Well, that’s it for the last surviving member of the Rat Pack lineup that mattered: Joey Bishop (nee Joseph Abraham Gottlieb) died on Wednesday night. Rest in peace, son of a gun.
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Month: October 2007
This LiveJournal entry has some interesting scans of Chinese propaganda pamphlets from the 1940s and 50s. Here’s an example:
Click to see the image at full size on its original page.
Although the illustration was made in 1951 and that’s supposed to be Harry S. Truman dancing on a cannon and waving a bomb while people drown and lose their homes, I can’t look at that image and not be reminded of the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
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Shipping Container Cafe
Want to know more about this shipping container that transforms into a cafe? See this entry in my tech blog, Global Nerdy.
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A Good Benchmark for Insanity
Welcome to the first installment of The Excited States, a series of articles in which I look at the antics of our wacky-but-lovable neighbour to the south, the Excited States of America!
Programmer Mark Pilgrim sums up my opinion of FOX News quite nicely:
I think liberals should thank Fox News for indirectly providing a valuable service. It is now possible to rank the batshit-craziness of American conservatives on a single linear scale, based on when they stopped watching Fox News.
Speaking of FOX News, here’s a screen capture of their front page from Tuesday:
Screen capture of the FOX News website from Tuesday, October 16th, 2007.
Note the article titled Which State Will Be First to Legalize…SEX WITH A ROBOT?, which I presume is aimed at getting people all riled up about gay marriage again.
One thing I really like about my friend Chris “Turner” Turner is that he’s an optimist at heart. That optimism was quite apparent when a couple of years back, he told me about his next book, which he then described as “a grand tour of people who are trying to make the world a better place”. That book has finally come out and it’s called The Geography of Hope and he’s having a little unofficial local book launch at C’est What (67 Front Street East, a short walk east of Union Station) this Monday at 8:30.
Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:
After the fierce warnings and grim predictions of The Weather Makers and An Inconvenient Truth, acclaimed journalist and national bestselling author Chris Turner finds hope in the search for a sustainable future.
Point of no return: The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.
In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.
And here’s an excerpt:
While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.
There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.
Come on down and meet the author! Wendy and I haven’t seen Chris in a long time, so we’ll be there, hoisting a pint to toast his new book.
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More on “Critical Manners”
Note how the riders aren’t using up the entire width of the road, but are going single file. Hint, hint, Critical Massholes!
Here’s more on Critical Manners: a report from the San Francisco Chronicle from a Critical Manners ride that took place back in April. This ride comprised only 16 cyclists, but was so much more civilized that the police escort simple left partway through the ride.
That’s “peds” as in “pedestrians”, folks.
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Critical Manners
A little while back, I wrote an article titled Critical Massholes, in which I explained why I no longer participated in the Critical Mass bike ride (it’s in my blog’s archives, which aren’t working right now; I promise to fix that soon). In the article, I wrote that the actions of Critical Mass members — ignoring traffic signals, hogging the road in an attempt to “get back” at cars, picking fights — hinder rather than help the cause of urban cyclists like myself. These people make up a small part of Critical Mass, but they are influential. There’s always a group of them in any city’s Critical Mass.
I’ve just been told about an attempt to counter these people in San Francisco: Critical Manners. Here’s a brief description of the event:
Critical Manners: a revolutionary act of courtesy. Come put the nice back in the bike world with Critical Manners! A helmet-wearing, bell-ringing, blinkie-sportin’ good time for you and all your bike friends. Practice synchronized signaling, single file riding, stopping at stop signs and NOT blowing red lights. Critical Manners will brake for pedestrians, trolleys, and even the occasional SUV. If you’ve ridden in Critical Mass, you know about the “testosterone brigade”. Maybe it’s time you rode with Critical Manners — We take obedience of the law ridiculously seriously.
If you want to find out more about this event, see this discussion in Google Groups.
Toronto cyclists who still participate in Critical Mass: can we do this here? I’d rejoin Critical Mass if we took this idea and ran with it!