Laurier LaPierre (1929 - 2012)

If you are Canadian and old enough, you should remember the 60's CBC programme This Hour Has Seven Days. Controversial, a combination of news, interviews and satire. It tilted an the stodgy Canadian windmills, refusing to back down from the difficult stories. You may not have agreed with all it had to say, but it was never dull.

Laurier LaPierre, along with Patrick Watson, hosted the programmme and brought to it a passion that hadn't been seen on CBC. He didn't just report, he tended to become involved in the stories. Perhaps he should have maintained more distance, been more objective, and he managed that on many occasions, but not all.

Unknown at the time, at least publicly, LaPierre was gay. In later life he came out and was actively involved in LGBT causes.

More at the CBC Laurier LaPierre, ex-senator and broadcaster, dies at 83

Pic of the day

Royal Marines from their calendar

2013 Go Commando Calendar

Playng on my iPod - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)

Pic of the day

Living with cats

From 9 Chickweed Lane

Idiots

This is for all those who believe that the killings in Connecticut are the result of excluding god from the schools. Do you want to know where your "logic" leads?

Let's assume that your god exists. By extrapolation he is all-knowing and all-powerful. And how does he use this knowledge and power? He acts like a vengeful dickhead; a showoff who, when he can't get his own way, arranges to make his point by having children killed. How very old testament. Can't understand why bad things happen? We must have offended god and he is justified in punishing us.

Fucking idiots.

Pic of the day

Thomas Eakins (1844 - 1916): The male figure

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going,
North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf
or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

---

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
We two boys together clinging

Eakins, of course, painted and photographed more than the male figure, but he captures its beauty, particularly in his boxer paintings. This applies equally to the final painting of his friend and student John Laurie Wallace, who in this pose isn't the same idealized figure as those in the wrestling or boxing paintings.

Why Canada needs Québec

"Some international perspective is all it takes to remind you that the only thing more boring to the world than the enduring mystery of Canadian identity is the eternal question of Quebec's future. But I am old enough to remember a time when Quebec separatists offered the closest thing Canada had to serious political violence. The very existence of the Front de libération du Québec served to satisfy the 'issue envy,' as Mordecai Richler called it, that ever afflicts peaceable, well-ordered Canadians when they view gritty world affairs. ..."

With the resurgence of the the PQ, although in a minority government situation, the idea of Québec separation is once again rising to the surface in Québec politics. The brouhaha about the removal of the Canadian flag from the Québec Legislative Assembly is merely a symptom, but how real is separation? Mark Kingwell has an opinion. Judge for yourself how valid it is or whether it's just ruminations from an ivory tower.

"Doppel Gang" at The Walrus

F-35 Jets. What does the "F" really stand for?

This has been a fiasco for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. The original cost for 65 jets was set in 2010 at $9 billion over 20 years. That's when it began to unravel.

The parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page estimated the costs would be $30 billion over a life cycle of 30 years because the original costs hadn't included appropriate "sustainment" costs and the lifespan was too short. But the government dismissed his report. Then the Auditor General also called the government on their estimates saying that they would be $25 billion over 25 years, but that life cycle was also too short.

The entire process was revisited by the newly-minted National Fighter Jet Procurement Secretariat who arrived at $44 billion over 42 years as more likely. The audit firm KPMG verified that - sort of. They added another 1 billion for lost aircraft over the life cycle. The cost, including "sustainment", now sits at $45.8 billion over 42 years - for the same number of planes. And that is by no means final.

But those are the Canadian implications. See the link below for the potential broader ones.

So what does the "F" stand for? Fiasco perhaps, but thanks to Stephen Harper and his sidekick Peter MacKay the song that Country Joe and the Fish performed at Woodstock comes to mind - "Give me an f!, Give me a u! . . .

Read Brian Stewart's analysis Super-costly F-35s, a global wrecking ball