Winners!

Day 645

The deadline for my "How Well Do You Know Hawai'i?" quiz has passed, and the two top scorers are Allison Nowlan and JohnnyK. As promised, each will receive a handcrafted CD of tunes by Bette Midler, the answer to question 3, within ten snail-mailing days of receipt of their mailing addresses to dolive@thestar.com.

The answers: 1. "Magnum P.I." 2. Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 3. Bette Midler. 4. Australian. 5. America Online, eBay. 6. One-quarter. 7. coffee. 8. U.S. Senate. 9. Honolulu. 10. surfing.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Office rage. Watch for the danger signs.

Day 645

HT: NYT.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

Futurama. Progress made visible.

Day 645

 

Ideas for making cities more fun.

The art installations edition.

Here's a treat from WebUrbanist, a portfolio of a dozen or so art installations worldwide that enliven new, old and abandoned buildings alike.  

In Bristol, England, artist "FilthyLuker" installs inflatable octopus tentacles to enliven this unnamed building for a June 2009 exhibit.

In curating Sydney's Luminous Festival, musical producer Brian Eno lit up the sails of the Opera House with a variety of images as a statement about global heating and the role artists can take in raising awareness about it.

The "Crossword Puzzle Apartment Building" in Lvov, Ukraine. Tourists and denizens find questions for each day's puzzle at museums, cinemas, fountains and other local points of interest around town. At night, special lights show the answers.

For his 2006 exhibit of architecturally-related works at Austria's Museum Moderner Kunst, artist Erwin Wurm added an external installation, "House Attack," a house embedded in the MUMOK's roof.

Artist Brian Goggin, joined by about 100 volunteers, created "Defenstration" (to throw out of a window) at this abandoned four-storey tenement building in San Francisco. The clocks, chairs, tables and other furniture attempting to escape the building reflect the mood of this skid-row district at the corner of Sixth and Howard Streets.

Courtesy: WebUrbanist: Urban Design, Culture, Travel.

 

Adding spark to a neighbourhood is ArtZuid (Aug. 16 - Oct. 26, 2009), named for the Oud-Zuid (Amsterdam South) district close to the city's museum quarter. The free open-air exbibit, complete with an arts workshop for children, is an effort by locals to bring a dash of postmodern sculptural mirth to their comfortable but overlooked quarter. Neighbours joined to raise donations and recruit artists for this installation of 30 large-scale pieces that take advantage of a tree-lined park framed by the historic Apollolann and Minervalaan boulevards.

Erwin Wurm's re-welded Volkswagen van, its angles conveying the kinetic power of a twist. Wurm designed the "House Attack" shown in the previous gallery.

A recent cast of Auguste Rodin's 1902 bronze scuplture "Le Penseur."

Related

ArtZuid website.

NYT report on ArtZuid.

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Futurama is in tribute to GM's pavilion at the 1939-40 World's Fair, whose theme was "Building the World of Tomorrow." Arguably the last of the great World's Fairs, the exhibition marked a time of North American confidence in the future as it emerged from the Depression. The 700-foot Trylon spire and adjoining Perisphere orb, as large as a city block, were embraced by New Yorkers as whimsical mascots. The spirit of optimism managed to eclipse the ominous signs of looming conflict in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Makes me wonder what 10 historic events I would want to have witnessed, the '39 Fair being among them. The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (World's Columbian Exposition) would be another. Napoleon crowning himself Emperor. Hearing FDR give his "Four Freedoms" speech on the radio. Sitting in on just one of Plato's lectures. Watching Rembrandt put the finishing touches on The Night Watch. Watching Robert Moses explode in a phone call with biographer Robert Caro when The Power Broker first appeared in bookstores. Champlain embarking on yet another expedition, still deeper into the Canadian wilderness, till he reached Lake Simcoe, the furthest extent of his explorations. Being close enough on the Mall on Aug. 23, 1963 to hear King's voice...And, of course, bumping into Shelley Long as she walked off the set of "Cheers" for the last time to tell her she was making a big mistake.   

What are your Top 10?

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Today's top news, Monday, Aug. 31.

Day 645

Bill Clinton tells adoring, capacity crowd at CNE he hopes U.S. will follow Canada this year in adopting universal health care. "I hope [late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy's] lifetime dream that America finally will follow Canada, and every other advanced nation in the world, in providing affordable health care to all of our people will pass," former U.S. president tells audience of 12,000 Saturday at CNE's BMO Field. Photo: Darren Calabrese, CP.

Why Canada was late entering recession, is early to emerge. Analysis shows without reliance on exports, Canada might have dodged this downturn, as it did the post-9/11 slump. Sum total of recessionary damage: 414,000 lost jobs, first export deficit in decades, massive hangover in future from deficit-financed stimulus.

