Beyond the Palewall (9)

 

 This is another in a series about news items of which you should be aware. For those who prefer a table of contents: 1) The first story is about yet another Canadian apology and we may soon have offered one to every group that has been offended. I don't think the apologies are being done alphabetically, since the last one was to the Italians. For more about that, see my post "Apologizing Again", where you will learn there is even a book about such a subject: A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past. If you feel traumatized by long ago events or feel guilty about something that happened in the last century, you should have a look. 2) This one is about children now allowed outside in Toronto. I have also dealt with this issue in an insightful piece about "Children and Risk." 3) This one will be useful since you probably don't have a local newspaper to read and 4) A very interesting piece about the shootings occurring outside of theatres in Canada where people supposedly don't have guns. Even more interesting are the comments posted by readers of the articles, who apparently are not thrilled with the current government or sold on the virtues or multiculturalism. 

1) Apology Parity

“B.C. To Apologize For Historical Treatment of Doukhobor Sect,” Mike Hager, Globe and Mail, Jan. 31, 2024.

Back in the middle of the last century about 200 children were seized “ from their parents in southeastern British Columbia and sent to the New Denver residential school by the province after their sect, known as the Sons of Freedom, refused to send them to public school. The tiny group had broken away from Canada’s Doukhobor population, a religious group that settled in the region and Saskatchewan after they were banished from Russia in the late 19th century for their pacifist views, rejection of the Orthodox Church and refusal to participate in the military.”

They will now be getting an apology:

“B.C. Attorney-General Niki Sharma’s office confirmed a public apology to the survivors, who may number about 75, and their families will be made Thursday in Castlegar. A corresponding proposal for financial reparations is expected by the descendants of the Sons of Freedom community.”

B.C. Ombudsperson, Jay Chalke, says the  "government’s apology needs to be “unconditional, clear and public.”

He said he has also communicated to the Attorney-General that the wider community needs to be compensated, as well as the individuals who were sent to the New Denver residential school and their progeny.

“Clearly there has been intergenerational trauma from the events that happened in the 1950s and I don’t think government should be seen to have the amount of compensation they pay reduced through their own delay,” he said in a phone interview.”

2) Children Allowed to Play Again: The Return of PLUCK
 [There will be no image of children playing since it might be too disturbing for some.]

                      Playing Even Sanctioned by The Toronto Star

   “'We Aren't Talking About Sending Them Into Busy Streets or Near Rough Water.' Canadian Paediatric Society Recommends Risky Play for Kids, Toronto Star, Jan. 25, 2024

"Unstructured outdoor play, in particular risky play, is essential for the physical, mental and social development of children, according to new recommendations from the Canadian Paediatric Society."

"We have to reframe how we view risk and understand that risk is a part of life and it's a part of our children's lives," said Dr. Suzanne Beno, a paediatric emergency medicine physician at SickKids, chair of the injury prevention committee of the

CPS, and author of the guidance document released Thursday.”

The new recommendations say children should be kept "as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible," and land on the heels of a tussle in Toronto over whether the city should be closing tobogganing hills that have served neighbourhoods for generations....

The city has closed 45 hills this year, due to concerns about hazards including trees, wading pools, stairs and benches. It maintains a list of toboggan runs it considers safe.

Risky play helps build physical and mental health and resilience among children and youth and can help prevent or manage conditions like obesity, anxiety and behavioural issues, according to the CPS."

For the actual CPS report see:  "Healthy Childhood Development Through Outdoor Risky Play: Navigating the Balance with Injury Prevention.”

                   Playing No Longer Condemned by the CBC

   The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation imprimatur guarantees that a reasonable bit of playing should be allowed while wearing helmets.

   "Pop the Bubble Wrap and let Kids Play Outdoors, Pediatricians Say:

Pediatricians Encourage Parents to Allow Children to Take Risks, Even if it Leads to Minor Cuts, Bruises," Amina Zafar · CBC News · Posted: Jan 25, 2024

"The group said opportunities for risky play fell over recent decades as unscheduled free play outside gave way to planned activities. Now, kids spend more time indoors, often on screens.

The 2022 Participaction report card gave Canadian children a grade of D overall for physical activity and a D– for active play.

"It's the move away from helicopter parenting, from over-parenting, over-scheduling and the recognition that it's probably healthy and good for kids to be kids and to be allowed to experience developmentally and age-appropriate challenges."

