Month: October 2006

Final thoughts on the Rockies

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A few last things about the Rockies trip, then I’ll shut up about it, I promise. It’s hard to believe we’ve been back a week. We’ve kind of started planning our next trip already.

The five best parts of the trip, for me:

  • Lake O’Hara (pic) was almost certainly the most spectacular place I’ve ever been. Part of what made it so incredible was the relative isolation — only 40 other people are in the immediate area, so you don’t really see anyone else apart from the bus ride in and out. Lake Oesa, where we hiked to, was like a natural cathedral.
  • Peyto Lake (pic | video) was a quick stop along the highway to Jasper, and was swarmed with tourists, but the scenery was immaculate: the mountains, the glacier, the impossible blue of the lake, the valley stretching north…it made for stunning pictures and a nice little video I posted to YouTube.
  • Moraine Lake (pic) was almost as pretty as Lake Louise and about one-tenth as crowded. Our room at the lodge gave us a beautiful view of the lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks, and was the perfect home base from which to start our trip.
  • Beauty Creek (pic) kind of snuck up on us, a short hike up a series of waterfalls and cascades, just off the highway but feeling miles away from anything. At that point in the week we didn’t really expect to be stunned and surprised anymore, but we were.
  • The Athabasca Glacier (pic). There’s not much to say about this; we got to walk on a glacier. The glacier, though huge, was dwarfed by the surrounding mountains and was one little bit of a huge ice field that fed rivers running into three different oceans. I’ve never felt so small in my life.

In general, we had some really good fortune on our trip. The weather, for example, was better than we could’ve hoped for the first five days…sunny and in the teens, with no rain or snow whatsoever until the last two days when most of our outdoor activities were finished anyway. The food was terrific for the most part, though we can thank good research for that. Our rental car was comfortable, good on gas and had zero problems over the 600+ km we covered. It had a good stereo too, not that we needed it; apart for the Calgary-Canmore stretch of highway, we turned off the stereo/radio for the entire trip. There was more than enough natural beauty to keep us occupied. Finally, we lucked out — eventually — with the wildlife. Apparently it’d be pretty hard to spend a week in the Rockies without seeing deer, bighorn sheep or elk, but we got to see chipmunks and pikas high up around Lake O’Hara, and we got even got to see a coyote and a wolf just outside of Banff.

OK, I’ll do my best to curb any more Rockies talk.

[tags]rockies, lake o’hara, peyto lak, moraine lake, beauty creek, athabasca glacier[/tags]

Like he wasn't a big enough twat already

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Darcy Tucker loves him some Dubya.

“I would like to pick his brain,” Tucker said. “I think his political views are on the same line as my own. I think the wave of the future is someone who doesn’t back down to terrorism.”

Oy.

.:.

Sometimes I hate living in Toronto. Tonight, my only option is watching the Leafs play Calgary instead of being able to see Montreal open their home season against Ottawa. And can someone explain to me why even French CBC isn’t carrying the Canadiens game?

[tags]darcy tucker, dubya, maple leafs, canadiens[/tags]

"What's wrong with being elitist, if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?"

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Today has been a slotttthhhhhhhful day. It was nice to sleep in this morning after a late night out with CBGB, and we’ve barely gotten off our asses all day. No trips to plan, no festivals to attend, no pictures to sort & upload, no textbook to read, etc. Good thing, too, ’cause it’s friggin’ freezing outside.

.:.

Yesterday’s Salon featured an interview with Richard Dawkins, who I wrote about here.

It’s interesting that you link those two words — intelligent and atheistic. Are you saying the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist?

There’s a fair bit of evidence in favor of that equation, yes.

Word.

[tags]richard dawkins, atheism[/tags]

The Nobel peace prize

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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a man and a bank for their work and theories on micro-credit and other  grassroots methods of eliminating poverty. When I first read this I thought it was the prize for economics, but after re-reading it realized the press release was for the peace prize.

Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Grameen Bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world.

I find this very interesting; early in my international business class we had a debate about whether poverty breeds (or contributes to) terrorism, and the Nobel committee seems to be saying that it does. For my part, I agree; I think poverty breeds desperation and ignorance (through lack of education), two factors that increase the likelihood of terrorism on a macro scale.

Thoughts?

[tags]nobel peace prize, muhammad yunus, grameen bank, micro-credit[/tags]

Pictures: days 5, 6 and 7

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

That’s it, the last of the pictures are uploaded. Day 5 has quite a few pics, but days 6 and 7 are pretty light. Maybe I’ll put one or two of the videos into YouTube someday, but for now I’m happy this is done.

Day 5: pictures | description

Day 6: pictures | description

Day 7: pictures (no description; there were only 10 pictures taken as we drove out of Banff)

This male elk was eating the flowers right below our hotel window at the Banff Springs

[tags]rockies, banff, banff springs, wolf, deer, elk, coyote, beauty creek, mistaya canyon, johnston canyon[/tags]

Mystery, wonder, freshness

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TV notes:

  • I like the new trend of shows not having opening credits with a long stupid song. Even ER has scaled back their marathon jingle.
  • People playing teenagers on TV are usually much older than their characters, hence, I don’t feel so dirty ogling the cheerleader on Friday Night Lights (who’s actually 26). However, I feel extremely dirty now that I’ve learned the cheerleader (do we see a trend here?) on Heroes is only 17.
  • The Colbert Report: better than the Daily Show?

.:.

