We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • the new antediluvianism

    ready.gov flash animation showing an office in a flood
    Browsing a news site today, I caught this weird animation for the US government ‘preparedness’ (hunh?! as in ‘prepared food’?) site, ready.gov

    Basically, it shows an office being drowned in a biblical-scale flood. Apart from being astonishingly insensitive to recent victims of the tsunami, when’s this going to happen? Could it finally be an acceptance of global warming by the US government? It’d take a fairly nifty terrorist to cause a flood like this. How’s some plastic sheeting, duct tape, and not talking to strangers going to help here?

    I have no answers for this, but I tell you, I’m investing in gopher wood futures right away …

  • The price of democracy in the UK: $50.42

    $50.42 is what it cost me to UPS my UK ballot paper back to North Lanarkshire Council with any hope of it getting there on time. It really didn’t help that I only got my papers on Monday. Canada Post and/or Purolator were too slow or evil to get it there in time.

    Once the election is done, I’ll show you what a real ballot paper looks like.

  • teh 734

    Paul Stalker gave me a caddy of Lee Valley Sri Lankan Orange Pekoe Tea. It is teh thé! Thanks, Paul!

  • my true fortune

    appositely, in my fortune cookie, after a particularly fine Manchurian Beef dinner:

    Some men dream of fortunes,
    others dream of cookies.

  • this is not my galaxy

    We’re just back from seeing The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It was a mildly amusing movie, little else.

    I’m fairly old-school when it comes to HHGTTG. I didn’t catch the original airing, but did hear it when it was broadcast before the second series. Good old Radio 4 Long Wave, 200kHz or so. I saw the TV series. I read the books. I have the scripts book. I even had the towel; my brother got me a membership of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha for a year (I didn’t renew; a bathtowel is a hard act to follow). In summary, I remember it as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, but know it’s really Paul Neil Milne Johnstone.

    So basically, I have an image of how it should be. Yes, the radio series was quite different from the TV series, which was again different from the books. But to me the differences are its strength. It’s clear that Douglas Adams had an immense comic talent, and the spontaneity of a show that was written only minutes before (and sometimes, during) broadcast is dazzling. It was the genius of the contrived plot and deus ex machina saves that made it so fresh.

    So a movie carrying the Hitchhiker’s brand is out, and a lot of people find it funny. That’s good; I’m a big fan of anything that improves the gross national happiness. But while it was funny, it wasn’t inspired. There were no producers tearing their hair out over the writer’s legendary inability to meet deadlines. Everything was safe, corporate. With a legend, when you retell it, you have to add something. This retelling added nothing; it was a mish-mash of bits from the cutting room floor.

    Don’t get me wrong, the actors did their part well. It was a good spectacle. I even laughed at parts. But I can only agree with my friend David Inglis, an even longer-time Hitchhiker’s fan than I. After seeing it on preview, he summed up the whole film in one word: unnecessary.

  • democracy can be so tiresome

    Someone’s been moving the Wkipedia article I created for Scots Tablet, ‘cos they claim the One True Name is Swiss Milk Tablet — a name I’d never heard.

    “Swiss Milk” is an unusual name for an American invention, condensed milk.

  • tea jenny

    I bought a teapot today; a proper brown betty. I had to go to the Sri Lankan supermarket to get loose tea. But tea from leaves, in a warmed pot, is the business.

  • Chance encounters on the Ivor Cutler list

    I joined ivor-list during the week. In this short time, I’ve met on the list:

  • Pepys’ Diary

    Pepys’ Diary, as a blog. Yes, I’m the second last person to discover it. The RSS feed seems a little out of date …

    We just watched Stage Beauty. Hugh Bonneville’s portrayal of Pepys never reminded me more of certain bloggers I know.

  • Happy Earth Day

    Yep, it’s Earth Day again. In Canada, nothing continued to happen …

  • Burlington doesn’t need another Wal-Mart

    I walk past a pleasant green space every day from Burlington Station. I’ve seen deer, groundhogs, Canada geese and even snow geese on this land. It’s pretty.

    But Wal-Mart Canada wants to build a huge ugly store on it. The area is zoned for properties up to 5600m2, but this store is more than twice that, at 12000m2 — and yet city staff are recommending approval.

    This is craziness, especially since the project will have a parking lot of at least the same size as the store. Who is going to manage the water runoff from that? There will be extra sets of traffic lights, making Brant Street even more stop-go. This is supposed to be a mixed-use development, yet a single behemoth store doesn’t make for much mixing.

    The Burlington Downtown Business Association opposes the Wal-Mart proposal, as do many other locals. Burlington has a fine downtown, and it doesn’t deserve a wage-lowering, opposition-closing cheapo crap emporium in its midst.

    There will be a a public meeting on May 17, 2005 commencing at 4:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers, Level 2, City Hall, 426 Brant Street to discuss the proposal. Be there, or be stuck with a big grey box.

    Here’s the council letter about the Burlington Wal-Mart proposal. It includes diagrams. Full text of it is in the ‘read more’ section.

    (more…)

  • Egg Meat

    Ivor Cutler — Egg Meat (MP3).

  • Just Browse Stuff: Google Catalogs

    Uhoh, timewasting ahead: Google Catalog Search

  • Massive Yawn

    I went to Bruce Mau‘s Massive Change exhibit at the AGO on Sunday. Mistake.

    My defining experience of the show wasn’t actually meant to be part of the exhibit. In the ‘Massive Café’, there were vacuum-flask coffee dispensers. If you put your cup in the round cup guide, the dispensed coffee missed the cup. They had been set up wrongly, and like the rest of the show, it was half-assed and missed the mark.

