While on vacation I read two books (well, read one and finished the other): Moneyball by Michael Lewis (buy it) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (buy it). Moneyball is about baseball on the surface, but deeper down it applies to my – and pretty much everyone else’s – workplace. It’s about how Billy Beane managed to make the Oakland A’s a top team when they have a third the budget of other clubs, and about the baseball fraternity’s refusal to acknowledge the validity of his methods.

The Da Vinci Code was a good summer book. I flew through it, and it kept me interested without sending me off on tangents of thought. The downside of more complicated books (like The Guns Of August (buy it), which I’m reading now) is that an idea or insight gets my brain going and I spend half an hour daydreaming instead of reading. Da Vinci is silly enough to keep that from happening, but still entertaining enough to kill a long summer day.

Just got back from 10 days in Nova Scotia. Will post details later. For now, enjoy the demon dog. 

The Shortlist Prize long list is out. Sorry if this is old news; I’ve been disconnected for a while.

Going to Nova Scotia for a few days, so unless my rental car comes with a satellite net connection the blogging will be dry for a while.

Time to skedaddle, McFaddle. You’ll hear from me in about a week and a half.

Going to Nova Scotia for a few days. Unless I come across a free high-speed connection in my travels the blogging will be dry for about a week and a half. Stay tight, tigers.

Courtesy of Mark Lanegan in “Sideways In Reverse”.

gonna shake shake shake
as a matter of course
it flies like a dish and
it kicks like a horse

There’s even a chorus singing “Going down, going down people, give me your love” in the background. TimmyD, you need to listen to this song.

Watched two movies (from Zip) in the last few days:

• Bloody Sunday (imdb | rotten tomatoes | buy it) was a brilliant piece of work. It almost convinced me it was a documentary, it felt so realistic…everything was digital, filmed on a handheld, with no artificial lighting, untrained actors, the actual location of the march…it felt so authentic. It was simply a great piece of filmmaking, whatever you might think of the story (I was personally quite moved, but the movie clearly has an agenda). Highly, highly recommended.
• Shattered Glass (imdb | rotten tomatoes | buy it) was also very good. I knew the story behind it, as would most anyone who paid attention when it broke, but to see the office politics and personality conflicts and professional rivalry come out to the viewer was a lot of fun. Really, the movie is as much about how people operate in an office environment as it is about professionalism or journalism. Hayden Christensen was surprisingly good, as was Hank Azaria in a smaller part. He so often plays the comic character (America’s Sweethearts) or the dope (Quiz Show) that to see him play a well-respected, charismatic editor gave me new respect for him.

From the CBC: Police want 25-cent surcharge on phone bills to fund wiretaps

Last Updated Mon, 16 Aug 2004 11:02:29 EDT
OTTAWA – The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police wants every phone and internet customer in the country to pay a surcharge of 25 cents a month to help cover the cost of eavesdropping on criminals.

The money would boost police coffers in the face of an increasing number of expensive court-approved wiretaps on drug suspects, money launderers and potential terrorists.

Police are eager to use new technology to find and help convict wrongdoers, but they warn investigations will suffer if individual police forces are required to pay for telecommunications access and surveillance.

“This is a very, very serious issue for us. It has a potential for really paralyzing operations,” Supt. Tom Grue, a member of the association’s law amendments committee, told the Canadian Press.

Grue, of the Edmonton police force, compares the measure to the current 25-cent to 50-cent surcharge that supports the 911 emergency service.

But Bell Canada doesn’t think customers should have to pay for crime investigations in that manner. The country’s largest phone company wants to split the cost between the police and the service providers and leave average Canadians out of the equation.

“I don’t know how popular that’s going to be, something like that,” said spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis. “Twenty-five cents is a really significant amount to add to everybody’s phone bill.”

She pointed out that Bell Canada has spent “millions of dollars” on new technology to improve the quality of wiretaps, in line with looming changes in federal legislation.

Michelis said Bell Canada isn’t looking for police forces to compensate it for that infrastructure investment, but should be able to charge agencies like the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for day-to-day services associated with phone-line monitoring.

Grue said police forces shouldn’t have to pay any of the cost.

“From our perspective, it’s a very slippery slope to start paying for the execution of search warrants or any kind of a court order,” he said.

Too much Olympics…too little sleep…

OK, first the pipe bombs outside my window, and now an armed robbery on my street. I seem to be paying an awful lot of rent to be living in Hell’s Kitchen…

From The Globe and Mail

Jewellery dealers robbed near Yonge and Bloor
By Jeff Gray
Friday, August 13, 2004 – Page A8

Three jewellery dealers from Singapore were robbed at knifepoint in a daring daylight operation near Yonge and Bloor Streets on Wednesday, police say.

Around 4:30 p.m. the men, who had been exhibited their wares at a jewellery show, were waiting for a cab with their luggage, which police say contained a “substantial” amount of jewellery.

A van pulled up, and three thieves wielding knives jumped out and ordered their victims to crouch down and cover their faces. The robbers then grabbed the luggage and sped off. No one was injured. No description of the thieves was available.