we're totally in Prague, man So last night Pammy and I watched the Oscars. Accounting for the time change, you should know that that means we were up until about 6:00 AM local time...! Not 'cause we were partying - we were just awake. We're totally not time-zone adjusted, man.

So we woke up around 2:00 this afternoon and were like, shit! it's 2:00! We're determined to get ourselves time-adjusted tonight.

Let's see, what have we done. The long flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was actually quite bearable, due to the lovely technological advance of personal televisions for each passenger, which served as personal VCRs, gaming system, and map tracking device. I watched The Forgotten with Julianne Moore, and played some Mah-jong. I liked the movie. Pammy watched Sideways, which was edited and censored, but still quite amusing, and she played "Bejeweled". The seats are equipped with remote controls which doubled as (I wanna say "joystick")... game... device-thingys.....?

Our hotel is good. We laughed when our taxi dropped us off yesterday, because right across the street, with bright yellow signage, is "Erotic City". The big bold signs advertise all sorts of things, but the ones that made me laugh were "spanking" and "piss". Piss?? I don't want to know..!

We've been making an effort to check with the locals, like the friendly front-desk girl at our hotel and our waitress at TGI Fridays (don't ask) about good places to check out locally. We're interested in visiting places that aren't too tourist-y (a LOT is geared towards tourists here), and I think we've got a good list. Of course, we are definitely interested in doing some of the tourist stuff like walking across the Charles Bridge and visiting Prague Castle, which we plan to do tomorrow.

What I love the most are the very narrow streets with tall OLD buildings surrounding you everywhere. Our hotel is right in "Old Town" (Stare Mesto), so we're really within walking distance of a lot of cool stuff, and we've been out walking quite a bit already. I also really like the Czech language (despite it making NO sense to me) - after our very short stint in Amsterdam and listening to Dutch for a bit, Czech sounds a lot prettier to me. The only word we've used very much is "dekuji" ("dekoo-ey"), which means "thank you". Thankfully, most everyone on the service end of things speaks English, so we're not struggling with communication issues.

Oh yeah. Pammy and I are sharing a bed.

Stay tuned...  | ¶ 8:24 p.m.

  w/e Okay, so I'm not actually in Prague yet, but I wanted to change my countdown over there, so it says that I am. There will be radio silence (blog silence?) for a couple days while we travel.

I'll post a report once we locate some internet-ing facilities.  | ¶ 1:08 p.m.

  Pammy: Have a good flight, girl. I'll see you tonight at the hotel. If you have any reminders for me...email me. I'm off to my last class.  | ¶ 9:05 a.m.

  tick tick tick I haven't packed yet. I figure I'll catch either the 4:00 or 5:00 bus to Montreal tomorrow, so I've still got the day to get ready. Pammy arrives around 7:00, and we will rendez-vous at an undisclosed airport hotel. (Undisclosed to you - she and I both know where it is.)

Today went by too fast. I spent time on the phone with Tone-L, Mom, Gina, and Scott. CP came by to receive his cat-feeding instructions (and to watch Wife Swap - he loves that show). I even skipped TWO classes today so I could be at home getting organized and doing some homework. Mostly no homework was done today...

I've had this odd headache most of the day. I think I waited too long to have my first caffeine of the day, and well, you know how these caffeine headaches are (they don't go away, even with drugs). I tried doing some yoga, taking Tylenol, ingesting caffeine, having a hot bath. And still I'm in pain. Thumbs down to the headache.

I purchased some travel stuff today: two disposable cameras (they were on sale)... and, well, that's all that's really worth mentioning.

Here's the rough itinerary, for those who care: we leave Montreal Saturday at noon and fly to Detroit. We leave Detroit at 5-ish for Amsterdam. We leave Amsterdam at 9-ish (the next morning) for Prague, arriving at 10:30-ish local time.

And in other news, I got a disappointing 72% on my Modern Government midterm. Truthfully, though, I'm not that disappointed. I do what I can. So much for those 80s I was aiming for...!  | ¶ 11:46 p.m.

  backwards Hello. My name is Stacey, and I'm a sobraholic. It's been 12 days since my last drink.  | ¶ 4:22 p.m.

  debate 2 This morning I've been doing some reading for the second debate in my N. America since 1860 class. This time, we must assert a position either for or against (I'm against this time) the following:

Resolved: Masculine power exists through violence; feminine power through nurturing.

The hard part about these debates is that our responses are supposed to based primarily on certain pre-selected readings, chosen by our professor.

So, this time there are two readings. The first discusses the rise in popularity of dueling in Mexico at the end of the 19th century. And yeah, dueling is solely the domain of men, but the article doesn't generalize conclusions relating to anything other than Mexican men of the time.

The second reading is a critical review of the critical reviews of writings and actions of the Canadian feminist activist Nellie McClung. It discusses how her influence and writings have been interpreted over the years. Again, I'm not sure about how this particular piece relates to the assertion or denial of feminine power, since it's mostly a literary critique.

