Smoke Break #852: So How’s That “War On Drugs” Doing? Not So Good…But That’s OK
June 3, 2011
The Global Commission on Drug Policy has released a pretty darn damning report that says the “War On Drugs” has failed (despite it being occasionally hilarious). The 19-member panel included former leaders of major drug war front-line states like Mexico and Colombia, as well as global bigwig pragmatists like former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and billionaire Sir Richard Branson. As if on cue, the governments of the USA and Mexico called the findings “misguided”, probably because the status quo is clearly working out so well. The report comes on the heels of the re-election of Stephen Harper, who got so high at the victory party that he still plans on moving forward with legislation that will bring in longer sentences for drug crimes (including for the possession of just a couple of pot plants at home). Why? Because if it ain’t fixed, break it some more!
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Field Trip #585: Diggin’ Guerilla Archaeology In Vancouver…
May 31, 2011
Me and a friend took our sons out for a dig and pretzels today somewhere in the recess of our neighbourhood. The only archaeology I’d done before was at the bottom of an old well while I was a foreign student some 15 years ago, back when I thought Indiana Jones’ career was something easily replicated (still not entirely convinced to the contrary).
I remember being not all that amazed by the finds at the time, as the cat and rat skeletons, broken plates, rags and knives discovered during that school dig weren’t things that I could viscerally connect to. My fellow students could put them in a more personal context because they were “of that place”. I was not. I was born in Vancouver, and naturally find the short sweep of its modern history to be profoundly more interesting than that of most other places I’ve ever been to.
I should stress that this isn’t “real” archaeology. We’re not going meters down and hunting for evidence of aboriginal life thousands or hundreds of years ago. We’re looking for old bottle caps and rubbish on and just below the surface to get our kids excited about the past. Without training, geophysical surveys or documents leading to a proverbial “x” (we’ll leave such things to the pros digging real archaeological sites), one simply marks a spot and digs a small, inoffensive hole a few inches deep.
At our spot – an old dump – today, we brought up plenty of cool finds dating from the Victorian to the 1960′s. We found an over-abundance of old glass (including an intact bottle buried in mud) and just as much shattered ceramic of many different types. There were also butchered bones galore, and bits of metal that included an iron skeleton key and an old copper latch hook (amazingly, the only plastic we found was on the surface).
Here are a few shots of the day and of the finds my son and I categorised afterwards at home … Read more
Vancouver Would Be Cooler If… We Had The “Grillenium Falcon” Rolling Around Town
May 26, 2011
I was going to go into Tashi station to pick up some power converters when this shot landed in my inbox. The Grillenium Falcon just landed in Fayetteville, Arkansas. So jealous. May the lunch be with you.
Local Intelligence Brief #729: “Great Cities Are About Street-Level Experiences”
May 24, 2011
Don Cayo penned an opinion piece in the Sun today on how Vancouver “coasts on its beauty, but misses out on creating vibrant city life”. The meat of it focuses a little too much on business as if more retails stores and restaurants along the waterfront were the keys to cultural ascension for my liking (it’s all the stupid by-laws and red tape), but he pulls out some good quotes just the same:
Vancouver coasts on its natural assets, too rarely learning from other cities that do more with less, says Michael Goldberg, a professor emeritus at University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business and an outspoken critic of urban planning and development.
“Great cities are about street-level experiences,” he told me over the lunch the other day at a table near the window of a pleasant little eatery, a spot I chose because there was no functioning outdoor patio this time of year on this section of busy Robson Street.
“But we [in Vancouver] rely excessively on being beautiful and being next to nature. All our planning tends to focus outward toward the views, and there has been no attention to the street-level experience for people.
Read the whole bit here. Vancouver’s relative sterility is hardly breaking news, but it’s nice to see our local paper pause its groan-worthy cheerleading for just long enough to echo what everybody already knows, that our city would be so much better if we just arrested all the No Fun nabobs and sent them packing to gulags in rural Ontario.
Smoke Break #851: “The Musalman” Is The World’s Only Hand-Written Daily Newspaper
May 24, 2011
Chennai’s “Musalman” newspaper launched in 1927 for Muslims living in India’s south. It is penned by calligraphers daily, by hand. Via Nerdcore:
Making The Musalman is simple but laborious. It is a broadsheet folded to make four pages. […] “We are not able to afford” full-time Urdu reporters, the editor says, so the material often comes in English. Three translators turn it into Urdu. The katibs then write the copy out on paper with quills and ink, three hours per page, and paste all the items on a form. If a mistake is made or a news update arrives, the page is rewritten. The form is turned into a negative, which is used to make the plate for printing.
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Smoke Break #850: The Coolest Thing About Patio Season Is The Furniture In The Face…
May 23, 2011
Wait for it…go summer!
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DINER: Video Blogger Makes Pancakes And Gets Proper Wasted In “My Drunk Kitchen”
May 23, 2011
I want to spend some time in Hannah Hart’s Drunk Kitchen. Money quote: “I wanna eat this with my mouth.”
CANUCKERY: How Bandwagon Fans Should NOT React To Our 4-3 Loss To The Sharks…
May 21, 2011
Starts at 1:25 and continues throughout. Don’t do that (also, never refer to a friend as “bitch”). We got this.
Foreign Intelligence Brief #370: On Teasing Tintin And Getting Ready For The Rapture…
May 20, 2011
When I get old and Michelle puts me in a senior’s home, I hope a Latin-loving Darth Vader comes on stage with a trombone and makes magic for me and my orange juice while I wet my pants and disguise it with spilled tapioca.
Likely GOP presidential primary contender Jon Huntsman to come out against war in Afghanistan. Wait…what? You’re a republican Mormon descended from a long line of saloon keepers and proselytizers! You had hope, but now you might as well climb to the top of the Capitol and scream “I’m gay”. Good day to you, sir.
End of the line for dining cars on British trains. Sniff.
Dear flooded Mississippians, meet the neighbour you lent your shovel to…
Would you trade a salad plus $2 to a narc in exchange for cocaine? Of course you would!
With his pre-1967 Israeli-Palestinian border gambit, Obama tries to earn another Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. No-Fun Netanyahu balks (where’s President Bartlett when you need him?). My Nobel money is still on Mohamed Bouazizi. Make it happen Scandinavia!
The best right-wing, bat-shit crazy Tea Party event, ever.
RIP: 80′s wrestling icon “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Was there a chair involved? Nope. Was he pile-driven hard? Neg. Apparently, he suffered a heart attack while driving his jeep on the highway, careened across oncoming traffic and then smacked head on into a tree. Derp.
Best insensitive follow-up tweet ever: “and with the first overall pick of Rapture Draft, God selects…Macho Man Randy Savage! Ohhh yeeeah!”
And speaking of the rapture, it turns out its art isn’t all that rapturous.
But best of luck tomorrow, anyway. Save me a seat for Game 4 in hell.
And speaking of speaking of the rapture, Goodbye Newt, you dumb bastard.
Texas to legalise noodling. Because naturally!
Do astronauts have the internet in space? Glad you asked…
Bonus: Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg’s long awaited treatment of Tintin gets a teaser trailer.
Smoke Break #849: Berlin Art Installation Sees 72,000 Bottle Beer Pyramid Annihilated
May 17, 2011
Via Colossal:
Behold the latest installation by French artist Cyprien Gaillard who constructed this 72,000 bottle pyramid of beer in cardboard boxes (a beeramid, if you will) at KW Berlin. After signing a waiver participants are free to climb, open, and consume as many bottles of “Efes” beer as they desire, making this, in my eyes, the pinnacle of modern art as we know it.
Oh, art. You really do know how to roll…
