So, the federal government will likely have a deficit budget next year.

Last week when Flaherty publicly mused about the possibility of selling off government assets like, but not exactly like, the CN Tower, to raise cash and avoid a deficit, I twaid that it was just a tactic to make it more acceptable to run a deficit.

Jim says, maybe we’ll sell off some assets. Economists say, that would be a bad idea, actually running a deficit would be better. Next move, Jim introduces a deficit budget.

Jim Flaherty may be set to become the first federal finance minister in nearly 40 years to oversee a return to budget deficits, but economists say they’re generally satisfied with his occasionally controversial stewardship.

Just last week, he raised eyebrows when he suggested the Harper government is considering selling off federal assets in the name of deficit fighting – even joking that the landmark CN Tower in Toronto could be on the block.

The idea was panned by private-sector economists, who warned that selling the family silver in a down market would fetch deflated “fire sale” prices.
– Flaherty poised to oversee deficit TGAM 18 Nov 2008

This is how the book’s dust jacket opens:

Why do some people succeed far more than others?
There is a story that is usually told about successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them — at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex — and a lot more interesting — than it initially appears.
– Outliers: The story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Also on his website he has a Q&A about the book:

6. What’s the most surprising pattern you uncovered in the book?
It’s probably the chapter nearly the end of Outliers where I talk about plane crashes. How good a pilot is, it turns out, has a lot to do with where that pilot is from—that is, the culture he or she was raised in. I was actually stunned by how strong the connection is between culture and crashes, and it’s something that I would never have dreamed was true, in a million years.
– What is Outliers about?

I have yet to start reading, but I will report back anything really interesting I find out.

Economists have terms for what the U.S. government is doing here. Moral hazard is one. Disincentive is another.

But Spencer Bachus, a Republican congressman from Alabama, offered more digestible language a few days ago, and it’s worth repeating.

On the plan to help only homeowners who are badly delinquent: “That, to me, is only going to encourage these people,” he said. “I actually had a constituent that called us and said, ‘We’re not going to qualify for this program because we’re current. What should we do? Should we miss three payments?’”

On the plan to bail out automakers and their highly paid, politically connected, unionized workforce: “I’ve got a sawmill worker in my district who is making $15 an hour. And he’s working hard every day. And he gets very dirty every day. And it’s a risky, hot job, or it’s very cold. It’s usually very cold or very hot. And he’s making $15 an hour. And we’re taking his money and we’re paying it to a company that’s paying $75 an hour.”
– The American strategy of rewarding irresponsibility cbc.ca 18 Nov 2008

Sourdough bread 1
I made two whole wheat loaves last week. The bread ended up not rising very well. I hadn’t accounted enough for the water that was already in the sourdough.

When I was mixing flour in, I did add extra flour. But after adding a demilitre of flour, I held off because I didn’t want an huge unwieldy mass of bread dough. The dough didn’t rise very well after several hours of waiting, so I went ahead and made loaves. Because there was so much dough I used a cookie sheet rather than my pizza-sized-and-shaped baking stone.

So the loaves were not very tall and the bottom was a bit scorched because of the thin pan, but inside the crust the bread had an amazing flavour.

So, in this first try I learned to account better for the water in the sourdough or to add flour until it is the right moisture. Henceforth I will always use a baking stone.

Sourdough bread 2
I prepared starter overnight Friday and made two batches of dough the next morning.

The first I made was whole wheat (though whole wheat is not whole grain). Really it was two loaves, but since they are from the same dough and did the same things, I’ll talk about them them together.

Again the dough didn’t rise well, but the flour water ratio was better. The loaves did rise okay, but not enough.

This photo after slicing is the only one I took. You can see the expansion cut I put down the middle is still quite a valley.

So, with this one I noticed that when I put the loaf of dough in a warm place (on top of the activated oven, it did a little better. Baking this bread with whole wheat will still be a challenge.

Sourdough bread 3
I made this one from the same proofed starter, but I used all purpose flour for the dough and processed it in the bread maker.

The dough was very soft and sticky when it was done and it seemed to not have risen very much.

I put the dough on the stone, sliced a cross in the top and put it in the oven.

While baking it rose quite well.

It even kept rising so much that it cracked through the already expanded crust.

This one worked out okay. I think the aid of the mixing and rising of the dough in the bread machine is very helpful. Also the refined flour makes it easier too.

Sourdough bread 4
On Sunday I made another two batches of dough from the same proofed starter. Both with the refined flour because I was pretty much out of whole wheat.

One I mixed in the bread maker and then pulled out before it started rising so I could star the next batch. Since I had to go to work I knowingly put the dough in prematurely.

It reasonable flavour, but there was some doughiness in the middle.

Good bread takes time, but I already knew that.

Sourdough bread 5
The other Sunday batch of dough I set up to mix and rise in the bread machine around 10:30 a.m. and the machine does that process in about two hours. I got called away and then had to go to work, so I left it in the machine for about thirteen hours (eleven of which the machine would have been off.

