Local Top Gear

Too bad the plate isn't on a much nicer car. Like that brand new Gallardo Spyder I saw downtown yesterday...yum!

McLaren's New 600bhp Supercar

It's called the MP4-12C and isn't scheduled to go on sale until 2011, but the teasers are out and the car is hot.



Facts:
-3.8 litre V8 twin turbo developing 600bhp
-0 to 60mph in 3.4 seconds
-lowest carbon output per hp of any car currently on the market (including hybrids)

A short vid from the BBC here shows some interesting features of this F1 inspired car.

Commenting Idiots

Okay, this article is irrelevant "news" but I'm posting it anyway because the current first comment is hilarious. Here is the article about a man who helped his wife deliver their baby alone even though they were in a hospital. The original comment is just plain stupid even we ignore what the re-poster points out. Check it:

Obi John Kenobi wrote:
Posted 2009/06/03
at 5:47 PM

ETHughGRection wrote:
Women have been giving birth without doctors for hundreds of years... its not rocket appliances!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


rocket appliances???

Overheard at Starbucks

Two men in their mid-30's...

"Yeah, we've finally joined...whatever century we're in right now, and bought a computer and an ipod."

"Oh yeah? You liking it?"

"It's fun, we're busy copying all the CDs we have."

"Well, congratulations on joining the Now Generation!"

Spage's 2008 Olympics Moments #2

When I turned on the television I was greeted with the Canada vs. China baseball game. The next Canadian batter was walking up to the plate and was being introduced. His name? Stubby Clapp.

And that was enough to make me turn off the t.v.

Spage's 2008 Olympics Moments #1

One World,
One Dream,
One Thought...

While watching the incredible opening ceremonies in Beijing I had one overriding thought: We will never be able to beat this in 2010. Not a chance.





Images from the Boston Globe.

Once Proud

Oh CBC online news, how far you've fallen in one short year.

Now you're using the ridiculous user comments from previous articles to write new ones?

Hang your collective heads in shame while you lift your glass to useless editorialized "news" services.

Citizen Batman

"It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations." -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Anthony Furey has written an interesting "web-exclusive comment" for the Globe and Mail about The Dark Knight movie and it's political philosophy. It may be simple but it speaks to a problem that has been infecting us, at an alarming rate: our fellow man not being civic-minded or politically involved.

When people cease to be actively engaged in the world and choose to retreat to an insular and selfish existence great harm done to societies, then starts to compound before eventually moving us towards Gotham-like social decay. Taking your responsibilities as a citizen of your neighbourhood, province/state, country and planet seriously means that care, concern, and action follows.

"[Bruce] Wayne realizes that, as a billionaire, he has the option of secluding himself from a society run amok. But he believes that as someone who has reaped the benefits of good society, he also has to stick it out with bad society. That's the social contract he feels he's signed. Thus, the story confronts our sense of citizenship."

A certain level of idealism is necessary, which seems to disappear rapidly in the psyche as one ages, so active pursuit and maintenance of ideals is needed to fend of weariness and hopelessness. This is not easy and staying accurately informed takes effort, but is at least honorable and at most a duty.

"Batman is rejecting what has come to be known as the "lesser evil" approach, in which one can commit an otherwise undesirable act if there is an urgent and significant need. Underlying this rejection is the notion that society is greater than the sum of its parts — that the sheer fact coming together to form it is something worth fighting for."

The Dark Knight movie entertains the masses, there is no doubt there, but it also holds an important, if not desperate, call to those masses to become engaged with their environment and do their part to move our societies forward, to improve ourselves and do what is right for the global community. To take our responsibilities seriously may not be the most fun thing to do, nor the easiest, but is by far the most important.

"The one basic, cogent argument that can be gleaned from Gotham City's embers: Nobody ever said democracy was going to be easy. The democratic tradition is one that asks its members to participate fully and to constantly reconsider its fundamental tenets and be willing to fight for them. The film challenges you, regardless of your views, to get in the game."

Year 3

Today is the third anniversary of my first post and much has evolved since then.


Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
(All things change, and we change with them)

-Alexander Pope

On Climate Inaction

I have a question to put forth.

