Blane

hi again folks,

move is just about finalised, and I've rented myself a nice looking place in the Glebe, which should be pretty fun.

A few questions for anybody who has an opinion on the matter:

- Who offers the best deals on mobile phone packages? Have never had one in Canada before but am thinking I'll forego the land line and go straight into mobile land.

-That said, what's the deal with getting high speed internet if you don't have a TV (for cable connection) or phone (for DSL)? Can you get high speed DSL from somewhere like Teksavvy and not get phone connection with it?

- where should one go for quality used furniture in Ottawa?

Thanks for any advice!

Was in Estonia a few weeks ago and walked into a bar to find a KHL game playing on the big screen. So tragic that I had to content myself with that for a hockey fix. The level of play is WAY lower than NHL from what I could see BTW.

d'oh. missing out. I'm closing in on an apartment in the Glebe, so hoping I'll narrow down teh final list of rec centres once that deal is sealed.

yeah fuck him. Trade him for a bag of pucks.

Brutal. Finally moving back to Canada, just in time for first games of the season, and they shit the bed like this.

try Goodlife fitness for Women.

Why, you need a spotter?

Thanks for the Plant Bath suggestion. Looks pretty close to what I'm shooting for! Next step, to find some living accomodation that isn't a crack den or a 20 story high-rise.

fun!

Hey, any Ottawa folk able to recommend a gym that is pretty central and not full of meat heads and hyper competitive "gym freaks"? I like to do classes and stuff cause otherwise I'm super lazy, not into weight lifting or anything like that, and like a chilled out and friendly environment where weak skinny guys like me won't get mocked.

Anything you can think of that fits the bill?

Thanks!

how many channels (2-channel stereo? 4-channel multi-track?)

Tascam, Sony, Edirol, Marantz and Zoom all have gear in that approximate range (say 500-700 tops) that might match your needs.

Thanks folks, looking forward to seeing old friends again!

Incidentally, first of (probably) many questions...

Which websites are best for Ottawa housing listings? Kijiji? Craigslist? Anywhere else?

yeah man, depending on dates (got a quick trip to Geneva around then). Drop me a line and we can hit a pub or some music.

Hey gang, long time...

Well, it looks like change is in the air and I'm going to be making a pretty major move, and relocate from Brighton to Ottawa! Not 100% final yet, but have received and accepted a job offer there, so I think it's mostly just a question of logistics now.

Anyway, has been something like 13 years since I was an Ottawaan, so hope folks here can help with ideas. Where are the decent places to live, good places to funish the home, etc.

Lots of time yet (probably won't arrive until november) but just giving a heads up. Look forward to seeing a bunch of y'all around town!

Shucks. Thanks so much guys! It has been a challenging road juggling motherhood and health concerns and such but it has been an interesting ride that's for sure. I can honestly say that this board has been with me the whole way through. A welcome source of distraction, humour, company and grounding when it was very much needed. Happy to have this lifted off my shoulders so I can gear up for the next stage. Must say I can't WAIT to let 'er all hang at All Good. Hot damn...

What was your thesis, if you don't mind me asking?

TITLE: The socio-spatial construction and negotiation of knowledge, power and influence in the governance of environmental health risks from toxic chemicals in Canada

ABSTRACT:

