GLOBADOM

I feel I should blog by proxy for Eric, since two majorly Supa pieces of information are in the air today, and he’s out of town (and is using that as a lame excuse not to post).

Item 1: Houston Rockets are up 2-0 in their series against the Dallas Mavericks. Yao Ming, a man I once presciently described as “the second coming of Big Country,” scored 33 points in the second victory.

Item 2: Ferrari is preparing a new, cheap–well, cheaper car, tentatively called the California. US$150,000, and the engine is a front-mounted 400-hp V8. Sounds like the second coming of the Ferrari Daytona.

That is all.

It’s true. This site is not about politics. It’s just the world’s best (and still the only) cybermorphic weblog. Just like the title. And to prove it, I’ll end this post with a note about a cute dog.

But some things, political or not, are too amusing not to highlight.

Item: Paul Martin says the corporate tax cuts he axed at the NDP’s behest can still be saved. This is epic stuff! When you deglaze the meat of this story, what Martin seems to be saying is that he will gladly screw up the deal he made with the NDP at any moment as long as the Tories will help him.

No, let’s be fair. I don’t think he’s suggesting he’ll actually renege on the spending he has promised the NDP. That would be super-evil. I think he’s just suggesting he’s willing to make the budget $4.6 billion fatter than he had planned.

I think Martin believes he is being clever here: if the Tories support the separate tax cut, they look like business-loving ogres and deficit spenders. The NDP look like social mush-heads and free-spenders. The Liberals look like the Natural Governing Party. I think Martin misunderstands how transparently craven his actions look.

Fortunately, unless my guess is wrong (and it almost always is), the budget is going to fail, and will take the government with it.

Special bonus cravenness: Jack Layton says the Tories are getting into bed with separatists. Dear Jack: you’re shacking up with embezzelers, and ones largely responsible for the present electoral strength of the separatists. If you’ll pardon the analogy, this is burglars looking down their noses at divorcees.

* * *

Fortunately, we are now at the part of the post with a dog in it.

This morning I stepped out onto the backyard deck, only to find a small dog curled up there, looking a bit bedraggled. He was quiet and friendly. I gave him some food and water, then told The Lovely One about our visitor. She came out and petted him, gave him some food, and made his acquaintance. She spent an hour or two in the back yard just taking care of this nice doggy.

Poor guy. He’s got a collar, but no tag. I guess finding his owner will be this evening’s task.

There’s a thematic lesson here which I think I ought to take to heart: as fun as it is to fulminate about what happens in Ottawa, your important duty in life is to mow the lawn and take care of stray dogs that wander into your life. Fit the fulmination into the leftover time.

Really, this blog is not about politics. Honest!

Okay, I thought wrong in my last post. The Liberals have thrown in with the NDP. It still doesn’t add up, so this should be fun.

Just to reiterate the numbers: New Democratic Liberals: 151. Bloc Conservatives: 153. Independent: 3. A tie means the budget passes, because the tie vote goes to the speaker of the house. Oh, those independents!

Of the independents, David Kilgour is expected to vote against the budget. Carolyn Parrish is expected to vote for the budget. Chuck Cadman is undecided. He initially came out in favour of the budget, but I was listening to him on CKNW last night, and he has said the deciding factor would probably be the feelings of his constituents, and that after an initial flurry of “vote no” calls, it appeared to be heavily running to “vote yes” for the budget.

Not that it matters! The math seems confused, but after checking and rechecking my numbers, the NDP-Lib coalition, even with the support of two independents, does not have the votes. It’s actually worse than it looks, because I believe the Liberal total to make 151 with the NDP already includes the speaker, and the speaker only votes if the House vote is tied. Tie goes to the Liberals, but the Liberals don’t have the votes unless they can manufacture one or two more votes for the budget.

The most likely mechanism at this point would seem to be an abstention or absence by one or more Conservatives.

I think what is really going on here is that Martin is hoping that by pretending he has a budget-passing majority, he will be perceived as having a budget-passing majority, and that the Conservatives will be seen as some sort of political spoilsports for not going along. Of course, that’s not how minority governments actually work.

So in my usual premature fashion, I’m already writing off the budget vote (and the Liberal government) and asking the next interesting question: if the government falls, will the Governor-General ask the Conservatives to form a government? And will the Conservatives run the show with the tacit support of the Bloc? It could be interesting.

Jack Layton has offered NDP support to the Liberals in exchange for some budget changes. I have heard some people (okay, it was in the Vancouver Canucks newsgroup) suggest this was an evil political ploy, but I have no problem with it. The NDP has no chance of forming government anytime soon, so joining a coalition is their only chance to directly form government policy. And that’s what they should be trying to do.

