Ottawa, ON -- The Main Event: Fahrenheit vs. Celsius!
It's cold in Ottawa today -- so cold that I'm cutting my trip short by a day because it's a terrible week to be sightseeing.
As I ran back to my hotel from breakfast to escape the icy air, I began to think about the meaning of temperature. While I'm usually a fan of the metric system (base-10 just seems to make sense), I'm just not sold on Celsius. It might be easier to remember that water freezes and boils at 0 and 100 degrees, respectively, than it is to remember 32 and 212. However, it would seem to me that 0 degrees should be unbearable for humans, and 0 degrees Celsius just seems plain comfortable to me on a day like today!
All I'm trying to say here is this: I'll keep my Fahrenheit thermometer until they pry it from my frozed, dead hands...
Anyone want to argue in favor of the Kelvin Scale?
Ottawa, ON -- Jews and Wells Don't Really Go Together in Kazakhstan
Ari, I mean, Borat, recently hosted the MTV Europe Music Video Awards. The Kazakhstani government
has finally had enough with Sacha Baron Cohen's (Ali G) portrayal of his caricatural Kazakh.
(Thanks to
Andrew Sullivan)
Ottawa, ON -- Heaven on a Truck
The streets are paved with gravy!
Ottawa, ON -- More Ottawa Photos
After four hours of working on all of this, it's time for me to go to dinner at one of the area's zillions of restaurants.
Before I go, I leave you with
my second batch of Ottawa photos from the day. These are really beautiful; many of them show the lights of Ottawa in the early evening.
Ottawa, ON -- Loonies and Twonies
Because I couldn't get into the Parliament today, I decided that it was fully acceptable to start drinking in the afternoon since I was on vacation. My first stop was a bar called the Mayflower.
The site of my first drink in OttawaI had a drink with a government worker in his mid-30s named Tim. His father was in the Canadian military, and Tim was born during Vietnam at the Rammstein base in Germany. Tim "loves Americans," including every American President in his lifetime, as he figured that anyone who can be elected to the highest office in America must be a great man. I remember when I used to think that way!
I did learn a lesson from Tim -- those silly one dollar and two dollar coins that the Canadians have are affectionately known as "Loonies," and "Twonies," respectively!
The second bar I hit up was Elephant and Castle, a British equivalent of Chili's. The drink I ordered was a Strongbow. I took one whiff and thought, "man, that's one raunchy beer," having totally forgotten that Strongbow's a cider! Blech.
Ottawa, ON -- Ottawa Photos!
I walked over to Ottawa's Parliament (yes, that's what it's called) today to check out the architecture and to learn more about Canadian politics. Unfortunately, visitors weren't allowed this afternoon. I'm going to try again tomorrow.
It was a bit nasty today -- Ottawa's first snow of the season. I took many photos of the city, which you can
view here in my first photo album.
Canada's Parliament, through the snow and fog
Click here for Ottawa Photo Album #1
Ottawa, ON -- Cheney, Close With the Energy Industry? Naw...
This is nothing we didn't "know" already, but
this article corroborates stories of Cheney's secret meetings with the energy industry in 2001.
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.This is why the Bush administration simply brushes off global warming.
Ottawa, ON -- Not Voodoo Economics, It's...
Bushenomics (n): The use of the government to take regular people's money and give it to rich people and corporations
So says Larry Beinhart.
Read the article.
A taste:
Why does this administration persist? If we use their language -- stimulus and jobs and tax cuts lead to deficit reduction -- or the standard language of economics, the discussion disintegrates into a food fight, except that it's statistics and buzz words being thrown around the lunch room.
If we forget all that, just look at what they've done, then make up our own description, it's clear and simple.
The tax policies unarguably favor the wealthy. They especially favor unearned income, dividends, capitol gains and inheritances, money that accrues as you sip Campari on the veranda of the Splendido in Portofino.
Ottawa, ON -- JPost (and JBrzoska) on the GA
The Jerusalem Post
wonders aloud about the GA's relevance to the Jewish community:
Yet with all these impressive accomplishments, some still wonder why there is a GA at all. Even proponents of the annual meeting admit that the days when it set the agenda for American Jewry seem to have passed, and one of the main reasons to continue it is to avoid sending a signal of diminished organizational power.I've attended the last two General Assemblies, and from what I can see, the above is not what the GA is about. It's about Federation leaders getting together and schmoozing with each other and with those who may directly or indirectly help them raise money. It really is an unparalleled Jewish networking event. Each year at the GA, I and my colleagues meet dozens of people who provide ideas and connections, and for that alone, the GA is good for us. I'm not one for kissing up to those with money (especially younger ones who act spoiled and haven't earned it themselves), but I realize the importance of keeping the Jewish organizational economy going. According to the article, the Federation has raised $24 million in funds for U.S. hurricane victims.
The question is, does the GA support the Jewish establishment's current agenda, which JPost says "should be to transform current trends so that the community is growing, not shrinking."
