The City Gal

Senator Romeo Dallaire on Khadr

2009-01-12T09:17:00.002-06:00

I was pleased to see Romeo Dallaire following up on Omar Khadr's case.

This morning Canada AM spoke with the senator who will be making a presentation about the child-soldiers (from Rwanda and Sierra Leon) to Obama's Transition Team.

It is noteworthy to mention that Omar Khadr (who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15) is the only westerner in Guantanamo Bay Prison.

For more information on Romeo Dallaire and his mission in Rwanda see the documentary "Shake Hands with the Devil" or a movie with the same title.

BONO on Sinatra

2009-01-12T08:58:00.001-06:00

January 11, 2009
Op-Ed Guest Columnist
Notes From the Chairman
By BONO
Dublin

Once upon a couple of weeks ago ...

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.

Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new. There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.

Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year? In the mist of uncertainty in your business life, your love life, your life life, why is Sinatra’s voice such a foghorn — such confidence in nervous times allowing you romance but knocking your rose-tinted glasses off your nose, if you get too carried away.

A call to believability.

A voice that says, “Don’t lie to me now.”

That says, “Baby, if there’s someone else, tell me now.”

Fabulous, not fabulist. Honesty to hang your hat on.

As the year rolls over (and with it many carousers), the emotion in the room tussles between hope and fear, expectation and trepidation. Wherever you end up, his voice takes you by the hand.

•

Now I’m back in my own house in Dublin, uncorking some nice wine, ready for the vinegar it can turn to when families and friends overindulge, as I am about to. Right by the hole-in-the-wall cellar, I look up to see a vision in yellow: a painting Frank sent to me after I sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with him on the 1993 “Duets” album. One from his own hand. A mad yellow canvas of violent concentric circles gyrating across a desert plain. Francis Albert Sinatra, painter, modernista.

We had spent some time in his house in Palm Springs, which was a thrill — looking out onto the desert and hills, no gingham for miles. Plenty of miles, though, Miles Davis. And plenty of talk of jazz. That’s when he showed me the painting. I was thinking the circles were like the diameter of a horn, the bell of a trumpet, so I said so.

“The painting is called ‘Jazz’ and you can have it.”

I said I had heard he was one of Miles Davis’s biggest influences.

Little pithy replies:

“I don’t usually hang with men who wear earrings.”

“Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid — or a word on a fool.”

“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s about the present.”

I think about this now, in this new year. The Big Bang of pop music telling me it’s all about the moment, a fresh canvas and never overworking the paint. I wonder what he would have thought of the time it’s taken me and my bandmates to finish albums, he with his famous impatience for directors, producers — anyone, really — fussing about. I’m sure he’s right. Fully inhabiting the moment during that tiny dot of time after you’ve pressed “record” is what makes it eternal. If, like Frank, you sing it like you’ll never sing it again. If, like Frank, you sing it like you never have before.

If.

•

If you want to hear the least sentimental voice in the history of pop music finally crack, though — shhhh — find the version of Frank’s ode to insomnia, “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” hidden on “Duets.” Listen through to the end and you will hear the great man break as he truly sobs on the line, “It’s a long, long, long road.” I kid you not.

Like Bob Dylan’s, Nina Simone’s, Pavarotti’s, Sinatra’s voice is improved by age, by years spent fermenting in cracked and whiskeyed oak barrels. As a communicator, hitting the notes is only part of the story, of course.

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know — as opposed to what they don’t want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this — the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power — interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

Want an example? Here’s an example. Take two of the versions of Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The first was recorded in 1969 when the Chairman of the Board said to Paul Anka, who wrote the song for him: “I’m quitting the business. I’m sick of it. I’m getting the hell out.” In this reading, the song is a boast — more kiss-off than send-off — embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere.

In the later recording, Frank is 78. The Nelson Riddle arrangement is the same, the words and melody are exactly the same, but this time the song has become a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat. The singer’s hubris is out the door. (This singer, i.e. me, is in a puddle.) The song has become an apology.

To what end? Duality, complexity. I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment.

This is our moment. What do we hear?

In the pub, on the occasion of this new year, as the room rises in a deafening chorus — “I did it my way” — I and this full house of Irish rabble-rousers hear in this staple of the American songbook both sides of the singer and the song, hubris and humility, blue eyes and red.

Bono, lead singer of the band U2 and co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

Childcare Policy

2009-01-12T08:37:00.003-06:00

Lessons from Quebec:

I have long appreciated Quebec's progressive childcare policies. Here is an article in the Economist that looks at what works and what doesn't. The article also discusses the costs.

I would like to discuss the cultural paradigm shift in population growth at some point in future.

Quebec's demography

The cradle's costly revenge
Jan 8th 2009 | MONTREAL
From The Economist print edition

A baby bump courtesy of the taxpayer

A French-speaking outpost in a predominantly English-speaking continent, Quebec has always been sensitive about its demographic prospects. For a long time these were encouraging. The province was legendary for its families of 15 or more children. Its population more than tripled between 1900 and 1960; its relative weight within North America also increased. The revanche du berceau (“revenge of the cradle”) dreamed of by some romantic nationalists as retaliation for the British conquest of 1759 didn’t seem so far-fetched.

Then came a sudden rebellion by Quebeckers against their Catholic heritage and church-dominated institutions. The birth rate plunged from the highest in Canada to the lowest. By the mid-1980s the fertility rate—the average number of children born to a woman—dropped to 1.36. Since a rate of 2.1 is needed to maintain a stable population, nationalists, and others too, began worrying about extinction.

This stung the provincial government into action. After much fine-tuning under several different administrations, signs have at last emerged that its efforts are bearing fruit. The first effort was a “bucks for babies” scheme. Parents were paid C$500 ($425 at today’s exchange rate) and C$1,000 for their first and second offspring respectively; subsequent children earned as much as C$8,000. But Quebeckers seemed to be unbribable.

So the government stepped in to support child care. While this can cost C$50 or more a day per child elsewhere in Canada, Quebec offers big subsidies to day nurseries and childminders provided they charge parents just C$5 a day (increased to C$7 in 2004). Despite long waiting lists for places, the province has developed a reputation as parent-friendly. Parts of Quebec bordering Ontario saw an influx of young families, even though the move involves paying much higher income tax.

Even so, the birth rate edged up only modestly. But in 2006 the Liberal provincial government of Jean Charest introduced a provision for parental leave that is more generous than anywhere else in North America. And at last the children came. The number of births in the province jumped almost 8% that year (with a particular bump in January as parents delayed conception to qualify for leave), and then a further 2.6% in 2007. Early figures for last year show the trend continuing. The fertility rate has risen to 1.66, still below the replacement level but higher than the national average.

“Baby boom is a big word. It’s more of a little bump,” cautions Céline Le Bourdais, a demographer at Montreal’s McGill University. “It will have to be seen over the long term.” From that perspective it may prove unsustainable. Both subsidised day care and the parental-leave programme, which allows parents to take almost a year off at up to three-quarters of their salary, have been popular beyond the government’s wildest projections. Their cost is way over budget. There are now 200,000 subsidised day-care places across the province, each costing about C$13,000 to the government, and with plans for 20,000 more within two years. The parental-leave programme, which was forecast to require C$1 billion annually, already costs 50% more.

At a provincial election last month Mr Charest managed to win a third term with a narrow majority (having governed with a legislative minority in his second term). With Canada’s economy sliding towards recession, the fiscal calculus is more complicated. So he may be tempted to cut spending on day care and parental leave. Both programmes help to make Quebec the most taxed and indebted place in North America. But they are popular, and many Quebeckers see them as a price worth paying to prevent a demographic death sentence for their culture.

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton

2008-09-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

TheStar.com -

September 05, 2008
Gloria Steinem
Los Angeles Times

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing – the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party – are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice-president.

We owe this to women – and to many men too – who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote.

We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: it won't work.

This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton.

Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton stood for – and Barack Obama still does.

To vote in protest for John McCain/Palin would be like saying: "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Senator Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice-presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

When asked about Iraq, she said: "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now, she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact Alaska has no state income or sales tax.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence.

The difference: McCain is filling a job that's one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom.

If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice-president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison or Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality.

She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town.

She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child.

She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child. So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Obama and Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

American author and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem is co-founder of the Women's Media Center. This column first appeared in The Los Angeles Times.

I am not really back....

2008-09-05T22:30:00.002-05:00

It's been a long time since I wrote and I don't have time to write often anymore, but I really needed to say some things!

The election talk on the both side of the border (Canada and US) is driving me nuts, specifically words such as "small town values", "family man", etc...

Values, my ass!

Why does the right wing live in 1700s?

People! Wake up! It is the 21st century. Not everyone has cows in their backyard. Women are not baby-popping beauty queens. Women have choice now. Gays and Lesbians have rights. Peace is valuable in this world. Racism is looked down upon. Guns kill people. First world countries provide their people with health care.

Going to an Ivy League school is not a crime, neither is drinking wine and eating cheese!

But again, maybe it's me! I am an Urban Liberal who is a latte-sipping wine-drinking non-religious elitist! and yes, I stand up for human rights, peace, reproductive choice, gay marriage and the environment. I believe in responsible family planning and don't think one's sole responsibility in this world is reproduction or copulation!

BTW, I might consider joining the Humanist life stance.

Mad Men: The Smartest Show, this summer

2008-07-01T22:00:00.003-05:00

From last week's New York Times:

‘Mad Men’ Has Its Moment
By ALEX WITCHEL

Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, “Mad Men,” ready for his close-up in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his staccato commentary was a scene in itself.

“He should be standing,” he said of an actor who was seated.

“That should be on the table,” he said of an accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor.

“They’re overreacting, paying too much attention to each other.” He heard himself and looked slightly sheepish. “You’ll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take,” he told me. “I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more perfunctory. Not that TV thing.” His smile was wry. “I’m very impatient.”

He should give himself a break. Everyone else has. “Mad Men,” about the world of advertising on Madison Avenue set in New York in the early 1960s, languished for years after being rejected by HBO and Showtime before the unlikely AMC (formerly known as American Movie Classics) picked it up, making for its first scripted drama series. The show had its premiere last summer and won instant critical acclaim, a Peabody Award and the Golden Globe Award for best drama. Its second season begins July 27; the DVD set of the first season goes on sale July 1.

Weiner (pronounced WHY-ner) is the creator and show-runner of “Mad Men,” which means the original idea was his: he wrote the pilot; he writes every episode of every show (along with four other people); he’s the executive producer who haggles for money (he says that his budget is $2.3 million per episode and that the average budget for a one-hour drama is $2.8 million); and he approves every actor, costume, hairstyle and prop. Though he has directed episodes, most of the time he holds a “tone meeting” with the director at which he essentially performs the entire show himself so it’s perfectly clear how he wants it done. He is both ultimate authority and divine messenger, some peculiar hybrid of God and Edith Head. “I do not feel any guilt about saying that the show comes from my mind and that I’m a control freak,” he told me. “I love to be surrounded by perfectionists, and part of the problem with perfectionism is that by nature, you’re always failing.”

Weiner’s achievements with “Mad Men,” which is produced by Lionsgate, are plentiful, starting with the storytelling. Setting it in the early 1960s, on the cusp between the repression and conformity of the cold war and McCarthy-era 1950s and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, allows Weiner an arc of character growth that is staggering in its possibilities. It also gives him the opportunity to mine the Rat Pack romance of that period, when the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the fog of too many martinis — whether exhilarating or nauseating — and the silhouettes specific to bullet bras only heightened the headiness of the dream that all men might one day become James Bond or, at the very least, key holders to the local Playboy Club.

Deepening the tension between that fantasy and reality, Weiner has put Sterling Cooper, the fictional ad agency that employs the show’s characters, on the old-school, WASP side of the equation, letting them revel in their racism, sexism and anti-Semitism. It was during that period that the creative revolution in advertising was taking off at agencies like Grey and Doyle Dane Bernbach, where Jews and some women held leadership positions. That Sterling Cooper’s creative director, Don Draper, is played by Jon Hamm, a leading man in the Gregory Peck mold who manages to make his sometimes oblique and often heartless character into a sympathetic figure (and won a Golden Globe for best actor), eases the pain.

The show’s design, the almost fetishistically accurate sets and costumes, has been lauded from the start. But Weiner is wary of deifying the visual. “The design is not the star of the show,” he said as he led me through the offices of Sterling Cooper. “I don’t want to be distracted by it.” He never forgets that his characters are not movie stars; they are the people who go to the movies and try to emulate movie stars. “I’m against clean and glamorous,” he said. “I like to respect the popular culture, mass production and also people’s eccentricities. The temptation is to become Mannerist. People have old things and new things, and as someone who loves the period, it’s very hard to resist the idea of getting the perfect 1960 everything, but I want it to feel like a slice of life. People’s hair is messed up, there are sweat stains, their collars are not perfectly flat. The actors tie their own ties a lot of the time, and it makes a big difference.”

Read More Here...

Making it all they way! (for the wrong reasons!)

2008-06-26T20:28:00.004-05:00

I am not quite sure if this is a good thing that our little funny political sex scandal has made it all the way to the Economist!

For Julie Couillard, it must be some sort of a milestone!

Femme fatale
Jun 19th 2008 | MONTREAL
From The Economist print edition

Sex, lobbying and politics in Quebec

WHEN Maxime Bernier, a neophyte Conservative from Quebec, showed up to be sworn in as foreign minister last summer with a beautiful brunette in a plunging décolleté, it got him noticed. It also seemed to confirm the notion that Quebec produces a more dashing and dynamic brand of politician than the usual stodge. But now Mr Bernier's companion that day, Julie Couillard, has reinforced a less flattering stereotype: that Quebec is a place where politics mixes uncomfortably with corruption and criminals.

Last month Mr Bernier was sacked after Ms Couillard, who had ended their relationship, said that he had left classified documents at her home. What made this fatal for the minister was Ms Couillard's colourful past. Two of her former lovers were involved with a motorcycle gang that in the 1990s waged a murder-filled campaign for control of Quebec's drug market. One of the men had been murdered and left in a ditch a week before he and Ms Couillard were to wed. She married another biker (later a police informant), for whom her father grew marijuana. More recently, she lived with a third man with criminal ties who had bid on airport-security contracts (he later killed himself). Her earlier consorts included other mobsters.

When she took up with Mr Bernier, Ms Couillard worked for Kevlar Group, a property developer seeking a contract for a C$30m ($30m) government building in Quebec City. It was a Kevlar boss who introduced her to Mr Bernier. Federal officials concede that she lobbied the former minister. She also lobbied Bernard Côté, a senior adviser to Michael Fortier, the public-works minister, another Quebecker. And yes, Ms Couillard dated Mr Côté too. He has also resigned.

Ms Couillard chose not to accept an invitation to answer questions about her conquests from a House of Commons committee on June 18th. Stephen Harper, Canada's Conservative prime minister, originally chided the opposition as “gossipy old busybodies” for dwelling on Ms Couillard. But the remarkable career of a “one-woman wrecking crew” (as one newspaper called her) may prove damaging to a government that took power pledged to clean up sleaze. That applies especially in Quebec. The Conservatives won ten seats there in 2006 because of Liberal sleaze. Mr Bernier was their best hope of winning more—and thus endowing their minority government with a majority. The new symbol of Conservatism in Quebec is Ms Couillard.

_______________________________________

I was talking to my buddy who used to work for the government in Ottawa. He was quite disappointed that he didn't get a chance to meet her, when he was there!

There ya go! That says it all! She is a popular lady!

Life as we know it?

2008-06-17T13:36:00.004-05:00

As one friend entered a very emotional divorce process, one friend got married and another friend decided to go to a sperm bank!

All the above mentioned friends are pretty close to me and I have known them for years.

Niloofar and I went to high school together (starting 15 years ago). Our parents went to university together, too. So, I have known her the longest and her divorce hit me pretty hard.

A day after she broke the news of her separation, Alireza sent me picture of his surprise wedding! I have known him since I was 18 (he was 22 then). So, 11 years! As he put in his e-mail, he went back home for a 1 week visit, got married to this lovely lady (introduced by his parents) and then she arrived in UK last week.

At this point in time, nothing could shock me anymore, not even Katrina’s decision to go to a sperm back! I met Katrina 4 years ago as I started working for the government. We have been very close since.

Life is full of surprises and there is a lesson to be learned from all life experiences (as lived by people around us).

Looking at Niloo’s recent challenges (the model wife, as far as I know) I can see how much work goes into working out a marriage and yet, it may not be enough due to many circumstances such as environmental influences (in laws!). Also, I have begun to see that you might have to reinvent yourself and reorganize your path a few times in your lifetime, and that’s no easy task. Self-awareness will come in handy when all of a sudden you have to shift gears and restart your life (sometimes with jumper cables!).

But most of all, Alireza shocked me by his announment. The man who reads The God Delusion, did a very traditional thing and chose an arranged marriage. Interestingly enough, I admit that statistics show these marriages can be as successful as love marriages, for many cultural reasons. But again, it’s a very bold move for a man that I have known to be a Skeptic, and a smart one, too. At the end of the day, he might have made a good choice for himself.

But Katrina’s recent decision has really got me thinking. This morning I finally picked up the phone and told her that she is making a mistake. It might have been the Father’s Day events that went down this past weekend that got me thinking seriously about this. The bottom line is that no one likes to be the child of a test-tube. I understand her dilemma that she is running out of time (she is 42) and she has had a hard time finding a boyfriend (let alone a husband) but still, it is better to find a “live” sperm donor (i.e. a friend) than going to a sperm bank. At the end of our phone conversation I might have convinced her to go to a child psychiatrist and ask about the future mental health of a child that comes from a sperm bank and may never find a father figure in his/her life.

At the end of the day, what I think matters the least. Life is a weird thing, my friends!

My dearest best friend,

2008-06-08T13:45:00.005-05:00

First when I heard the news I was outraged and upset. I cried, screamed and cursed your inlaws and your husband for bringing so much pain on you. I had never known a more devoted and loving wife than you, despite all the extreme hardship that the marriage put you through. You gave it your best and asked for nothing in return. What you deserved was a medal for your heroism and not this.

But, that is yesterday's news.

Today, what I have to say is "Congratulations!". You are back. You are back to being a strong person of your own, in charge of your destiny.

You have many many difficult steps ahead of you. This is a very hard road to walk. But, you can do it. You have taken more difficult steps in your life before.

