Best comment ever

here by Mike O. It had me laughing all day.

Shame of the City

They live - and die - on a traffic island in the middle of a busy downtown street, surviving by panhandling drivers or turning tricks. Part one of a five part series on the homeless situation in San Francisco.

Woman knocked unconscious by trampling shoppers

Fun at Wal-Mart

A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.
"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!"'
Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals.
"All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.
Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.
She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials said Saturday they did not have any information on her condition.
"She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened."
Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.
Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of a such a melee during a sale.
"We are very disappointed this happened," Burk said. "We want her to come back as a shopper."

Putting a DVD player on hold? I think when one almost dies in line at Wal-Mart, they should at least get a free DVD player delivered to the hospital room. via MetaFilter

I saw this coming

Mark: "I want to nap with my skates"
Jordon: "You want them in your room?"
Mark: "No, I want to wear them!"
Jordon: "umm, no, just go to bed"
Mark: [throws himself down on the bed]

Now back to writing my review for Next-Wave

Hockey Saturday in Canada

Went with Mark and Jerry Reimer today to the mecca of Saskatoon hockey, Larry's Skate Exchange where Jerry and Gloria got Mark some skates for Christmas. It's early but Jerry and Gloria are going to see almost all of Asia over Christmas (not quite but close). After a trying on a pair, we found a pair of Bauer Supreme's that fit will and for not ever having on a pair of skates on before, he was able to walk around fairly well. I am starting the rink next week. After getting some consulting from Jerry on the rink, I am going with paper instead of poly for a surface. It will keep the grass from burning to a crisp in the spring when it is still cool and the sun is really bright.

To say Mark is thrilled about his skates in an understatement. He had me put them on as soon as we came home. He is watching television now while wearing skates and for him, life doesn't get any better. He is also explaining to the dog that dog's can't wear skates because they would look funny. I don't know if I agree with him. I think I would love to see my dog in skates.

It is always fun to go to Larry's Skate Exchange. Like a lot of kids in Saskatoon, I bought almost every skate that I have ever owned while living in Saskatoon from Larry. He started selling skates from his garage in Silverwood. Over the years he is doing it full time and I think he has over 1000 pairs of skates in there, plus all sorts of other equipment, snowboards, and seemingly everything under the sun there. Larry is kind of a cheery institution in Saskatoon.

Shipbreaking

Found this via Metafilter. Greenpeace has a website and a movement against the dumping of toxic ships on poor Asian countries beaches

Every year the number of ships for scrap increases. It is estimated that by 2010, 3000 ships per year will be scrapped. Each one broken to pieces on the beaches of developing Asian countries. Polluting the environment. Threatening the health and life of the workers.
To prevent this we have put 50 ships in the spotlight. These are vessels that are likely to be scrapped in the next five years. There are several categories. We will be actively monitoring these ships to ensure they are decontaminated of all toxic and hazardous substances prior to export for scrap to Asia. We have asked the owners to declare that their ships are decontaminated before scrapping. A convincing 'yes' means they will be removed from the list. But other ships where owners have not declared an intention to decontaminate will replace those removed.

Here are some pictures of some ships being torn apart on Asian beaches as well as a gallery of other pictures that look fascinating and horrifying.

I also found, Stop the Rustbuckets. A site that tracks unsafe ships.

This makes up for not getting a real bonus this year

You know you work at a bad airline when...

Pleased with workers who scored top marks on customer service, Air Canada recently picked 100 at random to give them a bonus -- a 2.25 pound hamburger coupon that expires in five weeks.
Employees winning the award were sent a personal letter containing the coupon, redeemable until December 31 at the Harvey's hamburger chain, Second Cup coffee shops or other restaurant outlet owned by Cara Operations, which provides food service for the insolvent airline.
Air Canada said the awards came at no cost to the carrier, mainly because the coupons will soon expire.
Earlier this month, Cara warned its own investors that Air Canada, the dominant airline in Canada and world No. 11, may cancel its catering contract.
Some Air Canada in-flight service employees were forced to forgo a bonus earlier this year when the airline won court protection from its creditors and squeezed some 490 million pounds of concessions from its unions.
The burger bonus comes as two groups bidding to control Montreal-based Air Canada through equity infusions have offered its chief executive and top restructuring manager multimillion-dollar stock or cash bonuses to remain with the airline through its bankruptcy protection proceedings.