In isolated programs, it seems to, but should that really be the priority of the Jewish community? It has manifested itself as alarmism, and has imbued much of the Jewish organizational world with the belief that every new project should be the savior of the Jewish community. A lot of the existing Jewish community has been turned off by this. My perception is that if Federation, foundations, and Jewish organizations concentrate more on making themselves relevant and beneficial to their current constituency, that constituency will eventually introduce it to outsiders.
Just a general marketing principle, repeated ad nauseam in college: It takes six times the resources to get a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and the existing ones tend to spend more. So shore up that existing customer base!
I think that's the proper Jewish world approach, but what do I know?
Ottawa, ON -- A Great Moment in JasonBrzoska.com History
Finally... my blog appears on both Google Blog Search and Technorati. Turns out, I had my feed set incorrectly.
About 500 unique visitors came to my site in October -- that number is bound to go up now! My host uses Webtrends to track site statistics, but I'm testing Google's new free service,
Google Analytics, just for the heck of it. So far, so good.
All you newbies, make sure to leave a note and tell me who you are and what a jerk I am!
Ottawa, ON -- Ottawa Photography Preview
I plan to spend a good portion of tomorrow taking photos of this city. From what I could see on my brief drive tonight, it has some really amazing architecture. A preview:
Ottawa, ON -- TV Imitates Life, and It's Eerie
For the last week, the European press has been stating, and the Bush administration had been denying, that our military has been using white phosphorus, a burning agent, as a chemical weapon in Iraq. Today, the
military backtracked and finally confirmed it. I listened on Canadian Public Radio to Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable as he hemmed and hawed about it, asserting that this weapon is OK because it's not as bad as napalm. (Thanks to John Fowler)
It just so happens that at the moment I'm watching M*A*S*H for the first time in many years, and in this episode, Col. Potter is confronted with the Chinese using white phosphorus for the first time. Upon hearing the news, he flips! “WHY CAN’T WE JUST END THIS STUPID WAR?”
If only our own leadership could respond that way...
Ottawa, ON -- This Might Not Be So Bad, After All...
I know very little about this city, so I paid a visit to the front desk to ask what there was to do in Ottawa. You'd better believe I was excited when the woman at the desk handed me a list of the 150+ restaurants within a five minute walk of the hotel! I asked her if Harvey's was as good as it looked on TV, and she very much recommended it. She also gave me tomorrow night's mission, which is to find a restaurant which serves Ottawa's official dessert, a Beaver Tail. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm sure I'll know tomorrow.
I went out looking for
Harvey's (shades of my
last major burger search). The burgers are basic, and really good. I knew I was in for a treat when I stepped out of the car and found onion rings under my feet!
The best part of the trip was finding out that Ottawa is close enough to Quebec for Harvey's to offer peutine, a Quebecois dish which is simply divine. For the unpolished, peutine is french fries slathered in gravy and topped with cheese curds -- smoked meats optional. A friend aptly described it in Toronto this week as "cheese steak put in a blender and then poured over french fries."
Mmmm... peutine!
Ottawa, ON -- It Ain't Over Yet...
Bob Woodward of the Washington Post
says he got Valerie Plame's name a month before Scooter Libby's leak, and that he didn't get it from Scooter Libby, rather from a "senior Bush administration official."
Are we going to find out who that is?
Woodward, however, doesn't think a crime has been committed. Does Fitzgerald agree?
Ottawa, ON -- Hello, Ottawa!
Seemed like a short 4 1/2 hours from Toronto to Ottawa, and it was; I was on the phone just about the whole time.
I can't hook up my PS2 here either... this may be a short stay if the city is boring. Tomorrow might be it.
Maybe I'll visit the Canadian Capitol Building tomorrow, or whatever they call it here.
Toronto, ON -- Goodbye, Toronto!
Here's my last post before I leave for Ottawa. As I leave, I'd like to salute the Renaissance Hotel's pizza -- it's gotten me through the last few days.
How about a token photo of the CN Tower?
The CN Tower
Toronto, ON -- Rabin Honored, Sorta
As many of you know, this month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli Prime minister who signed the Oslo Accords. Granted, he may have equivocated (depending on whom you ask), and much of his work may have been for naught, but he did the right thing. For that, he should be celebrated. However, not everybody does feel he should be honored. For instance, when Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin mentioned Rabin at the UJC General Assembly this week, the crowd was silent, in stark contrast to their cheers when Martin made negative assertions about Iran and Syria. The Jewish establishment remains more than a bit too hawkish for my taste.
From what I could see, there was only a token acknowledgment of Rabin's anniversary:
Rabin Memorial at UJC General AssemblyIt really disgusts me (but doesn't surprise me) to read statements
like this one:
Though a law was passed mandating that all Israeli public schools would commemorate Rabin on Monday, some yeshivas and religious schools refused to do so. Daniel Septimus and Lili Kalish Gersch, our editors at
MyJewishLearning.com, have
assembled a very informative issue this week about Rabin's legacy.
Toronto, ON -- A Vietnam Vet on Iraq
I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, and am just now getting around to it. A poster on
Silicon Investor who goes by the name cnyndwllr and is a Vietnam Vet, made these comments about the Iraq War on November 1st:
Vietnam's been a frigging nightmare for those who served in combat and for those who've mourned American soldier's deaths for decades. It's worse than that for Vietnamese people who often lost entire families, villages and generations. But the real regret is not that its "SEEN" as a waste, the real regret is that IT WAS A WASTE.