3) News Deserts - Oases Shrinking

   Weekly a writer for The Atlantic sends out a newsletter, “Up for Debate.” In a recent one he asked his readers to respond to this question: “What is the state of local journalism where you live, and how does it affect your community?” There were many replies, all lamenting the loss of local reporting. Here is one from close-by Pennsylvania and, with a change of newspaper names, it could probably have come from any province in Canada.

"There are four newspapers covering a county of about 150,000 people. On paper, we’re not a news desert by a long shot. But the reality is we’re a de facto news desert because our newspapers are zombies. Three of the four newspapers are owned by Gannett, which, according to the online staff directories of the Chambersburg Public Opinion, Greencastle Echo Pilot, and Waynesboro Record Herald, employs exactly two journalists across all three newsrooms, which sporadically cover local government. The Echo Pilot lists no staff at all. The fourth newspaper, the Mercersburg Journal, is print-only and owned by a local chain. It covers our borough council and other local events in our tiny town reasonably well, and local officials tend to be extremely aware that what they say and do could end up in the paper the following Wednesday. For me, that’s evidence that traditional dead-tree news remains essential, though I wonder how sustainable it is.”

  This is a very important subject. For more about it see:

In Canada: Local News Research Project.

For the United States:

Northwestern University: The State of Local News Project.

University of North Carolina: Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. 

4) Shoot-Out at the Cineplex Corral

  "Cineplex Pulls South Indian Film Following Drive-by Shootings at GTA Movie Theatres," Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press, Jan.30, 2024
TORONTO - Cineplex has cancelled screenings of a South Indian film following four drive-by shootings at theatres throughout the Greater Toronto Area the day it premiered.
       Coming Soon To A Cinema Near You
   "Cineplex Pulls South Indian film Screenings After Incidents of Threats, Intimidation and Talk of Turf War," Joe Castaldo, Globe and Mail, Jan.31, 2024.
   "Movie exhibitors including Cineplex Inc. CGX-T -1.70% have pulled screenings of a South Indian-language film across Canada after individuals opened fire at four cinemas in the Greater Toronto Area last week, the latest incidents of intimidation related to Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam blockbusters.
   Videos obtained by The Globe and Mail show a person in a hoodie shooting a gun multiple times through the passenger window of a vehicle at the entrances of Cineplex locations in Scarborough and Vaughan. In a separate video, the driver of the vehicle fires at a Cineplex in Brampton. York Cinemas, a theatre in Richmond Hill, Ont., was also hit by gunfire. The shootings shattered glass and left bullet holes in windows. According to York Regional Police, the incidents occurred in the early morning hours, when the theatres were closed….
   Film distributors have contended that a turf war is being waged and that a group of individuals is trying to control the lucrative market for South Indian-language films in Canada, using vandalism and intimidation to pressure theatres and distributors to drop certain titles and ensure the films run in favoured cinemas.
   In recent years, Telugu and Malayalam movies have been affected, too. The Globe has found more than 20 incidents at Cineplex locations, independent theatres and other chains such as Landmark Cinemas across Southern Ontario, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Surrey, B.C.
  In December, noxious substances were sprayed inside three GTA Cineplex theatres, forcing audience members to evacuate.
The illustration above is the poster for the currently contentious film, Malaikottai Vaaliban. As far as I can determine, it is not necessarily the film that is problematic, but rather the issue of who gets to decide which South Asian films should be shown. 

Beyond the Palewall (8)

 

Coming Soon Next to the Shawarma Shop Near You: A Private Clinic

   If you need a knee or hip replaced, you may be able to soon hobble down the street and get one, or two, or even four. Our government announced that more private options were being made available and that news was nicely conveyed by the Canadian correspondent for the New York Times: The Growing Private-Sector Involvement in Canadian Public Health Care Systems," Canada Letter, Ian Austen,

January 20, 2024.

This week, the provincial government in Ontario announced that it was expanding the number of private clinics providing medical services.

Right now, Ontario has about 900 such clinics, and they mostly offer medical imaging and cataract surgeries. Sylvia Jones, the province’s health minister, said this week that the government was expanding its program to include hip and knee replacements.

The province is being careful not to violate the Canada Health Act by requiring people to pay for medically necessary procedures. That would jeopardize the 20 billion Canadian dollars the province will receive this year from the federal government for health care. While the clinics will be privately operated, their procedures will be covered under the provincial health care plan as if they had been performed in public hospitals.