We soak them in chemicals, end of story

Good for the ASA

Fast food corporation McDonald's has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for a campaign that trumpeted the brilliant simplicity of their recipe for fries -- the humble potato and nothing else.
Adverts showed a potato in a fries box alongside the text: "The story of our fries (end of story)".
But the public and campaigners objected, saying that often the chips were part-fried in one country, sometimes in beef tallow; flown halfway round the world; soaked in dextrose; often contaminated with gluten and finally drenched in excessive levels of salt.
The ASA said McDonald's argued the advert was "not intended to be a literal and comprehensive statement of all the processes involved".
It accepted the burger giant's case that it had not used beef tallow in Britain since 1993 and that there was no gluten contamination.
However, the ASA concluded the claim "we peel them, slice them, fry them and that's it" was misleading and told McDonalds to stop the adverts.

Sustainable Seafood Card

It's the Monterey Bay Aquarium's wallet-sized Seafood Watch Card. It rates seafood consumption by how safe it is for the environment and the particular species via Mighty Girl.

Psst! Wendy, get me one of these for Christmas

Here

Living Low in Luxury

Former Web entrepreneur remakes himself again, with a bus

The bus cannot be described as "regular." It's a luxury cruiser of an ungainly vintage -- 1992, to be exact -- and is rumored to have belonged to Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees. The carpet is teal, with an ivory dolphin carved into the weave. (To be fair, Wayne swears he's about to tear out the carpet because, he says, it's "silly.") The wall lights are a peculiar construction of brass and graduated glass rods that would fit on a set for "The Sopranos." Gilt-edged cocktail glasses nest in the glass cupboards. In the front of the bus are gray leather captain's chairs on swivels. In the back is a bedroom lined with mirrored cabinets.
Wayne, who intends to install solar panels on the roof, somewhere near the satellite uplink for his computer, bought the bus on eBay for the bargain price of $200,000 in cash.

The Memoirs of Jordon Cooper

Now easier than ever to get Customized Classics

The Consumer Strikes Back

Very effectively

Top 10 Dangers of Living in the Blog Space

via the Blog Herald

1. You think everyone cares about your opinions: They don't. They care about mine.
2. You stop having normal experiences: Every event you participate following your initial blog post will be constantly interrupted as you simultaneously live the adventure and write the corresponding blog post in your head.
3. You will care what other people think: Even if you really don't. "Stats" will become an important part of your blogging life (also self-esteem),even though you detest math. You'll be glad your web-stalker is gone but regret losing the hits. When stats go down, you will start padding your posts with words like "naked", "nudity", and "clown porn".
4. You will become more news savvy: You'll start reading several news sources to inspire more posts. Unfortunately, you will focus on items that are weird, quirky, or bizarre, thereby eliminating your ability to discuss these items with non-bloggers in real-life (ie around the water cooler) without coming off like the freak you really are.
5. You will feel the need to post: Even when you have nothing to say. Just in case other people are reading. Sarcasmo's Corner, I'm a slave for you.
6. You stop hearing from non-blogging friends: You're behind on their lives, but they feel like they haven't missed a beat with you, because they "keep up with you through your blog." Also, they are tired of talking to you because you constantly ask them "So, when are you going to get a blog?" (You laugh, but our local blog mafia has coerced four independent, strong-willed, intelligent, people into blogging (and we're working on a 5th). All hail the power of peer pressure!)
7. Your work habits change: Why talk to those irritating, clueless, inane people in your office, when you can sneak a quick peek at your favorite blogs for clever quips, interesting insight, and comment-based conversations?
8. You will stop having normal conversations with family and friends: Real life conversations will go like this. "Oh, hey, I saw So-And-So in concert and the weirdest thing happened..." Friend, "Yeah, I know, I read about it on your blog." Silence. Friend, "Did I tell you that I'm..." You, "Blog." Friend, "Yeah."
9, You expect your friends to be witty and clever. Always.: I am lucky to surrounded by bright, witty people with bright witty blogs. I don't know how the rest of the world survives without these for distraction. I suppose they must come here.
10. You demand that your witty and clever friends be blogging. Constantly: Why aren't you all busy shirking your jobs and entertaining me? I need INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION. Or, barring that, something really silly and inane to peruse. Seriously. I'm bored to tears, here people. For the love of Pete, POST SOMETHING. NOW.

