Time Immortal

One really just has to love Andrew Coyne’s way with words as he begins his second day of live-blogging the BCHRT show trial of Maclean’s magazine.

It looks like things have gotten off to a good start, and it appears that someone thought to spare Mr. Coyne any further Blackberry thumb by setting him up with EVDO.

9:32 AM Habemus dongle! The good folks at Rogers — wonderful people, never said a bad word about them — have kitted me out with some sort of external modem thingie, so I will not be forced to type with my thumbs today. KDO, I don’t know how you do it!

9:34 AM The tribunal enters. There’s a little ritual that plays out each time: the two contending sides, and some of the spectators, rise, as you would for a real judge in a real court. The rest of us stay seated, in silent protest.

9:36 AM Faisal Joseph up for the complainants. He’s promising to treat us to a tour of some of the seamier parts of the blogosphere. No guilt like guilt by association. He dumped a bunch of material on the Maclean’s side only last night — and apparently some more stuff this morning — which would ordinarily be out of order but not, as by now you will have guessed, here.

9:40 AM Khurrum Awan back on the stand. Joseph entering a Sept 2006 Ottawa Citizen poll in evidence, showing that two in five Canadians back racial profiling. Aha, clearly the evil hand of Steyn at work: he’s already influencing public opinion even before the Maclean’s piece appeared!

Whoops - not a poll, just a clipping of a Doug Fisher column. (Doug Fisher!? I thought he’d retired by then?) The panel is solemnly studying it… And studying it…. And studying… Now they’re going to “retire” to consider it. In this case that means actually leaving the room — as often as not they just kind of swivel round in their chairs and put their heads together, like kids sketching out a football play, though I’m willing to guess the other two go along with whatever the chair, alpha-commissioner Heather MacNaughton, says.

9:53 AM I remain impressed with Steyn’s ability to influence opinion even in advance of publication. I admit this seems implausible. However, we must always remember, good people of Salem, that when when it comes to witches, all things are possible, natural and supernatural…

As with yesterday, just keep clicking ‘REFRESH’ until the buzzer sounds.

Update: More goodness:

1:42 PM…And we’re back. The tribunal has decided to admit the blogs. The whole wide internet is their domain! They can’t hear complaints about blog posts, but they can take them into consideration in assessing questions of “impact.”

Mind you, having admitted them, the tribunal is surprised to discover it hasn’t got ‘em. The printouts, Faisal Joseph informs the panel, are “five minutes away.” Not to self: perform Google Maps search on “Kinko’s.”

To add to the sense of general chaos: the tribunal cannot as yet provide counsel with recordings of the proceedings, as apparently the microphone used has been picking up conversations between counsel. Just another day in Mayberry.

My God but this is a farce.

Update - When Nature Calls: Ezra Levant is chronicling this travesty live as well. He’s doing a more comprehensive analysis, especially of poor Mr. Awan’s having been exposed as a liar.

Update Jr.: Welcome, Steynians!

Bus driver chooses instructions from GPS unit over bridge height-limit warning signs — ends up shaving the top two feet off of most of his bus.

Chesterton once noted, I believe, that if people stop believing in God, they’ll believe in anything. I haven’t the first clue about the bus driver’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), but I do happen to think that our society has gotten…a lot more credulous, especially where technology is concerned. Heck, it’s gotten to the point where people are willing to trust the little Garmin box sitting on their dashboard over the road signs that have been in place for twenty, thirty, or forty years.

I remember when Google Maps first launched — it took them over a year to finally sort out which streets in Edmonton’s downtown area were one-way streets, and another few months to sort out which directions those one-ways went. Even now, when I use Google to find directions, I tend to take the results as only a rough guideline; the reality on the ground may be a very different thing than what the picture on the screen suggests, and on a long-distance trip I need to be able to adjust for that when and if it happens.

Anyone want to bet that a decade ago, before GPS units became commonplace, that this bridge that the bus hit saw hardly any overhead impacts in a typical year?

A useful site that uses Google Maps as its tech base, and then overlays information in the news about terror attacks on it. It updates every 300 seconds or so. Very cool, if somewhat sobering.

What’s interesting to note is that while the whole world is indeed affected by acts of terrorism which get displayed on the map (there was even a recent incident in Prince George, B.C., in which a drunken man hijacked a bus with five passengers), there is a palpable difference in the “quality” of the incidents in, say, North America versus those in the Muslim world. The most violent incidents are, obviously, found in the latter.