Month: January 2004

Say Hello to the Consultant!

Here is what I mean. Via Dave3, The New York Times reports that someone has been funded masses to study how links and bookmarks die:

The project, which is being paid for by a three-year $378,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, is intended to shed light on the best tools for the job. So far, observation of a few dozen people in their work environments has revealed a hodgepodge of approaches to organizing pages, and bookmarking them is not at the top of the list.

Half a million Canadian to confirm link rot. Good Lord.

157 Years Of 25 Watts Of Power

The glass reads “Last Gas Lamp 1847 – 1947.” This is the lamp I referred to the other day. I passed it heading to Queens walking down King Street to do the seminar on section 7 Charter “liberty” and biometric surveillance. It is odd doing public talking when I am not being marked, looking for a client or trying to keep a client out of jail…

Notice that the light is on – that’s the yellow glow behind the 1947.

Painted Wall

 

It reads “GAS THE MODERN FUEL” and I noticed this near the foot of Queen Street by Ontario, seen from behind S&R. It is pretty faded but a really nice font. The municipality has run natural gas distribution since the 1800s. This is near the old gas works site. Here is some info on city gas works in Canada. There is still one last gas street lamp lit dating from 1847 on King Street East near William.

Permission Denied

While I am not clear in myself as to what Canada should have done in relation to Iraq, I can’t recall ever being so clear as when I understood what was happening in Rwanda and how democracies, the world community, whoever was at the wheel failed. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire is testifying this week at United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I do not think I will ever forget the CBC radio piece on Rwanda in 1994 when he was interviewed and described walking into a stadium where children had been butchered wondering why he was walking on sausages when he realized they were all little severed fingers. 800,000 people died there just ten years ago in a few weeks to people with only rifles and machetes. Yesterday, he identified the accused who gave the orders:

Dallaire, who led the ill-fated 1994 United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, rose to his feet, glanced around, then fixed an icy glare on his former nemesis. “He’s on the extreme right, in the last row,” Dallaire said, pointing at Theoneste Bagosora…

…Today Dallaire is expected to testify about the secret informant who warned in January, 1994, that death squads were compiling lists and training to kill thousands of people a day. When Dallaire told U.N. headquarters in New York he planned to raid the arms caches of the death squads, he was told not to take any military action, that he had to remain neutral.

They told him not to act on a plan.   I can’t get around the numbers. 267 World Trade Centres. Downstream in Burundi, the river was red with human blood and parts. Then you remember fifteen years before that two and a half times that many died in Cambodia.

Iowa

Not my country but what the hell. Ian’s comments as a Iowa leftie lad in NYC are interesting as are Michael’s, the Newf of Atlanta. Michael has pointed out the angry-man thing about Dean while Ian speaks of electability. I cannot for the life of me ever imagine an NDPer as US president – that is really what Dean is: early against the war, early pro civil unions for homosexual couples. Like Hollywood, Vermont is a foothold of Canadian infiltration of the USA. Good for us. Bad for Dean. Plus he looks like a Muppet extra, the guy at the other table not given interesting features, the guy with the fly in his soup.

Compare Edwards. No gaggle of techie dreamers around him either as “journalists” or groupies. He points out that he is electable in the southern states (key #1) and he speaks well (key #2) and he stands for being nice (…hmm…). The trouble with Democrats outside of the Brooklyn bench is that they do not know how to put the boot in because they stand for not putting the boot in. Edwards strikes me as a guy who can’t put the boot in.

Kerry won but he won’t win. Too many Kennedys.

So on to New Hampshire. For a election junkie such as me, the USA and its absolutely nutty voting system is a gold mine for graphical analysis of statistics which really come to nothing in themselves. Charts. Charts and talking heads. Wolf Blitzer saying things like “I don’t know anything about that, Phil, but I can confirm that CNN is predicting Dean will finish third. Dean will finish third” about 45 minutes after Dean confirmed he was finishing third.

Murderecords

My order came from murderecords today:

  • Closed by jale (1995, ep cd)
  • Smart Bomb by Thrush Hermit (1994, ep cd)
  • Peppermint by Sloan (1992, ep cd)
  • Mock Up, Scale Down by The Super Friendz (1995, cd)
  • Peter by Eric’s Trip (1993, cd)

Three months but who cares. Five disks of Halifax scene. I used a cheque with 19__ on it. Thanks Mike Nelson – everyone buy up the back catalog from Mike Nelson. Who uses cheques now anyways? People raised by wolves? Neato small catalog for murderecords up to their 26th release (as illustrated below). I want the Al Tuck shirt.

I want the Al Tuck shirt
Looks like one soft NSCAD summer job to me

By the way, calling something an “ep cd” is a bit of a misnomer but it was the 90s. We should have all been eating food from tubes by now.

Heist!

art has a message and the message here is I am a rich bastardI noticed at The Star this morning that there was an art theft thisweekend in Toronto – a heist. Is there any other crime which so warms the heart what with unending bad 70’s police TV episodes guest starring the likes of George Peppard centering on the thievery of art.

But why these things? Likely because they are literally pocketable and worth millions. Like Stalin’s retention of the great czarist buildings, our relationship to the image is not so simple. This is the face of another polticial era, that of the tyrant. This man never lifted a shovel or pen, a product of solely the power of inheritance. Google the name. The figure, Charles Mordant, left the world nothing of note other than this nasty, purse lipped, bloated face under a ridiculous wig, a symbol of virility affordable and wearable only by the wealthy and unvirile.

Later: Recalling that Google sucks, I did some more digging on the lost art and found this at the AGO’s web site:

Portrait of Charles Mordant, 3rd Earl of Peterborough and 1st Early Monmouth of the second creation (1658-1735)
Made by David Le Marchand (1674-1726) between 1704 and 1713
French, active in England
Ivory
Inscribed with artist’s monogram on front center of panel beneath truncation: ‘D.L.M.’
21.6 cm ht.; 17.8 cm w.; 5.1 cm d. ( 8 ½ x 6 ½”)

Hmm, doesn’t help that the AGO spells his name differently from other records which refer to Charles “Mordaunt” as the 3rd Earl of Peterborough. Here are records for five portraits of him at the National Portrait Gallery in London. He was an ambassador with an unhappy diverse career and private life as pointed out by notes to these portraits:

Admiral, general and diplomatist. A vehement whig and a supporter of William III until his ejection from political office in 1697 and imprisonment in the Tower. As General of the expeditionary force to Spain in 1705, he fought a controversial but largely successful campaign…

Here seen shortly after his return from serving as British ambassador to the Duke of Savoy, and his final fall from royal favour. The last of Kneller’s four portraits of the sitter….

Title: ‘Hon Mrs F- and Incautious Lothario’ (Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough; Mrs Edward Foley)…

I am now starting to warm to the jerk. Voltaire was his guest for 3 weeks in 1727. He was perhaps the first to cultivate fennel in England. A Colonel of the Royal Horse Guards in 1712 He has a slim but curious relationship to Nova Scotia’s Oak Island gold. He died on board his yacht off Lisbon 25 Oct 1735, is buried Turvey, Beds, 21 Nov 1735 and is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of Camilla Parker-Bowles, Prince Chuck’s fancy lady. Cooling off again…