From today on, you have a new identity and an enormous number of opportunities ahead of you to develop and become your own PERSON.

I can only imagine how hard and painful this will be at the beginning. You got married young and you have had a life partner almost all your adult life. Losing a love is extremely painful. Getting used to your new identity as a single individual won’t be easy. But:

Welcome to 21st century, where women can have an independent identity of their own and do anything they put their mind to.

I am absolutely outraged and mad at your inlaws and your husband for not loving you for the amazing person that you are and the love that you offered them all these years, but we need to focus on the future.

Your future is bright and full of opportunities. You can be anything you want to be. A writer, an engineer, or anything else. Just name it.

From today on, you are a free agent in the universe. There are no limits to what you can do. All you need to do, is dream and that’s what you deserve.

Stay strong, and only focused on the future. Today is the first day of the rest of your (fantastic) life and all the injustice in the world, cannot ruin it.

We all love you and want to be there for you.

So I cheered for her....

2008-06-04T20:27:00.002-05:00

From Today's Globe and Mail by Judith Timson

So we haven't come a long way, baby

I cheered her on because she is a woman. There. Is that so wrong? Why shouldn't I, a middle-aged woman who has spent her adult life watching women fight for equality between the sexes, pin my hopes on the first woman to have a credible shot at the U.S. presidency?

Should I - and countless others - have backed off because she was imperfect? (Or because imperfection in a woman may be more ruinous than in a man running for public office?)

In any event, this is how, for all intents and purposes, and despite whatever political theatre took place last night in New York, the primary campaign ends. This is where Senator Hillary Clinton, her voice tinged with exhaustion but also laced with pride, faces the final chapter of her historic but unsuccessful bid to be president, ending a thrilling and at times infuriating primary campaign that told us as much about ourselves as it did about her.

It told us that American society still has trouble with the reality of a woman ascending to the most powerful political job in the land.

I know this is a discomfiting thought - even laughable to some - given the sheer political power Ms. Clinton amassed and the fact that she was once the Democratic front-runner.

According to the sexism-free scenario, Ms. Clinton lost the primary campaign fair and square, undone by her own complicated nature and questionable political instincts, and of course by all that baggage: "If only Bill had dropped dead of a heart attack," mused one woman I ran into on the street.

More importantly, Ms. Clinton was ambushed by the shining promise and utterly improbable, but enthralling, presence of Senator Barack Obama. But there are no simple narratives for a woman who wants to be the most powerful leader in the world. And no simple reactions to her, either.

Observing her stunning wins, her humiliating defeats, her amazing postvictory glow, her missteps and her astonishing mental toughness (she "kicked ass as a woman," Slate.com's Dahlia Lithwick said), we've run the full gamut of emotions, including elation, pride, disbelief, disappointment, irritation and even pity.

There were several times I actually became enraged over her fate. There were those gratuitous sexist slurs - like the one from novelist Kurt Andersen, who wrote in New York magazine that Ms. Clinton had "a Wal-Mart shopper's bad hair and big bum" in analyzing her connection with working-class folk.

Show me just one instance in which Mr. Obama was slagged over his physical appearance like that and I'll shut up.

Even Ms. Clinton's supporters were mocked. James Wolcott wrote in Vanity Fair that at first he thought the race was shaping up to be "a clash of entitlements, the messianics versus the menopausals." Tell that to the men who voted in droves for Ms. Clinton.

And even late in the campaign, a panel of political pundits tiresomely argued on CNN whether the term "white bitch" was indeed a fair way to describe Ms. Clinton because, as one Republican strategist said, she really was "abrasive, aggressive [and] irritating."

There will be time to gather all the artifacts that characterized the complicated run of Ms. Clinton - the Hillary "nutcracker," for instance, available on the Internet, or the video of television pundit Tucker Carlson saying that every time she comes on TV, "I involuntarily cross my legs."

This media climate permitted an atmosphere of hatred directed at Ms. Clinton that I think was unprecedented. And then they sought to make her invisible, by simply ignoring her, focusing more on Mr. Obama's victory laps than on the wide swath of voters she was still winning over in key states.

Sure, she smiled and gave her "I'm not going to quit on you" speech, but it must have burned. Middle-aged women are used to being ignored, but Ms. Clinton?

It certainly got to fans such as Libby Burnham, a Toronto lawyer and spokeswoman for Equal Voice, a Canadian organization that promotes women in politics. Ms. Burnham said she was "disgusted" by the treatment Ms. Clinton was receiving: "It is pick up your marbles and go home - we let you play and now let the boys work this out," she said.

I won't argue that this campaign was about sexism and nothing else. There was race, there was character, there were her own mistakes, some of them heart-sinking. There was war and an economic meltdown that has people genuinely afraid.

In fact, in light of what's at stake for Americans and hence the world, whether someone calls someone else a bitch may seem luxuriously irrelevant in the months to come.

In the meantime, praise will soon start flowing for Ms. Clinton, with her onetime political foes rushing to thank her for trying to shatter that glass ceiling, handing her the Ms. Role Model trophy, kind of like the Miss Congeniality award in a beauty pageant.

Even Mr. Obama expressed gratitude to his often merciless foe for giving his daughters something to look up to: "No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and your daughters will come of age," Mr. Obama said.

He offered that praise last month in Iowa, where, in a picture-perfect photo op, he bounded on stage with his gorgeous wife and daughters and roared in manly self-satisfaction about what a "nice-looking wife and kids" he had. Sounding a tad more entitled than the former first lady ever had.

You got the sense that even many of those who went over to Mr. Obama were conflicted at the demise of this particular dream - a woman as president. Whether that dream will now be delicately reconstituted as "a woman as vice-president" will of course depend on political machinations and on the capacity of both senators to stomach each other. It's been a long battle.

Last March, Newsweek magazine put Ms. Clinton on the cover with the words, "Hear her roar."

One reader e-mailed me to say that when she bought that issue, she stood arguing with a young female cashier who didn't agree it was important to vote for a woman. The older woman said she would be "inconsolable" when Ms. Clinton finally packed it in.

Not like a close friend in the States, who was never a Clinton supporter, but who called me recently to say she had finally, in her 50s, got up the nerve to apply for a top job. "I'm taking my lead from Hillary," she said wryly. "If she could do it, then so can I."

So the roar begets another kind of roar.

In the meantime, the debate goes on: What stopped Hillary Clinton from becoming president? Gender or character? Biology or baggage? Maybe all of the above.

Or maybe just Barack Obama.

The End of an Era

2008-06-03T22:04:00.002-05:00

Putting aside "what Hillary did wrong" or "where her campaign went wrong" or "when she should have conceded" we all agree that:

Tonight marked the end of an era and started a new chapter.

The era when we believed a woman could win the presidential election and a chapter in which we believe a black man can win the US presidential election.

For women, next time, you say? I hope so, or at least during my child's time (if I ever have one)

For now, we are wondering "will there be a ticket?" or "can a former first lady accept a VP position?" or "will Obama want Hillary on his ticket?"

Here is to hoping.

Happiness? Ignorance is bliss?

2008-06-02T23:43:00.002-05:00

An interesting piece by Margaret Wente from Saturday's Globe and Mail

The happiness... gap
Why conservatives are (gasp) happier than liberals
MARGARET WENTE

Here's a bit of bad news for all my latte-loving, liberal-leaning friends who believe that jobs in retail stink, traditional religion is for morons, and income inequality has made society a lot worse off.

You're a miserable bunch.

I don't mean miserable, as in contemptible. I mean that as a group, you are not particularly happy people. In fact, you're far less likely to be happy with your lives than, say, a gun-owning truck driver who goes to church, shops at Wal-Mart, and makes half the money you do.

So says Arthur Brooks, who's spent the past few years exploring what makes us happy. "This is counterintuitive to urban elites," he says. "We think nobody can be happy but us."

Over breakfast earlier this week, Mr. Brooks, a political scientist at Syracuse University, shared a few other surprises about happiness. For example, despite their 35-hour work weeks and long vacations, the French are less happy than Americans. Most Americans who work are amazingly happy with their jobs, even if they work at Wal-Mart. Happiness and income are not closely related. Churchgoing people are happier than secular ones, married happier than unmarried. And people who give away their money are the happiest of all.

The study of happiness is a thriving field these days. Entire scholarly journals are devoted to the subject, as well as tons of books. For his book, Gross National Happiness, Mr. Brooks decided to delve into the data. He discovered mountains of large-scale, reliable surveys that go back for decades. According to the data, conservatives are nearly twice as likely as liberals to say they're happy - and the gap has persisted for at least a generation.

What explains the happiness gap? Two of the biggest factors are marriage and religion, which are powerfully correlated with happiness. Two-thirds of conservatives are married, while only a third of liberals are. Conservatives are also twice as likely to go to a house of worship once a week.

There's another factor, too, which, he argues, centres on world view. Conservatives generally believe that people who work hard can get ahead and be successful. They believe success is in their own control. Liberals are more inclined to believe in collective solutions to social problems - and that people's success depends on factors outside their control. "I compared poor conservatives with rich liberals," he told me. "Ninety per cent of poor conservatives say that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantage. But only 65 per cent of rich liberals believe that."

Mr. Brooks has focused his lens on the United States, which, as some of believe, is to Canada as Mars is to Venus. So why should these findings apply to us? Maybe they don't. Or maybe (as I suspect), the two countries aren't as different as we sometimes think. In culture and values, Canada is probably closer to the United States than it is to Europe. Like the United States, we are populated with immigrant stock, which makes us more genetically inclined than Europe toward entrepreneurship, individual initiative and risk-taking. And though Canada is undoubtedly less religious and more liberal, our social-policy debates have closely tracked those in the United States.

For example, liberals in both countries believe income inequality is our biggest social problem. But Mr. Brooks argues that when you look at what actually affects people's happiness, it's not. "What makes people miserable is the sense that they don't have equality of opportunity," he says. Or take the matter of work. You'd think (especially if you're a professor or a journalist) that sewer-cleaners, cleaning ladies and burger-flippers would be unhappy with their jobs. But that's not the case. The data say that 89 per cent of all people who work more than 10 hours a week are happy or very happy with their work. The overwhelming majority of people who work like to work. The main reason is that it gives them a feeling of achievement.

"Work is an authentic source of happiness, and idleness - especially involuntary idleness - is a source of pure misery," Mr. Brooks says. Work gives life meaning. Even among the nickel-and-dimed set, he found, 87 per cent of people are satisfied with their jobs. And job satisfaction is highly correlated with life satisfaction.

It turns out that your mother was right. Happiness has very little to do with materialistic stuff at all. It mostly comes (and I shudder to say these words) from family, faith, friends and the dignity of work. This is a truth that Mr. Brooks thinks the urban elites ought to try to grasp. "The majority of people are very happy with these yucky traditional values," he says. "They work very well."

Who, then, are the unhappiest of them all? Look in the mirror, dear reader, for it may be you. Researchers have found that lifetime happiness is shaped like a U. It has a big sag in the middle. "Statistically, the saddest year in a man's life is age 44," he tells me merrily. "By then your spouse has figured out that you're a bore. You're not that fun, and you're not gonna change. You have adolescents in the house. And you've found that success and money aren't the same thing." For men, all these chickens come home to roost in their mid-to-late 40s. (Women also have a middle-aged slump, but they tend to suffer somewhat less.)

If you are 44, I have good news. Soon you will be 50, and things will start looking up. Happiness studies show that healthy people who are 70 are just as happy as people who are 20.

By the end of breakfast, Mr. Brooks has explained why almost everything I believed when I was 20 was entirely wrong. Many of the things I thought would bring me happiness did not, and many things that I despised (e.g., marriage) did. So what now? Alas, I'm not religious. Is there any other way to increase my happiness?

Yes, he tells me. Be philanthropic. People who volunteer or give money to charity are 43 per cent more likely than non-givers to say they are very happy. Conservatives are more charitable than liberals, which is another reason why they're happier. And the more you give, the happier you get.

In other words, money really can buy happiness after all - but only if you give it away.

Two Weddigns and a Baby Shower

2008-06-01T21:10:00.004-05:00

Frankly, I am disappointed! The show (Sex and the City) that looked outside the box when it came to women's choices of lifestyle, produced a movie that should have been called "Two Weddings and a Baby Shower".

I don't deny that any "love story" sells, but seriously, Cinderella was made for preschoolers, not 40 year old women! Why is every woman's happiness in getting married and pregnant these days?

Oh, for the record, based on Mr. Big's personality (and history) I doubt he would give into getting married to Carrie. Ever!

Yuk! I hate fairy tales and I hate fake happiness and I hate bad stories. The picture on the right pretty much summarizes my feelings toward this movie! Shoot me!

Ambition and The City

2008-05-29T22:35:00.002-05:00

A great essay by Paul Graham (via Richard Florida)

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to.

When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful.

That's not quite the same message New York sends. Power matters in New York too of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate agents. What matters in Silicon Valley is how much effect you have on the world. The reason people there care about Larry and Sergey is not their wealth but the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone.

When you talk about cities in the sense we are, what you're really talking about is collections of people. For a long time cities were the only large collections of people, so you could use the two ideas interchangeably. But we can see how much things are changing from the examples I've mentioned. New York is a classic great city. But Cambridge is just part of a city, and Silicon Valley is not even that. (San Jose is not, as it sometimes claims, the capital of Silicon Valley. It's just 178 square miles at one end of it.)

Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one day the most important community you belong to will be a virtual one, and it won't matter where you live physically. But I wouldn't bet on it. The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle.

One of the exhilarating things about coming back to Cambridge every spring is walking through the streets at dusk, when you can see into the houses. When you walk through Palo Alto in the evening, you see nothing but the blue glow of TVs. In Cambridge you see shelves full of promising-looking books. Palo Alto was probably much like Cambridge in 1960, but you'd never guess now that there was a university nearby. Now it's just one of the richer neighborhoods in Silicon Valley.

A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It's not something you have to seek out, but something you can't turn off. One of the occupational hazards of living in Cambridge is overhearing the conversations of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. But on average I'll take Cambridge conversations over New York or Silicon Valley ones.

A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping. At the time I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. Sure, it can be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but is good quality eavesdropping so important that it would affect where you chose to live? Now I understand what she meant. The conversations you overhear tell you what sort of people you're among.

Much much more here

Chris De Burgh and Arian in Iran

2008-05-28T17:40:00.001-05:00

Lady In Red star Chris De Burgh will be the first Western artist to play a concert in Iran since the country's 1979 revolution, according to reports.

Authorities in Tehran have approved a plan for the Irish singer to play with Iranian pop group Arian, the group's manager told Reuters news agency.

De Burgh recently recorded a song, The Words I Love You, with the band.

Western pop songs with lyrics are banned in Iran, although state radio sometimes plays instrumental versions.

Iranians wanting to record an album or stage a concert need to get official permission.

Last month, the government announced a campaign against rap music, which it considers obscene.

But De Burgh, known for soft rock ballads like Don't Pay The Ferryman, seems unlikely to raise the ire of the ministry for culture and Islamic guidance - although he may want to leave Patricia The Stripper off his set list.

Arian's manager, Mohsen Rajabpour, told Reuters that the ministry for culture had "officially announced that there is no problem with holding a joint performance".

"We are trying to organise the concerts, scheduled for June and July," he added, confirming a report carried by Iran's Fars new agency.

The plan is to hold the concert at a 12,000-seat stadium complex in Tehran.

De Burgh is expected to visit Iran early next year as a tourist for discussions on the project.

Calls to the singer-songwriter's management by the BBC were not immediately returned.

Introducing:

2008-05-26T22:40:00.005-05:00

the blogger known as Petite Anglaise, who just released her first book, a memoir about blogging through some profound changes in her life:

A long-suffering Francophile, Catherine Sanderson spent years pining for the romance and allure of France from her dull surroundings across the Channel. Finally, she lands a job in Paris (albeit at a satellite office of a British accounting firm), a handsome Frenchman (who is increasingly preoccupied and less available), and a charming apartment with sweeping views of the city skyline. Soon after, she gives birth to a baby girl and the dream seems complete. But the triple whammy of motherhood, stale romance, and the daily grind begins to sour Catherine’s Parisian fantasy.

One slow day at work, she reads an article about starting a blog and–voilà–Petite Anglaise is born. Initially, the virtual Catherine muses about expat life and the adventures of raising a bilingual toddler, but before long the blog evolves into a raw forum to air her most intimate desires. Petite becomes a powerful alter ego and the blog a haven for her to think out loud, miles away from the real world and its consequences. But when the real world and the virtual one collide, sending Catherine into a tailspin, she must reconcile her life and her creation.

Fizzing with the candor, wit, and panache that have drawn millions to her blog and attracted the attention of publishers around the world, Petite Anglaise offers a decidedly fresh twist on the classic story of reinvention abroad: how a young woman transforms herself wielding the power of a mouse.

The Best of Years

2008-05-25T17:36:00.003-05:00

What if these are the very best years of ours? And if they are, why are we letting them go by so easily?

If these are my best years, how come I am not doing what I was born to do?

By the way, what was I born to do? I think I must have forgotten that.

If these are my best years, how come I am not in Paris, or in love, or close to my best friends?

My best year are going by, and I just go to work and come home at night.

Where did passion go? Where did MY passion go?

Big is in town, for a couple of days. I will arrange to go see him. I be sure to ask him the same thing. Why aren't we having fun anymore? Why aren't we in love with life anymore?

Working Girl

2008-05-21T21:59:00.001-05:00

From this month's Economist:

Working Girl

Barbara Walters

IN 1964 NBC's “Today” show suddenly needed a new girl. The programme always had a glamorous “girl” to handle the weather and lighter stories, but the previous one was addicted to prescription drugs and the one before her had a drink problem. “Why not Barbara?” asked Hugh Downs, the show's host, referring to Barbara Walters, the programme's lone female writer. She wasn't beautiful or well known, but she knew the ropes and would “work cheap”.

“Well, like the ingénue in a corny movie, there I was: the patient and long overlooked understudy,” writes Ms Walters in her candid new memoir, “Audition”. Having toiled in the shadows for years, writing scripts and making coffee, she finally got her big on-air break. Don Hewitt, a TV producer, had assured her she would never make it because she had the wrong looks and couldn't pronounce her “r”s properly. Ms Walters duly avoided sentences with a lot of “r”s in them.