The anti-climate change/anti-Kyoto folks' argument always centres around their skepticism that humans are responsible for the environmental issues that are coming to a head. eg. "The lobby group was formed several years ago to protest Canada's legally binding commitments in the international Kyoto agreement on climate change and cast doubt about research linking human activity to global warming."

These arguments persist and are eaten up by the tragically uniformed despite the following:

"The overwhelming majority of scientists that study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, comprised of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the national academies of science of all G-8 countries, as well as those of China, India and Brazil. The Royal Society of Canada – together with the national academies of fifteen other nations – also issued a joint statement on climate change that stated, in part: "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognize IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change."

I think we can agree that humans have contributed something to the issue (think Greenhouse Effect) even if we can't all agree that we are primarily responsible (think Earth's natural cycles of hot & cold).

BUT,

I posit,

Does it matter who or what caused/is causing the problem?

AND, even if there was no evidence of climate change, would we not still want to commit to reducing our pollution output levels? Does it matter if every single country in the world is committing to action?

The range of historical tragedies, from genocide to colonialism to the restriction of human rights, were/are supposed to teach us to think as a global unified species and that positive action, no matter how small, makes a difference and starts to avalanche into more and better action. It is also a tenet we attempt to teach the young though we refuse to model the behaviour.

It seems to me that all the bickering going on about who is at fault for melting ice caps or the childish attitude of we-won't-do-anything-unless-China etc.-does-too is completely irrelevant to just doing something about the wellness of Earth and its inhabitants.

Spending so much time and energy closely examining the relationship between Industry and Climate restricts our view of the Big Picture: the planet is under siege, species are rapidly becoming extinct, air/water/land pollution is out of control, and the health of living things is under attack.

I decided to take a quick search about and found a video that takes a similar but radically different approach to the argument. In his awesome video How It All Ends, science dude Greg Craven demonstrates that deciding to act or not on Climate Change is completely disconnected from whether or not you believe in the phenomenon. I've embedded the video below, and although it's educational, it is entertaining...a low budget Bill Nye The Science Guy if you will. In all seriousness it's a compelling argument about risk and I'm glad I saw it so I hope you will also watch it. And think hard on it too. Thank you.

Moon Eyed, For Real

After that last post, I took a walk to the nearby Olive Garden (blah) to pick up some dinner...and realized that a lunar eclipse was occurring!

Tonight, it's a serious moon theme. I trudged through snow in the freezing Edmonton night to find a good vantage point and snap some pictures. I ended up having to sit on my heels knee-deep in snow to prop the camera on a post and take about 50 pictures. Then I called Wookiee and chatted for 20 minutes about eclipses, Somalia, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, etc. It wasn't until after we hung up and I turned to walk back to the hotel that I realized that my wet-from-snow dress pants had been frozen into solid sheets. Fraking Edmonton.

Anyway, this is the best picture I could manage sans tripod or DSLR.


Wookiee tells me that the two bright objects above and to the left of the moon are Saturn and the bright star Regulus. Awesome.

Moon Eyed

Holy frak. I need one of these asap!

From English Russia I have garnered another bit of info that proves how much Russians rock.

Russian designers have created Your Personal Moon. I've searched a lot and still can't figure out how to get one. More research will be done!

The Guest Directory

From the Best Western in the Valley. (PittRidgeMeadows)

If the Don wishes to be left in peace:

Fog Drawing

Sitting in my car, bowl in hand, watching planes land in heavy rains at the airport. Waiting for the next plane, I haphazardly draw a plus sign in the fog of my window with the tip of my pinkie. It ended up looking like a cross instead of a plus so, to cover the error, I tried to draw a pope under it. Instead it turned into a large snouted, four-legged beast wearing a pope hat. I'm terrible at portraits.

South Dakotan Plate

It reads, "A Man & His Toys, Such A Beautifull Sight"

Agree or Disagree? And is the double 'l' at the end of 'beautiful' meant to make it innuendo?

A Conan WGA Strike Vid

His wailing on the Beastie Boys' Sabotage?...oh man, you'll see.

Guess Who?

I have to post this old celebrity blog post on Jessica Biel because the reference to that old phat game is hilarious!