Since the "for" group goes first, I've got an entire week to see what type of responses they're coming up with, and another week following that to create my own argument. It's due the day I get back to Lennoxville after the break.  | ¶ 9:33 a.m.

  feel my pain I've posted my exam schedule over there, under "other stuff".

And just to keep you in the loop, because it preoccupies me pretty much constantly, there's also my March schedule of insanity ("March madness").  | ¶ 6:20 p.m.

  Happy Birthday, Kyle Today, my nephew turns EIGHT. Par-tay, dude.

Happy Birthday  | ¶ 11:55 a.m.

  reasons I love my history prof (referring to Dr. Childs, teacher of 20th Century World)

• he's a good speaker - that class is rarely boring;
• when I emailed him about the chatty, disruptive kids, he handled it;
  
• he marks our assignments and midterms himself and returns them promptly;
• he's a generous marker; I wasn't sure how I well I'd performed, but managed to get a 78.5% on my midterm (class average: 69%). That's 15.7 out of 20 towards my final mark (and close to my target mark of 80%!);
• today's lecture was all about World War II - I'm loving this subject area these days - fascinating...!

  | ¶ 10:32 a.m.

  realizations Today we had to hand in an assignment in my political analysis class where we identified the main actors, institutions and instruments involved in our respective policy areas. I've been struggling to come up with an angle on my chosen policy area of environment / Kyoto stuff. I've done a bunch of reading and researching, but I wasn't able to narrow down my focus much. Then I figured it out: I was BORED.

But as I read, I discovered another topic that actually appeals to me. It may sound less interesting, but for whatever reason, I'm more intrigued by the topic of democratic reform (for instance, changes to the electoral system) than Kyoto. So I've officially changed my research area to that. Now I just gotta come up with a hypothesis to work with...

Something else occurred to me today: the university system is ALL WRONG.

I say this because after seeing on a daily basis kids who are not interested in being in class, I finally understand: the kids don't want to be there, the teachers are not trained to teach (unfortunately this is all too apparent with some of them), and finally, a lot of the teachers also don't seem to care that much. What kind of system is this?

I admit that I, too, was one of those disinterested kids when I was 18-22 (although I was more likely to skip class than go and suffer through). But that's why I think going to university right out of high school is the wrong decision most of the time. The students would get more value and the teachers would get more reward if the students actually wanted to be there.

And maybe we could start training teachers at the university level how to teach, too. It's an odd thing, that we make people get an "education" diploma / degree before they teach grades 1 though 12, but all you need to teach at the university level is a Masters degree, in your field. The ability to teach does not come with subject mastery, people.

Today I swear about TEN students got up during Modern Government class to go to the bathroom or something - coming and going like it's a coffee shop, not a classroom, with a lecture in progress. This is a strange world, this university life...  | ¶ 7:39 p.m.

  school report I got my first NA-1860 debate mark back today - that's the one where we had to debate the democratic-ness of the three North American countries. I got 4 out of 5. Respectable.

They've already got the exam schedule posted. Mine looks a little more manageable this semester (I'll post it over there--> later this week). Even though I'm taking six classes, I only have four finals.

Now if I can just get through the month of March...  | ¶ 5:53 p.m.

  Prague prep Check weather, for packing guidelines

Give CP lessons

Photocopy and other important documents

Get spending money for

Cram as much research time as possible in the next 5 days.

Anything else?   | ¶ 12:58 p.m.

  still stressing... For my Cognitive Psychology class, I am writing a paper on the effects of aging on cognitive functions. I have 21 research papers downloaded and ready to be reviewed, so my target for today is to get 6 of them read with relevant notes made. I'm on my third right now. Even though this paper is not due until March 14, my new goal is to have it as close to complete as possible before I go away this week. The less I have to worry about when I get back, the better I'll feel.

Pammy was telling me the other day that she plans to pack light and just carry on all her luggage, since we'll be making connecting flights in Detroit and Amsterdam, and she's worried about lost luggage. Have I mentioned how I'm not the best packer...? Now I'm planning to pack light myself, so Friday will be the test of my skills.

Pammy is flying into Montreal Friday evening, so I'm planning to take a bus to meet her there, where we'll spend the night before flying out around noon on Saturday. By the time we arrive in Prague, it will be 10:20 AM Sunday morning, local time. I've never flown such a long flight before; I'm hoping that sleep comes easily on the plane.  | ¶ 3:06 p.m.

  blah blah world events... I'm watching "Meet the Press" on NBC. Sometimes the Americans can give the appearance of being pretty short-sighted and ignorant. I cringe at comments like this from John McCain:

"I can't understand why the Europeans are not being more forthcoming."

They are now bemoaning the fact that they don't have a real "coalition" of international involvement in Iraq. I'm wondering if they've forgotten comments made before the invasion about the "irrelevance" of the U.N., the reference to "old Europe" by John Ashcroft, the downright dismissal of the need for diplomacy and for a multilateral approach rather than their impatience to start dropping bombs.

