She was a pretty good performer, of a form of music I normally do not much care for:
The songs are actually quite lovely and she performs them delightfully.
Her life history is not so far off Taylor Swift's. Wikipedia tells both stories so well - very talented young girls.
I doubt I would have paid to see her perform.
Of course neither would I pay to see Lady Gaga perform - but I know which one of them will get more YouTube visits from me. She is however suffer from a bad case of Michael Jacksonitis - I suspect as she grows up she can get over it.
Go for it Stefani! I bet you will find further interesting incarnations before you are through! I do enjoy both the ones you have tried so far.
Actually, I think I'd feel more comfortable with 12,500 miles! But it is at least refreshing to know there actually are academics who make good sense. (I KNOW there are.)
As an academic, I understood productivity differentials between locations more than most local-food activists. It seems to me that [they] simply don't understand that some places are just better than others at growing certain types of food, and that it makes more sense to trade these types of things because transportation is only a tiny fraction of the total energy requirements of various food items.
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... You end up destroying more jobs by buying uncompetitive local food than the number of jobs you create in the process.
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I think the best way to promote development in less advanced economies is to buy from them.
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I tend to believe that prices do tell you something not only about the cost of an item, but its input footprint: energy, fertilizers, everything.
This geographer sounds almost like an economist! What great sense.
Who am I cheering for? Not for the brothers! For all her caviling at Brian, I quite like Ericka (he cavils, too). And for all their apparent emptiness, Meghan and Cheyne have impressed me at times, especially Meghan, who has faced tasks she wanted to give up on, and then found a way to prevail. So let it all begin! As it will shortly.
Here we go!
I am thinking I miss Gary and Matt. Oh well.
Everyone heads to Las Vegas! I assume the apparently disparate parting times all mean the same flight, as usual. We shall see. Too bad they are leaving Austria.
Is it sunny at any time of year in Austria at 3 am?
Graceland Wedding Chapel? Can there be a task there with an Elvis? Useless stop - everyone is there at the same time, of course.
Oh oh rappelling down the hotel face - face first? Ericka is great - she takes it. Brian cannot even watch; it is pretty cute. I am pleased to see Sam and Dan not able to keep up.
Ericka is terrific! What an awful task and how well she takes it on! Meanwhile I think Cheyne should have given this job to the always more capable Meghan.
I do not quite understand this Cirque du Soleil task but it looks as if it may equalize teams fast, or just produce random results. That is NOT good at this point.
Well actually bouncing up to get the flowers seems pretty fair. This is now fun to watch. And as ever, Meghan, initially utterly frustrated, figures it out. Much as one might want to mock her, she is VERY consistently resourceful, and she has brains that combine with physical skills.
Sam and Dan continue their policy of not thinking for themselves, but simply sucking off others.
Rats! The next task seems like one of those that, depending on how the show sets it up, could be stupidly arbitrary, and reward neither intelligence nor diligence. Of course, we do not get to know. But counting out exact change surely depends on the distribution of key coinages.
It IS An amusing point that finding the right place to go was tricky.
Watching it for a few minutes, I have decided this is not ludicrously wrong in its effects. It is an entertaining and roughly fair challenge.
Sam and Dan made it clear they deserved NOTHING when they did not know Wayne Newton's name. Sick.
And justice was served! Meghan and Cheyne were clearly the just winners of this season! Meghan was REALLY capable in the face of a variety of challenges.
I do not take too many reality shows seriously, but this one asks people to extend themselves, and in pairs.
And they largely do.
Congratulations Meghan and Cheyne, and also Sam and Dan, and Brian and Ericka! Thanks for letting me intrude into your lives for the last few months.
Just because Greg said he liked it, I tried it out. I must say I love it. I am somewhat surprised, but always pleased to find something else I really enjoy.
"You amd me could write a bad romance...caught in a bad romance."
Toronto City Council is a Joke - Economics Exercise
The latest brilliant policy is likely to have some unintended consequences, if any consequences.
Developers building condos on Toronto transit lines will now have to buy every unit a TTC metropass for a year in order to obtain condominium approval from the city, a policy critics say comes at a high cost and without proof people will use it.
Now the policy seems to me a bit silly, maybe harmful, but what makes this a joke is the commentary from councillors, exhibiting a rather dimwitted view of the universe.
Councillor Howard Moscoe, however, believes it “will cause people on transit lines to abandon their cars.”
Almost surely not - see below.
