I don’t normally just re-post video, but I found these two TED talks particularly enjoyable and thought I’d share.
Sean Gourley: the mathematics of war
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
"I think that the closer you are to a flame and the more you see people getting burned, the funnier you get, if you’re at all human."
If you were a fan of The Wire — and if you weren’t, you should probably just stop talking to me now — Vice Magazine has a very long, very interesting interview with David Simon, the show’s creator. It takes a while to get through, but it’s excellent. Simon sees the hypocrisy and senses the frustration around him with great clarity, so you’ll get to read things like this:
“There’s not a lot else that can produce mass wealth with the dexterity that capitalism can. But to mistake it for a social framework is an incredible intellectual corruption and it’s one that the West has accepted as a given since 1980—since Reagan.”
And this:
“What do they think group insurance is, other than socialism? Just the idea of buying group insurance! If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn’t be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, ‘Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we’ll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan…’ That’s fucking socialism. That’s nothing but socialism.”
Just be warned, though: if you haven’t watched the entire series yet, there are spoilers aplenty.
Best songs of 2009
Lo and behold, my twenty favourite songs of 2009, listed according to artist:
- and you will know us by the trail of dead . “fields of coal”
- the antlers . “two”
- dan auerbach . “heartbroken, in disrepair”
- neko case . “middle cyclone”
- drummer . “mature fantasy”
- florence and the machine . “dog days are over”
- john frusciante . “unreachable”
- great lake swimmers . “still”
- the heartless bastards . “be so happy”
- japandroids . “heart sweats”
- lightning dust . “i knew”
- now, now every children . “everyone you know”
- the rural alberta advantage . “the dethbridge in lethbridge”
- the thermals . “when i died”
- ume . “the conductor”
- the von bondies . “chancer”
- william elliott whitmore . “old devils”
- wye oak . “tattoo”
- the xx . “crystalised”
- the yeah yeah yeahs . “heads will roll”
The list is a bit of a cheat, as I tried not to have more than one song per artist, even though “Kettering” by Antlers, “Ascending” by …Trail Of Dead, “Diamonds To Shake” by Drummer and Wye Oak‘s “Mary Is Mary” are all on my ‘favourite songs of the year’ playlist.
Somebody's got to lose
All week Maclean’s has been issuing ‘best-of-decade’ lists, focusing only on Canadian content. Best Canadian TV shows, best Canadian movies, and so on. Today was the one I was really waiting for: the best Canadian music of the decade. In true Canadian spirit, it is both indie-focused and very safe.
- Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
- Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People (2002)
- Black Mountain – Black Mountain (2005)
- New Pornographers – Mass Romantic (2000)
- Wolf Parade – Apologies To The Queen Mary (2005)
- Sarah Harmer – You Were Here (2000)
- Tangiers – Hot New Spirits (2003)
- Sam Roberts – The Inhuman Condition (2002)
- The Constantines – Shine A Light (2003)
- Feist – The Reminder (2007)
I don’t see how anyone could argue with #1, and while #2 is probably a widely accepted choice, I am just unable to love BSS the way everyone else seems to. I’m pleased to see the likes of Black Mountain, The New Pornographers, Wolf Parade beat out Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts and Feist. I do think The Constantines deserved to be higher (and, in truth, it should have been Tournament of Hearts) but all in all that’s a pretty respectable list.
The full article contains the Maclean’s writer collective’s opinions on each album, as well as this piece of begrudging awesomeness:
HONOURABLE MENTION: Nickelback – Silver Side Up (2001)
Yes, it’s stupid arena rock, but they own that stuff. So make fun of them if you want, but they’re way more famous than Arcade Fire will ever be. And they accomplished it with a lead singer sporting a woman’s haircut and a goatee.
Fair point.
Gone quiet
You might have noticed that I’m hardly blogging these days. I’m also not reading most of my news feeds, and I don’t even turn on my Twitter client anymore most of the time.
Whyzat?
In short: work. I’m spending more hours than usual in the office these days (late evenings, and Sunday is now a regular work day) and when I’m there I’m either away from my desk or busy as ass. Even when I’m not in the office work dominates my thoughts.
You know what else? I love it. I love my work right now. It’s not without the occasional frustration, of course, but overall it just feels good.