With my new education in the history of Europe, I also now understand a certain reluctance on the part of the Europeans to be involved in any military action. After the failure to maintain peace after World War I, they swore "never again" to the kind of destruction that a military confrontation involves. They made a commitment to re-build and respect the sovereignty of one another. I'm sure that some of them think the Americans should experience the devastation of such an event on their own soil before they even begin to understand what is truly being undertaken.

Now Time Russert is having a round-table discussion with a group of really well-spoken women, where I'm hearing a lot more that makes sense. These women are pointing out precisely why most European countries are so hesitant to jump on George's bandwagon. Like the comment by Katty Kay from the BBC, referring to Bush's inaugural speech where he condemns the countries of the world who do not practice democracy. Everybody knows that many of the U.S.'s "friends" have precisely such regimes in place, and yet there are no implied threats for China, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to clean up their political situations. She used the word "hypocrisy" - nice.  | ¶ 9:28 a.m.

  who needs pennies A few years ago I was making a cross-Canada drive from Calgary to the Maritimes with two of my brothers. It was around mid-May, I think, but when we got to Manitoba we got hit with a nasty blizzard, with blowing wet snow, slippery roads and low visibility. We had set out from Brandon early in the morning, but only made it to Winnipeg before deciding the conditions were too dangerous to be driving in. So we checked into a hotel for the day/night and tried to figure out how to entertain ourselves for the day.

I put in a phone call to Tone-L, who had spent a lot of time in Winnipeg over the years through his job and he suggested that we visit the Royal Canadian Mint. We agreed that it sounded interesting, so headed out, took a tour and got ourselves all educated about the making of coinage. It was interesting to learn that the Canadian Mint actually makes money for numerous countries and is internationally respected for its very high quality standards.

When we were there Keri was sharing his thoughts about the penny, suggesting that the penny should be done away with. We even asked our tour guide about the cost of making pennies (surely it wasn't economically viable to be wasting money to make money). She told us, though, that it costs less than a cent to make each penny. Who knew, eh?

I thought of this because I'm doing research for my Political Analysis class today and just stumbled across an article about this exact issue. The abstract:

We show there is a strong economic case for removing the one-cent coin from circulation in Canada. Using data from the Royal Canadian Mint, we show that seigniorage on the coin is negative. When the user cost associated with the inconvenience of the penny is added, the case for eliminating it is even more compelling. Simulations using price data from Tim Horton's show that rounding prices to the nearest nickel will not be inflationary. We conclude that Canada should follow Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France, and Spain by removing the lowest denomination coin from circulation.

And later we went to a mall.  | ¶ 10:27 a.m.

  midterm day I'm writing the 20th Century World midterm this morning. So I'm sitting here reviewing various things we've covered so far, like colonialism, nationalism, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism after WWI, the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Spanish civil war, and the beginnings of World War II (we're just getting to that, so it's not a major focus of the exam). The library opens at 8:00, so I'll head over soon to finish my studying there.

I've done all of the readings for this class (can't always say that), and I have not missed any classes. I have a ton of class notes. Also, this is kind of my favourite class, so I'm planning to write a lot and get myself the 80 I've been targetting.

Yesterday I got a care package from my mother. In it were four boxes of Kraft Dinner, "sharp cheddar". I'm all stocked up now. Yay!  | ¶ 7:21 a.m.

  is God a unicorn? My philosophy of religion class gets pretty deep. Harvey is a good speaker, though, so it's really interesting. We have moved from the problem of evil (i.e. if there is a God, how can he/she allow such evil to exist) on to the issue of speaking meaningfully about "God".

We've discussed how the words we use to describe things in our own world cannot possibly be the right ones to describe God (Aquinas' theory of analogy). Either because they are not exactly right (for instance, is God "wise" the same way that John is wise?), or because we cannot sense-perceive God, and therefore cannot know what we are talking about anyway.

Today Harvey was elaborating on Hume's empiricist position. That is, all knowledge we have is based on our experiences of sense-perception. But there are two kinds of sensations: "lively impressions" (the aforementioned sense-perceptions), and then "ideas", which are the new associations we can formulate in our own minds based on the things we have perceived. For instance, we can take the concept of a horse and the concept of a horn, make an association in our minds, and conceive of the possibility of a unicorn.

Hume also maintained that even if we could not conceive of a particular idea, if we could sense-perceive the event in question, we can verify or falsify the claim. Harvey's example today was, "there is a penguin in the quad". Now, we know that there are not usually penguins in the quad, but if we went out to check for ourselves, we could verify whether the claim was true.

It is way more complicated than that, but the conclusion is that Hume believes that all claims about God are meaningless, because we can neither sense-perceive any God, nor can we associate any pre-learned concepts to create an idea of what God is. Claims about God are neither true nor false, because there is no way to verify or falsify them through perception.

THE END  | ¶ 5:58 p.m.

  woo hoo --> single digits! NINE DAYS until Prague. Woot!

This is a map of the downtown core of Prague - our hotel is somewhere in the right-hand corner, in Stare Mesto.

