A Wellington Street view

I best know local uber-partisan Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre for an endless series of rabid political cheap shots that seem to me to be firmly rooted in a deeply considered intellectual process involving either cartoon logic or clinical insanity. Come to think of it, his parliamentary question period antics probably give rabies a bad name. He regards John Baird (or possibly Baird's hair) as his political mentor, for cripes' sakes...

So, earlier this week when PP, a member of the federal access to information, privacy and ethics committee, took a, ummm, principled stand against Google Street View in Ottawa, I immediately began looking for the guy's ummm, well-reasoned angle. There has to be one. There always is.

PP claimed that he had concerns about the service's potential for invading privacy. Since he backs a law 'n order agenda, which can occasionally involve stuff like, oh, ubiquitous closed circuit TV cameras aimed at the general populace for no particular reason, I hadda kinda wonder.

Now, suddenly he has flipflopped, (assuming foursquare, steadfastly antiflipflop Tories can ever be said to flipflop. I'm sure they call it something else among themselves. I digress.) musing that a "useful and popular service" like Street View could fall victim to Canada's privacy laws vis-a-vis public surveillance. Which, unlike earlier this week, are now apparently too strong. And so must be modified to make them weaker. To allow, ummm, useful and popular services. To whom, exactly, other as yet unspecified services might also be useful and popular with, remains an open question for now.

Oh. Now I get it... and I'm torn. And perhaps slightly more paranoid than usual. Tooling around virtual versions of the great cities of the world amuses me. Pretending Ottawa is a great city of the world would amuse me even more. I like Street View. But if a little git like PP supports it...

Amused? An ESI Caption Contest

Prime Minister Stephen Harper met The Queen today at Buckingham Palace. Whatever could they be talking about?

Breaking News: Tommy & Lefebvre burns

Details at CBC News

Why I Like Chinese Doctors

I have gone to Chinese doctors for a number of years and have been happy with my Chinese medicine experience.

Here are some of the reasons I like Chinese doctors/medicine:

1) You can go to them when your GP isn't really helping. Let's say, you've done all the blood work, the tests, and everything comes out ok. But you still have things like gut problems, energy problems, mild depression -- these are the issues Chinese medicine can deal with effectively!

2) Chinese doctors don't try to be diplomatic. They tell it to you like it is: "You're too fat." "You're too thin." "Don't think so much!" "Stop spending so much time on the computer!" "Your breath stinks". And my personal favourite --- "Don't eat too much garlic! That's not good for the ladies. Causes discharge."

3) Reading the "instructions for use" on Chinese herbal medications is hilarious. I'm currently taking pills for "shrivelled complexion" and another for "wounds, serious or otherwise, sustained from a fall or throw - down from horse back, hurt of tendons and fracture of bones, internal pains by shocks and external swellings, pains by clot of blood, constipation and scantiness of urine, bumping or rod-hitting."

4) Chinese medicine is pretty cheap. Some acupuncturists are covered by work benefits. It's important to stay healthy during these hard times.

5) Chinese doctors don't care about privacy and confidentiality, and there is something really liberating about this. "Come in here and let me give you this constipation medicine...Oh yeah. There is another patient in here, but no problem!" This kind of thing makes me laugh at my own Western uptightness. And laughter is good medicine.

Stunned?

Many of you know that we of the Elgin Street Irregulars are big on lists of, ummm, five. If you don't, read our archives. You'll figure it out.

Some may also recall that I take a dimwitted quadruped's dim view of high voltage electrical discharges applied to living creatures. Especially since the Vancouver death of Robert Dziekanski after he was tasered - five times, it turns out - in October 2007.

With a full-on enquiry into the man's death, Taser International, cops in general and the RCMP in particular all seem to be heavily vested in denying that Tasers, police, Dziekanski and deadness are in any way linked. These may be honestly held opinions.

But I admit that my first uncharitable thought, when I heard about the Alzheimer's-like testimonial trend at the inquiry was, "Yeah, right. Stonewall away, guys...." Because, I reasoned, these talking points may also exist because if any of 'em did hint at regrettable liability, there could be legal and financial hell to pay, in Vancouver and elsewhere.

But faced with RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliot's plea for the public to walk a mile in his police force's spit-polished boots before rushing to judgement, I am now wondering about the real victims here. Could it be that the guys behind those electric stun guns really are victims, and worse off than Dziekanski?

Because after standing nearby while one of them pulled the trigger - did I mention, five times? - all of the Mounties present seem to have suffered catastrophic memory loss about the event. I don't wish to be uncharitable and suggest that they made their original statements under the mistaken assumption that no bystander had video-recorded the entire incident. Which would now place them in a position of having to explain why their statements and that video seem to part ways on several, ummm, crucial points...

No, we coyotes will take the high (voltage) road, and a charitable view of such memory loss. Obviously, the poor sunsabitches' neurons were fried by the weapon's electrical fallout. One weeps! To think of all the incidents in which police will be medically unable to remember why they zapped anybody! We could lose respect for the Mounties. And the legal system would surely descend into chaos...