The problem I have (and apparently, from the cool reception they’re getting from Mr. Martin, the problem the Liberals also have) is that the NDP’s support is not very useful. NDP + Liberal = 151. That leaves 153 Tories, Bloc, and independents arrayed against them. Of those, 2 are ex-Liberals: Carolyn Parrish, kicked from caucus for trash-talking to Americans, and David Kilgour, who proved that at least one Liberal has a capacity for shame when he resigned from caucus. The third is Chuck Cadman, the first federal MP I can recall who ran and won as an independent, after he lost the Conservative nomination in his riding to a mass-membership drive by the “winning” candidate (who was then utterly destroyed by voters in the actual election).

Ms. Parrish and Mr. Cadman (!) have apparently indicated support for the Liberal budget already, while Mr. Kilgour is planning to vote against it.

The situation is confusing. So much so that I have articles in two papers that suggest different seat counts. I’ve run the numbers myself:

NDP + Liberals = 151
Bloc + Conservatives = 153
Independents = 3

There are 307 seats in parliament right now (one unfilled due to the death of Liberal Lawrence O’Brien, representing Labrador; byelection to follow). A vote is won, therefore, with 154 votes, assuming no abstensions or absentees. For those of you playing the home game, that means that an NDP/Liberal coaltion would be beyond tenuous.

This is interesting… the CDC seems to have revised downward their estimate of annual fat-related deaths. They now think it kills less than a tenth as many people as previously assumed, gone from 400,000/a to about 26,000/a. The remaining deaths are almost entirely concentrated in the morbidly obese BMI classification, and there seems to be virtually no risk to longevity from being a bit overweight.

The real question is, how did the CDC miss by 374,000 in the first place?

More to the point, the CDC has said that this new estimate won’t change its campaign against obesity. Hm? Okay, this still makes obesity the 7th most common cause of death in the US, but shouldn’t the fact that it’s now less than a tenth as deadly as they thought last month count for anything?

I’m having a bit of a Damascene moment here myself, since years ago I went on the record as saying that more people died of being too fat than too thin. This is apparently not the case. My guess is that when you get old or sick, having a few extra pounds of fat reserves is important, since it allows you to weather the ailment. You don’t see a lot of really heavy septagenarians, after all.

So, I think it’s time to address our glorious PM’s naked begging for a chance to prove his, um, well, whatever it is he has to prove.

Why? Why should we give the Liberals further chances? Is there anyone in the country who believes there is even the faintest hope that the Gomery inquiry will turn up some exonerating evidence that mitigates the evidence we’ve already heard?

I’ll stop now.

Back to the present, the provincial election proceeds, and the undramatic reelection of the Liberals should go off without a hitch. The real interest will be in whether the BC-STV proposal is favoured. For myself, I like it a lot. I think it straddles a solid line between generating a result proportional to actual vote-casting, and avoiding the dread terror of centralized party lists and no local representation (or to put it another way, if the Greens are fer it, then I’m agin’ it).

Nobody in my family so far seems to agree. The basic arguments seem to be that BC-STV is complicated and that larger ridings are bad.

Let me say this: I concede both points. But neither issue is fatal. Larger, but not impossibly large ridings. And I think the world will learn to rank candidates in order. I hope that’s possible, anyway.

Lance Armstrong is retiring right after this year’s Tour de France. Tyler Hamilton got a 2-year suspension for homologous blood transfusion, which, for a 34-year old pro cyclist, is the career death penalty.

Lance cited the usual reasons for retiring: more time with the kids, wanting to go out on top, etc. I think you can add one more to that list: he hates to lose. He has to know at his age that even this year’s Tour will be a big stretch. As I have pointed out before, stage racers like Lance tend to stop winning right about the age he was last year. The killer is recovery: a rider over the age of 30 often still has virtually all of his power and performance for one day, but the grind of 3 weeks of racing doesn’t allow his body to recover fast enough to keep up with younger legs.

Lance is better at preserving his body than most other great tour riders have been: he races much less than historic cyclists did (or even do; he may have the fewest scheduled race days of any ProTour rider right now), and he had a year off mid-career to, you know, fight off cancer.

The surprising part is highlighted in that article I linked above: what older riders can do just fine, in general, is win one-day races, and Lance has previously said he wanted to collect a few of the famous “classics,” the very traditional one-day races that take place in the low countries and northern france. That Lance doesn’t seem to have an hour record attempt planned is the most surprising part, since that is pretty much the queen of cycling achievements, and it’s known that Trek even built a special track bike for an hour attempt earlier this year. Furthermore, the nature of an hour record attempt is such that he could easily train for it in the United States.

But I think hating to lose is a big part of this: pro athletes can draw on many motivations, but Lance’s key motivator seems to be not losing. This would certainly explain why he might want to go out on top, and why he might not want to attempt all these big cycling challenges, which, as big as they are within the cycling world, would be meaningless to Lance’s future marketability, which hinges entirely on his bout with cancer and his monumental Tour accomplishments (and full props to him about the cancer thing: it may be good PR, but he and Nike have used his name and his time to raise millions of dollars for the cause). And he’s probably sincere about the time-with-kids excuse. It seems to have been a major motivator behind the rearrangement of his training schedule to include more US racing in the last few years.

