Lookalike

Sharp eyed corgis will have noticed the uncanny resemblance between the pot-banging, mentally challenged character Ruprecht, played by a con artist who is in turn played by Steve Martin in the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and the pot-banging leader of the Parti Quebecois, Pauline Marois.

We Get Spam

To: corgis .at. Doggerelparty.ca
From: Richard Warman
Subject: Urgent Confidential Business Proposition

Sir,

Am Richard Warman, Barrister at law and currently representing estate of recently deceased Mr. Section Thirteen former dictator of Ottawa, Canada.

I am trusting you with this most confidential matter of utmost urgency knowing you are of good character Bd morals and will benefit magnificently from proposal I am put to you.

During his lifetime I was Mr. Thirteen's closest friend and advocate and he rewarded me handsomely for this. Between us we accumulate large sums of money and vast holdings of hurt feelings. Am also in possession of quantities of offence and large tract of political correctness.

Now Mr. Thirteen has passed away, peace and glory be upon him, and I need your help to transfer the funds and grievances to a more friendly country. As you may know Canada is country in state of civil war with mobs ruling large parts of cities and racial massacres occurring every evening at half past five. Am urgently in need therefore of your help to transfer Mr. Thirteen's great and noble portfolio of human rights to a better and freer country.

If you are willing to help me move Mr. Thirteen's forty year of accumulation to a friendly regime such as Syria or Zimbabwe I look forward to your confidential response.

Am sincerely yours trusting in spirit of atheism and also Allah you will assist me in most worthwhile scheme.

Richard Warman
Barrister and Attorney, Ottawa Canada

Ontario's Liberals and The Catholic Schools

"As Both A Catholic and An Ontario Liberal" begins a post by former David Dingwall entitlement Warren Kinsella today. When I expressed the view (perhaps overstating, but then, what's Twitter for?) that this was oxymoronic, Kinsella simply called me a "moron". So, given that Liberals don't like to debate any issues around religion and would rather simply call religious folks "morons" while at the same time somehow claiming to also be religious, I thought I'd unpack some thoughts in a brief post.

I don't like what the McGuinty folks have done with the mandating of the "Gay-Straight Alliance" title in Catholic schools. Not because I'm opposed to these clubs however, or even this name. In fact, I personally think anyone who believes what you call such a club will have any effect at all on homophobic bullying in schools has totally forgotten what it's like to be 14. Kids don't care about this nonsense at all.  Kids who are going to bully will still bully. Kids who don't like the kids who go to a GSA won't like them any more or less because it's called a GSA. There's the story of the British troops in the Falklands who called the locals "Bennies" because their woolen hats made them look like a character in a television soap opera of the day. When their COs insisted this disrespect should stop, the troops switched to calling them "stills" - because they're still Bennies. Parents can do far far more to stop bullying than anyone else. Government is at the very bottom of the influence list.

Homophobia is on the wane at all levels in our society, as it should be - and indeed as the Catechism also says it should be. These kinds of social changes happen not because of politicians' efforts, no matter how well meaning. They just happen over time and they will continue to happen over time. Solving issues of bullying in schools comes down in the end to wise and decent parents, teachers and principals. What McGuinty is doing is simply shameless window dressing and more "look at me, I'm so compassionate" Premier Dad stuff - and the debate it's launched distracts nicely from not having done anything on the deficit yet. 

The real issue is that this is a very thin end of a wedge - a major assault on religious freedom that is coming to North America. Led by Obama in the US and the Liberal parties of Canada, this is going to get much, much worse. McGuinty is floating a trial balloon here on an emotive issue, one where he knows the majority will take his side. It's his first slice of salami. The question is, what's next?

And of course, Catholic schools are uniquely vulnerable because they straddle the state and the church, taking taxpayer funds. If taking government money, goes the argument, you have to abide by government policy - even if that directly contradicts your religious beliefs, as it does in this case. And this is a valid argument. Sometimes governments are respecters of freedom. The Liberal party, and people like Kinsella, are long documented enemies of freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, however, and so taking their taxpayer dime from them puts one on the road to serfdom. 

When John Tory lit the fuse on his famous exploding faith schools plan, I always felt that it was a bad idea precisely because most faith schools don't want the shackles of state control. A far more optimal solution, for all concerned, in my view, was the partial tax credit for private education that was in place before the nanny statists took over in Ontario. Let parents choose, and if they choose privately funded schools - on faith or any other grounds - then provide some financial recognition that they are not using the services for which they are paying taxes. It's not total funding of private or faith schools by any means, but it provides what is in my view the best balance between the interests of the majority in a state education system and the rights and freedoms of religious groups to educate their children in their respective traditions. The level of such a tax credit can be debated to achieve the right balance.

But to get to any kind of fair resolution on this stuff, you'd have to be dealing with people willing to debate and not dictate - and in Queens Park, and on Twitter, it seems we only have dictators for the time being.

"Failed" Charge of the Light Brigade a Myth

Sir,

With the benefit of one hundred fifty eight years of hindsight, is it not time to take an honest look at the glorious leadership of Lord CaRaedigan, as he led his troops into the Battle of Balaclava? Despite what was so obviously a great military victory on this occasion, history persists in the falsehood that the Charge of the Light Brigade was in some way a "failure". Much of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the ignorant and illiterate Alfred Lord Tennyson and other so called professional writers, all of whom must have been under the influence of laudanum to have so grievously mischaracterised the great events of CaRaedigan's leadership.

As my great-great-great grandfather was a close advisor to and confidant of the great leader, I can personally attest that in fact the Charge was a great success, and has served as inspiration to me in my own humble career in public service.

