Uncategorized – Page 39 – Babel-on-the-Bay

There are other blogs about Canadian politics.

December 13, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Hopefully that headline does not come as a surprise. After writing this blog for the past three and a half years, the curiosity about what others write became too powerful an urge to resist. It led to an interesting day of research. Frankly, the most profound shock after hours of study is that there are so damn many of them. Do all these people have that much time on their hands? Can they not find gainful employment?

And who is Warren Kinsella? Can one person really claim to have that much ego?

It is always interesting to read Andrew Coyne but he surprises the reader by falling into the most invidious of traps for bloggers. He overuses the pronoun “I.” It is an indication of lazy writing.

It was pleasant to note that the majority of the top bloggers are literate. While Kinsella goes too far by using words that need to be explained, most popular blogs have Fog indexes in the 9 to 11 range. (A Fog index of 9 means the writing is at a level easily read by a person who has had a year of high school. At the 11 range, you are using some words that the person needs a few years of high school to easily read.) Nobody is writing for dummies in political blogs but when you get an e-mail complaint saying the reader had to check three words in your last blog, you tend to cringe.

A possible exception to that is Jordon Cooper, a blogger in Saskatoon. You have to not only be well educated and intelligent to read his blog, you have to be interested. Once you figure out what he is talking about, it can be quite intriguing.

What is most puzzling about many of the blogs that were studied today is the awkwardness of manoeuvring around the material. It is never easy and the way they tend to link their material, you can be six blogs away from where you started before you know what has happened.

If there is one basic beef that could be had with many of these bloggers is that they think they are reporters. (Come to think of it, many of them are experienced reporters.) Please do not read Babel-on-the-Bay for breaking news. That is not the purpose of this blog. What Babel does is look for insight that goes beyond a reporter’s analysis. There is also a liberal slant to the material. It is this different take that Babel offers.

What was also a relief to see was that other bloggers might only write something once a week or even once each month. There is no urgency to do something every day. You are invited to read and enjoy and discuss what the blog has to say but you are not paying for it and if time is needed for better paying activities, you might miss a few postings.

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Making book on Dr. Zamboni.

November 26, 2011 by Peter Lowry

It came up over lunch in a private dining room at Toronto’s National Club. It seems that people think there is a good book that can be written. It is not only a story of medical mystery but of politicians, avarice, ethics, irresponsible journalism and people who prey on the sick. It is also a mainly Canadian story.

But it starts in Ferrara, Italy. It was introduced by an Italian vascular surgeon, Professor Paolo Zamboni. Dr. Zamboni had a theory. He had noted that his wife and other patients with multiple sclerosis seemed to have restricted drainage of blood through the veins in their neck. He thought this lack of good drainage was causing a build-up of iron in the patient’s brain, either causing or exacerbating the MS patient’s neurological condition. He called his theory, Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency, or CCVSI.

As a vascular surgeon, Dr. Zamboni not only established a diagnosis of the problem, he and his team developed what they thought might be a cure. He initially used balloon angioplasty techniques to open the veins. Later, he introduced the use of metal stents to keep the veins open. Similar to the stents used to keep open the arteries of heart patients, Dr, Zamboni used them in neck veins. This procedure was dubbed the Liberation Treatment.

The only problem was that Dr. Zamboni was not doing this as a research study. There were no controls or double blind protocols. He was touting a procedure that had neither been determined to be safe nor been submitted for peer review. His only support for the theory was anecdotal reports of individuals who had the treatment and felt better.

It was not until the treatment was tried by a neurological team at the University of Buffalo in New York State—an area of the world with maybe ten times the incidence of multiple sclerosis than that of Ferrara, Italy–that Dr. Zamboni’s treatment was noticed by the news media. They were medical researchers from CTV television network in Toronto, Ontario, working on the network investigative program W5.

It was not so much the fault of the W5 program people that the story was blown out of proportion and caused the controversy that ensued. Canada’s CTV network constantly inserts self-promotion for its programs into its regular newscasts. It was the news programs on CTV that, in our view quite irresponsibly, sensationalized and promoted the Zamboni treatment. They did far too good a job of promoting the CTV W5 program.

Part of the reason for the success is that the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada is made up of chapters that are actually MS support groups in every major town and city across Canada. People with multiple sclerosis and their families in these support groups keep in constant communication. Because of this high level of communication, the CTV news programs attracted thousands of MS patients and their families across Canada to watch the W5 program that weekend.

After the first very enthusiastic W5 program was aired, the demand for this supposedly miracle treatment was immediate and overwhelming. The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada was caught in the middle. It could not retreat to acting responsibly. It was hammered by patients and their families, by contributors, by politicians and the public on both sides of the question.

