RoadDave

Davey’s asked me if I wanted to write more about the Olys, so’s I said yep. 

Skeleton: Now didn’t we do just fine there, what with that kid from Russell Manitoba winnin the Gold.  Skeleton is like the luge, but you go down face first with your pie hole about a half inch off the ice, through the same turns as the lugers and the bobsleddin lads and just as jeezly fast.  You steer by dragging your feet and moving your arse about to keep from goin head first into a wall of ice at 140 k per.  Which could ruin your day if you did.  On the Womens side of the skeleton, we did just fine too.  No medals but the Brit girl who won was the one with the biggest set of balls what clanked when she walked.

Fancy Skatin:  Some Yank florist won, but without doin a quadruped leap, what pissed off the Russian, Ivan Bitchacockoff, who did a four times around and landed ‘er.  I think what we’re seein is the downside of the Olys so here me out for a moment. 

There’s sports where you can tell who won.  They went the farthest, or tallest, or fastest.  Those are things what you can measure.  Closest to the house, or more goals, or didn’t take as long as the other lad.  Then there’s the judging sports.  You got your artistic merit, or degree of difficulty, or did you land’er OK. 

Anytime you got judges for anything like art, it’s a “my opinion is better’n yours, so shut yer trap” kinda pissin contest.  Even if all the judges are fair and square, it still comes down to “I said so and you can eff off.”  Which tells me it ain’t a sport worthy of the Olys.  And lookin at some of the judges at the Fancy Skatin, I doubt if any one of them could push back from the table without assistance, let alone do some quadruped leap on skates, so what the hell do they know?  Same with the half-pipers.  Might as well give out the medals based on the applause or the colour of their boards. 

Judgin ruins it all as they sit around natterin about oh she’s ranked fourth and it’s not her time and she didn’t turn her ankle out the right way on the second revolution so’s to demonstrate the lithe determination of the atheticisms.  Eff that.  Them judges cain’t see it anyways, even if they watched the replay twice, so’s they’re talkin out their arseholes to make themselves look important and get a better hotel at the Olys. 

Now sure, there has to be some judgin, as in is that an offside or icing.  Did you put your skatin boot across the lane line, your elbow in the defenceman’s guts or that kind of measuring, fer sure, but marks for artistic merit?  Jeeze Louise, might as well hand out medals based on yer dye job instead of your performance.  They used to have barrell jumpin at the Olys.  The one what jumped over the most barrells won the Gold and they didn’t give a shiite if you landed ear, elbow and dicktip first.

Speakin of dicktips, will someone tell the lads what makes the aerodynamic uniforms for the speedy sports that we don’t want to see the moose knuckle.  We don’t need to see it either.  I asked Maureen and she says if you sew some interfacing (whatever the hell that is) into the uniforms, you’d be presenting a more finished appearance. Instead, we get to see who waxes or who answers correctly to Mazel Tov!. 

At least in the hockey you know they’re wearing a cup or they’re going to come off the ice on a stretcher, curled up like a cocktail shrimp halfway into the first period.  Wear some gitch, dammit.

Speakin of gitch, the Brit media has been pissin all over Canada about the flame bein behind a chain link fence, the Zambonis breakin down, no fourth leg at the openin, the tracks too fast or it’s too dangerous, or we ain’t got enough snow.  Well, from where I sit, we done a great job and the Brit media can have urine, stool and sperm sample.  Which means they can go eat my gitch.  When you smartarses do the Summer Olys in 2012, I’ll be writin up every screwup you got and they’rl be thousands. 

I’ll even start now.  You got 76 million people in the United Kingdom and are so smart you haven’t got the sense to let one of them go to Dentist School?  Frig ya all.  Oh and stop boilin your food.  Yer supposed to be able to chew a roast a bit.  Sorry, I forgot, none of you have any friggin teeth which is why you boil everything, includin yer friggin heads in a bucket of tea.  Arseholes.  And don’t friggin smile anymore either.  You’re scarin the kids.

And by the way, we’re kickin ass and takin names in the Curling.  Cheryl Bernard pulled another one out, this time on Denmark and just floated the hammer into the four foot in the extra end.  Now that’s the thrill of victory.