NBC's 13-week contract turned into 13 years at “Today” and nearly half a century in front of the camera, breaking gender barriers and securing interviews when other journalists were turned down. Her genial, empathetic style won fans and friends. “Barbara, are you hungry?” Fidel Castro asked after a marathon interview in Cuba before whipping up a sandwich. Anwar Sadat's grieving widow admitted, “you were the only one I was ever jealous of because Anwar liked you so much.” Ms Walters earned a reputation for finding something soft in her subjects. “Asking the right questions has always been less important than listening to the answers,” she explains.

She helped support her family (her father was an unlucky nightclub impresario), and she remains haunted by her impatience with her disabled sister. Her insecurities—some of them financial—pushed her to work harder. “Make no mistake: television is a demanding business...it is hell on your social and romantic life,” she writes.

Indeed, Ms Walters's entertaining tome, which picks up considerably after the first 75 pages, describes three failed marriages, many complicated love affairs (including with Alan Greenspan and Edward W. Brooke, a senator) and a tough stretch with her adopted daughter. But the author seems reconciled with her many memories, and proud of her stories. It is for good reason that she now owns a ring inscribed with the words, “I did that already”.

Party of One

2008-05-18T22:16:00.012-05:00

As I packed in the morning I kept wandering where I was heading and why.

A harmless trip, I thought. Like I always, I was travelling alone. But it felt I was trying to prove something to myself. As I hit the road, I took the back roads, the scenic routes and I admired my own navigational skills. "I've still got it".

As soon as I muttered those words, it occurred to me that this was no ordinary trip. I was running away from my 29yr old self, trying to be 25 again!

When I turned 25, I experienced true love (which of course had to end in tragedy), then I moved to Europe, travelled all by myself, found my first permanent full-time job as a professional and my life changed forever! I found myself for the first time. I had grown a personality. I was somebody. In fact, I was a grown, self-sufficient capable free woman. I was proud of who I had become.

Then, I made a few bad decisions from 26 to 29. I dated the guy also known as "the perv who was into foursomes", then "the moron who wanted a 'white' wife", ran in the municipal elections (which introduced me to the dark world of cynicism and disappointment) and then dated the guy also known as "the perv who cheated on me with my secretary".

So, last April, I finally crashed. I lost all respect for me and for my life. Last summer I decided to quit dating. Mr. Big moved away and I lost another person who knew me well. I stuck to work. Got my P.Eng. License, got a new job and moved to a new neighbourhood. I needed a change and I got it. But when when it was all said and done, it was time for me to look the truth in the face and finally deal with it:

I am a mess.

I haven't been able to find me (the woman with a lot of character and strength). I have gone into a frenzy obsessing about turning 30 next year, and gone back in time and stuck to the last time I really liked myself: when I was 25.

I am trying to get out of this hole. But it is too deep.

So, I ran away this weekend, looking for my 25-yr old self. I checked into my hotel, a couple of hours later I had my dinner (with some wine) and finally a therapeutic massage (see the view from the Spa at Sheraton) and I was ready to go to my room, when I got invited to a party with some 26-27 yr olds. My 25 yr old self was not going to decline the invitation, nor reject the unknown drink that was being served.

I needed the lesson.

There were many things that I couldn't remember from the time I was 25. I returned to my room only one hour into the party, throwing up until morning. It suffices to say when paramedics showed up and gave me an IV, I remembered 25 was also about silly experiments (with unknown drinks, unknown smokes and unknown people).

I am not silly any more. I am older.

It's true I am a much more cynical person, but that's because I have been crushed and walked all over. I am a more cautious person, because I know a thing or two about bad decisions.

Even though this weekend's trip wasn't what I had planned, it turned out to be an eye opener.

I often think about leaving my life behind and moving to New York, San Francisco or Paris and go to school again. The thought of moving away and starting a new life is very exciting and attractive because it makes me feel 25 again and it helps me run away from me (which is what I do best)

I am done with 25. I started with 25 four years ago, but if I cannot build on it, I will stay in silly forever.

Today, I am 29 and I am wiser for it.

Yet, there is a long road ahead. I need to find me again, love and respect me again. Where do I begin?

Deja Vu

2008-05-12T23:08:00.006-05:00

A sign of getting old is yearning for oldies music.

I was at the local beauty salon for regular maintenance and all of a sudden an Ace of Base song came on the radio! Sherry (my beauty consultant, a.k.a the girl who does my nails and facials) and I started singing it loudly.

Ace of Base, Aqua, Backstreet Boys (and some other bands that I cannot remember off top of my head now) were my teenage bands. They make me feel 15 again.

Check this out:

My Deja Vu by Ace of Base

The Sign by Ace of Base

Once Sherry and I (both 29 years old) got started on old times, we both realized we would like to be 15 again, or 19 or 25.

Oh, boy! What I do not give to be 25 again: broke, with a backpack in Europe!

This whole grown-up thing is not fun! This past weekend, while I was heading to the beauty salon to get my nails and hair done, some woman sold me on a bunch of anti-wrinkle creams!

I have been thinking about how I would like to celebrate my 30th birthday. What could I possibly do to make myself feel good about turning 30?

Ideas? Please? and don't tell me Vegas! (reminds me of Rebecca Eckler's story of how she got knocked up on her 30th birthday/engagement party!)

For Victoria Day long weekend (this weekend) I have booked a hotel room and a spa appointment in Niagara Falls. I am packing my golf clubs, my laptop and my thesis (of course!) in my car, heading to Niagara to enjoy some peace and quiet, relax and celebrate the summer.

No (single) man's land!

2008-05-04T11:57:00.010-05:00

It's that time of year again. You know, patio season, time to plan camping/hiking trips and fun. The time that all of a sudden I realize: Oops, I still don't have a boyfriend!

Well, it's that time of year again! Time to look for a boyfriend!

For 2 years, I had been receiving e-mails from this dating service: Dinner Works. I thought I would give them a chance, eventhough I was skeptical. I know that most eligible men are married or gay, and most eligible women single and looking. No dating service can perform magic, given those odds!

They had organized a "Drinks for Professionals" night somewhere downtown Toronto. The term "Professional" means "people with jobs". Well, I figured at least you won't get the "unemployed, looking for a free ride" type! I paid my $20 online and signed up (that was just a cover charge).

I have to admit, the turn out was good. About 50 people showed up. The age range for the event was 25-45, but I could swear at least 5 guys were 55 and over. There was also one guy with a toupee, one who couldn't speak English (I can see how that could be a hindrance in finding a woman), one guy that sat in the corner and sipped his rum and coke, one short, bald guy in a tight suit that kept complaining about the temperature and one guy that seemed awfully nice and kept talking to me. The rest were 35 eligible, dressed up, good looking women, talking amongst each other!

About the nice guy, well, he had some sort of an accent. I don't know how to put it delicately, but it was more like THE ACCENT OF DENIAL! The man was so gay, he could have been wearing a pink skirt and it wouldn't be more obvious:

"This lounge has beautiful interior decor! What do you think?".... "I love love your blouse! Where did you get it?"...."I envy you! When it comes to home renovations, I can't event put a nail in the wall"

Well, I don't think "the wall" was the only thing he couldn't nail. But he was a nice guy that insisted on having my number! Surprise, surprise, he didn't CALL!

So, you get the picture! The City is out of men, single-heterosexual that is!

At that event, someone mentioned "eHarmony" and how effective it is. I figured, I could waste another $45, so what the heck, I will try that!

Last weekend, I signed up for eHarmony. If you have seen the commercials, this doctor dude (Dr. Warren) has invented (!) a system to match people based on their personalities!

I started receiving matches on my profile as early as the next day. The good news is that anyone I have ever broken up with, is single and still looking, on eHarmony!

Now, when I say This City is Out of Men, you believe me, right?

My first match was my first boyfriend! Some of you know him. He is the one that 6 years ago told me "you either marry me in the next 6 months or, I can't guarantee that I will still be available" (he needed a visa). As it turns out, he is still available! (he has just lost some hair, gained some weight, but at least has a job and permanent visa now!)

2 days later, I was matched with a couple of more guys that I met for a few drinks 2 years ago. We didn't end on bad terms, but well, we are not exactly socializing anymore.

AWKWARD!

Who's the doctor now? Dr. Warren is matching me with people I had already tried! I think with my dating experience, I can do a much better job than stupid Dr. Warren does! I want to kill him! Where does he live? in California?

Yesterday, I checked again and I had new matches, one of which was a guy that I had a crush on, 10 years ago. Let's just say the crush ended really fast when we got to know each other as friends. Last time I heard, he was commuting between Toronto and Dubai. But as it turns out, he is out looking, too!

Talk about recycling!

So, I can't wait to find more matches on this service! I have a few single guy friends that will probably be matched with me, on this service, sooner or later!

What does a girl have to do to find a nice/educated/employed boyfriend in this city?

It looks like I have already met all the single men in this city of 4 million, one way or another! All I am saying is that This city is No (single) Man's Land!

Then she discovered the “Drive Through”

2008-04-30T20:31:00.003-05:00

I have been living in the suburbia for more than a month now, and working in the suburbia for 3 weeks. I now own a car, and play golf on the weekends!!!

This morning, I discovered a drive-through Starbucks on my way to work. Sweet!

That’s true! when in suburbia, you do as the suburbans do!

I can hear the “I told you so”s already. But I have to admit, I don’t hate it. It’s just different and I think temporary, but not necessarily bad.

It’s no secrete that I have had a love affair with urbanism for years. In fact, my new apartment is full of big pictures of New York. I am ALL about public transit, little Cafés, mom and pop dry cleaners and beauty salons. But there are things that I have come to appreciate in Suburbia as well.

It’s quiet, clean, manicured and family-friendly. Every house has a couple of kids that come out in the afternoon to play on the sidewalk. On the weekend, people are gardening, adding more beauty to their big manicured landscape. Within walking distance, you can find a ravine, a small forest with a trail and perhaps a small lake with a boat club beside it. There is not a lot of traffic, the weather feels clean and there are no sky-scrapers blocking the view in any direction.

In my area, if you are into jogging or walking a good distance, you can run your errands locally, as well. If I drop off my car at the dealership for an oil change (a mile from the house), I can drop off my dry-cleaning, grab a coffee and buy my groceries in time to pick up the car. Not too bad for suburbia, huh?

But you know what I miss the most? It’s the foot traffic and having a choice of which dry-cleaner’s, hair salon, spa and shoe-repair store you want to go to. To be able to get some human interaction and find a little variety in stores, you need to drive a good 15 minutes, or you are stuck with what you have in the vicinity: one of each.

But even in this part of the suburbia, I can see a good sense of community. Just a month ago, people were offering to shovel the snow in each other’s drive-way. The local Starbucks gives my dad a free coffee every now and then for being a loyal customer and the neighbor’s kids like to say hello when you get home and park in the driveway.

I am yet to try the local community centers. I hear they have nice swimming pools and gym facilities. The good thing about driving is that you can always leave your gym bag and your golf clubs in the back of the car, so that you can stop by, at the spur of the moment if you like.

That’s all.

The City Gal is dismissed for now.

Large and in Charge!

2008-04-16T21:50:00.002-05:00

From Today's Globe and Mail

Spain's first majority female cabinet - including a seven-months-pregnant Defence Minister - reflects a greater European shift away from 'criminal machismo.' Siri Agrell reports

As the U.S. electorate continues to ask whether it is prepared for a female commander-in-chief, Spain watched its new Defence Minister inspect her troops this week, a maternity blouse doing little to obscure the fact that she is seven months pregnant.

Over the weekend, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero named the country's first majority female cabinet, with nine of 17 ministries headed by women.

Among his appointments was 37-year-old Defence Minister Carme Chacon, the government's former minister for housing and a constitutional law professor who studied in Toronto and Montreal, and is expecting her first child.

Ms. Chacon (a constitutional law professor who studied in Toronto and Montreal)has pledged to boost the number of women in Spain's armed forces, which first allowed female members in 1988 and is part of the NATO engagement in Afghanistan.

Her high-profile position in the new government came after Mr. Zapatero's Socialist Party won its second four-year term in a March 9 election and the Prime Minister named women's issues as his priority, placing female ministers in charge of Science and Innovation, Development, Housing, Sport, Environment and Public Administration.

He also named a woman as Deputy Prime Minister and created a new Equality Ministry, which will be filled by the country's youngest-ever minister, 31-year-old Bibiana Aido. The new office was created to promote opportunities for women in Spain, address violence against women and combat what Mr. Zapatero has dubbed "criminal machismo."

A photograph taken of the Spanish leader and the women in his cabinet this week may have looked more like a Vogue shoot than a paradigm shift, but is much more than a photo op.

Last year, Spain introduced a bill requiring certain firms to employ 40 per cent women at top-ranking positions, and Mr. Zapatero has proudly referred to himself as feminist.

"I am very proud to be the Prime Minister who for the first time has made a woman Defence Minister," Mr. Zapatero said after he was sworn in on the weekend. "Moreover, I feel very proud that there are more female ministers than male."

Jeffrey Kopstein, a professor of European studies at the University of Toronto, said the new Spanish government is part of a larger shift within the European Union to make political representation and policy more reflective of society, especially when it comes to gender.

Last year, Finland became the first European country to appoint a majority female cabinet and, in 2002, Norway introduced a law that required state-owned and some private companies to fill their boards at least 40 per cent with women by January of this year. And last spring, the Portuguese parliament legalized abortion after a referendum on the subject.

"In the case of Norway and the Scandinavian countries in general, people aren't all that surprised," Dr. Kopstein said. "With Mediterranean countries, it's more surprising because the preconception is that they are macho cultures."

But the effort to expedite gender equality across Europe has been motivated by several factors, he said. From a purely political standpoint, Dr. Kopstein said, putting women in cabinet positions is a move that appeals to female voters.

But it is part of a larger, continent-wide reaction to the European Court of Justice, a judicial body that operates like a Supreme Court of Europe.

"One of the things they're allowed to rule on is equal pay for equal work, and that has allowed the European Court of Justice to take a very outspoken line on all kinds of gender-relation issues," Dr. Kopstein said. "And what they rule, you have to follow."

In the case of Spain, the government is also trying to bring social policies in line with the country's relatively new and prosperous democracy.

"Spain and Portugal are like the California and Oregon of Europe," said Dr. Kopstein, referring to the Iberian Peninsula's economic and tourism credentials. "These are countries that have developed their economies and have consolidated their democracies against long odds and now they're kind of headed down the route of what you might call social modernization."

Women in Politics

2008-04-08T22:58:00.003-05:00

Introducing 2 books by Cokie Roberts:

Founding Mothers

In the histories of the American Revolution, much has been written about America's founding fathers, those brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution. Yet the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who supported, encouraged, and even advised them have been virtually ignored.

In Founding Mothers, New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts brings to light the stories of the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, sometimes even defending their very doorsteps from British occupation.

Drawing upon personal correspondence and private journals, Founding Mothers brings to life the everyday trials, extraordinary triumphs, and often surprising stories of Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Reed Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Martha Washington, and other patriotic and passionate women, each of whom played a role in raising our nation.

Ladies of Liberty

In Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts paid homage to the women who helped establish our nation. Now she continues the story of more remarkable women and their achievements in moving the fledgling nation foward, from the election of John Adams in 1796 to the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828.

Roberts reveals the often surprising and compelling stories of determined and passionate woman who courageously faced the challenges of times and laid the groundwork for a better society, including: Dolley Madison, the strong-willed woman whose bravery and insight shaped the new capital of Washington, DC, during peace and war. Thoedosin Burr, Aaron Burr's devoted daughter, a brilliant, independent, highly educated, and freethinking woman ahead of her time who was groomed for greatness by her doting father.

Barack Obama on The View 2 weeks ago:

Women: Would Michelle sit on cabinet meetings?
Obama: No, she has no interest in that. She has her priorities straight. She would like to take care of the children.

Choosing My Confessions!

2008-04-04T23:24:00.009-05:00

What I am going to write tonight is very personal. So, please bear with me.

I think I have partially found my answer, or at least I think I know "why" I ask "so what", now more than ever, as I am approaching 30.

Unlike other girls, growing up, I never had dreams of getting married or having children. Even as I grew out of my teen years, I never saw myself wearing a white dress or taking care of the garden in the backyard of a house that I would share with a husband. Give or take one or two, I never took guys seriously.

To this day, the idea of a "wedding" or a house with a couple of children and a man I call "husband" makes me uncomfortable. I really don't see myself in that picture.

Not that there is anything wrong with that picture, it's just that I dont see "me" in that picture. I like my friends' husbands. I like other people's weddings. Just not my own.

So, you could say: something, somewhere must have gone wrong. True, but I don't think it really matters what, when and why.

Did I tell you that Deborah Coyne came to my door a while back to ask for my vote in the Liberal nomination? I never asked myself why I thought she was my kind of gal as soon as we spoke. Was it because she was not conventional? The fact that she was not into "white picket fences"? Did I admire her for being so educated? For having done so much with her life? Or the fact that she had a love relationship with the (most popular) Prime Minister of Canada and had a child with him without being apologetic about it? Was it because she broke all the rules (traditions, not ethical rules) and lived her life her own way?

The fact that I am not a conventional or traditional person is clear to everyone. I don't even have a religion anymore. But until I moved to the suburbs (the neighbourhood of beautiful white picket fences) I had never realized how much I do not belong.

As I am approaching my 30s, my differences with main stream thinking become more apparent. I am approaching an age associated with thoughts of getting married, buying a house and having a couple of kids. But since such plans have never been on my agenda, I have found the vacuum that they have created for me: "What are my life plans? What is next? What am I working so hard for?"

If my mom was listening, she would say if I meet some that I like, I will fall in love, then I will have the desire to have a wedding, a house and a couple of kids. I guess it could happen. It is possible, but not so probable.

I have been in love before. I have had the desire to be a part of someone else's life, to share dreams and possibly conquer the world together. I have also often thought of adopting a girl from China. It shouldn't come as a shock then, that I have mostly picked educated men with big dreams and no desire to settle down, to fall in love with.

So, I ask myself: What do I want to do with my life? Do I want to try to fit into the norm? Do I want to give the idea of "marriage, kids and a house" a good try? Or should I start planning my life "my way", completely outside the box?

So, now you know. I am scared and I have not yet found that special goal that will define my life for me. Well, I have strong ethical values, I am passionate about human rights, my profession is saving the environment and I like learning (possibly going back to school again). But somehow all those, don't seem good enough. Life is bigger than all of those, at least I want mine to be.