Dobré ráno! (Good morning!)  | ¶ 9:29 a.m.

  fix it I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but I'm really struggling with sleeping during the week. I kept waking up at various points last night and finally just decided I would get up (notice the 6:30 AM blog post). So I make it through my long day of classes and get home and try to start on my reading. But I'm so tired now that my concentration is shot. So I'm not sure how to proceed, since I also still can't sleep.

Maybe I need to do more yoga or exercise of some kind. Tonight I'm going with a hot bath.

In the back of my mind are these concerns: Prague paper; WWII paper; history midterm; cognitive midterm; cognitive paper; politics presentation; politics paper; religion paper. I wish I would just stop stressing and realize that I'll get it all done. But I feel this tremendous pressure to get a lot of progress made before I go away next weekend, because there are several of those that are due the second week back after that break.  | ¶ 6:40 p.m.

  oh, it's about the king I always have a hard time remembering what the terms "Right" and "Left" mean when referring to politics. Today when doing some preparing for my history midterm on Friday, I learned something about those terms:

The use of the terms Right and Left to designate opposing political beliefs dates back to the parliament of the French Revolution of 1789. Supporters of the king and of the existing society happened to sit on the right side of the hall, supporters of the revolution and of change on the left. Ever since, opponents of change - conservatives - have been described as the Right, and proponents of change - from progressives to radicals - have been the Left.

Who knew?  | ¶ 5:59 p.m.

  conspiracy! Nothing disgusts me more than certain American politicians making a big fuss over things that are only a glimpse of the types of scandal that their own government is involved in. Today, a senate sub-committee is "trying to bring down Kofi Annan by bringing down his son". There are questions about the involvement of Kojo Annan in some questionable deals involving the former oil-for-food program in Iraq. Maybe some companies made money illegally.

What I want to know is, how is this a bigger deal than, say, Halliburton winning billions of dollars in contracts in Iraq without a competitive bidding process? How is this a bigger deal than the fact that after repeating ad nauseum that Iraq needed to be invaded because Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction, we learn that there are NONE?

Why this big push by the Americans to discredit the UN, the only real diplomatic force in world politics these days? Is is maybe that this institution is the only opposing force, on a global scale, to the Americans' "we will police the world as we see fit" approach?  | ¶ 6:34 a.m.

  Speaking of pants... No Pants 2k5  | ¶ 2:16 p.m.

  I found an ace that I could keep (sing it, Kenny)

I was pretty tired today. I'm such a lightweight - last night's casual poker game involved me drinking a bit of wine, and although I was feeling okay today, I could have used a bit more sleep.

The good news is that I won fifty dollars (minus the ten dollar buy-in). Not too shabby. I like poker. But Scott says that, statistically, the way I play is all wrong. I never fold before I see the flop, people. Even when you have shitty cards, how do you know that there won't be a corresponding shitty flop until you buy in and see? I dunno. Maybe in Vegas my methods wouldn't fly. We play for small pots here in L'ville.

School updates:
I handed in my essay outline in NA-1860 today. It was 5 days late, but w/e - I'm not superwoman - I couldn't get it all done last week.
I got back my essay outline in 20th Century World. He gave me 7 out of 10. Not great, but decent. I neglected to provide an explanation of the "structure" of my paper. I maintain that since I'm not actually writing the paper yet, the structure is yet to be determined. I just don't write that way, dude.
My Mexico/WWII book arrived in the mail. Now I've got more research material for that paper.
I have a 20th Century World midterm on Friday.
I visited my Cognitive prof on Friday to have my references reviewed for that term paper. He gave me 90. That works out to 3.6 out of 4 on my final mark. I'm not sure how I could have done better on that little "assignment". He told me my references looked excellent and stuff - so why not a perfect mark...? Dunno.

My time is more flexible this week - nothing DUE. Just lots and lots of research to get moving on for those lots and lots of papers that must be written eventually.  | ¶ 10:19 p.m.

  hug someone
Happy Love Day  | ¶ 8:14 a.m.

  student plan XIV Well, I'm off to the library. I've selected three classes to focus on today: 20th Century World - preparing for the midterm on Friday; NA-1860 - touching up my essay outline, which I worked on last night and am pretty pleased with; Political Analysis - research on Environmental Policy stuff. Later I'm off to Scott's for poker Sunday.

In doing my research on Mexico and Canada's respective roles in World War II, I've discovered a shared aspect of participation. We both trained pilots. The Mexicans participated with the Americans in some bombing raids of the Philippines. There is a whole other side to this war that I know even less about, and that's the Pacific side. I think Japan was behaving a bit like Germany over there and invading China, and then maybe some other smaller countries in the region. After they bombed Pearl Harbor, you gotta know that the Americans would hunt them down, and good.