The policy states the cost of the metropasses cannot be passed on to the condo buyer.
I especially love that - how can anyone tell?
More from our genius Moscoe:
“Besides, it doesn’t cost the builder of the condo anything up front. He can buy the transit pass in bulk from the TTC at a 12% discount, and get a 16% writeoff on his income tax from the federal government for transit passes. So it’s a win win for everybody,” he said.
No comment. This beggars belief.
Mr. Moscoe said the idea is not really to generate revenue, since presumably some people in the building would have bought passes on their own, but to get people thinking about public transit.
My jaw is now on the floor. "since ... SOME"?
“I think we’re going to get awards for this all over North America,” he said.
I suspect Moscoe is right here and it is symptomatic of what is wrong with this city; instead of controlling budgets and providing services effectively, Miller and crew have whored themselves out left and right for awards using largely symbolic gestures.
Now of course this whole thing is a symbolic gesture, as the passes are transferable.
“This is found money for the TTC,” he said of the plan. Or a treat for a condo dweller who can simply resell the pass.
So it is probably not even found money for the TTC - we just need someone to set up a decent secondary market (an excellent web application) in Metropasses.
What strikes me is that one approach to forcing people onto transit is not giving them parking spaces. But as it turns out:
Mr. Dupuis noted zoning bylaws stipulate 1.2 spaces per unit, which creates extraordinary expense for some of the larger buildings that have to dig several floors underground.
Oh well, nevermind.
I do note that all the dumb quotations above issue from one person, so why is the whole council a joke?
He pushed the initiative forward, which passed council without debate.
The Polytechnic Murders - A Welcome Change of Focus
I am so accustomed to hearing the Polytechnic murders tied to arguments for gun control, when they are a classic example against gun control, that it was astonishing to find Helene Guergis' column this morning in the National Post, with the focus where it belongs, on extreme misogyny, and cultural practices that encourage it.
While Canada thankfully has not experienced an incident of the type and magnitude of the Montreal Massacre since 1989, we are becoming more aware of a variety of forms of violence against women that are less public but similarly horrifying.
These forms of violence against women include cultural practices, such as so-called honour killings, genital mutilation and forced marriage. Another danger to women is human trafficking — literally, modern-day slavery.
Canada’s aboriginal women in particular are vulnerable to abuse and are three times more likely than other women to experience violence, and five times more likely to die as a result.
The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.
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We can start referring to “forced marriages” as kidnap and rape, and by refusing to use the term “honour killings” as though it actually has something to do with honour, rather than being the most heinous form of dishonourable murder. In order to end violence against women, we need to face it, and to name it for what it is.
UPDATE: Whatever my implications above, I would have to agree that the gun control laws of 1989 that made it easy for Lepine to get his gun were too lax. I thank today's Sunday Edition for this note.
Others have said this, but should we not be proud that our Prime Minister is rebuked by the Chinese government, and their crony press?
I found myself particularly shocked by Ignatieff's suggestion that Harper should feel bad about loss of face; watching Harper, I almost think he felt proud and he was right to toss the accusation back at the accusing thugs. Ignatieff managed to avoid mentioning human rights; does he really think he can count on that Harvard job when he fizzles out here?
He probably can; they likely mean something else by the phrase.
This column describes beautifully why so much of what I read and hear about climate change seems so empty and unhelpful. Read it all. The finish:
The central battlegrounds on which we need to fight out the policy implications of climate change concern matters of risk management, of valuation, and political ideology. We must move the locus of public argumentation here not because the science has somehow been "done" or "is settled"; science will never be either of these things, although it can offer powerful forms of knowledge not available in other ways. It is a false hope to expect science to dispel the fog of uncertainty so that it finally becomes clear exactly what the future holds and what role humans have in causing it. This is one reason why British columnist George Monbiot wrote about climategate, "I have seldom felt so alone." By staking his position on "the science," he feels alone and betrayed when some aspect of the science is undermined.
If climategate leads to greater openness and transparency in climate science, and makes it less partisan, it will have done a good thing. It will enable science to function in the effective way it must do in public policy deliberations: Not as the place where we import all of our legitimate disagreements, but one powerful way of offering insight about how the world works and the potential consequences of different policy choices. The important arguments about political beliefs and ethical values can then take place in open and free democracies, in those public spaces we have created for political argumentation.
