Travis Biehn wins on appeal

Travis Biehn, the Newfoundland-born teenager who was convicted in Pennsylvania last year of making a bomb threat against his school and possessing explosives, has won his appeal. Biehn's conviction was overturned last month, and the DA has not filed a counter-appeal.

Travis emailed me last week to let me know that common sense had prevailed, and earlier this week he emailed me a link to the text of his appeal, which unfortunately has gone dead, so I can't link to it here.

To summarize, the appeal court reached the same conclusion that any reasonable person would: the evidence against Biehn was insufficient to warrant a conviction.

Biehn was originally convicted of making a bomb threat, but there was absolutely no evidence that he had made the threat. In fact, he was one of two students who reported the threat, and the teacher's aide to whom he reported it did not take it seriously enough to take it any further.

He was also convicted of possessing bomb-making materials, which, at the time, I erroneously wrote was more or less a slam-dunk. I was trying to take the most balanced view that I could, but I was wrong. In fact, under Pennsylvania law, it is only an offence to possess bomb-making materials if you have the intent to commit a crime with them. And of course, the DA had no evidence whatsoever that Biehn had any such intent. On the contrary, the evidence showed that Biehn had legal purposes for the materials.

The DA's argument was essentially circular: Biehn must have made the threat, because he possessed explosive materials, and he must have had criminal intent, because he made the threat. The only "evidence" supporting either charge was the existence of the other charge, and Biehn was convicted based on innuendo. The second charge, of possessing explosives, is a felony.

The appeals court drew the obvious conclusion, the conclusion that the trial judge should have drawn, and overturned the convictions.

Congratulations, Travis. Reason has finally won the day.

From Canadian newspapers and television, which treated Biehn's conviction as a major story, there has not been one peep. Consequently, a Google search on Biehn's name won't find that his name was cleared. The media is good at reporting stories, but is usually piss-poor at correcting them, or following them up months after the fact. If Travis Biehn's original conviction was big news, then the fact that it was overturned is equally important. But that sound you hear is, as the song says, the sound of silence.

Before we start waxing triumphant about the world o' blogs, let me direct you to the Trenchcoat Chronicles, which has reacted to news of the appeal by insisting that the trial judge was right all along. That would be the much-touted "self-correcting nature of the blogosphere" at work, folks.

The really important thing, when you're running a single-issue blog like the Trenchcoat Chronicles, dedicated to the proposition that schools are filled with out-of-control, dangerous kids, is never to admit that you could be wrong. Because it's hard to piss your pants if you let go of fear.

Fear is what this whole sorry story is about. Biehn was charged, in the absence of evidence, because of fear. He was convicted, based on innuendo, in a climate of fear. His conviction became news touted by a media that acts to magnify that fear, and commented on by bloggers who were, by and large, too busy pissing themselves to use their brains.

The results is that whenever anyone Googles Travis's name, they'll find a pile of hysteria suggesting that he was once a mad bomber.

That's the crime here.

Newspaper of record

It seems like only Wednesday, the 20th of September, 2006, that I confessed to be "not much for the pedantry of copy editors, those sad, tired subterranean creatures who occasionally raise their bespectacled and bloodshot eyes to lecture us all on the evils of the comma splice and the perils of the dangling participle."

My patience is, however, limited. Nothing is lower, in my estimation, than an incompetent copy editor, one who allows common errors to pass. You never know if a fool like this will actually take your words and make them wrong, ruin the rhythm of your sentences, and generally make you look like a fool.

This, evidently, is the brand of copy editor now employed by the Globe & Mail. In a recent web-exclusive op-ed, the Globe disgraced itself thusly:

When the Strathconas were sighting the canons' bores at Camp Wainwright recently, their gunners consistently put rounds through the same hat-sized holes in targets 800 metres distant, adding fearsome destructive power to the Forces in Afghanistan, while minimizing the risk of collateral damage.

When faced with a sentence such as this, it is difficult to know where to begin. I'm going to skip lightly over the non-sequitur (how do gunners on a range at Wainwright add "fearsome destructive power to the Forces in Afghanistan?"). I will not mock the fool who changed "boresighting" into "sighting the ... bores," because "boresighting" is a specialized gunnery term, and I do not wish to become a bore myself. (Although, while I'm on the subject, you can't shoot while you're boresighting.)