Incredibly, devastating global downturn too short-lived to result in meaningful reforms in financial-markets behaviour or new system for worldwide coordination to avert next catastrophe. We could quote an anti-capitalism hippie weirdo freak on this, but warning comes from expert at one of world's most venerable investment banking firms. In note to clients, Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, writes:

"The crisis is of historic proportions by many metrics. Yet in some ways it was not strong enough to force a restructuring of the world economy...The failure to take advantage of the crisis to put economies on a more balanced footing will have far reaching consequences..."

New Japanese government takes office today amid uncertainty. After breaking decades of near-monopoly rule by LDP, Yukio Hatoyama-led Democrats take office with little governing experience. Israel meanwhile indicts former PM Olmert on fraud charges. Olmert’s three predecessors in office faced corruption allegations.

Opel saga taking bad turn for Magna. GM stalling for time, as I've previously surmised, in hopes of clinging to Opel-Vauxhall once new German government elected late next month. Sources speculate German Chancellor Merkel (left) snookered by Detroit. Further evidence "new GM" refuses to focus on key N.A. market is $293-million deal to flesh out its Chinese offerings, adding trucks to its Chinese line-up of cars and minivans.

Green shoots: IPO boom in offing. Hyatt Hotels and Dollar Stores among giants poised to tap equity markets this year, after two years of pent-up demand while markets slumped.

Scotiabank and BMO chief executives detail their strategies in a global market still fraught with uncertainties.

In stunning reversal, Florida posts net drop in population latest 12-month period. Sunshine State, fourth-largest, has only known growth over past century. But lately hard hit by foreclosures, job losses, and net out-migration. William Frey, demographer at Brookings Institution, tells NYT:

“I don’t know if you can take a whole state to a psychiatrist, but the whole Florida economy was based on migration flows.”

Small but discernible exodus of Facebook users. Commercialism, arrogance, and privacy fears have turned many users against the social-networking site for adults. Facebook defector Leif Harmsen tells NYT:

“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us. It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”

Reading blogs ranks second only to social-network visits among adult Internet users. Close to 40% of Web users are regular blog readers. (See chart at left.)

In San Francisco marathons, runners shunning Nike and other special-purpose shoes for thin togs that literally fit like a glove or going barefoot. They point to studies showing expensive running gear has little effect on performance.

EU members as, and sometimes more, productive than U.S. despite more generous EU holidays. Against average of 25 days off in U.S, EU average is 34.4 days, with the most pocketed in Lithuania (41), France and Finland (40 each). Yet OECD finds Belgium (30) and the Netherlands (28) are almost 2 percent more productive than the US, while Luxembourg (32 days) is whopping 27% more efficient. Even France is just 2% less productive, despite 37-hour work week.

Newsweek wonders if the epidemic of proven and alleged plagiarism - from Harvard students to debut novelists (Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life) to high-profile pundits (Maureen Dowd) - is an unavoidable tic. "Could they be guilty of psychological sloppiness rather than fraud? Could the real offense be disregard for the mind's subliminal kleptomania? And if it is real, is unconscious copying (or "cryptomnesia" to those who study the phenomenon) preventable?"

Ted Kennedy's written message to Pope Benedict XVI, conveyed by Obama on Vatican visit several weeks ago, partially revealed during late senator's funeral Saturday:

“Even though I am ill, I’m committed to do everything I can do to achieve access to health care to everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life.” 

 

Funeral procession for late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy makes its way to Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday.

___________________

Quote of the day

"I think it's a real city of the future. I think having that big windmill ... is a signal to people from all over the world that make the journey from the airport [to] downtown that you're interested in the future. I like it because it's a diverse city. I like it because it's a friendly place." -Bill Clinton, asked during the Q&A session of his CNE appearance Saturday what he best liked about Toronto, where he has been a frequent visitor since retirement from the presidency in 2000. Toronto's one power generating windmill, a demonstration project that most days produces enough power to heat a birdhouse, is near BMO Field, where Clinton spoke. 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

America, America!

Day 643

An occasional digest.

The brilliant artist Maria Kalman, as is her wont on the final weekend of August, offers a spectacular multi-media essay, "I Lift My Lamp Beside The Golden Door," in the NYT. This time out, Kalman offers words and images that capture the essence of America in all its complexity, warts and glorious virtues. It is today's most e-mailed NYT feature, no surprise.

Much less heartening, but just as important, is this exposition on the ghastly underside of American sentiment when real change is in the air - ignorance, fear of the future, revulsion for leaders trying to better the lives of the disadvantaged. WaPo columnist Rick Perlstein reminds us it was ever thus. Even the Founding Fathers bitterly bickered, we don't hear much about that. Now it's healthcare reform. And the forces of retreat, self-interest and wilfull know-nothingness are on the march. This is the enduring character of the right in America. Nothing we have seen in recent months, from "death panels" to "pulling the plug on Grandma," should surprise us.

