Author: jasonloch

Thoughts on finishing Merlin

The Physicist and I finished watching Merlin this evening, and I have to say, I wasn’t a fan of the series finale.

My biggest gripe is that so many people spent the finale holding the Idiot Ball. Why was Gwaine stupid enough to spill state secrets to some cheap doxy he’d just met? Why the hell didn’t Merlin ask the Dragon for help earlier? Why did Percival and Gwaine think that they had any hope of bringing down a powerful sorceress on their own? The answer, of course, is that they had to set up Arthur’s death, but they still made the characters seem woefully stupid.

I think it also sucks that we never got to see the promised golden age of Albion. Throughout the entire series, we’ve been told that Merlin is destined to help Arthur unite the kingdoms and bring about an age of wonder, but it never happens. All we get are some passing references to a few years of prosperity occur in between seasons 4 and 5, and the show ends with Merlin being consigned to a rather lonely existence as he waits for his boyfriend to come back from the dead. This makes the whole series seem futile.

It also doesn’t help that season 5 as a whole was rather lackluster. While it was nice that they finally moved away from the rigidly episodic format of the earlier seasons, they frittered away too much time on inane side plots like Evil!Gwen. I also missed the lighthearted tone of the earlier seasons. What is it with campy, fluffy shows going all dark and gritty as they go on? Xena and Buffy did the same thing, and I think it usually hurts the show.

I did appreciate the fact that Arthur’s character finally got to develop in season 5. In the early seasons, they had a nasty habit of hitting the Reset Button every time he learned a lesson, but towards the end he finally got to grow and mature. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Merlin. I suppose one could argue that he’s a bit harsher in season 5, but I would’ve liked to have seen more pronounced development. It was particularly annoying that, even at the very end, he was still blurbling about how his destiny was to serve Arthur. I think it would have been much cooler if Merlin had outed himself as a sorcerer before the final episode. It would have been neat to see Arthur come to grips with that in normal circumstances instead of the deathbed acceptance we got.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of season 5, I thought the way they handled Mordred’s betrayal sucked. Having him ragequit Camelot over some chick who’s never been seen or mentioned before was just stupid. In the episode, he kept claiming that they were besties from way back, but it would have been nice if they’d done a better job of working that particular relationship into the plot.

Despite my complaints about the end, I have to say that I enjoyed Merlin overall. It’s not going to go down as one of my all-time favorite shows, but it was fun to watch. Colin Morgan and Bradley James are both fine actors (Morgan did a particularly nice job in the finale—those were some heavy scenes, yet he never seemed overwrought or melodramatic) and they had great chemistry together. With any luck, they’ll collaborate again at some point.

Datamining Reaper of Souls

A version of Reaper of Souls, the Diablo III expansion pack, has been leaked and subsequently datamined by eager fans. Now the results have to be taken with a heaping grain of salt because RoS is still a long ways from release, but there are some interesting tidbits nonetheless. If you want to experience RoS as a wide-eyed virgin, I suggest you skip this post. That being said, I’m not going to discuss anything too spoilery (I’m not going to talk about new lore or plot points).

By User:Holek (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Blizzard has already said that the existing five classes will get an overhaul in RoS, but I was a little bit surprised at some of the changes they’re contemplating. For example, the Wizard might become more of an elementalist like the Sorceress in Diablo II. The Arcane Orb runes Arcane Nova, Tap the Source, and Celestial Orb could end up being replaced by Spark, Scorch, and Frozen Orb (which do lightning, fire, and cold damage, respectively), while Magic Missile’s Penetrating Blast and Attunement runes might be replaced by Conflagrate and Glacial Spike (which, as you probably guessed, do fire and cold damage). Even the ever-popular Spectral Blade could get an elemental overhaul, with Deep Cuts being replaced by Flame Blades and Impactful Blades becoming Ice Blades.

Some of these new runes also seem to impart an elemental buff of sorts. Each enemy you kill using Flame Blades will apparently increase the damage of your fire spells by 1% over 5 seconds, while Spark does something similar for lightning spells. Right now, elemental damage in D3 is strictly cosmetic (except for cold damage, which can slow/freeze enemies), but designer Travis Day has indicated that Blizzard wants to give elemental attacks unique properties once more.

