I spent this evening at a workshop organized by Kathy Stinson which should serve to get my creative juices flowing. As a result, I missed the 8 p.m. showing of Doctor Who. No matter, though; I caught the Calgary feed at 10 p.m.
So, give me a little time before I do a proper review of The Empty Child. Suffice it to say, I liked it, but it took me a second viewing in order to really appreciate it. I’ll need to think on it some more, and it’s late. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with these tidbits…
Every Day
The City of Yellowknife has cancelled Heterosexual Day.
Councillor Alan Woytuik introduced the proclamation last week in response to a request for the city to proclaim Gay Pride Day.
“I am not anti-gay and I’m not advocating denial of anyone’s rights or promoting discrimination. In fact, my position is just the opposite. I fully support the fundamental principle of democracy that everyone should be treated equal.
Way back when I was a child, I was affronted that I had to get gifts to my parents on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Where the heck was Children’s Day? It wasn’t fair!
To which my parents replied: why, every day was Children’s Day. And, as usual, they were right.
I’ll leave it to you to figure out the parallels.
Tick… Tick… Tick…
From the Washington Post via Tom Tomorrow:
More than a third of the mortgages written in the Washington area this year are a risky new kind of loan that lets borrowers pay back only the interest, delaying for years repayment of any loan principal. Economists warn that the new loans are essentially a gamble that home prices will continue to rise at a brisk pace, allowing the borrower to either sell the home at a profit or refinance before the principal payments come due.
The loans are attractive because their initial monthly payments are tantalizingly low — about $1,367 a month for a $320,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,842 a month for a traditional 30-year, fixed-rate loan. If home prices fall, though, borrowers could lose big.
“It’s a game of musical chairs,” said Allen J. Fishbein, director of housing and credit policy at the Consumer Federation of America. “Somebody is going to have the chair pulled out from under them when they find prices have leveled out and they try to sell, only to find they can’t sell for what they paid for it.”
About 54 percent of home buyers in the District purchased their homes using interest-only loans so far this year, according to LoanPerformance, a San Francisco-based company that tracks loan originations nationwide. About one-third of buyers in Maryland and Virginia are buying with interest-only loans.
Just five years ago, only about 2 percent of home-purchase loans in the Washington area involved interest-only terms.
Not good.
The Left Hand Not Knowing What its Right Hand is Editorializing
Calgary Grit makes note of an interesting editorial by the Globe and Mail that plays down the impact of eight Conservative nominees being activist fundimentalist Christians:
“It is difficult to understand the fuss about Christian activists helping to secure the nominations of at least eight federal Conservative candidates in the next election.”
It was quite a fuss, wasn’t it? Indeed, it made front page news on the… um… Globe and Mail.
You see, this is why there is no such thing as a media conspiracy against any political player in this country. The corporate media just isn’t that organized, or particularly interested in advocating policy to have a consistent bias. Their sole purpose is to make money. And the best way to make money is to make noise, and be as sensational as possible to attract as many eyeballs as possible.
The great shame is that so many of us fall for this hyperbole.