via Jonny Baker

Buy Nothing Day

Morning Political Commentary

"In the 1950s, buggery was a criminal offence, now it’s a requirement to receive benefits from the federal government. This is a ridiculous rationale for extending government benefits!" so says today's Canadian Alliance press release from the offices of Garry Breitkreuz, M.P. for Yorkton-Melville. The full press release can be found on Warren Kinsella's blog. I know the guy is from Saskatchewan but using the term buggery in a press release is not even politically correct here. It doesn't make any sense. It would be offensive to his constituents and doesn't really serve any purpose. Unless you think that the issue isn't about gay rights but about trying to offend the Tories enough that they see the CA as a bunch of red-necks and vote against the merger of the two parties. Two very anti-gay commentaries in three days? Even after Liberal MP Andy Scott was beaten? They are trying to bait Tories and trying to damage the merger.

No comments, no flames, no problem.

Dan doesn't have comments which makes it easier to make posts like this.

Nooooooooooooooo! (my favorite coffee shop is closing)

Tools Affect Content

via Anil Dash

It seems that the PDF format signifies something now, and it's something more than just user inconvenience. In addition to requiring the user to shift mental modes, ("I'm seeing something designed as a PDF now, this must be serious information...") the requirement that a document either be downloaded or viewed in a context that's radically different from standard web pages seems like a subtle assertion of authority by a document's creator. The decision to switch from standard HTML to PDF isn't arbitrary, but it isn't based on technical requirements either. It's based on the value that an author wants to assign to the work, and it benefits from the still-prevalent, though rapidly fading, consensus that print work is somehow more inherently valuable and authoritative than web pages and other online content.

This is evidenced in several ways. Documents which are offered up for a fee are frequently in PDF format, though for unprotected documents there's no reason the content can't be presented as HTML. And even password-protected PDF documents rarely make use of any of the advanced features which theoretically distinguish PDF from HTML. If the goal is to preserve formatting fidelity for the user while providing a good user experience, Macromedia's FlashPaper offers a much more pleasant in-browser experience that doesn't require the document viewer to take over the entire window and chrome from the standard browser toolbar. So the PDF decision is entirely about communicating intent.

So much on my lifetime grudge against Tom Peters

Darryl Dash will call me a hypocrite for this post but here is Howard Rheingold chatting with Tom Peters

One very interesting comment in your book came from a young Japanese person who said that if a friend sent him text messages from some party he wasn't physically attending, he still felt as if he was there, just because he was getting messages. It seems to me that there's something huge in that comment.

HR: Yes, it is a huge comment because I think it indicates a generational norm that's changed dramatically. It used to be, and it still is among older people, that I'm going to meet you at 5th and Main at 7:00. And if you're not at 5th and Main by 7:20, you're late and you're rude. Apparently that norm has changed among groups of teenagers. In places like Finland, among adults, you don't say, "I'm going to meet you at 7:00 at 5th and Main." You say, "I'm going to meet you after work or before dinner downtown," and then you negotiate that. Sometimes whole groups of kids negotiate and then suddenly they all show up at a fast food place. They call it flocking or swarming behavior. And that's an example of collective action. It's not a political protest, it's just a social gathering.
There's a hotel I usually stay at in Stockholm and the bar/restaurant there is a popular meeting place. One time they were having a private party and to get in you had to show the text message invite on your telephone.
The whole thing was organized by four people who sent out invitations by text to everyone in their telephone address books. So it's this merging of social networks, communication networks, and places that causes this kind of collective action, the swarming or flocking behavior to happen.
If you're present in your social network, you're considered present. Researchers in Norway have called this the softening of time. Time is no longer the precise, crisp "if you're not there you're rude" agreement. It's softer than it used to be. That's a pretty major change.
I'd also point out that in Japan, this has caused a generational difference between the older folks and the younger folks. The use of the technology has certainly spread to everyone. But it used to be that parents would know who their kids' friends were because they would have to call the land-line and talk to them. Japanese homes are very small; people don't entertain there socially. They meet outside to entertain. Japanese teenagers' lives are pretty regimented. You can't really have a private conversation at home. Suddenly, it became cheaper for teenagers to have a cell phone than a land-line. They could communicate with their friends without their parents knowing about it.
As a result, parents no longer know who their kids' friends are. Which has happened pretty dramatically in the last five to ten years.
Another aspect of this new technology that's creating a gap between generations is the ability that kids have to write out messages with their thumbs while the cell phone is in their pocket or their school desk. Adults are not so adept at that.

Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns

by Jeffrey Zeldman

Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in.
The usability problem discussed in this article was one of many we addressed or are in the process of resolving. In the life cycle of most large projects there comes a point where you have to downsize your expectations, prioritizing deliverables in order to launch on time. Think 80/20 rule. Think “dare to do less.” If producing 100% of your desired features will delay your launch by six months, maybe you need to scale back, build what you can, take the site live, and then continue to improve it in the months ahead. That is what we’re doing with ALA.
When ALA 3.0 premiered with issue 160, some readers asked, where was our search engine? The answer is, it’s coming soon. We were unwilling to launch until we had solved the bookmark usability issue discussed in this article. But if implementing Search would delay the launch by months, it made more sense to launch sans Search (and add Search later).
ALA is more user-focused than before, but we still have a ways to go. That is the iterative nature of interactive media, and it also the mystery of life itself.

A great example of this approach is Fotopages which launched version 2 of the site a couple of weeks ago but continues to roll out new features almost weekly as they are finished.

But at least he is spending a lot of money doing nothing...

That's a lot of money for not doing anything anyone is aware of

The mystery surrounding Rick Laliberte's travel expenses deepened Wednesday, with the release of statistics which indicate the Saskatchewan Liberal MP rarely attends House of Commons committee meetings.
A Meadow Lake newspaper, meanwhile, claimed in a recent editorial that Laliberte is rarely seen in any of the communities in the Churchill River constituency and often misses important votes in the House of Commons.
All this has Jeremy Harrison, the Canadian Alliance candidate in Churchill River, once again demanding Laliberte come clean about the $310,000 in travel costs he racked up in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2003.
It was the second year in a row Laliberte topped the charts among Parliament's high flyers. He has gone through more than $550,000 during the last two fiscal years -- more than former privacy commissioner George Radwanski spent on lavish living and luxury travel.

Dean Attends Repatriation Service for Brother

From the Washington Post

Charles Dean was a gregarious, adventurous and idealistic recent graduate of the University of North Carolina when he set out to see the world. He was 24, and had been traveling for more than a year, when he and a young Australian journalist named Neil Sharman began a raft trip on the Mekong River in the fall of 1974. Charles Dean was planning to go to Thailand and then to Tibet to visit a friend in the Peace Corps. He never arrived.

Laos, the site of a once-secret U.S. war to cut North Vietnamese supply lines that snaked through its jungles, was a dangerous and unlikely tourist destination at the time. In his last letter to Dean, Charles wrote that at night he could "hear the thump of distant artillery and the muffled explosions as the shells hit the ground," Dean wrote in a soon-to-be-published book, "Winning Back America."

The worried Dean family spent months without any further word from him. Eventually, the family learned that Dean and Sharman were detained by the Pathet Lao communist forces at a checkpoint south of the Laotian capital, Vientiane. His family's best guess was that the communists believed the two white men with cameras to be spies.

"There was speculation that Charlie was in Laos because he was working for the CIA, and I think my parents believed that to be the case," Dean wrote in his book. "Personally, I don't think he was employed by the U.S. government in any capacity, but we'll probably never know the answer to that question."

Intelligence reports indicated over the years that the communists detained Dean and Sharman for three months and then executed the men in December. Witnesses saw the two being loaded onto a truck. "The next day the vehicle came back empty," Dean wrote.