Environmental health effects from chemicals are an example of risks associated with modern, industrialized, technologically advanced, capitalist society. In Canada approximately 23,000 substances have been in commercial use despite never being assessed for their risks to human health and the environment. The assessment, management and regulation of environmental health risks from “existing†chemical substances can be viewed as an emerging and contested domain of governance whereby an increasing number of diverse stakeholders are seeking to shape its constituent actors, rule systems, knowledge inputs, and orientation. Using a multi-method case-study of Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan, this thesis examines how governance and decision-making rationales, knowledge inputs, influence, and authority become constructed, negotiated and (de)legitimized in practice, and the role and significance of “space†in these processes. Sources of data include scientific, policy and legal documents, participant observation and key informant interviews. Findings reveal that stakeholders divergently interpret evidence and exploit scientific uncertainties using various tactics that (de)legitimize particular claims and policy prescriptions to favour their interests. This has significant implications for how “precaution†and “weight-of-evidence†are operationalized. The concepts of “scale-frames†and “boundary-work†reveal how stakeholders construct and spatially bound political and epistemic legitimacy and authority through contested definitions and rationales of accessibility, inclusion and exclusion. To gain the influence and legitimacy that is needed for effectively shaping environmental health policy stakeholders must (re)define the jurisdictional and epistemic spaces in which knowledge, evidence and rationales are created and institutionalized. Bringing contested modes of subject-making around expertise and technical capacity to the fore assists in explaining why particular forms of knowledge production and interpretations of evidence are adopted while others are downplayed. This in turn perpetuates particular kinds of risk assessment and management tools and approaches that benefit some and marginalize others. Scientific and political deliberations are situated within existing relationships of power and production between modern administative states, big industry and mega-science. Thus prevailing "governmentalities", logics and tools of chemical management are driven by, while mutually reinforcing broader neo-liberal political-economic ideals and interests.

Congratulations! Interesting looking piece. A lot of overlap with the stuff I do actually, though I look at it from an international development perspective.

So this show was a big pile of shit last night, btw.

The band came out on fire. The rest of the crowd clearly knew their material much better than me, and there were a couple of huge tunes early on. But things unraveled very quickly. The lead dude was all fucked up (and got progressively more fucked up), couldn't get his amp working, switched amps, then couldn't get his guitar working, switched guitars, lost his voice, told the other guys in the band to sing a few numbers, and called it a show.

Set was about 65 minutes, a good portion of which was spent fussing with gear.

Yep, major disappointment. I think the contributing factor was that it was his birthday, but man it was a sad sight to see. caught them two years ago in the UK and they were awesome.

CHECK OUT THE RACK on the blonde sitting behind the Phoenix bench tonight. You'll see her almost every time the camera is on Dave Tippett.

From last night:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/taylor-stevens-porn-star-talks-her-heaving-cleavage-163133543.html;_ylt=Ata3wIZyWpLp4leKYfEAJH17vLYF

hey man. will be there! met a guy who works with you at Patrick Watson/Barr Bros the other night. Big guy with a big beard. Forget the name.

I have even a better suggestion for you Blane. Move back to Montreal so I have somebody to go to shows with.

Expect to be there all of June and much of July so you're on!

and thanks for the suggestions folks! Will be back in Canada for much of the summer and look forward to catching up with a bunch of you!

Don't be a little bitch, man up and try and catch a little bit of each of them!

Haha. Dude there's like 7 venues going at once, spread out over like a 5km radius. I'd just end up running around in circles seeing nothing but lines of people out of venues!

It's kind of a shit format where the popular shows fill up really early, so if you roll over from something else you sometimes can't get in the door. Calls for much strategy!

Hey gang,

So, every year there's a city-wide festival here in Brighton with like 300 bands playing, most of which are pretty small independant groups. Wonder if you guys have any suggestions on who to catch (Alabama Shakes and Barr Brothers are playing and are already must-sees for me). THey might be mostly UK Bands, I'm not sure, but if you notice some good ones on here please let me know! The formatting for the band list makes it virtually impossible to make sense of it.

Can't make the lineup appear here, but this is it I think: http://www.thinglink.com/scene/241157405168107520

Thanks!

Dear Mrs. Claus is an original tune.

You can buy the mp3 on iTunes and maybe amazon?

My understanding is that it was a cover. Forget where I read that.

Just listening to the band's NPR performance from today (http://www.npr.org/2012/01/05/144678767/the-barr-brothers-on-world-cafe) and it's simply amazing how much Brad's vocals have improved (or been re-invented) for this band. I can remember Slip stuff being positively cringe-worthy at times, and now there are elements that are really beautiful (just listening to Old Mythologies here as an example).

Slip forum?

Spent the day at Occupy London today. Great vibe, great discussions, and pretty tension-free. Julien Assange (WikiLeaks dude) swept in to do this speech which was a bit surreal and probably not in keeping with the "people-led" nature of it all but otherwise it was 100% people-power. Very cool.

or at least they could take an approach that actually gets at the roots of crime (by listening to one of their own)

Tough on poverty, tough on crime

February 20, 2011

Senator Hugh Segal

Debates about whether approaches to crime and corrections in Canada are too soft or too tough are ongoing and endemic.