I will simply mock the copy editor's incompetence, which is demonstrated only three short paragraphs later:

The main vehicle the infantry uses in Afghanistan, the Light Armoured Vehicle or LAV III, is a superior fighting machine. It is an eight-wheeled 17-tonne armoured car, armed with a 25-millimetre cannon capable of transporting troops at speeds of up to 100 kilometres an hour.

I certainly hope that our soldiers in Afghanistan will not be aiming the Leopards' "canons" at the locals, whatever the provocation. Nothing will be gained by canonizing them.

This is no isolated example. "Canon" also pops up in an article published on September 10 (and no longer available online), under the headline, "Battle for Panjwaii fought in long stops and terrorizing quick starts." And while we're on the subject of that article, allow me to point out that "terrorize" is a verb. The adjective the copy editor was grasping for was "terrifying."

Still not disgusted? In another recent article, also no longer available, the Globe had scholars "pouring" over Margaret Atwood's books (vice "poring"). Exactly what they were pouring over them was never made clear.

The people who made these errors have perfectly good degrees, which are supposed to prove that they have learned not to make these errors. So much for j-school.

And so much for the newspaper that aspires to be our national newspaper of record.

Harper must resign

Over at Bowie's Call, James Bowie looks at the facts and draws the only possible conclusion: Stephen Harper must resign.

We in Canada can put up with many things, but this is too much to bear:

"The same way that Canadians from all walks of life were stunned by this savage, senseless attack on innocent students from one deranged individual."

There is no need for me to go into detail regarding Harper's grammatical crimes. James Bowie has already covered that. I have other concerns. I believe Harper must resign on grounds of style, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

Here at the Wonderdog Institute, we regard language as a pretty flexible thing. We're not much for the pedantry of copy editors, those sad, tired subterranean creatures who occasionally raise their bespectacled and bloodshot eyes to lecture us all on the evils of the comma splice and the perils of the dangling participle.

In short: never attempt to rescue a dangly participle with one a them comma splices. Next thing ya know, that splice'll pull apart and then we'll all be doomed. Eight hundred pounds of participle crashing down through the trees: a nightmare scene. Sentence fragments everywhere.

No, syntax is not to be taken lightly. Words are too dangerous to be handled by amateurs. Professionals, on the other hand, can afford to splice with commas or leave a participle dangerously exposed, because they can do it with dash and style. The dogma of copy editors is not for them.

The Prime Minister is not a professional. Dash and style are as foreign to his writing as they are to his dress, hairstyle, and demeanour. Dash and style peer at him in puzzlement, and struggle to make sense of his utterances. Then dash looks at style and says, "I think we're going to need a translator."

Harper loves his clichés, and he doesn't disappoint here. Now, clichés are excusable, if they mean something. Dusting off "all walks of life" would be acceptable, if there was any point in using the phrase. In this case, however, the words are meaningless. Are we to understand that some Canadians -- say, dentists, letter carriers, and left-handed fly-casting instructors -- would not normally be stunned by a shooting, but Dawson College is too much even for them to bear?

A good writer knows when to leave a word alone, but Harper molests all his nouns. Attacks are savage and senseless, students innocent, and individuals deranged. Consider that: a deranged individual. If overusing adjectives is the mark of a hack, then surely this is hackery supreme. The noun -- "individual" -- is almost meaningless. All meaning resides in the adjective. Harper has elevated hackery to the level of art.

And finally, need I point out that the idiom is "an attack by an individual," not "an attack from an individual?" The Maximum Leader, it seems, has been so busy piling on the adjectives that he has lost track of what he is saying.

Bowie is right. Canadians have put up with this long enough.

Harper must resign.

On picking and choosing

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published a study warning that Canada is suffering a disproportionately high casualty rate in Afghanistan, and projecting 108 deaths by the end of our current commitment.

We at the Wonderdog Institute of Crapping on Thinktank Nonsense were not about to take that at face value, because of our extensive experience with thinktank nonsense. So we did a study of our own: instead of limiting ourselves to reading the Star's summary and accepting at face value what the CCPA had to say, we actually read the CCPA's paper.

Our conclusion? As suspected, they're as suspect as the usual suspects at the Fraser Institute.

One conclusion that jumps out is the claim that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed than American soldiers in Iraq. This is based on adjusting "for the relative size of troop commitments." But, while the authors provide detailed information on casualty numbers, they have almost nothing to say about those troop commitments. Noting that NATO does not publish detailed numbers, they say only that they have used a variety of sources.

