There’s a minor uproar in Waterloo over city council’s decision this week to sell a portion of the Iron Horse Trail. I have some concerns about the sale, but I also see some positives. In terms of the usefulness of the trail, this change offers some improvements: The minor route
Continue readingAuthor: Yappa
Yappa Ding Ding: A classless act of petty personal vindictiveness
“When Joe Clark’s portrait was unveiled in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Stephen Harper skipped the event, a classless act of petty personal vindictiveness.” – Jeffrey Simpson’s column in the Globe yesterday Simpson captured the truth very eloquently with “petty personal vindictiveness”. I tend to think of Harper as
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Troubling news from the Bank of Canada
The Bank of Canada, like all central banks, is supposed to be independent from the government. That, as the Globe & Mail put it this morning, is sacrosanct. When a governor resigns, the BoC’s board of directors is supposed to recommend a candidate to the finance minister. However, we learned
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Improving accessibility
Here’s a photo from the inside of the washroom in the COC Friend’s Lounge at the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts in Toronto: (Sorry for the fuzziness. The light was really low and I was using my phone.) The dampening arm at the top prevents the door from
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Improving accessibility
Here’s a photo from the inside of the washroom in the COC Friend’s Lounge at the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts in Toronto: (Sorry for the fuzziness. The light was really low and I was using my phone.) The dampening arm at the top prevents the door from
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Stealing a car to steal a truck
When I first moved to Africa my employer assigned me a luxury double-cab pickup truck. I quickly learned that that particular model was the number one choice of car jackers (a particularly nasty form of crime that was rampant in Tanzania at the time). So I gave back the pickup
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: A VERY good first week
I supported Justin Trudeau. I voted for him for leader. But I had no idea he would burst from the gate with such incredible vigor. He has far surpassed my expectations. He has outperformed the much more seasoned leaders of the government and official opposition. And he has shown an
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The right to bear pressure cookers
So the main import of the events this week in Boston is a demonstration that the US is not invulnerable to another terrorist attack. Of course it was never invulnerable, but a lot of people thought it was. A mythos had developed that US authorities have been able to keep
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: En garde!
Here’s a still from the first Harper attack ad against Justin Trudeau, which was released about 12 hours after Justin became Liberal leader. It’s a weird ad. I thought with all their money the Conservatives could come up with something more effective. They’re obviously trying to ridicule him, but… The
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Fingers crossed
I admit it: I’m a worrywart. At our last leadership convention in 2006 Conservatives played dirty tricks, circulating fake buttons and posters to try to discourage delegates from voting for Bob Rae. Has Harper dropped another little turd to surprise us with on Sunday? It’s probably fine; I haven’t heard
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Governments are longing for WikiLeaks… or should be
So the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists scored the largest leak in history, and they’ve got the names of thousands of people with off-shore bank accounts, many (or maybe all) of whom are tax evaders. They have more than names: they have emails detailing fraud; they have transactions; they have
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Tribute to Bob
I’m watching the leadership convention live at liberal.ca/live. It’s great – John Turner is giving a very funny speech at the moment – but the tribute to Bob Rae is bittersweet, given that he was denied the chance to run for leader… again. Last time, it was decided we needed
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The class system is alive and well and living at the GRT
(Conestoga College, WLU and UW fares are based on a 4-month term, and I converted that to monthly to compare them to monthly pass prices.)(Update: Perhaps the figure for high school students should be $47, which is the monthly equivalent of a 5-month pass.) There is something wrong with a
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Loliondo and the Shiek
The A marks Loliondo, a Maasai village in northern Tanzania. I have written about the Maasai before, on this blog in The Wheat Field, and in African publications in the 90s. In the fight between pastoralists and farmers, I support the farmers, if only because poor countries need food sources.
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: What I would do with a 3-D printer
Every time I see a piece of furniture or plant or piece of art or food that I like, I would take a 3-D photo of it and then reproduce it in miniature with my 3-D printer. Then I would build a little house and arrange my little stuff in
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Hail, Isolde
After Richard Wagner had been working on the Ring Cycle for about ten years, he took a break for two years to write Tristan und Isolde. With Tristan, he did something that seems unbeleivable: he took the plot of the last opera of his unfinished magnum opus (the libretto was
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Senator Assange
Julian Assange is running for Australian senator for the Wikileaks Party. Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK, but Australian law allows non-residents to run for office. Whether he can actually win in those circumstances is unknown. What interests me is the effect of a
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Too Many Goblins…
…Orcs, whatever. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. Otherwise, quite good.
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Remembering the massacre
On December 6, 1989, I was on holiday in Arizona, spending a week by myself driving around the Navajo and Hopi reservations. I kept the car radio on a local Navajo station and I didn’t understand much of it, but when I started to hear Montreal mentioned in newscasts I
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Leadership, leadership, leadership
I’m leaning towards Justin Trudeau for federal leader and Sandra Pupatello for Ontario provincial leader. But I don’t claim to be engaged enough to make an informed decision this time. I argued for Bob Rae when he lost to Dion and then lost to Ignatieff and then lost to party
Continue reading