High-speed ferry might create new Canada/US border crossing

 Posted by on 27 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 272009
 

A town in Ontario wants to forge a new link with an Ohio city across Lake Erie — with a ferry that would cross the border between the two cities. From the Globe and Mail:

Six high-speed ferries would be able to transport semi-trailers, cars and passengers across Lake Erie, and be equipped with restaurants and business rooms. The proposal would cost about $550-million and be funded by Ontario, Ottawa and governments in the United States.

Already, there is $88 million in daily business crossing the border between Ontario and Ohio. This would add capacity and ease congestion, say promoters of the idea. Something they haven’t mentioned, but which would be a no-brainer, in my idea, is to incorporate the customs process into the ferry ride itself.

Looks like it’s currently about a 450-km car ride, through Buffalo, and my eye on the google map shows that it would be just about 140 km over the lake, so that cuts out a boatload of time (ahem) but it would still be long enough to process drivers and passengers while they are on the ferry.

Fail the customs process, you just aren’t allowed off the ferry and have to return. But in the meantime, you can cut out all the port-side waiting.

The five biggest photogs on the Internet

 Posted by on 26 June 2009  Photography
Jun 262009
 

Like all lists of this type, I’m sure it’s more about the discussion which ensues rather than an authoritative listing of the actual top-five best photographers on the Internet.

However, monthly magazine PDN (Photo District News) has come up with five fairly unconventional choices.

Our list includes a photojournalist-turned-educator, a fine artist, an editorial photographer, a wedding shooter and a multimedia journalist. We spoke to each one about how they climbed these virtual mountains, and what see from the top.

It’s clear that success online doesn’t always translate into jobs. A hit YouTube video won’t make your phone ring, and a Twitter stream alone generates no revenue. There are downsides: Comments from Flickr users can be obnoxious.

However, all of these photographers credit the Internet with leading to some work, and in at least one case, financial success. And it’s hard to overstate the personal satisfaction of having a legion of online fans.

They focused on photographers who are known primarily for their online work, and they found one on Twitter, one on Flickr, one on Facebook, one blogger, and this guy, from Youtube:

Some of them I’d heard of, or seen their work, and others were brand-new to me. An interesting list, but obviously flawed. So, let the discussion ensue!

Michael Jackson’s death caught news orgs flatfooted (but they moonwalked away with a good story)

 Posted by on 26 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 262009
 

Who broke the story on Michael Jackson’s death? TMZ. And it’s not just TMZ saying that — the L.A. Times acnowledges that the celeb-stalking site was first on the scene:

The gossip site once again left TV networks and other traditional media outlets scrambling in its wake, even as they attempted to distance themselves from a source widely regarded as salacious, if not disreputable.

Just after noon on Thursday, paramedics responded to a 911 call at Jackson’s Holmby Hills mansion. Less than an hour later, TMZ … landed the scoop that the multiplatinum pop singer had gone into cardiac arrest. At 2:44 p.m., it beat rivals by informing the world of his death, which occurred at 2:26 p.m.

How surprised were news organizations? The Washington Post didn’t even have a pre-written obit ready (that’s normally standard practice for newspapers, just in case):

About 7 p.m. Thursday evening, former Post managing editor Bob Kaiser wandered past the obits desk and asked, ever so innocently, “Any noteworthy deaths today?”

Kaiser, who has been at the Post since 1963, knows the gallows humor of newsrooms better than anyone, and of course he knew we were in full emergency mode. The first rumors that Michael Jackson had died surfaced around 5:30 — a good half-hour or more after our usual daily deadline.

Michael Jackson was 50 years old, with no known life-threatening health problems, and we had no advance obituary prepared. Adam Bernstein and I began an immediate crash course in all things Michael, as the editors scrambled to figure out how to handle the huge, unexpected story.

