the blog quebecois

come on with me cruising down the street
who knows what you�ll see, who you might meet

roxy music

Windows Live Local is rolling out the beta version of its Local Technology Preview program, which lets you cruise around cities (so far, only Seattle and San Francisco) at street level. There's nothing to download or install. Steer using the arrow keys or mouse (If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use it to zoom the overhead view in or out. Or use the +/- keys.). It tends to be sluggish at times, so you might want to give this one a pass if you're on a dial-up connection.

This is different, if a bit morbid:

Another of Garnet's works, Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver is currently installed at Latitude 53 in Edmonton, Canada. A miniature computer is implanted into a dead frog. The animal is suspended in liquid contained in a glass cube, with a blue ethernet cable leading into its splayed abdomen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse. You can view and activate the project online until March 18th 2006.

Go on, give it a try. Hours of fun for the kids!

The creator, Garnet Hertz, is a Fulbright Scholar, Research Fellow at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and a doctoral student at University of California Irvine. He was previously famous (so to speak) for using a Madagascan Hissing Cockroach to control a robot. He talks about the details here, and it's actually quite interesting. This is assuming that you don't mind looking at pictures of Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches, which are not, to be sure, among God's handsomer creations.

Via we make money not art

CBC:

The federal ethics commissioner says he is opening a preliminary inquiry into conflict-of-interest allegations against Prime Minister Stephen Harper concerning his formerly Liberal cabinet minister David Emerson.

Emerson ran as a Liberal in the campaign leading up to the Jan. 23 general election, but was a surprise appointment to Harper's Conservative cabinet on Feb. 6. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conduct in the Emerson affair will be reviewed.

Ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro says he will look into what influence Harper wielded to convince Emerson to cross the House of Commons floor.

Oh, this is rich. Mister See-No-Liberal-Evil emerges from his coma to investigate the Conservatives. Sort of like how he ran Belinda Stronach through the wringer. Andrew Coyne, writing after Shapiro's release in January of the report on Gurmant Grewal:

We know that Belinda Stronach's defection took several days of negotiations to arrange. And sure enough, the day she crossed the floor, she was given a cabinet post. Are we to believe there was no connection between the two? What were they negotiating, if not the precise "reward" she would receive? What did she bring to the table, but her vote on the confidence motion? Why was that not also the subject of an inquiry?

Harper can't fire this stiff; only Parliament can do that. Here's hoping it becomes the first order of business when the Tories obtain a majority.

Some preschoolers were asked in which direction this, um, "bus" was travelling. They all came up with the correct answer.

What is it -- left or right?

Via grow-a-brain

So here I was, minding my own business, when I looked at my Sitemeter stats and did a double take. There seemed to be a large spike in traffic. Kate at Small Dead Animals linked to this post on Sunday and some people clicked through on it. Enough people that the poor froggie's right leg doesn't appear to be working at the moment. Whoever broke the frog, fess up.

But that isn't primarily what concerns me. I was going to call this event a "Katealanche" in the tradition of "Instalanche," etc., but that's starting to sound cliched. I propose a new word for this all-too-infrequent event.

It will henceforth be known as a "Kateastrophe." Get it? It's like "catastrophe" except that a "catastrophe" means something bad, whereas a "KATEastrophe" means something good. Unless it melts down your server, which would be a catastrophe, I guess.

Best of all, this ties neatly into the screenplay I'm pitching to Hollywood, hopefully in time for next year's Oscars. Because I am so overdue for one of those puppies.

Here it is: There's an evil blogger named "Kate" who directs her "Kateastrophes" at other bloggers, who then sit mesmerised watching their hit counters while "Kate" breaks into their houses and steals their most precious objets d'art. Sort of like a catburglar, except of course she would be a "Kateburglar." Okay, it's rough, but I was thinking that with the proper casting -- I see "Kate" as being played by Halle Berry, and "Me" by, well, me -- we could at least practice the sex scenes before the financing falls through.

Off topic, but does anybody know what happened to my favorite painting, the one with Elvis in his white jumpsuit on black velvet? I could have sworn it was hanging on that wall on Saturday.

. . . they're not kidding.

Camouflage fashion by Désirée Palmen.

RalphBorland.net:

Suited for Subversion is a project to create a suit that protects the wearer at large-scale street protests. The suit also monitors the wearer's pulse and projects an amplified heartbeat out of a speaker in the chest of the suit.

