littleblackduck

According to Exxonsecrets.org, run by Greenpeace, Exxon is engaged in a ‘multimillion dollar campaign’ to create public confusion about global warming. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/exxon-secrets-analysis-of-fun. All told, between 1998 and 2006, Exxon is alleged to have spent nearly 23 million dollars funding various groups that publish studies and pay scientists to publish studies that claim something other than the ‘consensus’ of man-made CO2 emissions causing global warming.

My first thought when I actually read this was THAT’S IT ??

Yes, Greenpeace/Exxonsecrets pored over XOM’s annual tax returns for the numbers, and then summed them up in the article linked above. They were kind enough to summarise all the data from Exxon for the reader, warning the public of a veritable Denial Machine hell-bent on suppressing the Truth about Global Warming.

The TOTAL DOLLAR AMOUNT from Exxon to these alleged ‘denial groups’ between the years of 1998-2006 is $22,854,423. Keep in mind, however that this total is spread over 80 groups over a period of eight years. Curiously, the same article claims “several organizations and journalists have confirmed that ExxonMobil is the only known oil company to fund a network of organizations that deny the science and urgency of global warming”. So no other oil company engages in that sort of funding then? Environmentalists are a lot of things, but they aren’t lazy. If ConocoPhillips or Imperial Oil or Royal Dutch Shell or some other petroleum company was funding these ‘deniers’ en masse it would be equally widely-publicized.

I haven’t yet dug into what the coal industry is alleged to have spent, but coal companies have never been responsible for pathetic (though certainly publicity-generating) pictures of sad-looking, dying oily birds and therefore don’t make for particularly great target.

So the sum total from the ‘oil industry’ to ‘denialists’ is that same $23 million spread among 80 organizations. This is an average of $287,000 each, spread over eight years, or just under $36,000 per year per organization. This is the average per organization per year that has gone into funding this veritable Machine that is alone responsible for any confusion the public might have regarding Man’s role in causing the earth to warm at an ‘unprecedented rate’ that will cause future catastrophe.

Not that I would ever turn down such an amount, but that’s probably roughly the amount of salary that I earned in that same eight years as I made my way up through a variety of entry-level to middling positions. So basically, the sum total of this ‘multimillion dollar campaign’ would in reality only be enough to fund a single and not terribly well-paid junior research assistant for eighty different groups.

Now, it is true that this oh-so generous 23 million over eight years isn’t distributed evenly to each of the groups. The Property and Environment Research Center got a piddling $55,000 in that time period. The American Enterprise Institute fared better under their largess, but no single organisation seems to have been able to get Exxon to cough up more than the Competitive Enterprise Institute managed - barely over 2 million in that time frame - and under pressure from Environmental groups, they’ve since been cut off.

Now I’m actually familiar enough with CEI to know that they have a life outside of global warming - they fund studies on other things Exxon might be interested in such as capital gains taxes or securities regulations and so on, but let’s just pretend that every last cent did indeed go to funding these “denialists”.

Now don’t take it on my word alone when I say that a couple of million here, or 23 million in eight years isn’t a lot of money even from a company that pulled in $40 Billion in 2007. If anything, Exxon’s a cheapskate. Really, if they were funding these organisations because what Environmentalists claim about global warming is such a threat to their future earnings don’t you think they’d be spending a little more than such a tiny fraction of their profits? They probably spend more on post-it notes and staplers. But numbers in isolation are still meaningless - unless there’s something else to compare them to.

Let’s take a look at a well-known advocacy group, taken at random, (also one for whom numbers are easy to come by - they’re less so for Greenpeace, who publish their numbers in Euros for a start). Let’s take PeTA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Their annual budget is $30 million.

But on to environmentalist lobby groups.

Environmental Defense’s Annual report for 2007 brings up this gem: “Total program and supporting services expenditures for fiscal 2007 reached $73.8 million” So in a single year, one single environmentalist lobby group had expenditures that were well over three times the sum total of what ExxonMobil spent on 80 lobby groups spread over 8 years.

According to this site, Greenpeace, in the same time span that Exxon doled out it’s 23 million, pulled in around 2 Billion dollars. We’re not even getting into all the government grants and so on. But even with these examples it’s pretty clear where the money really is.

Sorry, but who’s the one who’s ‘well-funded’ again?