Holy Matrimony

What's really undermining the sanctity of marriage? Article from Slate

Here's my modest request: If you're going to be a crusader for the sanctity of marriage—if you really believe gay marriage will have some vast corrosive, viral impact on marriage as a whole—here's a brief list of other laws and policies far more dangerous to the institution. Go after these first, then pass your constitutional amendment.
1. Divorce
Somewhere between 43 percent and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. If you believe gay marriage is single-handedly eroding a sacred and ancient institution, you cannot possibly be pro-divorce. That means any legislation passed in recent decades making divorce more readily available—from no-fault statutes to the decline of adultery prosecutions—should also be subject to bans, popular referendum, and constitutional amendment.
2. Circus Circus
In general, if there is blood in your body and you are over 18, you can get married, so long as you're not in love with your cousin. (Although even that's OK in some states). You can be married to someone you met at the breakfast buffet. Knowing her last name is optional. And you can be married by someone who was McOrdained on the Internet. So before you lobby to ban gay marriage, you might want to work to enact laws limiting the sheer frivolousness of straight marriage. You should be lobbying for an increase in minimum-age requirements, for mandatory counseling pre-marriage, and for statutory waiting periods before marriages (and divorces) can be permitted.
3. Birth Control
The dissenters in the Massachusetts decision are of the opinion that the only purpose of marriage is procreation. They urge that a sound reason for discriminating against gay couples is that there is a legitimate state purpose in ensuring, promoting, and supporting an "optimal social structure for the bearing and raising of children." If you're going to take the position that marriage exists solely to encourage begetting, you need to oppose childlessness by choice, birth control, living together, and marriage for the post-menopausal. In fact, if you're really looking for "optimal" social structures for childrearing, you need to legislate against single parents, poor parents, two-career parents, alcoholic or sick parents, and parents who (like myself) are afraid of the Baby Einstein videos.
4. Misc.
Here's what's really undermining the sacredness of modern marriage: soap operas, wedding planning, longer work days, cuter secretaries, fights over money, reality TV, low-rise pants, mothers-in-law, boredom, Victoria's Secret catalogs, going to bed mad, the billable hour, that stubborn 7 pounds, the Wiggles, Internet chat rooms, and selfishness. In fact we should start amending the Constitution to deal with the Wiggles immediately.
Here's why marriage will likely survive last week's crushing decision out of Massachusetts: Because despite all the horrors of Section 4, above, human beings want and deserve a soul mate; someone to grow old with, someone who thinks our dopey entry in the New Yorker cartoon competition is hilarious, and someone to help carry the shopping bags. Gay couples have asked the state to explain why such privileges should be denied them and have yet to receive an answer that is credible.

Argue amongst youselves in the comments below.

Government of Canada via RSS

This is very cool.

Deadline Iraq

It being rebroadcast on CBC on Sunday, November 30th. If you have time to watch it and can get CBC or CBC Newsworld, it will be worth watching.

How to build an outdoor rink

Everything you wanted to know about outdoor rinks

Another bizarre DCMA story

Now DCMA is defining how I can and can't sell gifts

I should probably also point out that the Madonna/Missy CD isn't a promotional CD like those the record companies send out to radio stations. It wasn't promoting music; it was promoting jeans. And no doubt for some customers the CD was what they were really buying and the jeans were the "free gift." If Time Warner can tell our reader that he can't auction the CD because Madonna might not like it, why can't the Gap say he can't sell the jeans to a second-hand clothing store because the seamstress in an Asian sweatshop could object?

The worst part about the drive to Spiritwood every week

This

Wifi and Public Speaking

via Smart Mobs

Call it a "basement meeting." This second meeting takes place below the level of the first. An audience can be dropping fast e-mail or instant messages to others in the same room, so that unbeknown to the hapless speaker, a consensus is developing about the talk he is giving. The positive side of this is that people can develop better questions and enliven the discussion that follows.

Doh

Out too late for my birthday

Some changes ahead

My site is undergoing some changes over the next couple of days. The big one was one that you probably haven't noticed and that was the migration from Microvision's WebExpress into Macromedia's Dreamweaver. A big job but one that is done more or less done. New templates are up and are governing the site which will make it easier to change the look and feel of certain parts of the site with a lot less work. Most of the messy WebExpress code has been cleaned by Dreamweaver so download times will be shorter and less bandwidth will be needed. You will notice that the photos section has been replaced by a link to my fotoblog and there is an RSS link on every page for those of you who want to get the blog via RSS Newsreader. I only have it set up to give an exerpt like some other well known blogs. Do you like that or would you prefer the whole thing?

Over the next few days I am in the process of updating content (I have about 500 new quotes to add) and adding two new content sections (they aren't done yet). I'll let you know when it is ready.

It's funny but I was planning to redesign the site but I am still pretty happy with my current design. It has had its critics but I still like it and still seems flexible enough to survive into the new year. I have to get it done so I can start working on Wendy's site. She has a bunch of Christmas recipes she wants on before December 1st. As the holidays hit, my traffic goes down and hers goes way up and she gets a load of e-mail thanking her for saving a holiday meal with the right recipe and helping the host or hostess escape a lecture from a mother-in-law. They are very funny to read.