I designed and fabricated the first prototype of the suit as part of my Masters Degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. The project draws on my work as an activist involved in street demonstrations in New York, and is influenced by the work of other activists and demonstrators who wear protective clothing and make creative use of tools and technologies for protest.

Of particular influence are the 'white' or �white overall� tactics of the Ya Basta, WOMBLES, or the Tutti bianche, who wear white protective-wear to protests. Like the Pret a revolter clothing line produced by my friends Las Agencias, and pictured below, centre, my suit fuses white tactics with more playful, carnivalesque, or 'pink' tactics. As much as my suit is armour, it is also disarming; as much provocation as protection.

Suited for Subversion is part of the exhibition SAFE: Design Takes on Risk at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2005/2006.

What the well-dressed denizen of rabble.ca will be wearing in the Spring Protest season. Far be it from me to dissuade them from running around looking like a bunch of sofa-bolsters, though I suspect it'll just encourage the police to perfect their baton-poking techniques.

They should try something like this. Cheaper, offers just as much protection, and perfect for taking in a World Cup game or two after the demo.

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - "Brokeback Mountain" might not have earned the best picture Academy Award, but with three Oscars to its name, including Ang Lee's win as best director, the gay-cowboy romance may have more impact on Hollywood than any other of this year's nominees.

Having already earned $127 million worldwide, the Focus Features release is expected to pave the way for more gay-themed films, and in its wake, other projects about gay characters that have long languished in development are suddenly looking more viable.

They just don't get it, do they? After the second-lowest ratings for the Academy Awards since 1987, and a pack of movies that delivered at best good (Brokeback Mountain, with ~$80M domestic receipts off a production budget of $14M; Crash, with $53M gross against a PB of $6.5M) to disastrous (Munich, which outlaid $70M to sell $46M in tickets [None of the production budgets include marketing costs, which can and often do outstrip the initial shooting budget.]) returns -- Hollywood figures: Hey! More of the same!

Don't get me wrong -- the profits engendered by Brokeback and Crash are certainly acceptable; much better than the majority of movies which never turn a profit. But compare them to, say, The Passion of the Christ, which turned $55M in production and marketing into $612M grosses worldwide.

If this focus on money seems crass -- well, it is of course only one measure of a film's worth. But it is the only tangible one. The Hollywood studio heads are well aware of that, but their stony little hearts turn to mush when it comes to pushing their pet projects.

So, as the Reuters article spells out, prepare for a deluge of gay-themed movies. The suits have convinced themselves that Middle America craves more "chick flicks without chicks" (can't remember where I read that) and are stampeding to slap their dollars down at the cashier's cage.

Is that true? Brokeback was a) from a critically praised story; b) shot by an acclaimed, innovative director; c) featured magnificent scenery (Alberta, pretending to be Montana Wyoming); d) something that generated an immense amount of buzz.

The more I look at it, though, the more this looks like a one-hit trend. Let's go to the books. Box Office Mojo (whence the above numbers were derived) also tracks daily grosses. There are no recent figures for Crash, which had dwindled to insignificance by September of last year (it will probably relaunch widely in the next few days). But Brokeback, which is still in wide release, has averaged a pathetic $225,000 (est., and dropping) over the last three days. Compare that to last year's Million Dollar Baby, which went on to rack up $36M in post-Oscar grosses. (It's not an exact comparison, as MDB won for both Best Director and Picture, but we got to work with what we got.)

Clearly, everyone who wanted to see Brokeback has seen it, with few returning for seconds.

Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is a great inchoate hunger out there for Brokeback and its successors, but I'm guessing not.

Certainly it wouldn't be the first time that people have thrown good money after bad -- Woody Allen, who seems to have the most patient investors in history, reputedly hasn't turned a profit on any of his films since Annie Hall.

This, however, fits my theory that Hollywood is combatting piracy by releasing movies that nobody wants to steal.

This is awful, but I don't make them up. John Podhoretz of The Corner does.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Little old lady.

Little old lady who?

The Tyee:

The radio dial of the future could contain 30 percent female musical content if a new proposal in the campus and community radio sector is widely accepted.

If enough campus and community radio stations support it, FemCon (female content) could follow in the footsteps of the 35 percent CanCon (Canadian content) regulation.