Several years ago I was sitting in a lounge with a small group of female friends, just out for a few drinks.  Roughly an hour or so into the evening, a familiar scene played itself out.  There were a couple of guys at a neighbouring table; one seemed fairly normal and was preoccupied watching a game on one of the TV screens mounted in the place, the other guy was one of those guys that pretty much any girl who got out more than once a month could pretty much instantly tell was one of those creepy guys.

Naturally, the creepy guy started talking to us. I can’t remember specifically what he said to us, but he had a habit of interrupting our conversation and trying to get the attention of at least one of us. It wasn’t that he’d been eavesdropping and wanted to add his own two cents; he was clearly too self-absorbed to be paying attention to what others were doing or saying. Nor did he have much to say apart from giving us the sense that he felt entitled to our attention.  Although we were all polite, he was not someone who interested any of us starting with being easily a decade older.

I was in the midst of some particularly animated conversation with one person when this same guy apparently figured it was my turn to pay attention to him.  Out of the blue, he tapped me on the shoulder and said: “I’m a nice guy you know.”

I turned around, as he was sitting behind me, and said to him, “I didn’t say you weren’t”.

“Well, you don’t have to ignore me you know.”

“I wasn’t,” I shrugged and gesturing in front of me and away from him I said, “I’m facing this way and talking to my friend who’s sitting in that direction.”

“But I’m a nice guy, and-”

“Get lost, creep” my friend Sam butted in (thanks Sam!).  She had more guts or whatever it takes to say such things. I was raised to be far too polite and find it hard, even to the most obnoxious person, to tell them straight out to buzz off.  Normally I hope that they get the hint, but some people need to be told. Really, on what planet is it appropriate to try to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger you’ve never before exchanged words with by interrupting them while they’re speaking to someone else while asserting what a nice person they are?

Anyway, the point of this little story is this: I have yet to meet anyone who tells me they’re a nice person, who actually IS a nice person.  If someone is genuinely a nice person, they never have the need to tell anyone. Such a quality can be determined through a person’s behaviour: nice people behave nicely, and rude people behave rudely. However, rude people often think of themselves as nice people, but seem to be surprised when the world doesn’t respond to them accordingly.  So instead of reflecting on this and perhaps changing their approach then instead just insist, but I’m nice. Or perhaps there are people out there who simply take what a person says about themselves at face value when they’d be better off presuming the opposite.

It’s the same with pretty much any character trait - honesty, intelligence, patience and so on. There’s never a need to tell anyone whether or not you possess these traits since if you do, they are readily apparent to anyone who’s even remotely observant.

Therefore, it is often the case that precisely those people who lack those characteristics in themselves who have to verbally assert that they do indeed have them.  The ditz who insists she’s really smart if only you get to know her, the used car salesman who claims to be ‘an honest guy’, or that creepy guy in the bar who interrupts complete strangers to tell them how he’s actually really nice.

Whenever someone has the need to tell me that they possess some positive character trait the first thing that pops into my mind is, why do they feel the need to tell me that?

Similarly , whenever someone claims they’re the ones in possession of The Truth, or they are interested in presently reality, I look for, and quickly find, plenty of lies.

An AW ‘art’ student, who shall remain anonymous, at least in my little world, suddenly took me back to my own university days. There was much controversy, blah blah blah, then a ‘manifesto’ - just like real artists have (at least back in the 20s) - that seemed to be cribbed directly from my old student reading material.

I studied Communications which unfortunately also involved Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. This stuff would be perfectly familiar to any one who took Feminist studies, anthropology and probably most senior-level arts classes to.

I say unfortunately in the sense that it was often a rather tedious challenge to get through a lot of obfuscation and unnecessary abstraction to the the actual ideas, some of which could be pretty insightful and interesting. For example, the concept of ‘hegemony’ the way it is used in Cultural Studies/critical theory is quite good, but rarely do people outside that realm have any idea what you’re talking about.

It almost seems that certain academics, and more often their students, hide weak ideas (or none) behind confusing and important seeming words in order to come across as intellectual. It really is so bad that Physics Professor Alan Sokal submitted an utterly fake paper to a then non-peer reviewed journal and it was published.

Later I had a room-mate who was growing frustrated with his International Relations courses - largely stumbling through the all the extraneous verbiage. Unfortunately for him, he lacked the filter in his brain that could just shut this stuff out.

So in his honour, I’ve decided to invent the “cultural studies drinking game” (or if you prefer, the “critical theory drinking game”), which after 30 seconds of Googling, I’ve confirmed has not already been invented by someone else and is therefore mine.