One thing I've begun to understand, too, is that their decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan is rather controversial. Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, and the war in Europe was effectively over by the end of May. With the Americans dropping those bombs (and TWO OF THEM) on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, when maybe it was starting to be clear that the Japanese were not "winning", you gotta wonder whether it was really necessary. I think NO.  | ¶ 10:41 a.m.

  exhausted student tales, chapter 22,570 I have to admit that I'm not handling the stress very well this week. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed with everything I need to get done in the next 6 weeks. After I get back from Prague, I have four major papers to write within two weeks. Throw in in a couple midterms and a quiz and I'm losing sleep over it already.

Yesterday, a Friday in which I was determined to take it easy for the latter half of the day - which I sorta did, watching about 4 hours of taped shows from the week - despite being exhausted and worn out, I still was unable to sleep for a few hours 'cause I just sit there wondering how the hell I'm going to get everything done.

I've determined that although those papers are due after the break, I'm going to need to get at least one of them done before I leave, and I think it will have to be my major presentation / paper for Political Analysis class. For that, I need to come up with a PowerPoint presentation and everything, so I've got my work cut out for me.

This past week, I didn't get everything done. The outline for my WWII paper remains outstanding - I figure I can afford to lose a couple marks to preserve my sanity. I'll hand it in on Monday. This coming week I've only got one midterm to worry about, on Friday. It's for 20th Century World, my favourite history class. But for Religion, he's giving us our assignment for our first major paper, which is due before the break. And next week I've got a midterm in Cognitive. So I'll be juggling these items (in addition to another NA-1860 debate) while simultaneously working on my research on environmental policy.

The problem with stress, too, is that it's rather paralyzing. Especially when you're not getting enough sleep. Usually I care a lot more than I have this week. But when you're feeling worn out and would prefer to sleep, but can't, and all six of your classes could use your attention, it's hard to know where to start, and hard to feel sufficiently motivated.

I like weekends, though. Gives me time to re-group and make a new action plan. I'm thinking that a few hours in the library today would be a good idea.  | ¶ 10:14 a.m.

  cranky Stacey strikes again Most of my classes consist of a lot of first-year students. They seem so young, and they're the worst culprits for not-wanting-to-be-there-and-not-hiding-it-very-well. It's frustrating, when you're trying to listen to a lecture and to learn new material, to have these kids distracting you with their whispered conversations and random fidgeting or casual strolls to the washroom. I had to address the issue with a prof recently:

Dr. ---,
I'm wondering at what point the chatting of students (amongst themselves) during lectures merits some type of admonition. Those two girls this morning were extremely distracting, and I wish someone would remind them about respect for the teacher and for their fellow students. Just wondering if you think it's worth addressing, or alternatively, if you think it's something I should just handle myself...?

Regards,
Star Student

His response:

Hello Stacey,
I have already dealt with this through an email (which also lets the students know that I know who they are). I do not expect it to happen again.

Super-Prof

Take that, young'uns!  | ¶ 3:12 p.m.

  I finally got my blizzard! We've got over a foot of snow here. The light fluffy stuff. I had so much fun walking to school this morning, trudging through the drifts. They hadn't done a great job on clearing sidewalks and pathways yet, so I was walking in snow almost to my knees. It was really fun, I'm telling ya.  | ¶ 10:40 a.m.

  SAQ! I didn't think the employee strike at the liquor store would affect me much. But it turns out there's only so much crappy grocery-store wine you can drink. They've kept one SAQ open in Sherbrooke, so Scott and I made a trip there last semester, but it's not terribly convenient. I mean, everyone knows I don't party here, but I do enjoy the occasional glass of GOOD red wine. I've kinda had it with the cheap stuff. The liquor store across the street re-opens tomorrow at noon. I think I'll get myself a bottle of good wine.  | ¶ 9:21 p.m.

  February hell week (I'm in the middle of it.)

(And I'm tired.)

The worst part is that I'm not sleeping so well this week. I have three more big things to finish up, and I'll probably have to skip my Religion class today (to study for Modern Gov't midterm right after).

Sometime today I'm supposed to also finish my essay outline for NA-1860, which was due yesterday (she deducts a mark per day). I got the annotated bibliography finished, but these things are annoying. An essay outline wants you to have all of your main points and arguments basically prepared, along with the structure of the paper. If I'm doing this much work, I may as well be writing the damn paper...

Needless to say I'm having some issues with this one. In a paper whose objective it is to "compare and contrast" the involvement of Canada and Mexico in WWII, doesn't the task seem fairly straightfoward? Why do I have to give a full preview of planned later work...? GRR. With this one, too, I haven't done a heck of a lot of reading, other than kinda familiarizing myself with the sequence of events in WWII. All I've written for the outline so far is something along the lines of "the two countries have very little in common". Surprisingly, that doesn't take two pages to say...(!)  | ¶ 9:18 a.m.

  hump day I did better on today's Cognitive quiz. 17 out of 20. I was wrong the other day about the quizzes being worth 5% each. It's 4% each. So on the first one I got 2.8 out of 4. Today I got 3.4 out of 4. I told you I'd work my way UP.