Inspired by a study conducted by Status of Women Canada and created by the campus and community radio collective Women's Hands and Voices, FemCon is an attempt to address a lack of balance between the sexes on Canada's campus and community stations. According to a resolution by the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NRCA), "FemCon is defined as music which meets two of the following categories: music, artists, lyrics and production by women." The NCRA represents 35 campus and community radio stations across Canada.

If I listen to a female musician, it'll be because she's worthy of being listened to, rather than because she meets the quota of women that some bureaucrat decides I need to hear.

"I went numb and couldn't speak for two minutes. Then I couldn't stop laughing."

Mother Shetal Patel had also failed to spot their error despite being a registrar's assistant, says The Sun.

She said: "I thought Russell had seen a ghost when he came away from the computer. We decided on the name a month before he was born - we both loved it straight away."

The couple are now concerned that Drew's name will cause him problems in later life.

Gee. Ya think?

pretty lonely, ugly woman
getting mail from you
pretty lucky are you real or am i simply ugly ugly

lisa germano

Number 34 with the sheepish expression is Gabe Pruitt, starting point guard for the USC Trojans. Behind him you will see rival Berkeley fans. They seem very amused.

I wonder why that is?

My Internet connection was down for much of the day; still, that hasn't stopped me from reporting on the latest in stupid, expensive and dangerous -- yet funny, stunts:

Back in the hotel suite, Ludlow assessed the mood: "Once you get a taste of Roomba Frogger, you can't get enough."

As people in the suite laughed, shouted and talked about what they'd just witnessed, Torrone summed up his evening.

"We had a lot to drink before we got here," he said, "but there's nothing to sober you up like steering a robot through traffic."

We've all heard that, but now we have proof.

An addictive little game I ran across awhile ago. You can easily chew up an hour or two playing it. Click on the bricks to move them. When you get four or more of a color touching, they vanish into the Great Colored Brickyard in the Sky. You get points for that, so don't be sad.

You can eliminate entire rows by moving the bundles of dynamite to them. Use them to blast the longest rows and especially the ones with "stone" bricks in them. Typical game noises, so you might want to turn down your speakers if you're goofing off at work.

Canadian Press:

TORONTO -- Fewer Canadian women will be able to contribute to the national economy if the federal Conservative government scraps a national child-care program set up by their Liberal predecessors, women's advocates said Monday.

A report prepared for YWCA Canada says more women will have to stay home without the increased day care spots made available under the five-year Liberal program introduced last year, which the Conservatives have promised to cancel after this year.

"We can't afford not to make this investment,'' study co-author Debra Mayer told a symposium on the issue at Toronto's city hall.

Government warehousing and indoctrination of children isn't an "investment." It's a totalitarian's wet dream.

A difficult struggle to find day care spaces gets harder when parents try to accommodate tight work schedules, Mayer said. Plus, finding sufficient care for children with special needs can complicate the problem, she added.

"Barrier after barrier is what our parents in Canada are faced with,'' Mayer said.

Yeah. Like having a federal government that confiscates half their income to squander on stupid social programs.

The $5-billion, five-year program introduced by the former Liberal government is slated to be replaced next year with direct $1,200 payments to parents for each child under age six.

Even with those payments, however, parents would still have day care expenses to cover, eliminating the incentives for many mothers to return to work or school, Mayer said.

YWCA Canada CEO Paulette Senior acknowledged the $1,200 payments are beneficial to parents as a family allowance, but don't address broader day care needs.

"We believe that Canada can actually do both,'' Senior said.

Sure we can. We just shake the magic money tree and why not buy everyone a bunny rabbit too, while we're at it.

More than two-thirds of Canadian women with a child under the age of six are in the workforce, Senior estimated. Forcing them to return home because they can't afford child care costs is an issue of equal rights, she said.

"While all family members are affected, women pay a disproportionate price when quality child care is not available.''

Federal Social Development Minister Diane Finley has not wavered from the Conservative commitment to cancel the Liberal program by March 31, 2007.

Finley declined the opportunity to speak at Monday's event, but she later told CBC Newsworld that many parents are eager to see the $1,200 payment because it gives them the freedom to choose the child care they need.

"There are a lot of parents out there who don't have access to full-time institutionalized day care, mainly because it doesn't meet their needs,'' Finley said.

"Now institutionalized day care is a good thing for some, but let's remember the parents who have to work night shift, the ones in rural areas, the ones that are stay-at-home parents who still need some help time to time. Our plan will help them.''

Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba all signed five-year funding deals with the former Liberal government, but they allow either side to opt out with 12 months notice. Other provinces had one-year agreements in principle as they negotiated longer terms.

