This afternoon, while I'm ironing a shirt, the phone rings.

As is my custom, I answer it.

"Mr. ... Dusky?" the unfamiliar voice asks, followed by, "Did I pronounce that correctly?"

I correct him. He goes into his spiel, telling me how his company has saved consumers hundreds of dollars per year on their phone bills and blah, blah, blah ...

I roll my eyes, sigh and put the phone down. I go back to ironing my shirt -- a process that takes several minutes to complete.

I go back to hang up the phone. Before I do, I inexplicably say, "hello?"

The guy is still there! "Mr. Doskoch!" he exclaimed -- with no small degree of relief.

I pulled the trigger and hung up.

I'm in the process of looking for new digs. I have not looked at newspaper classifieds, and the online versions I've seen are terrible compared to Craigslist.

You can add photos to a Craigslist ad, offer up an extensive description and a Google Map link.

If someone is trying to BS people or scam them, they will be called on it. And there are occasional rants.

While the search utility could be better, I'm amazed that it's still better than online newspaper offerings.

And it's free.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are rising faster than anticipated, finds a new study. Oh, and ocean absorption of CO2 is falling and sea levels are rising faster than expected.

From an AP story on crumbled political marriages, via CTV.ca:

Carlos Menem: The Argentine president locked his wife, Zulema Yoma de Menem, out of the presidential residence in 1990 after she repeatedly assailed his policies. On one occasion while he was away, she invited journalists over for a barbecue to criticize his leadership.

Today peaked out at 25 degrees Celsius -- not bad for Oct. 23, and according to the Toronto Star, a record. Sunday was also a record.

A good day for patios, a cone of Greg's sublime roasted marshmallow ice cream and an extended hike through High Park.

However, it really shouldn't be this warm at this time of year. The normal high should be more like 12 C.

In the Conservative election platform of 2006, the party promised more openness and transparency in government.

That was then, this is now.

Remember the relentless pounding that the Drudge Report gave to U.S. President Bill Clinton during the worst of the Monica Lewinsky affair?

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has put that behind her and thrown some bones to one of the most influential political news outlets on the Web -- the Drudge Report.

An NYT editorial:

In a rare moment of bipartisan sanity, the House voted 398 to 21 for a much-needed measure that would help protect reporters from being forced to reveal confidential sources in federal court.

Americans who are concerned that proliferating subpoenas are threatening the First Amendment and the public’s right to know should thank Rick Boucher, Democrat of Virginia, and Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, for sponsoring the bill, and John Conyers Jr., the Judiciary Committee chairman, and Roy Blunt, the Republican whip, for steering it through the House.

Now it’s up to the Senate. The Judiciary Committee passed a somewhat watered-down version of the House bill a few weeks ago. The Senate bill’s champions — Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Patrick Leahy, Judiciary Committee chairman — now need to persuade Harry Reid, the majority leader, to move the issue to the floor.

Bush administration officials have raised the threat of a presidential veto. The administration’s distaste for a federal shield bill — and its claims that it threatens national security — should be seen as just another extension of its obsession with secrecy. Hardly a total shield, the measure is crafted to balance the legitimate needs of law enforcement with the public’s right to know and the potential harm to news-gathering when reporters are required to disclose confidential sources. The House and Senate versions allow for disclosure when truly necessary to protect the country.

Michael Mukasey, the president’s nominee for attorney general, suggested last week that it would be better just to fix the Justice Department’s guidelines on this issue. Those guidelines apply only to subpoenas from the Justice Department. They do not address the large threat to robust reporting about government and corporate wrongdoing when reporters are forced to reveal confidential sources in civil litigation or cases involving other executive agencies or a special prosecutor.

If Mr. Bush still has doubts, he should remember that 398-to-21 House vote before lifting his veto pen.

In a Reason article entitled Amusing Ourselves to Depth, San Francisco writer Greg Beato asks whether the Onion is America's most intelligent newspaper (thanks, Kevin S.!).

I arrived at the Bathurst subway station at about 5 p.m. on Sunday, exiting just in time to catch the end of the 2007 Toronto Zombie Walk.

Many people took this event very seriously. Either that, or they are fortunate enough to have movie make-up artists as friends! Here's a Flickr page to see what I mean (behold the sample image to the right).

