Ask James Anything Month: A Bumper Crop of Questions

Well, hello there! Looks like we've got quite the full slate of inquiries, so let's go ahead and jump right in. Ask James Anything Month continues!

mrchristian asks:

"Rabbits or ferrets ?"

I've got a theory, it could be bunnies.

I'm trying to think of a scenario in which I would go with ferrets here, and I'm sure they're lovely critters if you get to know them, but nope, so far I'm coming up blank.

If I were to own one of the two, I expect I'd go with a rabbit (and, me being me, I would be functionally incapable of naming it anything but "Bunnicula"), because I don't think I'd get used to that weird sideways poinging weasel movement that ferrets do. And this goes doubly so if cat ownership is factored in; I've heard anecdotal testimony from people who claimed to have successfully convinced a rabbit and a cat to coexist, but cats aren't big on sudden movements, and videos of ferrets seem to suggest that they're nothing but sudden movements, so that combination would probably end in disaster.

Now, if I'm misinterpreting the question and I were instead tasked with eating one of the two, I'd also go with rabbit in that instance. I mean, a ferret does kind of look like a naturally-occurring sausage, but whatever useable meat is in there would probably be subpar, and the primary motivation for eating one (outside of hunger and desperation, I mean) would be just to make sure that it can't try and eat you first.

So, yes. Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies.

unclebob asks:

"[W]hat think you James about Paula Havixbeck? Is she such a trigger point of change or simply political debris?

And for your bonus point, why not gaze into your crystal ball and tell us if you see any political party movement that might trigger change?"

It's funny; if you'd asked me this time last year who looked to be the most noteworthy Council newcomer, I'd have said Brian Mayes -- who has proven solid and sensible, if a tad dry -- with little to no hesitation. But in that past year Havixbeck has made a late charge for that Most Noteworthy Council Newcomer title, the one that kind of doesn't exist, the award that I'm making up as a hypothetical right now.

(The rest of the field: Ross Eadie is most recognized for a profane email outburst, Thomas Steen's rare appearances in the public eye boil down to "hey fellers, heh, d'you folks remember when hockey", and Devi Sharma has been a living Kate Bush song.)

That said, Havixbeck's stock has gone up and down and every which way in that timeframe, so it's a lot harder to project her trajectory than it is for other members of Council; her current identity as an accountability champion for the little guy and a careful steward of public funds is indeed quite newfound, as just eleven months ago she was fully on board for the Mayor's $7-million waterpark grant right to the last whether Council had enough information on it or not.

Further to that point, her new one-woman-army attitude seems to have developed less from a natural evolution into the role and more from her increasingly acrimonious rebellion against the Mayor. (Not that distancing oneself from Katz has been anything of an exclusive practice, as late.) And the Mayor is known for making statements that are provably untrue -- Sam Katz could tell you that his name is Sam Katz and you'd still be better off having an auditor confirm it -- but when he characterized Havixbeck as "unpredictable" following her ouster from EPC, it was as close to plausible-sounding as anything he's said in months. (And, indeed, there've been rumblings to that effect as far back as April of last year.)

So it's hard to tell! It's hard to say for sure. We the audience can seem reasonably certain where Havixbeck stands right now -- her speech in January about being no one's yes-person and no one's tin soldier was, in professional wrestling parlance, a definitive face-turn promo -- and she'll be a distinct force to be reckoned with if she continues on her current path, but then again we've also seen the difference that a year can make. This time next year she might be arguing for a doubling of the police budget, embedded helicopters in every school, and a base on the moon. We don't know! We don't know. But it'll definitely be interesting either way, and interesting is exactly what I like to see.

As for any political party movements that might kick up some dust, I'm not terribly convinced that there are any significant status-quo shakeups a-comin'. Provincially, the Conservatives can't make the inroads into city-voter support that they need without alienating the zealots people like this within their base, and the Liberals continue to basically not exist. (A weak Liberal party directly benefits the NDP, not just in the "well, duh" polling sense but in the very real "federal Liberals endorsing provincial NDP candidates during provincial elections" sense.) Federally, meanwhile, the NDP is having the exact problems with its new Quebec MPs that most everyone predicted would happen after the last election, and the Liberals are drifting dangerously close to Calgary Flames territory -- stubbornly unwilling to begin the rebuild that they desperately need, instead sticking to the unsuccessful framework of years past and forever clinging to the hope that just one extra piece is all they need to take them to the top.