Who am I? Why was I born? How can I best live my life? What makes me happy? What can one dedicate his/her life to other than raising a family?

Now that I have "lost my religion", where do I search? Where do I look? Where are the gods? Have I said too much?

Losing My Religion by R.E.M

Who's Your City by Richard Florida

2008-04-03T14:21:00.003-05:00

From the new book that I just received in the mail, by Richard Florida:

link: www.whosyourcity.com

When does it end? (by Paisley)

2008-04-01T21:50:00.004-05:00

I swear these days at The City Gal headquarters things are pretty depressing.

The City Gal is all hung up on the purpose of life and meaning of being, etc. If she hadn't ruled it out, I would have gone with the PMS diagnosis, but I am afraid her problem is rather deep!

I am not sure whether I was invited here to write or become her personal shrink! I would like to charge $80/hour that apparently she used to pay Louis for this purpose! Shout out to Louis!

What I don't understand is that why she is not capable of enjoying her life the way it is. I know people that would kill to have an engineering degree, a good job and a supportive family. But no! She is looking for some sort of promised land, or utopia, if you will. Or I think she is searching for this "special thing" that she wants to define her life with. Until then, I have to sit here and listen to her complain!

Can't we just define life by living it? No, here at The City Gal headquarters we need to find this magic trick that she wants to perform so that her "being alive" is worth it. Worth what? Anyone knows the address to coo-coo land?

Between you and me, I think her problem is, for the lack of a better word, a little-something-something. (I will be fired from the blog as soon as this is published!)

I am just sayin'!

To be fair, she is meeting her (masters) project supervisor tomorrow and she has a couple of days to get some real work done before her first day on the new job (Monday). Personally, I think she has really screwed up this masters thing!

Can anyone cue the band for some music here?

I said music, I didn't say depressing music! Jeez!

Spicing Things Up

2008-03-31T13:34:00.002-05:00

Here at The City Gal headquarters, we are sorry that things have been slow. It has been a busy time, but there is a new plan to spice things up. There are 2 new staff members recently hired (Paisley and Eli) that will work under the supervision of The City Gal.

The City Gal: Welcome aboard guys.I am very glad to have found you!

Paisley: Thank you! I am very excited to get started.

Eli: I hope we can make this place a popular blog.

The City Gal: I am sure the readers are excited to get to know you better. Would you please say a few words about yourselves?

Paisley: Well, I am young, opinionated and bold like The City Gal herself. I would like to call it like I see it: through the eyes of a young and free woman. I hope there is no censorship here at The City Gal headquarters, because I am ready to spice things up!

Eli: I suppose my contribution here will be from a male's perpective. I will keep up with day to day global events and bring the highlights to your attention as much as my free time allows. These are interesting times we live in.

The City Gal: I am really grateful to both of you. Again, welcome aboard.

Earth Hour

2008-03-29T16:07:00.003-05:00

Will turn off lights and light some candles tonight 8-9 pm.

My mom has invited about 40 people over. It will be dark and crowded. People will be drunk. I expect it to be a hoot!

Pictures

2008-03-25T12:55:00.000-05:00

It's one minute past midnight!

2008-03-15T00:01:00.002-05:00

For the past 7 days, I have been busy covering myself with all kinds of cuts and bruises!

Let me rephrase: I have been packing and moving all by myself! Tomorrow (I mean today, since it is past midnight) will be the last push!

Oh boy! And believe it or not (I don't care what you think) my biological birthday is a few days before my legal birthday (on my birth certificate). I guess I was born a few days earlier than my parents expected, but they still wanted me to be born on March 22! Go figure!

Anyways, as of tomorrow (I mean a minute ago) I will (am) 29 years old!

Oh boy! Scotch on the rocks anyone? I need to get drunk!

She is my latest obsession!

20 something!

2008-03-04T10:05:00.007-06:00

I only have a week or two left before my last birthday as a "20 something" yr-old woman. I also have another week or so before I become a Suburban Girl!

The City Gal will soon be starting a new job as an Environmental Consultant in one of Toronto's busy/commercial suburbs, and since she does not believe in commuting, she is moving to the area as well. She will be closer to her parents (as well as pretty much all relatives) who have lived in the area for some time.

She will miss the hustle and bustle of The City, the Subway trains and yellow taxi cabs. Instead, she has got a new friend: Lola (that was just picked up from the dealership last week).

All jokes aside, my very last few days at the current job leave me with a heavy heart. I have enjoyed my job and cherished all friendships I ever made here.

Saying goodbye to life as a 20-something year old City Girl will be hard. Very hard.

Is it ever a good thing to wish for time to STOP?

Bare Truth or just Bullshit?

2008-03-03T08:31:00.003-06:00

Here is Zeitgeist, The Movie:

Complete Version:
Zeitgeist, The Movie - Remastered / Final Edition

Separate Parts:

Part I: Religion
Part II: Facts on September 11
Part III: Central Bank and World Wars

Here is an article on the whole Truth Movement that has created the movie:

It’s inaccurate to refer to Truthers as conspiracy theorists because, as they’re quick to point out, many of them don’t have a theory. They only have questions. Some of them believe that the government is guilty of knowing about the attacks and simply allowing them to happen, others believe that the planes were remote-controlled and no passengers died in the attacks, and still others believe that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile and no plane was involved at all. Many Truthers believe that Flight 93 couldn’t have crashed in Pennsylvania since the crash site is only 6 feet wide by 20 feet long. A radical few even claim that no planes struck the Twin Towers. The debate within the movement is intense and not always polite; some Truthers believe that denying that hundreds of air passengers died on September 11 is disrespectful and stupid.

The first Internet-distributed movie that turned people on to the Truth movement was Loose Change. Despite being an amateur production, Change is paced and edited like a mainstream documentary. It’s a shame it’s so bad. Director/narrator Dylan Avery’s voice is nasally reminiscent of Ira Glass’, which partly explains why Change seems like an episode of This American Life on acid. Avery makes crazy suggestions and then stops and says, in a folksy stage exclamation, “Wait a minute! What did I just say?” The last third of the film posits that Flight 93 never crashed in Pennsylvania. By this point it’s clear that Change is the work of someone who’s spent too long examining the evidence and needs to step out for fresh air.

The Truth movement’s newest, most popular film is a documentary called Zeitgeist. Not as professional as Change, Zeitgeist still has weird power: Based solely on anecdotal evidence, it’s probably drawing more people into the Truth movement than anything else.

The first 40 minutes explain in detail why Christianity is a sham and Jesus Christ is not the messiah. It’s fairly well argued and revolves around commonly known facts: Many early religions had messianic stories involving virgin births, crucifixions, celebrations on December 25, and so on. The second part is devoted to 9/11 Truth, and it’s probably the most clearly stated case I’ve seen, covering the “facts” concisely. The third part of Zeitgeist lost me entirely—it’s a screed about how everything has always been a part of a master plan to create a New World Order, and the film’s emotional climax involves a documentary filmmaker befriending a loose-lipped Rockefeller family member who blurts out the events of 9/11 . . . nearly one year before they happened!

It’s fascinating, this structure. First the film destroys the idea of God, and then, through the lens of 9/11, it introduces a sort of new Bizarro God. Instead of an omnipotent, omniscient being who loves you and has inspired a variety of organized religions, there is an omnipotent, omniscient organization of ruthless beings who hate you and want to take your rights away, if not throw you in a work camp forever. Zeitgeist is the film most Truthers mention online when they’re new to the movement, and it believes in a magical fairyland dominated by evil villains. It’s fiction, couched in a few facts.

Many people are quick to dismiss the Truth movement the second a Truther starts talking. This is a mistake. In many ways, Truthers represent a step forward, in part because of the high value they place on reason—nothing to sneeze at in a religious age. Outside of the always-to-be-expected lunatic fringe, the majority of the Truthers I’ve met have used clearheaded and civil discussion as their primary method of coercion, and it’s worked remarkably well. The problem is that many of the believers—like the ones who love Zeitgeist—have started to fall for spiritual hooey and Masonic bunkum. There’s a cult of coincidence just waiting to be born in the Truth movement that could prove to be every bit as awful and wrongheaded as any religion, but if the intelligent rationalists that I’ve met can keep their wits about them, be reasonable, and stick to facts, they could become a very important force.

2008-03-01T00:01:00.001-06:00

What Winter Does to You!

2008-02-28T15:08:00.002-06:00

When it is -30C outside, there is no sunshine and you don't see the end of the tunnel, life sounds like:

- Babies poop
- Teenagers hate
- Husbands leave
- Boyfriends cheat
- Parents die
- Loved ones get cancer
- Best friends move far away
- Economy crashes
- Politicians lie

and I am only getting older and fatter every day....

Oscars

2008-02-25T10:15:00.003-06:00

Watching the Oscars last night, I finally decided that I needed to make a list of the movies that I really like to watch:

Some are recent:

Juno
Michael Clayton
Once
No Country for Old Men
Rattatouille
The Departed
Million Dollar Baby
Pulp Fiction
JFK

Some are older and considered classic:

All the President's Men
Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Breakfast at Tifanny's
A Farewell to Arms
Casablanca
Grand Hotel

What is on your list?

Pakistan, Bhutto and Musharraf

2008-02-18T19:49:00.002-06:00

The early news indicades that Musharraf's party has been defeated. However, the night is still young as they say.

I have been reading some reviews about Bhutto's last book and I will hopefully get a hold of it and read a chapter or two to confirm my suspecions:

NY Times Prints:

Benazir Bhutto called her 1989 autobiography “Daughter of Destiny,” and when she was assassinated in December at 54, she became the fourth member of her immediate family to die violently against the backdrop of Pakistani intrigue and politics: her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 on charges of having ordered the murder of a minor political opponent; her younger brother, Shahnawaz, mysteriously died of poisoning in 1985; and her other brother, Murtaza, was gunned down outside his home in 1996.

In Ms. Bhutto’s new book, “Reconciliation,” a volume she finished days before she was killed, she lays out her vision of Islam as “an open, pluralistic and tolerant religion” that she says has been hijacked by extremists, and her belief that Islam and the West need not be headed on a collision course toward a “clash of civilizations.”

If Ms. Bhutto’s own life reads like a Greek tragedy, she was nonetheless a very modern politician, and the book she has written is part manifesto, part spin job, part selective history and part term-paper analysis. It shows Ms. Bhutto in the many guises the public in both the West and her native Pakistan came to know: an Oxford-educated debate champion, adept at invoking Spengler and T. S. Eliot to make her points; a savvy and self-dramatizing campaigner, adroit at charming members of the Washington power elite as well as the disenfranchised poor in Pakistan, whom she pledged to represent; a determined heir to her father’s political legacy, who found duty turning over “years of pain, suffering, sacrifice and separation” into “an all consuming passion.”

After a privileged childhood and a Western education at Radcliffe and Oxford, Pinkie, as Ms. Bhutto was known in her youth, returned home to Pakistan where her father was arrested by Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq in 1977. In “Reconciliation” Ms. Bhutto writes: “On the day my father was arrested, I changed from a girl to a woman. He would guide me over the next two years, cautioning me to remain focused and committed and never bitter. On the day he was murdered I understood that my life was to be Pakistan, and I accepted the mantle of leadership of my father’s legacy and my father’s party.”

As head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Ms. Bhutto was twice elected prime minister and twice expelled from office under charges of corruption, and she spent many years in exile abroad (in addition to some five years in prison and under house arrest). Her return to Pakistan in October 2007 was marked by terrible violence — at least 134 of her supporters were killed, and some 400 were wounded in bombings — that would prove to be a harrowing foreshadowing of the violence that took her life two months later.

It is Ms. Bhutto’s contention in this book that dictatorship breeds extremism and that democracies — and here, she sounds a lot like President Bush — “do not go to war with democracies” and “do not become state sponsors of terrorism.” She quotes passages from the Koran in support of her argument that Islam preaches tolerance and pluralism (“You shall have your religion, and I shall have my religion”), and she compares Osama bin Laden’s “attempt to exploit, manipulate and militarize Islam” to terrorist acts committed by other religious fanatics: “whether Christian fundamentalists’ attacks on women’s reproductive clinics or Jewish fundamentalist attacks on Muslim holy sites in Palestine.”

Much of “Reconciliation” consists of history lessons, delivered from Ms. Bhutto’s own unique perspective, about conflicting interpretations of Islamic doctrine, the Shia-Sunni schism and the debilitating legacy of Western colonialism in the Middle East. Ms. Bhutto takes the United States to task for its role in helping to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, arguing that this not only undermined the future of democratic government in that nation but also “made generations of Muslims suspicious and cynical about Western motivations.”

She says that if the United States had not used Afghanistan as merely a “blunt instrument to trigger the implosion of the Soviet Union” and then abandoned it, history in the entire region might well have been very different. And she deems Iraq “a quagmire for the West and a great and unfolding tragedy for the people” of that country — a “colonial war in a postcolonial era” from which America cannot extricate itself.

When it comes to Pakistani history and her own role in it, Ms. Bhutto’s account is considerably more problematic. She asserts that if her government “had continued for its full five-year term, it would have been difficult for Osama bin Laden to set up base in Afghanistan in 1997 when he established Al Qaeda to openly recruit and train young men from all over the Muslim world.” Never mind that it was on her watch that the shadowy Pakistani intelligence service began actively promoting the Taliban in Afghanistan and recruiting young Islamic militants for its continuing struggle against India in Kashmir. Grandly equating herself with democracy in Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto also writes, “In 1998, two years after my overthrow, Al Qaeda declared war on America,” and suggests that “the age of international terrorist war actually coincided with the suspension of democracy in Pakistan.”

Certainly she knew the risks of returning from exile. “I would have done anything to spare my children the same pain that I had undergone — and still feel — at my father’s death,” she writes. “But this was actually one thing I couldn’t do; I couldn’t retreat from the party and the platform that I had given so much of my life to.”

Her platform, laid out in this volume as democracy in Pakistan and a vision of reconciliation between the Muslim world and the West, was an optimistic one in which globalization promotes tolerance, not resentment, and in which “modernization and extremism are contradictory and mutually exclusive.” It was a platform deeply shaken by her own untimely death.

Spending for Municipalities

2008-02-15T10:30:00.002-06:00

The smartest thing he has said since he became the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada:

”Canada is facing an aging population. We will not pass onto our children crumbling bridges, leaky water pipes and insufficient public transit,” Mr. Dion told a Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in Ottawa.

If the Liberals were in government now, Mr. Dion's pledge would mean Ottawa would dole out as much as $7-billion to new infrastructure spending after the books had closed this current fiscal year. A planning surplus of more than $10-billion has already been projected for the year ended March 31, 2008, all of which the Tories have pledged to paying down the debt instead.

More here.

Valentine Wishes...

2008-02-14T10:58:00.002-06:00

Valentine's Day is not Christmas, but who says you cannot have a wishlist?

To my beloved Liberal Party of Canada: if you want to be my valentine, please do not force an election before May or June. In fact, a good time to force an election will be September. By then, I can promise you my volunteer services. How's that?

To my beloved TD Bank of Canada: if you want to be my valentine, please cut the interest rates. I am trying so hard to pay off my debt and you have not made it very easy. If you do that, I can promise to take my first mortgage with you when I buy my first house. How's that?

To my beloved University of Toronto: if you want to be my valentine, please give me a break on the requirements of a Masters project. I have been trying my hardest, but I don't have anymore time and energy to put into this project and I really really want to graduate. If you do that, I can promise to volunteer my time (or make alumni donations) for future events. How's that?

Ah!

Who wants to be my valentine?

Breaking News: The Kennedy Boy!

2008-02-13T08:04:00.003-06:00

The man who says he's JFK's son:

The British Columbia man is asking the Kennedys to provide a DNA sample so tests can be run to determine whether there is a match with the 35th president of the United States.

If he is JFK's son, he would have been conceived in the early days of the presidency, about a month after Mr. Kennedy wowed the world with the words, “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

As for why he is coming forward, Mr. Worthington stated: “It's simply a profound duty I feel to do the right thing. Many Americans won't agree and will want to sweep the dirt under the rug. Unfortunately for them ... I'm constitutionally incapable of it. I'm a born whistle-blower.” Mr. Worthington moved to B.C. about six months ago. His wife is Canadian and he indicated that his in-laws are nearby. He says he works in business, but would not elaborate.

Why the Left is screwed!

2008-02-11T08:06:00.001-06:00

My biggest apologies to my readers who are still here (1 or 2?) despite my absence. I was at a very intense 3-week training course that finally finished today with the exam on all things legal and illegal about the Environment. Next time you throw garbage on the street or not recycle your waste, I might just write you a ticket!

Following up on the US primaries, I am feeling less and less confident about the Democratic race. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going head to head and this trend will continue until the convention in August, when they will call in the Super Delegates! Whatever the result is, by then, the party has fractured over this rivalry that may not be able to heal fast enough to face a strong candidate like John McCain in the national election.

Say whatever you want, but I really don't see it pretty as this rivalry gets tighter and tighter.

On a different note, the Feds in Canada are gearing up for election, and that's no good news. Liberals are divided over all issues, especially those that might just trigger the election, such as "Canadian Troops in Afghanistan". The Liberal leader (Stephan Dion) is not exactly a very politically charming character, either. So, only outcome of a spring election is millions of dollars from the pockets of tax-payers and either another minority Conservative Parliament or a Majority Conservative Parliament.

Not depressed yet?

Check out the Grammy Awards: 8 Awards for Amy Winehouse! Feist? None!

Super Duper Hard!

2008-02-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

It is anything but a done deal!

However, for those who thought Hillary would be out by now, guess what? She is still ahead!

Dismissed!

Self Explanatory

2008-02-04T22:03:00.000-06:00

I don't think the glasses suit him that well! What'ya think?

Super Tuesday

2008-02-04T07:26:00.000-06:00

You can take the girl out of politics, but cannot take the politics out of the girl!

Yesterday the Super Bowl set an interesting precedent for Super Tuesday, tomorrow. As the pundits put it, it was a big day for the under dog!

Tomorrow more than 20 states will choose their candidates in the next Presidential election in November 2008. Many democratic voters have indicated that they would like to see an Obama-Clinton ticket if possible. The prediction is if Obama wins the nomination, Clinton will in no way be interested in a VP position. However, the opposite Clinton-P/Obama-VP has not been completely rulled out:

"The possibility that a potential Democratic presidential primary matchup between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama could lead to a Clinton-Obama ticket is raising concerns in GOP circles that it might be unbeatable." USNEWS

The countdown begins.