Back in the semi-drunk, food-coma before New Year’s Day, our esteemed Prime Minister, Stephen “Steve” Harper decided to prorogue Parliament.  He wrote up a note from himself excusing the government from school until March 3rd, drove across the street from 24 Sussex Drive and dropped the note off with the Governor General, Michael Jean.  In with the unopened Christmas cards and hidden in the preparations for the New Year’s Levee, someone slipped the note from Stevie for Her Excellency’s signature. 

Now, I’m not going to suggest our Governor General wasn’t paying attention, but hey, it’s the day before New Year’s Eve and everyone with a lick of sense has the mental cruise control engaged in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.  That would include our G-G in that category, so she signed it.

What a prorogue is, in a parliamentary democracy for those who were sleeping in Civics class, is a break.  It shuts down the previous session, s-cans the previous bills and puts a happy bow on business.  Recess is a reasonable analogy, except that rather than coming back in from recess and resuming the six-times multiplication tables, it’s a recess that ends the school year.  Go outside, play some four-square, hockey cards or marbles, come back in and holy crap, it’s the first day of Grade 4 with Miss Welch as your new teacher talking about Uganda in Social Studies.

Stevie figured that taking the heat in Parliament for Afghanistan, the Economy, Jobs, a bottomless deficit and his generally hurtful vindictive demeanor would be a daily bummer on the news.  So, instead of taking the heat, standing in his Place as an elected representative of the people, our Prime Minister decided to be true to his form of micromanaging bully and take the dickless coward route: He wrote up a note, asking to be let out of school until March 3rd and to not have to do his homework either.

To keep this in perspective, let’s say you take the same route with your credit card company.  Write up a note saying you’re proroguing your payments to Visa for January and February and will resume giving a damn about them around March 3rd, 2010 and Visa can’t charge you interest, as you’re going to the Olympics.  After the laughter subsides, Visa will send over someone to knock some sense into you with a ball-peen hammer upside your head.

Unfortunately the problems with our Economy, Jobs, Afghanistan, the Deficit and now Aid to Haiti never got the memo from Stevie with the Get Out Of School card. 

This also means the collection of lame, halt and closed-head injured that compromise Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, can’t ask questions in Parliament, holding the PM and his groupthink meat puppets to some kind of standard of vague participatory parliamentary democracy. 

There is no accountability.  We now have an Emperor ruling by fiat, pronouncement and Order in Council.  

I’m not entirely convinced I can write about Haiti without resorting to clichés, screaming out loud and then flailing at the ground impotently:  No one can, if we are honest.  The same emotions percolate around any tragedy, either manmade or natural.  Fear, anger, frustration, shame, guilt, sorrow and so on. 

The Haiti Earthquake is a natural disaster, one that could neither be foreseen or prevented, in an impoverished country, with a rickety political state and a cobbled together infrastructure that barely works at the best of times.  Aid has been pouring into Haiti for years, most of it skimmed off by the political elites to be resold to the truly needy at insane prices, or doled out as ‘cadeaux’ for various menial tasks, political favours or as expressions of loyalty. 

We don’t see that level of corruption here in the “Western” world.  We have that luxury of reasonable prosperity whereby we don’t have to bribe a cop to allow us in to see a doctor at a “Free” clinic, to get charitable medical treatment for easily preventable diseases like malaria, dysentery, or simple inoculations for uncomplicated illnesses.  We don’t see that every day, so we don’t have a frame of reference, or even a basic comprehension of the issues of the elemental struggling to stay alive that millions of Haitians have to face every day.

Which makes it doubly difficult to watch pundits and “our correspondent in Port-Au-Prince” bemoan riots at food distribution areas, uncontrolled lines of the terrified pushing and shoving to get a simple bottle of water, or bodies being piled across a street to get some attention from the authorities.  The people of Haiti are reacting the only way they can, if only to survive and it is not our place to complain, comment or bemoan their actions.  They have never known any other way, and have no other recourse.

Our reaction as “Westerners” should be to ignore the things we see as savage and inhumane, as our rules do not apply.  Haitian rules apply and we have to overlook much to bring our resources to bear to help as many as we can.  Much like the tsunami of a couple of years ago, or any of the hundreds of genocides (spin the wheel of African meltdowns and pick any name that comes up) we have to do what we can for basic human needs and let the rest of it sort itself out. 