Speaking of ice

It is generally dark when we are driving up to Spiritwood these days but my favorite site driving home is the 10 or so ponds and small lakes that are home to hockey games on a Sunday afternoon. 5-10 neighbors out on the pond skating and drinking hot chocolates and coffees on the back of pickup trucks. Kind of cool.

Interview with Eugene Peterson...

The deeper problem, Peterson said, is that two things that are basic to the Christian life run counter to the American ethos. First, the Christian life is not about us, but about God. It is not like giving ourselves a makeover. "We're in on it, but we're not the subject or the action," Peterson said. Ever notice how in the Bible, we always come in after a preposition? God with us, in us, for us. In an individualistic, commercial culture, where the self is the center of everything, an autonomous agent of transformation, we have lost this grammar of shalom—what Peterson called "prepositional participation."

The second principle of the Christian life that runs against the grain of American culture, Peterson said, is that the ways and means must be appropriate to the ends. "We can't participate in God's work if we insist on doing it our own way." He cited two examples of "doing the right thing the wrong way": congregation and Scripture. We consider both to be our matters, not God's. Instead of forming communities that embody self-denial, sacrifice, and patience for God to become present in them, we form "consumer churches," using commercial methods to attract people and cater to their wants. And rather than reading Scripture as a way of "listening to God revealing God," we treat it as information for us to process to become more successful and enlightened people. In both cases, the ways and means—bowing to the gods of salesmanship and efficiency—are out of sync with the ends—forming a community of believers submitting to God's work within them.

These are familiar themes that bear tedious repeating in an impulsive culture. Coming from Peterson, they are anything but tedious. In The Message, his plainspoken translation of the Bible, Peterson captured the essence of Scripture with neither sanctimony nor glibness. This lucidity marked his address as well, though it was not without nuance. He introduced this baffling paradox of the Christian life. "This is slow work; it cannot be hurried. This is urgent work; it cannot be procrastinated." In American culture, in which "fast" is equated with "good," this is a contradiction. What's worse about the contemplative life, he told me afterwards, is that "most of the time you're unconscious of it. … The minute you start thinking about it, you mess it up; there's a sense of always having dissonance."

The most helpful metaphor for this tension, Peterson said at the end of his address, comes from a neighbor of his who developed a fascination with glaciers. They possess unstoppable force but move so slowly as to be imperceptible. They don't move an inch until they are 64 feet thick. Peterson didn't say this, but he suggested we could use more thickness in our lives and actions. Before long, he said, "the ice will begin to slide," and, as Hopkins envisioned in his sonnet, "we will see Christ in ten thousand places."

Link to entire article. via Jason Evans.

Advice needed

I want to have our backyard flooded for the Christmas season and I need some advice. Growing up we lived close enough to Lawson Heights School to skate there so we never flooded our backyard. There are no rinks in Mayfair so I am flooding part of our backyard.

Our backyard grass has a lot of wild grass as it kind of went unkept from the end of WWII until Wendy and I moved in. Not much topsoil but after some fertilizing, it looks okay. It isn't as if I am flooding a fairway of Augusta. What I am wondering is, how much damage will the ice do the lawn? I don't mind it looking bad for a couple of weeks in the spring but I don't want to destroy it. That being said, it is pretty tough after not getting watered for a couple of decades but the last couple of years it has had it good. Should I be looking at laying down some tarps or picking up a "rink in a bag" from Canadian Tire?

The plan is to play some hockey with Mark and Wendy on Christmas Day and if it is above -20, roast some hotdogs in the firepit. It is Leighton's birthday as well and we have invited him over. Hopefully between the two of us we can get a "backyard rink" cam going.

Random Tuesday Thoughts

Christmas shopping is in full swing and some gift giving happened today. Jerry and Gloria Reimer are heading to Vietnam for Christmas and are leaving in mid December. Gloria was making some talking about getting some books for the trip. Wendy and I wanted to get Gloria Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller and Vimy by Pierre Berton so we went out yesterday and picked them up and dropped them off for them today before they bought them. Wendy has liked Blue Like Jazz so much that I haven't had a chance to read it. Todd Peters really enjoyed it too. Andrew Careaga has a good review of it at Next-Wave. My old pastor and friend and now professor at Rocky Mountain College, Mark Mealey always talked about Vimy and for about a year I couldn't find a copy. There were actually waiting lists in all of the Saskatoon used bookstores. We finally found a used copy and got one and it is an amazing book. Then shortly after I got a copy of it, they reprinted it in a nice paperback format (larger format, really nice covers) that is even nicer then the hardcovers. Go figure. I have suggested both Vimy and The Great Depression as preaching textbooks in the past. Everyone talks about using more story in their preaching, well, I don't think anyone tells a story like Pierre Berton.