Next post on Wed. morning.

Persepolis

2008-01-30T20:23:00.000-06:00

Many many congratulations to Marjan Satrapi for receiving the Academy Award Nomination for Persepolis.

Stephen Colbert interviewed her on Monday night. You can watch the interview here.

You can watch the trailer here:

The Red Phone

2008-01-29T23:24:00.000-06:00

A pretty amusing little article in this week's New Yorker about the recent protest/campaign in NY which focused on getting ordinary Americans in NY to talk to ordinary Iranians on the phone:

""My name's Blair," he said into the phone three times, each time a little louder. "I'm from New York." Shadi told him that she has relatives in Los Angeles. "I don't care much for L.A.," Blair said. "Is there a rivalry between two cities in Iran like there is between New York and L.A.?" The translator tried to explain the question. "You know how we joke about the Qazvinis and the Rashtis," he said in rapid Farsi. "She doesn't want to stereotype anyone," he said to Blair with a shrug. "O.K.," Blair said. He gave up on his attempts at levity and, instead, asked about which Iranian films he should rent."

More Here.

Waving Goodbye To Hegemony

2008-01-25T10:32:00.001-06:00

This is a very interesting read from the New York Times Magazine, recommended by Richard Florida:

By Parag Khanna (you can find the hard copy on the shelves this weekend)

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.

More here.

Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,” to be published by Random House in March.

The Business of Prostitution

2008-01-24T08:58:00.000-06:00

I have picked this piece from the Economist today:

Economists let some light in on the shady market for paid sex

The annual meeting of the American Economic Association this month in New Orleans was part of a huge gathering of social scientists sprawled across the city.

The star attraction there was Steven Levitt, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of “Freakonomics”, a best-selling book. Mr Levitt presented preliminary findings from a study conducted with Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia University. Their research on the economics of street prostitution combines official arrest records with data on 2,200 “tricks” (transactions), collected by Mr Venkatesh in co-operation with sex workers in three Chicago districts.

The results are fascinating. Sex workers receive $25-30 per hour, roughly four times what they could expect outside prostitution. Yet this wage premium seems paltry considering the stigma and inherent risks. Sex without a condom is the norm, so the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI) is high. Mr Levitt reckons that sex workers can expect to be violently assaulted once a month. The risk of legal action is low. Prostitutes are more likely to have sex with a police officer than to be arrested by one.

Pricing strategies are much like any other business. Fees vary with the service provided and prostitutes maximise returns by segmenting the market. Clients are charged according to their perceived ability to pay, with white customers paying more than black ones. When negotiating prices, prostitutes will usually make an offer to black clients, but will solicit a bid from a white client. There are some anomalies. Although prices increase with the riskiness of an act, the premium charged for forgoing a condom is much smaller than found in other studies. And attractive prostitutes were unable to command higher fees.

By chance, the authors were able to study the effects of a demand shock. As people gathered for the July 4th festivities around Washington Park (one of the neighbourhoods studied), business picked up by around 60%, though prices rose by just 30%. The market was able to absorb this rise in demand partly because of flexible supply. Regular prostitutes worked more hours and those from other locations were drawn in. So were other recruits—women who were not regular prostitutes but were prepared to work for the higher wages temporarily on offer.

One controversial finding is that prostitutes do better with pimps—they work fewer hours and are less likely to be arrested by the police or preyed on by gang members. The paper's discussant at the conference, Evelyn Korn of Germany's University of Marburg, said that her favourite result from the study was that pimps pay “efficiency wages”. In other words, pimps pay above the minimum rate required by sex workers in order to attract, retain and motivate the best staff. Mr Levitt said that a few prostitutes asked the researchers to introduce them to pimps.

These studies contribute to our understanding of the suppliers of paid sex, but tell us little about their customers. The session's organiser, Taggert Brooks of the University of Wisconsin, attempted to fill this gap in knowledge. He shed light on the sex industry's demand side in his analysis of men who attend strip clubs. He argued that habitués of strip clubs featuring nude or semi-nude dancers are in search of “near-sex”—an experience of intimacy rather than sexual release. They are aware that paid sex is on offer elsewhere, should they desire it.

Strip-club patrons are more likely to be college-educated (cue some uneasy seat shifting from conference delegates), to have had an STI, and to have altered their sexual behaviour because of AIDS, than non-patrons are. They are typically unmarried, relatively young (against the stereotype of old married men) and are characterised as “high-sensation seekers”.

Although all speakers at the session were careful not to draw very strong conclusions from preliminary findings, a few broad themes nevertheless emerged. In many respects, the paid-sex industry is much like any other business. Pricing strategies are familiar from other settings. Despite evidence of a myopic attitude towards risk, there have been plenty of recent examples of that in the finance industry too. Illegality and lack of regulation are likely to heighten public-health risks. The Ecuador study concluded that rigorous policing of street prostitution might limit the spread of STIs by directing sex workers into the safer environs of licensed brothels. For an audience facing an evening away from home in the Big Easy, there was much to ponder.

____________________________________________________________

Note: Considering that "Selling Sex" is the oldest profession in human history, all the findings are very much in line with principles of free market. However, personally, I find these facts very dark. Considering the risks involved, the wage is really low, and I believe, that speaks volumes about poverty in certain communities.

What is NOT right with (organized) religion

2008-01-22T23:51:00.000-06:00

It is perhaps not "business as usual" for most people, but here at the City Gal headquarters, debates on religion, politics and social justice is like breathing air!

Interesting debates have taken place with friends and colleagues on this topic recently, religious and non-religious. Perhaps the US primaries have been a stimuli, but I would like to consider the topic more of a personal interest.

Coincidentally, tonight Jon Stewart had Jim Wallis on the show, promoting his new book The Great Awakening.

During the interview, he said somethings that I very much appreciated:

Religion does not have a patent (or own the right to) morality! I don't care what religion you practice, I am interested in your moral compass.

The Moral Compass: My ever-lasting dilemma!

My point is what has gone wrong in religious practices over the centuries, is that people have used religion to promote their own agenda: war, slavery, torture, social injustice and sexual abuse of children. I don't think there is any dispute in that fact.

Most people tell me, it's people's agenda that is the problem, because religion is all about great values. Well, I agree. Religions and religious texts are generally so vague that they can be interpreted in different ways and therefore, taken advantage of. Therefore, everyone shapes their interpretation to their own agenda, or I as call it their Moral Compass.

so, my question is, what is the use of something that can be interpreted in different ways? It seems like at the end of the day, people will push their own agenda and use their own moral compass (good or bad): good people do good deeds and say they learned it from a religious text, and bad people will do the same and justify that on a different interpretation of a religious text!

Again, I agree with people who say religious texts were written with good intentions. Well, the same people say that the road to hell was paved with good intentions, too.

More over, I have come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with having the "fear of hell" as your motivation for following morality! I believe it takes a lot more than "heaven vs. hell" debate to cultivate values in people, or we are dealing with a much less sophisticated creature than the human being I know.

What I want to say that if you have a working moral compass, no matter what god you worship or whom you accept as your saviour, you will do just fin in life (and if there is an after-life, your efforts will be rewarded). However, if your moral system is not all that in order, I am sure you can find some religion that justifies your sociopathic behaviour anyways.

So far, what religion has accomplished more than anything else is giving some people a false sense of moral superiority over others.

Winter Blues

2008-01-22T22:15:00.000-06:00

Better version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=PscogedAWTI

Prosperity and Size

2008-01-20T22:19:00.000-06:00

All the talk about the potential recession in 2008 has had many thoughts brewing in my head. A large country like United States wins big, and loses even bigger, when a recession is triggered.

When I hear the word prosperity, many European countries come to my mind. It is their size? If we agree that the economy of tomorrow (and today) is the “creative economy”, are smaller countries managing creative talent better? Is smaller necessarily more beautiful? (Thanks to Louis for pointing out this source)

I agree with all people who believe magnitude brings political leverage and military might. The former Soviet Union was a super power for a few decades until it fell apart and United States is the only super power in the 21st century so far for that reason. It is important to understand why the European Union has taken flight, although it is a union very different from a single federal government with a central power.

However, do we lose (economic) efficiency as we gain magnitude, political leverage and military power?

Naturally, my profession (environmental management) imposes a bias on how I view economy, and for a long time, there has been a popular school of thought that smaller systems are more environmentally sustainable (much smaller foot-print) than large centrally-managed systems, the same reason why Kyoto Protocol is not an economically viable option for North America. In the light of the potential energy crisis in the 21st century, many people draw parallels between environmental sustainability and economic prosperity. Is it simply the case that smaller countries have better potential for prosperity in the 21st century?

The cost of running elections (the Senate, House of Representatives, Primaries and Presidential) in the United States is likely to be bigger than all elections held across Europe. That reminds me of all big (bureaucratic) projects that lose economic efficiency due to size: federal public healthcare, federal public education.

I am not an economist (my biggest regret in life), but I would like to know if there is a current economic model that can easily compare large communities (i.e. countries) and smaller ones in terms of economic efficiency, prosperity as well as talent (creativity) management.

If such theory is ever proven, future economic constraints and future energy crisis (environmental constraints) will likely lead larger countries to re-think “federalism” and gravitate toward delegating all political government (in the true sense of the word) to smaller entities (e.g. provinces, states) under a merely-administrative union that has as much authority as the European Union does on its member countries.

Of course, my biggest fear is that nuclear weaponry and military will interfere with all such equations.

What do you think?

Worth Watching

2008-01-20T06:44:00.000-06:00

It doesn't happen often that a 19-year old student of film (in Toronto) makes me cry:

Iran and Its Place among Nations

2008-01-18T09:11:00.000-06:00

Recommending a book written by a close friend:

Iran and Its Place among Nations
by Alidad Mafinezam (Author)and
Aria Mehrabi (Author)

Synopsis:

Iran and Its Place among Nations takes a bird's-eye view of where Iran has been in the international community, where it is today, and where it may ideally end up in the future. Is Iran an Eastern country, bound by traditions that hinder economic development? Or does it also have some attributes of Western countries, given its history, geographic location, culture, and politics? Among the key insights in this book is the observation that Iran is a bridge between East and West. Is Iran a fomenter of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East and beyond, or can it be a promoter of moderation and reform within its own borders and in other Muslim countries? How effectively can the religious and national sources of Iran's identity by reconciled, or must the country choose one over the other and overcome the inherent tensions of this dual identity? This book addresses these and similar questions regarding one of the most important and newsworthy countries in the world. Combining description and prescription, the authors shed light on the tumultuous history of Iran in the twentieth century and uncover the domestic and foreign factors that have aided and retarded the country's development in modern times. Providing a close look at the backgrounds and identities of key pre- and post-revolutionary leaders in Iran, the authors make insightful recommendations to Iranians and the international community on how to integrate Iran into harmonious and stable relationships that benefit Iranians, the region that surrounds them, and the world. Grounded in solid scholarship yet written accessibly, this is a must-read for all Iran watchers today.

The hardcopy is available for purchase here.

The Unspoken Option

2008-01-16T10:03:00.000-06:00

As I am trying to concentrate on my masters project, so many interesting topics come to mind for blogging.

Last week I read this post at The Basement. For those who are not familiar with Her Bad Mother's Basement, it is a place where people talk about their pains anonymously and seek their peer's advice. Last week an anonymous author wrote that she has just found out that she might be pregnant for the third time. She wrote that she wasn't so enthusiastic about children even before she had her first two. There were complications with her pregnancies, along with some serious PPD afterwards. Now that they are finally out of diaper and she has donated all the baby gear (stroller, etc) she has found out she is pregnant again. To make matters worse, the doctors told her she is having twins this time. She sounded devastated.

Her situation seemed dire, but to my surprise only one or two commenters (out of 20)mentioned abortion as an option to save the whole family.

In today's Globe and Mail Judith Timson asks "When did abortion become a dirty word again?".

She writes about the history of legalizing abortion and how the newest crop of movies about unwanted pregnancy makes her feel like she is living in a time warp:

In both Knocked Up, a ribald comedy starring Katherine Heigl as a beautiful, ambitious woman in her 20s who gets pregnant during a one-night stand with a semi-slacker guy she meets in a bar, and Juno, featuring Canadian actress Ellen Page as an adorable, wise-cracking 16-year-old who gets pregnant after one-time sex with a friend, the abortion option is firmly dismissed.

she continues: Abortion is one of the trickiest and most personal issues around. In practice, it's still kept very quiet. Our society still finds it easier not to acknowledge that so many women among us - friends, sisters, daughters, even mothers - have terminated an unwanted pregnancy. But could they also be part of a subtle attitudinal shift against abortion that conservative thinkers like David Frum are calling for? Mr. Frum, in his new book Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, prescribes "education and persuasion ... rather than changes in law" in the continuing fight against abortion.

You could say the "message" from all three movies is roughly the same - an unplanned pregnancy is a bomb that goes off in a young woman's life.

While I do not condone careless behaviour toward sex, I still believe abortion should be an option for unwanted pregnancies (like the post on The Basement) where the well-being of a mother and her existing children could be negatively affected. Of course I am assuming that we all agree that raising a child is a serious business and should not be taken lightly. Is responsible family planning still on the table for us, at all?

Or, is our culture going backwards?

P.s. David Frum, a former speech-writer for George W Bush, will be at University of Toronto next week for a debate.

Why I would like a gay neighbour…

2008-01-13T13:03:00.000-06:00

a Chinese one, too and a Jamaican market at the corner:

Like many other urban dwellers I would like to talk about diversity, but really what I hesitate to talk about is segregation. The truth is that you can have diversity intertwined with heavy segregation.

In Toronto, we have large populations of people from the Chinese descent, Persian, Indian, Caribbean, Italian, etc. However, naturally you see that immigrant communities have selected certain geographical locations to congregate. The same has happened with Toronto’s large gay population.

A good explanation for this phenomenon is that groups of visible minority share common interests such as religion (place of worship), cuisine (local food market), culture and code of conduct. But a deeper look reveals that by congregating in one geographical location, they can build a support network that in many areas has resulted in electing one of their own as the member of the parliament for political leverage.

Sounds great. You may ask why not?

While this seems a strategy for first generation immigrants to bear the difficulties of living in a new country and provide a familiar support network for survival, I don’t see this favourable for the second generation. The same principles apply to the queer community.

Segregation brings a big host of problems, the most important of which are intolerance and cultural gap. Children who grow up in a rather closed ethnic community experience difficulty trying to merge with the bigger urban society, when time comes to leave home. At the same time, the majority that has lived in a dominant (e.g heterosexual Christian white) Canadian environment could show Resistance to the alternative (ethnic/queer) culture, simply because it is foreign to them.

The news is not all that bad. Fortunately, many second generation immigrants choose to reside outside their own ethnic community and integrate with the bigger society. Educational institutions have a great role as well in representing the cultural mosaic of the urban environment. This is one of many reasons that I have always loved and admired my university: University of Toronto.

However, it is not all perfect. There is still heavy segregation in many urban centres where large population of immigrants live. Fortunately, this did not result in publicly-funded religious schools in Ontario, as pitched by the Conservative Party during the provincial elections. However, such segregation has resulted in patches of poverty and affluence and an invisible culture of intolerance.

It is not easy to find a neighbourhood where I can have a gay neighbour, a Chinese one and a Jamaican market at the corner.

Immigration does not necessarily come with integration, but rather segregation. And segregation in abundance, could lead to a cultural of fear and urban violence.

Professor Jahanbegloo's Return

2008-01-10T12:03:00.000-06:00

Professor Jahanbegloo who was imprisoned in Iran in 2006 and was freed in 2007 is finally back at University of Toronto.

You can read more about his return here.

To celebrate his return to Canada and to the University of Toronto, Jahanbegloo will deliver a homecoming lecture based on his new book, The Clash of Intolerances. The lecture will take place on Monday, January 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre and is open to the public.

Will be an emotional event for many of us.

Hillary is Back!

2008-01-08T22:13:00.001-06:00

I am very happy with the results in New Hampshire. I have always admired Hillary Clinton and wanted to see her victory. While I understand the world's excitement for Barack Obama, strategically speaking, I believe Hillary's win is the one that could result in a sure Democrat win in the presidential race.

Why do I think the Obama Factor could bring another republican term?

My prediction is that John McCain will win the republican race. He is a seasoned and capable politician who could potentially redeem the Republicans reputation and come back with a strong national campaign.

Obama's win on the Democratic side is very ideal in so many ways, mostly because he is not white and will soften the image of the United States in the world, and could restore the faith of voters in young politicians. However, Obama winning the presidential race over John McCain will be very difficult, if not unlikely. We all know why.

Hillary's win will still make history, bring a lot of change and soften the image of the United States in the International arena because she is a woman, but perhaps not as much as a black man with a middle name "Hussein" would do.

BUT there is too much at stake: A Sure Victory for the Democratic Party.

That's why Hillary is your man, ehem, woman!

UPDATE: Predictions call for Richardson's support going to Hillary once he drops out. It is up to Edwards now. how long he wants to stay in the race, and whose VP he chooses to be, will determine the winner.

Here you can read Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson's response to my question:

Mr. Ibbitson: Mr. Edwards will stay in the race, at least until Super Tuesday. As for Mr. Richardson, we are awaiting his decision. But I don't think either candidate could influence greatly the decision of their supporters. Where those supporters will go, of their own volition, is a great unanswered question.

IKEA

2008-01-08T15:53:00.000-06:00

I consider IKEA a symbol of creativity and urbanization. Their items fit into small boxes that you can even carry on public transit (yes, I have done that). The furniture is generally small (unlike honky country furniture) with a modern design perfect for small city apartments. Items usually come from a "furniture system" that are all compatible together: feel free to mix and match or create your own design.

Perhaps putting it all together requires some good common sense and focus, but again, each item is so carefully designed that if assembled properly, will do the job it was intended for.

All that aside, I saw this video and made me laugh, since my own apartment looks like an IKEA showroom:

A New York comedian moved into IKEA while his apartment is fumigated. The store is letting him stay until Saturday

P.s. That reminds me of a dream I had a while back, about sleeping at a big mattress store! Phew! I am glad it was just a dream!

Eyes on New Hampshire

2008-01-07T22:03:00.000-06:00

The predictions seem very close to Iowa. While America, and in fact the whole world, is excited about Obama, there is still something quite novel and unique about Hillary:

Breaking News: Jon Stewart is back on TV! (This is the closest thing I know to a religious experience!)