"I don’t know what Jessica Biel is thinking here, but those 99 cent glasses she got at CVS are not working. She looks like a character from the game Guess Who. Does your person have a smoking hot ass? Yes. Yes she does."

For you Canadians, CVS is like an American Shopper's Drug Mart.

Entering The Armpit Of The Year

So we've just come off the Holiday Season where we are forced to spend consecutive hours with people we normally never would (family), TransLink raised transit rates again, our bank accounts are down, our credit card accounts are up, the rain has settled in for the long haul, the avian flu has been transmitted human-to-human, we don't have any statutory holidays until the end of March, and this morning the CanWest News Service tells me that "by 10:33 a.m. today, Canada's top 100 CEOs had already earned the same amount of money that will take the average full-time worker all year to make."

That's just great.

Sets Galore

I've uploaded a bunch of new sets to my Flickr site as well as added to the Dave Work Tour ("Under Construction") set and Life In Macro collection.

New sets include:

• The Question Jar Tour (Vancouver)


• Hollywood Bowl 2007


• Gorge (WA) 2006


• NYC Summer 2006


• Gorge (WA) 2005


• Red Rocks (CO) 2005


• NYC Summer 2005


• NYC Winter 2005


• Following The Band - Toronto (ON), Darien Lake (NY), & Saratoga Springs (NY) 2006


• Riding to Lillooet & Cache Creek (BC)


• Alpine Valley/East Troy/Milwaukee (WI) 2006
  

...and there's lots more to come. But for now my eyeballs - and 'copy & paste' shortcut fingers, need a little break.

List Excerpts

While Google searching for something entirely unrelated to what I found, I came across CBC.ca Arts' The Top 100 of 2006 list.

There's a lot of stuff there, but skimming it I saw a few highlights that I thought rocked for one reason or another...they're old, but they're still true!

Check it:

"9. Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. When U.S. President George W. Bush sat down at this annual gathering of Washington reporters, he was no doubt expecting a light ribbing. What he got from Colbert, star of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, was a punch in the gut. This was satire at its ballsiest — ballsier even than Borat, for the simple reason that the leader of the free world was sitting only a few feet away. “I believe that the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq,” Colbert quipped at one point. The room responded with a gasp. Comedy so devastating it took your breath away." <-true dat. I thought Bush was so freaking angry that he wasn't even going to wait for Colbert to leave the stage before having him disappeared. The full 24 min video here.

"11. Watching The Wire on a string. One of us waited until early December to see a single episode of David Simon’s Baltimore crime series — and then plowed through all four seasons in two weeks. Yes, it’s true, Omar (Michael K. Williams) is 21st-century TV’s most excellent antihero. The Wire’s main draw, though, is its unblinking view of the war on drugs, the struggles of the working class, political corruption and the collapse of public education. HBO’s grand gift to devil-in-its-details, dystopian storytelling." -I watched the first episode and immediately decided to wait and watch them all "on a string" too



"13. Robin Sparkles, Let's Go to the Mall. The writers of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother created this genius, faux-1980s music video upon revealing that one of the show’s characters, Robin, is hiding a dirty secret from her past: the Canadian ex-pat was once a bubble-gum popstar. For those who lived through Alanis Morrisette: the Early Years, this hysterically funny video — which boasts the line, “I’m gonna rock your body till Canada Day” — is dead-on in the details: rubber bangles, cheesy white-girl rap, synthesizers, a toy robot, moonwalking and name checks of Brian Mulroney and Wayne Gretzky. It’s awesome, eh." <-um, yeah it is!



"87. Tyra Banks. With her eponymous talk show and evermore me-Me-ME, dammit! appearances on America’s Next Top Model, the poor person’s Oprah has become the ego that ate television. Girlfriend is the guiltiest of pleasures." -"the ego that ate television"!

"94. David Caruso versus acting. It’s not that we enjoy Caruso’s performance as Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami. Rather, we are comforted by its existence. Shatner’s Kirk impregnated fewer pauses; Al Pacino eats less ham; and what — what? — is with the sunglasses? Proof positive that you can be a spectacular failure, and millions of people might love you anyways. So inspiring."