Anyway, after running a few errands, I went to catch a southbound streetcar at the stop by Honest Ed's. A constant stream of the undead passed by me.

One blonde little girl was dressed up in head-to-toes goth gear with light zombie makeup. She resented the digital camera beeping and clicking that her photogenicity had inspired. "Hey, no pictures!" she snarled at a few people. A few remarked on the cuteness of her costume. "These are her real clothes," explained the equally goth-looking mother.

Another little blond girl looked considerably less undead, but was still in zombie character. She liked attention and was having a great time attacking passersby, nipping at their pantlegs.

There's a used bookstore close to the stop. I went to window-shop while waiting for the streetcar, the moans and grunts of the parading brain-munchers providing the aural backdrop.

When I walked back to the stop, the littlest zombie -- arms raised, teeth bared -- decided to attack moi.

"Whoa! You don't want bite me," I told her. She came to a complete halt and awaited further explanation.

"I'm a Frankenstein," I told her as her innocent little face stared upwards. "And when zombies bite us, we get mad and eat the zombies."

The parents played along. "Did you hear that?" the kneeling mom told the daughter, both hands on her child's shoulders. "He's a zombie eater!"

I nodded at the kid in grim confirmation.

A look came over the tot's face that suggested she now thought she was in way, wa-a-a-y over her head ("A zombie eater?!?! Nobody said anything about zombie eaters. WTF?!?!").

However, lest you think I traumatized her for life, she was back to happily attacking the living within minutes.

PS

A zombie couple shambled by me before the attack. "Brains?" the guy asked me.

"You don't want mine. It's toxic," I deadpanned, eliciting some chuckles.

My alternate take would have been this: "I'm an an American Republican who thinks George W. Bush is the greatest president ever."

Now, if some zombie really wants to bite into that brain ...

PPS

An extremely visual event like this, and the only place I can a photo gallery is on Flickr (TheStar.com only had one picture). Score one for user-generated content.

Prominent Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid offers some thoughts on what the bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto and her followers means to democratic development and stability in Pakistan. The short answer? Nothing good. Nothing at all.

From the NYT blurb: A political meltdown in Pakistan, where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play, could be a disaster for the Bush administration.

How about the rest of us?

From the BBC:

Shabelle has criticised both government and opposition

The acting manager of the independent Somali radio station, Shabelle, has been killed in Mogadishu.

Bashir Nor Gedi was attacked on Friday night outside his home by unknown militia armed with pistols, station employees and relatives said.

Last month, Bashir and 18 colleagues were arrested and questioned for hours by government soldiers.

The same month, government troops besieged and fired on the station and ordered Shabelle to stop broadcasting.

After a two-week closure, the station resumed broadcasts on 3 October.

From the BBC:

A quarter of China's greenhouse gas emissions are produced making goods exported to the West, a report from a UK government-funded body has found.

Climate research body the Tyndall Centre, using 2004 data, estimates the emissions are double those of Britain for the same period.

It wants rich nations to take the lead in cutting the pollution they cause.

In the last year, UK imports from China rose by 10%, nearing 6.5 million tonnes, according to a recent study.

From the BBC:

Lucky Dube pictured on his most recent album, Respect Lucky Dube on music

Fans across the world are mourning the South African reggae star, Lucky Dube, who has been shot dead.

He was dropping his teenage son and daughter off in a Johannesburg suburb when he was attacked by car thieves.

Local radio stations have been flooded with tearful callers expressing outrage at the murder and renewing demands that the authorities act to curtail crime.

South Africa's leader paid tribute to him and called on people to "confront this terrible scourge of crime".

Alongside Bob Marley, Lucky Dube was thought of as one of the great reggae artists - singing about social problems.

He was also one of the apartheid regime's most outspoken critics.

I walked to the subway sans jacket.

And at 5:45 p.m., I basked in the 22-degree temperatures on the final approach to my home.

Is this a great climate or what?

From the BBC:

Swiss voters go to the polls on Sunday after a general election campaign marred by riots and accusations of racism.

The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), already the largest party in the parliament, is leading in the opinion polls and now expects at least 27% of the vote.

But the party's campaign has focussed almost entirely on immigrants.

Its controversial poster, showing three white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland, brought sharp criticism from the UN's special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene.