So, things like blogging and my news junkieism are falling away. And, to be honest, I don’t really miss them that much. Also, with Nellie working equally long hours we’ve found ways to make the most of our few moments together, like dinners at North 44 or, uh, pouring IV fluids into our cat. So yeah, everything’s coming up Milhouse.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I am gonna enjoy the hell out of those three days off over Christmas.
"The dragon is hungry."
In an attempt to relax yesterday (after a bunch of Christmas shopping, and before I go back to work for the rest of today) we watched two movies: Doubt (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I liked for the scenes of such exceptional acting talents as Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffmann squaring off (and not much else), and Frost/Nixon (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which had a little prodigious talent of its own in Frank Langella.
I don’t know if I liked Doubt‘s story so much as I loved the way in which the story was told. As for Frost/Nixon, while there was nothing exceptional about the telling, the story itself was obviously very interesting. The little details and behind-the-scenes stories of such monumental events usually are.
Best albums of 2009
We’ve entered the time of year where there aren’t really any more new albums coming out that I care about, so here are what I consider the ten best to be released this year.
- and you will know us by the trail of dead . the century of self
- the antlers . hospice
- neko case . middle cyclone
- drummer . feel good together
- the heartless bastards . the mountain
- japandroids . post-nothing
- lightning dust . infinite light
- jay reatard . watch me fall
- the rural alberta advantage . hometowns
- william elliott whitmore . animals in the dark
Those are in alphabetical order, obviously. If I were to pick my favourite of the year I’d probably land on Japandroids or The RAA, but top to bottom that’s a pretty strong lineup, even without the likes of The Dead Weather, Fanfarlo, The Thermals, The Xx or Now, Now Every Children, all of which I quite liked.
And for the bonus round, here are my two favourite albums from past years which I only discovered in the last twelve months:
- the black angels . passover
- the plastiscines / lp1
So…what’d I miss?
"Europe slid over the edge of a cliff."
I’ve just finished reading book number three (in a planned series of four) about WWII: A Short History of World War II by (my uncle) James Stokesbury. Having covered the rise of fascism through the 1930s and the emergence of Nazism in particular, I used Jim’s book to refresh my memory of both the sequence and the context of the battles. I was reminded of two key things:
- Had Britain and France stood more firm in the face of Hitler’s aggression prior to his invasion of Czechoslovakia, and had it come to a fight, Germany would have been well outnumbered. France alone has one million men and superiority in both tanks and aircraft. The British had no army to speak of, but their navy was far stronger than Germany’s. The Czech army was nearly the equal (in number, anyway) of Germany’s. However, Chamberlain seemed determined to avoid a war — though with The Somme and Ypres barely twenty years behind them, you could scarcely blame the British for that — and he gave over the Sudetenland. The French had convinced themselves of two things: that defense would win the day (hence their commitment to the Maginot Line), and that they were badly outnumbered by the Germans.
- As a Canadian I’ve seen such a Canada-America-Britain-centric view of the war, and view of who won it, that I sometimes forget who actually won the war against Germany: Russia. It was Russia who swallowed up great swaths of the German army while Britain and America made plans, and while Vichy France collaborated. It was Russia who lost more soldiers in a single battle — the siege of Stalingrad — then did the U.S. in the entire war, and whose civilian dead numbered in the tens of millions. It was Russia who eventually took Berlin. And it was Russia, of course, who would not have even been in the fight had Hitler not broken his non-aggression pact with Stalin. As the book says, “Hitler’s choice may well have been the single most important political decision of the twentieth century.”
Given that, and given the bias my education has had toward the western allied powers, I’m altering my four-book plan. I’ve begun reading something which should give me a much closer look at the Russian side of the war called A Writer At War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman. The battle of Stalingrad alone fascinates me, as it might have been the singular turning point of the war in Europe, but if the reviews I’ve read are any indication it should be worthwhile. Grossman was one of the few writers who didn’t simply act as a mouthpiece for Stalin, and the carnage inherent in this phase of the war, so often glossed over, should come out.
Latitude
We needed that.
