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The Gun Show
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2007
This was a couple of years ago, a construction buddy got a couple of free passes to the gun show.
Why not? I like guns-ish, it's a bit out of my box, on a rare Sunday off we head down.
Now it's huge, and there's an amazing array of vendors, not only guns but a thousand related products, there's hunting and fishing, there are antique bayonets and knives, there's Samurai swords, canes, fur mittens, antiques of various descriptions, Nazi memorabilia, watches (I get a trifle hung up here, I confess...), antique dueling pistols, reproductions, powder flasks, umbrellas, novelty stickers and buttons, chain mail and armor, single shot muskets and muzzle-loaders, fine Italian hunting rifles, embossed and engraved with scenes from antiquity, there are zombie posters and targets, dried rations for your backyard nuclear bunker, it's a lifestyle...
The crowd...how to describe them ... more like a Comicon of people you would never in your life sell a gun to, there's the army dude, walking about all dressed up and kitted out like he just stepped of the plane from Afghanistan, there's the old Vietnam Vet, in heavily beaded biker jacket, complete with patches, there are the drag queens and perpetually angry adolescents, there's every weird fucked-up neighbor you never wanted to run into again in your life...
And I realize that if any of these people own a gun, I'd better own one too ... if only to protect me from them...
Salaries
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2440
Prime Minister of Canada Salary $157,731.00 + Expenses, Living residence.
President of the United States $400,000.00 + $50,000 annual expense account, $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment.
President of the University of Calgary $480, 000.00 + $130, 500 for sitting on Enbridge Board.
There are some serious flaws in the way we reward competence, ethics and leadership. Serious. The first, and most obvious of which, is that while it's fashionable to overpay University Presidents at the moment (and wrong, the correlation between quality of leadership and understanding of core issues and values central to Academia is clearly disproven in her need to top up her salary with outside contracts), there is no necessary correlation between money paid and quality of direction and leadership. Find someone that shares your institutions values, pay them well (and at $480,000 ++ is too much more than well in my books) and you may be surprised at what value you get. Given the University of Calgary's reputation, this seems not a trifle high but insane.
Meanwhile, half-a-million dollars exhausted my sympathy, that extra hundred plus grand just looks like greed...
Academia
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1983
The recent conflict of interest "scandal" at the U of C has prompted some thought as to the expectations and obligations of Academia, or University.
First of all, while I acknowledge the real world need and pressure of funding, this could be better addressed by raising corporate taxes and passing the proceeds along to the educational institutions in need. This is the purpose of taxation, to support those institutions that society values. By keeping corporate taxes low (a longstanding strategy of the Conservatives), and allowing the corporations to build their "brand" through selective donations to institutions that are willing to "partner" with them we remove all autonomy from Universities and Academia.
This diminishes the value of the Education received. Universities are not trade schools, or institutes of technology, they serve as well functions in research, in publishing, in advising government, and other roles, but their paramount objective should be to educate - without bias, and free of political, corporate, and religious interference. We would probably agree that fundamentalist Christian college would teach evolution and biology different that a standard university, it should not be hard, then, to understand that a University sponsored by oil and gas might not delve as deeply as it should into the environmental/social/political ramifications of the industry.
Education, as in University, in it's purest sense is not done strictly with the purpose of employing it's pupils upon release. Education is about learning to think critically, to relate to people from different backgrounds, to learning both generally and specifically about different areas of the arts and science. That you leave with an education and are more employable as a result should be the happy by-product of an opened, disciplined and trained mind.
It is both the peoples and the governments job to fund education, that we've so devalued the institution that it must go a-begging to corporate sponsors is tragic. We've a new government. We can fix this.
Synecdoche, New York
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2123
I was surprised to discover this - I haven't seen it. Given I loved Being John Malkovitch, and appreciated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, this will have to be remedied - probably this evening.
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The whole movie is actually posted online.
But this comes as a preparation for Anomalisa, coming out this December...
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Which proves that I'm clearly getting older, as this has me far, far more excited than the new Star Wars. It's been a while since I've so looked forward to a movie...
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