Fiction - when referring to anything other than a book that is not non-fiction: pretend to take one shot

Myth - unless debunking a widely held belief such as changing lightbulbs will stop global warming: one swig of beer.

Ambiguity - one shot. Maybe

Adding ‘ity’ or ‘ities’ to any adjective in an attempt to turn it into a noun: e.g. ‘domestic’ vs ‘domesticity’ : two shots.

Adding any other extra syllables to any common word to make it sound more ‘academic’ - one shot per each syllable.

Relation to power or ruling class - everyone takes a shot.

Social construction - see ambiguity

Appropriation - take the drink of the person to your right.  If used in the same phrase as “class relation”, then three shots.

Discourse - everyone yells ‘chug chug chug!’ while you swallow the remainder of whatever is in your glass.

Consciousness - you’ve now lost consciousness from drinking too much. Game over.

I find whenever there’s a ‘Muslim headscarf’ story unavailable for public outrage a ‘Sikh Turban’ story invariably appears.
This time it’s a Brampton motorcyclist who was ticketed for not wearing a helmet, which, as a Sikh, he challenged as a violation of his religious beliefs to wear a turban at all times. I dunno, last I checked, riding motorcycles wasn’t integral to any religion (remember that ‘Zen’ book was about motorcycle maintenance, not riding per se

Of course, he could always move to New Hampshire with it’s Live Free or Die motto.  According an article in an Indian publication, though oddly enough not mentioned in any Canadian one, turbans may already be worn in lieu of helmets in BC and Manitoba.

The usual arguments for mandatory helmets come down to the usual safety concerns, as well as taxpayers’ money for health costs and so on. At the same time, there is an ongoing serious lack of organ donors.

Since motorcyclists refusing to wear helmets harm nobody but themselves, I don’t think this should be an issue of religious freedom at all. If people don’t want to wear a helmet, that’s their prerogative. Just make them sign an organ donor card first.

An article on CTV News yesterday, along with one of the accompanying comments, exemplify the very thing that annoys a lot of folks when it comes to environmentalists.

This article is about a new report from Environmental Defence slamming the state of the environment around Alberta’s tar sands. Within the report are the nasty photos that every one pretty much expects to see. There’s the toxic looking clouds and deformed animals and the scarred landscape. All undoubtedly horrible. At the bottom of the report they outline what they think should be done, including advocating the use of ‘dry tailings’.

An anonymous commenter then posted this:

C
Under the conclusions part of this report, the authors recommend that producers switch to “Dry Tailings” instead of wet tailings.

As someone who works in the oil sands industry and occasionally on projects related to tailings, I would love for the authors to inform me of how we can magically make “Dry Tailings”. Through chemicals? That’s already been tried. Through massive driers? Well, you’ll end up burning more gas that way. Filters likely won’t work either due to the extreme solids loading of the system.

Everybody in the industry would love to hear how to make these “Dry Tailings”. Would the authors’ care to enlighten us?

It reminds me of the old Greenpeace protesters complaining about clear-cutting. As the daughter of a forester I learned that a lot of their claims were pretty nonsensical.  To the point where one of their founders up and quit the movement altogether. What are loggers supposed to do, pick the trees here and there out one by one? You can’t. Other trees are in the way.

I’ve always thought that if people really care about the environment, that rather than produce flashy brochures and documentaries and court celebrities, they’d go to University, get a BS or Masters in materials engineering or organic chemistry or any related discipline and figure out workable solutions to these problems themselves.

But that would take a lot more hard work and would be less glam than getting to lecture people at every opportunity.

Full disclosure: I used to work at a newswire. I’m not going to say which one, when or for how long; you’ll just have to take my word that ‘used to’ = ‘impartial’, and that it is a realm with which I am familiar.

I’ve watched the various attempts to launch of some sort of ‘social media template’ from the sidelines, and read the furious blog postings by the same ten people who might care about the relevancy of newswires at all in the face of social media while they alternately berate and ridicule the attempts by same newswires to stay ‘relevant’ within the context of new-social-media-2.0-blog-link thingy…

After all, ‘multi-media’ is so-o-o 90s.

To be fair to those doing the berating, many of the attempts have been either of the too-little-too-late variety , or in some cases, all out lame (uh, Mr. Marketwire, I’m just seeing 500 null right now… the link from Strumpette isn’t working anymore).