TV Review (1)

2008-01-07T13:06:00.000-06:00

Read my take on a new show on ABC during an exchange with a Globe and Mail columnist here:

The City Gal from Toronto: I watched the first episode of the new show Cashmere Mafia apprehensively. My suspecions were correct. This show seems to be a cheap attempt at recreating Sex 'n the City (without the originality and autheticity that made Sex 'n the City a hit). This new show is more like Desperate Housewives, even though it is made by the same producers as Sex 'n the City. It has no chance of becoming a hit in my opinion. What is your take on this show?

Andrew Ryan: Cashmere Mafia stands as proof that there's really nothing new on TV today. In press materials, ABC has been describing the show as a "a thinking-woman's Sex and the City mixed with the wit of The Devil Wears Prada," which is a bit much. As you say, the show is closer in TV species to Desperate Housewives. The four female principals—Lucy Liu, Frances O'Connor, Miranda Otto and Bonnie Somerville—present wildly idealized versions of the modern working woman. Each is single and looking, more or less, and each has a fabulous wardrobe. Most of what airs on television is more style than substance, but Cashmere Mafia is off the charts in terms of frivolity. Like yourself, I believe the show has no chance of survival, but keep in mind that many critics predicted Housewives would only last a few weeks.

Prediction at City Gal Headquarters: Forget Desparate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy, if the writers end the strike soon, amongst the hit shows of the season will be Brothers & Sisters for its political content and portrayal of the all-American family.

Religion and Creativity

2008-01-06T11:04:00.000-06:00

Creativity (or "creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts (Wikipedia Definition).

In simpler terms, creativity means thinking outside the box. It involves freedom of imagination, asking any question and being able to consider all possibilities. Creativity flourishes in an open environment where there is no danger of persecution, bullying or discrimination for free-thinkers.

In most cases the creative man needs to step over the boundaries of tradition and common belief to bring in the "new". Once he creates, he needs to find the opportunity to present the creation. For that, the environment needs to be welcoming, otherwise hostility and rigidness could kill the new-born right at birth.

For that reason, I believe religious environments are not suitable for creativity.

A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law (Wikipedia definition).

However, religion should not be mistaken with faith. In fact, faith has been an inspiring factor in human history. Whereas religion is mostly a set of common beliefs, rigid rules and traditions that are followed under an assumption of truthfulness and holiness. True or false, many people believe while faith is a natural human instinct, religion is only a creation of governments. Human history has a lot to say about how religions were formed and how they evolved from every "faith" over time, but this is not the venue to enter such discussions at this point.

Many scientists and artists (creative minds) have been subject to accusations and persecution in religious societies throughout history: from Galileo Galilei, Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Edison to Salman Rushdie.

In an October 2, 1910 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated: "Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me -- the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love -- He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us -- nature did it all -- not the gods of the religions." Edison was accused of atheism for these remarks.

It is important to realize although much artistic and scientific activities have taken place in religious societies (art in Christian environments and science in the Muslim world) there have always been limits imposed on the extent of creativity.

While creativity demands flexibility more than anything else, religious environments represent rigidity. Throughout history creative minds have sought a "free land" as their utopia. That has resulted in the appearance of a Creative Class in major urban centres of the world, where the dominant culture promotes liberalism and tolerance. This goes hand in hand with freedom of speech and democracy, since freedom of "presentation" is crucial to the creation process.

Although I haven't seen solid statistics on the extent of religious practices in major urban centres (centres of creativity such as New York, Paris, London or San Francisco), but their reputation for racial and sexual tolerance, freedom of press and secular politics proves the point.

My question is why are we afraid to put numbers to such facts? Are we afraid of being politically incorrect and lose our reputation for religious freedom and tolerance? There is no debate about the fact that creative society of the major urban centres have nurtured freedom of religion, but the underlying reason is most important: they are not religious.

What the creative class around the world shares includes their affinity for a good life, open and inspiring environment, arts, technology, new horizons, democracy (mainly secular politics) and a "non-religious" environment.

After all, how many Bohemians do you know who go to church?

Why Polls are Unreliable!

2008-01-04T08:35:00.000-06:00

My campaign last year was a relatively small undertaking compared to federal elections (in Canada) or presidential in the United States, but in a smaller scale same principles applied: Polls are Unreliable!

A month before the elections, based on some poll they asked the top 4 candidates (amongst 15) to participate in the televised debate. When election time rolled around, 2 of their predicted top 4 did not receive as much support as everyone had predicted, yours truly included.

The overall predictions for the United States primaries (in the democratic party) pointed at Hillary Clinton as the number one candidate. Although Obama would come out first in some states, Clinton coming third was not the dominant prediction until NOW.

The UNDECIDED voter determines the result at the end of the day. In fact, those who eagerly participate in polls may not even cast a ballot (campaign fatigue?). The silent undecided voter who has been watching the events unfold from outside the arena, turns it all upside down by showing up at the ballot box. Of course campaign organization and how you keep up the support all matter. But in reality, even the most accurate statistical analyses won't necessarily pan out.

This is why many campaigns do not rely on polls, or take their own polls that incorporate certain correction factors. Successful campaigns do not let polls catch them off-guard.

We will have an interesting season ahead of us. Put your game face on, because not even the NBA, NHL or NFL excitement can keep up with the primaries of 2008.

Awaiting Iowa's results

2008-01-03T13:26:00.000-06:00

Very Patiently!

Yesterday's Suburbs?

2008-01-03T09:48:00.000-06:00

We have always viewed suburbs as neighbourhoods with parked SUVs, quiet residential subdivisions and dead evenings! Perhaps it's time to look again. Some suburban regions have changed dramatically.

Around the corner from my parents' house in Richmond Hill there is a 24-hr grocery/drug/liquor store. In the same plaza, there is a hardware store, a Starbucks coffee shop, a Time Horton's coffee shop, a Pizza Hut, 2 banks and an all-day breakfast cafe. People walk to the grocery store at odd hours, and they don't need a SUV to pick up a cup of coffee in the morning. Five minutes down the road there are 2 daycare centres, 2 high schools and several car repair shops. Take the bus that runs every 11 minutes, and at the first intersection you can find a movie theatre, several hair salons and restaurants.

You want more proof that today's suburbs are going "Urban"? Just look at the voting pattern. Areas that were dominantly conservative are half liberal now, and areas that were mixed, voted 70-80% liberal provincially and I predict the same pattern federally as well.

This is what I found on Richard Florida's blog, written by Madeline Johnson in Financial Times:

Today the world's urban population is greater than its rural one, which - statistically speaking - must mean that most of us have chosen to be city mice. But our home towns are no longer what planners call the "traditional" or "medieval" city - the clump of spires and towers where that mouse fable took place, neatly separated from the surrounding countryside and from the trim suburbs of television and film. Like the economic and communications networks that now dominate our lives, our new cities are now polycentric and "multi-nodal" or "fractal" - bunches of units with patterns repeated on every scale. (Think of florets on the head of a cauliflower.) They look more like land-eating Los Angeles than hemmed-in Hong Kong, with blended centres and peripheries and ragged boundaries between the natural world and built space. Any economic or moral divide between the "urban" commercial, political and social institutions and the "suburban" or "rural" residential world has disappeared and the resulting scatter of areas for living, work and pleasure creates complex and unpredictable traffic patterns. ...

As a result, it would seem that we no longer have to make that big decision - whether to be suburban or urban, country mice or city mice. In these micropoli, aerotropoli, city-regions and zwischenstadt , we can have it both ways and eat our cakes and ale in peace.

The New Class

2008-01-02T07:39:00.000-06:00

You may want to call them Bobos like David Brooks does in Bobos in Paradise: Bourgeoisie-Bohemians. Or you can call them the creative class like Richard Florida does in The Rise of the Creative Class:

"David Brooks offers a clever report of the new upper class, the Bobos - bourgeois bohemians. Capitalism`s bourgeois world and bohemian counterculture used to be two separate entities. The grey-suit-wearing, church-going bourgeois worked for corporations and were 1980s resourceful yuppies. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals whose values characterized the radical 1960s. Now the two have fused. It`s difficult to tell the artists from the bankers." writes the editor of Indigo-Chapters. Florida's work suggests that a new or emergent class, made up of knowledge workers, intellectuals and artists is a rising economic force (creative economy) around the world.

In simple temrs, we are talking about the educated upper middle class that has been transformed by the knowledge-based economy of major urban centres.

They are creative like the bohemians and they like a sophisticated life-style like the bourgeois, but what I would like to know is how their belief system (religious practice) has been transformed alongside their life style.

The more I analyze this, I see a mainly socially left and fiscally right population that has long given up the small town mentality of divine intervention and adopted a world view of "self-intervention".

Would be great to see if Richard Florida would ever touch the sensitive topic of religion through his blog.

Old Year, New Year

2008-01-01T12:40:00.000-06:00

2007:

Local
- Canadian Dollar sored to new heights
- Conrad Black was convicted
- Robert Pickton trial (Canada's most notorious killer) ended and he was convicted
- Schreiber-Mulroney affair was probed
- Ontario Provincial Elections: Liberals won, First Iranian-Canadian got elected to parliament

Global
- Tony Blair stepped down in UK
- Nicolas Sarkozy was elected in France and shortly after, divorced his wife
- Iranian President travelled to US and spoke at UN and Columbia University
- Argentina elected its first female president
- Turmoil in Pakistan: Musharraf announced state of emergency, Benazir Bhutto went back and was assassinated

2008:

Local
- Federal election: will the Conservatives win a majority?
- Will the Liberal Leader Stephan Dion show any leadership or be forced to step down?
- Recession: will we see one in Canada? Where is the manufacturing sector heading?
- Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan: will the death toll reach an end?
- How will Ontario face the energy crisis? Will we see another nuclear plant or fight over "clean coal"?

Global
- Will United States of America see its first female or black president?
- Will North America face a major market crash?
- Where is the Middle East heading? Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Israel? More instability and turmoil than before? OR just business as usual?
- Environmental Agreements: will Kyoto survive, or be replaced by another treaty or forgotten all together?
- How will the Energy Crisis and Price of Oil impact the world and world politics?

I will be damned....

2007-12-28T08:29:00.000-06:00

"I would like to become madam president". I was only 9 years old. Then I was told women do not become presidents, not even in the United States. But I had heard, just around the corner (my family lived in Iran and India back then), there was a woman that finally became a Prime Minister and "that's like she is the president" my mom had explained to me.

That woman taught me I can become whatever I want to become.

My family is devastated, not because Bhutto was ever the greatest politician or never made mistakes in her life, but because she stood for a lot more than just politics. For me, she had changed the impossible since I was only 9 years old.

I lived in a third-world Muslim country for 19 years. I know how impossible it is for women to make it as leaders in society.

"Well, I just wanted to say, you know, the nail that sticks out is hammered down. She was only 54, 3 weeks younger than your father." I was told last night.

Her life was cut too short, but in her 54 years she did a lot more living than most people do in 70 years, and I'll be damned not to be another nail that has the courage to stick out.

I'll be damned....

Bhutto killed!

2007-12-27T07:48:00.000-06:00

This just in: Bhutto Assasinated

Could we get more disappointed in human race?

Somebody Save Me!

2007-12-27T06:41:00.000-06:00

Every year, in November you start hearing the Christmas music until the new year has dawned, that is a whole two months. What could be rather annoying is that the programming on radio stations change completely. "Forget your favourite music, for the next two months you will hear Alvin and The Chipmunks or Christmas Shoes. Now go ....yourself."

The radio stations are not the worst of the problem. Malls: The stores trying to sell you any junk and convince you that your big aunt needs another "exfoliation kit". Most people don't have cash lying around. So, we all give our credit cards muscles some good exercises and blow the month's mortgage payment on buying mostly junk that others don't need.

I am sorry. I shouldn't insult the spirit of gift giving. I mean we do need at least one gift-giving occasion per year, if you don't count birthdays, bridal showers, baby showers and house-warming parties. Otherwise, who would ever buy ugly picture frames, bath kits that you never use, scented candles, red sweaters and boxes and boxes of chocolate!

But that's not why I need to be saved.

Television goes bust, too! All favourite shows go on vacation and during prime time you can watch (50yr old) re-runs of A Christmas Carol. Call me Scrooge, but the worst of it really is the commercials. The usual Christmas songs are not bad enough on their own, but Wal-Mart changes the lyrics to include their sale items this years.

Seriously! Somebody save me!

I get it. Once a year, we need to make some noise and send people into some frenzy to be able to clear the warehouses of all the stinking leftover unsold crap like cars, TVs and furniture.

But if you are not even Christian and keep saying "Merry Christmas" to everyone in the elevator, you have been pissing me off.

"Are you ready for Christmas?" they ask. "Am I? Ever?" It comes too early and hits you in the head like a tone of brick every year!

Don't get me wrong. Taking a break for a few days and spending time with family and friends is just fine. But can we please take a moment and appreciate the holiday for what it is supposed to be (whether or not the whole story is even true!) ?

Perhaps even if we all agree that the story is just a fable, it is a nice fable about justice, tolerance, compassion and helping out the unprivileged. Maybe we should wake up and see what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. And if we really believe in it, we should take a look at Africa and ask ourselves "What would Jesus do?".

Sometimes I wish it could just stop! For one year, maybe. We are spinning out of control, or at least my nerves are, slowly but surely!

Somebody Save Me!

Happy Yalda

2007-12-21T08:39:00.000-06:00

Winter Solstice is officially tonight (tomorrow morning) at 1:05 am Toronto time. So remember to keep awake and party all night.

Yalda:

Shabe Yaldā (Persian: یلدا) or Shabe Chelle (Persian: شب چله) is an Iranian festival originally celebrated on the Northern Hemisphere's longest night of the year, that is, on the eve of the Winter Solstice.

Following the fall of the Sassanid Empire, the religious significance of the event was lost, and like all the other Zoroastrian festivals Yalda became merely a social occasion when family and close friends would get together. Nonetheless, the obligatory serving of fresh fruit during mid-winter is reminiscent of the ancient customs of invoking the divinities to request protection of the winter crop.

P.s. Mona, check out the link to the baby photo!

Irrelevant Photo:

Here is a Koala bear in Spain who loves her baby!

Yorkville

2007-12-20T08:45:00.000-06:00

Toronto's Yorkville is located near the famous Bloor Street, in the heart of downtown. It's a place that you can certainly wine and dine alongside celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Paris Hilton, Matt Damon and George Clooney during Toronto's International Film Festival (the second biggest in the world).

Yorkville website reads: We are Toronto's most celebrated neighbourhood of style and culture offering a unique blend of designer boutiques, fashionable restaurants, plush hotels and world class galleries... 700 in all!

I love Yorkville especially in winter, when all the small shops glow with lights and all restaurants are full of people. Of course in the summer, there are patios and nicely dressed fashionistas walking on the sidewalks.

About a month ago I had a chance to have cocktails at the famous Sassafraz.

The interior decor is beautifully done, the music is fantastic and service is great. Last year this beautiful restaurant went up in flames, but people were so happy to see it finally back and redesigned better than before. If you live in Toronto, or are planning to visit our City, make sure you pay a visit, even a short visit, to Sassafraz.

Two nights ago I made plans with a friend to eat at Caren's Wine and Cheese. What I can recommend on their menu is mussels, crab cakes and their peppercorn pate. The wines are great, too. The interior decor is slightly less modern than Sassafraz, however, it is warm, cosy, small and overall beautiful. As it is the case with most Yorkville restaurants, the service is great, too. Most of the time you need reservations to get a seat, even on a Tuesday night!

What makes Yorkville especially unique and attractive is, first and foremost, its small size. To tour Cumberland and Bloor between Blair Street and Avenue Road, it takes a mere 20 or 30 minutes. In those few minutes you probably pass by The Gucci store, Channel, Benetton, BOSS, Louis Vuitton and Escada.

As I was talking about this small Urban Jewel with my French companion Martin at Caren's Wine and Cheese Bar, we both agreed that while most people cannot afford to live in, or dine and shop in Yorkville all the time, it is worth saving your budget for a few outings a year in Yorkville. Or perhaps you can save your budget for a pair of airline tickets to our City, if you don't live in Toronto.

Studying Urban Centres

2007-12-18T09:22:00.000-06:00

I suppose I was getting boring for my readers and I really had to spice up the beloved BLOG! So, for a little while, I will write about cities, etc.

I recommend that you visit Richard Florida's weblog. Today he is discussing property value at different urban centres.

Richard Florida is a business professor at Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. However, he has written a few books on the Creative Class. But, when you get to the bottom of it, his specialty is "Urban Development" or "Urban Centres" and not economics or creative class. He is a big admirer of Jane Jacobs (I suppose that explains why he has relocated to Toronto).

He lists the top ten metros on housing price to income ratio:

1. Los Angeles, Ca. 10.5
2. San Francisco, Ca. 9.8
3. New York City, NY. 9.4
4. Orange County, Ca. 9.2
5. San Jose, Ca. 9.2
6. San Diego, Ca. 8.8
7. Miami, Fl. 8.5
8. Riverside, Ca. 6.7
9. Boston, Ma. 5.4
10. Sarasota, Fl. 5.4

He argues that housing prices are becoming disconnected from regional productivity and wages. Overall, the connection with income is stronger, but we also that measures of amenity and openness have a strong association with housing prices. His guess is that real estate prices in many of these markets are being driven by accumulated wealth rather than income per se.

Looking at Canadian cities, I am not sure if his theory really applies. My understanding is that the real estate market generally follows "supply and demand". In Calgary, where there is no sign of amenities, the prices have gone through the roof, because of job creation and immigration. In Vancouver, the same thing has happened because of the 2010 Olympics. However, in Toronto, good economy has made it possible for the young middle class to buy 10 years earlier than the previous generation. Again, I believe it is all supply and demand, whether that demand was generated by good economy ("because I can") or job creation ("because I have to").

The 3 major Urban centres that I named in Canada, all have their own positive characteristics that could keep the prices rather high (not as high as 2007) for a while. Vancouver is beautiful and has a "resort-like" climate. Toronto is the political/economic/cultural centre of Canada and has great amenities such as public transportation. Calgary, being the centre of oil and gas, will always generate revenue and attract professionals that need jobs.

But at the end of the day, the question is which location is really worth the money that you pay for it? What determines that worth? Climate, amenities or jobs?