BOOM HOCKEY SEGUE

Anonymous, 2013-03-05 10:39 asks:

"Leaving former team scoring leaders aside (Hawerchuk, Selanne, etc) which former NHL Jet would be the best addition to the current Jets roster?"

Allowing for my incredibly transparent loyalty-slash-bias, and allowing for the obvious caveat that we're dealing more in archetypes than in specific player evaluations because of the inherent difficulties in comparing players between eras -- dude, OBVIOUSLY Teppo Numminen.

Goal scoring isn't really the problem with the current Jets, necessarily; goaltending, sure, but that doesn't really help us when the former-Jets were... never exactly an elite goaltending powerhouse themselves. No one's ever like "by god, what this new Jets team needs is a Rick Tabaracci!" (And y'all know I love some Bob Essensa, but man, he had some not very good years.)

As I was saying, though, about scoring -- so far the Jets have scored three goals in a game and then lost anyway four times this season, and that was within the first twenty games. Not good, guys. Not a good look! Not great.

So our current, sadsack Jets have a lot of issues, but we can cover a few of the more obvious ones -- special teams (because good lord), consistent effort (because younger teams, particularly this one, give up easily and quickly) and positional defensive play (because BYFUGLIEN WHY ARE YOU BEHIND THE OTHER TEAM'S GOAL, COVER THE P--DAMMIT ENSTROM, YOU TOO, GET BACK HERE) -- with a quietly excellent, positionally sound two-way D-man who could eat up twenty to twenty-five minutes a night and handle both PK and PP duties effectively.

Numminen! He's all we ever need on D!

H asks:

"If I saw you in person and wanted to say hello, how would you prefer I do so? I'm assuming not by shouting 'heeeeeey Winnipeg cat!'"

That would be a bit peculiar, yes. (Although not unheard of!)

But, nah, there's no real trick to it beyond the same general way to approach anybody; if you see someone in the wild who might or might not be me, something along the lines of "excuse me, are you James?" ought to work perfectly well.

And if it does indeed turn out to be me, bear with me if I seem a bit dazed for a moment or two; even to this day I've still never quite wrapped my head around the idea of people recognizing me as Guy From The Internet.

Anonymous, 2013-03-05 13:33 asks:

"Everyone speaks much too slow on Internet Pundits. Will you guys ever try to speak quicker? "

Hmm! You know, I had not considered this. This is good feedback! I can't speak for anyone else, but I could give it a shot; the difficulty, however, in my (limited and amateur) experience, is that radio may prove a difficult medium to rush.

Legibility is part of it, but not as big a part as coherence of thought; if I seem discombobulated and ungainly on the radio now, imagine what a trainwreck I'd be if I weren't also pacing myself just enough to think my statements through.

The Analyst asks:

"What are your opinions on Steve Keen's modelling of Hyman Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis?"

1936-37 Keynesian ruminations on investment motivation being synthesized and codified as a 1957-onward Post-Keynesian framework of capitalist unsustainability, being revived in the mid-2000s to address the influence of large banks on the world economy, and then ultimately being packaged as a Kickstarter project serve to quite thoroughly remind and convince me that I just really, really do not understand economics. Like I'm a Golden Retriever with safety goggles in a chemistry lab. No idea.

Avid S and M Reader asks:

"A classic question with no right or wrong answer...

You can have sex with the most beautiful woman in the world, but nobody other than you and her will ever be able to know about it.

Or

You can have the most beautiful woman in the world draped off you, holding hands with you, making out with you, etc, for all to see. Everyone assumes you are having sex with her, but, you never ever can actually have sex with her.

Which scenario would you choose? "

Thank you for your avidity!

The question may very well be a classic, though I must say that I've never myself encountered it before now, but -- real talk? That second scenario sounds legitimately awful. I don't even get how this is a dilemma.

Unless you're absolutely just consumed by what other people think of you -- and what kind of a way to live is that, really -- how would that second choice be anything but perpetually, tormentingly unfulfilling? A self-imposed blueball purgatory! The heck with that. Given the choice of being satisfied and letting people think I'm miserable, or being miserable and letting people think I'm satisfied -- well, as I'd said, it doesn't seem an overwhelmingly difficult decision. I never was one for the classics, I suppose.

Anonymous, 2013-03-06 10:01 asks:

"When are you going to have Woofers on Internet Pundits?"