In keeping with modern times however, ribbons for participation should at least be handed out to all the newswires and clients who try.

First off, to all the bloggers who are complaining about how the newswires don’t ‘get it’. I would like to take this time to point out that complaining about someone ‘not getting it’ is a rhetorical device best left for the ‘emos’ storming downstairs to their bedroom to update their livejournal. Thank you. Personally, I love what some commenters on fark do: they put a picture, usually of a bizarre car or truck crash or an animal running into a tree, with the caption: You’re Doing It Wrong.

After not ‘getting it’, the most popular argument seems to be that the mainstream is out of touch, or has to catch up. The view of everyone at the cutting edge of any new technology or new way of doing things is that the mainstream is out of touch with them. That may be, but it cuts both ways: some people can be so far out at the forefront that they have put themselves out of touch with the mainstream. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that the ‘mainstream’ would prefer to sit and wait to see what gets more widely adopted. They’re not going waste time chasing after every shiny new toy just because it’s shiny and new. This is especially true of anything social: mainstream types follow the herd, not those who are way out ahead. There’s also no point going anywhere where there aren’t enough people to be social with. It’s also why I don’t log into my Friendster account anymore.

Now, the newswires exist to serve two types of folks: their clients, and journalists. Just as newspapers and TV networks ‘sell audiences to advertisers’, newswires sell journalists to their clients: their pricing structures are roughly scaled towards the number and geographic reach of outlets they send a given release to. Yes, there are now direct-to-consumer press releases, larger audiences and all that, but clients are the priority, since they are the ones who pay and most clients care more about whether a journalist copied and pasted with a different headline wrote about their press release than some random person posting the same release on Mr. Wong.

For now, I’m going to ignore ‘hrelease’ since everyone else seems to be too these days.

So on to the clients of the newswires.

A large portion of the clients of any of the main newswires are publicly-traded companies. Many pundits have pointed out that this is because they have to, as though if the securities regulators yanked disclosure requirements tomorrow, PRN, BW et al would fold faster than a 2000 dot com. If there’s one group that’s even keener than newswires in maintaining the status quo, it’s the corporate law firms. Anyone thinking those laws are going to disappear simply because there’s websites and rss is obviously unfamiliar with the legal profession. In addition, TSX-Venture and OTC-BB companies don’t have those requirements but plenty of them still use newswire services. Seeing as how penny stocks are rarely flush with cash there must be some reason they opt to use them.

Many companies simply don’t care about engaging any sort of ‘audience’. The stock split announcement from some obscure mining company that trades on the Venture Exchange or the OTC-BB is likely of little interest to anyone apart from their six shareholders. They’re most likely one of about 15 companies run out of the same office and the only ‘digg’ they might be interested in is their latest core samples. The newswires are just grateful that these companies know how to use e-mail and pay their bills before needing to call collections.

On the flip side, news about a company like Research in Motion or Rogers will get to the media and will be read by whomever’s interested regardless of what distribution channel they opt for. Newswires are necessary for these companies to ensure a channel of authority: someone who actually works at the company gave the go-ahead for the news to be issued; it isn’t just rumour, hearsay or some random crank. Also, the newswires tend to be a little better about ensuring that someone claiming to be from RIM or Rogers is allowed to send out news releases at all, rather than some disgruntled soon-to-be ex-employee sending an email from their desk to CP right before getting walked out.

Another large portion of a newswire’s client base are the various government agencies like Environment Canada or Public Works and Government Services or the CMHC. Again, if Environment Canada issues a hurricane warning it will find its way to wherever it needs to go, but the PWGSC news about their latest ditch-digging project in eastern Saskatchewan could have all the youtube and del.icio.us and second-lifing and still no one will care.

The rest run the gamut of PR from Edelman and Omnicom to a farmer promoting his cornmaze, and oddly enough, a blogger.

As many PR practitioners lament, plenty of clients ‘get it’ even less than the newswires supposedly ‘get it’. Some of them might like colourful graphs and pie charts to show their bosses or their own clients if it can make them look important, but are baffled by the whole concept of social media themselves and don’t want to learn anything more than they can get away with already pretending to know.