Unfortunately, our media attention span is short.  Even in our own backyard, New Orleans, whole districts are still unrecovered, unrepaired and uninhabitable.  For those keeping score, Hurricane Katrina was in August 2005.  That would be more or less, four and half years ago.  We still, with all our ability, money, will, infrastructure, political machinery and public outcry, have not fixed New Orleans.  It will take at least a generation, under the best possible circumstances, to put New Orleans back together.

Which leads to the question:  If we can’t fix our own messes, what the heck makes us think we can fix Haiti in a week?  We can’t.  Nobody can.  That is where the frustration and the anger seeps in and we react badly as only well-fed, comfortable westerners can from the luxury of our living rooms.  The media know this and make sure we are fed a diet of outrage and incomprehension to both make us donate money and be pissy about it. 

Yes, Haiti is a tragedy of staggering proportions.  No, there is not way anyone can fix this in a week, a month, a year or even a decade.  About all we can do is donate money to reputable, compassionate aid organizations. 

The Red Cross is the most effective in these situations.  Be assured that there will be charity scams on their way to your email.  If you’ve never heard of them before, then odds are the charity is either a scam or being run by well-intentioned but less-than-skilled people who are in over their heads.

That’s about all you can do. 

With the capture of the latest shoe bombing nut, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab onboard a Delta flight to Detroit from Amsterdam, the Air Safety Bullshiite Theatre has moved into Act II.  In previous posts, we deconstructed the utter and complete failure of the TSA to find their ass with both hands and a roadmap.

In the name of ‘preventing terrorism’ the TSA is now pushing for full-body scanners that allow the security folks to see if you trim your Secret Garden, without asking you to disrobe, ostensibly to see if you’re packing hard to detect explosives in your underwear.  Looking further into the sound and fury, the real failure of the TSA or any of the other affiliated agencies, like the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security or even the local rent-a-cops, isn’t the technology, it’s the actual willingness to succeed.

The whole shoe bomber-terrorism game is set up so the terrorists only have to win once out of 100 tries, while the security folks have to win 100 times out of 100 to keep us safe.  The failure isn’t the game itself, as the game has always favoured the bad guys, but in how the good guys play the game.  Since 9/11 the security services have not played to win, as the game is a people game and not a technology game.  Technology can’t win a people game and terrorism is, once you boil it down, a people game:  One person getting around several dozen other people with something destructive.

Here’s the problem:  We know how to stop the bad guys getting on aircraft, but we don’t have the will to do what is needed to stop them.  El Al, the Israeli national airline, has an excellent record in preventing loons from getting on their aircraft.  They start their security screening the minute you buy a ticket or get out of the cab at the airport.  You get asked questions, lots of questions, repeatedly and forcefully by highly trained and well-paid security officers who are concerned with keeping their flights safe and nothing more:  They use people to solve a people problem.

El Al does passenger profiling.  They take anyone who looks or sounds like a potential threat aside for a serious grilling, inspecting and patting-down.  If that means someone with a Palestinian-sounding name, then that is what happens and El Al has taken significant heat for it.  El Al’s response is always the same:  If you don’t like it, don’t fly our airline.  Now, I’m not saying racial profiling is right, morally, but statistically, the math says racial profiling is very effective in keeping loons off aircraft.  Statistically, very few Mormons want to blow up airplanes for religious reasons.  Profiling is a moral conundrum that I can’t answer with any degree of comfort.

The other steps El Al takes to keep their aircraft safe include stringent background security checks and actual monitoring of anyone who goes near the aircraft, including fuellers, ramp rats, groomers and maintenance workers.  Is every piece of cargo on that aircraft inspected?  Yes, as well as x-rayed until it glows in the dark.  El Al does security they way it does because they know it works:  They use people to solve a people problem. 

So can we make flying safe?  Most certainly we can.  Hire suspicious, grumpy people to constantly question why someone is near an aircraft, what is going on the aircraft, or into the aircraft.  Give them the power of police officers, pay them a very good wage and make them Federal employees.  Let them loose and tell the airlines they’re paying half the cost.  It will mean pissing off the airlines who will moan about government getting in the face of private business, but do you want to fly safely or not?

