Archive for March, 2010
|Country of Origin – Olympics
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
I know I’m a bit late in writing this, as the 2010 Winter Olympics are over. But there’s still time for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the 2016 Summer Olympics, and the … you get the point.
In a nutshell, I’m wondering why do we make such a big deal about the nation vs nation aspect of the Olympics. I’m thinking it should be more about athlete vs athlete.
Sure, on the surface it seems like a good idea, people come together to cheer on their home country, instilling a wave of patriotism in every competing nation across the globe. And it settles the age old question of which nation is the best without need for a world domination style war. Yes, it appears to be a, nation vs nation, who’s better then who competition and that’s what everyone from politicians to the working class alike want. And, I can see how that appeals.
There’s of course the obvious dark side in this, confusing nation vs nation with race vs race, but so far I think the Olympics have done a reasonably good job in avoiding this. It also helps that multi-cultural or multi-racial countries such as the USA, and Canada tend to do quite well at the games without a defining majority race.
But, does it get to the age old question of which athlete is the best?
The big downfall of this system that I’m complaining about is the country cap system. This system sets the maximum number of any athletes that can compete for a single country in any one event. The problem is that it is quite possible for 5 or 6 of the top 20 athletes in any one event to have citizenship in the same nation. The cap would force some of them to stay home, while athletes who perform worse during qualifications from other countries who have not filled their cap are allowed to compete. Not really getting to the best of the best are we?
Another problem is citizenship. Some countries give out citizenship like candy to athletes just so they will compete for them at the Olympics. This works to get past the country cap system, but cheapens the nation vs nation experience. Can we really consider someone who was born in the USA, who’s parents were also born in the USA, who plays professional level basketball in the USA to be a German just because they offered him some money and a citizenship?
There’s inequalities here too, different countries have different rules on who can compete for them. Some require birth in the country, for others citizenship is good enough, maybe having a grandparent who was a citizen will work, or maybe there is no need to have had a previous relationship of any sort with the country you compete for. It’s all a hodgepodge, further advantaging or disadvantaging one nation over the other.
Finally, citizenship is generally based on where you were born, unless you have citizenship to more than one country. Is this what is important, or is it the place your currently live, train, and prepare for the Olympics that is important? For me, I don’t care where you were born, so long as you live and train in Canada, you should be competing for them. That’s good enough for me.
In summary, let’s play down the country of origin labeling forced on our athletes, and make it more about who’s the best of the best. Here are two simple changes to improve the next games:
- Remove the country cap system, and make it a world wide cap per event
- Don’t base the nation of an athlete on which country granted the citizenship, but on which country they have lived and trained in the longest over the past 4 years. It should be more of a sub-note about the athlete than the main label.
What would you prefer to see at the Olympic games? A competition to test the best of the best, or a forum for trumping up nations and international rivalries?
Tags: philosophy
Posted in ramblings | No Comments »
Did The Red Cross Employ Slave Labour?
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
CBC Radio - The CurrentJust passing on an interesting story I picked up on while driving from Saskatoon to Qu’Appelle the other day. The above link will play the radio episode that I heard, while the link below will take you to a written article. Both sourced by the CBC and, as I understand, originating from an investigation done by the French Radio-Canada.
My opinion of all this is not great for the Canadian Red Cross. As a past, and potentially future, donator to the Red Cross I’m a little upset at they way the Red Cross seems to be treating these allegations. Their initial approach to the whole thing seems okay to me. After hearing a report from one of their field agents, they began with a high level internal investigation to determine if there was any truth to these allegations. They decided there was, then hired an external third party investigator to bring in the details. Seems reasonable so far.
The part that I’m upset with is what they did after that. I’m just going to sum it up with what they seem to be doing, vs what I want to be hearing from them.
This is an isolated case, of 40 or so workers and it has been fully dealt with
vs
Thank you for bringing to our attention this potentially wide spread problem. We will be sending our own field agents to Java to conduct a full review, and will compensate workers that were under compensated for their efforts in rebuilding after the Tsunami. Expect a report on our findings in the next 6 months.
We have a code of ethics that we make all contractors sign to prevent anything like this from happening.
vs
We realize that without proper inspection and follow up, we can not be certain that contractors are following our code of ethics. In the future we will be performing regular inspections at job sites using a rotation of our own field staff. We will take the lead from other NGOs and cancel contracts with employers who are found to be non-compliant.
We are not directly responsible for any abuse given to workers as this is the responsibility of our contractors
vs
As owner’s of the project, we take full responsibility for any worker abuse.
You get the idea.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/17/mtl-red-cross-tsunami-enquete.html
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=34473&tid=001
Tags: charity, news
Posted in charity | 3 Comments »
I’ve Been Stuck in a Car Wash
Sunday, March 14th, 2010
Not sure if this has ever happened to anyone else, but I was stuck in a car wash the other night. It happened at the Petro-Canada on the corner of Victoria and Fleet Street in Regina.
Pretty snappy picture eh? Thanks Google.
Back to my story, I was driving my company truck at the time. It’s a reasonably large 2008 Chevy Silverado. I’d taken it through this same car wash before, usually once a week, so I wasn’t worried about it not fitting.