They say absolutely nothing about the tooth-to-tail ratio, which suggests that they did not consider the number of combat troops deployed vs. the number of support trades. So what? Deployed is deployed, right?

Not quite. Smaller units have proportionately smaller logistics tails. The casualty rate suffered by a force of 1,000 soldiers can be expected to be proportionately higher than that suffered by a force of 10,000, which in turn would suffer proportionately higher casualties than a force of 100,000.

This would be difficult to adjust for, of course, as the data would be hard to come by. But the fact that the authors of the study did not even mention it speaks volumes. Honest scholarship demands that you mention factors that might undercut your conclusions, and this one, frankly, is obvious.

Even more suspect is the study's claim that "based on the record since major operations began in Kandahar (February 24, 2006 to September 6, 2006) and averaging the number of casualties incurred during that period and projecting that average over the remainder of the mission, there could be an additional 108 deaths from all causes by the end of the mission in 2009."

No rationale is given for the selection of casualties during the period February to September, 2006 as the sample, but it is worth noting that this excludes periods where casualties were lower. The fact that February marked the beginning of our operations around Kandahar is irrelevant, as there is no reason to believe that Canadian troops will remain near Kandahar until 2009 rather than redeploying to Kabul.

The disclaimer that "it is highly unlikely that the current rate will remain unchanged" does not excuse the author's selection of an obviously biased sample, as they suggest that the casualty rate is as likely to increase as it is to decrease:

Factors that might reduce Canadian deaths include progress towards a diplomatic resolution of the conflict, reductions in Taliban forces or operations, changes in the nature of Canadian operations, or improvements in Canadian equipment or tactics.

On the other hand, improvements in Taliban equipment or tactics, or other deterioration in the security situation in Afghanistan, might lead to an increase in Canadian deaths.

Their own data puts the lie to this suggestion. German troops, based in relatively stable areas, have suffered no casualties in the same time frame, and Canadian casualties were much lower before deployment to Kandahar. It is likely that "changes in the nature of Canadian operations" will lead to a reduced casualty rate, and relatively less likely that other factors will lead to changes in either direction.

Their sample is also seasonally biased, coinciding with the summer season. The Afghan insurgency fights in the summer and rests in the winter, and this is reflected in the CCPA's own data, which show a significant surge in overall coalition casualties during the same period last year. (The various upticks before that time involve small enough numbers that they are probably not statistically significant.) It is highly unlikely, then, that the current casualty rate would be sustained through this winter, let alone subsequent summers.

The CCPA paper, in another display of intellectual dishonesty, makes no note of the seasonal effect on casualty rates.

This paper is junk.

I don't mean to suggest that Canada's casualty rate is insignificant or that the conclusion that we are bearing the brunt of the Afghan insurgency is untrue. However, the paper makes a clear effort to exaggerate its case. It's dishonest work, and no one possessing a shred of self-respect should cite it.

We have Gordon. No police.

Sympatico sends me a semi-spam:

As a valued client of Sympatico™ service from Bell, we wanted you to be the first to know that Gordon, our spokesbeaver, has gone missing. He left a note saying he was "on a mission for consistent high speeds."

That was a cover story to throw you off the scent until we at the Wonderdog Institute of Large Rodent Abduction were ready to discuss terms.

We have Gordon. No police.

Sympatico's email continues:

While we don't believe Gordon is in any imminent danger, we miss him and need him to get back to work doing what he does best: being our spokesbeaver.

I'm sorry to inform you that you are, in fact, the only people in Canada who miss him.

We at the Wonderdog Institute are opposed to cruelty to animals, yet we are equally opposed to cruelty to humans. Therefore we will return Gordon on the strict condition that he appear in your advertising only in the form of a hat.

A thoroughly dead hat.

You will receive your instructions in a plain brown envelope.

Love, Theft, and Model Aeroplanes

It's sad to read all the fuss surrounding this past week's crisis in the music world: the shocking discovery that Bob Dylan lifted lyrics for Modern Times from the nineteenth Century American poet Henry Timrod. From some of the commentary, you'd think that we'd just learned that the only way Bob can achieve his dulcet tones is to lip-sync to someone else's vocals. Our universe is altered, when we find out how he got paid. And so on.

