As a child–I think around 8 or so–I once got booted out of Sunday school for “disrupting the class” with a series of “outspoken incidents”. What actually happened, at least as I remember it now, was that I was politely but firmly asking the teacher a number of questions she found inconvenient about the material she was laying out. On… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
I totally would have outbid that because cannons are awesome
I just found out today that our local free weekly was running a charity contest as an eBay auction. The winner would get to give the command to fire the Citadel’s noon gun while in period costume, among other things. I would have totally bid fairly highly on that–it would have been hilarious, especially as a gift for someone. That… Read more →
Canadian Style Democracy At Work
One of my standing gags when talking foreign policy to Americans (and I by no means think this is exclusively mine–it’s the kind of joke that’s just obvious) has to do with the difference in diplomatic styles between the countries. Americans, of course, tend to us a lot of guns and a bit of butter, where as the stereotypical Canadian… Read more →
Farther Beyond Than I Can Apparently Go
Generally speaking I appreciate black humour. Generally speaking I get that especially dry, uniquely British style of humour. Generally speaking any book that’s described as witty, much less as “a masterpiece of wit”, is right up my alley. Generally a book that makes excellent use of metaphoric commentary to satirize and skewer political systems, the general public, and the interaction… Read more →
Your Interests Are Not Their Interests
I’ve been watching, but staying out of, the debate around the US health care system and how it will change. What I don’t understand are the people who resist full insurance because they have good benefits now through work, and don’t see the need to pay for other people’s benefits. I first don’t understand it because I just don’t get… Read more →
Keeping The Noggin Limber
OpenCulture has some interesting (and free) philosophy stuff to listen to. I love this kind of stuff, and it transforms time in the car alone from a choreIt’s only really a chore if there’s traffic or if you’re driving a route you’ve driven millions of time before–if there’s anything novel about it you can always slip into the blue sky… Read more →
Notes From The Augmented Hobo Community
One of the things I’m interested in generally is the notion of augmented or mediated reality–everything from simple HUD overlays to the kind of stuff Karl Schroeder so excellent explored in Lady Of Mazes. Some of the ideas that were clearly science fiction just a little while ago are turning into real street level science fiction–you could be walking around… Read more →
Living In Interesting Times, Or, Friday Night With Fancy Books
While there were many exciting conversations here at Casa McLaren tonight about things that are not yet blog-announcement-ready, as far as actual action goes things were pretty sedate. Mostly it was me assembling some hardware store purchases, and then spending a few hours doing some sorting and organizing of the library. So, since I spent all my time doing that,… Read more →
Now Magazine vs The Adapters
I’ve been following the video posts from the shooting of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, the movie that’s being adapted from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of Scott Pilgrim comics. Partly this is because I dig the comics, and it seems like the filmmakers are having a wonderful time adapting them, and partly it’s because Mal used to live here in… Read more →
Aside
Yes, I am aware that the asides are not currently rendering as asides. The upgrade to WordPress 2.8 broke the plugin I use to manage that, and I’m giving the author a little time to get it sorted before I toss out the plugin and do it myself. At some point these will look correct again, one way or another.
Aside
If you’re a fan of The Wire (and really, you should be) then prepare for some cognitive dissonance, as you watch and listen to Jimmy McNulty, or rather Dominic West the actor that portrays him, read from one of the few dirty books that snuck into the canon of classical literature. In his actual accent.
Aside
Go and see what Chip Zdarsky (in his alter-alter-ego as Steve Murray) has wrought by bringing a George Perez sensibility to The Muppets. Apparently I am seriously behind in my Muppet continuity.
I would not have believed it.
If I were playing Balderdash, or something similarI have this very vague memory of an old game show called Liar’s Club–I must have seen repeats of it or something, since it only ran until I was 5 or 6 years old. The premise of the show was that people would make up a set of incredibly unlikely explanations for something,… Read more →
Serious Ireland WTF?
Like many North Americans of Irish descent I quite often like to play up that aspect of my heritage–although in my case it runs more to quoting Yeats, listening to songs about killing the EnglishFace it, the rebels had better music., and drinking Guinness than to wearing KISS ME I’M IRISH shirts or drinking blechh green beers. From time to… Read more →
Yes, that explains it.
You may recall that we’ve discussed the Drake Equation here before, and also Nick Bostrom’s efforts to amend it with what I called a Doom Constant. Well it turns out that a very plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox that doesn’t involve either post has been suggested by a cartoon over at Abstruse Goose. I don’t know that the cartoonist… Read more →
