Category: News

"It would be Wolfmother instead of Wolf Parade, Darkness instead of Lightning Bolts"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I like this recent development of traditional media linking out to local event sites for more in-depth coverage. It’s especially helpful in cases where user-generated content (like all the photos of this week’s fire on Queen Street) is better and/or more plentiful than the professionally-gathered stuff.

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I don’t know what it says about the internet (or, erm, me) that, just by reading her blog at NPR, I’ve developed a crush on Carrie Brownstein, a gay woman I’ve never met. I sense this could be difficult relationship.

.:.

I can feel myself getting sick. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since everyone around at work is sick, but c’mon…I was just sick. Super crazy mondo sick. Hell ass balls sick. I cannot be sick again, not with an assignment due Monday and work running somewhere north of murderous. I cannot. I shall not.

[coughs]

Goddammit.

[tags]blogto, toronto star, carrie brownstein, cold season[/tags]

"Officials would not estimate the likelihood of success, only calling it high."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Yesterday my brother was supposed to be in town for dinner, but fate prevented him from reaching Toronto in time, so Nellie and I just went ahead and had dinner at the same place. Screw valentine’s day; ’tis a crock.

Much more important to us are the days immediately before and after V-Day; Feb 13 is the anniversary of the day we got engaged (which Nellie refers to as engage-iversary) and Feb 15, the anniversary of the day we adopted the cats (which, naturally, she refers to as cat-iversary). Of course, there’s another wonderful day coming up on Monday: our new holiday. Thank you Dalton McGuinty.

One more Valentine’s-related tidbit: I’m guessing NBC re-aired last year’s V-Day episode of 30 Rock, ’cause yesterday my blog was flooded with hits for the phrase “Happy Valentimes!!”

.:.

Let’s see, what’s in the news today? Hmm…US primaries…campus gunman…Pentagon to shoot down satellite…baseball hea…wait, what?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon plans to shoot down a disabled U.S. spy satellite before it enters the atmosphere to prevent a potentially deadly leak of toxic gas from the vehicle’s fuel tank, officials said on Thursday. [via Reuters]

Yeah, I don’t see how anything could go wrong with that.

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Toshiba: bring out your dead.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp. [via MSNBC]

Seriously where’s my Blu-Ray Children Of Men?

[tags]valentine’s day, family day ontario, disabled satellite, hd-dvd, blu-ray[/tags]

"Devour the moose!"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

While Nellie and her mom were out yesterday I watched a documentary called The Heart Of The Game (imdb | rotten tomatoes) about a Seattle high school girls basketball team. While the entire team was followed for several years, the main focus was on the coach (a college tax professor) and Darnellia Russell, a star guard who goes through a pretty huge roller coaster ride over the course of the film. Recommended, especially if you like sports, and basketball in particular.

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Last week the Toronto District School Board voted to approve the creation of one or more “afro-centric” schools, to focus on black students. Premier Dalton McGuinty clearly isn’t a fan of this decision, but I don’t see how the provincial government can take an official position like that when Ontario still has an entire Catholic school board.

I’m really torn about this. In an ideal world something like this wouldn’t be necessary; black kids, white kid, kids of any ethnicity or background would be treated equally in the existing school system. However, given the high dropout rate among black kids, it’s obvious that something’s broken and needs fixing. Whether or not it’s the right answer to open an afro-centric school, at least the school board is acknowledging that something needs to happen. I don’t buy all the panicked murmuring about this being segregation; while it’s not ideal, no one’s forcing black kids to stay away from white schools.

So, the question becomes whether the school(s) will work. Will dropout rates for black kids at these schools be lower than at traditional schools? If so, I guess most people would see that as success, but it’d be hard to judge; would these schools have more or less public funding than traditional schools? More or less private funding? Better teachers? More motivated students? It’s hard to conduct a reasonable test when it’s not apples to apples.

But let’s say all the external factors were the same and dropout rates at these schools fell below the average. Let’s say the dropout rate at afro-centric schools fell below the overall dropout rate for students of all races, but only black students were allowed to attend. We’d then have segregation of a new kind, and all the complicated debates that go along with it (see affirmative action). Then again, economic segregation already exists today because of the private school system, so I guess this is nothing new.

One problem at a time, I guess. It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses, and how successfully it is…if that can even be measured.

[tags]the heart of the game, afro-centric schools, toronto district school board[/tags]

83.764%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

A review of Meet The Spartans in Slate contains what may be the best line of the year so far:

This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a “movie” and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. [Directors] Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it.

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Well, this is certainly an Afghanistan worth fighting for:

Last week, a court in Balkh province sentenced Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, to death for distributing articles downloaded from the Internet that were said to question the Koran and the role of women in Islam.

[via Torontoist]

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Every time we come here for a course a few of us have a tradition on Thursday. Because we can’t bear the thought of another meal here, we order pizza, drink a few beers and relax a bit before heading off to study for tomorrow’s exam. As such the evening has become known as Pizza Thursday.