Paul Begala, Clinton-era political strategist (James "Serpenthead" Carville's teammate) and take-no-prisoners liberal (my kinda guy, plus he writes so damned well), makes a convincing case why progressives should settle for less than perfect in health care reform. If we had been around for Social Security 1.0, Begala asserts, we'd be repelled by how miserly FDR was in all the groups he excluded from its benefits. But the shortcomings were later fixed, once FDR had succeeded in establishing in law state assistance to retirees. Here's Begala:

"The Founders gave us a standard: 'a more perfect Union'. It's an odd phrase; we don't generally speak of something becoming 'more perfect'. I believe it means that we have a duty, every generation, to make progress. For a dozen generations we have done that, in our imperfect way. Let's hope those writing the new health-reform bill can give us something that represents historic progress -- and that those of us most passionately committed to fundamental reform can celebrate progress, not lament a lack of perfection."

If there's a darned good reason Obama is retaining the Bush practice of renditions, Clara Gutteridge, writing in the U.K. Guardian, doesn't see it. Me neither. Where's the progressives' outcry?

Obama can expect a distracting, heated debate on national security come Sept. 11, warns Justin Miller in the Atlantic.  The first 9/11 anniversary of the Obama administration will see renewed doubts about Obama's commitment to protecting the nation, given his focus to date on domestic issues. The real story here, an American weakness, is that because domestic policy is so much tougher given all those clever checks and balances gifted by the Founding Fathers, most chief executives eventually give up on the home front and become foreign-policy presidents. JFK invaded Cuba; LBJ fought a ruinous war in Southeast Asia; Nixon launched an era of detente with the Soviet Union and "Red China"; Clinton intervened to stop the genocide in the Balkans, bailed out a defaulting Mexico, and brokered peace in Northern Ireland - all of this and much more without the say-so of anyone on Capitol Hill. The first Bush threatened to evict Saddam from Kuwait with or without Congressional authority (which ultimately he was given by a narrow margin). But try reforming healthcare, or education, or inner-city decay (as Carter tried and failed to do, making himself look weak in the process)...  

Ariana Huffington advises Obama to channel FDR. In the WSJ, Thomas Frank counsels the president to channel Truman.(Who each failed with attempted healthcare reforms, but what the hey.) Here's what Obama's actually been reading on his rare week off, at Martha's Vineyard, and just now ending. Five books - not one on healthcare reform, thank goodness - totalling 2,300 pages. With time out for beloved Teddy's funeral, in Boston, and announcing Bernanke's reappointment earlier this week, that hasn't left much time with M&M&S. Then again, there's worse role-modelling than having your kids see you more often than not with your face in a book. 

Obama's summer reading, BTW:

• The Way Home by George Pelecanos, a crime thriller based in Washington, D.C.;
• Lush Life by Richard Price, a story of race and class set in New York's Lower East Side;
• Tom Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, on the benefits to America of an environmental revolution;
• John Adams by David McCullough;
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf, a drama about the life of eight different characters living in a Colorado prairie community.

With acknowledgements to William Faulkner.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Diversions: signs of the times.

Day 643

In his spare moments, Gus indulges his hobby of collecting peculiar signs - traffic signs, warning signs, shopkeepers' signs. I once asked why his interest in signs, and he showed me this one:

 

Uhmm, looks like a billboard company's moral justication for "visual pollution," as a nascent anti-billboard movement called it beginning in the 1970s. (Whatever happened to those folks?)

In any event, billboards aren't Gus' fancy (although he marveled at this one):

Obviously a vandal's response to the jacked-up service fees with which troubled British banks are making customers pay for management's incompetence.

Signs are reflective of the times. Looking over Gus' collection, I was reminded of a 39-year-old tune by the Five Man Electrical Band -

Sign Sign everywhere a sign / Blocking out the scenery / breaking my mind / Do this, don't do that / Can't you read the sign?

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray / But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all / I didn't have a penny to pay / So I got me a pen and a paper / and I made up my own little sign / I said thank you Lord / for thinking about me / I'm alive and doing fine.

Time to edit the burgeoning GR image bank. (Click on image to enlarge it.  Locations are given where known.)

 

Boring and Oregon City are ex-urbs of Portland. Slow down: Nelson Suburbs, New Zealand.

Ham and Sandwich directions: Kent, England. Finally, a DUI test for cyclists.

 

Lost: Cardiff

 

Sand warning: Namibia. Unfortunately, when the wind gets up, obscuring the sign, you don't know what you're dealing with. Cemetery plaque: Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England. A caution against drive-by mourners.

Hazardous and obnoxious conditions: Maui, Hawaii. I think they could safely have dispensed with "please."

 

No slouching sign: Seoul International Airport: Three-hour barking limit: Brisbane.

Danger ahead: Sutherland, South Africa. There's something about an e-mail drafted on a toilet... 