Ms. Jones said that the expansion would allow more such procedures to be performed and that doing so would cut wait times for patients. Her critics say it will further undermine the public system, that it may actually increase wait times and that it is a step toward full privatization of health care.

   You may not be able to read the NYT article, but you can read this 36 page report which has just been released: "The Scope and Nature of Private Healthcare in Canada," by Katherine Fierlbeck. It is published by the C.D. Howe Institute.
 A serious subject which I should not treat so lightly.

Boil Water Advisory in the Nation's Capital

   Not in Ottawa, but Washington. I mentioned in "Water Woes" that, soon we are all likely to  be very thirsty.  A recent headline indicated that it is true, even in D.C., where a great deal of water is needed for the scotches. In this article, one learns that even the citizens in the ritzy areas (Chevy Chase, Bethesda) were likely to experience problems. Apparently these city dwellers need advice that is much clearer than the water: “Do not drink the water without boiling it first,” the D.C. Water said in an alert issued Friday evening. (The water should be allowed to cool before drinking it.) ("Many Residents of Northern D.C. Are Asked to Boil Water," Martin Weil, Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2024.)

  Some related CANCON: A Canadian Press headline: "Long-Term Prairie Drought Raises Concerns Over Groundwater Levels," Bob Weber, Jan.20, 2024.

“The lowest water levels are all in the last seven years and the levels are much lower now than they were in the ’70s and ’80s,” Pomeroy said. “It'll be a climate signal that we’re seeing....” “It’s something we need to keep an eye on.”

Don't Bet On It

   At the end of last year, I suggested in "On Betting" that perhaps we should be as worried about the gambling situation as we are tired over watching all the ads promoting it. I did offer one source suggesting that money was being made and people are getting jobs in the gambling sector. If you think you can find better statistics related to Ontario, Don't bet on it.  
   Read, if you can, this good article: “Got Questions About Ontario’s Online Gambling Industry” Don’t Bet on Getting the Answers,” Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail, Jan. 19, 2024. He begins by noting that this gambling thing is supposed to be great and he attempts to find out how great from iGaming Ontario. He wasn't able to get much information from them, but it was easy to find out from the folks in New York and Massachusetts.

  

When Ontario announced a few years ago that it was giving the green light to online gambling, politicians made familiar promises about the scheme. It would be great for consumers. Great for the province’s tax revenue. Great for jobs, great for the local innovation economy. (They didn’t say anything about how great it might be for our blood pressure to be subjected to the ensuing flood of sportsbook ads.)

Since then, most of the talk about online gambling has focused on its downsides: the volume of ads; the disappointment in seeing heroes such as Wayne Gretzky or Auston Matthews encouraging fans to get into the betting game; the cautionary tales about addicts losing their homes, their jobs, their families, their lives.

Would the conversation be different if the government actually trusted the public enough to give them real information about the state of the industry?

For almost two years, iGaming Ontario (or iGO), which oversees online gambling in the province on behalf of the Alcohol Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), has followed a policy of saying as little as possible. It releases quarterly snapshots that contain a handful of data to show things are going swimmingly.

Which they might be. Who knows.

For the first year of those quarterly reports, iGO revealed almost nothing. It published the total amount of money that had been wagered, but refused to outline how much came from the different types of betting: casino, sports, or online poker. It was hardly a vote of confidence in a promising industry.

It’s finally begun breaking out those figures. Still, it evidently believes most information is like thrash metal or direct democracy: potentially dangerous if released onto an unsuspecting public. And so it withholds data that might help Ontarians grapple with the emerging place of online betting in the province.

He then made a few phone calls and it seems our southern neighbours were rather chatty.

Other jurisdictions seem to recognize the benefits in giving the public access to timely, comprehensive information....

A quick scan of the information published by Massachusetts and New York may give you some idea of the warts that Ontario might be trying to hide.

Last month, mobile sportsbooks in New York State took in US$2.04-billion in total wagers. Of that amount, the market goliath FanDuel handled US$835-million, or about 41 per cent of all wagers. DraftKings handled US$773-million (about 38 per cent), and Caesars handled US$202-million (or almost 10 per cent)....