A very key phrase here is:
not because the science has somehow been "done" or "is settled"; science will never be either of these things
This is language that has always offended me, as it runs counter to what science should mean.
h/t Roger Pielke Jr.
And thanks for all the joy you contributed to my life.
I've posted this before, but really like it, not just for the song, but for his characterization of it in his patter:
The odds a Top 100 country song will refer to alcohol are 1 in 5. The odds one of these songs will contain a reference to “mama” are 1 in 7.14. The odds one will contain a reference to the word “train” are 1 in 11.11 and the odds one will contain a reference to the word “prison” are 1 in 33.33. Least surprising, the odds one of the songs will contain a reference to tears or crying are 1 in 3.23.
It's a guess of mine, but I suspect that the tears that are the most frequent feature of the top 100 country songs are those of men (despite what official feminists have spouted from the inception of the 'movement').
In honr of the final appearance of this vital stufy I offer you its apotheosis.
Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.
But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it.
Drunk-Blogging the Great Windbag's Afghanistan Speech
I'm outsourcing the task to Stephen Green, and I think this is how I will participate in all future such speeches, as I can barely watch the guy. A couple of great excerpts:
Bad writing. Lame delivery. Tepid response — from cadets ORDERED to be nice.
And a strategic vision equal parts High School Essay Content and low-rent public relations.
I hope you had as much to drink as I did.
and
5:14PM “I’ve seen first hand the terrible wages of war.” It was at a late night photo op here in the US, where nine of ten military families said “no thanks” to the photo op. But still… Bambi is young. And being President is HARD.
I watched a good bit of the hearings last week (on-line!) and realized only as the week went on that there were many more things being discussed than a simple surtax on cable and satellite providers, as had been suggested by the initial rent-seeking activity of both sides of the debate, the annoying and moronic ads running by both sides.
Michael Geist has a fine summary of all of the points in The Star.
Fee for carriage is only part of the story, as broadcasters are also seeking to: block U.S. signals; leave some Canadian communities without over-the-air television; and delay the transition to digital television transmission until 2013.
He discusses the requests in somedetail.
My own summary - the request is to reduce the level of current service to customers of the broadcast company, and regulate thee price upwards. This is at least better than what the Obamacare proposals seem to be - reduce choice and many aspects of quality in health insurance offerings, and then force everyone (except illegal aliens) to buy a policy. At least I can cancel my cable subscriptions.
Well, the hearings are not over yet.
Another Recommendation From Norm.
He's right - the transition at roughly two minutes is wonderful.
And I always love the site of that beautiful state capitol building (perhaps a fake but still pretty) on Austin City Limits.
Well they sure got puckish (a feature I associate with my visits to the Czech Republic) with the telephone task. Assemble the five letters in the name Franz and guess that they should fill that name in some annoying form, among other items.
I give Meghan credit - she got it in two tries. She and Cheyne also have the full physical courage needed in this show.
Still that telephone thing seemed slightly unfair to people who would never know Prague's connection to Kafka. I love the Globetrotters but I think Sam and Dan were quite justified with their limited hint. Once you are told 'starts with F' it seems to me you have Farnz and Franz to try, though who knows in Czech.
More puckishness - the Golom task! Meghan was outstanding on that one.
Meghan and Cheyne reach the pit stop first and he rightly summarizes their virtues as being both physically strong and mentally strong, displayed clearly in this episode.
I had assumed the episode would just lead to the inevitable elimination of Brian and Ericka but the Globetrotters got themselves totally stuck on a simple puzzle (as had happened at least once before).
Farewell, Flight Time and Big Easy; I will miss you both.
I am astonished that Switzerland has managed to ban minarets and I think Oliver Kamm's comments are dead right.
I guess I should try to find out how 'minaret' is defined in the proposed law but I am assuming this is not simply a ban, which I could understand, on tall towers, hey maybe like steeples.
I do know this - one of my favorite new neighborhood architectural features is a lovely mosque building, which, according to my vague understanding, appears to me as well to feature a minaret.
I might be less thrilled if there were one on my block and prayers were called at nasty times of day, but that seems to me better handled by a noise control law.
Well, I am but that is not the point. This is.
"Watch the ads and it's almost like paying."
I am sorry, as they point out in the song, I fear you have to click through to the site.
h/t Norm
I would NEVER have bet on him at any odds, and I am a bit surprised that he dispatched del Potro in such a dominant way.
A large part of this is that I had not watched any Davydenko match in 2009.
I suspect that changes in 2010!