The increased emphasis on elemental attacks is interesting because, when the Wizard was first announced, the D3 team said that they wanted to move away from the whole ‘elemental magic user’ paradigm in order to differentiate her from the Sorceress. I’d be curious to know why they changed their mind. My guess is that it ultimately boils down to build diversity. By differentiating the various types of damage and offering buffs, Blizzard can theoretically give players more tactical choices. While some people will undoubtedly gripe that they are rehashing the Sorceress, I think the changes have the potential to make the Wizard an even more enjoyable character to play.

The datamining has also revealed a lot of promising-looking side quests. It looks like the followers will finally get the unique missions that were promised when they were first revealed, and there are also a number of challenges that seem reminiscent of Torchlight II’s Phase Beast portals. I’m also intrigued by the quests that are identified as “OpenWorld_Tutorial.” It would be nice if they had a mode where you could just explore instead of having to repeat the same quests time and time again, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

As I mentioned earlier, all this information is highly speculative, and it’s virtually certain that some or all of the things I’ve mentioned won’t appear in the final game. If there’s one thing that D3C’s development has taught us, it’s that Blizzard loves to change their minds!

RIP Barbara Mertz

Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters) has passed away after a long battle with cancer. Despite earning a PhD in Egyptology from one of the best programs in the entire world, the gender mores of the 1950s prevented her from finding work as an Egyptologist.

In a classic example of making lemonade out of lemons, she turned to writing fiction. Mertz was a prolific author who wrote over 50 books in genres ranging from popular Egyptology to romance. She’s probably best known for her Amelia Peabody series of mysteries, which she published under the pseudonym of ‘Elizabeth Peters.’ Although the Peabody books were set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main character’s passion for Egyptology let Mertz put her academic background to good use.

 

Mertz was a first-class writer, and she will be sorely missed.

As for those learned scribes. . . it has come to pass that their names will endure forever, although they are gone, having completed their lives. . . they made heirs for themselves of the writings and books … which they made…. Their… memorial tablets (are) covered with dust, their chapels forgotten. But their names are pronounced because of these books of theirs. . . more profitable is a book than a graven tablet, than a chapel-wall well built. . . a man has perished, and his corpse has become dust. . . but writings cause him to be remembered in the mouth of the story teller.

-Papyrus Chester Beatty IV

 

Grammarly review

Recently, the good folks at Grammarly were kind enough to invite me to review their their product. In case you haven’t heard of it, Grammarly is an online “writing-enhancement platform” that offers proofreading and plagiarism-checking capabilities.

Grammarly is simple to use. You just paste or upload your text and click the review button (though you also have the option of choosing from several different standards of review, including business, technical, and casual). When it has finished its review, your writing is given a numerical score (100 is the best) and then it takes you through the piece line by line to show you where it thinks you goofed.

I spent a great deal of time playing around with Grammarly, and I used samples from many different sources. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that I can’t recommend Grammarly since it’s bedeviled by false positives and bizarre suggestions.

Grammarly’s commonly confused words checker is particularly inept. It wanted me to change ‘seat’ to ‘set’ in the following sentence: “The Green Party has given a seat to London Assembly member Jenny Jones….” It also thought that ‘culled’ should be ‘called,’ and ‘polity’ should be ‘policy.’

The spellchecker is similarly dodgy. It flagged ‘unbeliever’ and ‘China’ as misspelled words! I suspect punctuation might have had something to do with it: ‘unbeliever’ was originally in quotes, while ‘China’ originally had an apostrophe and an ‘s’ at the end. But a program that gets confused by basic punctuation doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Grammarly’s grammar checker also got tripped up on a number of occasions. It flagged the word ‘have’ in the following sentence: “A total of 30 new peers have been appointed…” Grammarly argued that the subject of the sentence was a singular or uncountable noun and therefore it did not agree with the present tense verb ‘have.’ The original sentence was correct, however. ‘Total’ can take either a plural or a singular verb depending on context: if it’s preceded by ‘the,’ it’s singular; if it’s preceded by ‘a,’ it’s plural. Here endeth the lesson.

Grammarly is not without its benefits, though. Having multiple standards of review is helpful, although I wish that I had more control over what it was looking for. The ‘creative’ standard seemed to work best for fiction, but it’s a barebones evaluation. It doesn’t flag passive voice or sentences that begin with conjunctions, and while those things are arguably less of an issue in creative writing, it would be nice if you could choose to include them in a creative-level review.