There’s an assumption among certain types of bloggers I’ve been reading that people are not only good at their jobs, but want or care to be good at their jobs. That’s not always the case. Many people do like to appear to be good at their jobs to the extent that it can get them promoted or a fatter paycheck, but that’s not the same thing as actually doing a good job. Doing one’s job well can be quite time-consuming particularly if there are quicker and more effective ways of merely appearing to do it well. That goes even more so for that person’s boss, who is more concerned about their own upward mobility to pay that much attention to the performance of subordinates unless they’re outstandingly incompetent.

The reason some press releases end up filled with jargon and logos is because the person who insists on them is usually not the one writing the release, and isn’t the one who’ll get any flack if that release doesn’t get any pickup. Never forget that Dilbert is based on actual experiences.

As for the clients who are good at their jobs, they may take one look at a flashy SMR with its ADHD layout and legitimately wonder what ROI there is likely to be. Will sound and video become necessary with every single message? How much is this going to cost? Are bullet points always better than a couple of paragraphs of text? How many people really rely on RSS for all their information?

There’s also no shortage of clients who most likely dread the very thought of engaging any kind of audience at all. Think of any company that tends to be a target of activists. Not just Wal-Mart, but the crap-load of mining, petroleum, chemical or agri-business companies out there. Does anyone in their right mind think that Cargill or ADM would be interested in wasting their time getting into an interactive debate with anti-GMO types or Gabriel Resources engaging with Rosia Montana protestors? Would KFC or the Pork Council pay anyone so that PeTA can have yet another forum to spread their propaganda help animals?

Then there’s the old media, as opposed to ‘social media’ – since again ‘new media’ is so-o-o 90s – TV and Newspapers. (I haven’t considered radio to be relevant since their music rotation became limited to 10 songs) Yes, TV and Newspapers are the dinosaurs lumbering their way to obsolescence. Everyone in the entire world gets their all their information now from newsvine and fark. ORLY?? Is that so?

Last time I looked, people still read newspapers. Even the paper versions of newspapers. True, online media have siphoned off some of their viewers and readers and some of their advertisers, but they aren’t going broke. People still write letters or send cards to each other even though email has been mainstream for over a decade now. There may well be far fewer people who are writing letters than there were 20 years ago, or it could be that the very people who would have never written even a single letter to any one (even a thank-you note to Grandma after the umpteenth ‘reminder’ from mum) are the ones writing all the emails. Given that the obituary for ‘old media’ has been written prematurely it would not do the newswires any favours by treating them as irrelevant. They aren’t.

There are a few problems I have with the whole concept of a ‘social media release’ altogether. First off, anything ‘social’ is essentially inimical to the entire concept of a template. Also, all the streaming video and links and tags in the world don’t matter if the subject of the news release isn’t that interesting. You can’t force someone to care about something. It also seems to presume that bloggers can’t find anything unless it’s fed to them by someone. As though they couldn’t find any video that wasn’t on youtube. And better make sure that every one of the fifty or so social media tags are readily available because it’s just too hard to copy and paste a link these days. Though that would explain the fragile egos – the sort who unless specifically pitched a story idea as though they were the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal go into a snit and announce every single detail to the entire world on their blog.

Supplemental links to pertinent video, photos or background info neatly summarized are great things that need to be encouraged, when relevant. Making things easier to share isn’t a bad idea either, within reason.

I often get the sense that this obsession with 2.0 and ‘social media’ has more to do with either recent PR grads wanting to climb the ranks ASAP or PR practitioners wishing to tell the world (and ideally, prospective clients) how ‘with it’ they are than it is the creation of anything new. (gee, ya think?) The newswires have long enabled clients to have clickable links in their news releases. One charged for it, since they could, the other didn’t since they couldn’t. Even then, websites and email addresses that aren’t clickable on the distributors’ own sites usually are once the same news releases make their appearance on Yahoo or Starquote or Globeinvestor or the myriad other places to view them online. They’ve had the ability to provide links to photographs and maps and even video in news releases long before 2.0 became the buzzword du jour. For example, the Ford SMR, apart from the tags to reddit or digg, doesn’t appear to be any different then what the newswires have had on offer (as ‘multi-media’ news releases) for several years already.

Even then, none of it matters if the subject matter isn’t interesting, you’re trying to sell a lousy product, the text is poorly worded or if the layout appears to have been designed by a chimp on LSD.

Some 2.0/social media advocates like to distinguish ‘new media’ from social media as the difference between online news and a two-way forum. At best, this can be difficult to delineate (and have they never heard of ‘letters to the Editor’ or call-in radio?).

