Bricks Without Straw

Here in BC, we have a four-day session of parliament just underway this week, after 265 days without parliament in session. That's right. 265 days. Two. Hundred. Sixty-five. It's nearly a year since parliament was in session. And the only reason for this particular session to be taking place is to pass legislation to permit the government to spend money until the new Liberal leader and NDP opposition leader can be elected at their respective conventions. Not only do we not have a working government, we have neither a leader of the house, nor of the opposition. Of course, "the government" is largely the bureaucracy of public service employees, not the elected officials, who keep doing the day-to-day work of keeping the province running, providing services. But it's very strange to live in a democracy where people elected to represent their constituents can effectively leave the ship uncaptained for so very long. Do we need elected officials at all? Do we

We recently downloaded Animal Kingdom on iTunes. Knowing nothing about the movie, except for critical accolades for performances by its cast, I approached this Australia masterwork with both detached curiosity and unease.

In the recent weeks following my brother's death, I've had some pretty strange dreams, as one would expect, as well as some half-waking notions.

The remarkable events in Egypt leading to the resignation of Mubarak demonstrate boldly what can be accomplished with organized civil disobedience. But we still have to ask what the eventual outcome will be. Martial law and the state of emergency that has been in place in Egypt for decades continues, and will do so until the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces decides how, when, and if a transition to democracy will ultimately take place. It is right to be joyful at the resignation of a dictator. But you can probably count on one hand the number of times in history a peaceful transition to civilian government from a military regime has actually occurred.

Well, this is a first for me. I've resisted blogging for so long, hoping, I guess, that the medium would be just another passing fad. Ah, wrong again, it would seem. Why "Bricks Without Straw"? First, because if there's a hard way to do something, I'll probably find it. You see, in old-time brick-making, you could not make strong bricks without adding organic material like straw. When Pharaoh tells the Israelites they must gather their own straw, and still produce the same output of bricks every day, Moses complains, but the complaint resolves nothing. The idiom " bricks without straw " implies having to do something without appropriate resources. Second, when we were forming Metaformix Information Systems Inc. back in 1999, "Bricks From Straw Software" was one of the proposed names. So, while that wasn't really a saying in its own right, the idea behind it was that having "the right straw" we could help you "make bric