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Author: Mr. McLaren
Five Years!
Sometimes it seems like that was just a minute ago, sometimes I can’t remember a time before then. Trish tells me that we’re through the easy part, and the next two years are the hard ones. I’m not too worried. For the record the people in the image, left-to-right are: My “little” brother Chef Paul, a.k.a. “Chia The Cat” Me… Read more →
Hanging Around The House 6: Sitting Room
Continuing the series of posts that try to capture the various pieces of art I have hanging around the house. Remember that these posts are made up of quick snapshots–these are hardly professional images, and the upstairs images are worse than the downstairs ones since the angles I could use to take the snapshots are much more highly constrained. The… Read more →
The 80s: Age 7 through 17
Wow. If you’re my age you’re going to totally suffer some productivity loss playing with this MASSIVE list of links to 80s music videos on YouTube. (Yes, the page is in Spanish. No, it won’t be a problem for you.) Also, you will probably want me to remind you about the site that makes it easy to download these videos…… Read more →
The Best Dad
On Monday, I was (at least temporarily) The Best Dad In The World. It was a nice day out, so I decided to take the family down to the boardwalk on the harbourfront. Sarah was very excited by the water, the seabirds, and then finally by the boats. Her sheer glee as she literally jumped up and down while pointing… Read more →
Long Weekend Miscellany
Note for non-Canadians: Monday is one of our most important holidays. Hence “long weekend”. I don’t know how much time I will have to blog this weekend, but I can certainly present a miscellaneous set of things to keep you happy all weekend just in case. This will be a tremendously long post about various, mostly unrelated, things. So, on… Read more →
Schneier: The Eternal Value of Privacy
At this point it should be firmly established that Bruce Schneier is like unto a god among my people. His essay, The Eternal Value of Privacy, which showed up on Wired News yesterday, only does more to cement his position in the firmament. Here’s the closing three paragraphs from the piece, but do go read it all–it’s only a page.… Read more →
I can mock the hick parts of my own country too.
Yes, there are crazy religious people-that-time-forgot in Canada too: CBC Montreal – Darwin’s theory not allowed in North Quebec schools Teachers in some northern Quebec communities are being told not to talk about the evolution of humans because Darwin’s theory offends some Inuit people. Alexandre April is a teacher in Salluit, Que., who says his school principal told teachers not… Read more →
So that’s the 31% who still approve
Someone to claim us, someone to follow Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo Someone to fool us, someone like you We want you Big Brother, Big Brother Illegal taps of US phone calls. Check. Secret compilation of the phone records of Americans. Check. Using this secret data to intimidate investigators and political opponents, while forwarding personal and political agendas… Read more →
New words today.
At the risk of showing some people how a certain trick was done, I present some lovely new words I learned today from “A Few of My Favorite Words” page at andreas.com: Wabi: Japanese noun. A flaw that gives elegance and uniqueness to the whole. Western culture sees beauty in mass produced technical symmetry, such as a Porsche Boxster. Japanese… Read more →
Elemental
Here’s how the contributor list reads to me: Brian ALDISS * Jacqueline CAREY * Arthur C. CLARKE * William C. DIETZ * David DRAKE * Lynn FLEWELLING * Esther M. FRIESNER * David “Where’s my damn Chtorr book” GERROLD * Joe HALDEMAN * Brian HERBERT & Kevin J. ANDERSON * Nina Kiriki HOFFMAN * Tim LEBBON * Kinley MacGREGOR (Sherrilyn… Read more →
Up late with Lenny
So, while I was out buying a new office chairTrish has reclaimed her office chair for her new PhD workstation, so I needed a replacement for my book-wrapping table. Don’t ask. today I happened to hear Shelagh interviewing Leonard Cohen, mostly about his new book. (You can actually hear the interview if you can deal with Real streams. It’s worth… Read more →
Raising My Kid With Science
A while back Paul Myers made a list of books for evolutionists. The list included a number of items “for the kids”. I really liked the idea of starting Sarah’s science education early–why not learn about science along with math and vocabulary, etc–so I decided to order some of these books “sometime”. (I figured the odds of them being in… Read more →
A bookish Sunday Miscellany
I’m not sure why, but for some reason book reviews written by authors whose work I like tend to carry more weight with me than reviews by almost anyone else. This is why I pay special attention to things like Paul Witcover‘s reviews at Realms of Fantasy and Sci Fi Weekly, or Norman Spinrad‘s review/essays in Asimov’s, etc. I was… Read more →
Can we start calling this a disapproval rating yet?
Steve Ruggles at University of Minnesota has prepared a lovely historical chart of Bush’s approval rating over time, as reported by a variety of sources. There’s a pretty clear trend here. Cynical Chris wishes he could believe that this represents a rejection of the policies of the administration by the public, and not irritation at gas prices… (I’ve captured a… Read more →