The Massachusetts numbers for December echo the winners-take-all landscape in New York. Of US$643-million wagered on online sportsbooks, DraftKings handled US$316-million, or 49 per cent. FanDuel handled US$187-million (29 per cent). ESPN Bet, newly rebranded from Penn Sports Interactive, handled US$50-million and saw its market share jump to almost 8 per cent from 6 per cent. The other five licenced operators handled the remaining 14 per cent of the action.

All of which is to say the industry looks a little like America itself: a few fat cats at the top, with everyone else scrambling to survive.

And what does the landscape look like in Ontario, where there were an astonishing 49 licensees operating 72 gambling websites – including, by my count, 30 sports-betting operations – as of Dec. 31, 2023? Are two or three foreign juggernauts dominating an industry the government had hoped would become a central player in the province’s innovation economy, as people suspect? Are Canadian-based companies, which have much smaller marketing budgets than the global behemoths, connecting with consumers? Are they barely keeping their heads above water? Are they targets for the industry consolidation that so many observers believe is inevitable? Will the jobs that the province trumpeted as a major reason to greenlight gambling never materialize, or evaporate? Will online gambling be yet another branch-plant economy of foreign giants?

The questions were not answered.

Beyond the Palewall (6)

[Beyond the palewall is the title of this series because beyond the paywall is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

Atmospheric Rivers
   Two years ago we experienced one in British Columbia and I had considered them a west coast phenomena. That is not the case:
"How a Category 5 Atmospheric River Supercharged Deadly East Coast Storm: Every State From Florida to Maine Saw at Least 4 Inches of Rain: Here is What Was Behind the Storm," Matthew Cappucci, Washington Post, Dec. 21, 2023.

   Atmospheric rivers — jets of intense precipitation that curl around powerful ocean storms — are generally considered a West Coast phenomenon. But it turns out a top tier atmospheric river — rated Category 5 on scale of 1 to 5 — was part of the East Coast storm that killed at least five people and cut power to more than 800,000 customers this week.

The storm unleashed at least 4 inches of rain and wind gusts over 50 mph in every Eastern Seaboard state from Florida to Maine. Along the coast, the storm’s wind shoved ashore an ocean surge of at least 2 to 4 feet, inundating low-lying roads.

   Boosted by the atmospheric river, the storm generated exceptional rainfall that caused creeks, streams and rivers to overflow. The river in the sky drew record-setting warmth from the tropics northward, melting snow in the mountains of the Northeast, which made the flooding even worse.

…..

Are atmospheric rivers normal on the East Coast?

An atmospheric river is a long, narrow ribbon of deep, tropical moisture that is pulled into the mid-latitudes by a storm. In the Northern Hemisphere, storms can tug these narrow moisture plumes and stretch them over thousands of miles to the north and east. An atmospheric river that hits California sometimes has extended from as far west Hawaii, and the phenomenon has thus earned the moniker the “Pineapple Express.”

Atmospheric rivers affect the East Coast just as much as the West Coast, if not more frequently. But they’re seldom talked about.

Serious Betting
   I recently posted about the increase in gambling. This piece shows what is required:
"The Over-the-Top Home Offices of Full-time Sports Bettors," Danny Funt, Washington Post, Dec. 21, 2023.

   It was a gamble in its own right for Kenneth Huber to try to mount a 165-inch TV in his basement office. It’s actually a three-by-three grid of 55-inch 4k computer monitors, and the first time Huber tried to install them on a $1,500 stand in his suburban Philadelphia home, all nine of the heavy screens cracked. Fortunately, the retailer sent him replacements, and this time he hedged his bet by supplementing the stand with large spacer brackets.....
   A specialist in “live” betting during games — bets on the next play, drive or score of games that have already started — Huber depends on following the action with as little delay as possible. All nine screens on his monitor grid have hard-wired connections, and next to the grid is a curved 65-inch Samsung TV that receives broadcasts through an HD antenna on Huber’s roof. Over-the-air broadcasts often have lower latency than cable or satellite, he explained, and are far quicker than YouTube TV’s sluggish Sunday Ticket feed.

Tall Tales From High Above and Long Ago
   Don't try this at home. This fantastic flying feat is from the obituary of Bob Pardo who invented the "Pardo Push." 
"Bob Pardo, Pilot in Daring Rescue in Vietnam War, Dies at 89: In An Extraordinary Act of Ariel Ballet, He Helped a Fellow Pilot Whose Plane Had Become Compromised Until They Could Be Safely Rescued," Trip Gabriel, New York Times, Dec. 21, 2023.