About a year ago Nellie’s boss gave her a gift card for all her hard work on a particular project. The gift card was from North 44, long considered one of the best restaurants in Toronto, so we were pretty excited about going. However, delays, other priorities and more work kept interfering with our plans to go. It wasn’t until last night that we finally used our card, and it couldn’t have come at a better time: we needed a night to enjoy ourselves and stop thinking about work for a few hours.
I don’t know how I’ve lived here for twelve years and not eaten at North 44, considering I’d made multiple visits to Mark McEwan’s other restaurants Bymark and One. Toronto Life magazine still considers it one of the ten best in the city (#7 to be exact), and it was perfect. I’ve had more impressive meals, certainly, but last night it was precisely what we needed: excellent, uncomplicated food in a relaxed but elegant room. Here’s what graced our forks as we moaned and swooned:
Nellie
- Chandon Brut from California
- Red and green pear salad with endive, blue goat cheese, pine nuts and sherry vinaigrette / Sancerre, Domaine du Carrou 2008, Dominique Roger from France
- 10 oz. U.S.D.A. prime strip / Cabernet Sauvignon, Mantra 2004 from Sonoma
- Four cheeses / Port sampler: 1 oz each of Taylors 10 year, 20 year & late bottled vintage
Dan
- Butternut squash ravioli with oxtail ragout and sage / Glass of Cave Spring Riesling 2007 from Niagara
- 12 oz. U.S.D.A. Rib Eye / Cabernet Sauvignon, Mantra 2004 from Sonoma
- Chocolate hazelnut terrine caramel fleur de sel moux, soft brownie, crisp orange tuile / Lilly Pilly “Noble Blend” 2006 dessert wine from Australia
It was all of it as good as it sounds. The card’s donors had picked North 44 specifically because, at the time of its’ giving, the only meat Nellie or I would eat was fish. The fish selection was certainly impressive, but we both craved a steak, and it was among the best I’ve ever had. The Cab Sauv we shared with it was equally spectacular. We rolled out of there very full, and very happy.
We decided to keep pressing our luck with the wine, and headed for reds bistro. A side note: it was the most pleasant cab ride we’d ever had in Toronto. The cab was immaculate. Soft classical music played. The driver was polite, quiet and wore a shirt and vest. It kind of freaked me out. I kind of wanted to put him on full-time retainer.
Anyway, we got to reds and let them know we wanted to try some interesting wine. For my part, I wanted to stick to Ontario wines. The staff was more than happy to oblige, and here’s what they gave us. Note that Nellie’s second wine was the same as my first. She had a sip of mine and loved it so much that she ordered a full glass.
Danelle
- David Trager 2002 Verdelho
- Peninsula Ridge 2007 Fume Blanc
- Fontodi 2006 Chianti Classico
Dan
- Peninsula Ridge 2007 Fume Blanc
- Norman Hardie Pinot Noir
- Peninsula Ridge 2007 Meritage
We wrapped up the evening will some ill-advised single-malt whisky (Oban for me, Cragganmore for her) and even donated some money to the bartender’s Movember moustache fund-raising efforts. A fun night, and a tasty one as well.
After such a luxurious evening we just couldn’t go through with our plan to spend the whole day back in the office, so we slept in and lay about. Tomorrow we’ll work the full day, but we needed these 36 hours badly.
My favourite songs of the year so far (IV)
As of August I’d picked off my 18 favourite songs of the year so far:
- neko case . middle cyclone
- von bondies . chancer
- dan auerbach . heartbroken, in disrepair
- john frusciante . unreachable
- heartless bastards . be so happy
- and you will know us by the trail of dead . ascending
- and you will know us by the trail of dead . fields of coal
- ume . the conductor
- thermals . when i died
- william elliott whitmore . old devils
- yeah yeah yeahs . heads will roll
- japandroids . heart sweats
- great lake swimmers . still
- rural alberta advantage . the dethbridge in lethbridge
- antlers . two
- antlers . kettering
- lightning dust . i knew
- now, now every children . everyone you know
Five more have made the grade:
- wye oak . tattoo
- wye oak . mary is mary
- drummer . mature fantasy
- drummer . diamonds to shake
- xx . crystalised
I suppose this means my ‘best songs of 2009’ list won’t really be a surprise when I post it in December.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 