Living Single

2007-11-15T08:38:00.000-06:00

I have lived by myself for a few years now and I have loved every moment of it. This morning I found an interesting article in the Globe and Mail that I thought I could share:

For Christmas last year, Santa Claus gave me a single napkin ring.

Okay, so it was my mother who tucked it into my stocking. And no, my mother, who lives in England with my father, doesn't make a habit of playing Santa every year.

But we were together for a family reunion, and as I am spouseless, she added to the stocking stuffers my children buy for me. That little sparkly napkin ring was a reminder, as mothers are accustomed to give, about what it means to live alone - it is an art, and it takes practice and discipline.

Does living alone mean you start down the slippery slope of reduced standards? Among other benefits of marriage is that someone else is a buffer between you and yourself, helping you not to fall into bad habits such as drinking too much wine, leaving your clothes on the floor and, worst of all, eating your dinner out of a container as you stand beside the sink.

"A good meal is like a present," writes Jenni Ferrari-Adler in the introduction to Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, a collection of essays on single cuisine.

That may be so, but preparing food for one is the greatest challenge of living solo. The act of cooking is an act of generosity, done for others. It's an expression of love, so it can feel weird doing it for yourself, a bit like culinary masturbation.

"It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at the table," admits legendary food writer M. F. K. Fisher in one of the book's essays.

Living well alone is an interesting encounter with oneself. You can hear yourself think. You can watch yourself act. As a result, you learn to really like yourself.

As my weekly flower friend says, "People who are afraid of living alone have not faced a lot of things about themselves."

I can't say that I am always making myself gourmet fare when I eat alone. I'm more like the single-double (and divorced) man I know in Toronto, who confesses that he envisioned he would "come home from work, check the mail, hang up my manly winter coat, fix a drink made with premium spirits, and cook a nice meal with a real sauce for myself." He sometimes did, but often he'd grab a bite and watch television.

Still, on the nights that I eat quick, simple fare by myself, I enjoy the snug solitude. It's me, my soft-boiled egg, a glass of red wine and my sparkly napkin ring against the world.

Canada AM Host

2007-11-13T13:49:00.001-06:00

For the past 5 years, I have been waking up with Seamus, having my breakfast with Seamus and getting my morning news and book reviews from Seamus.

Who is Seamus?

Here is a little biography:

Seamus O'Regan (born January 18, 1971, St. John's, Newfoundland) is a Canadian broadcast journalist and co-host of Canada AM, CTV's national morning show.

At the age of 10, O'Regan became a regional correspondent for CBC Radio's Anybody Home?, producing stories that celebrated the unique accomplishments of local residents - a professor hunting for giant squid to one woman's fight against leukemia.

Seamus studied politics at St. Francis Xavier University and University College, Dublin, and marketing strategies at INSEAD, the international business school near Paris. He received his Masters of Philosophy in Politics from the University of Cambridge, England, studying at Darwin College.

He has worked as an assistant to Environment Minister Jean Charest in Ottawa and to Justice Minister Edward Roberts in St. John's, and was policy advisor and speechwriter to the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Brian Tobin.

In 2000, Seamus joined talktv's current affairs program, the chatroom. He began his duties at Canada AM in 2002.

Seamus serves on the Boards of Katimavik, Canada's leading youth service-learning programmme, and The Rooms, which houses the Provincial Art Gallery, Museum, and Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador.

In December of 1999, O'Regan was named as one of Maclean's 100 Young Canadians to Watch in the 21st century

I really really would like to meet him in person one day!

Gonna get me some conference!

2007-11-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

So you guys know that I am a "Environmental Policy" junkie and I love conferences (I am sick!). So guess what? I am going to a conference, here in Toronto, where some really cool people are going to speak:

Keynote Speaker

Scott Barrett

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Scott Barrett is Professor of Environmental Economics and International Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he also directs the International Policy Program and the new Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative. He is the author of Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (published in paperback by Oxford University Press in 2005) and numerous research and policy papers on climate change. He has also advised a number of international bodies on the subject, including different agencies of the United Nations, the European Commission, the OECD and, most recently, the International Task Force on Global Public Goods. He was a lead author of the second assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was previously a member of the Academic Panel of Environmental Economists to the UK’s Department of Environment.

Formerly on the faculty of the London Business School, he has also been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He received his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics and studied previously at the University of British Columbia. His latest book, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2007.

Lunch Address

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Toronto

Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University College, University of Toronto.

He was born in Victoria, British Columbia and received his B.A. in political science from Carleton University in 1980 and his Ph.D. from MIT in international relations and defense and arms control policy in 1989. He then moved to the University of Toronto to lead several research projects studying the links between environmental stress and violence in developing countries. Recently, his research has focused on threats to global security in the 21st century and on how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change.

His books include The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Knopf, Island Press, 2006), which won the 2006 National Business Book Award, The Ingenuity Gap (Knopf, 2000), which won the 2001 Governor General's Non-fiction Award, and Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton University Press, 1999), which won the Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.

Benazir Bhutto

2007-10-19T10:22:00.000-05:00

She is back and I thought you all might find it interesting to know more about Ms. Bhutto:

Benazir Bhutto (born 21 June 1953 in Karachi) is a Pakistani politician who became the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state. Benazir was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but she was removed from office 20 months later under the controversial orders of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. Benazir was re-elected in 1993 but was once again deposed by the President in 1996 on similar charges.

Ms. Benazir Bhutto had been living in exile in Dubai since 1998, until she returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007. She is the eldest child of deposed premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi extraction, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Kurdish extraction. Benazir studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford, and has an additional degree from Harvard University. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto.

Bhutto attended Lady Jennings Nursery School and then the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi, Pakistan. After two years of schooling at the Rawalpindi Presentation Convent, she was sent to the Jesus and Mary Convent at Murree. She passed her O-level examination at the age of 15. She then went on to complete her examinations from Karachi Grammar School.

After completing her early education in Pakistan, she pursued her higher education in the United States. From 1969 to 1973 she attended Radcliffe College in Massachusetts, Harvard University where she obtained a B.A. degree cum laude in comparative government. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

The next leg of her education took place in Great Britain. Between 1973 and 1977 Bhutto studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She completed a course in International Law and Diplomacy while at Oxford. In December 1976 she was elected president of Oxford Union, becoming the first Asian woman to head the prestigious debating society.

On December 18, 1987 Benazir married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. The couple have three children, Bilawal, Bakhtwar, and Aseefa.

Charges of corruption

The French, Polish, Spanish and Swiss governments have provided documentary evidence to the Pakistan government of alleged corruption by Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.

A 1998 report indicates that Pakistani investigators have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zadari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari. The article also said a Dubai company received an exclusive license to import gold into Pakistan for which Asif Zardari received payments of more than $10M into his Dubai-based Citibank accounts. The owner of the company denied that he had made payments to Zardari and claims the documents were forged. The paper also said that Zardari's parents, who had modest assets at the time of Bhutto's marriage, now own a 355-acre estate south of London. The estate has been auctioned through a court order.

Bhutto maintains that the charges levelled against her and her husband are purely politican. "Most of those documents are fabricated," she said, "and the stories that have been spun around them are absolutely wrong." An Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) report supports Bhutto's claim. It presents information suggesting that Benazir Bhutto was ousted from power in 1990 as a result of a witch hunt approved by then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The AGP report says Khan illegally paid legal advisors 28 million Rupees to file 19 corruption cases against Bhutto and her husband in 1990-92.

However, Bhutto and her husband still face wide-ranging allegations of theft concerning hundreds of millions of dollars of "commissions" on government contracts and tenders. Despite this, a power-sharing deal recently brokered between Bhutto and Musharraf will allow Bhutto access to her Swiss bank accounts containing £740 million ($1.5 Billion). Another one of her prime assets include her 10 bedroom mock Tudor Surrey mansion.

Read More Here.

He's Doing It!

2007-10-16T23:43:00.000-05:00

Hot Hot Hot News:

That's right my friends! It's almost 1 am and you are hearing it from me:

Stephen Colbert is running for president.

Stephen, this is the first time in my life that I wish I could be American to vote for ya!

Way to go Colbert Nation!

And if you keep "Stewart" on that bumper sticker, I will pay whatever it takes to buy it, eventhough I don't have a car!

Closure

2007-10-10T23:02:00.000-05:00

Closure comes in many shapes or forms, and when it comes, it's all about a sweet surrender.

Tonight my candidate in the provincial election Reza Moridi won. I was there to count the vote, I was there to tally up all the results and I was there when the candidate arrived and was greeted by the screaming expectators.

I was there and I finally got the closure that I never got last November.

I finally cried the tears that I had held back since.

Congratulations Reza.

Sound of Silence

2007-10-07T00:24:00.000-05:00

"The Sound of Silence" is the song that propelled the 1960s folk music duo Simon and Garfunkel to popularity. It was written by Paul Simon in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

It's past 1 am and all I hear in my apartment is silence. I watched Bobby tonight.

I was born at the end of 70s, but I always wished I had been born during 50s to have seen the 60s.

What happened to the America of the 60s? The America that rallied after JFK and RFK? People who fought for peace, equality and justice? What happened? Wasn't America freed from prejudice, discrimination and violence in the 60s?

April 5, 1968:

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.....

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours....

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire....

How was the voice of justice, peace and equality ever so silenced to the point that no one even remembered?

And today, there is Obama, Clinton and Edwards, but they are not the Kennedys, because this America is not the liberated America of the 60s.

What have we done?

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one deared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisperd in the sounds of silence.

My guest-blogging

2007-10-05T05:57:00.000-05:00

Blogher Act Canada is hosting my article this month on "recycling our Hazardous Waste".

Please read if you get a chance.

If you have any questions on recycling or hazardous waste, leave me a comment and I'll do my best.

and now, I give you Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

2007-09-25T08:37:00.000-05:00

You didn't think I was gonna let this slide, did you?

In fact, 2 days ago, I got into an interesting brawl over this, on internet!

My position: he is disturbingly religious, doesn't believe in freedom of speech, prosecutes anyone who doesn't agree with him and his taunting of US and Israel could put Iran in some serious jeopardy! (basically he has stripped the country of any democracy and civil liberties)

Other people's position: he has a lot of support, was democratically elected and stands up for the sovereignty of Iran and won't budge.

My fear: Columbia was going to give him a podium to say whatever he wants, to basically "set the record straight" as he had planned.

What actually happened: he got an earful (or as they say, a lesson in freedom of speech) from Columbia's President and Dean of SIPA!

"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," he said, to applause, before directly issuing Mr. Ahmadinejad a series of strongly worded questions on his country's poor record of civil rights and support of terrorism. "I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do."

Updates:

Thanks to Niloofar, I found this video. I think this is the full speech.

Also the full transcript is here.

Some Excerpts:
“Our nation has the highest level of participation in elections. 80-90% turn out for elections, over half of whom are women. So how can you say that they are not free? In Iran, every family that is given a girl is ten times happier than having a son.”

"We don't have homosexuals in Iran like you do in United States."

“Come and speak with our university students. You are officially invited.”

Just In: Iranian University Chancellors Ask Bollinger 10 Questions

Solar Energy, My Colleague's Response

2007-09-21T10:25:00.000-05:00

Today's Toronto Star:

A bright energy future without coal or nuclear

This week, our dirty coal-fired power plants were back in the news with electoral candidates arguing the ifs and whens of their necessary shutdown. Shutting down coal plants, our guiltiest climate-change-causing beasts, seems like a no-brainer, but heels keep dragging.

For Ontario, a decision to invest billions of dollars in nuclear megaprojects or coal scrubbers is a decision not to invest in clean renewable technology. Every dollar sunk into huge transmission systems to support centralized megaprojects is a dollar not invested in "smart grids" that accommodate local production of renewable energy.

A bright energy future without the need for coal or nuclear is doable. With renewable energy, energy efficiency and co-generation, we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions by half of what's called for in the OPA plan. Ontarians could actually be saving money on their electricity bill rather than deepening our nuclear debt with at least another 40 years of expensive and unreliable power, not to mention generating more long-lived, unsolvable radioactive waste.

________________________________________________________

My Colleague's Musings:

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the short-term prospects of solar energy

Starting from Stefan/Boltzman’s radiation law where one uses the Sun’s temperature (6000K) and that of the Earth(300K) and the solid angle of the Earth as seen from the Sun (6o), we calculate an available energy flux of approximately 1.4 kW/m2. Being close to the per capita average usage (calculated based on the total world energy consumption divided by total population), this is a very promising number.

Thus, if we were to capture all the energy arriving from the Sun (and, in the long run, this is the source of ALL our energy) we would each need only 1 m2. Not bad!. Yes but .... we have to make several small corrections ....

The formula calculates the energy flux on a plane perpendicular to the direction of the flux i.e. the cross-section of a sphere. For our Earth, we would have to multiply with the ratio between the surface of the sphere (4ðr2) and that of the cross-section (ðr2), i.e. 4. Therefore, we each need 4m2.

Well, that’s still not bad. Let’s cover the Earth with solar collectors. Oh, but the dry portion is only about one quarter; our planet is covered by oceans for the rest. The answer is easy, we’ll take 4 times more of the dry land, i.e. 16m2 each. In communist Russia the calculation of the built living area allowed just 10m2 per person .... we’re already exceeding their "standard". Unfortunately, we still have some small adjustments to make ....

I forgot about yield. Nothing operates at 100%; this applies to the conversion of solar energy to electricity too. The best solar panels have reached nowadays 5% (or less). Let us hope that science will bring us to the yield close to that of the plants, i.e. 25% - the conclusion is that we have to .... multiply again by 4. We need now at least 64 m2 each!

Oh, but I forgot a small detail. All these calculations referred only to our average use of electric energy; we use many other forms: the gas in the tank of the car, the steam in industrial boilers, the propane in the BBQ tank, that in lighters, etc. . . . Well, we can ignore the lighters for this exercise but since electric energy is only approximately one quarter of the total energy consumption of the "average person" .... we multiply by 4, again. We need thus at least 256 m2 each!

If we remember that man needs food to live, and for this rough calculation we decide to ignore the needs and aspirations of the animals and plants - after all, there are many that we do not eat but who would also have a "natural" right to exist - and, if we decide that we should share equally these energy resources with all the other lining species, i.e. 50:50, we conclude that the per capita area needed (to be covered with solar collectors) doubles yet again; 512 m2 per person!

All the above were calculated for averages. Generating capacity is calculated for peak consumption. A factor of 2 may not be unreasonable at the scale of the planet. Therefore, we each need at least 1024 m2!

My conclusions from all this back-of -the -envelope calculation are:

1 - There is too many of us;

2 - For now, solar energy alone is not yet "the answer"; conversion yields are too low; we have to consume some of the reserves while developing a more permanent answer because it is quite evident that we cannot, in the long run, consume more than what we get from the Sun.

3 - All the numbers we used appear to increase in the pattern quite similar with the one observed in our need of computer memory; especially since the arrival of Windows. It appears obvious to me that Bill Gates is the one that controls the energy of our world! Many of us had this suspicion!

Canadian Dollar Soars

2007-09-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

"The Canadian dollar topped 99 cents (U.S.) Wednesday on the back of surging oil and gold prices, a weakening U.S. dollar and as traders bet on the increasing likelihood of parity. The last time the Canadian dollar was at parity was Nov. 25, 1976."

"The surge spells good news for Canadian travellers. Not only does their dollar stretch further in the U.S., but it's also strengthened against the euro. It has risen 8.4 per cent this year and is now trading at about 0.7 euros."

This is all great news if you travel a lot, import goods, or buy your commodities at the other side of the border! However, if you are a Canadian manufacturer, you have lost your customer base (mostly American) because they cannot afford your products anymore.

"Tuesday's Fed statement indicated that the credit crunch will lead to a slowdown that's much deeper and more pronounced than most people had thought. That spells bad news for the Canadian economy because about 80 per cent of its exports go to the U.S."

Religious Schools in Ontario

2007-09-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

If you are not up to speed on this topic, here are some links:

Tory (leader of the Ontario's conservatives) defends funding for religious schools

Creationism could be taught in funded schools, Tory says

The idea is to allow publicly funded Muslim and Jewish (and other religious) schools in the province. It has been hard keeping my mouth shut for almost a week, since the Conservatives in Ontario made "religious schools" a campaign issue in the upcoming October 10th election.

Before I dive into a discussion, I am going to summarize what I think is wrong with that picture:

- Our children will no longer grow in a diverse educational environment where tolerance is taught and not self-religious-righteousness!
- Many programs such sex-ed, phys-ed and arts will be negatively impacted or simply just eliminated in the name of religious principles.

I almost cannot even begin to explain what would be wrong with that picture! Many argue that Catholic schools have been getting funds for years and now it's time Muslim and Jewish schools were funded (in the name of equality). My answer to that is:

The Catholic school system should be integrated into one optimized public system.

First and foremost, the majority of the voters agree that immigration should result in integration and not segregation. What brings more segregation than children who go to their own religious school, grow up in isolated environments where only one idea is preached?

Schools are supposed to be a safe environment for children think and express their ideas freely and ask questions about all subjects that are considered "taboo" at home. How many families are open to answering their children's question about sex? How many families facilitate art education or sports for their teens? Are we trying to get back to 50s and possibly worse, because now we are dealing with multiple religions that do not quite co-exist peacefully!

And the topic of "creationism" gets many people anxious!

I have been accused of being super-liberal (and I don't have a problem with that), what you should know is that I don't have a problem with girls wearing Hijab if they like, boys wearing Kippah if they wish. However, I would want my child to sit in the same classroom with both those kids, play on the soccer team with them and play music on the same band as them. I want my child to feel comfortable in sex-ed class and grow up in an environment where "anything goes".

What is most hilarious is that they say the want to provide "choice for children". By putting a child into a religious school (a parent's choice, obviously) we are not giving the child any freedom or choice, but we are taking their voice away.

If you feel religion is being forgotten, what you are looking for is "Sunday School" (nothing wrong with that) and not public money to be spent on what the Church/Mosque/Synagogue preaches!

Many of us protested against Shariah Courts (which was advertised in the name of women's rights!) and we will make sure we stand up against religion hi-jacking the next generation's education.

