Another Olympics, Another Scandal
So Canada is the alleged victim in another Olympic figure skating scandal, this time in ice dance. There are the usual calls for ending all judged sports at the Olympics,…
Yappa
Winterloo
Artists create ice sculptures while people skate in the background, at Winterloo 2014 today: I like community events that have goofy individuality. What could be better than an Urban Iditirod…
Chili Cook-Off in Uptown
I take my chili seriously. One of the nicest things anyone ever did for me occurred a number of years ago when a colleague brought a container of his chili…
Olympic Update
CBC coverage of the Olympics has been fantastic. I don’t have TV reception in my home so have been watching events via olympics.cbc.ca. CBC shows live events, webcasts of the…
Waterloo needs a west-side expressway
Rush hour traffic in uptown Waterloo is a mess. Some of the busiest intersections – William/Caroline, Erb/Caroline – are going to get even worse when the LRT goes through them.…
Child abuse
Imagine if you will a 7 year old girl who said that the male adult in her home had molested her; the police were called and said that while they…
The attack on peace
Twice this weekend I heard the local Talk Radio station lead their news broadcast with these words: “A handful of university students have hopped aboard the left-wing Rideau Institute’s “white…
King & University: Density node? Neighborhood? Mess?
The density at King & University has been a long time coming. When I was a teenager in the 70s, there were already large apartment buildings on Regina Street North.…
Cell phones > Smartphones > Superphones > ?
Just fooling around here, but with the rapid evolution of smartphone technology, you have to be wondering where it’s going. Earlier this year we learned of an imager chip that…
Musings on love and freedom in the Ring Cycle
Wagner’s Ring Cycle is about a curse on a ring, but in another (even larger) sense it’s about a curse on women. Four women in the four operas are forced…
In praise of bus bays
A lot of rush hour traffic jams are at least partially preventable. If we had bus bays that let GRT buses get off the road when they stop to pick…
In praise of speed bumps
The reason we have roundabouts is that they let traffic flow without stopping through intersections. The problem with roundabouts is that having traffic flow without stopping is extremely hazardous to…
Rob Ford’s not drunk
A video was released today of Rob Ford in a living room, ranting about someone he wanted to kill in a boxing ring. Almost immediately, Ford went on camera and…
Will/Should John Chen move BlackBerry to California?
I worked at Sybase for eight years under John Chen, the new CEO of BlackBerry. He was an interesting CEO – refreshingly (almost appallingly) frank. I remember he once came…
Bubbles of Earth
My brother has started a blog about poetry, pictures, and co-creative science”. It’s quite wonderful.
Failing the modern Turing test is so vexatious
Here’s a CAPTCHA I just got. As you can see, my attempt was not accepted. Other characters I can see in this captcha, starting from the bottom left and moving…
More for Uptown, Part 3: Accessibility
I first understood accessibility issues in uptown Waterloo when my mother started using a walker. My mother lives in easy walking distance of the uptown. Her health and emotional well-being…
Let’s rethink the St Jacobs Farmer’s Market
Waterloo woke this morning to the sad news that the main building of the St Jacobs Farmer’s Market had burned to the ground. Already there is an outpouring of sympathy…
Musings on Manning
I worked for Reuters back in the 80s and 90s, and still get email sometimes about things that happen to Reuters employees. I got one today concerning the murder of…
Rally round the Ex!
I feel terrible about the illness at the Ex yesterday. As it happened, I myself was at the Ex yesterday. I had fantastic food there: roasted corn on the cob,…