An even more graphic SVP video contrasts the "heaven" of a Switzerland in which trains run on time and families hike in the Alps, with the "hell" of veiled Muslim women, immigrant teenagers attacking Swiss girls and black men standing idly in the street.

Jon Stewart has signed a two-year extension as host of The Daily Show.

TDL now has its own website with all show video dating back to 1999.

The Matador club dodged an expropriation bullet on Tuesday. The Toronto Parking Authority backed off.

Here's the take of John Barber, The Globe and Mail's Toronto columnist:

The decision will permit the beloved booze can to decline into the mud without civic intervention, unless and until somebody discovers a positive way to save it for sure.

That's possible. The TPA once bought the Royal Cinema on College Street, one of the last neighbourhood movie houses in Toronto, hoping to turn it into a garage. Local protest forced a change in plans, and the Royal has re-emerged better than ever, adding state-of-the-art digital editing services by day to the usual evening repertory. It's a classic Jane Jacobs success story. So there's hope yet for the Matador.

In the meantime, the sober Torontonian is left wondering how such an obscure public body ever contemplated taking such Draconian action against a private, albeit shady, business. How can creating parking spaces in a city that officially discourages such development be considered a public good, one so desirable as to justify expropriation? Or is the parking issue just a beard to disguise stealthy gentrification?

Just imagine College St. without the Royal. I would argue that it wouldn't be the hot strip that it is right now had the TPA originally gotten its way.

Barber is right. Destroying a cool old building like the Matador for parking makes no sense -- unless the point would be to sell the land to a developer at some future point.

From AP via CTV.ca:

A quarter of Germans believe there were positive aspects to Nazi rule, according to a poll published Wednesday -- a finding that comes after a popular talk show host was fired for praising Nazi Germany's attitude toward motherhood.

Pollsters for the Forsa agency, commissioned by the weekly magazine Stern, asked whether National Socialism also had some "good sides (such as) the construction of the highway system, the elimination of unemployment, the low criminality rate (and) the encouragement of the family.''

Forsa said 25 per cent responded "yes'' -- but 70 per cent said "no.''

Forty and 50-something Germans tended to be noticeably less nostaglic than Germans aged 60 or older.

CBC.ca has a panel discussion going on the future of news. It's going on right now, and I mean right now. The live stream ends at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Here's the CBC.ca blurb:

Internet utopians and cautionary critics alike agree that citizen journalism in its many forms will define the future of news. Rapidly changing technology has already changed the ways citizens consume media and how the media communicates information. But just what that future will look like, and how well it will serve the public interest, is still up for debate.

On Wednesday, October 17, panelists Andrew Keen (Cult of the Amateur), Leonard Brody (NowPublic.com) and Rahaf Harfoush (Wikinomics researcher) delve into the future of news. CBC Radio's Brent Bambury moderates the discussion.

I'm not sure if the stream will be archived. If so, I'll make some notes.

From the BBC:

Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman was jailed for four years

Bloggers are now finding themselves prey to censorship from repressive governments as much as journalists in traditional media, a report says.

Reporters Without Borders' annual study of press freedom says China is one of the worst offenders, having imprisoned 50 people for postings on the internet.

The report says governments realise the internet is now a key tool in promoting democracy and are moving to curb it.

Eritrea was ranked bottom on overall press freedom by the pressure group.

The African nation took the 169th slot on the sixth annual worldwide press freedom index, behind North Korea at 168th and Turkmenistan at 167th.

Here's the RSF news release on world press freedom.

O Canada

We finished in 18th place, although Canada and Germany are the only two G8 countries in the top 20.

Here's a Canada-specific report.

From print, according to this BizReport.com story:

A joint poll from Doremus and Financial Times indicates that online news sources come in second to print periodicals. Newspapers, trade journals and business magazines as well as "leisure" magazines are the preferred source of information.

Here is what the executives said. Of those who responded to the poll 73% said that print was not becoming obsolete and 59% said they trusted print more than online publications. Roughly 60% said they turned to print when they wanted in-depth information. Those polled also said they paid more attention to ads in print rather than online ads.

The Globe and Mail is less than impressed with the Harper government's apparently aborted plan to spend $2M on its own communications centre.

The government is being less than forthcoming as to when the project was shelved (BTW, the Star received documents about the project Thursday night).