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The Citizen, 2003-03-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 2003. PAGE 5. Other Views They’re really feeling no I don’t recall all the comic books I devoured in my misspent youth, but I do remember one of them. It was called Haunted Tales and it specialized in creepy stories calculated to send shivers of dread down impressionable prepubescent spines. I even remember one particular story in Haunted Tales. The first panel showed a close­ up of a delicious looking chocolate bar, still in its shiny wrapper, lying on a dock by a lake. Along comes a middle-aged looking guy with a fishing rod over his shoulder, obviously out for a day of angling. He spies the chocolate bar, picks it up, unwraps it and pops it in his mouth with a contented smile. In the next panel he’s dropped the fishing rod and his eyes are big as golf balls. His mouth is all puckered and distended - and you can see now that there’s...a thin, taut line running from the comer of his mouth, straight across the dock and into the water. The fisherman is on his knees and he’s being dragged - reeled in — inexorably across the dock. The last panel of the story is a close up of the lake surface with just a few bubbles rising and the fisherman’s hat floating beside them. The story was a rather clever, if unlikely morality play designed to make the reader think about angling from a different - angle, as it were. The moral being “What if fish did to us what we do to them?” Except... not. Anybody who’s ever hooked a fish - be it a 60-pound Tyee or a six-inch chub - knows that what you get right from the get-go is A Fight. The fish struggles, resists, tries with ever And now the name-calling starts You can tell an election is coming when politicians start calling each other names and this is starting to happen. The Liberals have been trying to pin the name Say Anything Ernie on Progressive Conservative Premier Ernie Eves on the claim that, because he has reversed some policies his party once held dear, he will say anything to win an election, The premier has responded by gleefully calling Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty “Donald McKwinty,” after a chamber of commerce official introduced him as such at one of its gatherings. Eves wanted to demonstrate McGuinty is so unimpressive that even those charged with introducing him at meetings have difficulty remembering his name. The Liberals have not seen much humour in this and accused Eves of being so bankrupt of policies he has to resort to making fun of his opponent’s name. The Liberals also suggested the Tories may stoop next to making fun of McGuinty’s face, as federal Tories once mocked Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s facial twitch in an election and were roundly rebuked for it, which may be fearing a worst that will not happen. But the Tories did get fairly close to the bone in the 1999 election, when they circulated a news release referring to “Squinty McGuinty,” whom they said had an election platform with blind spots on many issues, including how he would create jobs and balance the budget. Mike Harris, Eves’s predecessor as premier, dubbed the Liberal leader “Six-pack McGuinty,” explaining the Tories had put huge effort into clearing up problems including Arthur Black muscle in its body to shake that hook out of its jaw. Now imagine yourself in place of that fish on the line, with a great big treble hook set deep in your cheek (and imagine that, like a fish, you had no arms to grab the line and relieve the pressure). Would you be shaking your head and bucking your weight against the hook? No. You would be whimpering and mincing and tippy-toeing ever so rapidly in whatever direction the hook was pulling you. That’s because we human beings have oodles of nerve endings in our cheeks. A hook in the cheek would hurt plenty. Whereas fish - at least in the bony cartilage of their mouths - have no such nerve endings. That’s why they can put up a fight when they’re hooked. Now I know I’m going to get letters on this - especially from the PETA folks. PETA - that’s People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - has already spent millions of dollars on a campaign to outlaw angling, which it considers barbaric. All I can say is, save yourself a stamp. Get in touch instead with James D. Rose at the University of Wyoming. He’s a professor of zoology and physiology and he’s been Eric Dowd From Queen’s Park getting the economy working, while McGuinty seemed to think all that was required now was to sit back with a carton of beer. Harris supporters called the Liberal leader “McNasty,” although it could be said the Tories and Liberals were equally short- tempered with each other in a campaign in which McGuinty called Harris a “thug.” Harris also dubbed McGuinty “Mr. No” and “Mr. Negative,” arguing the Liberal leader criticized Tory policies without proposing alternatives, but there was nothing original in this name. New Democrat premier Bob Rae, Harris’s predecessor, called Lyn McLeod, Liberal leader and front-runner for a while in the 1995 election, “Dr. No” on the same grounds. McLeod, who will step down as an MPP when the next election is called, had something of a raw deal, because the Liberal campaign team had decided the party would not reveal policies publicly until the campaign got underway, to avoid opponents criticizing them, and McLeod allowed herself to go along. Rae also pinned a joint label “the twins of doom and gloom” on McLeod and Harris, who was then merely leader of a small, third party in the legislature. Rae explained the two opposition party pain working on the ins and outs of fish neurology for the past three decades. Last month Professor Rose published a study- that compares the nervous systems of fish and mammals. His conclusion? Fish lack the brainpower to