The sad part is that we could read a lot of intelligent commentary about the idea of originality, the "folk process," authorship, and so on -- but we aren't. Instead, we're reading sophomoric nonsense about plagiarism. The New York Times, unable to find an academic who would give them a quote accusing Dylan of plagiarism, resorted to quoting a man who compared Modern Times to a plagiarized term paper -- and to wrapping that bogus analogy in a weak appeal to authority by identifying him as a teacher.

Here's a tip: art is to term papers as ducks are to model aeroplanes.

The tricky thing about plagiarism, outside of the world of model aeroplanes, is that what constitutes plagiarism depends on the context. Stealing from one source is plagiarism, so the joke goes; stealing from many is research.

Let us suppose, for example, that you write a genre novel -- say, some chick-lit nonsense -- that borrows scenes, description and dialogue from other contemporary novels of the same genre. You're going to be called a plagiarist.

Let us suppose, on the other hand, that you write a novel that lifts its plot from great literature or from myth, that borrows characters from other stories and drops them into new situations, and in which characters routinely speak in lines stolen from poetry, movies, and popular songs, without identifying their sources. You're not going to get called a plagiarist, although you might get called a postmodernist, which is probably worse.

The important difference lies in the reader's expectations. Normally, one expects original characters, original dialogue, and so on. But as soon as the author tips his hand, by an allusion that makes the theft obvious, all bets are off. The reader understands what's going on, winks knowingly, and reads on. He understands that theft is the point.

This returns us to Bob Dylan. Anyone who expects Dylan to write entirely original songs clearly doesn't know Bob Dylan. Go back to 1963's Freewheelin' and you'll find that almost every song is lifted from one traditional song or another: "Blowin' in the Wind" from "No More Auction Block," "Masters of War" from "Nottamun Town," "Girl of the North Country" from "Scarborough Fair." "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is lifted, as one blog commenter recently had it, from "some old poem we read in a medieval lit class I took."

All this raised not one eyebrow, because it violated no expectations. In the folk genre, old songs are continually stolen and modified to create new songs. Fair enough, then.

Modern Times is the sequel to 2001's "Love & Theft." Those punctuation marks are not accidental; they're part of the title. They're supposed to twig us to the fact that the title itself is stolen, from the title of a book by Eric Lott, on how white American minstrels plundered black musical traditions. And everything on the album is stolen. Some of the theft is obvious, such as commonplace blues lines: "I'm gettin'up in the morning, I believe I'll dust my broom" snarls the singer in "High Water (for Charley Patton)," which in its title tips its hat to the father of the Delta blues. Other thefts are less obvious, such as "Floater," which steals a melody from Guy Lombardo while lifting its lyrics from a Japanese novel, among other sources.

Modern Times continues in the same vein. If you're surprised to find "plagiarism" there, then you've missed the point. These albums are about stealing what you love. Dylan expands the basis of "folk" music; it's not something played on acoustic guitars by earnest singers fascinated by the supposed greater validity of centuries-old songs. Rather, it's music lifted from whatever sources you please, from literature and poetry and from commercial pop as well as from "folk songs."

In that context, it's sad to read the occasional reviews asserting that this album has no relevance to modern times. In an age when Disney seeks to assert lifetime ownership over the image of Mickey Mouse, while simultaneously plundering (and copyrighting) folk tales, when the hot topic is the limits of copyright, these two albums of love and theft have a great deal to say.

On the missing of points

Big City Lib rubs a few brain cells together in an attempt to strike a spark, but succeeds only in crushing them like overcooked macaroni:

Operation Medusa was an exercise in futility. The insurgents have merely switched from military to guerilla tactics. According to this Globe article, they will soon switch back.

In case this has escaped anyone else, the objective of an offensive such as Operation Medusa is to ... force the enemy to revert to guerilla tactics. That is, to prevent him from holding and controlling ground. If your insurgent enemy can control territory and openly build defensive positions, your campaign is not going well. You want to prevent him from doing that.

As for the Globe article, it's amazing that people who are so good at identifying the propaganda claims of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are so poor at evaluating claims made by others. The evidence suggests that the insurgents were soundly defeated and fled, leaving behind weapons and ammunition, and are now attempting to put their best spin on the defeat.

I suppose its a matter of believing what you want to believe.

Doesn't the source's sudden promotion, alluded to in the story, mean anything to you? Come on, people. Everyone has an agenda. Stop grasping at straws. Think.

