Author: Alan

Listening to George

I am listening to George Bush right now during the live speech part of tonight’s presentation and I can’t shake how similar it is to listening to the English lyrics sung by Swedish pop bands like ABBA or Ace of Bass. It is not what he is saying (I don’t care much about debating that) but how he says it: slightly disjointed sentences one following another, within each sentence cliché and familiar word groupings. But no flow…so what comes across to me is grip rather than comfort. But when he starts answering questions his accent reappears, the cadance reappears.

Who was the best public speaker you have heard, the best speech written? What would Trudeau be saying – “just watch me”. Thatcher would be scary, Old Testament. Ronnie Ray Gun would say “weeeell” too often with that little head shake.

Asteroid Impact Calculator

I love fun web games that have neato results statements like:

The fireball is below the horizon. There is no
direct thermal radiation.

Whew…except…this is a real time, real outcome
widget to figure out how you would be affected in the case of an asteroid
strike. It takes into account the angle of the strike, the density of the
object, your distance from the impact, etc. For the true worrywort amongst you
from the good folks at the University of Arizona’s Department of Planetary
Sciences.

Water View

Took a trip on the Wolfe Island Ferry (which is a very fine ferry) and got this view of the face of Royal Military College, Fort Henry and the Cedar Island Martello. Here are a couple of other posts on the martellos and the harbour defences.


The vista – too tiny to really see anything


Detail of the Cedar Island martello, unspruced, south of Fort Henry (green above)


Detail of Fort Henry (blue above)


Detail of Royal Military College behind Point Frederick martello, north of Fort Henry (red above)

Egg Hunt

Right in the middle of a four day weekend, the inhabitants of one street in Kingston gather to let over 100 kids run over their lawns for 23 minutes every Easter Saturday.

The crowd gathers: mass quantities of caffine consumed in preparation for the sugar rush

This took an amazing amount of time, 1500 eggs being filled Friday and spread out over 40 front lawns at 6:45 am. Some sort movies here:

80 pounds of candy for about 80 households worth of kids.