sense pain or fear. But a minnow sees a large-mouth bass coming at him and flees - isn’t that fear? No, says Professor Rose, that’s ‘nociception’ - responding to a threatening stimulus. Which he contends is an entirely different kettle of - well, you know. According to Professor Rose’s report, the awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex that fish simply do not possess. So it looks like PETA’s out of luck with their anti-angling crusade - but wait a minute! What about bait? Doesn’t live bait suffer from cruel and unusual punishment? Not necessarily. I remember the time I was ice fishing on a lake north of Thunder Bay. It was bitterly cold and I wasn’t getting a nibble. Just then an old Finlander settles in about 30 yards away, bores a hole in the ice, drops a line in and starts hauling in fish after fish. Finally I couldn’t stand it. I walked over to him and said, “Excuse me, but I’ve been here all day and I haven’t had a bite. You’ve been here half an hour and you’ve got a dozen on your string. What’s your secret?” “Roo raff roo reep ra rurms rarm,” he says. I say, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” “Roo raff roo reep ra rurms rarm”. I say, “Sounds like you’re speaking Finnish - can you tell me in English?” With a look of disgust he spits a slimy brown ball into his mitten and says, “You have to keep the worms warm!” leaders blamed NDP policies for putting the Ontario economy into decline, when almost all jurisdictions had the same problem and a silver lining was already visible, but voters went with the negatives. Rae also named Harris “Mike the Kniie” after the character in the The Threepenny Opera, because of his promises to slash government and taxes, but Harris relished the name. Harris was already calling himself The Taxfighter, claiming to be the only leader seriously interested in cutting taxes, and Rae’s label merely reinforced his image. Tory William Davis, the most durable premier in the last half-century, won a campaign a couple of decades ago by pinning the name Dr. No, at a time when it was more original, on a Liberal leader, Stuart Smith. The cerebral Smith, who was seen often as resembling Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, had got wind of government studies showing Ontario was slipping economically and would soon do the unthinkable and fall behind other provinces in economic growth. The reports had some truth to them, but Davis said Smith was a prophet of doom and gloom and Ontario voters did not want to believe this was happening to their superior province and Smith lost. It was a time name­ calling hurt. Final Thought The v'orld is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. - Ivy Baker Priest Bonnie Gropp The short of it Right ‘versus left I’m reading a book. Nothing new about that. What is new however, is that I’ve already seen the movie. It’s not a practice I follow. Generally it’s my preference to partake of the wonder of words before seeing what Hollywood does with its rewriting, editing, special effects manipulations. Also, because a book is words it can often provide insights into the characters’ thoughts and actions which the visual can’t. There are others who say that reading the book can spoil the movie for them. The reason I think that this doesn’t seem to happen for me is that, despite my love of reading, a book doesn’t really stay with me. At least not completely. Even the ones that consume me are not absorbed so deeply that I remember all the details months later. Thus my curiosity was piqued while reading, when I realized the movie was still so vivid to me I could barely recognize it as the book of the same name. • Now, some of this may be put down to literature’s eloquence, a wealth of words creating pictures and ideas, a rich abundance too plentiful to retain. I however, imagine a short-circuit of some sort in the dominant side of my brain. The right and left sides of our brains work in different ways. We have a dominant side and tend to process information using this. The left side is logical and processes in sequential order. The right side is more visual and processes intuitively. When learning something new, when faced with a difficult or stressful situation we prefer one side over the other. I was first introduced to right brain versus left brain at a seminar in the 1980s. Presented with a picture, I saw a vase. My friend, however, saw two silhouettes in profile. On a verbal quiz I scored seven for right brain and 12 for left. The questions were straightforward and the answers I gave as accurate as I perceived. Yet, the outcome came as a bit of a surprise. Being predominantly left-brain means that I am a fist maker. That I will agree. I’m lost without lists. 1 even have lists for my lists. As well, phonics and language aren’t a problem for the left-brainer, which is true in my case. Also as a left-brain person I am better equipped to learn if the lesson is written out and I can follow through step by step. Being shown is not the answer. (Thus, my confusion over the movie-book situation I mentioned earlier.) There are other things as well that seem to be a little off with this brain of mine. For instance, a left-brain person is able to express themselves. Being as I write, it may come as a surprise *•> people that I don’t always say what I mean. Words are there swimming around in my head but articulating them verbally, not on paper, can be a challenge. Finally, and most puzzling, is the fact that a left-brain person is good at math. Let me say, this subject was and continues to be my nemesis, evil in the form of numbers. Understanding the differences between left and right can aid in learning. We need to develop both sides, but utilizing practical strategies suited to our preference can make learning easier. Unfortunately, it is starting to seem that I literally can’t make up my mind.