Opposition critics at the symposium pledged to battle the Conservatives over their child-care strategy when Parliament resumes April 3.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, who is said to be mulling a run at party's upcoming federal leadership contest, said the Liberals may not have articulated the issue adequately during the last election campaign.

"It's a shame that in some ways, we didn't do a good enough job, I think, for the people of Canada, to understand really the importance ... of this extraordinarily important social infrastructure,'' she said.

Oh, you explained it well enough that more people voted for the Conservatives than for you. Jolly good work!

Scrapping the Liberal program is "not a choice to the young mom who really thought that she was going back to school this September, or really thought she was going back to work,'' Bennett added.

New Democrat MP Olivia Chow is also spoiling for a fight.

"I can't wait until April 3 to deliver a message that . . . we need to protect these agreements,'' Chow said.

"We need multi-year funding, not just this coming year . . . .You can't just open a child care centre and then close them. Kids continue to be born.''

No thanks to the NDP, which worships at the altar of abortion.

Ontario Child and Youth Services Minister Mary Anne Chambers held out some hope that discussions with Finley might offer some more help for parents.

"This is not a partisan issue,'' Chambers said. "We actually signed an agreement as the government of Ontario with the government of Canada on behalf of parents and children in Ontario.''

And then the people of Canada unsigned it. Elections have consequences.

I wrote about the bar at right -- what little I knew about it, anyway -- last year. I've since found out that it's called The Crooked House, and was built in 2004 in Sopot, Poland.

And here's
its elegant sister in Prague, naturally enough called The Dancing House. The architects for the latter are Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunc; it would seem that their fingerprints are all over the Polish building as well. (I can't say for certain -- the developer's page doesn't seem to credit anyone in particular.) Either that or someone else got hold of the good peyote, too.

More unusual buildings here.

Now you don't even have to leave this fine blog for a minute to get your daily fix of hot gaming action!

This, as I see it, maximizes the chance that, blundering around this fine blog in search of more hot gaming action, someone will accidentally click on one of the damn Google ads, thus fattening my bank account by an average of $0.12.4781¢.

That is the theory, at any rate; and if Google asks, you didn't get the idea from me.

Click on Play and use your cursor keys to steer your little cube thing to freedom, or at least the next level. Warning: A few distinctly unbusinesslike sounds.

National Review's The Corner has been a gold mine this week for kitschy music videos. Here's Bing Crosby and friends (Englebert Humperdinck, Gwen Verdon, Dick Shawn, Bobbie Gentry) crooning their way through a Beatles medley.

I have no idea who this woman is -- just sit back and let the outstanding production values wash over you.

Ditto with this guy. I think it's probably from a losing entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. Or possibly a winning entry. It's tough to tell at times.

It's not like The Corner caught all the good stuff. Look what I found here.

And Leonard Nimoy "singing" The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. I ask you, how much would you pay for entertainment like this?

Okay, that was a rhetorical question.

Via A Welsh View

A dictionary-maker, unless he is a monster of omniscience, must deal with a great many matters of which he has no firsthand knowledge.

So H.W. Fowler wrote in the Preface to the 1929 Concise Oxford Dictionary. (Yes, I actually read the Preface to the 1929 Concise Oxford Dictionary. Hey, I was a lonely child.) I was quite taken by the phrase, and resolved to use it every chance I got.

Which opportunities turned out to be rather rare in practice. It just doesn't lend itself to everyday conversation:

Is it raining out?

What am I, a monster of omniscience?

D'you think the Red Sox will take it this year?

What am I, a monster of omniscience?

You see the problem? You start to sound like Howard Cosell, waxing rhapsodic about Muhammad Ali:

Ali! A. Monster. A. Monster. Of. . . omniscience!

But I've finally found a use for it. It makes a perfect title for a blog post. After all . . .

Made ja look! Made ja look!

Wired:

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

You know, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm nominally Catholic, though not particularly religious. I nevertheless think that the above model of events is no less fantastical and requires no less a leap of faith than the idea that the universe was conjured up out of fairy dust by The Big Guy With The Beard.

So, while waiting for the physicists to knit together their superstring theories, I might be inclined to revisit Pascal's Wager. Hedging my bets, as it were.

Pensées, Section III, #205:

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis." [Wisd. of Sol. 5. 15. "The remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day."]