When I got back from work, I put it in the oven. It rose well and turned out pretty good.

I took the bread in to work the next day for people to eat and many of them enjoyed it. I took that opportunity to educate them about sourdough.

Person: “Oh, someone brought in some bread.”

RC-W: “It’s sourdough bread. I made it.” (and so on you can imagine)

• First sourdough loaves were a little flat 14 Nov 2008
• Sourdough starter begins 13 Nov 2008
• Trying to start sourdough culture 10 Nov 2008

The map at Vancouver’s 2008 electoral results page shows the clear geographic division of support for mayor between the leading candidates.

It is interesting that the city has these parties or “electoral organizations” as the city’s website calls them. Aside from the four who had mayoral candidates there are also Coalition of Progressive Electors and Green Party of Vancouver.

When I first studied politics in school I had the common opinion that political parties were unnecessary and got in the way of governing. I now know better.

Parties do get in the way, but in multi-member representative democracies parties, or compromise coalitions at the very least are necessary. City parties are not that common, but clearly in Vancouver they are.

It may have something to do with their wardless system, where councillors are all elected at-large. Maybe being affiliated with a party is an advantage when you just have to be the nth or better candidate.

Though news organizations would want us to think differently, it is because of the power her employer that her captivity was unreported for so long.

The public editor at the Toronto Star describes the situation and tries to give a comparable example where the Star acted differently.

When a CBC reporter was kidnapped in Afghanistan last month and other Canadian news organizations agreed to the national broadcaster’s request to suppress that news to better ensure the reporter’s safety, was that a double standard? Would a Canadian victim who was not a journalist get the same consideration?
[...]
On Jan. 23, the Star’s Asia bureau chief, Bill Schiller, reported on the plight of Je Yell Kim, a dental technician in his 50s who was held in Communist North Korea on vague charges relating to “national security.” His family had kept his arrest secret for more than two months in hopes that quiet diplomacy might secure his release.
[...]
There are significant differences between Fung’s kidnapping by bandits and the jailing of a Canadian by a sovereign state. Still, I’ve been troubled by the reality that the Star disregarded this family’s request to suppress that news, yet agreed to the CBC’s request to a news blackout about Fung. In both instances, a strong case was made that reporting could endanger a life. Is that a double standard? How will we handle such requests in the future?
– Ethical issues in kidnapping cases Toronto Star 15 Nov 2008

The column closes by saying that The Canadian Press’s kidnapping and terrorism policy of “No news story is worth someone’s life.” is “a value all thinking journalists can subscribe to.”

The Star column is a reasonable take on the issue and shows the value of a public editor or ombudsman at news organizations.

The Globe and Mail makes some weak attempts to justify its hypocrisy.

When CBC-TV reporter Mellissa Fung was kidnapped in Afghanistan, the news media’s decision to censor themselves was sensible, humane and necessary. Silence during the 28 days of her captivity served the public interest, which must surely be founded on a respect for life’s sanctity and dignity.
[...]
Some may accuse The Globe and Mail, the CBC and other Western news media of a double standard. U.S. President George W. Bush once told the New York Times it would have blood on its hands if it revealed that the government was using widespread wiretaps to track possible terrorist transactions, without obtaining judicial permission first, and terrorists subsequently attacked. The Times went ahead anyway.

But there are two salient differences between the electronic eavesdropping story and the Fung kidnapping. The first is that the state has a monopoly on force and detention, and the media act as watchdog. There was no act of state directly involved in the Fung kidnapping, apart from the Canadian government’s part in trying to obtain her release
– Self-censorship to save a life 11 Nov 2008

So, in this article they say that in a different situation they acted differently. That is irrelevant. What they need to produce is a situation where someone is kidnapped who is not a reporter or does not have power and influence and it did not get reported.

The previous day they had a different article with more examples.

Ms. Fung’s kidnapping two days before the federal election triggered hand-wringing on an international scale as Ms. Fung’s employer, the CBC, pleaded for discretion from rival news organizations.

Fragile negotiations for her release could be instantly derailed by any publicity, the public broadcaster, the military and the Prime Minister’s Office argued. Headlines might doom Ms. Fung to extra months of captivity, if not worse.
[...]
Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with Montreal’s La Presse, questioned the wisdom of engaging in negotiations with the enemy and the ethics behind the information freeze.

“Journalists are the first to invoke the public’s right to information, but they become awfully sensitive when it comes to one of their own,” Ms. Ouimet wrote.

Like Ms. Ouimet, one senior southwestern Asia correspondent wondered whether a person who was not connected to a powerful Canadian broadcaster would receive the same treatment.