Pizza Thursday will commence a few hours from now, and we’ll be about 86% of the way through our week*. However, as we sit and enjoy our pie we’ll also just happen to be about 86% of the way through the entire program. Usually Pizza Thursday signals the turning of the final corner of each week we spend here; tonight, though, it signals the rounding of the final corner of the entire four years. After tomorrow morning’s exam we really will be in the home stretch…provided we don’t stumble in that final turn.

Wish me luck.

*I have a javascript that tells me these numbers, obviously, lest you think I’m sitting down and calculating it each time I post something. That’d be silly.

[tags]meet the spartans, afghanistan, mba[/tags]

Sure, that's a lot of silk, but…c'mon

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Incredulity, take 1: Shaquille O’Neal’s monthly spending. Granted, it’s probably no worse than any other NBA superstar’s spending, but I haven’t seen theirs broken down like this, so O’Neal’s the topic of discussion.

Among [the expenses]: $156,116 in mortgages on three homes (including his $20 million mansion on Star Island, Miami Beach), plus $31,299 in homeowners insurance; $3,345 in phone bills; $1,610 in lawn and pool maintenance; $12,775 in food; $1,495 in cable TV; $24,300 in gas; $6,730 in dry cleaning; $17,220 in clothing; $2,305 for pets, and $110,505 in vacations.

Believe it or not, the one that really threw me was the gas. I don’t get it. Let’s assume Shaq owns 6 Cadillac Escalades and drives them all every single day. Escalades get 13 mpg, and the highest gas price I can find in the Miami area is $3.39/gallon, which means that Shaq (or his family/whatever) would have to drive each of his six Escalades over 500 miles every single day. I think Shaq’s getting ripped off by either his driver or his accountant.

And don’t even get me started on his $220/day dry cleaner.

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Incredulity, take 2: Paul Wolfowitz is back in the Bush administration, albeit as an advisor.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, who resigned as World Bank chief after serving as second-in-command at the Pentagon, has returned to the Bush administration, albeit in an advisory role.

That sound you just heard was every Iranian sphincter tightening simultaneously.

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In 2007, for the first time ever, condos in downtown Toronto appreciated more than detached homes.

Condominiums in the central core appreciated by 12.2% in 2007 compared to 11.5% for single detached homes. West end condominiums appreciated by 7.3% compared to 6.6% for single detached homes. These stats generally capture activity in the resale market.

I’m actually kind of surprised it took this long, but I’m obviously biased toward condos.

By the way, if I see a sustained 12.2% appreciation, I’ll be pretty pleased with that.

[tags]shaquille o’neal, paul wolfowitz, toronto condos, toronto detached houses[/tags]

Gulf of Tonkin, anybody?

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From The Independent:

The US and Iran have engaged in their most serious military confrontation in recent times, with American warships on the verge of opening fire on gunboats of the Revolutionary Guards which had threatened to blow them up.

Sound familiar?

The “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” defined the beginning of large-scale involvement of U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. Historians have shown that the second incident was, at its best interpretation, an overreaction of eager naval forces. [via Wikipedia]

[tags]iran, gunboats, gulf of tonkin[/tags]

"Hence I am cautiously optimistic."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Interesting stuff found via Brijit, both of which relate to the book I’m reading right now: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

From The Washington Post: A Chance to Defend Themselves (Thomas B. Wilner)

More than 300 prisoners remain at Guantanamo. Most have been there almost six years. We now know that the great majority were not captured on any battlefield. They were not even captured by U.S. forces. Rather, as the National Journal reported last year after an exhaustive study into government records, many were simply “innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants” who were “handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords” in exchange for bounties.

From the New York Times: What’s Your Consumption Factor? (Jared Diamond)

The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

The outlook of the second article is more encouraging than the first, which at least ends with cautious optimism from the author, but its central issue is no less troubling.

[tags]brijit, naomi klein, guantanamo, jared diamond, consumption[/tags]

Who did this poll, Band of Horses?

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This news release presents a conundrum:

Toronto, ON – A new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of CanWest News Service and Global Television finds that while two thirds (66%) of Canadians indicate that they believe in angels and half (48%) of the nation says they believe in spirits and ghosts. One in 10 (10%) Canadians believe that there is a spirit or ghost actually living in their house or residence. To put it in perspective, that’s 2.5 million Canadians who believe that when something goes bump in the night it’s more than the mice from Ratatouille.

So either a major pollster is wrong (not much of a shock) or my nation contains a great number of gullible ninnies…not exactly news either, but the magnitude is troubling. I just can’t decide which is more believable…and less palatable.

[via the Globe and Mail]

[tags]ipsos reid, poll, angels, ghosts[/tags]

Happy holidays, everybody!

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

A work day that was supposed to end at noon actually didn’t end until after 3:00, but that’s ok. It wasn’t exactly a tough one. I had one little errand to do in Yorkville, and it took about 15x longer than it should have, but I pretty much expected that.

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Ah, the Liquor Dome. Craptacular then (by which I mean my university years), craptacular now.

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R.I.P., Oscar Peterson, a true Canadian music legend.

[tags]liquor dome, oscar peterson[/tags]