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker also seems to work reasonably well. When I used articles that I’ve published online,  each one was flagged because of its similarities with the published version. One cool thing is that Grammarly will compose a citation in each of the standard styles (e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) that you can use to cite the work. It’s a rather handy feature if, like me, you hate formatting bibliographies.

Alas, these pluses don’t outweigh the minuses. Wading through a slew of false positives and erroneous suggestions gets old fast. Even when Grammarly got things right, I didn’t find it all that helpful (I don’t need to spend $29.95 a month to find conjunctions at the beginnings of sentences!). Until they fine-tune things, you’re probably better off sticking with MS Word’s spelling and grammar checkers followed by old-fashioned human proofreading.

Cyberthuggery

Polygon has posted an interesting article about the growing number of video game designers who are being harassed by players.

The article makes for sobering reading, but I can’t say I’m surprised. When I was following the development of Diablo III, I was shocked at how vitriolic the “fans” could be. Whenever Blizzard announced something remotely controversial, there would inevitably be a steady stream of bile directed toward the developers, particularly Jay Wilson. After reading some of the comments, you’d think that the design team’s decisions were going to echo for all eternity. Reading the comments on a Diablo fansite soon became a surefire way to lower my faith in humanity.

The reality, of course, is that a computer game is just an elaborate string of ones and zeroes. Even if they had totally fucked-up the game, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Sure, spending $50 on a piece of shit would have been annoying, but life would have gone on. It’s not worth being miserable over, nor is it worth trying to make someone else miserable.

The sad thing is that cyberthuggery can have a chilling effect on developer/fan interaction. There comes a point where even the thickest-skinned person will say “enough is enough” and either step away from social media entirely or retreat behind a PR stockade. Thus, the whole community ends up losing.

The Queen and the constitution

Whenever there is a high-profile royal event such as a birth or a wedding, it invariably generates a wide spectrum of reactions. Most are usually positive, but there will always be some people who feel compelled to voice their displeasure. Some of these people clearly dwell among the lunatic fringe (such as the commentator, who shall remain nameless and linkless, who wants the Royal Family imprisoned for “crimes against humanity”), while others just don’t understand the monarchy’s role in the British constitution. Many of these people like to claim that the Queen doesn’t actually do anything, as if her entire life has been spent sitting around Buckingham Palace eating bonbons and watching Coronation Street while cashing hefty checks from the taxpayer.

In reality, of course, the monarchy is an integral part of the British constitution. The Queen’s duties fall into two main categories: those she undertakes in her capacity as head of state, and those she undertakes in her capacity as head of the nation.

Her head-of-the-nation duties are probably the most visible aspect of the monarchy’s work. They include the endless parade of ribbon cuttings, hospital visits, school visits, and ship christenings. While these things have no constitutional importance, it would be wrong to dismiss them out of hand as unimportant. They are a way to highlight local achievement and support worthy causes. In a way, it’s like a non-partisan version of our president’s celebrated bully pulpit. From the British perspective, the Royal Family is uniquely well suited to this task because, unlike a politician, they don’t have political baggage. Here in Wisconsin, for example, Governor Walker is booed and heckled even when undertaking purely ceremonial duties.

Although arguably less prominent in the public’s mind, the Queen’s head-of-state duties are her raison d’être. The most visible example is probably the State Opening of Parliament, but most of her constitutional work is done behind the scenes. She summons and prorogues Parliament. She makes a dizzying array of appointments, ranging from the Prime Minister to Church of England parish priests. There’s also lots and lots and lots of reading. In addition to briefings from the British government, she also receives regular communications from the 15 other independent realms of which she is Monarch. By all accounts, the Queen takes this aspect of her job very seriously. There’s an anecdote about how, during his weekly audience with her, Winston Churchill was once caught flat-footed when the Queen wanted to discuss an obscure Foreign Office telegram that Churchill hadn’t bothered to read. When he returned to Number 10, he ordered his Private Secretary to make him read everything!

The Queen essentially does a lot of the same things that our president does, though there’s one key difference: she is supposed to act on the advice of the government of the day rather than her own personal whims. However, that convention is counterbalanced by one that gives the Queen three key rights in relation the government: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn.