Sincerely,

Tim Armstrong

The Liberal Approach to Scandal

Kinsella has an interesting defence of the Ornge debacle. In essence it says "we told the opposition that we had put Liberal cronies in a position to abuse the public trust and bilk the taxpayer, so that makes it all right."

You know, come to think of it, he does have a point. If you put a McGuinty Liberal crony in a position to bilk the taxpayer, then we really should assume that they will.

A Fascist Goes To Federal Court

So Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act went on trial this week, and a fascist who advocates that Christians should be forced to wear identifying emblems like Jews in 1930s Germany, and that people who disagree with him, Richard Warman and Warren Kinsella should be muzzled by the state was there to blog about it.

On the positive side, Section 13's days appear numbered anyway so all the jackboots the CHRC can muster probably won't save it now.

The Gospel According To Saint Phil

Now when Al Gore was high priest in the reign of Harper the King, there went out a decree that all the world should be carbon taxed. And all went to be taxed, even unto the place named Durban, which being translated means "the gathering place of the anti-Semites." This was done so that it might be fulfilled which was written by the profiteer Suzuki, saying "Behold, the end of the world is nigh, give me your money." For the world liveth in fear and trembling of the gases of the greenhouse. The profiteers Gore and Suzuki predicteth famine, flood and plague, saying "Behold ye, consumers of fossil fuels and durable goods from China, thy greed shall warm the earth and scorch thy feet, and there shall be extreme weather events, earthquakes, hurricanes, warmer winters, colder winters, rain and drought Or at any rate it will liken unto something pretty bad which thou dost not wish to see, so give us your money." 

And Elizabeth also went up unto Durban, out of Saanich-Gulf Islands, which being translated means "the place of the pot-smoking gullible hippies." For she was an acolyte of the profiteer Gore and worshippeth at his every word and motion picture. And behold, when Elizabeth arriveth at the place she was sorely vexed, for there was no room for her at the negotiating table. And Elizabeth waxeth wrathful, saying "Behold, my country of Canada is awful, and my people Canadians are stupid, as I saith in election 2008."

And when the multitudes were gathered together at Durban behold the angel of Freedom of Information appeared unto them and they were sore afraid. But the angel said unto them "Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be to all of you that are of sound mind and hath not been smoking weed. Unto you a zip file is given, unto you an email archive is born."

And the multitudes wondereth at the angel's saying and they cast among themselves for what manner of password might allow access to the encrypted portion of the zip file archive. But the high priests and scribes of the people were angered at the angel's saying, exclaiming "Behold, or rather behold not, for lo, there is nothing to see here, move along." And Elizabeth waxeth even more wrathful, for she worshippeth the false gods of the high priest Al Gore and their downfall woundeth her pride mightily. 

And behold when the gathering at Durban heard the words of the zip archive, despite there being nothing in it at all, they began to argue and dispute among themselves, saying "Thou reduce thine emissions and thou payest." and "No, thou payest first." And some even saith "Behold, this Gore climate change thing beith an crock of dung." And so they departed from Durban by their own routes. And Elizabeth appeared to herself in a dream, being the only place where she maketh sense to anyone any more.

And the truth became known and was released among us, and we beheld it's glory.

12 Corgis of Christmas

Brave New Math

Some days ago, Kate at SDA linked to http://wisemath.org/, a site set up to challenge the new elementary school math curriculum in western Canada. The new approach to teaching math in elementary schools does away with the standard algorithms that we all know, and presumably, love, in favour of letting students "discover strategies" for solving mathematical problems. There's a lot of good material on the WISEMath site, and I won't rehash all of the reasons why this latest experiment being perpetrated on a generation of kids is a disaster. Suffice to say that the literary equivalent would be teaching kids to read by handing them a bag of Scrabble tiles. It's like teaching them to drive by just handing them the car keys.

I read this article two days after Doggerelle and I had met with my daughter's grade 2 teacher. We were concerned that she was coming home with problems such as adding together two or three two digit numbers but seemed to have little clue about how to approach the problem. Reluctant to teach her 'our' way, we wanted to clarify what the teacher expected. Almost word for word, we were told the same thing as the new western curriculum spells out. "We don't give the children a procedure," says teacher. "We expose them to different strategies for solving the problem." She's seven years old, for crying out loud. "Expose them to different strategies"???

The good news is, this means we can teach our children to do math properly, and it will be OK, because when it comes to marking math homework, anything goes. That's fine for my kids. Both have great aptitude for math, both love numbers. Dogerelle Jr. plays a mean game of Monopoly already at age 7, happily doubling rents, making change and building movie studios (it's the Muppets edition!). Both Doggerelle and I are good with numbers and completely confident in teaching arithmetic. But what about the kids who don't have parents with the skills to teach at home? What about the kids who couldn't choose a strategy to do arithmetic if their lives depended on it? Which, in a sense, they do.

In a world where very little is analog any longer, where everything, absolutely everything is digital, everything is, by definition, represented by numbers, this bizarre and ideologically driven experiment will strip an entire generation of the foundations they need to make sense of their world. It's madness, or worse. It's almost criminally negligent.

Any readers have any horror stories? Is there any group like WISEMath for Ontario? Because we surely need one.

And finally, while we're on the topic, the great Mr. Tom Lehrer is here to remind us that educators have been messing around with this stuff for 40 years - 40 years of continual decline in numeracy.

Not forgetting E Henry Thripshaw

Apparently the practice of naming diseases after their discoverers is declining. Let's hope E Henry Thripshaw was able to finish the remake of his first disease in time...

Alzheimer, Parkinson, Hodgkin: Names of a passing era as naming diseases and conditions after doctors declines | News | National Post