WHO'S TO SAY WE DON'T



ha ha ha ha, naw, I'm kiddin', I'm kiddin'. I don't know how well the gimmick would fly on radio, though.

tofurkey asks:

"Middle name = Hope. Is there a story behind that?"

There is, but in thinking about it I am just now realizing that I don't know enough about it to tell it properly.

Or, rather, I don't know the backstory well enough to tell it; the details and mechanics, as they were, are simple enough. My parents never married -- and it probably explains a lot about me that I was brought up second-wave feminist -- so when I was born, they gave me my mother's last name, and my father's last name became my middle name. Hope! Of all things, Hope.

As I'd said, I've known the how my whole life, but I'm just now realizing that I never properly asked about the why. I was an inquisitive little child, but I doubt I was much of a cross-examiner. I did escape the then-ubiquitous hyphenation, however, so there's that -- I went to Laura Secord for elementary, trust me, ubiquity ain't overstatin' it -- and that's not to say that I hold anything against hyphenation, necessarily, but it really is the kind of trick that you can only do once. (Imagine a Ms. John-Jacob and a Mr. Jingleheimer-Schmidt trying to sort out what to name their kid.)

In short, I suspect that this explanation is probably far more prosaic and mundane than you'd been hoping, but there it is; I inherited my mother's last name, and Hope's my middle name. (This would later prove to be a rich vein of irony for a number of reasons, but we shan't get into those now.) Never seemed odd to me, but I know that it can take a while for people to get used to it.

"Hey, is your dad named John?"
"Yes."
"John Howard?"
"No."
"But--"
"I know. Just roll with it."

Graham asks:

"I'm playing black jack. I have 16. The dealer is showing an ace.

Do I hit?"

Well, I can't speak on your behalf, but I wouldn't. (Disclaimer: I am not much of a gambler, most of my experience and knowledge -- 'expertise' would be overselling it by a very wide margin -- coming from the 1993 Super Nintendo video game Vegas Stakes.)

To cover the easy outs on the question, let's assume for the sake of the exercise that I don't have an ace and a five, that I don't have two eights I could split, and that I don't have any other players at the table whose cards I can use to make a better decision.

With a 16 there are only five of the thirteen face values -- A, 2, 3, 4, 5 -- that can improve the hand, and eight -- 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K -- that will bust the hand and kill the round, or whatever the proper language would be for it, outright. (And interestingly, now that I look at it that way, the dealer ace has the exact opposite situation; eight values that would seal the deal at 17 or better, and five values with potentially undesirable outcomes.)

So -- again, not being much of a gambler -- since a hit is almost twice as likely to kill me as it is to save me, I'd stay on the 16. There's still only about a third of a chance that the dealer turns up ace through five to bail me out, but at least my hand will be alive long enough to see if he or she does.

I'm entirely willing to be wrong on this reasoning, but that'd be my advice, as far as our hypothetical blackjack scenario goes. And during your time at the tables, if anyone asks you to buy a diamond off of them, invest in their oil-drilling business, or let them wipe a stain off your shirt, don't take them up on it. Thanks, Vegas Stakes!

And, finally:

Anonymous, 2013-03-07 14:23 asks:

"Here's a question I've had in my mind for some time: Are you my cousin's evil twin? You're both music-playing librarians with (sometimes) politically-themed blogs. Come to think of it, last time I saw him he had a beard, so maybe he's the evil twin. Maybe you're both evil, never thought of that. Or maybe I'm just misinformed about the whole beard/evil formula.

Is it just coincidence that his former band's entire discography made it into the elite Slurpees and Murder Record Club? "

Well, mild hyperbole of 'elite' aside -- I worry sometimes that my longevity can be mistaken for success -- that last part narrows it down to... let me have a look here... Fast Orange, the Steinbach Bible Institute, the Folklorama Youth Choir, and the 1971 Saskatchewan Roughriders. And actually, when I put it that way, I suppose that does kind of sound like it'd be considered elite company -- but I can confirm that I am, as far as I know, not an evil doppelganger of anyone involved in those groups.

(A sidenote on Fast Orange: one of their former members had sent me a very lovely email after my blog post on them, and I didn't see it until about a month later because it got caught in my Spam filter. There is no graceful way to respond to an email upwards of thirty days after it was originally sent; I have felt guilty and awful ever since, even knowing that it happened inadvertently and automatically. The moral of my story, gentle reader, is to check your Spam folders regularly, and to check them very carefully.)