    The energy section was a joke. Dominating the room was some awful hybrid vertical-axis wind turbine, with both a Savonius rotor and an aerofoil at the edge. That would be like yoking a cart horse to a thoroughbred; neither would work well together. The tiny generator at the bottom was an indication of the measly amount of power they expected to get out. The rest of the room was the usual gee-whiz “Hydrogen and Stirling Engines will Save The World!” stuff. Z.

    The Transportation room was equally amusing. Three of the personal vehicles featured have been less than successful: the Myers Sparrow (whose previous incarnation, the Corbin Sparrow, went bankrupt), the Twike (again, reported to have gone into receivership), and best of all, the Sinclair C5. If you’re from the UK, and about my age, you’ll remember the C5 as a total sales, marketing and design disaster. Sir Clive Sinclair, who could previously do no wrong, became a laughing-stock because of it.

    Also in the transport section, they featured a bike rickshaw and a bicycle stretcher-bearer. It was fairly obvious that these bikes were based on 19th century technology, as they were heavy roadsters, possibly even sensible bicycles. And this is massive how?

    The ‘Massive Thinkers’ gallery featured such luminaries as Sam Walton. And selling cheap crap is massive how? Massive parking lots?

    There were also numerous typos in the signage. C’mon guys, get a Massive Spelling Checker!

    In the Transport section, they could have featured transit systems, and perhaps featured HPVs from Brompton (inter-modal folding goodness), Moulton (wee wheels and spaceframes), Leitra (fully-enclosed velomobiles) and HP Veloteknik (much recumbentness). In energy, they could have posed the question, “Do we really need always-on power, since we’ve had it for less than 1% of the history of civilisation?”

  • this moment, slightly used

    Incongruous sign on the Zen Buddhist temple near Spadina on College: Rummage Sale. I suppose you could bring stuff, and not buy anything. What would the folks from the temple be selling? I wonder how much this moment, slightly used goes for?

  • link brings Fair Isle into the 21st century

    So Fair Isle gets broadband. I always thought they were ahead of most of us, since they’ve been using wind power for decades.

  • no more comic strip

    I see that Metro has dropped Comic Strip. I’m going to have to look elsewhere for my daily dose of suckage. The author has the audacity to expect us to petition Dose to pick up the strip. They’d be better off with Bob the Angry Flower, which is 100% suck-free.

  • positively brisling with joy

    I have recently discovered sardines. They used to be the low point of a Scottish High Tea for me, as they’d be dragged out of their oily can and mashed — skins, spines and all — onto toast. This is less than appetising for a hungry kid already fixated on the scones and cake on the table.

    But I know understand why my dad would hoover them up with such gusto. I’ve discovered Club des Millionnaires Boneless, Skinless Sardines. These are like the best tuna you’ve ever tasted, yet sweeter and more satisfying. In a pita, on oatcakes, they’re great. Snacked out the can is good too, if you’re desperate.

    Club des Millionnaires also has a Sardine FAQ, which makes rewarding, if extremely silly, reading.

  • Why I’m Allergic To ‘Cradle To Cradle’

    I’m reading McDonough & Braungart’s book Cradle To Cradle, and it makes me sneeze.

    Not that the content is to be sneezed at — it’s a very sensible treatise on a zero-waste, EPR-based society. It’s not the polymer that the book is made from, either. It’s the fact that the a previous borrower of the book from the Toronto Public Library was the owner of a probably very attractive grey cat.

    I’m allergic to most cats. And this isn’t usually a problem with library books, as paper doesn’t attract hair. But the polypropylene pages of Cradle To Cradle do, and so reading this book makes me itch. I guess this wouldn’t be a problem if I’d bought my own copy, but it’s a deal more environmentally responsible to share a few copies amongst the thousands of library patrons than keep one for myself.

    I don’t necessarily agree with some of the arguments made about the upcyclability (that is, a product that can be recycled into something of an equal or higher quality) of the book. Basic entropy tells you that you can’t reform a product without losing something of the original. Some of the material will evaporate, or the filler will degrade somewhat, or some additional colourant will be required to restore the original tone.

    Some other things that don’t jibe:

    • The book is a surprisingly dense chunk of polypropylene. Polypropylene is made from non-sustainable fossil resources. This is a case of doing less damage than the status quo, which Cradle To Cradle decries as being insufficient.
    • The ‘paper’, while very smooth, isn’t fully opaque, so the text from the other side of the page is distracting. That, and the cat-hair attracting static issue …
    • The book’s printed in China. At the very least, it has been shipped half way around the world, again using a wad of fossil resources. Knowing a little of the publishing industry, it wouldn’t surprise me if the raw materials were shipped to China, printed and bound, and then shipped back for the North American market. And this is a good thing how?

    In fairness, mad props for McDonough’s work on green roofs, and to Melcher Media for giving the plastic book a try. But thinking that a few polymer pages will change the world is pushing credibility to its limits.

    [And I really should temper the madness of my props to Melcher, as it would appear that they’re trying to patent the plastic book. I’m sure there’s some iota of novelty in replacing the form-factor and access methods of a cellulose polymer book with a hydrocarbon polymer, but for the life of me, I can’t find it.]

  • do you … enjoy … knives?

    I think perhaps I do, a little too much. The latest acquisition is a very benign Japanese Carpenter’s Knife from Lee Valley. While fullfilling two (shiny, pointy) of the three requirements (shiny, pointy, lights up) of tool porn, this heavy blade is all about utility. It reminds me of the knives I used to see in the market in Kochi in Southern Japan; brutally sharp, but designed for work, not violence.