CBC:

A Canadian soldier has been killed in a remote area outside of Kandahar, according to reports.

CBC's Keith Boag reported that Ottawa would only confirm there was an incident resulting in Canadian casualties in Kandahar. He said officials will not elaborate until the next of kin have been notified.

There are about 2,200 Canadian soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan.

Separately, the Pentagon is reporting that one U.S soldier and one coalition soldier were killed and three coalition soldiers injured in a firefight with insurgents.

A briefing is expected to be held later in Kandahar.

Yahoo/Associated Press:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban rebels launched a large-scale attack on a coalition military base Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, killing an American and a Canadian soldier but losing 32 of their own in a fierce American-led retaliation. The fighting was the deadliest in months and reflected a growing intensity of militant attacks after the Taliban warned of a renewed offensive this year, more than four years after the hard-line militia was ousted by U.S.-led airstrikes. More than 3,000 British troops are readying to take control of the volatile area.

"Over the last five or six weeks there have been various proven attacks mainly at night by the Taliban on that base, but I think it is fair to say this is the largest we have seen thus far," British spokesman Col. Chris Vernon told reporters in Kandahar.

The battle was sparked late Tuesday when Taliban insurgents ambushed an Afghan supply convoy as it returned to the remote forward operating base, killing eight Afghan soldiers, Vernon said.

U.S. and British warplanes and helicopters were called in to provide close air support and a Canadian quick reaction force was sent from Kandahar to the base, where a small contingent of American and Canadian soldiers are based alongside Afghan troops in the Sangin district of the southern Helmand province.

Oh, nooooo -- the dreaded Taliban perennial "Spring Offensive" has begun!

Somehow I doubt that the Coalition forces are shaking in their boots.

The truth is, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have got one trick in their arsenal, and that's using suicide bombers and IEDs to create havoc. Considering that they mainly manage to blow up civilians, it's probably not that productive in the long run, either.

If the Taliban want to show their prowess as soldiers, I'm sure our guys will be delighted to oblige them.

These people fight like morons. One of the big problems U.S. Special Forces had in the early days of the Afghan War when they were directing the air campaign and liaising with the Northern Alliance was in convincing their erstwhile allies that it wasn't "unmanly" to fire from a prone position and to take advantage of cover; this contrasted from the more typical Afghan tactic of shouting Allahu Akbar! (or its local equivalent) while dancing around in the open and wildly firing their AK-47s from the hip.

Though such romantic flourishes might have had some psychological value while fighting against other morons, it doesn't work too well against professional Western armies, who have a phrase for it: Target practice.

Only a 16:1 kill ratio? They must have been brushing up on their trick shots. No doubt their commanders will be having a word with them.

* Note: The Hindu Kush is in fact several hundred miles to the north and east of where this battle took place. I had an alternate title -- "Kicking Ass In The Khyber Pass"; but alas, the Khyber Pass is the major route through the Hindu Kush, so that was kind of off the mark, too. Plus, I would never be so vulgar.

contactmusic.com:

HARRISON FORD hates the internet, because it means anyone can spread malicious gossip about him. The actor, who plays a computer-security specialist in his latest film FIREWALL, sees a need to censor his words to avoid being misrepresented online. He says, "The worst thing about the internet is that anything and everything is up for grabs. How can that be, when I limit my public conversations to about once every couple of years? "Any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and it can have a f**king life of its own."

Oh my gosh. I immediately went to the Internets to find out what kind of nasty things people were saying about Harrison. Not much, beyond the standard industry bumpf. I did, however, find the Harrison Ford Paper Doll page and I gotta agree with his concern: If the wardrobe is at all accurate, he dresses like a blind Hawaiian pimp.

Once I decide on what I'm going to post I recheck any links in it to make sure they haven't disappeared. Which is what I did with this one. Still there -- no problem. So I write up the piece and then triple check the link. Gone.

Well, duh. It's an outdoor webcam in Hornby Island, British Columbia that's apparently turned off at night, because there's, like, nothing to see.

Still, if you happen across this at more congenial (i.e., daylight) hours you might want to give it a click. (You have to hit the play button to start it.) It's full streaming video of a bald eagle in its nest, doing eagly things like grooming itself and fixing intruders (that would be you) with a baleful eye.

Of course, it could also be doing eagly things like tearing at the corpse of a small dog, clutched in its blood-stained talons.

So clicker (and/or small dogs) beware.

Via Ursi's Blog