era of declining circulation and increased competition from the online news media.

-My uncle was kind enough to forward me Gerard Damiano's obituary. For those of you who are not porn aficionados, Damiano was the director of the classic porn film Deep Throat. Surely fans of the film will be saddened by this news.

I am now curious to see if the Globe will carry his obituary, and if so how long it will take to appear.

-I managed to get through my lecture on Monday. While it likely wasn't the world's best lecture, I also don't think that it was the world's worst lecture. I am hoping that tomorrow's lecture on the American presidential system and elections will generate at least a modicum of excitement in the class. On Friday I will get the pleasure of talking to the class about writing and citing, with particular reference to the assignment that they have to do for me.

-For much of the evening I have been reading critiques of the work of George Grant, a Canadian political philosopher. Unfortunately, I haven't found these works particularly illuminating or accessible. I keep skimming my eyes over the page without getting much information. Hopefully I will eventually get some sense of what is going on by the time I decide to pack it in later tonight.

A Few Quick Notes 86

-The weather was overcast and damp today. Fortunately, it was not as rainy as it was yesterday. If the sun comes out later this week I am sure it will be beautiful.

-I had my final presentation of the year today. Surprisingly, it went much better than I had expected.

In the several practice runs I went through last night I was having a very hard time keeping things to the correct amount of time as well as even getting the content to come across in a way with which I felt comfortable.

Before class I went through my notes and decided to leave a few things out and re-order a few points. So I was basically going up there without any practice.

For some reason as soon as I stood in front of the class I felt comfortable and things started to make sense to me, I knew how I would proceed. While it was not the world’s best presentation it was much better than what I had expected would happen.

-It seems that gas prices jumped by about 10-12 cents last night in Montreal. The intricacies of gas pricing still baffle me.

-It seems that yesterday’s fudge was left in the fridge for to long and now has become stuck to the bottom of the pan. Maybe I could leave it out for some period of time to encourage it to soften up a little, something that might make it easier to remove from the pan without breaking all of the nicely cut pieces. Something else about the fudge that I have noted is that it isn’t the best fudge I have had. Maybe when I will get back to St. John’s I will look for a fudge recipe that my mother used to use.

-As Friday is Good Friday Thomson House will be closed for the day (as well as Easter Monday). This is unfortunate as I was scheduled to work my usual Friday night shift. Fortunately, a last minute event was planned for Thursday night and I was able to get one of the two shifts. This should give me enough tip money to be able to afford to go the GSLIS end of term party for a few drinks on Saturday night. On the other hand, if I really wanted to save money and still spend time with my classmates, I could take the available shift and work the event on Saturday night.

-For some reason in the past few days I have had three different types of sausages. This is somewhat unusual for me as typically I don’t eat sausages all that frequently. Hopefully I will head back to my low frequency consumption pattern in the near future.

-While poking around Neil’s web footprint I saw for the first time a method to allow the quick dissemination of mathematical. Basically the proof, or whatever the person is doing, is captured by taking simple digital photos of a blackboard with workings and then posted online. This process gets around having to deal with cumbersome typesetting programs and awkward file formats. People are easily able to see most photos posted to a website, in some cases even free photo sharing services could be used. If text recognition programs become particularly advanced maybe it would be possible to translate these photos into more traditional formats.

-Today while on an unsuccessful mission to look at an apartment, I was able to finally stop in and check out Segal’s, a Portuguese grocery store on St. Laurent. This place is pretty incredible. Aside from the amazing deals and strange food, they actually had a stack of salt cod in the back of the store. I was pretty tempted to buy an entire salt cod just because of my Newfoundland connection. I wonder if this is the cod that involved in that foreign over-fishing problem?

-For the past week or so the pull of the trashy, easy to read novels has been very strong. During this period of time I have read two less than stellar novels and had to fight off reading a third. There is so much good stuff that I want to read, why do I keep coming back to the crap that I don’t even really enjoy?

-I should go and make some humus so that I have something tasty to eat as I continue to work this evening.