But before you start saying “Boy, those old newspapers are old, and the Internet’s where it’s at, baby,” consider that TMZ may have had the barebones, but for the details, the “heavy lifting” was done by established news orgs like the L.A. Times and the Associated Press. At least, so says the Chicago Tribune:

Gossip site TMZ.com … was out in front with Jackson news and digital-era pipelines spread the word, as has happened before with other major celebrity news stories. But it was old media stalwarts that did the heavy lifting, with giants such as The Associated Press and the Web site of the L.A. Times, sister paper of the Chicago Tribune, reporting the fastest, most credible information on the emergency call for paramedics and ultimately his death.

Adam Fendelman, founder and publisher of HollywoodChicago.com, an entertainment news site, was at a no-cell-phones-allowed screening of “Public Enemies” Thursday afternoon and missed the initial reports. When he left the screening and heard that TMZ had broken the story, his first response to his staff was: “Are we sure?”

“The Web and TV phenomenon that TMZ is is very good at fast-breaking and late-breaking news, but there’s an inherent problem with trust in the everyday consumer’s mind,” Fendelman said.

The Associated Press notes that:

So many people wanted to verify the early reports of Jackson’s death that the computers running Google’s news section interpreted the fusillade of “Michael Jackson” requests as an automated attack from about 5:40 p.m. through 6:15 p.m. As a defense mechanism, Google’s news section responded to requests for information about Michael Jackson with squiggly letters known as a “captcha.” Just as online ticket buyers regularly do to complete their purchases, the Michael Jackson searchers had to enter the letters correctly to see Google’s new results.

Now that’s the power of celebrity. But you know who I feel bad for in all of this? Farrah Fawcett.

(Kudos for some of the links from Jim Romenesko)

The future of the book

 Posted by on 26 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 262009
 

I recently attended the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Summer Conference.  In addition to the renewal of old acquaintances, author visits, sales presentations and other sorts of activities you would expect to encounter at a professional conference, there was a panel discussion on the future of the book industry.  Although this discussion touched on many of the issues affecting independent booksellers (the fluctuating Canadian dollar, reassessments of returns policies, the economy, big box discounters, etc), the most interesting topic, to my mind, was the mindset of various publishers regarding the rise of the ebook.

Even the idea of the ebook gives me a nasty crawling of the flesh.  It isn’t that I am some sort of Luddite or that, as a bookstore owner, I have a vested interest in the survival of the book.  My problem is that the ebook may eventually win out over the physical book, despite the fact that the centuries-old format is the superior of the two.

A cursory listing, in no particular order, of my arguments for this position include:

  1. Books have no requirement for electricity, battery or any form of power.  Thus, they can be used in even the most primitive of conditions.
  2. Although ebook readers have improved greatly with the latest generation of products, the resolution of the book will be difficult to surpass.
  3. Transferability is less an issue for books than ebooks.  While handing a book to a friend is rarely an issue (even if getting it returned is), sharing an ebook across different readers has, to date, been problematic.
  4. Books are a very popular gift.   Ebooks do not possess that physical dimension that is often important in gift-giving rituals.
  5. Environmentally, books are superior.  While much hue and cry can be raised around deforestation and the pollution resulting from pulp and paper mills, there are alternatives to these industrial practices.  Electronic devices, in both production and disposal, are frightening with respect to what is released into soils and waterways.

Certainly, there are additional arguments and just as many counterarguments.  Yet, because the general public has a love affair with hand-held electronic devices, publishers are looking to monetizing that small, but growing portion of the market seeking digital versions of new books.

The general consensus among the publishers present at the CBA conference was that ebooks will not likely play a significant role in the marketplace for at least 5 years.   In that time, I cannot say how else the book industry will evolve as we are truly in a time of change.

In short, although the publishing industry is in a time of flux, it is almost certain that the book will survive.

(This post has been simultaneously published on both Absurd Intellectual and the Pennywise Books blog.)