I even stopped to debate with Standing after class about the ambiguity of one question. He had an item on there something like, Mary says it's going to rain today; we ask Mary how she arrived at this conclusion. Mary is (a) reasoning, (b) introspecting, (c) conceptualizing, (d) analyzing. I know what each of those terms mean and the answer didn't seem obvious to me.

In other news, Dooce is going to be on ABC World News Tonight - tonight! That girl is BIG-TIME, man. I think she's getting funnier these days - I laugh a lot when I read her posts.  | ¶ 5:43 p.m.

  heh I don't know why, but I really like Jean Chretien (maybe it's 'cause he used to be my co-worker). That guy makes me laugh. All of these politicians are the same - nobody wants to step up and take responsibility for the bad decisions or mistakes that happened under their watch. They're just following a long tradition, though; it's the system.

So Jean gets up there yesterday and makes a big show of the golf balls he'd received from various prominent leaders. And keeps calling them gifts from "small town" guys - just how the judge of the inquiry had referred to the money spent on golf balls as "small town cheap". He might be wrong about lots of other stuff, but Jean's got a point there.  | ¶ 7:51 a.m.

  brainstorming It seems like every time I start delving into research, I discover that there's deeper and deeper to dig in order to get a complete picture of the subject in question. I'm doing some superficial Prague research tonight. But it's making me realize that it's not going to be superficial for long.

How did they get there? How did Czechoslovakia become a Soviet satellite so easily after World War II? Why did it take so long for the people to rise up and implement change? Why was liberalism and certain limited freedom viewed as a threat to the Communist system? What were the actual freedoms implemented and experienced by the citizens of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring? What impact did the Cold War have the inclination of Western states to intervene? Did the Warsaw Pact isolate Czechoslovakia and prevent outside nations from coming to its military aid?  | ¶ 9:15 p.m.

  random note In typical student style, I find that I'm eating a lot of Kraft Dinner these days. I actually enjoy it. Only I don't like the "classic" kind - I like the variations, like "extra creamy" or "three cheese". One that I'm missing here in L'ville (they don't seem to sell it at the Provigo) is the "sharp cheddar".

Now you know.  | ¶ 7:58 p.m.

  overload I have two history paper outlines due tomorrow. For my Prague paper, I'm struggling a bit because although he's given us the broad topic, we're supposed to present our research in terms of a problem to be solved. I'm not sure what my approach should be. I came up with a couple tentative ones (and sorry, I haven't filled you all in on the background of the Prague Spring, but I'll get to that later... 'cause I know you're all dying to understand...).

1 - Why did the Soviet Union feel the need to intervene in the developments occurring in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, after standing by for several months?

2 - What WAS the relationship between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union that permitted such liberalization to occur in the first place, and did something specific incite the Soviets to put an end to it?

3 - Did Dubcek set out to initiate such dramatic change in his country? As it developed, did he realize the impact he was having?

Anyway, I don't know if these are very good questions, but I'll do more reading tonight and get it finalized. Nothing like a deadline to kick you into gear.

My other outline is a little more straightforward, because it's a simple "contrast and compare" the roles of Mexico and Canada in WWII. As I mentioned previously, the main issue I've been having is finding very much in the way of documentation regarding Mexico's involvement in the war. I ended up ordering that book (Strategy, Security and Spies...) from Chapters, so it should be delivered to me soon. What makes this outline a little different than the other one is that we have to do an annotated bibliography - I believe that involves not only listing our references, but making a note of how they will contribute to our papers. I've got my work cut out for me.

I'm totally going to miss the season finale of The Amazing Race tonight...

Also tomorrow is another quiz in Cognitive Psychology. Thursday is the midterm in Intro to Modern Government. Friday I have to take my references for my Cognitive paper to the prof for review (I've barely started that, but I'm fairly confident in my researching skills, so hopefully I'll be able to pull it all together). TOO. MUCH. RESEARCH. MAN.  | ¶ 12:21 p.m.

  what the hell am I doing! In my Political Analysis class this morning, Bill wanted to assign presentation dates for our policy proposals.

I volunteered to go first.

That's a little bit nutty, but I figure I may as well get it over with.  | ¶ 12:13 p.m.

  gah - temptation So I went to Provigo to do my 10%-off-for-students Monday grocery shopping (yep, I'm there every Monday). It was successful outing - the store was mostly empty and it seemed like everything I needed was on sale (every penny counts). I got to the cash to check out, and decided to request twenty dollars cash back to save myself a trip to the bank machine.

Now, at the end of their shifts, I've noticed that the cashier girls at Provigo get pretty surly. I might chalk it up to the rudeness of the French here in Quebec, but that might just be perpetuating a stereotype. I dunno - they're impatient to get done work, I suppose, so they're usually pretty cold, dismissive, and rushed.

The girl absently hands me forty dollars, instead of the twenty I'd asked (and paid) for. And you know you have that moment of temptation, thinking it would be so easy to just tuck that extra money in your wallet and walk home. I hesitated; I admit it. But then I got her attention (she was already on to the next customer) and handed it back to her. She didn't even look that appreciative that I'd saved her from being twenty dollars short.

