I actually won!

J.M. McDermott announced a poetry contest a couple of weeks back that intrigued me. The prize was an autographed ARC (Advance Reader's Copy) of his upcoming novel, Last Dragon.

Being a little dense sometimes, I thought the contest was to write a poem about his book and seeing as I hadn't read it, I didn't try. But the description of the book at Amazon looked so promising, I eventually decided to make a stab anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. JM was nice enough to let me know I had misunderstood, that the poem was to be on the theme "last dragon", not on the book itself. My rather sorry little limerick had no chance. (You try converting advertising copy into poetry and see if YOU can do it!) So I tried again, even though there were barely 24 hours left before the contest closed.

The theme didn't seem to be too suited to limericks to me, so after considering the permissible forms I settled on a villanelle, a form of poetry that repeats two lines of a refrain at strictly specified intervals throughout. The most famous example is Dylan Thomas's iconic "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" with its haunting "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." It seemed to me to be ideally suited for a lament. Throw in the fact that it was probably a little easier than a sonnet or a sestina, and my choice was made.

I'm not claiming that my poem is destined to live forever in anthologies (it won't), but I was pleased enough with the result of my efforts to submit it, although another week to mull over the rough spots would have been nice. And J.M. was pleased enough to award it first place, throwing in some editorial comments for free.

I am tickled pink. I get to read the book before everybody else but the reviewers. I will post a review of my own when we get closer to the release date.


Technorati tags: Poetry, Last Dragon, J.M. McDermott

Misheard Numa Numa Lyrics

This is not exactly new on YouTube, but it was new to me. I laughed myself silly. Hat tip to M G Tarquini.

Thumbs down on proportional representation

In the form that’s being proposed in the upcoming Ontario referendum, proportional representation is downright dangerous.

Please don't misunderstand me. I would really like to see a form of proportional representation in our legislatures. But not this one.

It is truly unfortunate that parties like the Green Party, with its support swinging between 7 and 12% of the popular vote are shut out of Queen's Park. That is too significant a proportion of the population to have its political views completely excluded from effective public discourse. And I do agree that remedying this situation would help reduce voter apathy. So it was with considerable interest and no little hope that I took a look at the system that is being proposed.

There are, in my view, two immense problems with proportional representation in its pure form.

First, it tends to create unstable governments, with constantly shifting coalitions and all-too-frequent elections. The virtual impossibility of a majority government also makes bold moves on the part of the government very difficult, for good or for ill. One word: Italy.

Second, and this is far more serious in my view, it tends to give disproportionate power to marginal parties. Ironic, that proportional representation should produce results as warped as the first-past-the-post system. Splinter groups holding one or two seats can effectively hold the balance of power and wield influence far beyond what their popular support would justify. One word: Israel.

A third, smaller problem, is the lack of accountability of members who are not directly answerable to a specific riding, but the proposal being made does address this issue to my (somewhat uneasy) satisfaction.

I personally prefer having a majority government, at least most of the time, although massive majorities are definitely not a good thing. A mixed system that would work to reduce massive majorities to something more humble would be a good thing.

But the proposed system would use the list members (the third of the House elected according to party affiliation rather than by riding) to top up each party's representation to make it approximately equal to its proportion of the popular vote.

That way be dragons. With only 3% needed to get a seat, all kinds of spliinter groups - some of them potentially very extreme - would spring up. I can only see this contributing to the radicalization of Canadian society. Stop and think about it for a moment. Political and religious extremists would suddenly find it worth their while to fom a party, making all kinds of incendiary statements and getting a dangerously powerful platform. It is not that hard to hijack the voice of a minority group and deliver it into the hands of its least responsible members. I am a Christian, an evangelical Christian, and I for one would not care to see the more extreme members of that community holding the balance of power. They would get the votes of more moderate evangelicals because they would be perceived as the only ones speaking in our name. The same could be said of any number of ethnic and/or religious groups, some of them rapidly increasing in number. I have no problem at all with any of them having a voice. I have a great deal of trouble with the most extreme elements having a disproportionate voice, to the point of being able to dictate policy. Think of the influence the Ultra-orthodox have had in Israel.

If they had proposed list members who would be chosen proportionately among themselves, moderating the first-past-the-post system without bringing it up to fully proportional representation, my conclusion would be different. As it stands, I find the MMP system being proposed to Ontario voters would change our diversity into Balkanization, and I just can't support that.

Technorati tags: MMP, Proportional representation, Ontario Referendum

A Book on the Amish and Forgiveness

There is a new book out on the Amish and their culture of forgiveness. Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy was written by three American professors who were much in demand for expert interviews after last year's school shooting in Pennsylvania. I can't recommend it at this point, seeing as I haven't read it yet, (and I doubt that traffic at this blog is sufficient to talk my way into a reviewer's copy) but it looks like a serious effort by people who know what they're talking about on a subject that's worth talking about.

Technorati tags: Amish Grace, Forgiveness

Gleanings from the blogosphere, Sept. 23

Weekend Fisher has a great post on the shortcomings of pop spirituality. It's so nice to hear someone saying out loud what I've been thinking for a long time.