Besides the convention mentioned above, there are actually few formal limits on the Queen’s power. In the US, we enshrined the notion checks and balances in our written constitution. If Obama vetoes a bill, Congress can override his veto. If he nominates an unsuitable candidate for high office, the Senate can refuse its advice and consent. But there are no such limitations on the Queen’s power. If she were to refuse Royal Assent to a bill, there’s no mechanism for Parliament to override her. Similarly, Parliament has no formal say on the majority of royal appointments. In the absence of formal checks and balances, Britain has developed informal ones.

Because of the limitations on her power, many people (both in Britain and the US) assume that the Queen is little more than a figurehead without any influence over political affairs. But since her interactions with the government are totally confidential, it’s hard to measure the extent of her influence. However, Anne Twomey, a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney Law School, has managed to unearth some tantalizing tidbits about the Queen’s activities in the political sphere.

In 1979, the government of the Australian state of New South Wales decided to introduce legislation to abolish judicial appeals to the British Privy Council and to require the Queen to appoint the state Governor on the advice of the Premier of New South Wales instead of the British Foreign Secretary. As usual, these changes were announced in the governor’s Speech from the Throne, a copy of which was duly sent to the UK.

At the federal level, the Queen reigned as ‘Queen of Australia’ and acted on the advice of her Commonwealth ministers. But the states were technically dependencies of the British Crown, and this created an anomalous situation where the Queen still acted on the advice of the British government when dealing with state matters.

The British Foreign Office had some concerns about the constitutionality of New South Wales’ proposals, but it felt that the best course of action would be for the Queen to respond with the usual formal acknowledgement and then the UK government could raise the matter orally through diplomatic channels. The Queen, however, disagreed with this approach. She wanted to warn the Governor right off the bat that the Foreign Secretary might ask her to veto the bills. The British government yielded, and the Foreign Secretary sent a warning letter to the Governor. Britain’s High Commissioner to Australia opposed this approach, but he was told that nothing could be done since the Queen had already approved the message.

In a classic example of bad timing, the Governor of New South Wales received the Foreign Secretary’s warning on the same day that Parliament sent him the bill to abolish appeals to the Privy Council. Rather than risk a royal veto, the state government decided to let the bill lapse even though it had been passed with bipartisan support. What’s interesting about this episode is that it demonstrates how the British government was willing to change course based on input from the Queen.

A few years later, when Australia was negotiating with Britain over the legislation that would sever the remaining constitutional ties between the two countries, the state governments pushed for the right to advise the Queen on state matters in place of the British government. The Queen was not happy with this proposal because she feared being put in an untenable position if a state government advised her to do one thing while the Commonwealth government advised her to do something else. Her reluctance was enough to sway the federal Prime Minister, who told the state governments that he would not recommend that the Queen accept advice from them since he didn’t want to put her in the “embarrassing” position of having to reject ministerial advice. Even when the federal government eventually came around to the states’ point of view, the Queen still demurred.

Ultimately, the Australian federal government felt it had no choice but to give its full backing to the states’ proposal. Until then, it had refused to tender constitutionally binding advice to the Queen on the matter, but it soon became clear that there was no other option. The Queen was told that, even if she disagreed with the idea, the Commonwealth would stand its ground. If she remained opposed to receiving direct advice from the states, she would have to formally reject the federal government’s advice, which would almost certainly have started a constitutional crisis of epic proportions. In the face of a resolute Commonwealth, the Queen reluctantly agreed to accept the advice.

Although she had to accept the Commonwealth government’s advice, the Queen won concessions from Australia. She was keen to establish limits on the state government’s ability to advise her when she was present in a state, and the Australia Bills were amended in light of her concerns. Clause 7(2) was changed to make it clear that the Queen’s functions in regard to a state were exercisable only by the Governor in order to prevent the Queen from being asked to override a Governor’s decision, while clause 7(4) provided that the Queen was “not precluded” from exercising any of her functions when she was actually present in a state. According to Anne Twomey’s book The Chameleon Crown: the Queen and Her Australian Governors, the latter change was made because the Queen wanted to be able to decline a state Premier’s request to exercise her powers personally (pg. 252). The original draft of this sub-clause actually went so far as to explicitly state that the Queen was not obligated to accept advice from state Premiers while in the state, but the Commonwealth objected to language that seemed to enshrine in statute the idea that a constitutional monarch could disregard ministerial advice. Instead, they opted for the “not precluded” formula, which left things suitably vague.