   Bob Pardo, a fighter pilot who during the Vietnam War kept a wingman’s damaged plane aloft in a daring feat of aviation that became known as the Pardo Push, died on Dec. 5 in a hospital near his home in College Station, Texas. He was 89.

   In March 1967, Captain Pardo was on a mission over North Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom when antiaircraft fire hit his plane, inflicting damage, while more badly ripping into the fuel tank of another fighter in the strike force. Both jets pulled away to head home. But the second plane had lost too much fuel to make it to safety. Captain Pardo realized that its two-man crew would be forced to eject over enemy territory and face capture or worse.

   Flying beneath the compromised plane, Captain Pardo told its pilot, Capt. Earl Aman, to lower his tailhook — a metal pole at the rear of a fighter used to arrest its landing. At 300 miles per hour, Captain Pardo nudged his plane’s glass windshield against the tip of the pole. For almost 90 miles, he pushed the other plane as both jets hemorrhaged fuel, until they crossed the border with Laos. Both crews ejected by parachute and all four men were rescued.

….Captain Pardo knew Captain Aman’s plane would not be able to make it out of North Vietnam to rendezvous with a flying refueling tanker. At first, he tried to push Captain Aman’s plane by sticking the nose of his own jet into a rear port, but there was too much turbulence. Next he tried to maneuver directly under the other jet and give it a piggyback ride, which also failed.

   Then he conceived of pushing Captain Aman’s tail hook. A tail hook pole was used by the Navy’s version of the F-4 Phantom to land on aircraft carriers. The Air Force used it for emergency runway landings, when the hook snags a cable stretched across tarmac.

   Captain Pardo told his wingman to shut down his engines and carefully made contact with the tail hook using his own plane’s windshield.

   “If he so much as bumped the windshield, he would have had that tail hook in his face,” Mr. Houghton, who was in the rear seat of the injured plane, recalled in a 1996 interview. “We’re talking about glass here. It was phenomenal flying, nothing less.”

   Mr. Pardo recalled, “I can’t remember how many times the tailhook slipped off the windshield, and I had to fight to get it back in place.”

   After one of Captain Pardo’s own engines caught fire and he shut it down, the two planes began rapidly losing altitude, sinking 2,000 feet per minute. They crossed the border with Laos at an altitude of only 6,000 feet, leaving them just two more minutes of flying time. Both crews bailed out soon after, floating down to the jungle by parachute. They were rescued by U.S. helicopters.

For this he was almost punished! (for putting his plane at risk.)
The Bonus:
   For additional aviation derring-do, see this post about "Senator John McCain" and others who flew off carriers during the Viet Nam war. 

  For a Canadian example of fine flying see: "James Francis Edwards - Canadian Fighter Pilot."

Beyond the Palewall (5)

 

[Beyond the palewall is the title of this series because beyond the paywall is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

Something Else to Worry About

   One would think that it would be good news that fish are able to survive in Hamilton Harbour, but that is not the case. Very large goldfish have been spotted there and elsewhere in the Great Lakes (and elsewhere around the globe.) The point to be made in this post is simply that you should not take your goldfish out of the bowl and put it in the Thames.

   "Over the past several years, Ms. Boston and her colleagues have been tracking invasive goldfish in Hamilton Harbour, which is on the western tip of Lake Ontario, about 35 miles southwest of Toronto. The bay has been decimated by industrial and urban development as well as by invasive species — making it among the most environmentally degraded areas of the Great Lakes.

Their study, published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, could help pinpoint goldfish populations for culling, said Ms. Boston, who is the lead author. “We found out where they are before they start spawning,” she said. “That’s a good opportunity to get rid of them.”

   The fast-growing female goldfish, Ms. Boston noted, can also reproduce several times in one season. “They have the resources,” she added, “and they can take advantage of them.”

   Goldfish were first spotted in Hamilton Harbour in the 1960s, but largely died off in the 1970s because of industrial contamination. In the early 2000s, their population appeared to recover. Goldfish can tolerate a wide range of water temperatures, reach sexual maturation quickly, and can eat nearly anything, including algae, aquatic plants, eggs and invertebrates, Ms. Boston said.