Live by the sword

The Globe & Mail provides my daily laugh at the expense of others. In this case, I'm laughing at the expense of Dog, the Bounty Hunter, otherwise known as Duane Chapman. Dog, who, I hasten to add, is no relation to anyone here at the Wonderdog Institute, is known for his reality show, on which he chases down bail-jumpers and brings them to justice. Seems he's been arrested for "illegal detention," which you knew had to happen sooner or later.

But buried at the bottom of the Globe story is the punch line: he was charged in 2003, in Mexico.

What he's really in trouble for is jumping his bail.

Shut up. Just shut up.

There's no end of squawking, squealing and carrying on in the world o' blogs following the shootings at Dawson College in Montréal. This proves the gun registry doesn't work, or alternatively, proves the need for the gun registry. Choose your poison.

No, seriously. Choose your poison, swallow it, and shut the fuck up.

None of the people debating this point is in the least concerned with the facts of what happened. They already made up their minds on this point, long ago, and see events as nothing but a framework on which to hang their prejudices. And despite their protestations to the contrary, none of these people give a flying fuck about the shooting victims. It's just another opportunity to advance their pre-conceived political ideas.

Anastasia DeSousa's coffin is nothing more to these creatures than a soapbox on which to stand and rant.

The real issue here is not whether a long gun registry is required, or whether a long gun registry is useless. The weapon in question, as it turns out, is not a long gun, a fact which snuck in the back door in the middle of this bunfight and made fools of the participants.

The weapon in question is a restricted firearm. As with a pistol, this weapon needed to be registered regardless of the long gun registry. And the information released so far suggests that it was, in fact, registered, which means -- if it was registered to the shooter -- that the shooter, a bona fide nutcase, passed all the background checks required to obtain it, and register it.

The real issue, children, is not whether we need a long gun registry. The real issue is how this nutcase slipped through the background checks and obtained this weapon. All the registries in the world are useless if they can't do what they're designed to, which is to control who can own guns.

That's the entire aim of gun control: to keep guns out of the hands of nutbars and criminals. The system failed here, with deadly results. Grown-ups should be asking where the system failed, and how to fix it to make sure that it doesn't fail again.

That's a serious question, and we need some peace and quiet to consider it. So all you fucking children arguing about your politics: kindly go play out back.

The grown-ups need to talk.

Tanks for asking

The dark hour of the knotting of panties is upon us. News that Canada will send 15 Leopard tanks to Afghanistan has prompted all kinds of jabbering in the world o' blogs, and also in the world o' newspapers.

Cheerleaders for the conflict have been a-fluttering their pom-poms and a-tossing their ponytails while chanting, "Razzle, dazzle, siss-boom-bah, LASING SABOT rah-rah-rah!" War-blogging baton-twirlers, meanwhile, look on and play with their batons. And that, dear reader, is as far as I can take this metaphor on a family blog such as this.

On the other side of the stands, there is much wringing of hands over what is characterized as the government's escalation of the conflict. The Globe & Mail, in keeping with what is apparently its long-standing editorial policy, finds the most negative ideas it can, and magnifies them to critical proportions. For example, the Globe tells us that "by buttoning down [sic] inside a tank, Canadian soldiers could also end up losing personal contact with locals, which is crucial in building public support."

Debunking the Globe & Mail's sloppy and dishonest reporting on this story would require more typing than I'm willing to do. Suffice to say that the total number of the 2000-plus Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan who will be buttoned up in those fifteen Leopards will be ... 60.

That should put all the cheering and hand-wringing into perspective.

Let's be clear. What the government is sending -- if the proposal is approved -- is the Leopard C2 tank. The Leopard is operated by a crew of four (driver, gunner, loader and crew commander). It does not carry troops, and is not a substitute for the LAV III. Its frontal armour is essentially impervious to RPGs and other mere pop-guns, but this is not to say that it is invulnerable. The side and rear armour is thinner, and a roadside bomb could easily render a Leo immobile by damaging tracks or suspension. If that were to happen, and an ARV was unavailable, the crew could be forced to destroy the tank in place -- not something you'd like to see, if you only had 15 of them.

The Leo mounts a 105 mm gun along with two 7.62 mm machine guns. The 105 mm gun is aimed using thermal sights and a laser rangefinder. It is fully stabilized, meaning that remains laid on its target even when the tank is moving across rough terrain. Wind sensors correct for crosswinds. Temperature sensors correct for the effect of air temperature and density. There's even a laser sensor on the end of the gun barrel to correct for droop -- that is, for the way the end of the gun begins to droop under its own weight as it heats up from repeated firing. This system can hit a target the size of a car door on the first try at two kilometres, with a 105 mm high explosive squash-head shell that makes a very loud bang.