However, the states also agreed to a convention that the Queen would only exercise her powers within a state after prior and mutual agreement between the Palace and the state government. It was a win for both sides. The Queen could take comfort in the fact that state Premiers couldn’t force her into a constitutionally awkward position, while the state governments were reassured that the Queen would only act with their consent.

So what, then, do these events tell us about the Queen? For starters, they suggest that the process of advising the Queen is more complicated than one might expect. Ministers first submit informal advice that is not considered constitutionally binding; it is only when she has accepted the ‘informal’ advice that formal, binding advice is tendered. This is a nice example of how flexible constitutional conventions can be in the Westminster system: it allows the Queen to make representations regarding a proposal while preserving the requirement that she ultimately acts on ministerial advice.

Although Twomey’s findings suggest that the Queen isn’t quite the rubber stamp of popular conception, that doesn’t mean that she’s going around frustrating the democratic process at every opportunity. Both of the examples Twomey uncovered involved situations uniquely personal to the Queen, so it’s understandable that she would be more willing to assert herself in cases like those. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that we’ll learn more about her relationship with her governments anytime soon. Communications with the Sovereign are totally exempt from disclosure under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act for a minimum of 20 years (and in many cases, they could remain hidden for a lot longer: if the Sovereign is still alive when the 20-year period expires, they must remain classified for the remainder of their life, plus five years). But Twomey’s claim that the Queen is a canny political operator who is adept at using “soft power” certainly seems plausible.

The pitfalls of scene-setting

One of the things that really annoys me about historical fiction is the tendency of some authors to go overboard when it comes to background information. It’s like they’re bound and determined to shoehorn in every single fact that they uncovered in the course of their research, regardless of whether or not it’s actually relevant to the plot. I recently started rereading The Scroll of Saqqara by Pauline Gedge, and several particularly blatant examples of this jumped off the page (though I hasten to add that it’s still one of my favorite books). Take this piece of dialogue, for example:

Sometimes I wish that Grandfather had not moved the capital of the country north. I can see the strategic advantage in a seat of government close to our eastern border and located on a river that empties into the Great Green for good trade, but Memphis has the beauty and dignity of the rulers of old.

That quote is spoken by the protagonist’s son as he and his father sail northward to the capital in question (Pi-Ramesse). But it doesn’t seem natural. It feels like a modern author trying to include another fun fact instead of an ancient Egyptian having a casual conversation with his father. The fact that it’s the only thing the son says in that scene just makes it seem even more awkward.

A few pages later, the protagonist is on the deck of his boat watching Pi-Ramesse come into view. As he watches the scenery pass by, he sees the old city of Avaris, the temple of Set, and “a heap of rubble that Khaemwaset knew was the remains of a Twelfth Dynasty town.” I’m not quite sure why Gedge felt the need to include that bit of information. It’s not relevant to the plot; it’s just another factoid she uncovered, and it’s not even all that interesting.

Base of a statue from Pi-Ramesse. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Now I get the fact that authors who write historical fiction need to provide more description than usual. When you’re writing about the past, you have to do more to help your readers envision the scene. But the tricky part is that your characters, being natives of their world, wouldn’t normally go around explaining everyday things. That’s why I’m not a fan of first-person narrators in historical fiction. It’s incredibly jarring to have the protagonist suddenly provide a detailed description of something that he or she would have taken for granted in real life. I prefer to write in the third person in order to let the invisible narrator do as much of the info dumping as possible.

Going back to Pi-Ramesse and The Scroll of Saqqara, I think it would have been much more effective if, instead of nattering on about the city’s strategic location, the protagonist’s son had commented on its splendor. Judging from the few first-hand accounts we have of Pi-Ramesse, that’s what really stuck in the Egyptians’ minds. They were impressed by the city’s beautiful temples and palaces, not its proximity to the Levant. That would have allowed Gedge to provide useful scene-setting while avoiding a blatant jump into Author Mode.

There’s a very fine line between setting the scene and bogging your story down in detail. Readers are going to have varying levels of interest in the historical setting you’ve chosen, and you can’t assume that everyone is as fascinated with the details as you are.