Experiments with Expiry Dates: Six-month old eggnog

 Posted by on 25 June 2009  Everything Else
Jun 252009
 

So, I’ve been holding on to this carton of eggnog since Christmas. At first, I was hoping for a good reason to crack it in January, but that never happened, so it got older and older and older …

Finally, I knew I would have to so something like this. Something waaaay beyond the pale. Something crazy!

Plus, I’ve been thinking about “best before dates” a lot lately. People are so convinced that they’re some magical suddenly-spoiled date. That’s just not true.

Actually, from what I’ve learned, they’re “sell by” dates. That date you see printed on your yogurt or packaged deli meat is the absolute final date that stores have to have it off the shelf (not that they always pay attention). Generally, the food is supposed to be guaranteed good for at least two weeks past that date.

That’s unopened, of course. Once you open that cottage cheese, it might go bad in a couple of days, depending on how well you seal it, and how much you keep it refrigerated.

As I’ve found out, though, just because it’s pasteurized and sealed, it could still go bad, even in the fridge. Sad.

Merry Summer Christmas!

Police overreaction mystifies me

 Posted by on 25 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 252009
 

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, a worker in an empty house saw a man with a gun. Frightened, he fled and called police. The police came and surrounded the building, putting schools in the area into lockdown mode. After a few hours, they went into the house, and found no one there.

The Freep says they couldn’t confirm if the lockdown was then immediately rescinded, but according to the radio report I heard on CBC, it sounds like it. The CBC also mentioned that it was two schools that were locked down. (UPDATE: the CBC website says just one school.)

Here’s what gets me: if you think there’s a guy with a gun barricaded in a building, why bother to lock down a school that’s somewhere else?

And, once you go into the building and determine that he’s not in there, presumably he’s somewhere else? Ie. you reasonably think there’s a man with a gun just wandering about? But that’s the time to lift the lockdown?

In my opinion, there’s no reason to lock down the school unless you see someone with a gun actually entering the school. Did they lock down local businesses, too? Maybe force everyone within a half mile to stay inside their homes just because one guy thinks he saw a guy who might have been carrying a gun?

I guess it’s official — the terrorists have won.

Toronto plans to turn parks into dumps

 Posted by on 25 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 252009
 

Faced with a garbage strike, the city of Toronto is looking for alternative sites to let city dwellers dump their trash. The last time this happened, in 2002, the trash was collected in parks — including Christie Pits park, which is like a gigantic sunken bowl in the middle of a neighbourhood and thus lends itself perfectly to the collection of massive amounts of trash — you know, except for the fact that it is a neighbourhood park!

I used to live in Toronto — kind of near Christie Pits, actually — and the great parks in that city were one of the things that I loved about it. They act as massive communal back yards for people who live in a dense urban environment. Filling them with garbage is a ridiculous idea.

From an article in the Toronto Star:

“At a time of great economic uncertainty, with many city services currently unavailable, we need our great public parks more than ever”, said Christopher Holcroft, chair of Green 13.

The dump poses “unknown environmental risks to the surrounding parkland and lake and it undermines the very idea of shared public spaces,” the group said.

As I said when I first heard of this plan — why a park? Why not a parking lot? And it seems that I’m not the only one to make this obvious point:

A better choice would be a city-owned parking lot that is removed from the waterfront and parks, the group says.

Well, duh. Of course, filling a parking lot with garbage would affect the city’s business elite and perhaps its economy. Obviously parking your car takes precedence over kids playing soccer, walking dogs, picnics and frisbee. I hate the attitude that all must suffer on the alter of economic development and that parks and recreation are a luxury.

How to detect what is ‘phony baloney’ in the world

 Posted by on 25 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 252009
 

This video really doesn’t cover anything that you don’t get from an introductory science textbook or Logic 101 course. But it does a good job of explaining why the scientific method does such a good job and why it’s important to be skeptical.