   Their football-shaped bodies can swell to a size that makes them too large a meal for predators — up to about 16 inches long. “A fish would have to have a really big mouth to eat it,” she said....

   Nicholas Mandrak, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said that while goldfish were introduced to North America in the late 1800s, the wild population had begun to “dramatically increase” in the past two decades. Their spawning explosion, he said, resulted partly from people in densely-populated areas releasing pets in urban ponds.

   Climate change may play a role, because of the goldfish’s capacity to adapt to warming and poorly oxygenated waters, he added.

   “There are literally millions of goldfish in the Great Lakes, if not tens of millions,” Dr. Mandrak said.

Sources:

 "Once They Were Pets. Now Giant Goldfish Are Menacing the Great Lakes.

Released into the Wild, the Humble Goldfish Can Grow to a Monstrous Size and Destroy Habitats for Native Species. Canadian Researchers are Tracking the Fish, so That They Might be Culled," Livia Albeck-Ripka, New York Times, Dec. 8, 2023.

  That the problem is a global one is clear from the picture, which portrays a goldfish caught in Europe. "Behold Carrot, The 67-pound Goldfish Caught in France," Jennifer Hassan, The Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2022.

 

Magazines Are Disappearing Along With Newspapers

   In Mulcahy's Miscellany there is a series titled "Periodical Ramblings" and the last post in it was about, Liberty magazine which stopped publishing in Canada long ago. The Last Post has now been sounded for Readers Digest Canada which has been around over 75 years. Although one commentator called it the "Barry Manilow of magazines," another noted: “It’s going to be missed by a lot of readers,” said Mark Pupo, who was editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest Canada from 2019-2022. “It was a great space for Canadian storytelling. We’re losing a lot.” The following brief bits are from: "Reader's Digest Canada, Once A Household Staple, Will End its Run After 76 Years," Jana G. Pruden, Globe and Mail, Dec. 5, 2023.

   Employees were told Reader’s Digest Magazines Ltd. will continue to publish its five Canadian magazines until March 31, 2024, and that the websites will remain in operation “for a certain period” with “basic support” from employees in the United States.

   A spokesperson from American parent company Trusted Media Brands – identified in the presentation to staff as the person to handle all media inquiries – did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

It was an unceremonious announcement for a digest that has been a venerable part of the Canadian magazine market since it began publishing in the country in 1947. It was declared the most influential magazine in Canadian publishing history in 2008.

   As recently as April, a press release described Reader’s Digest as Canada’s most-read monthly magazine, boasting more than three million readers every month. Reader’s Digest Magazines Ltd. also publishes a French edition, Sélection, as well as Best Health Canada, Our Canada and More Our Canada....

   Founded in the U.S. in 1922, Reader’s Digest grew to be a dominant global brand with dozens of editions published all over the world in multiple languages, including braille, and sold in over 60 countries.

The magazine became known for its mix of upbeat and informative stories, health and wellness news and dramatic storytelling, often condensed and updated versions of other magazine pieces. Issues were also peppered with vocabulary quizzes, facts, jokes, comics, puzzles and lighthearted anecdotes in features such as Laughter, the Best Medicine, and Life’s Like That.

Post Script: 

   It is worth noting that the owner of the magazine is Trusted Media Brands. 

   Unfortunately, those of you who are saddened by this loss will no longer be able to reach for a Kleenex. See: "What Kleenex's Canadian Exit Reveals About Our  Grocery Sector's Lack of Competition," David Soberman, Globe and Mail, Sept. 11, 2023.

City Living

   I am not a big fan of big cities, nor do I put much faith in rankings. I did, however, call your attention to "The 100 Most Livable Cities in Canada", and particularly to the fact that London does not appear in that ranking. Another one has just been completed and London does not show up in it either. Ranked, this time, is the "Quality of Living", which must be related, one would think, to being "Livable." Given that I have provided you with the Globe and Mail and Economist rankings, I will now point you to the one by Mercer: "Quality of Living City Ranking 2023." You can go through the rankings by clicking on that link. If you don't want to take the time, I will suggest that you move to Vancouver if you wish to stay in this country or Vienna if you want to live abroad. 

Sources:

  "Vancouver Beats Out Toronto For Cities With the Best Quality of Living For Expats," The Toronto Star, Dec. 14, 2023

  Five Canadian cities made it on to the list ranking quality of life for newcomers and expatriates, but only one made it into the top ten.