After plugging in my payment card, the equipment fires up and away I go, everything seems normal. I go past the high pressure spray nozzles, and through the multi-colour foam machine. Everything is fine. Next come the spinning scrubbing cylinders on either side, and the overhead strips of cloth that drape over my windshield blinding me from the mechanical scrubbing frenzy taking place outside.
Just then, while I’m blind to everything around me, the steering wheel jerks hard to the right, the truck bounces a bit, stops moving, starts moving, bounces again, then stops moving for good. I would like to point out and emphasize at this point that I neither turned the steering wheel nor touched the breaks at any point.
Eventually the equipment stops spinning, the water stops spraying, and the whole machine grinds to a halt. I get out of the truck to examine the situation while I’m waiting for the attendant to come out. What I find is that some of the same cloth that was covering my windshield had been caught between the front driver side tire, and the metal rail that keeps your vehicle pointed in the correct direction. Seems to me that this was enough to cause the side wall of the tire to bind to the rail and cause the tires to turn and jam.
The attendant comes out, and quickly breaks into a lecture on how I should not have stepped on the break or turned the wheel while I was in the car wash. I explain that I didn’t, and point out the cloth wedged between the tire and the rail.
“Oh,” she says, “that’s not the problem, your truck must be too big.”
Of course I’m skeptical, given the regular frequency in which I take this same vehicle through this same car wash, but I didn’t really feel like arguing.
“I don’t know what to do, I’ll need to get the manager” With that she leaves, and I’m back to waiting. After a few minuets, I’m greeted by the manager and another lecture on not using the breaks or turning the steering wheel. Again I explain that I did neither, though I’m certain he did not believe me.
The manager says, “You’ll have to start your truck and drive out once I open the door. Then come through again and remember not to touch your breaks or steering wheel.” Yeah, a double dose of lecture. Oh well, I just want to get on the road again, so I don’t bother arguing with him.
I hop into the truck, put in the key, turn it, and nothing. That’s right, nothing. Somehow during the brief time I spent in the car wash the battery had died. I always turn the truck off when going through the car wash to save gas, this time it didn’t pan out. The in-dash meter was reading just over 9 volts, enough to make a clicking sound and run the radio, but not much else.
This is where things got fun. I, along with the manager and his attendant, had to push the truck out of the car wash. I had to turn the wheel and clear the fabric before it would move, but that did little to dissuade either of them to thinking that I had not deliberately caused my truck to stop in the car wash, and was now faking a battery problem.
We all got wet and waxy pushing that truck through all the fabric scrubbers, my jacket was soaked, my gloves were soaked, my pants were soaked, and I was none to happy. Once outside I quickly managed to find someone at the pumps in a Kramer company vehicle to give me a boost. The truck started right away, and thus ended my car was adventure for the evening.
Tags: humour
Posted in humour | No Comments »
I’m a loser
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
The title just oozes self deprecation doesn’t it? I’m actually not referring to my social inadequacies, but to my political ones. There’s nothing I’ve disliked more about my time in politics than when I’m on the loosing side of a vote. Contrary to what some may think, this doesn’t happen very often, at least not on town council.
The council system functions much like the Cuban system, or a company boardroom. There is no official opposition, we are all elected to be on the same team, and work together in collaboration. The vast majority of resolutions are made with unanimous support.
The votes that are not unanimous are the ones I became a politician for. You see, several things have to come together for a vote not to be passed unanimously. First, either outcome of the vote has to be acceptable. Otherwise you couldn’t have people both support and not support the same motion. The difference in opinion then comes down to vision.
For me, vision is the whole reason I took up politics in the first place. I felt that I could make a difference for the better. My political vision is best categorized as, neo-liberalism but let’s not use that term as it’s poorly understood and even detested in some circles.
A better description is this:
Always strive to make decisions which will have the greatest long term benefit to all parties involved. Base decisions on fact, avoid group think, gut feelings, party ideologies, and political games. Remember that you are making decisions as a representative of your constituents not as your constituents would make decisions. Your job is to have a deeper understanding of the issues, and to make an informed decision, not a popular one.
So, when one of these rare opportunities to vote on an issue where I get to apply my vision comes up, understandably I get quite excited. Then, I quickly become disappointed as I realize that I am on the loosing side.
It’s made all the worse for me, when I hear the following statements during the usually brief discussions the precede the vote. “I just have a gut feeling, and my gut is usually right”; “We all met before hand and decided without you, so it doesn’t matter what you have to say”; “Your wrong, I can’t give you any examples as to why but your still wrong”.
As you can see, these statements are directly opposed to my own vision or reason for getting into politics in the first place. Very disheartening. I usually don’t sleep well that night, often thinking that I should send in my resignation, as I’m not of “like mind” with my counterparts. I feel that I’ve not made any difference, and I’m wasting my time and worse tax payer dollars by taking up space on council.
Eventually I spin it around and come to realize that you can’t win them all, and things would have been all the worse if my vision was not even at the table. At least it gives others a reason to pause and reflect and maybe, just maybe it will slowly rub off on them. And one day I will be on the winning side of a principled vote, and I will make a positive difference.
Of course this process is made all the more easy by venting to my wife, friends, and family and now for the first time, my blog.
Tags: philosophy, politics
Posted in politics | No Comments »