Because it does. Now let’s fix it.

The Trojan Horse is a CBC miniseries in two parts débuting Sunday, 2008.03.30. (It’s the sequel to H₂O [2004].) Starting after 2000 hours Eastern time on that date, I will be writing a superspecial liveblog of the show, which will not be at this address. (I’ve also been Teamade.)

Kottke (for it was he) did the same thing with the most-anticipated-ever episode of Myþbuþterþ. That’s one inspiration – if you want to call it that, since I’m pretty sure Kottke thinks I’m an asshole. I’m doing this mostly as a meta-riposte to Wedgie Fulford, who cannot shut the fuck up about CBC’s anti-Americanism, which, like Communism, he sees everywhere.

“Different show, same message”

Peter Raymont, the executive producer of The Border, has said his show resembles… 24 – “but with a conscience.” You can’t get any more CBC-sanctimonious than that…. The evil deeds of both CSIS and the Americans are frustrated…. This is the third anti-American drama on the CBC schedule this season, the others being Intelligence and H₂O…. All of them depict public-spirited Canadians fighting off the influence of greedy or just plain vile Americans. Apparently, our immigration department’s real enemies aren’t terrorists or smugglers. They’re Americans.

“CBC’s torqued Intelligence” (sic)

Low-life bad guys may shoot each other on the mean streets, but the really bad guys are sitting behind desks [and] we know precisely who those bad guys are: Americans. […] It sounds like the darkest fantasy of a Canadian nationalist. Mary may be devious and greedy for power, but she’s still a patriot. She throws all her resources into the struggle against the American empire. […]

[W]hen it comes to Washington’s power, [Chris Haddock is] addicted to the conventional wisdom of hysterical nationalism. On the question of water rights, for instance, he assumes we all agree that fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and Americans gotta steal our water. It’s their nature.

In the old days, paranoid anti-Americanism at the CBC appeared mostly in news shows and documentaries. That was enough to infuriate some of us. But in recent seasons it’s seeped into drama as well. There’s no question that the CSIS heroes on Intelligence consider the Americans our most dangerous enemies. […]

Conspiracy theorists will say that all this indicates a plot devised by latte-lapping leftists among the filmmakers in Toronto and Vancouver. Unlikely. Their motive is probably pure calculation. Their shows appeal to the anti-American mood that Liberal and NDP politicians, as well as a few editorialists and TV critics, have done their best to foment. They also, I imagine, attract nods of approval from grant-giving Ottawa bureaucrats who consider their product “relevant.” Our TV drama producers have learned at least one rule from American TV: Success begins with an appeal to prejudice.

Here’s to you, Wedgie. Stars and stripes forever!

Just tall and handsome enough, just manly enough, good with his hands, nonjudgemental, with intelligent eyes and a rich sonorous voice, shivering, cold, vulnerable, needy, beaten to shit and crying.

Surely by coïncidence, most of my “friends” as designated “on the Facebook” are bobsledders. Some are Republicans, Christians, Harperites, Monacans, Utahans, Australians, Calgarians, Moroccans, or some combination thereof.
(Incidentally, what is it with Monaco and bobsleigh? In the principality that A.A. Gill derides so much, bobsleigh is to the winter Olympics as equestrian is to the summer.)

A bobsledder is pretty much guaranteed to be a weightlifting sprinter in tip-top condition. The skinniest ones weigh 200 pounds soaking wet in a Speedo, which means that the gold-medal podium at Nagano, where Italy and Canada actually tied for first, groaned under the weight of 830 pounds of bobsledder.

As with sports heavily reliant on equipment, bobsleigh is almost entirely pointless (a plus), and, like car racing, there isn’t much to recommend it as a spectator sport. Nonetheless, nontrivial bobsleigh photography is achievable, as wee Moroccan French Monacan bobsledder Anas Adoui (no relation) demonstrates.

There are barely any big, strong, tall sprinters in the world. You might be some of those, but you need all of them to push a sled. The kind of guy who might be biomechanically suited to bobsleigh is the same kind of guy who is socially more suited to football or hockey (or just spending an hour a half a day in the weight room). Bobsleigh “federations” worldwide are constantly short of athletes.