   Vancouver - at eighth - beat out Toronto (17th), Ottawa (tied for 18th), Montreal (tied for 20th) and Calgary (tied for 23rd).

   "Move to One of These 10 Global Cities in 2024 If You Want to Work Somewhere    With a Great Quality of Life," Michael Grothaus, Fast Company, Dec. 15, 2023.

   "If you’ve ever wondered which of the world’s cities might be the best to live and work in, you’ll want to check out Mercer’s 2023 Quality of Living rankings, which look at the quality of life that workers and their families who work outside their home countries have.  

   This year, the consulting firm ranked more than 200 cities on five continents. The top city in the world, according to Mercer’s rankings, is Vienna, Austria. Mercer says the central European capital is “known for its rich history, stunning architecture, and vibrant cultural scene, Vienna offers its residents a high standard of living in various aspects.”

   The remainder of the top 10 list is dominated by European cities, which take seven of the 10 spots. Germany alone takes three of the top 10 spots with Frankfurt in 6th place, Munich in 7th, and Dusseldorf in 10th. The only North American city to make the top 10 list is Vancouver, Canada, which came in 8th place."

BEYOND THE PALEWALL (2)

 

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

Blow That Whistle! - On Whistle Blowing
  Occasionally we witness examples of malfeasance in government at the federal level, and perhaps more often at the provincial one, and on rare occasions a whistle is blown. Such behaviour needs encouragement and it is provided in this article relating to government fraud in the United States.  Ms. Feinberg is featured in it and she is $42 MILLION richer and, no doubt, whistling all the way to the bank.
   "How a Whistleblower Says Booz Allen Hamilton Defrauded the Government: Sarah Feinberg's Complaint About the Billing Practices Led to a $377 Million Settlement With the Justice Department," David Nakamura, Washington Post, Aug. 26, 2023.
"Only a few months into a new finance job, Sarah Feinberg was stunned when a senior manager with a Northern Virginia-based defense contractor called federal auditors “too stupid” to notice overcharging, according to a federal complaint she filed....
During the ensuing nine months, she repeatedly raised concerns with senior executives, including internal compliance officials and the chief financial officer, according to the 37-page civil complaint she filed against Booz Allen in 2016 under the federal False Claims Act....
In July, the Justice Department, which investigated her complaint, announced that Booz Allen had agreed to pay $377 million — $209 million in restitution to the federal government and the rest in penalties — to settle the matter, one of the largest awards in a government procurement case in history....
Feinberg, who said she felt vindicated and was to receive nearly $70 million for making the case known to authorities, nevertheless could not help having doubts about whether justice had been served....Feinberg had filed a “qui tam” lawsuit in which whistleblowers are awarded a portion of any financial judgment or settlement as incentive to come forward with evidence of fraud against the U.S. government.... 
According to federal data, 652 people filed qui tam complaints last year, and the Justice Department recovered $2.2 billion in false claims by companies from 351 of those cases, the second-highest number of cases ever. The largest awards have come in health care, procurement and mortgage lending, federal officials said....
For Feinberg, the personal award is life-changing. After paying her lawyers, she cleared a pretax amount of $42 million — up to $12 million of which she intends to put into a charitable trust. Some funds will go to supporting her church, she said, and she is interested in investing in underserved communities.

    I have learned that there is in Canada the, Whistleblowing Canada Research Society.    

Unfit For Service
    I did not include the fact that the fine Ms. Feinberg mentioned above had also been in the Marine Corps Reserve. Although she broke her pelvis during officer candidate school, she got her commission and volunteered for a tour in Iraq. This leads me to the next story which indicates that the Marines are not having any difficulty filling the ranks, but the other services certainly are. It appears that sitting on the couch playing "Call For Duty" does not mean you will be able to answer it.
   "U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Struggle For Recruits: The Marines Have Plenty: As the Other Large Military Branches Fall Short of Their Goals Despite Offering Bonuses and Other Incentives, the Marine Corps Easily Fills Its Ranks On Swagger Alone," Dave Philipps, New York Times, Oct. 17, 2023.
"These are dark days for military recruiting.
The Army, Navy and Air Force have tried almost everything in their power to bring in new people. They’ve relaxed enlistment standards, set up remedial schools for recruits who can’t pass entry tests, and offered signing bonuses worth up to $75,000. Still, this year the three services together fell short by more than 25,000 recruits.
Military leaders say there are so few Americans who are willing and able to serve, and so many civilian employers competing for them, that getting enough people into uniform is nearly impossible.Tell that to the Marines.
The Marine Corps ended the recruiting year on Sept. 30 having met 100 percent of its goal, with hundreds of contracts already signed for the next year.
The corps did it while keeping enlistment standards tight and offering next to no perks. When asked earlier this year about whether the Marines would offer extra money to attract recruits, the commandant of the Marine Corps replied: “Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine. That’s your bonus.”
Apparently the slogan, "The Few. The Proud. The Marines", works. 

