Supercomma

Another good name for a band.

In a tizzy over talking.

I have a neocon joke for you.

Q: When is a negotiation a failure?

A: Trick question! All negotiations are failures.

The Shoot-First-Ask-Questions-Later cabal is furious that Secretary of State Rice has negotiated some mutual concessions with the nuclear-toting North Koreans.

It always amazes me how this influential political minority can fail to see its own traits in the groups they hate the most.

1. Their proclivity for seeing Great Satans around the globe.

2. Their preoccupation maintaining America’s solid and powerful international reputation. The country’s honor, if you will.

The neocons think negotiating with another country, especially a puny country trying to punch above its weight with nuclear weapons like North Korea, is a humiliation. Anything less than a capitulation to American moral and military might should be considered defeat.

What the neocons fail to recognize is that people in other countries care about their national honour too. The North Koreans do not want to come to America on bent knee to beg for an end to economic sanctions. Human nature demands some give and take.

So the US gives them some penicillin (or whatever is being held back) and the North Koreans blow up a cooling tower. Now both parties have something they wanted and the trust created can be invested in further negotiations.

(I can’t believe we’re still talking about neocons. They are so 2004.)

[link] Neocons Blast Rice Over North Korea, Iran – The Nation

[via] The Morning News

It Slices, It Dices

Please don’t give Coldplay any money.

Check out Elbow’s new album instead. It’s all the pop-rock goodness with only one third the pretension. You can hear a wide selection of Elbow songs at Hype Machine. Be sure to listen to their cover of Back to Black.

[photo] “Elbow-Brixton Academy” by Afraid of Ducks

Tangent: “Dinosaurs Learning to Ice Skate” would make a great Dave Barryesque band name.

I had a dream last night…

…about the US Midwest and the purchase of unnecessary transit tickets. I think they may have been two unrelated dreams.

An Insomiac Works Out His Problems on Paper

I took an intensive course this spring which postponed any opportunities for me to find employment until this month.  In addition to a job hunt, I’m working on a big paper and presentation for the beginning of July, about two weeks away.

I haven’t been sleeping well, and contrary to popular belief, a student can’t get by with minimal energy and attention. I’m making slow progress, which is stressful, which leads to more sleepless nights. Which further slows my progress.

And nobody will hire me. Not that I want a job right now. I am enjoying writing this paper and would like to put my full energies into it. But I need to pay the rent and buy groceries. And it’s going to be a long July and August if I don’t find something to occupy my time after all this schoolwork is finished.

Tonight, my third fully sleepless night (not consecutively, thank goodness), I may have come up with a two-pronged solution:

1. No more worrying about insomnia. If I need to sleep until two in the afternoon and write until two in the morning, so be it. Students don’t have to operate during banker’s hours, and I’m probably doing more harm than good by trying.
2. I have some money set aside for school from a previous job and grandparent contributions. I was reluctant to touch it over the summer, but since my unemployment is very much the result of a spring course, I think I can justify dipping into the reserves. Also, it’s not like I’ve blown all my money on alcohol – mostly just rent and food. And an awfully pricey bus pass (still cheaper than a car).

It feels good to have the figured out. I can feel the tension melt away.

It’s another matter altogether if it will stand up in the light of day. For now, though, sleep.

Pay Your Own Way

Road pricing is back in the news as Metrolinx tries to fund transit improvements in the GTA. On the table are expressway tolls of 10 cents per kilometre. This would, according to the Globe and Mail, mean a one-way toll of $3.60 to get from Oakville to downtown Toronto.

This is a pretty good deal for motorists; GO riders pay $6.00 for the same trip.

While recognizing this is a good idea, we should hold off on implementing some or all of the tolls until certain significant improvements are made to transit. I know this is a chicken-and-egg problem, but the Yonge subway is at capacity during rush hour and GO has serious trouble arriving on-time. If we can’t fit people on the trains or get the trains to run on time it isn’t fair to punish them for hitting the highway.

And since we’re talking about road pricing, why not tolls on most of the 400-series highways? Ten cents per kilometre gets very pricey very quickly, but we might consider something similar to the New York State Thruway. Accordingly to my (shaky grasp of) math, it costs about 2.5 cents per kilometre between Buffalo and Albany. Applied to the length of the 401, a journey from Detroit to Montreal would set drivers back about $20. It isn’t a lot of money, but it is a reminder that driving has costs. You may not have to buy more gas when you get on the 401, but you always pay a small toll.

Gas taxes encourage people to use gasoline sparingly which is a worthy goal in this age of climate change. Getting people to leave their car – Hummer or Prius – at home is a part of that, but setting aside inconvenient truths, fewer cars on the road has independent merit. It isn’t healthy to spend hours on the road commuting between or across cities. Cars turn people into monsters. Highways destroy neighbourhoods.

The financial and psychological impacts of road pricing make it a useful tool for combating climate change, urban sprawl, and low standards of living.

[photo] “Toll booths” by vagrantant