“If we get into this argument, then every story we write has to be looked at with this in mind,” said the reporter, who isn’t authorized to give interviews by her employer.
[...]
Scott White, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Press, said CBC moved quickly to ask the wire services to wait.
[...]
In the case of a French aid worker, the news spread quickly, partly because a bystander trying to intervene was killed when she was taken on a busy Kabul street. The woman is still missing. The Globe received no request to withhold the news in the aid worker’s case.

Mr. White of The Canadian Press said “every respectable news organization would hold off” if a trusted source warned that a story could endanger a person’s life.
– A question of whether no news is good news 10 Nov 2008

So the examples they give in this story were:

• They didn’t report that Christian aid worker James Loney, who was kidnapped in Iraq, is gay (not relevant information anyway).
• At the request of the Federal government they did not report the Loney kidnapping for 24 hours.
• At the request of the reporter who wrote the story, La Presse held off on running a story when in 1980 a Canadian diplomat Ken Taylor helped six American hostages escape from Iran.
• They didn’t report on the kidnapping of a Dutch journalist.
• A French aid worker’s kidnapping was reported after someone was killed during the abduction. The story says, “The Globe received no request to withhold the news in the aid worker’s case.”

So, it seems like a hefty list of examples. In the cases of the aid workers both stories were reported, but — oh so honourably — they didn’t report an irrelevant, gay detail.

All other cases given involved diplomats and reporters.

And they justify in the French woman’s case that no one asked them, as though they can’t make value decisions on their own.

Part of the challenge with deciding whether to report something is that it can’t be undone. The bell cannot be unrung. This is part of the explanation in the Star’s counterexample of the detainee in North Korea is that it was already on “the Internet.” Once one person puts it out there it becomes known to the public and other sources releasing the story merely determine how widely it spread not whether it is public.

This fact shows how extraordinary it is that anyone can keep news like that known by new orgs, but unreported. In part it is just the ability contact. It’s no surprise that CBC can quickly contact CP or the Globe and get their request to be considered. Strangely the French aid organization could not call up the Globe editor as easily, if it happened to want to.

The other is influence. Being able to convince them into complying. You can see how the government could make a convincing appeal. Then colleagues in the news media can make a stong appeal to because they are colleagues and may even be friends. If there is to be a bias, and I think there is, it would more likely be in favour of like people.

So the Globe has not made a convincing case that it is not biased, nor that it escaped exercising a double standard. It could have provided a past example, if there were one. Of course a current example might still be ongoing.

There could be an uninfluential person from a small organization being held against his or her will overseas whose life is in danger and the new media organizations could be keeping it double super secret or they could be hypocrites.

By employing automotive materials and technologies, Power Panel has been able to create a product that is able to deliver both solar thermal and electrical power at a lower price than power-only panels cost today. These easy to install, durable panels will make solar possible for many home owners and small to medium sized businesses.
– Power Panel Canada - combined solar PV and thermal

The interesting part for me in reading about them is the combination of electrical and heat production and that the cooling from the heat system makes the pv cells more efficient.

Household energy use is typically 70% or more thermal …. less than 30% electricity
We all know that we use electricity and heat (thermal energy) in our homes. But you might be surprised to know that most of your total household energy consumption is for thermal energy (space heating and hot water).

Power Panel supplies both electricity and heat at the same time. In fact, Power Panel captures the heat by fluid cooling the PV cells which then operate more efficiently as the temperature of the cells is reduced.
– PowerPanel Energy Use

• Power Panel Canada

Fruitwood-smoked Quail with Quince Gastrique
Quinoa Risotto

Landmark Chardonnay “Damaris Reserve” 2006

Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb
Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue
Chanterelle Jus

Shafer Cabernet “Hillside Select” 2003

Lolla Rosa, Red Oak and Endive
Cider Vinaigrette
Baked Vermont Brie with Walnut Crostini

Pear Torte
Huckleberry Sauce

Chandon Étoile Rosé
– Menu for the Dinner in Honor of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy Whitehouse.gov 14 Nov 2008

Yeah, they are eating quinoa risotto.

Quinoa is my favourite. It is tasty and nutritious, offers complete protein, and coks quickly. The seed also comes in flake form for a hot pseudo-cereal breakfast.

And now the world leaders are eating it.

I had prepared the starter the night before and kept it at warm room temperature over night. The next morning I mixed in more flour. I added extra flour because it seemed pretty moist. I was wary of adding too much flour, but I probably should have added more.

I think the problem was that I tried using more starter which has more water in it, which then requires more flour.

So the dough wasn’t rising well and didn’t hold it’s structure, but I went ahead and baked two loaves.

You can see that there are some bubbles and the taste was good, just not very tall.

I plan to make another attempt tomorrow.

• Sourdough starter begins 13 Nov 2008
• Trying to start sourdough culture 10 Nov 2008

We played a good possession-focused game controlling the play and taking our chances when they came. That combined with good saves from our keeper led us to a 6-0 victory. It may be our easiest game all season though.

• Got my soccer medal 4 Oct 2008