Thursday

was a busy day. But rewarding, as I now have another year's worth of relish in hand.

Are You Ready For...Boobquake?

One of my new favourite people; Jen McCreight. And isn't that a great t-shirt?

Well, its Monday morning, and no reports of an earthquake yet. But if Islamic cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi is right, we should finally experience the Big One here on the coast.
 Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi apparently said,  “Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.”And Jen McCreight decided to put that to the test. So today, thousands of women plan to dress "immodestly" in order to see if they can actually cause an earthquake.
This is exactly why authoritarian regimes like churches and dictatorships fear laughter--there's really no defence against it.

Who Said Things Were Crap?

Not the wealthy of the U.K., that's for sure. According to The Guardian, the wealthiest 1000 of them managed a 30% increase last year. To quote the article:

There may have been a recession, but the combined fortunes of the richest people in Britain still managed to rise by nearly 30% last year, the biggest increase for more than two decades, according to annual ratings published today.
The Sunday Times Rich List suggests that the combined wealth of Britain's 1,000 richest people rose by more than £77bn to £333.5bn, with the number of billionaires up from 43 to 53. That still leaves the list relatively poorer than at its peak in 2008, when the combined total was nearly £413bn and there were said to be 75 billionaires. But it still means that the richest 1,000 people are more than three times richer than when Labour came to power in 1997, when their combined wealth was less than £100bn.

Yeah, three hundred percent increase in combined wealth in 13 years. In Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore points out that in the U.S. the top 1% now own more than the bottom 95%. Madness.

Beautiful!

The Guardian has put up a series of photos of new ocean life, including microbes, zooplankton, larvae and burrowers. The pictures are, typically, both fascinating and gorgeous.

Instructional Video

You know, we could all use an "Uncle Andy" in our lives. No beating around the bush, just information, communicated directly and clearly. And check out the kid's grin at the end of the clip.

Books Read: March

Again, not a great month. Marion Nestle's Food Politics took way longer than I thought, and I still hadn't finished it by the end of the month. Jon Stewart was very funny, Slow Death By Rubber Duck was unfunny and made me very angry (I highly recommend it to everyone). Food Rules is a fast and light read--shouldn't take more than a half hour. The Butcher and the Vegetarian was a great unexpected find; a revealing look into meat culture from an outsider's perspective. And A Taste of Charlevoix just made my mouth water. A book on Canadian terroir.

Naked Pictures of Famous People / Jon Stewart / New York, New York : HarperCollins, ©1998

Slow death by rubber duck : how the toxic chemistry of everyday life affects our health / Rick Smith, Bruce Lourie with Sarah Dopp / Toronto, Ontario : A.A. Knopf Canada, ©2009

Food rules : an eater's manual / Michael Pollan / New York : Penguin Books, c2009

The butcher and the vegetarian : one woman's romp through a world of men, meat, and moral crisis / Tara Austen Weaver / Emmaus, Pa. : Rodale, c2010

A taste of Charlevoix / photography by George Fischer and Pascal Arseneau ; preface by Elizabeth Baird / Halifax, NS : Nimbus Pub., c2009

Business Insider--The Wealth Slideshow

The Business Insider offers up a reality check on Amerikan wealth; who's getting some and who isn't. And it's pretty clear that the top 1% are getting most all of it. Why am I not surprised?

Death From Above

In war, mistakes are made. But it seems the US military is making  more than you would think. Wikileaks has decrypted and released a video of two Apache helicopters spotting a crowd, recognizing numerous weapons, and getting permission to open fire. The problem is, almost nothing reported by the pilots is true.



According to The Guardian website:

A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today.
The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security. The US defence department was embarrassed when that confidential report appeared on the Wikileaks site last month alongside a slew of military documents.
The release of the video from Baghdad also comes shortly after the US military admitted that its special forces attempted to cover up the killings of three Afghan women in a raid in February by digging the bullets out of their bodies.
The newly released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. The Pentagon blocked an attempt by Reuters to obtain the video through a freedom of information request. Wikileaks director Julian Assange said his organisation had to break through encryption by the military to view it.

Lighten Up

Upside Down--what a lovely little song and video. Nothing heavy, nothing dreary, just some light jazzy pop. Good times.....






Thanks to Danica LeBlanc for finding this one.

Books read: February

This felt a little better, but still. 

Empire of illusion : the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle / Chris Hedges/Toronto, Ontario : Knopf Canada, ©2009

Float your boat! : the evolution and science of sailing / Mark Denny/Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©2009

The price of a bargain : the quest for cheap and the death of globalization / Gordon Laird/ Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart,©2009

Egon Schiele / Alessandra Comini/ New York : bG. Braziller, ©1976.

Stuffed and Starved: markets, power and the hidden battle for the world food system / Raj Patel/ Toronto : HarperCollins, ©2007

Last Words / George Carlin with Tony Hendra / New York : Free Press, ©2009

At this rate I'll only get through 60 books this year. And that seems rather low. On the other hand, I've been reading A Geography of the Canadian Economy -- yes, for pleasure-- and it's taking a long time to get through. But Carlin's bio took about 4 hours.So, more Carlin, less everything else?

Books Read: January

I thought this would be a good idea. So far, not so much. Its just telling me what I'm not doing.

The slow food story : politics and pleasure / by Geoff Andrews/Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, ©2008


8 days of crisis on the hill : political blip-- or Stephen Harper's revolution derailed? / Thomas W. Joseph/New York : iUniverse, ©2009/

Beer belly blues : becoming the ultimate male. Again : what every aging man and the women in his life need to know / Brad J. King/Edmonton, Alberta: Abundant Health Systems, Inc. ©2008/


Goat song : a seasonal life, a short history of herding, and the art of making cheese / Brad Kessler/New York : Scribner, ©2009/


Have a nice doomsday : why millions of Americans are looking forward to the end of the world / Nicholas Guyatt/New York : Harper Perennial, ©2007

Yeah, that was it.

The Tobin Tax

What would a 0.05% tax on bank transactions raise? Richard Curtis (the writer behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually) brings in Bill Nighy (Underworld, Love Actually, etc) to help explain just what it could mean to the Uk and to those of us in the rest of the world.

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Disaster Movie!

Pick 4 numbers between 0000 and 9999 and then head over to the Random Filmpocalypse Plot Generator at the Guardian, and find out what movie you've created. And then think about how many films like that one you've actually seen. When film-making becomes this by-the-numbers (I don't want to say Avatar, but there you are...), you know something's gone very very wrong. It's okay to tell the same story again, but you're supposed to add something to it with each retelling--and that doesn't mean bigger explosions and stupider, more impossible escapes.

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L'Homme qui marche

Alberto Giacometti's sculpture L'Homme qui marche, it is reported in the Guardian, has sold for north of $103M US. It really is an extraordinary work of amazing potency. I remember the impact it had the first time I saw a photo of it--even mediated through a picture, it bowled me over. Some years later, for a show called "Seat Specific"  here in Victoria, I paid hommage to Giacometti with a piece called "Hungry Ghosts Walk the World, and it's Time They Had a Chance to Sit Down: A Chair for Alberto Giacometti." It was a spindly-legged Douglas fir chair, 3 metres tall, which I had textured with pigmented plaster to simulate the effect of the tortured bronze used by Giacometti. I was gratified by the response--even though it didn't sell and was eventually trashed. I've since managed to see some of his work, and he remians, for me, one of the great artists of the last century.

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Techniques of Communication

Once upon a time, rap was the underground CNN. Very serious people like Chuck D used the form to communicate some fairly complex ideas. Herewith, for your edification, two white guys laying down some oldschool education.

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