Now this I would pay money to see: George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens.

‘Kay…not sure what this means exactly, but it’s pretty fascinating stuff.

In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two men carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the subjects. After the door went by, the subjects were asked if they had noticed anything change.

Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.

[via]

I’m now on a bit of a mini-vacation from school. My next course starts in two weeks, and I just have to read a couple of chapters between now and then, nothing heavy. After that comes the first of two IT courses, both of which should be a joke in terms of difficulty. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something new out of it, but in any case it should be pretty light in terms of work from now until November…which is good ’cause Economics starts after that. Might as well enjoy it now, I suppose.

Last Thursday I wrote about some of my favourite two-minute song endings. Just now I listened to what might be my favourite minute of the year: between 2:50 and 3:50 of the Sleater-Kinney song “Let’s Call It Love”.

Today = cleaning day. It’s a pretty warm day too, not the best for trying to dig industrial strength cat hair out of the carpet or scrub the bathroom tile. It’s been that kind of Sunday though: cleaning, getting groceries, finishing up my last assignment (!), etc. Must be penance for all the time we’ve spent in front of the TV this weekend.

By the way, the Dessert Lady makes the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies ever. They’re going to do some kickass business on Labour Day (if they’re open); the new TIFF processing center is across the street in Cumberland Terrace, so the giant lineup should be there all day.

Last night signaled the start of the great Six Feet Under: Season 4 marathon. We got through six episodes; at this rate it wouldn’t surprise me if we finish it tomorrow evening.

The Toronto media has fallen into a state of CNN-like missing-pretty-white-girl dodginess. While I certainly hope Alicia Ross is soon found safe, I find it disgusting that missing white women (especially young, pretty ones) get ’round-the-clock coverage on American cable news (see Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway or whatserface the runaway bride) while non-white women hardly warrant a mention (see Tamika Huston or Latoya Figueroa). Seeing local media fall into the same pattern is upsetting.

If you doubt this at all, doing a google news search for Alicia Ross will produce 224 hits (at the time of writing). Searching for Aziz Fatima Nizam Ahman who’s been missing for six days gets you 1 hit.

Missing? Check. Female? Check. Young? Check. Pretty? Check. White? Sorry. Hence, 224 to 1.

The new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club disc Howl (metacritic) is as good as I was led to believe. As everyone knows by now it’s different from their first two albums, and a welcome one; the vast majority of bands can only sound the same for two consecutive albums before it gets boring. They took side trips down the musical roads they hinted at on the first two discs, and they didn’t get lost. Highly recommended.

I’m listening to the upcoming Fiery Furnaces disc Rehearsing My Choir. Noooooooot diggin’ it. It’s like they invited Granny to guest on Blueberry Boat II.

Karla Homolka is horrible. This guy is just pathetic.