There’s so much information overload on the Internet that I think this healthy skepticism — what Ernest Hemingway called a “built-in bullshit detector” — is increasingly necessary. Schools used to teach a rote memorization of facts and figures; now I think it’s more important to teach students the right skills to look up and locate information, plus the ability and judgment to weigh good information against bad. This video provides a nice, 10-step framework that I think could be integrated into a junior-high curriculum without any trouble at all.

Aside: the scientific method, in this context, needs to be expanded and renamed. If we called it the “bullshit detector”, students would memorize it in no time flat, and they’d happily use it to call out their friends.

Astonishing volcano eruption photo from the International Space Station

 Posted by on 24 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 242009
 

volcanofromspace

This is Sarychev Peak, in the Kuril islands — northeast of Japan, though part of Russia. On June 12, it started erupting. And, by happenstance, the International Space Station was orbiting right above. I can’t find the original NASA source, but I got the picture above from an article in the Daily Mail. They have more pictures. They also say:

The round hole in the clouds is thought to have been caused by the shockwave of the initial explosion. At the centre lies the billowing mushroom tower of grey and brown ash.

For volcano experts, the most exciting part of the image is the layer of smooth white cloud that caps the plume – a little like a layer of snow on a mushroom.

This cap of condensed air is created from the rapid rising and then cooling of the air directly above the ash column. When moist, warm air rises quickly it creates a cloud.

My jaw literally dropped when I saw these cool pictures.

UPDATE: Here’s the official NASA page, and here’s a link to the biggest size pic I can find.

Cheese of the Week: Frico spiced gouda

 Posted by on 24 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 242009
 

IMAGE_114

I had an idea this week that I could take a nice picnic-style lunch up to Amy during her break, and we could go to a nearby park, I would whip out Cheese of the Week, and we could perhaps even do a Cheese of the Week video in the great outdoors. The weather was beautiful, the light was amazing — it would have been perfect. Except, that is, for the gale-force wind, whipping about and getting into the microphone.

So pictures it was, same as every other week. The video will have to wait. But don’t worry — it’s a’coming!

Seeking shelter in a gazebo-style enclosure, we were mostly out of the wind, but not entirely. And, we quickly found ourselves surrounded by kids out for an afternoon in the park from their day care or last day of school. They were super inquisitive, and having determined that “lunch date” meant we were out being romantic, watched us rabidly to see if we would smooch.

Their minders made half-hearted efforts to keep them away from us, but you can’t corral 30 kids like that. They’re Hydra-like.

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For the picnic idea, I thought nice gouda would be appropriate — they come in a wax coating, so they’re designed (in my mind) to be transported and eaten in the fields. Of course, I wasn’t about to take a 10-pound wheel of gouda, so I just bought a nice sliver of one — a spiced gouda, which caught my eye because it was imported from Holland, not a knockoff made domestically, and also because the spice was named — cumin — and not just alluded to as “spices” in the ingredients list. I hate that.

As a cheese, gouda is one of my favourites. It has a near-perfect consistency that isn’t too hard, nor too soft, nor too rubbery. It cuts into slices like a dream, but in a pinch, you can just nibble some off the ends, if you like. It’s got a taste that’s very creamy and slightly salty. A lot of commenters say that gouda can be a tad bitter, but I don’t get that at all. If anything, it has a hint of sweetness, something you might get from a tiny pinch of brown sugar.

Of course, I figured it would go well with a fruity wine, but Amy was just on lunch break, so I decided to bring a bottle of faux-champagne — sparkling apple juice, with a cork that even popped. (This really got the kids excited — they asked if we were graduating.)

IMAGE_118

The deep cumin flavour of the spice was a really nice addition to this cheese. I’ve tried other spiced goudas, and some of them include carroway seeds, or mustard, or are smoked as well, but I think the simple cumin has a lot going for it.

I was hoping that the cumin seeded-gouda would go well with the 7 Grain flatbread-style crackers that I found, but the crackers were far too salty for this cheese. Luckily, you don’t need anything with it to appreciate a good gouda!

