i hear that mel gibson will be doing the film adaptation of michael hudson's new book.

https://michael-hudson.com/2017/12/he-died-for-our-debt-not-our-sins/

and, why is ottawa so much better?

because it's the only city off the 401, so it's not dealing with all the through traffic.

from ottawa, you have to take a roughly two hour drive up the 417 or a roughly hour drive up the 416 to get back to the 401.

i did a little bit of research on the pollution in windsor and while the city gets a bad reputation in canada from being right across the river from the industry in detroit, the reality is that all of the industrial decline in detroit has reduced the problem to being roughly comparable to toronto.

the idea that windsor has awful air pollution is an out of date notion; nowadays, the fact is that the air quality in windsor is usually comparable to the air quality in the gta, which is not particularly bad in global terms.

the other problem in windsor is that the transportation corridor over the bridge - which is famously the busiest border region in north america - goes right through the city. so, if you're heading to the us, you come off the 401 (the big highway that runs from windsor/detroit, through toronto, and into montreal) and go on to a regular city street for a few kilometres, before you go over the bridge and on to the interstate. the result is trucks idling at streetlights, international traffic stuck in traffic jams, etc. and, if you walk through the area, you can see the smog on the road. they're building a new bridge that should both route the traffic out of the city and prevent it from idling, so that should take another dent out of it.

when i walk down the street, i don't usually get the stench of car fumes - i get the stench of burning tobacco and, more frequently, the smell of burning marijuana. these are different smells. i think the bulk of the actual problem is not coming from cars but from smokers. it's a mix, certainly, but it might be useful for these weather monitoring stations to start measuring second-hand smoke in addition to particulate matter and ozone and nitrogen and sulphur...

the real reason i'm reacting poorly to the air in windsor is less that it's particularly dirty and more that i grew up in ottawa, where the air is unusually clean. that's maybe warped logic, granted. but, short of moving back to ottawa, which i should point out is also growing very rapidly, there might not be a lot i can do about it.

seems like i'm going to lose a full day due to a migraine that knocked me out last night...

it's been roughly a year since my last migraine - i had some headaches in the last apartment from the shs, but they weren't migraines - and this wasn't like those migraines, because i didn't have an aura. it was really pretty weak, as far as migraines go. but, i'm clearly in the hangover stage at this point, and it's hard to describe a 12 hour headache that knocks you out using other terms.

by now, the caulking around the windows should be cured, and it's certainly had a positive effect, primarily in keeping out the smell from next door. there's a kind of background pepper-y smell in my apartment that i can follow down the street that i think is particulate in origin, but i cook with a lot of pepper, and the reality is that it's the same smell i get from opening my cupboard, so i can't be sure. i'd have to take all of the pepper out of the house for a while to test.

the family upstairs seems to be gone for the weekend, and the smokey smell seems to have cleared out with them, indicating that the smoke is in fact coming from the kid. i'm still building a correlation, but the uncertainty is declining dramatically. it doesn't seem like this is the cause.

i had a stiff neck this week from sitting in bed too much and may have just been a little overwhelmed. i'll keep an eye on this. the most likely cause is the pollution, but i can't jump to conclusions, yet - let's see if they end up recurrent or not. and, i'll point out again that there was no aura...

for now, i'm going to just try again: i'm going to get something to eat and see if i can get to working on the court documents afterwards.

the canadian liberal party has a history of supporting orderly migration through careful screening processes.

unlike the united states, there is absolutely no precedent for any political party in canada supporting this kind of a rush at the border, nor is it something that has benefited canada for generations - because it's not something that has happened at all.

what has benefited canada for generations is a very strict immigration policy that puts high priorities on educational background, existing job prospects and an ability to speak the language.

while he appears to be confusing immigration policy with refugee policy on purpose, trudeau is still not in any way articulating a position that is historically associated with canadian liberalism. it is closest to canadian toryism, but is really a position that is most closely associated with the democrats in the united states.

the reason every one wants to live here is because it's so hard to qualify for it; while i would support a schengen-type agreement with the nafta partners, and hope for an orderly extension to the rest of the americas, we should not follow the americans into the errors that they made in allowing for condition-less immigration.

we need to bring back the pearsonian system and stick closer to it.

it's his own policy failures that are at the root of the problem - which have often overruled his party's own historical positions. it's unusual for this to be so localized not just in the pmo, but in the prime minister's personal politics.

he needs to take responsibility for any backlash that is coming, as well as the backlash that has already happened in quebec.

they didn't provide enough resources; they didn't take the situation seriously enough. there have been consequences of this, he hasn't produced policy to address those consequences, and he's going to be held accountable to the people for them - that's how a representative democracy works.

he should be announcing policies to deal with these failures and apologizing for his mistakes, not taunting the opposition and calling them names.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/12/16/trudeau-lashes-out-at-conservatives-over-migration-misinformation.html