Sorry. Nearly lost control of my baton there. Where was I? Let me just say that a tank is the most powerful direct-fire weapon on the battlefield. If you want fire support it is, as the kids say today, the shiznit. If you were an infanteer advancing on Taliban positions in the Panjawli district this past week, you would have been glad to have a Leo nearby.

Tanks never operate alone. They're organized into troops (platoons) of four, commanded by a Lieutenant. Four troops make up a squadron, with an an additional three tanks in the squadron headquarters. The proposal to send fifteen tanks means sending a weak squadron with three troops (platoons, not soldiers). (Presumably, the CF now uses three-troop squadrons because there aren't enough tanks for full squadrons.) So what Afghanistan is getting is a single tank company (or sabre squadron, as a classy blogger would say) of 60 men, organized into three troops, plus their logistics tail. The notion that tanks will soon be rolling all over Afghanistan, as promoted by the Globe, is a trifle overblown.

Nevertheless, one point must be granted the hand-wringers: this does, indeed, reflect a serious escalation in Afghanistan. That's not because, as some have suggested, we're escalating the conflict by sending tanks. On the contrary: we're sending tanks because the conflict has escalated.

The sign of that escalation is the events of the past few weeks, culminating in the battle for control of the Panjawli district. The Taliban, for whatever reason, are now behaving not as an insurgent force, but as a conventional ground force. Their confidence, as recent events have shown, is misplaced, but that's beside the point. The Taliban will be beaten every time they try to stand and fight, and will eventually retreat back into "conventional" insurgent tactics, but this will take time. And all the while, the clock is ticking on hearts and minds.

What the deployment of Leos means is that it's time to ask some serious questions. Not partisan questions, but simple questions about what we're doing. Beginning with, what specific reconstruction goals will we achieve, on what schedule? What is, in short, the new plan?

X-posted to the Torch, to keep Damian happy. Happy, Damian?

Money well spent

In health news, the Globe & Mail reports that researchers have developed a drug to stop premature ejaculation. What with Viagra and now this, we have a suite of drugs to get you through the entire process.

In fact, for those having trouble at the front end, we've got Paxil to help out with your Social Anxiety Disorder. We used to call this "shyness" and treat it with a drug called alcohol, but things have changed: we now recognize that using a drug as a crutch to overcome shyness is wrong, so we're addressing the underlying issues, such as the patient's bank account and SmithKline Beecham's bottom line.

It's heartwarming to see that all those health care dollars that aren't going to fight AIDS in Africa are still being put to good use.

Southern X Yellow Dog

The critical reaction to Bob Dylan's new album, Modern Times,* has been fun to watch. Most of it has been strongly positive, although one suspects at times that the critic doesn't really know why he's proclaiming Modern Times to be a Great Work, but feels he should. The negative reviews have often included the amusing complaint that Dylan now lazily overuses the 12-bar blues form -- presumably, these critics have forgotten what Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde actually sounded like. Here's a hint: them chord progressions wasn't exactly groundbreaking.

Just about every review has commented on the irony of calling the album Modern Times, considering that it sounds anything but modern. Yet it does sound modern, if not contemporary, because all the songs belong to modernist times, rather than the postmodern times in which we find ourselves.

Most of the reviews, especially the negative ones, also share some tone of disappointment. The title raised expectations that his Bobliness would have something to say about our modern times, in particular the state of the republic. He doesn't have anything to say on that subject, of course. Not overtly, anyway.

The lyric from "Nettie Moore," which may be the best song on the record, has something to say about that:

I'm goin' where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog
To get away from these demagogues

"Where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog" is, of course, a line lifted from among the earliest recorded blues songs. It first appears in W.C. Handy's 1914 "Yellow Dog Blues," but Handy said he had lifted it from the first blues song he ever heard, sung by an anonymous man at a train station in 1903.

What does it mean to go where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog? In Handy's day, it meant a specific location, in Moorehead, MS. It could equally mean to go back in time to the heyday of the blues, or to step out of time -- which would be a fine way of getting away from these demagogues. If Modern Times contains a comment on our times, this could well be it: the only way to deal with postmodern times is to step out of time entirely.