The book I was hoping to give out to a couple of people is Steven Johnson's new book, Mind Wide Open but it won't be out until February.

The book is an attempt to look systematically at the question of what brain science can tell you about yourself as an individual. There are a number of great books that ask questions like: How did the brain evolve? Or: how does the brain work? This book asks a related, but more intimate question: how does your brain work? In what ways can science shed light on your own personality traits, emotional habits, mental blindspots or strengths? In the book I've set myself up as a kind of guinea pig for this experiment: I take a number of tests that evaluate different cognitive faculties; I do a number of explorations with neurofeedback; I help design a series of fMRI experiments on my own head. I also have conversations with some of the world's leading brain scientists, who function as guides through this amazing inner landscape.

There isn't a "book" like The Ingenuity Gap, Emergence, and Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics which we gave out lots last year. Everyone liked their books last year except for my dad who didn't hide his disappointment with The Ingenuity Gap. While I have some favorites this year, none do that well to all of our friends like last year. It means some careful looking and pondering the weeks ahead.

The Love Him, Hate Him President

Yet another article on the polarization of America. This time in Time. Also has a good article on how political punditry is contributing to the divide and creating anger.

Len Sweet Chatting @ Spirituality.com

He is talking about "America the Spiritual"

This groundbreaking new series showcases some of today's leading thinkers speaking to the unique phenomenon of the nation's third great spiritual awakening. The first event in the series, "Women and Spirituality - Breaking the Code," will take place on Friday, December 5, at 6:30 pm, Eastern Time.
Join noted experts Elaine Pagels and Ann Braude in a conversation with popular author and theologian Len Sweet on this fascinating topic gaining momentum in the news -- that of the previously obscured leadership roles of women in early Christianity and American religious history.
Author of 20 books, on the changing face of religion in America, Len Sweet, Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, is one of the nation's most provocative thinkers on contemporary, spirituality - and an insightful, engaging moderator.
Elaine Pagels is Professor of Religion at Princeton University and best-selling author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, as well as numerous other works on early Christianity and is a National Book Award recipient.
Ann Braude is Director of the Women's Studies on Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School and an authority on the role of women in American religion today.
Spirituality.com, www.spirituality.com, is an open-faith community where people from various beliefs and backgrounds share spiritual ideas, inspiration, experiences and prayers.

Top Blog?

According to BlogStreet, I am in the top 500 blogs. Kinda cool. Thanks to everyone who links to me.

U.S. Presidential Politics in 60 seconds

with Bill Clinton

Now, let me just close on an upbeat note here. I don't entirely buy the Ruy Teixiera [and John B. Judis] analysis about the natural Democratic majority. On the other hand, there is something to it.
[Lyndon] Johnson wins big in '64 cuz he marginalizes [Barry] Goldwater. They never got over it and they've been trying to do it to us ever since. By '68, Nixon wins by a point, but we all know he would have beaten [Hubert] Humphrey handily if [George] Wallace hadn't been in the race. So there was a traumatic coalescing of a culturally conservative majority in the Republican Party between '64 and '68, ratified by the '72 election, OK? So essentially from '68 forward the Republican Party had a hardcore base of roughly 45 percent. The Democrats had a hardcore base of roughly 40 percent.
So in '80, Reagan wins 51-to-41, and [John] Anderson gets, what, [6 percent], [7 percent], whatever he got? Then in '84, [Reagan] wins 6-to-4. And in '88, they win 54-to-46, which means they won 9 points of the undecided vote and we won 6 points. In '92, because of the campaign I ran, if no [Ross] Perot had been in there, all the analyses show that it would have been 52 [percent], 53 percent. In '96, if no Perot had been in there and we'd had a normal turnout, it would have been about 55 percent. [So] by 2000, sometime between '92 and 2000, because of immigration, urbanization and the suburbanite voters developing a more communitarian ethic, both parties had a base of about 45 percent. And what happened in 2000 is they were fighting over an effective 10 percent, and they fought to a draw.
So that means that we're in every race. You start with 45 percent, you're in a race. I don't care what anybody says. So sometime between 1992 and 2000, for the first time -- probably in the last four years, for the first time since 1964 -- we were no longer at a cultural disadvantage in our base. So both parties go into this next election with a natural base of about 45 percent. So in 2004, this race will be about -- it goes back to your question about the Democrats' dilemma and our division. We have to improve our turnout to their level, as we did in '98 and 2000 but not in 2002. And then we have to win the votes among the other 10 percent. That's eminently doable.