I like to take care of my karma, though. What goes around comes around, eh!  | ¶ 8:37 p.m.

  I DO have a social life I joke that "now that I'm in university, I don't party anymore". And it's true - for the most part, I'm living the clean life these days, spending my free time reading and studying. And that's the way it should be and needs to be right now, so it's cool.

This weekend, though, was a bit of re-visiting some old faces and spaces. I decided that I needed to see a women's basketball game (I used to play for the team, you know), so Friday evening I dragged CP over to the plex to watch the "Lady Gaiters" kick some McGill butt. It was a good game. At half-time I went over to buy myself a beer (yup, I had a beer) and noticed a familiar face pass by. Young Chris has grown up but he remembered me, so we had nice little chat. He's from Moncton, my younger brother's friend, but now lives in L'ville with his fiancee.

Friday I got an email from another old Bishop's pal, Mister Craig. Craig also grew up in my hometown (well, across the river from Moncton in Riverview), and we became friends here in L'ville back in 1992. We've kept in touch sporadically over the years, but have not seen each other since 1997. He was passing through town on his way to Sugarloaf and stopped to spend the evening drinking beer and wine with me. We had a really nice visit, laughing at some foolishness from our previous life here at Bishop's and getting generally caught up (and yeah, a little drunk). It was really refreshing to hang out with an old friend, and one who's my age. Sometimes all the youth in this place makes me feel like I'm pretty alone. Cheers to old friends, man.
  | ¶ 9:15 p.m.

  Resolved: Canada's constitution is the most democratic of the three countries we are studying.

After doing a bit more reading, I discovered that the word democracy has come to mean "liberal democracy" in practice, so these kids were right to include stuff about individual rights and freedoms in their arguments. It was hard to narrow down what the most important points were - I had intended to include something about the provisions provided to amend constitutions, but didn't. I think it turned out okay anyway. It's only worth 5% of our mark, so probably did not merit quite the time commitment I've put into it, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist these days and wanted to be as thorough as possible. Here's what I posted:

What stands out about the constitution of Canada as compared to that of the United States are the guidelines regarding how Canadians elect a representative government. Every ten years, the Canadian government is required to conduct a census of the population, and the proportion of elected officials per province is adjusted according to population numbers. The nominated officials at the local level represent a vote for Prime Minister at the national level, regardless of overall popular vote in a particular province. Accordingly, we can be assured that the government elected at the federal level is truly representative of the population, which is the fundamental concept of democracy.

In the United States, by comparison, this type of actual representative government is not seen. The individual states are also awarded a certain number of “Elector” votes based on the population, but the votes of these nominees for the office of President are given to the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state in question. Due to the large variations in population size and the number of electoral votes given to different states, this can result in the office of President being awarded to a candidate who did not receive a majority of the votes nation-wide. This does not qualify as representative government.

Another important aspect of a democracy is the protection of individual liberties of citizens. The Canadian constitution, with the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, is particularly strong in advancing the equal protection of all Canadians, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, language, colour, or disability. A clause regarding the official languages of Canada gives broad protection for both English- and French-speaking citizens. Another re-affirms the rights of Aboriginal peoples.

The constitution of Mexico, by contrast, is not nearly so explicit in expanding on the rights of its citizens. Rather, it emphasizes the “obligations” of Mexicans more than “prerogatives”. Typical rights are recognized: Mexicans are permitted to vote, to bear arms, and to freely associate. In comparison with the Canadian constitution, however, the rights of the individual seem to be secondary to one’s obligations to the state, for instance, the mandatory military service imposed on every person.

The Mexican constitution elaborates more on the limits to particular freedoms than the freedoms themselves. It actually singles out the Church in several areas, for instance in regard to land ownership. The limits on property ownership as pertaining specifically to religious institutions are discriminatory.

For the above reasons, it is clear that the constitution of Canada goes further to protect its citizens and to ensure the formation of a representative government. The Canadian constitution is the most democratic of the three countries we are studying.

  | ¶ 8:52 p.m.

  I need this book So, Mexico doesn't have a very well documented role in World War II - they were nowhere near as active as the Canadian military was (I've just watched two more war movies). I haven't had a lot of luck finding books or journal articles, in order to "compare and contrast" their role with Canada's. I've found this one book, Strategy, Security and Spies, that looks really useful, but our gay library doesn't have it, and the closest library around that does is McGill. Some people think I'm pretty close to Montreal, but it's a two-hour journey, and not easy or convenient as a money-less, car-less student. GRR.

The movies I've watched are produced by the Canadian Film Board, and are meant to focus on Canada's activity during the war, but man, I'm getting the impression that we were a pretty vital part right from the start. We provided safe haven for British orphans and Dutch royalty, conducted flight training for all the countries of the British commonwealth, produced a TON of war material, including ships and planes, not just for Canada, but for other Allied nations, so some of it went to Russia. There are some really telling stats like the fact that before the war, Canada had fewer than 30 shipyards. Afterwards, there were close to 90 - crazy!