What you don't seem to realize about either Vietnam or Iraq is that there are some things that are what they are.
You can spin Vietnam all you want but the fact is that we were never going to win in Vietnam, the only question was how many would die before we quit trying to push that string of dead bodies.
In Iraq the same political and nationalistic forces that made "victory" impossible in Vietnam are growing stronger with every Iraqi we kill. And the stronger those forces are, the more fearful and violent our soldiers will become. And the stronger those forces grow, the more violent our soldiers will become.
It's a vicious cycle and once it reaches critical mass the only choices are to get out of the way and let the locals find their own path or make war on the entire population as we did in parts of Vietnam, only finish the job by killing them wholesale. Is that the kind of "help" you'd like to give them?
And the question of continuing a war has NOTHING to do with honoring dead soldiers. It has everything to do with honoring the lives of those who'll become dead soldiers if we continue.
How would you feel if you'd lost two of your four kids in Iraq? Would you feel that you needed to see your other two kids dead in order to "honor" the deaths of your first two? Or would you want to re-evaluate the doability of the mission and make a cost benefit analysis to determine whether it was worth the lives of your last two children? It's when it's other people's kids at risk that the "honor the dead" thing seems compelling.
Click here for more.
Toronto, ON -- Running Towards Hypothermia
I tried to go to the hotel gym this evening, to find that it was actually a real gym -- five huge, confusing floors. I found that pretty intimidating, and decided to go jogging outside in Toronto instead.
I picked the wrong night to do it... It's been gorgeous out evey day since I've arrived -- 50s and 60s (those numbers are smaller in Celsius) into the evening. Not tonight. Mid 30s and freezing rain. I ran 2-3 miles (the usual), through the cold with frigid puddles splashing up onto my calves every few seconds. Not pleasant.
I have a new mission for the next few days -- I'm going to have to have a
Harvey's burger!
Toronto, ON -- Hollywood in Toronto?
The conference is over, and I've cranked up the heat in my hotel room and am trying to relax, get a bit of work done, and read for the next few hours. I am so friggin' exhausted!
The field of the Rogers Center (formerly Skydome) has been set up for baseball. Some studio is filming a movie, but are being tight-lipped about which one. I'm going to try to find out more later.
Toronto, ON -- Reflections on the General Assembly
The GA is wrapping up today, and I'm taking a few minutes from my packing to relax. I've been getting kudos all day for my karaoke performance last night. Looking at the staticky (is that a word?) video of it (yes, such a beast exists), they're probably just humoring me, but being humored is better than no attention at all, right? Besides, I'm the only one who had the cojones to go up there. Hey, maybe someday I'll learn to sing!
I only feel semicomfortable at Jewish conferences. To some extent, I'm on the outside looking in: I don't share much of a passion for anything Jewish, I've never been to Israel, I don't hold an advanced degree or have a fellowship in Jewish studies or Jewish communal service (nor do I really want one), and I don't live in a major metropolitan area where I see many of the other attendees on a regular basis. My saving graces are that I'm relatively outgoing and very good at what I do (whatever that is).
At the GA especially, it's hard to reconcile my lack of passion (and just a little disdain) for Israel with the right-wing Zionistic sentiment that pervades the conference. There are some great left-wing Israeli groups here, like
Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and
Ameinu, but they certainly don't have the resources or the moral support that AIPAC, CAMERA, and several others have.
Even though most people here are rather to the right on Israel, nearly everyone I've spent time with hasn't been. In fact, last night, there was an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protest held outside the Convention Center on Front Street, and everybody I was with was more or less glad to see it. I raised the question of whether it was good for the Palestinian cause to protest outside of a general Jewish event; I thought it might not help their image as anti-Semitic. A colleague of mine answered that since there was so much Zionist rhetoric going on at the GA, it was fair game. I think I agree, but what's fair isn't always what ends up being portrayed. Image means a lot.
Pro-Palestinian Protest Outside of the UJC General Assembly
Toronto, ON -- Karaoke, Canadian Style
Jason doing a rendition of the Barenaked Ladies' "One Week"
Toronto, ON -- News From the North
So what's going on in Canada while I'm here? For one thing,
Prime Minister Paul Martin is embroiled in a bitter race to keep his office.
I saw the Prime Minister speak last night at the opening plenary at the United Jewish Communities General Assembly. While I was disappointed in the fact that he only said exactly what his audience wants to hear, and I don't know a thing about his politics, he was well-spoken, charming, and witty, all things one would want in the leader of his country, and all things our President, the most important man in the world, simply isn't. Point, Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin at the UJC General AssemblyNAFTA has ruled that the U.S. has unfairly collected $5 billion in lumber tariffs from Canada, but the U.S. won't give Canada the money back. Why? Probably because there's not much Canada can do about it. Well, two 10 year old boys have an idea -- they're trying to have
all Canadians boycott perhaps the biggest U.S. symbol in Canada, McDonald's.
Here's their website.