And there were two sides. The medical profession saw the treatment as foolhardy and dangerous. They wanted to study it and test it before coming to a conclusion. Try to convince a person with an uncontrolled and debilitating disease that they have to wait!

As we said at the time to the heads of the Canadian MS Society: “That is your mob out there. You better get out front and lead it.”

And, to their credit, they did. Despite the controversy costing them large amounts in donations, the society set aside money to fund studies. In combination with the U.S. MS Society, some $2.4 million was immediately earmarked for studies of CCVSI and the proposed treatment. Within the year, studies were underway in Canada and the U.S.

But the controversy would not go away. Simcoe County in Ontario became the entire argument in microcosm. While no surgeon would face the ethical problems of putting a stent in neck veins, there was a local doctor in Barrie promoting CCVSI. Since the examination was not covered by the Ontario health plan, he would do the study for for a figure believed to be between $200 to $400. If he determined that you needed the Liberation Procedure, you could buy that off-shore for anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 plus air fare and hotels.

Patients returned from these trips with stents in place. There seemed to be no post-operative procedures to follow. Some patients raved about the procedure. A few died. (Veins do not have the same characteristics as arteries to hold a stent in place.) Some complained that Canadian doctors were reluctant to treat these patients with stents in their neck veins. The controversy in Simcoe County split the chapter in half.

Simcoe County also is an area of focus for politicians. The Member of Parliament for Barrie has never met a charity that he would not use to promote himself. That person jumped into the fray with both feet. He is a Conservative but that did not stop other parties from getting in on the publicity. When two Liberal MPs, who were also medical doctors, from Toronto were in Barrie for a political event, they also jumped in, arguing for use of the Liberation Procedure. They got scorched by an annoyed local Liberal who realized they did not know what they were talking about.

After a year of controversy, W5 did a follow-up program and admitted that they might have been a bit too enthusiastic. Even the news programs, promoting W5, have been less eager to say that Dr. Zamboni’s cure is the answer. They now say the jury is still out.

Despite the recent agreement of the federal government to go along with the provinces and assist in testing the theory, the Canadian MS Society studies are well under way. Some answers should be available by summer of 2012. It is unlikely that Dr. Zamboni is going to like the answers.

(Note: The author of this article is a past president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada and served on the management committee and as chair of public education for the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies. He is not writing a book on this subject. It is a story in which nobody wins.)

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In resolution of the red sky.

November 22, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The time of the occupy movement has ended. Reality and the Canadian winter are reclaiming our parks and streets. Despite the large amount of empathy for the frustrations of the so-called 99 per cent, further occupation can achieve nothing. The time has come for the protesters to realize that lazing around and pontificating can never replace the hard work of the real world.

There might be the occasional anarchist left for the police to evict but the smart ones will be developing a long-term plan of action. In their planning, they will find there are many routes to the levers of power. Some will take the way of community activism. This is a fast, effective route to being noticed and to work your way into the municipal scene. It can include work for charities, community services, and local news and information media. Building a solid base in the community provides that place you can back up to.

Going directly into the political arena provides only a tenuous base of operations. For every winner in this venue, there has to be losers. For every opportunity, there are many pitfalls. When one person moves forward, others have to step back.

You have to serve a political apprenticeship. Nobody starts at the top. There are no training wheels. Ask former Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff how it feels to be out there in the top job and turning to find nobody behind you, nobody to trust.

And start by ensuring your livelihood outside the political sphere. It can be fun to live hand-to-mouth when you are young with no commitments. It is no fun when you are older and have responsibilities for others.

Making things happen all comes down to finding the point of leverage. You can change the world. You just have to remember that there are irrefutable laws of physics that apply to politics too. For every positive action you take for change, there will be equal and opposite reactions against change. And, sometimes, they do not feel all that equal.

Our only advice to the participants in the red sky is to go peacefully when asked. That will keep your enemies off guard and confused. Never do the expected. Make your point and go on. That will enable you to make the point again.

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Every blog has its reason.

November 6, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The following was originally run October 8th, 2009. We need to run it more than just every couple years.

Have you ever asked a blogger why? Did you get an answer? Did you get an honest answer? You wanted to know why they did it. You cannot believe that so many people have that big an ego. Could they really consider their pontificating so profound?

Or is the answer very simple. Take the case of this blog. What is it all about? Why call Barrie, Ontario Babel? Simple answer: I am a professional writer. As a writer, I am available for hire. I write for people who pay me. If someone needs a writer to produce a speech, a lecture, a presentation, a brochure, a résumé, a book, a script, a poem or a posting for twitter, I am your ghost. The web site babelonthebay.com is a sampler. It showcases my wares.

It helps that I love writing.

