[NON BLOG] Birthday Wishes

Birthday wishes go out to vcutag and pauldrye.

[BRIEF NOTE] What Gets Me Most About the Air India Disaster

Once, in some compendium of Canadian short stories in English, I came across a short story written by Bharati Mukherhjee about the bombing of Air-India Flight 182. It was a tragic story as one would expect, told in the first person by a woman who lost her husband and her son on the flight, who found absolutely no succor for her anguish from her uncomfortable friends or from a government that cloyingly tries to satiate the families of the dead with money and grief counsellors. Mukherjee, originally from India, once resided in Canada with her husband, short story writer Clark Blaise; she later left for the United States, rejecting what she identified as the nativist tendencies of Canadian multiculturalism for the United States' non-racial citizenship. She cited, as an example of Canadian multiculturalist nativism, the immediate extension of Canada's sympathies by then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to then-Prime Minister of India Rajiv Ghandi, even though the overwhelming majority ofr Flight 182's passengers were Canadian citizens.

Flight 182 has proven, to my satisfactiion, that Canada entered the big leagues of hyperterrorism long before 9/11. Long before the 9/11 hijackers were carousing at strip clubs, Canada hadn its own disaffected members of a respectable immigrant population conspire to commit aviation-related acts of mass murder. Best of all, as the recent failure of the prosecution's weak case demonstrates, the people responsible for the 331 dead have managed to escape from the Canadian justice system just as surely as those directly responsible for 9/11 have avoided arrest by the United States. We Canadians should be proud.

What's next? I can hardly wait.

[URBAN NOTE] The New Bakka

Thursday, before I met up with halibut, I went to Bakka-Phoenix's new location at 691 Queen Street West. I'd been curious about its new location even since it moved on 1 March. (And no, it's nowhere near the Silver Snail as it once was.)

Brief impression? Much nicer location. Yes, it's less centrally located on Yonge Street, but the store itself is much brighter and significantly larger, with more titles on display than at the old Yonge Street. I'll definitely head back, not necessarily to buy granted, but still.

[NON BLOG] CFTAG Report

A selected digest of the high points from the past Sunday's CFTAG:

• schizmatic enthusiastically continued his missionary work for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I'm convinced.


• New biotechnologies will be enthusiastically misused, even (especially?) those relating to humans.


• We agreed that it's critically important to not use ends to justify means, whether one talks about justifying invasions, making cases for torture, or enacting other policies of state.


• A thought: Are the totalitarianisms of the 20th century explicable as Christian heresies?


• Non-falsiable Platonic ideologies might have really, really bad consequences. On the other hand, they are often quite aesthetically pleasing. They have to be: How else to demonstrate
  
• I praised Diane Duane Star Trek Rihannsu books for Star Trek, which not only provide a more interesting Romulan backstory than Nemesis, but which explain a minor question in Star Trek lore. Why were the Romulans portrayed as ethical and honourable in the original series, but not so much in the 24th century series? Answer: They were desperate.