Anyway, in the interest of clearing up the slight and understandable bit of misinformation, let me just note: beards do not tip off alignment values one way or the other. Goatees are for evil twins. And I would look mad goony with a goatee, but then, I doubt I'd make much of a villain, either.

Antagonist, sure, I could pull off antagonist. But villainry, I fear, escapes me. I think I'm more around a Neutral Goo--oh, dude, we should all do our Gygax alignments! Yes! Yes. I mean, not right right now, this post is long enough as it is. But remind me to come back to that later.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Your cousin sounds like a pretty cool guy, from your description of him! Sounds like a good dude.

In conclusion: if I don't want to bog the whole process down, I should answer questions in the rotation more speedily in order to keep things rolling. So! The comments box awaits below, true believers; Ask James Anything!

Ask James Anything Month: Immigration, Seeeeecrets, and Progress Updates

Thank you so much to everyone who passed along their condolences following the death of my Grandmother this past Friday afternoon. It's been... it's been really rough, but she passed as cleanly and as painlessly as anyone could hope for given the circumstances, which I'm sure will be vastly more comforting once the rawness and immediacy of the whole thing have worn off a bit more.

All right. Deep breath. Keep it together, deep breath. Okay.

Hello and welcome back, everyone; let's see what round one of Ask James Anything Month yielded!

unclebob asks:

"If Winnipeg didn't have so much immigration, left to its own, would the city population actually be declining?

"And for the bonus question, 'What does that say about governance?'"

Hm. Not quite what I'd expected as the opener -- I'm not sure what I expected as the opener, really, to be honest -- but sure, let's roll with it.

The question could just as easily apply to any other city in the land, or indeed to the country as a whole -- counting on immigration to outpace the declining birthrate is something of a modern Canadian tradition -- but Winnipeg must also contend with the very pressing issue of competition from the bigger and/or better-run cities elsewhere in Canada. Which is basically all of them! That's pretty much every single one. These are not our glory years.

As the experiment, then, let's assume for the sake of our hypothetical scenario that the current federal government decided to treat all immigration the way that Mackenzie King treated Jews.

(The gap between his heyday and the rise of the internet was far enough that this may occasionally be forgotten, so I want to make sure we've established this as a point of order while we have the opportunity: Mackenzie King was a wretched little man, and he barely deserves the four lines of Dennis Lee poetry he got.)

People come to Winnipeg from other places, be it immigration from countries or migration from cities, for one of two reasons: 1) they already have a bunch of family and friends living here, or 2) they really, really, really need to get away from wherever they were beforehand. This scenario would pooch both of those conditions, but more particularly the former -- and as disenchanted as I may be with our current governance, I don't think there's any potential administrative makeup that could make lemonade out of our lemons if you took those two draws away.

Like, if you drew up an All-Star fantasy team of Winnipeg governance past and present -- as silly as I know that sounds ("my fantasy team is doing awful this year, ugh") -- and then handed them modern-day broke-ass Winnipeg with a smaller tax base and fewer incentives to live here? Shit, nuh-uh! They'd resign then and there, and that'd be that, and that's how that would end.

It isn't quite dire enough to suggest that Winnipeg would become ghost-town territory -- like a landlocked prairie version of some teeny abandoned Maritime village that the kids all packed up and left to find work years ago -- instantaneously, or that the whole province would be annexed by Saskatchewan and sold off for scrap within the week, but Winnipeg would definitely go hinterland (more so than usual, I mean, in the national scheme of things) sooner rather than later if the borders were to suddenly close. And there'd be an ugly but sizeable rumbling of certain white folks -- those of you who know me in person know how I enjoy pronouncing it as "WAAIIIHT folks", for the sake of distinction -- certain white folks very up in arms about the aboriginal and First Nations birthrate, rather more so than they already are now. Because people are kind of terrible, sometimes.

I'm a bit confused about the later comment's weird follow-up statement of "trying to corner James into the realization", as though I've A) ever argued against immigration or B) ever intimated that the people in charge seem to know what they're doing, but I suppose it was inevitable after the systematic purge of the Uptown Magazine archives that people would forget how I used to roll.

Hm. Alas.

Y'know what I'd like to see? I haven't encountered such a thing in the wild as yet, if it does indeed exist, but I think it'd be fascinating to read a book about the origins of Filipino immigration to Winnipeg and how those four original nurses in 1959, followed shortly by a small wave of doctors and teachers and garment workers, would go on to influence their newly-chosen home for generations to come.