A general disgust with the state of the world isn't new territory for Dylan. Time Out of Mind dripped with it, as in "Not Dark Yet." Bob Dylan's view of politics seems to be on full display in Masked and Anonymous, the (fairly dreadful) movie he wrote with Larry Charles. The world is corrupt and the outlook is bleak. All you can do is muddle through and try to hold onto what you love.

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* While you're checking out Modern Times at the Amazon link, watch that video of "Cold Irons Bound." But be warned: the Wonderdog Institute will accept no responsibility if your brain explodes.

McAfee, how dost thou suck?

A poem for Saturday:

Ode to McAfee

How dost thou suck?
Let me count the ways:
No, what the fuck
I can't count that high
I'm only a Nobel-prize winning
Mathema
Fucking
Tician.

Here at the Wonderdog Institute for the Enjoyment of Third-Rate Software, our system has been hobbled for a week, with the hard drive chunking away non-stop and physical memory maxed out even when we shut everything down and leave the thing idle. In technical lingo, something was clearly fucked.

Naturally, we put our top man on it, who happens to be a dog, although he is not in fact the top dog around here. That would be Mrs. Skippy. But we digress.

We went through all the usual suspects: virus, some horrible spyware infestation, and so on. We even were at the point of diagnosing incipient hard drive failure. All the fingers of blame continued to curl around and point at McAfee.

McAfee has been taking it on the nose for the execrable quality of their version 11 release, which has prompted numerous complaints of degraded performance, an unusable user interface, and lousy customer service. I have been experiencing degraded performance for a month, but this was above and beyond degraded. My computer was little more than a bulky paperweight.

The culprit turned out to be McAfee's new QuickClean utility, which purports to delete all the unnecessary files from your hard disk to free up space. Unbenownst to users, and unannounced, McAfee added this utility to their version 11 product, and defaulted it to run monthly. Mine ran a week ago.

I was lucky. If it had been scheduled to run 9 days ago, as it was for some users, it would have deleted my Windows software key. That manifestation of programmer incompetence was apparently fixed right away, so that now QuickClean only deletes critical files required for the management of your disk and memory. This is what the TQM people call "continuous improvement."

The upshot, then, is that McAfee version 11 runs a process, unknown to the user, that deletes critical system files and renders the computer virtually unusable. This, of course, is exactly what McAfee is supposed to prevent.

I understand McAfee will soon be marketing a new product that purports to protect users from McAfee's own updates.

Music is their business...

... and business is stagnant, foul-smelling, and infested with leeches.

If you were to listen* to the Tragically Hip's new single, "In View" (which you would do by finding the link on the left side of the band's web page or by visiting them on myspace) you might well wonder if they've completely lost it.

This assumes, of course, that you hadn't already reached that conclusion, but we'll get to that later.

"In View," the first single from the upcoming World Container album, may charitably be described as vile. Some fool has clearly let a keyboard player, jailed since 1986 for crimes against good taste, out of his cage. Thinking he was showing up to a session for a Men Without Hats comeback album, he turned up at the World Container sessions. The World, reportedly, was not amused by its new container, and responded with a massive release of greenhouse gas. The result was faithfully recorded by producer Bob Rock and foisted on an unsuspecting public, like a shit-bomb dropped from 20,000 feet on a group of smiling schoolchildren.

I trust I need not clarify my opinion.

Have the Hip lost it, or has that horse already left the stable? They started out with three solid, if unspectacular rockers (Up to Here, Road Apples, and Fully Completely) that established their reputation as Canada's then greatest rock band, or as an overrated bar band, depending on your point of view. Day for Night, their best and most unified album, followed, but Trouble at the Henhouse was weak and uneven. Phantom Power, in 1998, stands second only to Day for Night.

Since then, the Hip have put out a string of albums no better than Henhouse. 2000's Music @ Work, which followed Gord Downie's move to Toronto, was the first album they wrote in the studio. It was a wildly incoherent effort that veered wildly from one sound to the next and petered out halfway through. The band resolved to do better.

For In Violet Light, they brought in producer Hugh Padgham and repaired to the Carribean, where they decided to leave off the good songs ("Ultramundane" and "Problem Bears") in favour of crap ("Are You Ready"), self-conscious attempts to be the Tragically Hip ("The Dark Canuck," "The Dire Wolf") and a blatant attempt to create an Arena Anthem for the Ages ("It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken"). The result was disappointing, although on the strength of "Good Life," Zippo stocks soared.

