Why cops don't belong in schools

My only question about this incident is why it took so long to happen.

Teens question authority. It is what they do, it is practically hardwired into the DNA. Putting an authority figure in their way for no good reason is just asking for trouble. If that authority figure is a coach or a teacher or a vice principal, even one with a chip on their shoulder, they are at least used to dealing with kids. A police officer may not be as experienced in dealing with kids. And one that decides to arrest a teenager for making "bacon" jokes or being a smart ass, is not someone who should be working in a school.

Who is the cop supposed to be protecting the students from? And who is protecting the students from the cops?

More cover-ups for the higher-ups

My guess would be that, as in most government scandals, the big problem here is not going to be the initial misconduct by some underling, but the subsequent bullshittery by the government in trying to hush the whole thing up.

Obviously, at some stage someone in the chain of command figured out a mistake had been made in handing over prisoners to the Afghans, and obviously they reported it to someone higher up who was eventually told it was not a problem, when it very much was a problem. The question is: Who was the amoral idiot who decided it wasn't a problem to hand prisoners over to be tortured, and how high up in the government ranks are they? Given the steps being taken to squelch this investigation, I think we can assume it was someone fairly senior, possibly Cabinet level.

The government is doing its best to delay things until they can appoint a new commissioner to the Military Police Complaints Tribunal when the current chairman, Peter Tinsley, reaches the end of his term in December. And they will probably manage to succeed and appoint some useful idiot to shut down the inquiry once and for all.

Which will probably lead the whistleblowers to take the case to the public in bigger and better ways. Eventually, even if it has to wait for a change of government, the truth will out, but it isn't going to set anybody free in this case, except in the sense that they will be free from being tied down to a government job anymore.

Our own little Nixon

Lots of fuss in the blogosphere about Steverino's big singing debut. Pale makes some nice points with a pop-up version of the video here.
Last year, big gala's were "elitist" and Steverino was hot and heavy to chop all the arts funding he could get away with. Now, he's appearing on stage with Yo Yo Ma at the National Arts Centre Gala? Well, his wife is the honorary chair of the event, so I suppose it makes some sense, but just to be clear about his feelings for the arts, Steve left the building before the event was over and went tieless to the blacktie event. When was the last time you saw him without a yoke of the corporate oppressor necktie?

Oh yeah, now I remember...



And how did that work out for ya Steverino?

This whole thing is just another sweater vest moment and it won’t work any better than it worked for Nixon. The people who like Harper are the same people who liked or would have liked Nixon and they like him for the same reasons – because he’s mediocre, just like them. They hate anyone smarter, better educated, better looking or more talented than they are and so they loved Nixon because, just like them, he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin and lacked any social graces at all. (See Rick Perlstein's Nixonland for myriad examples of Nixon being Nixon - Steverino is Nixon writ small)
They don’t like anyone different from themselves and they don’t like new ideas or change.
Read any posting on any Blogging Tories blog - its all about the resenting anyone different, anyone that they think is getting something that they aren't getting. And that, and fear of The Other, is what conservatives have been running on for the last 50 years.

That’s why they like guys like Steve. But you have to ask why they feel they need to sell this idea that he’s human. Why are they trying so hard to convince us that he’s a regular guy?
If he was a great piano player or singer, his advisers never would have let him do this--he'd look like an elitist, a star. Since he's merely adequate, he looks like a "regular guy" instead of the awkward, narcassistic, power-hungry, control freak that he is.


When I saw Harper at the piano keyboard, I immediately thought of Nixon, but Red Tory beat me to posting the video



Plus ca change, plus ca meme frickin' chose

Dept of "I'm not saying he is, I'm just saying" --Could it be that Harper is actually an android fuelled by the succulent flesh of tiny babies? Why doesn’t Stephen Harper, if that is his real name, level with Canadians and deny his baby-eating and the accusations that he’s really an android?

Sunday songs and cinema

As always join us on Radio Woodshed for some groovin' on your Sunday afternoon followed by our weekly movie. If you are among those clever enough to find us in Second Life, you can join us on the Red Zeppelin for both!

This week the Glorious People's Cinema Project wraps up the Dustin Hoffmann retrospective with "Midnight Cowboy"

the original:

and the cover

the return of The Rules

so that's how they reproduce

I always thought it involved pods and mitosis, but maybe not.

weekend uke blogging- extra long jamming edition

Once upon a time I worked as a coop student at IBM in Don Mills, but since apartments were very expensive in Toronto, I lived on the couch of some friends of mine. One was a serious musician studying double bass at the University of Toronto and lugging his huge stand up bass back and forth on the subway. Another was studying geography at Ryerson, was an awesome bluegrass guitar picker and did 200 pushup every night, no matter how may beers he'd had. The third was not ending classes by this point but was spending his time chain-smoking, teaching himself the banjo, drinking vast amounts of neo-citran and reading and then burning Stephen King novels as a way of training himself to become a writer. I paid rent by buying dinner once a week. Much to the considerable annoyance of the people downstairs, we painted slogans on the wall in the hallway, often used the floor for an ashtray, had a temporarily homeless sound engineer friend sleeping under the kitchen table a couple of nights a week, and listened to a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Charlie Mingus and especially Neil Young. We also played a lot of bluesgrass together, drank a lot of beer (and neo-citran until the corner store wouldn't sell it to us anymore) together and wailed a lot of loud Neil Young jams together.

Ah, those were the days.

First, the original:

And then, the cover - dig the awesome uke solos and as a bonus the singer looks and sounds like a skinnier me

extra non-uke bonus jamming from the jammies (Grace Potter and Joe Satriani - hoo-ah!)

A different kind of private lesson

When I worked for NOVA, it was pretty clear that the way the company made money was by lending students the money to buy lesson packages from the school at usurious rates of interest. There were always rumors that the company president, when he and his brother parted company over their first language-teaching firm, had gone to the Yakuza for the money to start up what became NOVA. I'm guessing that might have been more than just a rumor and that maybe the teachers and students weren't the only ones who got stung.

2 gangsters held over holding of ex-Nova boss

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Two members of the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate were arrested on the spot Monday on suspicion of confining the former president of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. inside a Tokyo hotel, police said.

According to senior police officials, the two men confined Nozomu Sahashi, 58, who has been sentenced to 3-1/2 years' imprisonment for professional embezzlement, inside a room of a hotel in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, from about 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday.

On the same day at about 3 p.m., investigators rescued Sahashi and arrested the two men. Sahashi, who is currently appealing the ruling, did not suffer any injury.

(Sep. 30, 2009)

If the mobsters had only had the presence of mind to sell tickets to former teachers for their little chat with Mr. Sahashi, they could have gotten back all their money in one fell swoop by selling out Toyko Dome at 500 yen a seat. (I'm sure there are still a few veterans who remember being paid, in cash, the first and only bonus NOVA ever paid its teachers - a nice, shiny 500 yen coin to mark the new millenium - I think I bought a beer and pack of cigarettes with mine)