David Akin, on his blog On the Hill, has been commenting quite a bit on Tom Flanagan's new book Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power. This, from Flanagan's "Ten Commandments of Conservative Campaigning" caught my eye:

4. Incrementalism: We have to be willing to make progress in small practical steps. Sweeping visions have a place in intellectual discussions, but they are toxic in practical politics.

I am so glad to see someone on the Canadian right finally articulating this. History teaches us that sweeping changes tend to get rapidly swept out the door. People resist large-scale change, viscerally and actively, unless their present reality is so dire they want out. Many good ideologies make no headway because their proponents perceive accepting incremental change as moral compromise. All or nothing usually leads to nothing.

Talk talk talk has on-the-fly notes about the Ontario political leaders' debate. Seeing as I missed it, this was helpful to me. A strong anti-McGuinty bias is quite obvious but I guess I can live with that. ;o)

Technorati tags: Tom Flanagan, Pop Spirituality, Ontario Election

Really cool science news

For all you geeks and geek-wannabes (I guess I fit into the second category) with too little time to sift through the mountains of news coming out of the labs of the world, I have the perfect solution.

Hassenpfeffer.

Edward Willett is a writer who wears many hats, among them science columnist. And he regularly shares his best findings on his blog. The latest offering: a laser thruster that could shorten a trip to Mars to under seven days. If it pans out, travel within the solar system suddenly becomes much more doable and our children will be telling their wide-eyed offspring, "When I was your age, there was no such thing as week-end trips to the Moon." (Mine were aghast to learn that I grew up without videos or microwaves, but that's another story.)

I thought I'd one-upped Ed a few days ago when I forwarded him a very cool story about the possibility of using seawater for fuel, but no. He'd seen the story and thought the technology was just too iffy at this point to post it. Ah well. Another day.

So check out his blog and subscribe if you like tales of the weird and the wonderful.

The ultimate in true crime stories

The problem is, this one was marketed as fiction. It took the police in Poland all of four years to realize that Krystian Bala's 2003 novel bore an uncanny resemblance to an unsolved murder case dating from 2000, and realized that it was an only slightly fictionalized account of how the novelist murdered his wife's suspected lover.

He may be the first villain in history to get paid for his monologue.

For more details, click here,. Hat tip to Done With Mirrors for the more detailed story.

Technorati tags: Crime fiction, Murder, Krystian Bala

Mother Teresa and her doubts

I have made no attempt to enter this debate mainly because I haven't paid enough attention to be able to make an intelligent comment. Not so Ambivablog. Annie Gottlieb has distilled some of the best commentary into one post that is well worth your while to read.

Technorati tags: Mother Teresa, Religion, Faith

Surprise!

The best way to successfully throw a surprise party is to do it four weeks early. That way the guest of honour is pretty well guaranteed not to suspect a thing. My hubby exploited the technique the other night to great effect. The only problem was, he told me what time the reservation was really for (for what I thought was going to be a romantic tete-a-tete) and then proceeded to get there in a circuitous route that had me fuming. I hate being late for things. Of course, he was deliberately stalling to make sure everyone else was there first... He didn't really mind, because that way he got to laugh at me for the whole evening. Men. Of course, I had to laugh at myself too.

One of my favourite cards was from my daughter. It was grey and bore in large letters the message: Rest in Peace. Inside it said, "Oopsie! Kinda got ahead of myself there. I mean, "Happy Birthday." I confess, I hooted.

So I'm officially fifty, even if I'm not. As the T-shirt I received stated so nicely: You're not getting older, you're increasing in value.

Better believe it baby!

(If I were a truly worthy blogger, I'd be using this as a springboard to some kind of profound social commentary. I am obviously not a truly worthy blogger.)

Technorati tags: The big 5-0

What kind of Canada?

There was a very disturbing article (in French) in LaPresse today about a priest come to visit immigrant workers who was chased off the FraiseBec farm in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines by the irate owner, Isabelle Charbonneau.

There are a couple of things very wrong with this picture.

First, immigrant workers are being held in unacceptable conditions. A landlord, as Father Clement Bolduc pointed out very reasonably, has no right to restrict the visitors of tenants. Mme Charbonneau claims she has a "responsibility" to "protect" her workers, who are mostly women. There was nothing in the situation that indicated that these women were in any danger whatsoever. Mme Charbonneau, who was physically present, was well placed to evaluate this herself. She had no legal right to evict the priest.

Second, this eviction was carried out with active help from the Terrebonne police. Since when do the police assist people in asserting authority to which they have no legal right, and which, even worse, is oppressive in nature?

There are too many cases of immigrant workers being exploited and oppressed in Canada. We do not need the police intervening on behalf of those who are taking advantage of them.

FraiseBec is apparently the largest strawberry producer in the country. I do believe I will be keeping an eye out for their produce, so that I can actively avoid it.

Technorati tags: FraiseBec, Immigrant workers