Although they praised Padgham in public, the band was obviously unhappy with In Violet Light, and they quickly retired most of its songs from their setlists -- beginning, of course, with the good ones. For 2004's In Between Evolution, they hooked up with producer Adam Kasper and came up with a much harder sound. In Between Evolution was a better record than either In Violet Light or Music @ Work, a return to the level of their early albums. But the record company promptly selected its weakest songs ("Vaccination Scar" and "Summer's Killing Us") as singles, and the album proceeded to fade from the charts.

Which brings us to today, with the band firmly mired in the mid-career doldrums. Apparently unaware that In Between Evolution was their best work in years, the band discarded Adam Kasper and went with Bob Rock and the vile keyboards, and came up with "In View." The new single appears to mark another step on their ongoing search for a new sound, a step that, disappointingly, falls in the footsteps of current commercial successes. "In View" promises to bring nothing to radio that we haven't heard ad nauseam of late.

The Hip have always had difficulty producing studio albums that give justice to their live sound, and they seem never to have found a producer they can work with. Unfortunately, it seems that, since Music @ Work, they've been putting more effort into their sound than into their songwriting. Songs like "Vaccination Scar" seem half-finished. Others, like "Good Life" or most of In Violet Light, seem contrived. In Between Evolution was a fair-to-good album; with better songwriting, it could have been a great one.

"In View," then, doesn't bode well for World Container.

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* The Wonderdog Institute for Aural Torture takes no responsibility for any injury your ears or mind may suffer as a result of listening to the single in question. Listen at your own risk.

Return of the Eddie Award

Once in a long while, or a shorter while if an election campaign happens to be underway, someone writes something so stupid that it really deserves recognition. This is why we at the Wonderdog Insitute for the Dumb, Blind and Illiterate inaugurated the Eddie Award.

This award is no minor honour. It is the Victoria Cross of Dumb: to win it, you have to write something so dumb that the brain cells responsible are likely to die from the effort. In a sense, then, it is often awarded posthumously. Named for Captain Ed, who won the inaugural award for his assertion that terrorists "slaughter women and children as indiscriminately as possible," the honour has subsequently gone to Jason Cherniak, the thoroughly deserving Brent Colbert, and of course, the redoubtable Steve Janke.

We at the Institute are pleased to bestow the fifth Eddie Award upon Stephen Taylor. Taylor has written a great deal of stupid tripe in his blogging career, and we're pleased to note that with this post, he has finally descended to the Eddie level. In particular, the judges found this sentence compelling:

von Mises was an economist who was very influential economist and advocated for the free-market.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is writing of the first order. Taylor's insistence on making "free market" into the compound "free-market" is also wonderful, suggesting a recent visit to Germany where he may have learned newgrammaticalrules that will help him to write stupid-shit. But the staggering leap of illogic that puts Taylor into Eddie territory is yet to come, in the form of this lovely non sequitur:

I found this page, which sells t-shirts featuring the "Champions of Liberty" featuring Aristotle, Frédéric Bastiat, Albert Jay Nock, Jean-Baptiste Say and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.

I just had to laugh. Here's a website for a libertarian free-market economic institute selling t-shirts featuring the "Champions of Liberty" as if to break into the dead icon t-shirt market itself (the one that is dominated by the sales of millions of Che shirts).

However, one truth emerged. While the t-shirt market may demand Che Guevara, the marketplace of ideas has favoured these "Champions of Liberty". In both cases, the free-market has won!

Well done, Steve! Enjoy your award, and please continue blogging while drunk.

Steve and Me

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

I have been impressed by the way in which you have responded to the deaths of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan, most recently yesterday, by steadfastly urging Canadians to support the troops and to support the mission. Loyal, courageous soldiers, I believe, deserve the leadership of loyal, courageous politicians.

I was also impressed by your response to the death of Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, a courageous (and unarmed) Canadian soldier serving in Lebanon with the UN observer force. What could be more logical than to suggest that he should not have been there in the first place? That’s what I call supporting the mission!

I trust you will grasp that I was not impressed favourably. Loyal, courageous soldiers do indeed deserve the leadership of loyal, courageous politicians. You, unfortunately, are not even fit to walk a dog.

I suggest you find employment more suited to your temperament. I would suggest a career in fraud, but I see you are ahead of me.

Contemptuously,

Skippy