There’s also two questions that need to be asked. First off, why should anyone pay for this when it will happen anyway? I see more value in monitoring or measurement than I see in distribution. Secondly, if you spend long enough lurking on any forum, it appears to be mostly the same people barking on about the same things. Until they get bored and move on to something else. These people, at the very least, display a very wide range of intelligence, sanity, articulateness and employability.

Just as with the ‘old way of doing things’, where good PR didn’t begin or end with a news release sent via Canada Newswire or CCNMatthews, but included pitch calls to the media and so forth, nor should the ‘new way of doing things’ end in an SMR. We don’t want PR people to be as lazy as journalists, now do we?

Many of the criticisms of the ‘old press release’ are in reality ‘badly written press releases’ and were ignored by journalists long before they were ignored by bloggers. The problem isn’t form, but content. Many of the social media bloggers out there seem to be under the impression that nobody reads press releases. But that just isn’t true. If it were, then the newswires’ websites wouldn’t get any traffic, but a quick check on alexa or marketleap shows otherwise. Plenty of random members of the public, and plenty of bloggers do indeed read press releases and comment on them when it’s something they find interesting.

Of course, along with the deaths of newswires and newspapers, there are those pronouncing the death of Public Relations itself. Nonsense. There’s still going to be the need for Official Spokesperson who can say whether the CEO of their company did just die in that plane crash, or if their product really does contain whatever ingredient is part of the latest consumer hysteria recall or to ‘greenwash’ that toxic spill in the north Atlantic.

The idea that every single company out there should or even could just post everything of relevance to their own website and maintain a dialog via corporate blog with every single nutjob interested person is completely unrealistic, and I doubt is seriously advocated by anyone who’s ever worked at a company that is larger than fifty people. I could go further into explaining this assertion, but at this point this article is already long enough. Also, as blog spammers and shady SEO marketers have proven, some things are best not left to search engines, which is what’s implied if legitimized distributors any some sort are taken out of the equation.

At the end of the day, good PR involves the following:

A well-worded item that effectively communicates whatever it is that you are wishing to communicate, tailored/formatted to whatever audience it is that you wish to sell to target, that includes supplemental links, background info, photos or video where relevant, distributed to those who may be interested in whatever it is you are wishing to communicate.

Social anything can’t conform to a template and changes happen when they happen. Only when something really is dead should you try to write its epitaph.

Today pitbulls are back in the news. Not a nasty mauling this time, but a constitutional challenge to the current pitbull ban in Ontario.  The dog generating headlines today was born after the ban took effect, meaning that since it was caught by the authorities it will be put down.

Granted, the owner could have been a little smarter by not letting the dog escape in the first place, and also perhaps by picking a better name than “Rambo“.  Something like “Buttercup” or “Daisy” would be more advisable for a dog whose breed has a serious image problem.  After all, part of being a responsible dog owner, which most pitbull owners insist they are, involves not letting the dog get loose.  Ever.

However, that doesn’t make the law itself any less stupid.  A blanket ban on any breed is senseless, particularly when it can include “a dog that has an appearance and physical characteristics substantially similar to any of those dogs” - when “those dogs” include not just pitbulls, but also any sort of Staffordshire Terrier and any old mutt that might have similar traits.

Funny thing about breeds and bans.  When I was a kid in the 70s the breed everyone was hysterical about was the Doberman Pinscher.  I knew several children who’d been badly mauled by Dobermans.  My mother’s dog was viciously attacked by a poodle - the ’standard’ poodle is actually a large dog, and can be pretty ill-tempered. Not exactly a breed that generates media hysteria however.

A lot of high profile attacks seem to involve one of two things:  a vicious dog that the owner has not secured properly, or a child that is too young to be left alone near any animal.

In England the law - Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 - is even more draconian as it includes not just pitbulls, but also a couple of lesser known ‘fighting dogs’ such as the Argentine Dogo. Over there, Rottweilers seem to generate the most headlines and there are continued calls to add them to the list of breeds to be banned.

Meanwhile in Ontario, Rottweilers seem perfectly uncontroversial. And like any blanket prohibition, rather than single out reckless people, even law-abiding, responsible dog owners are turned into criminals.

I’ve argued this before, and I’ll argue it again.  There shouldn’t be prohibitions on everybody because of the stupidity of a few individuals.