He makes it sound very easy. via Steven Johnson

Wal-Mart the Sovereign State

First of three part article on Wal-Mart (registration req'd: user:jordoncooperdotcom pw:jordoncooperdotcom)

Half a century ago, the nation's largest and most emulated employer was General Motors Corp. "Today," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at UC Santa Barbara, "for better or worse, it's Wal-Mart."
GM brought prosperity to factory towns and made American workers the envy of the world. With a high-wage union job, an assembly-line worker could afford a house, a decent car, maybe even a boat by the lake.
There was a bit of truth, Lichtenstein said, to the famous assertion by Charles Wilson, General Motors chief from 1941 to 1953, that what was good for GM was good for the country.
With Wal-Mart, the calculus is considerably more complex.

"The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture." I think Yahoo! News and Canoe have to be the two worst offenders. Canoe links rot before Google News can even post them.

Simplicity Survival

John's report touches on four topics addressed by Bill at the event:
* The awesome one-page summary
* Emails that get read and acted upon
* How to delete 75% of emails
* Getting the budget you deserve with less effort

Jesus was married?

and may be a half dolphin as well

Well, of course I can’t prove he wasn’t married. I can’t prove he wasn’t half-man, half dolphin either. None of the sources we have mention such an oddity, but that silence can best be explained as the embarrassment that someone The Church wanted to proclaim as divine had a dorsal fin and a blowhole in the back of his head. “You don’t think they’d boast about that, do you? They suppressed all references to his dolphin characteristics. But notice — he associated with fishermen, and he had an inexplicable knowledge of where to catch the most fish even though he wasn’t a fisherman himself!”
(Later): And then there’s that “stilling the sea” thing, too.

Some sarcastic Biblical scholarship from AKMA

Whoa

Jared Siebert of Next Church is now blogging

Deadine Iraq

Christiane Amanpour of CNN has stated that the coverage of the war, particularly in America, was too driven by patriotism. John Burns of the New York Times recently said that the Iraq war highlights how corrupt journalism has become. His colleague at the Times, Judith Miller, has herself been accused by some media observers of being corrupted by Pentagon influences. The controversy around Tony Blair and the BBC's coverage of the war continues to boil.

Last night CBC aired Deadline Iraq which was a documentary about and by the reporters who were embedded and covered the Iraq war. Their stories were disturbing on so many levels. From their constant use of the term propaganda to describe the American media's covering of the war, to editors who wanted a smiling and happy picture of a boy who they called stumpy who had both legs and arms blown off and had 70% of the rest of his body burned, to the lack of objectivity they described when the fighting started to one reported who wondered if he should pick up a M-16 after the medics and chaplains had even started firing back when they were surrounded and about to be overrun during the battle for Baghdad.

"There was smoke everywhere. There were vehicles around us burning everywhere. The chaplain of the unit that I was with picked up an automatic weapon and started firing back. Medics were starting to fire back. I thought about it quite seriously myself."

There is a website and even a photo gallery of some pictures that never made the papers or CNN. Also chilling is the 12 complete interviews that they posted on the site.

Simpson also witnessed some horrific mistakes. Tense and under the constant threat of suicide bombers, soldiers fired on innocent civilians attempting to flee the city at military checkpoints.

"One soldier had to bury 3 of the people, a mother, a father and a 14 year old boy. They dug a grave along the Tigris rive, it was so hard they could only dig it shallow. They put the mother and the father in first and laid the son across their bodies. And the sergeant who had been in the marine corps for 15 years almost had tears in his eyes."

"He said 'what I regret most of all is that we don't have anybody in this battalion with a Polaroid camera who could take their pictures and make the location. We could put out some flyers in the neighbourhood saying, these people were killed on this evening, do you know them.'"

December 2nd

Am going to be in Toronto the night of December 2nd with some time on my hands. Let me know if you want to get together for a beverage and food.

Exactly

Crimes Against Nature

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.

An interesting article on the state of the enviroment and enviromental regulation in the United States in Rolling Stone magazine via MetaFilter