Man, even as we get towards the downslope of the pandemic in North America, the hits keep on coming. The brutal heat out west sparked a fire thunderstorm, something that I did not know could happen. No rain, just lightning sparking fire. It wiped out a town that had just set the Canadian record for high temperature. And climate change is only going to get worse--with droughts out west, a real water crisis is emerging, there will be more fires, and people are dying just due to the heat. At the same time, the bill has come due for GOP domination of court selection. This week's decision to further gut the Voting Rights Act will let stand all kinds of shenanigans by the GOP to suppress the vote AND change who decides elections--Republican legislators, not voters. Yet, the Dems still can't get their act together--Sinema and Manchin (along with Feinstein and some others) are entirely too willing to let this happen. It drives me crazy that the crisis alarm is blaring, and these politicians are letting this all happen. Of course, even if they were to pass a new Voting Rights Act, Alito and pals are likely to gut it. Up here, in Canada, it was a very sad Canada Day, as what Canadians should have known has become obvious to all--that the Residential Schools were concentration camps for Indigenous kids, complete with disease-ridden housing and abusive guards priests.
And yet more death. Mat McCubbins was a prof at UCSD when I was there. I didn't take any classes from him as I was avoiding all American Politics stuff. Too bad as the approach he helped to develop and promote--principal-agency theory--has become one that I have been leaning on quite a bit the past decade or so. Mat was a powerful force in the department. He helped shape it, and he definitely made a huge impact on his students. I remember him doing a great deal of pitching to get his students jobs. My only real experience with him was the football games we played a couple of years around the Super Bowl--grad students versus Mat and his bigger, more physical friends. But I got a lot through osmosis at the time as his students gave me much feedback on my work, and I learned from what Mat had to say at job talks and the like. He moved from UCSD, but he made a lasting impression. My condolence to his family and to his students.
The Canadian civ-mil story got messier. The Acting Chief of Defence Staff announced he was going to keep the head of the navy on despite the latter's poor judgment in playing golf with the disgraced and currently being investigated former CDS. The A/CDS, General Eyre, explained that we can't fire everyone and that we need to have some proportionality. I see the challenge here--that there needs to be consequences but also there needs to be an environment where people who make mistakes can learn and improve. Zero tolerance, no discretion is a dumb, cowardly way to go that often causes much more harm. When asked, both Deputy Minister Freeland and Prime Minister Trudeau criticized the decision as if Eyre was off on his own, making shit up. I can guarantee that Eyre consulted widely including with the Minister of National Defence. So, if Freeland and Trudeau have a problem with this, they should talk to MND Sajjan. Sajjan hasn't said he was consulted but that he stands by Eyre. Which is pretty weak. He should make clear he owns this decision, but perhaps Sajjan still does not understand what his job entails.
So, how do we manage to get through this? Focusing on the positive, I guess. Thinking about the things one can control. Taking some solace in the silly stuff. The best news on the home front is that on Thursday Mrs. Spew and I will be "fully vaxxed" meaning that we had two doses (AZ and Moderna) and two weeks. Which will then mean arranging long-deferred dentistry, a haircut, movies for me (my wife will wait on that a bit longer), and more outings including some patio dining. The number of new cases in Ottawa has been in the single digits this week. So, I look forward to some drinks with friends soon.
Also, ultimate! With Ontario moving to stage 2, we can now return to the fields. I may have overextended myself by signing up for three leagues--playing three games a week--but I was not sure whether any of the three were going to work out. The Sunday late morning league will be a small affair with two dozen or so players, all "Master" or "Grandmaster". To be qualified for the former, men have to be over 33 and women over 30 and for the latter, men over 40 and women over 37 (the idea is not that women age faster than men but they tend to be fewer of them, I am guessing). Yes, there is such a thing as Great Grandmaster--for guys over 50 and women over 47--but we had a hard enough time getting 26 people together this summer with the lower age cutoff. I know more of the older players so that makes it more fun. Many are still quite fast, but not quite as many rabbits. And generally a high skill level. The two other leagues are open, so I will be playing against men and women of all ages. My wife is wondering if I will make it through the summer with my hamstrings and achilles still attached. We shall see, but it will be a short summer session as we are starting late. Expect more frisbee talk and pics in the weeks ahead.
The other bit of good news was that it was a good writing week. One co-author finished off our revisions of a paper, so that is now in the hands of the reviewers. I met with Dave and Phil for the big project, and we figured out our July division of labor. This meant me revising our paper with the two of them working on the first two chapters of the book. I made a lot of progress swapping out the case studies that had been in the paper and putting in two others. The advantage of having 15 or so case studies with most nearly or fully written up is that is not hard to plug and play. The aim is to get the article out this month and to have a draft of the book by the end of the summer. Alas, summer is now about half over (for those of us who stop teaching in early April).
Time to write a promotion to full letter, so enjoy your weekend. May the Fourth be fire-free.
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