My wish would be that Lance reneges and races the classics next year, or at least goes out and tries for an hour record, but I’ll take what I can get. Maybe he’s done the tests, and really can’t hit the hour mark. But I’d be a bit surprised.

* * *

Which brings us to Tyler Hamilton, the cutest drug cheat you could ever meet. Hamilton is the other great American rider, a guy who has some world-class results, including the gold medal in the last Olympic time trial.

The case against him is also complicated. The thing he tested positive for is a homologous blood transfusion, which means he had blood from someone else flowing through his veins. You’re not supposed to do that unless you have some legitimate need for a blood transfusion (like, say, losing a lot of blood), but that doesn’t seem to be the case. But this is a brand new test, and Hamilton, perhaps unsurprisingly, is vehemently declaring his innocence.

I want to believe Tyler, and he seems to be raising some disturbing points about the test, and generally behaving like an innocent rider. But he has only one appeal left at this point, and it doesn’t look good.

* * *

Back to everybody’s favourite drug-free rider, me! On Monday I did a fun workout consisting of about an hour of repeatedly riding up a hill in the Westwood Plateau area. It hurt really good, and then afterward I ate a very large T-bone steak with my bare hands and a nice glass of red wine. It’s all true.

Can you tell The Lovely One was working late?

No name yet, but every news service in the world is reporting that a pope has been elected. Name isn’t available yet. Commentary? This is quick to elect a pope, but not particularly unusual (apparently a pope was elected on the second day of the conclave a few times in the 20th century).

Update: it appears to be Cardinal Ratzinger, hereafter known as Benedict XVI. To analyze him in one sentence, he’s the conservative’s conservative, and was the single cardinal most closely associated with the reign of John Paul II. But he’s also 78, which means that the conclave has elected what might be expected to be a caretaker pope: gracefully continue the legacy of John Paul II for a few years, then have the decency to die. But of course, there’s nothing saying a 78-year old can’t persist for a hale and hearty decade, or longer even.

Updater: habemus papam . . . but one more thought to justify the update. I have to profess that I am surprised at the choice, but that’s not the same as thinking it was a bad choice. From my perspective, Benedict XVI looks like a very good, if somewhat simple choice. If I had to express it in any way, it is that this choice is one of a conclave wishing to very strongly honour the spirit of John Paul II, and to continue it a little further.

But since it’s hard to say that John Paul II had any major unfinished business at hand, this seems almost a desire for a sort of stasis (or maybe just a bit of a rest) in which there will be no new business brought forward.

Hm. Well, since I am always one for a bad prediction (my previous guess was that there was no sense in the papabile speculation, but Ratzinger has long been a favourite), my next guess is that whatever anyone is expecting Ratzinger to be like as pope, prepare to be surprised.

Okay, let’s get back on track here. I think I owe it to, um, well…I guess I owe it to nobody, but I want to comment on the two major stories of the last few weeks: The death of the pope and Gomery.

On the death of the pope, I can only say that so much heat and light has been thrown off on the subject that you can find nothing but commentary on him. I don’t know which of John Paul II’s several legacies to history, both within and without the Catholic Church, will ultimately be seen as most important, but if I had to guess, I’d probably guess his “culture of life” pronouncements.

As for papabile, almost everything you have heard is probably crap. There’s a fair chance that the next pope will be a man that none of the recent coverage has mentioned. The worst story I’ve read so far was a half-assed bit of gossip published in the April 5 Vancouver Sun, which suggested the Pope might actually have died on Friday, not Saturday, but that “conservative” forces within the hierarchy witheld this information in order to allow more time for mourners and pilgrims to flock to the Vatican, apparently in hopes of influencing the conclave to elect the pope. Say what?

On the Gomery inquiry, the revelations have been remarkable. The big ramification is not going to be the possible (probable?) downfall of the current Liberal government. In my opinion, it’s the huge opportunity the Liberals handed to Quebec separatists by basically proving to be detestably corrupt.

On the specifics of what is being revealed in the Gomery inquiry, oh dear. I think that about covers it.

Now, on to stuff I’ve seen recently:

Early Superman cartoons

Mom’s Cancer, the must-read true comic-strip story of the author’s mom’s cancer. Yes, I know. Go read it anyway.

Submitted without comment: Douglas College is geting a substantial new building.

Personal life is about the same. Need to work on focus. Next bike race is a 16 km TT next weekend. Time trials: the choice of connoisseurs of suffering.

That was fun. This weekend, I rode the Harris Roubaix, and did acceptably well. A close analysis says it was Suck Factor 4, good for 12th place in a field that was probably 50 starters.

The funniest part of the race was Zenya, a new teammate, tentatively asking me for advice on keeping up with the pack. Zenya finished second. I think my advice was pretty good!

Least funny part? The crashes. Two riders in our race got free hospital rides, including teammate Taku. He’s okay, though.