Canada’s Constitutional Clusterf*ck

Our northern neighbor could be facing a major constitutional headache soon. Two law professors from Quebec have lodged a challenge to the Succession to the Throne Act, claiming that it is unconstitutional.

The Succession to the Throne Act is Canada’s attempt to implement the Perth Agreement, wherein the Prime Ministers of the 16 Commonwealth Realms where Queen Elizabeth II is head of state agreed to change the law of succession. Male-preference primogeniture is to be abandoned, and the Sovereign will be free to marry a Roman Catholic (though the Sovereign will still have to be in communion with the Church of England).

The most straightforward way for a realm to implement the agreement is to enact its own version of the Succession to the Crown Act that the British Parliament passed in April. That is exactly what Australia and New Zealand are doing. However, Canada tried to take a shortcut. Instead of specifically enacting the changes in their own law, they just passed a bill that essentially says “we agree with the British legislation.”

The Harper government maintains that the Sovereign of the United Kingdom is automatically the Sovereign of Canada. Therefore, the succession is, strictly speaking, the domain of British law. However, as James W. J. Bowden has pointed out on his excellent blog Parliamentum, this approach is inconsistent with the Canadian government’s actions during the Abdication Crisis of 1936. Although the British Parliament had passed His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act, Prime Minister Mackenzie King recognized that it wouldn’t bind Canada unless the government ‘opted-in’ under section 4 of the Statute of Westminster 1931. If it hadn’t done so, Edward VIII would have remained the Canadian Sovereign.

But the current government of Canada can’t ‘opt-in’ like its predecessor since section 4 of the Statute of Westminster no longer applies and the British Parliament has surrendered its right to legislate for Canada. In 1982, at the request of the Canadian government, it passed legislation that explicitly relinquished its vestigial authority over Canadian affairs. The relevant section is pretty damn unambiguous: “No Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the Constitution Act, 1982 comes into force shall extend to Canada as part of its law.” So it’s hard to see how the British Succession to the Crown Act could have any legal force in Canada whatsoever.

There’s also the troublesome matter of the Canadian constitution. Under section 41 of the Constitution Act 1982, any constitutional amendment “to the office of the Queen” requires the agreement of all the provinces plus the federal Parliament. The Harper government claims that section 41 only applies to changes that affect the Queen’s constitutional status or her powers. Therefore, changing the law of succession doesn’t require a constitutional amendment.

But Canadian academics have questioned that reasoning. Writing in Maclean’s, Philippe Lagassé, an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, argued that since the Crown is a corporation sole, there can be no distinction between the office and the officeholder. He went on to quote the great English jurist William Blackstone, who had this to say about corporations sole:

Corporations sole consist of one person only and his successors, in some particular fashion, who are incorporated in law, in order to give them some legal capacities and advantages, particularly that of perpetuity, which in their natural persons they could not have had. In this sense, the king is a sole corporation. [Emphasis mine]

Because of the fusion of office and officeholder inherent in a corporation sole, the government’s contention that the succession is somehow separate from the office seems hard to swallow.

Leaving aside the Crown’s status as a corporation sole, there is also case law that suggests that the law of succession is actually part of the constitution. In 2002, a Toronto politician named Tony O’Donohue mounted a legal challenge to the Act of Settlement 1701 on the grounds that it discriminated against Roman Catholics and was therefore incompatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed the challenge, holding that the Act of Settlement was part of Canada’s constitution and could not be overruled by the Charter. Mr. Justice Rouleau also suggested that striking the discriminatory portions of the Act of Settlement could itself be unconstitutional since it would amount to changing the office of the Queen without following the procedures set out in section 41 of the Constitution Act 1982.

Curiously, Mr. Justice Rouleau seemed to have difficulty with the idea of the divisibility of the Crown. On the one hand, he held that the law of succession was part of Canada’s constitution, yet he also suggested that Canada was “united under the Crown of Great Britain.” But if Canada is subject to the British Crown, it seems hard to see how the law of succession could be part of the Canadian constitution. The fact that Canada can alter the office of the Queen by a constitutional amendment seems to me to be pretty conclusive proof that the Crown is now a Canadian institution.