While the partisan debate continues unabated, the real issue is why prisons disproportionately house our most vulnerable citizens.

While all those Canadians who live beneath the poverty line are by no means associated with criminal activity, almost all those in Canada’s prisons come from beneath the poverty line. Less than 10 per cent of Canadians live beneath the poverty line but almost 100 per cent of our prison inmates come from that 10 per cent. There is no political ideology, on the right or left, that would make the case that people living in poverty belong in jail.

Statistics underscore the bleak link between poverty and incarceration. While aboriginals, many mired in poverty, represent 4 per cent of Canada’s population, they make up almost 20 per cent of those in federal prisons. A study by Toronto Star journalists unfortunately makes the point. Sandro Contenta and Jim Rankin, in an impressive 2008 feature for the Star, reviewed thousands of pages of data concerning crime and those caught up in the system. They noted that:

• More than 70 per cent of those who enter prisons have not completed high school.

• Seventy per cent of offenders entering prisons have unstable job histories.

• Four of every five arrive with serious substance-abuse problems.

• A Toronto study of 300 homeless adults found 73 per cent of men had been arrested and 49 per cent of them incarcerated at least once. Twelve per cent of women had served time.

In a modern, competitive and compassionate society like ours, these numbers are unacceptable. If Canadians want to wage an effective war on crime we must first reshape the debate. If crime abatement is the goal, it is time for all Canadians and their governments to become tough on poverty. By doing so, the outcomes we all want — safer communities and diminishing prison populations — will follow.

Not only would this approach — best achieved through the establishment of a needs-based, refundable income tax credit for all Canadians (a guaranteed annual income, or GAI) — prove more effective, it would also be cheaper. At a time of government restraint, prisoners are, in a word, expensive. With all costs factored in, Canadians spend more than $147,000 per prisoner in federal custody each year.

By contrast, it would take between $12,000 and $20,000 annually to bring a person in Canada above the poverty line. Even at the high end of the GAI scale, this represents savings to taxpayers of $127,000 per federal prisoner each year. Those are figures that should be of interest to any federal or provincial finance minister — of any party background.

The most famous call for a Canadian GAI was issued 40 years ago by Senator David Croll. It was 1971 when his Senate committee on poverty issued its report.

“Poverty is the great social issue of our time,†Croll wrote. “The poor do not choose poverty. It is at once their affliction and our national shame. No nation can achieve true greatness if it lacks the courage and determination to undertake the surgery necessary to remove the cancer of poverty from its body politic.â€

Both Conservative and Liberal federal governments have ignored this proposal ever since. In the years following, the expert calls for a GAI have only increased. The Macdonald Royal Commission challenged Canadians to take a “leap of faith†and embrace free trade with the United States in 1985. It also stated unequivocally that a universal income security program is “the essential building block†for social security programs in the 21st century.

What anyone who studies Canada’s prisons understands — be they from the right, left or centre of the political landscape — is that current approaches are not working. Whether or not one believes crime is decreasing, reducing the pipeline that feeds poverty is the best public policy. Police chiefs with whom I have spoken all agree that their areas of greatest challenge are not the better off parts of town. To be tough on crime means we must first be tough on the causes of poverty.

Hugh Segal is the Conservative senator for Kingston-Frontenac-Leeds.

Crime is still far too high in this country

I'd love to see them present any kind of hard evidence to this effect.

I have an upcoming work trip to Uganda and Malawi' date=' and am planning to tack on a 2-week vacation at the end of it. Destination: MADAGASCAR! This would be roughly Nov 4-18. Anyone wanna meet up?[/quote']

kevo who do you work for?

we changed our plans back to madagascar, but it's too bad we won't be there at the same time as you. i want details when you get back!!

Funny so much traffic heading that way! I'm thinking of hitting madagascar the week of Dec. 12th.

only through the first couple of tracks but this seems like a massive return to form for Wilco. So nice to hear them get out of the adult contemporary rut they were in.