Today I was a little bored so I went to the CP24 website to catch up on the latest Toronto car crash/stabbing/gun-related homicide and for once they actually had something of ‘international’ importance: Parents Of World-Famous Missing Child Release Picture Of Possible Suspect along with a sketch of the alleged suspect.

I thought he looked a little familiar since just the other day my husband had finally put on the copy of the DVD for George Harrison and friends’ Bangladesh concert that we’d received a couple of years ago.

Harrison’s hair is a little longer and parted in the middle rather than the side, but otherwise the resemblance is downright spooky.

Arrgghhh. I usually can’t stand the ‘lone crusader’ types, and that’s how one mother by the name of Susan Pagan was cast in this Orlando Sentinal newspaper article.

The comments by most people seemed to come out against her as yet another busy-body ruining a chance for the common folk to get a free happy meal. After all, she could refuse to take her own daughter there.

She could. But if my kid came home with this:

I think this little black duck would be none too happy about it. I’d be outright appalled. I think I’d be seriously thinking of home schooling if there wasn’t a school nearby that could afford to forgo corporate sponsorship.

I’m not much in favour of controls over advertising for the most part - even advertising directed at children - but I think when it’s directed a captive audience (it’s illegal to not send your kid to school) and there’s no way to reasonably opt out then the sensible thing is an all-out ban. You shouldn’t have to relocate to the hills of Montana to get away from the reach of advertisers.

There is a world of difference between McDonald’s advertising during children’s cartoons: you can just switch off the TV. Fine if McDonald’s wants to sponsor a little league team or drop coupons in the mail, advertise in the newspaper, yahoo email, whatever. But kids have to go to school and they have to get report cards. I don’t have a problem with McDonald’s even advertising on TV - ‘hey kids, get an A, get a happy meal’. Parental authority is undermined enough by these companies and limits do need to be set.

So I say hooray for Susan Pagan!

I’ll be upfront: I think playing the lottery is stupid.  That doesn’t stop me from sometimes partaking - I’ll blow an occasional 50 cents on the Ontario 49 or if Lottario goes over 500K I might waste a dollar on a ticket.  I’ve won 5 dollars twice in Lottario and $50 in Ontario 49 so at this point I’ve probably broken even.

Despite full awareness of the miniscule odds of even getting a free ticket let alone millions of dollars, I have always checked the numbers myself.  If not online or on the little ticker that runs on CP24, most retailers have a bundle of tickets that contain the winning numbers right in the blue booth.  I always do the quick pick, so I manually check each number. After all, if I haven’t won anything I don’t see much point in bothering the cashier.  I’ve always thought that those who just take their tickets to the clerk must be pretty lazy.

Those who play the same numbers each week have even less of an excuse.  A quick scan of the winnings numbers - they really aren’t hard to find - and you should be able to tell you’ve won something.

So in some ways it’s a little hard to feel much pity for those who’ve been scammed.  Especially when those doing the scamming are often treated by customers as though they are only one rung up on the social ladder from the homeless guy with the coffee cup sitting outside their store.

At the same time, my work lottery pool typically plays about twenty sets of numbers or so depending on the size of the jackpot.  I’ve stood in line behind others who seem to grab a fistful every week - if they invested that money instead they probably would have been millionaires by now.  Even then I’d still compare at least the first and last numbers to ensure no jackpot was won. Not that I don’t trust my co-worker who manages it, but  I don’t know how thoroughly she checks either.  Nevertheless, society does function best when a certain amount of order and mutual trust is the norm.  And right now, the lottery retail system in Canada resembles that of New York garbage collection in the 80s.

The chief dunce has to be the guy who stole the $5.7million jackpot though.  Not that I’d ever steal that much money (or any money for that matter), but if I were to steal that big a sum I sure as hell wouldn’t be dumb enough to stay in the same city let alone the same country! I suppose if he bought a giant HDTV with some of the purloined winnings he never switched it to the news once in the past year, or perhaps assumed that the Ombudsman would only want to investigate all the other shady retailers out there.

It must take a special kind of arrogance and stupidity to pull the stunt that this ex-store owner is alleged to have pulled.  For a start, if I just had millions of dollars I sure as heck wouldn’t stick out a single Ontario winter.  I certainly wouldn’t be dumb enough to buy a huge freakin’ mansion in the same city.

But I suppose that the people who are not so stupid and arrogant as to do those things would also not try to steal someone else’s jackpot in the first place. No matter how stupid you thought even they were.