___________________________________________________________

P.s. I suppose I should further explain why my position on religious schools is so firm. Last year I campaigned in a neighbourhood that was partly occupied by religious Muslims. Most women were not allowed to leave the house without their husbands and were not allowed to talk to me, because I was a stranger (eventhough a female). Do we want such ideas taught in public schools? In addition to that, a few years ago I volunteered in a study that looked at Muslim women's sex life. Many teens or adults get raped because the guys never took sex-ed, and these crimes are never reported because in such isolated communities it is looked down upon (and mostly considered a girl's fault). Should I go into the concept of putting guilt on our kids at an early age? What about unspoken abortions?

Confessions of an Iggy girl!

2007-08-07T08:33:00.000-05:00

I got to know Michael Ignatieff through academic circles first and I have been a big fan, since. (you can guess the connection: Human Rights Issues)

Many of you know have been following the weblog, know that I volunteered in his campaign for the leadership race and was even a Liberal Ignatieff delegate last year (the fact that I didn't quite make it there, was a different stroy).

You also know that when my professor Ramin Jahanbegloo was jailed in Iran, Michael Ignatieff was the only one who came to the rescue and thanks to Iggy's efforts he is out now.

On December 2, 2006 when the Leadership Race came to a shocking end and Michael Ignatieff was not chosen, many of us decided not to renew our Liberal membership.

Last week's Globe and Mail discussed Where Iggy is today and what he told the New York Times Magazine this week:

“You have to see the piece [The New York Times article] in the right frame – what's different about the judgments you make in the safety of academic life from the judgments you make in politics. You have to remember I spent five years getting up every Tuesday and Thursday morning, teaching political science to bright people, and what's funny about it, looking back on it, is that I would teach it totally differently now. That's what I think the piece is saying.”

Iggy also discusses his view on Iraq:

In the article he declares flat out that he was wrong to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a U.S.-led military coalition, a position that brought widespread criticism from the U.S. academic community and travelled with him – like the black cloud over the head of Al Capp's legendary cartoon character Joe Btfsplk – when he left Harvard and returned to Canada to run for Parliament in Toronto's Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding for a party that opposed the invasion. His mistake, he writes and says now, was in failing to accurately calculate the costs to the Iraqi people of freeing them from Mr. Hussein's prison only to dump them into a nightmarish sectarian bloodbath – a calculation the Bush administration also failed to make.

I have always admired him and will do so unless he becomes "one of those" politicians that have long forgotten their sentiments!

As for me, for the same reasons Iggy mentioned, I don't think I will run for public office again. I am also very disappointed in the Liberal Party (and its leadership) that I am yet to renew my membership for 2007.

If you have time, please read Last week's Globe and Mail and also check out This week's NY Times Magazine. and this article!

Whatever happened to Mini Pops!

2007-08-05T23:51:00.000-05:00

I was in grade school when I got to watch Mini Pops for the first time. The kids in the video were my age and knew how to sing and dance. There was especially this cute guy (probably 12 yrs old) that I had a crush on! He was the star of the video Yellow Submarine!

What did I think of it? I was only a kid and I would slip the cassette into the video and dance along! It was fun.

Now, 20 years later I realize that Mini Pops stirred quite a controversy back then in UK. When I watched this video, I realized how some people referred to the show as pedophilic!

I watched more! 20 years ago, I never thought those lyrics were sexual (I had no idea what they meant) or the make-up was excessive! I was only a kid. But today, I know about how children are exploited through kiddie porn all over the world and how child pageantry is taking their childhood away, I think I look at it differently.

But I listened to all those interviews and how the grown former Mini Pops think of their experience, I realized, if the show was only made for kids to watch and dance along, would have been ok. But god knows, if pedophiles got a hold of even one show, they would think they died and went to heaven!

I know for a fact that when I become a mother, I will never engage my child in pageantry or sexual acts and performances. All that said, singing and dancing is one the funnest activities kids can do. Where do you find that fine line where "cute" becomes "exploited"?

What do you think? Did you ever watch those shows? What do you think of child pageantry, teen pageantry or competitions such as Miss World? Would you watch? Would you allow your child to participate if she really wanted?

For what is worth, all those kids in those shows were very talented, seemed to have fun and made me happy every day after school! I hope the show never impacted them negatively.

Pregnancy in late 30s and early 40s

2007-08-02T16:07:00.000-05:00

It's time to stir up some controversy!

A few days ago this article showed up in the Globe and Mail: 40 is the new 35 when it comes high-risk pregnancy

The article is mainly tackling the scientific studies that looked at risks of amnio for pregnancies that are considered high-risk. Nothing really shocked me about the facts, since my colleagues (successful, educated women) got married in their 30s and by the time they were ready to have kids, they were past the 35 years of age. How did their kids turn out? Very normal.

I am 28, still tempted to go back to school for a change or enhancement of my career. but how do I know that I won't have children well into my 30s? Well, there is no sign of a husband (man! Finding one of those is hard!).

Many of us have asked ourselves whether or not women can have it all: education, career, loving husband and a child or two. More and more I look around and the answer I find is YES, THEY CAN. So, what if they have children later in life?

However, some people think it is unnatural and inconvenient that women are putting career/education first. Just read these comments.

What is exactly the problem, according to the critics?
- Optimal age of reproduction (physiologically speaking) is 20-30
- Later pregnancies might lead to an unsatisfactory sex-life
- Parents are not as energetic as they would be 10 years younger
- why do women think career is more important than having a family?

Well, to start, the first 2 facts have never been really proven!

About fact #3, I'd have to say an older parent may not be as energetic, but might be a lot happier, since it probably was a sure decision to have a family and parents are well professionally (and financially) established.

On fact #4, well I am biased. If men believe that their confidence depends on their career advancement, why do they think women are any different? Also, looking at divorce statistics (50%) don't we all believe that single mother should be able to provide, just in case?

More and more men are choosing to get married in their late 30s. Does that mean for the sole purpose of procreation they need to marry women at least 10 years younger?

It is true that many people don't have a choice when it comes to the timing of their pregnancy, because they hadn't found a partner or simply couldn't get pregnant earlier. But please, give today's woman a little more credit (i.e. choice if you like).

Women have every right to a well-established career if they desire. They have a right to financial stability (by themselves) if they deem necessary and they have a right to have children when they are ready.

Many ask "is a late pregnancy worth the risks because the woman chose her career first?" I am not fully qualified to answer this question. I'd like to ask moms (who had kids well in their 30s and 40s) to answer that for us.

Sustainability

2007-08-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

Sustainability is a simple, yet complicated and important concept when it comes to protecting our environment.

Topics that come up these days in every paper and article include Energy, Forests, Agriculture, Water, Wildlife, Air Pollution and Natural Resources. They all share the same concern: are we destroying our environment and therefore reducing our chances of survival on the earth?

More importantly, the question we need to ask is "is our life-style sustainable on earth?"

That means:
- For how much longer we can consume so much energy before we are out?
- For how much longer we can destroy forests to create agricultural land to feed our population?
- For how much longer we can put our waste into the air and water before we endanger the life of all species?
- For how much longer we can dig into the natural resources such as oil, coal, metals, wood and even wildlife before they are all gone?
- For how much longer is this life-style sustainable?

I suppose you could say the question is not whether or not our life-style is sustainable, but for how much longer. It worries all of us: another decade, 2 more decades or best case scenario 5 more decades?

Everything has a "life cycle". We get our raw material (e.g. metals, wood) from natural resources. But what do we do when we are done with them? Do we put them back into the cycle (Re-cycling) or we bury them in a landfill where it might table many centuries before they can be used again?

What do we do with our waste? Do we just assume that atmosphere and oceans are infinite spaces to store waste? We very well know that is not the case.

How about energy? are we more dependable on semi-infinite resources such as solar, or very finite resources such as oil, nuclear (uranium) and coal?

It is all about our life-style and how much longer we'd like to survive. We need a paradigm shift.

Every time we go to the supermarket, we are about to turn on heater/air-conditioning, we are at a car dealership or the gas pump, or we are about to dump a garbage bag down the chute, we need to ask ourselves:

- Is my life-style (my habits of consumption) sustainable?

If you do, you may find yourself riding a bike to work, separating the recycling material and turning off the air-conditioning.

It's all about little steps that you and I can take to live a more sustainable life-style.

I can hear you all saying "what about the big corporations?" Well, let's leave that to government policy-makers to figure out (that's why we elect them and give them our tax dollars).

For now, it's important that we believe markets can be consumer-driven.

P.s.I'd be more than happy to discuss any questions or topics related to the environment. Just leave me your comments.

Immigration is not for fun!

2007-05-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

This is a topic that has been on my mind for a while. The goal is to clear the air.

Summer of 1987 the war was getting more and more intense. Before we knew it, rockets were falling on Tehran. My parents were fearful of losing their loved ones and decided to save their lives, like every other family in Iran. We applied for immigration visa and we got it right after the peace treaty 598 was signed.

The sentimental people that my parents were, they didn't want to raise their children in a foreign country before they knew their cultural roots. So, we didn't move despite the fact that my aunts, uncles and cousins lived in the US.

Another 11 years went by and my parents couldn't tolerate the social injustice. We had a little house, we went to good schools, we had a car, we had everything that was necessary for a nice family life. But we also had the nonexistence of freedom of expression and religion or social respect, as well as the humiliation of a fanatic government that we hadn't chosen. Not knowing how long it would take before their children ended up in Evin Prison gave them sleepless nights, especially when they found a big stash of Khatami's pictures in their 15 year-old's bedroom.

They decided to sell everything off and move to Canada and embrace a life of uncertainty because at least it guaranteed "no prison time" for their children's future. They lost their jobs, their house and their financial security.

Yes my parents are brave people who sacrificed their comfortable life in Iran for their children.

It took years before they could own the same house or car that they had in Iran. My father works longer hours, my mother works longer hours and they cannot afford vacations like they they could in Iran. However, they are happy.

My father takes pride in the fact that the construction worker that works for him can afford the same life style as he does. He says seeing that even the cleaning lady or the construction worker are respected as much as he is, makes the whole immigration experience all worth it.

Yes my parents sacrificed a comfortable life for their values.

Some of my parents' friend moved to Canada after we did. They stayed for 2, 3 years but went back. My mom's friend had to work to earn a living here, but back home, she can live off the money that she gets from renting her real estate (houses). Some people who recently moved, brought big chunks of cash with them because their inheritance (house and land) is valued 20 times more than it did 10 years ago and now they are rich. Well, I guess we could call it "oil money" or the money that didn't go to the teachers, nurses or other hard working groups of people in Iran who are starving and don't own a house.

Yes, what I am getting at is that you have to work much harder for your money in Canada! But if you were a teacher, a nurse, a police officer or just a simple employee in Iran and never got your share of self-respect, I wish I could bring you all to Canada. I wish I could show you how you can live a decent respectful life if you are a hard-working individual.

You don't need to be religious, pretentious, connected to the government, smuggle drugs or lie to earn a living. You just need to work hard enough to deserve the money.

If anyone ever told you that people immigrated for money, they lied. Immigration means hard work. Immigration means a complicated life. But immigration can show you the meaning of "social justice", "self-respect" and "equality".

Now it's up to every individual to decide what they want to give their children: a big house? an expensive European car? a big piece of land? enough money to last a life time? Or, freedom of speech, social justice, equality and ethics of hard work.

My parents chose the latter and I am proud of them.

Love of your homeland is a dear concept, and of course many people don't have the luxury of immigrating for many reasons. I don't judge them and I don't want to be judged either.

I Just wanted to put the truth out there.

My Gift to You!

2007-02-19T15:11:00.001-06:00

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=82337

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=82343

Too much thinking kills you!

2007-02-13T13:29:00.000-06:00

It is February in Canada and all you hear is "a big storm is coming to town!"

So I ask myself:

- What is the purpose of life? Working? Spending money? Having children?
- Should I save money to get another degree, buy a little tiny apartment condo or just spend all my money on travelling?
- Should I stay at my current job, or start thinking about a job abroad (like with UN)?
- Should I live my life single or hope that one day prince charming will sweep me off my feet?
- What kind of guy should I be looking for?
- Do I want to get married, ever, or keep my freedom?
- Should I ever have a child, or spend all my energy on my career and make it somewhere?
- What do I want to accomplish, anyways?

Hell! This weather is killing me! It makes me think I have no purpose in life!

I would like to get paid to lose weight!

2007-02-05T10:58:00.000-06:00

A century ago, I could paid to sweat!

With our big energy problems in this world, why are teadmills powered by electricity? If I am running, sweating and spending my energy, shouldn't I be able to get that energy back in some format?

Here is the deal: when I jog, I can produce enough power to light a bulb. Right? With all the gyms over-crowded between 5 pm and 8 pm, we shouldn't have a problem lighting up the streets in the city between those hours at least!

What I mean is that, we need to put people on bikes that are connected to a little motor that generates electricity. This way, you can work out for free, because the gym can sell all the power that you generate while you run!

Why winter sucks!

2007-01-30T09:12:00.000-06:00

- By the time I leave work, the sun has set.
- In the morning, it is too cold to wear something nice, so I have no motivation to get out of bed!
- I have been alternating between my two muddy boots for the past few weeks.
- Walking outside is not much of a choice, so we hide in our smelly cubicles during the day.
- My hair spends too much time underneath my toque and looks flat all day.
- My skin feels damaged and rough (hands, feet, face)
- I crave hot chocolate and latte all day, which are high in calories!
- I hop in taxi-cabs all the time and it is costing me too much money!

On the upside, on Sundays all you feel like doing is cuddling under the covers. That is only if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Otherwise, you are screwed!

The Whole Love Dilemma

2007-01-26T13:14:00.000-06:00

I thought a lot about what Leili said yesterday: we should be able to love ourselves, etc.

Leili is right. In the ideal world, you should be able to love yourself, motivate yourself, make yourself happy and not need someone else.

But in this less-than-ideal world, we like to be hugged, kissed, comforted and told that we are worthy of happiness. Plus, it is not all mental, but also physical:

People in loving relationships are healthier and happier

Up to a certain age we get all that affection from our parents but after that, nature forces us towards the opposite sex for procreation purposes.

See? It is not me, it is nature that is causing all these silly love problems!

Routine Life, Dating, The Mess!

2007-01-25T14:52:00.000-06:00

I like a routine life, believe it or not. A routine life gives me time to read, interpret, be creative, work out and think about my career.

Dating on the other hand, messes with my routine life and screws me over.

Once you get used to one-phone-call-a-day, one-dinner-a-week, deep conversations, affectionate gestures and sleep-overs-on-weekends, there is no return!

Damn it!

For almost 2 years I have been on this on and off diet of meeting people, dating them for 3 months, grieving for 1 month and meeting the next person.

WTF? (pardon my language)

I don't know how to stop! It feels like I have forgotten how easy life was when I was single, had a routine life and was happy to be just by myself.

I am addicted to the search for someone to become my companion and give me affection.

Good News

2007-01-24T12:41:00.001-06:00

Today’s Globe and Mail:

U.K. zoo announces virgin birth of 5 Komodo dragons

In an evolutionary twist, the newborns' eight-year-old mother Flora shocked staff at Chester Zoo in northern England when she became pregnant without ever having a male partner or even being exposed to the opposite sex.

The evolutionary breakthrough could have far-reaching consequences for endangered species.
Scientists hope the discovery will pave the way to finding other species capable of self fertilization.

DNA paternity tests confirmed the lack of male input, although the brood are not exact clones of their mother.

Conclusions:

- Women will always find a way
- After all immaculate conception might have happened!
- What are guys good for, anyways?

Go Hillary Go!

2007-01-22T15:48:00.000-06:00

Some guy I know, went on speed dating last week. How can you decide if you like to get to know someone within a few minutes? "First impressions are very true." Damn it, I have known people for months and I still try not to judge them too early!

Stupid people are everywhere! I think I will eventually be able to deal with living my life single.

Anyhow, I am glad that Hillary has thrown her hat into the ring, or as they say thrown her name into the hat!

It's time to see if Bill is willing to support Hillary as much as she supported him throughout the years!

Obama

2007-01-18T10:46:00.000-06:00

Let's forget about my life for a second and focus on "Obamania" as Jon Stewart puts it.

I personally love Hillary but this Obama guy looks good on paper, plus Oprah is campaigning for him.

What do you guys say?

Pain and Suffering

2007-01-03T22:33:00.000-06:00

I have done something very funny.

I went out with this guy during the summer because I knew his sister and brother in law and therefore I got to meet the parents, as well. His parents (german/finish) went all crazy for me, hoping that I would marry their son. Really nice people!

Funny part is that I didn't really sleep with the guy, because he smells, he is sloppy and I have proof that he is cheap. After 3 months of dating (!) I called it quits based on the fact that I couldn't get close to him (smelly sloppy bastard!) and I had to pay for all the dates.

He moved to Calgary (Thank God!) but needed to come to Toronto over the holidays and I was stupid enough to say that he could stay with me. Well, the cheap guy that he is, he decided to stay 3 weeks.

1- he doesn't participate in grocery shopping (but he eats them all)
2- he doesn't clean
3- he doesn't even shower or brush his teeth for God's sake!
4- I am worried that my sofa bed will finally smell when he leaves

So, I decided that I had to kick him out. I figured the cheap guy that he is, if I ask for a portion of the rent, he will leave.

Also, there is the whole issue of bed bugs that I am so convinced his clothes are infested with it.

Well, he took it pretty well and finally after a week, he gave me 1/4 of a month's rent.

I swear to god, if I consider the groceries, the very expensive cleaning lady (me) and all the pain and suffering of having a smelly roommate, 1/4 of the rent is nothing.

I hate myself! I am such a door mat!

Here is a lesson for me: do not go out with cheap people and do not invite smelly people home.

Last night I had this dream that I threw his stuff off the balcony, then called my parents and they beat the hell out of him.

He is finally flying out on Monday. I am planning to steam clean the sofa bed, burn the sheets he is sleeping in and bug-spray the whole apartment.

However, here is a secret:

He has an old pillow (it used to be white and is brown now) that I threw out a few times but he went and got it back. This afternoon, I bug-sprayed the whole pillow! I am thinking, I should bug-spray him and his clothes when he is sleep.

What do you say?

Boys and Girls,

2007-01-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

The mysterious allergy is back in my life.

I think Mona should remember that in grade 9, I was absent half the year, as funny things happened to me.

About 14 years later, the mysterious skin rash has come back to haunt me, or there are bed bugs in my apartment.

I changed the sheets, moved the bed, vacuumed every corner in the apartment and I am pretty sure I didn't see any insects.

Any how, I am all itchy and I sleep with ice-packs on my rashes!