Are they looking in the wrong place?

In the vein of a previous freakonomics study (does wymmynz body size keep them off male hockey teams?), I wanted to do some research on the following question: Could athletes with certain disabilities succeed in bobsleigh?

On the surface, the answer is yes.

• A single-leg amputee almost couldn’t possibly run fast enough to push a sled. Getting into the sled fast enough would be difficult with a prosthesis, which might just fall off. So let’s eliminate them.
• Paralysis pretty much knocks you out of consideration, too, as would many kinds of cerebral palsy (maybe not upper-limb).
• A single-arm amputee, I contend, could push a bobsleigh – maybe not as brakeman, where you have to hold on to both sides of the back of the sled and pull two cords to stop it, but easily any of the other positions. You’d want to stay on the side of your good arm to reduce torque. Just barely possibly, you could even drive.
• Severe visual impairment knocks you out of contention, but minor visual impairment doesn’t.
• You could probably be stone deaf and still work on the team. There would be some adaptation required at starts, which tend to be cued by sound (i.e., by big, strong 200-pound guys hollering).

If you’re running a bobsleigh team and you’re in dire need of colossi, then you aren’t hiring on the ability to count to 20 on their fingers and toes, or drive a bus, or hum a single jam by the Dave Matthews Band. You’re accustomed to having perfect specimens all around you, but I thought you were hot for performance.

So I started doing research. I have a line on sprint times for any number of relevant disability classes in the Paralympics. To do a reasonable comparison, I needed some kind of clue about the sprint times bobsleigh coaches are looking for – “if you can run the 50 metres in x seconds, we want to talk to you” type of thing. (The recruiting pages I’ve seen – e.g., Bobsleigh Idol™ – aren’t specific enough.)

I sent along various requests, and even got an acknowledgement once. But since then, bupkes.

How am I supposed to solve your problem here if you aren’t gonna help me?

And yes, of course there is such a thing as wymmynz bobsleigh. Wow, do I ever not really care.

(UPDATED)    I have received information that Devlin eBusiness Architects, the winner of the TTC Web-redevelopment contract, may not be in a position to live up to its contractual obligations. This information, from a confidential source, is not verified, and indeed Devlin refused to confirm or deny it. And the claims might or might not be true and might or might not represent a violation of the terms of the TTC contract, especially deliverables.

Because the new TTC site is a high-profile public project from a public body using public funds, clear accountability and transparency are required, while maintaining confidentiality of contract terms. The issue has to be able to withstand public comment.

Of course I endeavoured to verify or disprove these claims. I E-mailed Devlin these questions:

• Were there any firings, terminations, or dismissals at Devlin since the awarding of the TTC contract? In particular, did a creative director fire, terminate, or dismiss staff?
• Did relatively large numbers of other staff, or any staff, leave the company voluntarily? If so, did that happen after other employees were fired, terminated, or dismissed?
• At present, does Devlin have positive cashflow? Does income exceed expenses month-to-month? [I didn’t ask about actual dollar figures.]
• How many full-time front-end coders do you have on staff? Has that number changed since the awarding of the contract? If so, by what percentage or number?
• How many freelancers or contractors are being used on the TTC job, and in what capacities?
• The Web RFP, at §5.2(i), required proponents to submit résumés “for each team member.” Proponents were also required to provide an organization chart naming, at minimum, one each of project manager, senior Web/application architect, Web developer, Web-accessibility expert, tester, and copywriter. Have the identities of persons named in those lists changed since awarding the contract? If so, how many identities have changed?
• At present, is the project under budget, over budget, or exactly at budget to the penny?

A read receipt was issued from a Devlin E-mail account, indicating that the message was opened. But there has been no response. (I gave them a reasonable deadline for response.) Devlin can issue answers to these questions in any reasonable form and I’ll link to them.

I cannot attest to the veracity of my source’s claims. However, the last thing anyone needs is a high-profile contract like this going wrong for any reason.

Update

(2008.03.28) Gee, guess who’s looking for a technical lead/architect (sic) and a bog-standard Web developer.