The Contrarians

A CBC radio show after my own heart... It happens to be on every time I drive to or from Montréal.

The Contrarians, with host Jesse Brown, examines unpopular ideas and political heterodoxy that just might make a bit of sense. A very good anti-dote to the venereal political correctness that hounds the public airwaves...

Farthest Northern Patrol in a Generation?

A very interesting article on the farthest northern patrol in a generation. A platoon from the 2nd, Royal 22e Régiment will be providing the major army contribution to the patrol. Gee, wouldn't that be fun... ;)

The Canadian Dream

A small house near a lake, a dock with some playtoys, a couple of fridges for the beer; these are the objects of the Canadian dream.

At Bobs Lake this summer, I was reflecting on how much people spend and invest to have a place to relax for weekends in the summer. In different parts of Canada, the dream manifests itself in different ways. In northern New Brunswick, people buy mobile homes and congregate in mobile home parks for the summer. They go to the mobile home park to get away from nature! (Because their normal homes are in the middle of nature).

In Ontario, the middle class have staked out a huge part of the rural landscape in the form of cottages that dot map. The dream is a cottage by the lake. A big deck, a nice dock. But what do you do once you have it? You maintain it? You expand it?

Is the cottage dream a return to nature? Or a wholesale colonialisation of nature by implanting pieces of cities at 40 metre intervals along shorelines? Certainly, the jet-skiiers are no friends of the loons.

What if you build the perfect place, nobody comes, and you can't sit still?

I don't speak for all Canadians (yeah, in case you were wondering). But I can observe the behaviour of the Canadians on Bobs Lake. The dream is sit by the lake with family, surrounded by scenes of nature and ensconced in comfort bordering on luxury. I just hope there are enough lakes for everyone.

I Killed Cable

A lot of sleeps have gone by since I last shared my musings with the enraptured blogosphere. I know that you, dear reader, have been anxiously keeping this page in the background and clicking refresh for the last two weeks. Well, your patience has paid off.

I took a bold decision in the month of June, and killed my cable. Here's how I made the call. I took monthly cost of the cable, annualized it and multiplied it by the number of years that I deserve to live (which is an infinite number). Using this calculation, I determined that I would be paying millions into infinite.

To most trashematicians, the calculation would end there. Not here. I then calculated the number of hours I would likely watch television over the course of this hypothetically immortal life, using as a baseline what STATSCAN says I should be watching (19.8 hours per week, Quebec anglophones over 18) and likewise came up with an infinite number of hours.

I then added up all of the social and intellectual benefit of watching Simpson reruns for the 11th time, test driving new TV series, and watching Peter Mansbridge's shiny forehead. The calculation went something like this: B = 0 + 0 + 0.

So I killed the cable, saved myself $15 per month, and 19.8 hours per week. Let's say that my time is worth $10 to be slightly conservative and use my hourly wage as a lifeguard for the City of Waterloo back as a full-time undergrad.

I calculate that I'm saving approximately $800 of my social productivity per month.

It's not about the numbers. Its about unplugging, and living life more consciously and less robotically.

It's not that I have anything against cable television. If I was the last man on earth, and there was nothing on my island but Rogers cable television, I would probably marry it. It's just that it doesn't have anything to offer me right now, considering that the desert island scenario is surely quite a few years away.