If the price of an airline ticket has to go up, then the price of an airline ticket has to go up, but it goes up for all the airlines, across the board.  Guess what?  Passengers can look at the in-your-face stringent security and say “Yep, I’m paying for this as part of my taxes and my ticket.  It sucks, but that’s the price.”  And yes, it will have economic effects.  Not as many people will be flying, or be willing to pay the price to fly, which is not necessarily a bad thing when you look at the larger picture. 

If, and assuming the American fixation on technology solutions to people problems holds true, the back-scatter imaging stations will be all over airports sooner rather than later.  This means some poor TSA hump making $10 a hour will be locked in a private room staring at freakishly hued images of your more or less naked body every time you fly somewhere.  Yes, it will be a great job when the Hawaiian Tropic All-Girl Beach Volleyball Team is flying to Cleveland, but that’s a once a year deal.   

Will it be exciting, stimulating and sexy work?  Go look around any shopping mall and see if there are more than one out of a hundred fellow shoppers you’d actually want to see naked.  I will suggest that there are probably more people that you would gladly pay money to not see naked.

The TSA could always hire online one-handed typists who could really enjoy that kind of work, but that is a very small subset of a very small subset.  A combination of the outstanding restraining orders and the inability to leave their parents’ basement would preclude most of the possible candidates from applying for the job.  Alternatively, we could outsource the real-time image review to a call centre in Uttar Pradesh, where nobody will be stimulated by the naked image of Aunt Hazel, unless she breaks into a Bollywood dance number.

Which leaves us exactly where?  A technological solution to a problem with people who want to blow up aircraft, which would be exactly no solution. 

The reason they’re pushing for a technology solution is money of course.  It’s hard to make outrageous amounts of money with a people solution to a people problem.  Pushing ‘magic’ technology means you can charge outrageous amounts of money for it and, with the right level of paranoia in the air, the government will buy it. regardless of the cost, in the name of keeping us safe. 

It doesn’t solve the problem of air safety, but makes for good theatre.

Now that the ruckus regarding Tiger Woods is settling down, we can wade in with our reasoned overview.  Upfront, we don’t know what actually happened, as we weren’t there.  For that matter, the media wasn’t there either.  The only two people who were there aren’t talking, so we’re into the land of wooly speculation, supposition and juicy guesstimation.

First off, Tiger Woods is worth somewhere near 8 Zillion dollars.  He doesn’t fly economy and doesn’t stay at a Super8 motel.  He has people who do things for him that you and I have to do because we don’t have personal assistants, aides, or ‘people’ who look after the minutiae of getting around and doing things that we all have to accomplish in the course of a day.

Secondly, Tiger Woods is a professional golfer.  He hits a ball with a stick.  It isn’t like he’s causing World Peace to break out, or finding a cure for cancer.  He doesn’t carry the launch codes in his wallet and his involvement in third-world political stability is about the same as yours and mine:  That would be None for those keeping score at home.

Let us assume that the events went down as advertised.  He and the Missus were discussing relationship issues when things went off the rails.  Perhaps there was a disclosure or two that were not received well.  Someone lost their temper and took a golf club to someone else.  One of the participants hopped in the car and tried to drive away with some alacrity, possibly under a barrage of club swings, shattering glass and general emotional mayhem.  It would seem a tree and a fire hydrant were parenthetically involved, then police.

The media involvement happened moments later.  As soon as you mention Tiger Woods is involved, the media descends like nattering gnats gnawing on the purported half-truths, suppositions and fourth-hand speculations from people who weren’t there.  Serving up an order of perspective here, if it was Buddy Jamoke who got de-assed from the house by his missus because he played some away-games, it wouldn’t even rate a page seventeen police blotter note.  

Which comes back to why do we care?  Yes, Tiger is a celebrity and a damn fine golfer, but his direct input on all our lives is about three-ten thousandths of sweet frig-all.  Which also means our input on his lifestyle choices is exactly the same; .0003 over SFA.

The same math applies to his relationship issues being ‘our’ business:  Mathematically insignificant.  So close to zero as to be a rounding error.  Null.  Zip.  Nada.

Let us let Tiger and the wife figure their stuff out.  In private.  Without our input.  We would never presume to tell him how to golf and we should never presume to tell him how to run his private life.