I also make it easy for people who wish to hire me. Take a speech, for example. All you need to tell me is to whom you will be speaking, what is the subject and if you for it or against it. You can tell me more if you wish but I am mindful of the time a client gave me a two-hour explanation of a 15-minute speech he needed. He was angry when he read my first draft. “This is just what I told you,” he blustered. “What have you contributed?” I thought I had done an excellent editing job.

And then there are clients who are not interested in your view. I was once offered more than twice my normal rate for a 50-minute lecture a client was giving at an American university. The reason for the higher rate was that the client was extremely rightwing politically. The client might have got a standing ovation for his speech but I deserved every penny of that fat fee for fiction writing.

Hands up everyone who thinks all business people write their own presentations. Those of you with your hands up; you must also believe in the tooth fairy. When I started writing presentations for others, we were still using slide shows. PowerPoint makes life much easier.

Modern low-cost, on-demand publishing has given impetuous to the world of business book ghost writing. It has reached a point that if you open a restaurant, the opening can be shared with the introduction of your new book of recipes that is a regular reminder of a good place to eat out. You have an auto parts firm, so you produce a book of tips on doing minor auto repairs. No matter what your business, there is a book that can be written that reminds people that they should deal with you because you are the expert. Just leave the writing to an expert at writing.

I am not sure I want to resume writing résumés. I used to brag that nobody I wrote a résumé for ever failed to land a suitable job. Today, it is necessary to qualify that bravado. One problem is that younger people do not trust someone my age to know their audience. And they might be right. Today, there are many barriers to getting your résumé to the person with whom you really need to communicate. I still believe in my résumés but I am losing touch with those barriers. It is becoming more of a team effort.

Poetry is something else. I tend to inflict it only on friends and family. While they are not always enthusiastic about my poems, they are kind.

What some people say is missing from this sampler blog is humour. I apologize for that. I have been accused of being a bit capricious with whimsy. That is the reason that I refer to Barrie as Babel. I think Barrie gets a bad rap. Babel is a more whimsical place, more open and accepting. Babel seeks challenges and opportunities. Barrie is a harsher, colder environment, full of potholes and bars, hockey players and hookers. (Yah, I know, your sister plays right wing.)

But I love twitter. This is a venue where writers can shine. Effective tweets are full of alliterative allusions, weighty words of wisdom and devoted to doggerel. It is a medium that eschews whole sentences while demanding clarity. It is in twitter where everybody knows your name but not the name of your writer. Can you imagine a writing gig that pays you to write less than 280 characters a day? It’s golden!

And one last comment about the art: Writing to precisely fill a column is a big part of a writer’s training. A column is usually limited to an average of 800 words. As is this one.

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The Commonwealth: An anachronism built on avarice.

October 30, 2011 by Peter Lowry

It was all designed by Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. He said grow the opium poppies in India, ship the product on British ships, sell it to the Chinese and send the profits to London. That way the gentry of England could buy furs from the Canadian colony to keep the Lords and their Ladies warm and dry. Today there are still 54 countries in the British Commonwealth of Nations that was built on the rape and pillage, greed and avarice that Adam Smith legitimatized.

And the tenuous thread that holds the motley assortment of countries in the Commonwealth together is the monarchy. There are still 16 of these nations that actually claim the British Monarch as their head of state. Some of the others have their own King, Queen or Leader for Life but these wannabes all play second fiddle and stand in awe of the wealth and substance of England’s sovereign.

But the Commonwealth is in failing health. Even with the British Queen herself making a guest appearance, some of the heads of state failed to make an appearance. Mind you, there are some of them who would be deposed if they made the mistake of leaving their country. There are even some who are attending who might not be head of state for long if Quantas Airline does not end its labour dispute and get them home soon.

One of the major problems of the Commonwealth is the lack of shared direction. If other Commonwealth heads disagree with a member’s approach to human rights, who is going to make them change? Expulsion from the Commonwealth is no longer the threat it used to be. Bribery might work but who is going to put up the big bucks?

As the last vestige of British colonialism, the Commonwealth has little to sustain it other than the generosity of Australia and Canada and the influence they, along with Great Britain, have on the Americans. What the Commonwealth might not be able to fund, the Americans might. The Americans are today’s imperialists.

What the Commonwealth has to recognize is that the British monarchy is on its last legs. The amused agreement to a change in Great Britain’s primogeniture laws in respect to the monarchy is a small band-aid. No Commonwealth leader is likely to go home and find his or her government will not support the change—except for Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. He might be in for a fight with the Church of England over the clause to let royals marry Catholics.

There is more than just the pomp and ceremony of its meetings for the Commonwealth. It is another avenue for communication and support between nations. It might have lost the commercial values promoted by Adam Smith but it offers additional communications between peoples. In that, it does some good.

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