The movies are good, too, because they focus a lot on the role of women. Women had to work, and so they did. They farmed, they worked at the shipyards, they worked in factories, and some of them were even on the front lines providing nursing care as the allies moved through Europe.

They have veterans telling some stories about what it was like to serve in various areas. Farley Mowat (Canadian writer) was with the Canadian troops that gained control of Sicily and then moved north through Italy. There are merchant marines talking about the harrowing journey to Russia, in which they had to pass through waters close enough to occupied Norway that they were reachable by missile. Many stories of loss, obviously. But some funny stories, too. Like the one about how when the troops reached Holland to "liberate" that nation. The commander of one unit sees some Dutch women in their traditional clothing, which made them look like nuns. So he reminds his boys to be respectful. When he wakes up in the morning and peeks in on his unit, all of the men are laying there with these "nuns". He figures that he was the only one who slept alone that night!

(/war geek)
  | ¶ 5:35 p.m.

  oops! Resolved: Canada's constitution is the most democratic of the three countries we are studying.

Those of us in Group "A", the affirmative side, have until Monday to post our debate arguments on "WebCT", the service that hosts this type of thing (it's new to me). It occurred to me that we could kinda wait it out and see what other people posted and, if we wanted to, we could basically create a post based on some combination of the other posts. Of course, I will not be doing that, because I want mine to be PERFECT and I would rather create it myself. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to log in and compare my argument to others'. The first girl to post in my "group" has made a little error. Remember, we are comparing how democratic the constitutions are. Two of her sentences begin with "Canada's constitution is the most diplomatic because...".

That made me giggle; we've got a diplomatic constitution.  | ¶ 6:00 p.m.

  the exciting evening of the history geek Last night while I ate my dinner I watched a war movie. It's a documentary piece put together by the Canadian Film Board, with all this original black and white footage of images from World War II. The film series is called Canada at War, so it's giving me a pretty solid view of our role even at the early stages of the war. Other than a couple commercially-produced movies like Schindler's List that I've seen over the years, I really don't know much about the war (or, history in general, for that matter). So I'm totally fascinated, as I mentioned.

One of the cool (but sad) scenes shown was when Germany decided to attack London, sending over fleet after fleet of planes dropping bombs on the city. Apparently Hitler wanted to "crush the spirit of Londoners". So they all gathered in the subway system overnight to sleep - men, women and children, sleeping peacefully, grandmothers knitting casually on the subway platform, as the roar of planes and exploding bombs shakes the city. It was chilling to watch. And apparently, their spirits were NOT crushed.

When I went to bed, instead of reading my current Robert Langdon novel Angels and Demons (I'm almost done), I continued with that great book I got yesterday from the library, Czechoslovakia since World War II. It's really well written, so it plays out like a novel itself. The cabinet members of Czhechoslovakia's government have just convinced Novotny (the leader) that he needs to resign (he was about to initiate a military coup to take over the government by force, but they found out and called him on it!), and they hold these marathon meetings trying to decide who should take over his role. They settle on Dubcek, who is an unexpected choice - to this point he had not demonstrated any great ambition to take a leading role in the government. He is Slovak, too, so he represents the needs of the Slovak side of the country, which struggles to be recognized. Where I am in the story, it is currently January 1968 and the "Prague Spring" is about to begin.... ooh, suspense...(!) (/dork!)  | ¶ 9:19 a.m.

  taking them out is not the same as READING them... I've been slacking off on the updates lately. I kinda feel like I'm in class all the time. And I've stopped coming home for lunch some days, so I'm on campus between classes - having coffee, visiting the library, doing my reading.

I found this awesome book on Czech history leading up to the "Prague Spring" in 1968 and subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union. I'm such a history geek all of a sudden - I'm reading this book like it's a novel, just trying to absorb all the context of the events. It helps when you find books that are really well written, too. I think the field of history has made an effort over time to become more about the stories and context of historical events than just the who-what-when approach. But maybe not.. I'm new to this game.

I needed more sources for my Prague paper, anyway, so I took out five more books from the library, in addition to two general books about World War II, for my other paper. I'm amassing quite the stack of library material here at my place.

I've got a lot on my plate right now. Sorry if this is a repeat of current stresses, but it's kinda for my benefit, too: two history paper outlines and another paper's references (Cognitive) completed by next week; online debate re constitutions of N. American countries by Monday, midterm in Modern Government next Thursday. Ugh. I was thinking of changing my research area for Political Analysis, too, but I don't think I have time to spend researching topics - Bill wants us to commit to something by tomorrow. I guess I'll stick with environment / Kyoto stuff.

On my Cognitive quiz last week I got 14 out of 20. It's worth 5 percent, so 3.5. Not as good as I'd planned, but I'll work my way UP from here.

I'm off to do some yoga; gotta de-compress after this long day.  | ¶ 4:44 p.m.