Sports notes:

  • The Canadiens took 5 of 6 points on their season-opening road trip, including a win over Philadelphia last night. Not a bad way to start, I guess.
  • Also: the Raptors don’t seem to suck too badly yet, though it is only the preseason. They won last night to go to 2-0.
  • The NBA has announced their plan to crack down on whining and bitching after calls (or non-calls). Say a prayer for poor Vince Carter.

.:.

Political notes:

  • Stephen Harper accuses all of the Liberal party leadership candidates of being “Anti-Israeli.” At least he restrained himself long enough to keep from calling them anti-semitic.
  • I don’t think the US can get out of Iraq right now. I think they should be trying their hardest to get out as soon as possible — and I don’t think they are right now — to minimize loss of life on both sides, but in the short term I think they need to stay. Obviously, I think it was a mistake of staggering proportions to invade Iraq in the first place, but now that they’ve made this mess they have to clean it up. You can’t kick down the door of a house, shoot one of the occupants, break all the furniture, set the place on fire, piss on the hallway floor and then just walk out yelling “My job here is done!” If you walk out of the house now, the guy you shot will bleed to death and the house’ll burn to ground. Now that you’re there, you’d damn well better put down the gun and grab a firehose to fix the problem you started. You broke it, you gotta pay for it. Tragically, the currency will be lives. Not that the guys who dreamt up the invasion care about that.

[tags]er, friday night lights, heroes, colbert report, canadiens, raptors, vince carter, stephen harper, iraq[/tags]

Pictures: day 4

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I’ve uploaded pictures from the fourth day of our trip, when we saw things around Jasper like Mount Robson, Maligne Canyon, Maligne Lake and the gondola to the top of The Whistlers. Lots of wildlife shots in this one: bighorn sheep, deer and a few distant elk. Click here for the pictures & description.

[tags]rockies, jasper, maligne lake, maligne canyon, bighorn sheep, deer, gondola, whistlers[/tags]

How not to take a loss

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This plane crash story from New York is getting weirder and weirder.  There’re now reports that Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was on the plane when it crashed into the building. I’d heard it was his plane, but apparently they’ve now found his passport near the wreckage.

Was he just really broken up about the ALCS loss to Detroit?

.:.

I see that Americans, having run out of foods to deep-fry, have begun deep-frying Coke. Brilliant. [via Joe]

.:.

I’m always angry at myself for not going to see art and photography exhibits, so I’m going to try really hard to see the World Press Photo 2006 exhibit at BCE place before the 22nd. [via Torontoist]

.:.

More pictures tonight if I have a chance.

[tags]cory lidle, new york plane crash, deep-fried coke, word press photo 2006[/tags]

Pictures: day 3

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I’ve whittled the 405 pictures we took on the way from Lake Louise to Jasper down to 295…which is still a lot, but thankfully flickr lets you preview ’em before you open ’em. There’re about 70 of the Athabasca Glacier alone, so if you get tired of looking at ice just skip to the waterfalls. Pictures are here, description of the day is here.
Peyto Lake and the Icefields Parkway leading north

[tags]rockies, banff, jasper, icefields parkway, bow lake, peyto lake, athabasca glacier, athabasca falls, sunwapta falls[/tags]

Brain –> page

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The Onion’s A.V. Blog reports that two of the TIFF films that I’m most anticipating might have trouble getting on screens south of the border. I suspect no such issues here in Canada, but it’s a sad state of affairs. As the article states,

“In both cases, films are being shut out of theaters for their ideas, not for any explicit or offensive content on the surface. These gatekeepers have basically decided that adults need to be shielded from ideas that they deem inappropriate. They’ve creating a special rating and it’s called GFY (Go Fuck Yourself).”

.:.

I might be in the minority, but I’m all for Hockey Night In Canada moving from CBC to TSN/CTV. Why? Because I, like most of the rest of the country, can’t stand watching the prime time game being called by a pair of Leafs homers who’re on the down slope of their careers. Bob Cole and Harry Neale may be nice guys, but you may as well go watch the game in your Toronto-fan grandpa’s rec room. Gord Miller’s a better play-by-play man, Pierre Maguire’s better at colour (and actually knows the names of some non-Leaf NHLers), and they have guys like Bob McKenzie, Glenn Healy, James Duthie and Chris Cuthbert to boot.

The best part: no more Don Cherry. I’d like it if they could salvage MacLean somehow, but if he has to be sacrificed in order to distract Cherry while they pack up the HNIC set, then so be it.

.:.

Because all my music is encoded at 128kbps (it’s the only way it’ll all fit on my Nomad) I’m thinking this would be a good investment.

.:.

Hey, WOXY’s back.

.:.

Slides in a museum; bitchin’. My brother’s already mentioned it, but this exhibit at London’s Tate Modern looks very cool. When I was there that hall was filled with a giant (and I do mean giant; it was about a hundred feet tall) double-ended red horn.

.:.

If I have time tonight I’ll try to post more pictures from our trip. Day 3 was the motherload (400+ pics) so it could take me a while to slog through them.

.:.

I’ve finally had to pick up my next textbook. However, it’s a statistics course, and I find stats kind of interesting. Sick puppy, I know.

.:.

New TV: Heroes has me hooked. Studio 60 is, apparently, in trouble, proving once again that Aaron Sorkin is too smart to write for television. I haven’t watched Friday Night Lights yet, but if it’s as good as the movie I’ll stick around for the ride.
[tags]d.o.a.p., deliver us from evil, hockey night in canada, creative xmod, woxy, tate modern, statistics, heroes, studio 60, friday night lights[/tags]