I realize that phrases like "changed forever" get thrown about willy-nilly in these exaggerative times we live in, but man: imagine if those four nurses and those early professionals had instead decided to settle in, I don't know, Hamilton. God, could you imagine? Extrapolating a modern-day Winnipeg from that, in the grand sci-fi tradition, would probably be super depressing.

("More so than usual", yes, yes. Sometimes I fear I've become predictable in my old age.)

So, to answer your question: yes, eventually. And to answer your bonus question: probably nothing, which is perhaps the nicest thing I could say on their behalf.

Next!

Anonymous, 2013-03-01 14:44 asks:

"Is Uncle Bob a secret bigot?"

Well, if he were, we wouldn't know, because it'd be a secret. Right? Admitting up front that I am not a secrets expert, I am nonetheless reasonably certain that this is how secrets work.

Anonymous, 2013-03-02 10:34 said:

"How's this AMA working out for you so far, James?"

I dare say it's the best one I've ever done! Let us try to maintain that momentum, then.

Yes, readers, please feel free to hit up the comments form below; it's time to Ask James Anything!

March is Ask James Anything Month at Slurpees and Murder

That's right, you read correctly -- it's audience participation time! Something a little more straightforward and a lot more frequent than that other time, and hopefully no less enthralling.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I've had an unmitigatedly disastrous back half of February, and I spent a weekend taking it not particularly well, so my apologies to all of you that had to put up with Mopey McMoperson for an uncharacteristically mopey two or three days.

In celebration, then, of it not being February any more -- because, man, screw February -- let's do a little something special for the month of March.

I've had the idea to do this in the back of my mind for a while now, partially because it seems reasonable that audience members would have unanswered questions over the seven (egads) calendar years of the site, but more particularly because -- in those rare and peculiar moments when people recognize me from the internet, or half recognize me, which always ends up being really confusing for everyone involved -- I get statements from time to time along the lines of "I know this sounds weird, but I feel like I know you from reading you. Not well, but, like, kind of." So all this month and all month long, in the interest of getting to know me better -- go ahead and Ask Me Anything!

(I know that the phrase is more commonly associated with Reddit nowadays, but I'm thinking of it more in the Tumblr sense. Not that I've ever really spent any particular amount of time on either site, but y'know. Humour me here.)

I'm pretty sure that this should work out well for everyone involved; I get an excuse to work on shorter bursts of content and less aloof delivery, the questioning party in each instance gets resolution of an old plot thread or payoff on a concept I'd left half-covered somewhere along the way, and everyone else viewing the page gets to drop by without my demanding that they read two- to four-thousand words every single gosh-dang post.

So fire away! I'm throwing open the gates, so Help a Brother Out; from the complicated ("If you had the ability to transfer one file or responsibility from one level of government to another, what would it be, and why?") to the simple ("wats ur favorite soda-pop"), leave your top-of-mind questions in the comments section below and I'll do my best to tackle each and every one. Though I may, in honesty, see fit to give greater priority to ones with actual names attached. Y'know how it is.

But enough talk! Ask James Anything!

Weekend(-ish) in Review: Here are a Bunch of Jets Valentines, a Handful of Civic Valentines, and Some Pictures of Omand's Creek on Louis Riel Day (Warning: Very Image-Heavy)

Well, hello there, stranger. Happy Louis Riel Day! And Happy Valentine's Day, too, if you were into that sort of thing.

As it just so happens, since we're on the subject of recent seasonal observances, I chipped in two or three jokes for the Sun's very special Winnipeg Jets Valentines gallery. (And knowing my luck, chances are that mine are all the ones you didn't like.) They're all quite worth your eyeballin', but here are some of the ones I really liked:

Help a Brother Out!: Longform Web Layout-slash-Design Recommendations (Plus, Here is a Four-Foot-Tall Brian Mulroney Butler Wooden Standee)

First things first: now through the end of the week, Winnipeg Art Gallery memberships are 58% off for individuals and 50% off for families on Groupon. Culture at a discount!

(Having just typed that string of words, "Culture at a Discount" seems like it'd be the headline of a national feature on our arts scene. Y'know those weird bi- or tri-annual Globe & Mail articles about how suddenly and surprisingly legitimate Winnipeg is? Well, one of those.)

Hopefully you will find that above link to be useful, and also hopefully -- the two are not connected, mind, please don't feel obligated -- you may be able to aid me with a recent concern of mine. Yes, it's time once again for a little segment that I like to call: Help a Brother Out!