Everglades National Park, Florida. As a biker I might take my chances at the side of the road...

 

Both from England. The fine is payable prior to electrocution.

  Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, Calif. I thought he left them behind in Washington.

Diverted traffic: England. Pretty much all of England is a diversion, when you think about it. Shoplifters association: Marsaxlokk, Malta. In Baltimore or Brampton, it would be the "Shrinkage Association."

Foot prohibition: Yangon, Myanmar. One of many crackdowns since name change from Rangoon, Burma.

 

Beverly Hills, Calif. Rodeo Drive shoppers are a fretful lot.

Nairobi. It's a myth all Kenyans put warthogs before rug rats.

Okay, I cheated on this one. They're fake, but I couldn't resist with back-to-school approaching.

Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park, or Rajiv Gandhi Zoo, in Katraj near Pune in southwest India. Mr. Roget was kept busy on this sign. The verb to Badger Harry is a new one on me.   

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Man, am I tired of bailing out CIBC.

Day 643

Here's a prime example of the "socialization" of private-sector losses that has been a fact of capitalism life since forever, but has come become a bit of a talking point in progressive circles since the spectacular flameout of global capitalism.

Recall that CIBC, or "the bank of running into sharp objects" (BRISO), took heavily losses from its dalliance with the unlamented Enron Corp.

Now CIBC its trying to get everyday Canadians to pay for its lack of judgment in hanging out with a bad crowd in Houston. For being gulled into the promise of a quick, fat profit by Enron executives who will languish for decades as guests of the U.S. correctional services system. Due diligence? That's for wusses. 

When the private sector messes up, it takes a tax writeoff. Sounds innocuous. But that's money out or your pocket and mine. By declaring writeoffs against future profits, the business in question deprives government of revenue, which Ottawa then has to get from you and me. Through higher income taxes and user fees, cuts in services - you know the routine.

Tax writeoffs and writedowns are everyday business. It's government helping soften the blow from the fallout after a misguided corporate strategy or the blundering execution of one. It's how we subsidize the chronic mistakes in business. The MSM never describes it that way. It saves its outrage for $30,000 junkets by city councillors.

Except the government is us. So it's you and me being asked told to bail out CIBC's shareholders.

Repeatedly, over 30 years.

I've helped bail out BRISCO shareholders after the bank's craven stupidity in backing Massey-Ferguson Ltd., R.I.P; Dome Petroleum Ltd., R.I.P., Olympia and York Developments Ltd., R.I.P., Global Crossing LLC, R.I.P., Enron, R.I.P...

I know what you're thinking. How did CIBC manage to escape the epic Nortel Networks Corp. boondoggle?

Answer: Nortel made its feckless $34-billion (U.S.) worth of takeovers at the height of the tech and dot-com boom in the late 1990s by using its own hyper-inflated stock as "currency," and not bank loans. Good news for BRISO shareholders, whose management otherwise would have been at or near the head of the line of wiped-out Nortel creditors.

But that doesn't get Canadians off the hook. Nortel is sittling on billions and billions of so-called tax-loss carryforwards - deductions against future profits. And everyone picking at the Nortel carcass, L.M. Ericsson being the latest, takes away a portion of those tax deductions to apply against their future profits generated in Canada. So we'll all pay for Nortel's incompetence too - quite apart from the managerial ruination of our national R&D flagship. (Which we also subsidized with lavish R&D tax credits...)

The mind boggles that CIBC, as disclosed in its 3Q report Wednesday, has been trying to get Canadians to absorb the cost of its $3-billion settlement in 2005 with enraged Enron shareholders.

The Canada Revenue Agency earlier this month struck down the request. Good for it for the CRA, obviously. CIBC of course plans to go to court - another service paid for by Canadians - to fight the agency's ruling.   

All this, by the way, shows up as a four paragraph story buried in the back pages of the Globe and Mail's business section. That Alberta is bracing for a bigger-than-expected budget deficit of several billion dollars, with the implicit suggestion such stories always have that governments don't manage their finances well, was on Page One that day. As if Edmonton had any control over plunging world prices for natural gas.

To think I've done so much for BRISO shareholders over the decades, and for the top management whose pay is tied to the stock price. And not one of the bastards has so much as sent me a thank-you card.

  

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

Enjoy your weekend.

Day 642

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Was it something I said?

Day 642

How to disappear at work.

 

 

 

HT: New York Times.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

Quote of the week.

Day 642

Saskatoon-based health-policy expert Steven Lewis, in a pro-Canadian healthcare YouTube video:

“If [Americans] want to use our system as a whipping boy in their own propaganda wars, it's mildly irritating. ... We should hope for our American brothers and sisters that they get it right, but I for one don't much care about what right-wing superstitions Americans want to put out there about our Canadian system because ultimately they're the ones who suffer from their own ignorance.”

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.