My sister Anne and my friend Nancy each reached significant educational milestones in the last little while. (My sister also got married, which is an accomplishment in its own right.) Anne received her Masters of Public Administration degree two weeks ago; Nancy did her one better by earning her Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics.
Needless to say, I’m incredibly proud of both of them.
[Being] in court this week got me wondering if the same amount of respect Canadians show their judges was passed on to that other hugely important field — education. […] But if the culture we lived in encouraged students — and parents — to show admiration and added respect for the weight of the responsibility teachers carry on their shoulders, maybe we would all be a better society for it.
Am I the only one disappointed that tonight’s winning Lotto 6/49 numbers weren’t 4 8 15 16 23 42? I mean, dude.
…in the early Nineties I was a serious enough fan that when I was watching the games on TV, I’d turn off the sound and listen to Tom and Jerry on the radio…. We’ll miss ya.
[The CBC] cleaves to two fundamental objectives: to knit the country together by appealing to citizens’ highest inclinations, and to be an authoritative check and balance on a heavily concentrated private media. […] The [CBC]’s mandate is to transport viewers and listeners out of prosaic reportage on people and things, and into the world of ideas, into issues contextualized through documentary programming.
Jeez, a guy goes away to his sister’s for her wedding/convocation and all hell breaks loose.
Screen capture of my feed aggregator
Here’s something for CBC employees—freelancers, temporary, part-time, full-time, and management alike—to think about, particularly those few (anonymous, naturally) that need to get some serious anger-management therapy, and soon:
Fighting a war is easy. Destroying is easy. Building a new world out of what’s left of the old, that is what’s hard.
The people I’ve talked to on the line here in London understand this, and I know there are a lot of others in the corporation that do too: just read their weblogs. They understand the purpose of public broadcasting, and they know it needs to be strong in the face of opposition so that all Canadian voices continue to be heard by all other Canadians.
The vocal minority mentioned above, however, seem bent on destroying this communication by razing the organization they purport to defend. They’re a sect of fervent, crazed individuals who twist the meaning of the union and the CBC as a whole with every word; in another situation, these people are the ones who would become suicide bombers.
She, with her guitar,
tie-dyed dress and winter boots,
sings of what she wants.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
To those who say that other Canadian broadcasters are just as good at independently covering the same wide range of issues and topics that the CBC does, I present Exhibit A: CTV’s so-called current affairs program W5‘s hour-long self-promotional puff piece on the network’s sitcom Corner Gas, featuring (among other things) a look at their website—WIN BIG PRIZES!—and last year’s contest winner (who spent 300 hours playing a program-related game to win).
Don’t get me wrong, I think Corner Gas itself is a good show, and yes, I watched the documentary (which was interesting, and will probably show up as an extra on the third season DVD). But when’s the last time that the fifth estate (the closest analogue to W5 that I can think of offhand) took an hour to go behind the scenes of (i.e. advertise) Da Vinci’s Inquest, This is Wonderland or Royal Canadian Air Farce, hmm?
Just a quick followup to an in-person conversation today: if Beyond Corner Gas had been aired as a special hour-long program rather than as an episode of W5—renowned for almost 40 years of award-winning investigative journalism—I wouldn’t have an issue with it or CTV at all. It’s a decision that wouldn’t even be a question at the CBC, and that’s what sets the independent national public broadcaster apart from (and, in my opinion, above) the other ratings- and sponsor-driven private networks.