   Although standards have been lowered,  "about 77 percent of young people are ineligible to enlist because they are overweight, or have disqualifying mental or physical conditions or issues with drug use, according to a Defense Department report.

BEYOND THE PALEWALL (1)

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

SACRÉ BLEU - Wine Destruction

   You may have missed this bad news among the other bad news, but this is truly terrible. There is too much wine in Europe and the French government is spending over 200 million euros to get rid of it. Perhaps they could just ship it to the LCBO.

   "France Has Too Much Wine. It's Paying Millions to Destroy the Leftovers," Caroline Anders, Washington Post, Aug. 26, 2023.

"Ruining so much wine may sound ludicrous, but there’s a straightforward economic reason this is happening: Making wine is getting more expensive due in part to recent world events, and people are drinking less of it. That has left some producers with a surplus that they cannot price high enough to make a profit. Now, some of France’s most famous wine-producing regions, like Bordeaux, are struggling....

In June, the European Union initially gave France about $172 million to destroy nearly 80 million gallons of wine, and the French government announced additional funds this week. Producers will use the funds to distill their wine into pure alcohol to be used for other products, such as cleaning supplies or perfume.

Wine consumption in France has been plummeting since its peak in 1926, when the average French citizen drank about 136 liters per year. Today, that number is closer to 40 liters, The Washington Post previously reported. Consumers are also inundated with beverage choices now, and they’re choosing wine less and less.

As consumption has taken a nosedive, production costs have increased and inflation has tightened budgets around the world. That’s especially true since the coronavirus pandemic, which shuttered bars, restaurants and wineries, driving up prices. The war in Ukraine also influenced the industry by disrupting shipments of products essential to winemaking, such as fertilizer and bottles. And on top of the pandemic and war, climate change is forcing growers to adapt to new harvest schedules and reckon with more extreme weather."

Rivers of Wine! 

  Not long after that article was published, this one was. I am not suggesting they are related.

   "Nearly 600,000 Gallons of Wine Wash Down the Street in Portuguese Town,"  María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2023. 

"Residents in a Portuguese village woke up to an almost biblical scene on Sunday morning. The streets were impassable, replaced by a raging river of close to 600,000 gallons of red wine.

After two wine tanks belonging to a local distillery burst, enough booze flowed down the roads of São Lourenço do Bairro to fill an Olympic-size pool — and to spark fears from local leaders about possible environmental damage…

Sunday’s wine wave began at Destilaria Levira, a company that specializes in transforming wine into a slew of products, including gin, cleaning supplies and food oils. Though authorities are still investigating what caused the tanks to burst, the company said the wine they carried was essentially going to be destroyed — or distilled into raw alcohol — as part of the Portuguese government’s attempts to address a brewing wine crisis.

The nation with the world’s highest wine consumption per capita is among the European countries grappling with a massive surplus of wine this year. The combination of rising production costs and an ever-increasing range of alcoholic drink options has resulted in plummeting demand for wine in countries such as France, Spain and Italy....

The episode in Portugal isn’t the first time large amounts of wine have spilled. In 2020, the Russian River in California’s Sonoma County was tainted red after a 97,000-gallon winery tank burst open. That same year, a 13,000-gallon tank broke at a Spanish winery, leaving a flood of red wine gushing down like a breached dam."

  This story was also reported in the New York Times: "A River of Wine Flooded the Streets of a Town in Portugal," Sept. 12, 2023.

"The tanks that collapsed were part of an effort to address a broader problem: There’s too much wine in Europe. Portugal, like other major European wine producers such as France and Italy, is suffering from an oversupply of wine, largely because of a decline in both consumption and exports. The tanks that collapsed were being used to store surplus wine, according to the distillery."

I will try to find some better news.