The Quebecois law professors are going to put the Harper government in a very uncomfortable position when their case finally comes before the Quebec Superior Court. Not only do they allege a violation of section 41 of the Constitution Act 1982, they also claim that the act is contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it restricts the monarch’s choice of religion. This puts the government between Scylla and Charybdis. If it argues that the religious provisions are not justiciable because they are part of the constitution, it essentially confirms the section 41 challenge. But if the law of succession is outside the constitution, then the religious provisions could be in conflict with the Charter!

If the Succession to the Throne Act is ultimately ruled unconstitutional, Canada will likely have to amend its constitution in order to implement the Perth Agreement, and that could get messy. Since the amendment would need the backing of all the provinces, Quebec could use it as a bargaining chip to try to win sovereignty-related concessions. Should Canada fail to implement the Perth Agreement for whatever reason, the other Commonwealth Realms could find themselves stuck. The original plan was for the changes to take effect on the same day across all sixteen realms (that is why the UK’s act doesn’t come into force until the Lord President makes a commencement order), but if there isn’t unanimity, the other governments might decide to back away rather than create a situation where a woman becomes Queen of fifteen of the realms but her younger brother becomes King of Canada.

On the other hand, it’s possible that fears of a Quebecker monkey wrench being thrown into the works could be overstated. I don’t know if Stephen Harper would be willing to engage in much horse trading over a constitutional amendment. Given that the first two people in line for the throne are both men, changing the succession is hardly urgent. If Quebec tried to block the amendment, Harper might be content to call their bluff, secure in the knowledge that the changes don’t need to take effect anytime soon (plus, Quebec wouldn’t actually gain anything by blocking the amendment). So if push comes to shove, Quebec might just hold its nose and vote for the amendment.

 

My new Kindle!

After weeks of hemming and hawing, I finally bought a new Kindle. My old Kindle Keyboard 3G bit the dust in a cat-related accident, so it was time for an upgrade.

Because I’m a cheap bastard, I went with the basic model with the special offers, though the Paperwhite was certainly tempting. Since the basic Kindle no longer has a physical keyboard, a touchscreen would have made the onscreen keyboard a bit easier to use. But I never did much typing on my old Kindle, so it seemed silly to spend an extra $50 for something I would rarely use (yeah, I know you also use the touchscreen to turn the pages, but I kinda like having the buttons for some reason).

Gompers better not break this one!
My new Kindle.

I think the new Kindle looks a lot nicer than the Kindle Keyboard. While the latter always reminded me of the PDAs my dad had in the late 90s, the former is much sleeker. It looks very tablet-like. It’s also a hell of a lot lighter than the older model.

The one annoying thing is that Amazon no longer includes a wall-socket adapter with their new Kindles. Fortunately, I still had the one that came with the Kindle Keyboard. Otherwise, Amazon would have charged me $14.99 for it (and that’s a discounted price that’s only good if you order it along with the Kindle; if I’d waited, the price would have gone up to $19.99!).

My first purchase on the new Kindle was a collection of short stories by Saladin Ahmed entitled Engraved on the Eye. I’m looking forward to starting it later this evening!

 

One of the best games ever gets a sequel

I love Planescape: Torment. Although the graphics are horribly dated (it was released in 1999, after all) and some of the mechanics are a bit cumbersome, the game’s writing is so phenomenal that it’s easy to overlook those things. It’s certainly worlds away from the banal, cliche-ridden dialogue of Diablo III! Planescape is the sort of game that lingers in your mind long after you’ve stopped playing. 

Sadly, Planescape didn’t sell well when it was initially released. But the intervening years have been kind to it, and it continues to appear on lists of the best games. Even now, it’s one of the bestselling titles on GOG, which isn’t too shabby for a game that was released back when we were still worrying about Y2K!

Thanks to its continued popularity, some of Planescape‘s creators have decided to produce a ‘spiritual cycle’ called Torment: Tides of Numenera. Unfortunately, it won’t be set in the Planescape universe since Planescape is part of the Dungeons & Dragons IP and Wizards of the Coast has mothballed that particular setting. But Torment will make use of a setting devised by D & D veteran Monte Cook, so I’m sure it will be just as awesome. Not only that, but Patrick Rothfuss (yes, the Patrick Rothfuss) will also be part of the design team.

Torment is still a long way from release (it’s currently slated to ship in December 2014), but I have a feeling it’ll be well worth the wait.