Year: 2006

Latest acquisition

If you’ve been following the “Hanging Around The House” postsMan, I should really finish that…two more posts should bring us up to date., you have a pretty good sense of what kind of stuff decorates the walls around here. New stuff is coming in at a slow, but constant rate–indeed at the moment I have a small Barry Windsor-Smith print,… Read more →

QOTD

“I’m sorry to be so short with you, but you are making as much sense as someone who asserts that World War II began when Delaware attacked Batman.” — PNH I am likely going to use that, or a simple variant thereof, in some future discussion where someone is starting from completely, objectively, wrong premises. (Cowardly caveat: Note that this… Read more →

Overextended, and under-comprehending

I’ve been watching the housing boom–especially in the crazy U.S. markets like Boston and parts of California–with interest and a kind of schadenfreud-laden waiting for the bust to begin. This most recent Businessweek article just confirms all my basic notions: that people do remarkably stupid things, especially when they are motivated by greed, and that they are happily helped into… Read more →

I have never ridden a turtle.

While preparing a ficititious biography for a friend’s soon-to-be-published first book, I came across Louis De Rougemont, a.k.a. Henri Louis Grin His story is plenty weird enough to qualify for a blog post. Follow the link to see the long version at Wikipedia, but I have to quote a couple of bits here: In 1898 he began to write about… Read more →

The word from Boston

First, let me say it’s apparently a really good thing that I didn’t get that Arabic shirt for this trip. One of the inspectors answered him “you can’t wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads “I am a robber” and going to a bank”. I’m trying to come… Read more →

I wonder what my boss would say…

… if I called in “Guantanamo” on Monday, instead of showing up in Boston for work. “Calling in Gitmo” is the international travellers trump-card version of “calling in sick” here at the beginning of the third millenium. If I had seen the t-shirt below a while ago, instead of just now, I would totally have ordered one, and would have… Read more →

I am so… aroused.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a page on the Internet that has aroused me more than this one. (Link is safe for work, unless you have the same mental quirks as I do.) If I weren’t working right now I would totally spend the next couple of hours following those links at the bottom. And I am buying that… Read more →

Has the KKK invented a time machine?

Seriously: what the hell? This is still 2006 right? Black Students Ordered to Give Up Bus Seats to White Children By Vickie Welborn The Shreveport Times COUSHATTA — Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School in Louisiana were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white… Read more →

You could chase a bear with a buggy whip!

When I first moved to Nova Scotia, I discovered that I had apparently moved to “the South Shore“. You see, the ocean side of Nova Scotia is essentially divided into two areas: the South Shore, which runs from Halifax down the coast to Yarmouth, and the Eastern Shore which runs up the coast to Canso. Amusingly, to get to the… Read more →

Danny Michel On CBC

Thanks to a timely pointer from George Jones, I managed to catch Danny‘s appearance on the national radio program Sounds Like Canada this morning. This is same Danny oft-mentioned here before, and with whom I had my recent short bit of “life on tour”, which I still haven’t written up. And, since I am still too busy to generate real… Read more →

The Truman Doctrine

This is another post brought to you by my wife’s studies, while I am too busy to post. Please allow me to quote from President Harry S. Truman’s address before a joint session of Congress , March 12, 1947: At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.