As a drink, I recommend the sparkling apple juice. I paid just $3.33 for a 750-mL bottle, and it was made in France. While that may sound expensive if you’re used to buying the apple drink in 1-L cartons for 79 cents, it’s a relative bargain when you consider that you might spend easily $3 for a 473-mL plastic bottle of juice at a gas station convenience store. As well, it went really perfectly with the cheese and with the picnic-style atmosphere that I was trying to create.

This cheese would also have gone well with seedless red grapes, if you had some. It needs something sweet for accompaniment, and I would ditch the crackers next time.

At the end of the picnic, there was still a fair bit of the wedge left, so I packed it up in the black reusable grocery bag that I used in lieu of a picnic basket, put it back in my car and promptly forgot about it.

Gouda, as it turns out, will ‘weep’ oil like there’s no tomorrow, if you leave it in the heat. Luckily, I had it in a zip-lock bag, so it didn’t get all over everything, but it was a pretty gross-looking cheese when I remember.

A few hours in the fridge, though, and the cheese was almost back to normal, although the outer wax covering had gotten very greasy. I was going to use it that night on a barbecued chicken burger, but I found some hot sweet Thai red pepper sauce that I decided to use instead. I was halfway through the burger when I thought to myself ‘You know, I bet gouda would have gone pretty well with this hot sweet Thai red pepper sauce.’ Next time, I might try it.

This was a solid gouda — and I was very pleased with it. Recommended!

Cool optical illusion disappears when you get close

 Posted by on 24 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 242009
 

color_illusion

If you’re like me, against a backdrop of red and purple, you see alternating squares of blue and green.

Lean in real close to your screen — or download the image to your own computer and zoom in on Photoshop – and you’ll see that the “blue” and the “green” are actually the same colour.

There’s a spiral version of the same illusion here, but because it’s a jpg, you can’t zoom in endlessly like the one I’ve posted.

Roger Ebert critiques the “news”

 Posted by on 24 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 242009
 

It was posted almost ten days ago, but I just came across an interesting article by Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times.

In it, Ebert examines the bully-style tactics of Bill O’Reilly and how he, and other “news” figures like him are changing the way people not only receive their information, but the information itself.

I am not interested in discussing O’Reilly’s politics here. That would open a hornet’s nest. I am more concerned about the danger he and others like him represent to a civil and peaceful society. He sets a harmful example of acceptable public behavior. He has been an influence on the most worrying trend in the field of news: The polarization of opinion, the elevation of emotional temperature, the predictability of two of the leading cable news channels. A majority of cable news viewers now get their news slanted one way or the other by angry men. O’Reilly is not the worst offender. That would be Glenn Beck. Keith Olbermann is gaining ground. Rachel Maddow provides an admirable example for the boys of firm, passionate outrage, and is more effective for nogt shouting.

Ebert goes on to decry the way radio and television have changed — which struck me as a comment on “the good ol’ days” that I have no sympathy for — but his analysis of O’Reilly, and others like him, is spot on. The bottom line, in Ebert’s mind, is that the polarization in the media has to stop. I would have to agree.

This T-shirt totally creeped me out

 Posted by on 23 June 2009  Modern Life
Jun 232009
 

IMAGE_112

So, Amy was trying on a few clothes at Giant Tiger (note to my international readers — it’s like a low-rent Wal-Mart) and I was just waiting around, like boyfriends do, you know?

And then I noticed this shirt. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it. It was gigantic and green. It was staring at me. I couldn’t look away. I tried to steal its evil soul with my camera-phone, but that didn’t work. I tried to hang another shirt over it, but every shirt on the rack had the same design on it!

Look, I know that it’s supposed to be a cute baby puppy cuddling with a cute baby kitten. But you weren’t there! You didn’t see — up close and personal — just how terrified that kitten looks, as it meekly raises one paw to fend off the snarling dog.

And the dog! The dog’s wearing a … a … a bib!

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