Heart of Canada

Beedogs

Who can resist checking out "the premier online repository for pictures of dogs in bee costumes"? It's Beedogs.

Book Tags

A couple of people have tagged me on that blogger book tag thingie, including Autonomous Source and one of my new reads, The Journal of N=1. Actually, they tagged me last week, but I've been mulling obsessively over answers to the questions -- I don't know why. I guess I own way too many books, and they're mostly all important to me. One caveat before I start. I'm not including professional books for work; otherwise, they'd all be depression this and psychopathy that. Anyway, here goes....

Number of Books I Own: At present, hundreds. Hubby and I have joked a number of times that the largest commodity we own is paper. We used to own considerably more, but every time we move we find nice homes for some of them. Once you realize that you have to pay by the pound when you move, it becomes a lot easier to part with a few books. The last time we moved, we sold some to this cool book dealer in Calgary and then gave a couple of car loads to the Southwest Calgary Co-Op's 50 cent book exchange. We found that kind of funny because most of the books donated were worth a lot more than 50 cents, but what were we going to do with several copies of Moby Dick or Dombey and Son?

Last Book I Bought: Henri J. M. Nouwen's The Wounded Healer. I bought this book because it pushes past the stereotype that helpers, ministers, and healers have to be aloof and overly professionalized in order to be effective. Perhaps when we understand our own wounds and suffering in life, we can better help and reach out to others.

Last Book I Read That I Could Discuss At A Swanky Dinner Party With My Eyebrow Arched To Underline My Fascinating Interest In The World Around Me, And The Historical Currents Which Sweep Man Along To His Destiny: Bohdan Kordan and Craig Mahovksy's A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian-Canadian Redress. Actually, I thought this book had a lot in common with swanky dinner parties: they're both pointless, irritating, and lacking in any real substance. IMHO, the book wavers on the edge of historical fiction, ineffectively discussing realities relative to the diaspora of the time and even more ineffectively holding the government to account: to redress or not redress -- that is the question, unfortunately an unnecessary one and, even more unfortunately for this book, left unanswered with regard to the small number of actual internees at the time relative to actual immigration numbers of those particular ethnic groups from that particular era.

Last Book I Really Finished: Anita Daimant's The Red Tent. Much better historical fiction.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me (in no particular order):

Donald and Lillian Stokes's Field Guide to Birds: Western Region. I don't like to be without this excellent birding book. Wherever you go, there are birds. Who cares about the Eastern birds? J/K!

Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. When people with seemingly good intentions go bad -- can't ever forget that it can happen -- and did -- and still does.

Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman and Keith Sutherland's The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will. I'm not cheating here. I don't count this as a book for work because most people I work with or who trained me would never read it. The book is a fascinating intersection between neuroscience, quantum physics, psychology, theology, and philosophy with a dash of mathematics thrown in -- pretty much hits on many of my major interests.

Wladyslaw Szpilman's The Pianist. I read a lot of personal experiences of historical events, including war journals and dairies, 9/11 survivor experiences, and stories of genocide. Official historical accounts are interesting, though sterile; personal accounts are complex and front-line. Both types contain elements of fiction and interpretation.

The Gospel of John. Although I could have said The Bible, in some ways that would have been cheating because it is comprised of many separate books. I was going to say The Book of Psalms because I spend quite a bit of time with it, but, really, how much more does the story of Christ as told in the poetic and literary manner of the Johannine Gospel inspire me. "And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God."

Honourable mentions: J. L. Granatstein and Normal Hillmer's First Drafts: Eyewitness Accounts from Our Past. I could have picked a number of travel journals or historical accounts, but this is the most recent one I've been perusing. I enjoy reading people's initial expressions of novel experiences because they give such a fresh take on what we now have trampled over or reinterpreted a gazillion times.

Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park for its penetrating and insightful look at scientific ethics and justifications. How could I blog about books and not mention my favourite author?

Now, for blog tagging, I'm going to tag...

Jim
Becky
Mr. Anchovy
Kate
Bart

Post Secret

Post Secret: bizarre & voyeuristic, but very, very compelling.

Intel-ligence

Apparently, Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, implies that, if you're sick of adware, you should just buy a Mac.

*snort*

Via VP

Daft Diversions

Your Geek Profile:

Academic Geekiness: High

Internet Geekiness: High

Fashion Geekiness: None

Gamer Geekiness: None

Geekiness in Love: None

General Geekiness: None

Movie Geekiness: None

Music Geekiness: None

SciFi Geekiness: None

How Geeky Are You?

Guess-the-Google

Bruce found this rather compelling visual concept formation game online called Guess-the-Google. My recommendation: don't start playing it at work because you probably won't get any work done. Also check out Montage-a-Google.

UPDATE:

In know...it's silly...

Leo Laporte's Story

I used to really enjoy watching the shows Call for Help and The Screen Savers on Tech TV. At some point last year, the shows started to suck. Then the shows, as I knew them, disappeared altogether and awfully strange things started happening with that channel in general. I hadn't been following tech news, so I was unaware at the time that Tech TV had been bought out by Gag 4, who seems to have systematically dismantled one of my favourite programs and networks altogether.

Lately, I got wind of the real story behind what happened to Leo Laporte and the rest of the Tech TV crew. Based on my reading, it's an ugly story involving lay-offs, moving Tech TV staff from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and then promising work to folks who moved, only to cancel their positions after they moved there.

*shudder*

Horrid, unconscionable acts, if you ask me.

Today, however, I came across a post by Leo Laporte at Leoville Town Square, in which he describes some of the behind-the-scenes wranglings regarding his contract. Here's an excerpt:

...the short version is that during the sale process at the end of 2003 TechTV held up my contract negotiations and couldn't say why....when it came time to sign the contract, they introduced an additional rider that prevented me from suing Vulcan Ventures should they decide to value my fully vested 324,000 shares of TechTV at $0. I declined to sign the rider. They declined to renew without the signature. I walked.

A few weeks later they increased their payoff offer (which as it turned out was much lower than the severance many other TechTV employees received) and I decided to cut my losses and take it. Especially since the sale to Comcast was imminent, and the best legal opinions were that there was nothing I could do about the shares anyway. (Vulcan did void them eventually.) [Read the rest]

I was glad Leo posted what happened to him but also simultaneously disgusted and sad about how Gag 4 treated its employees. Moving some to another city and then callously ditching them? I hope these employees all received excellent severance pay. According to this former Tech TV intern,

The severance package stipulated that the person could not say ANYTHING negative about G4, even if it was true, and it was also stipulated that the person could not discuss the severance package agreement with anyone. I must also add that no single person at TechTV told me this, and that my knowledge came from reading the document itself. It sounded like G4 knew exactly what it was doing from day one. [Link]

The people behind Call for Help and The Screen Savers, as a team, were so much bigger than just their show formats. Gag 4 will never be what Tech TV once was. I was never tempted to refer to G4 in any way at all before they did what they did; now, it just seems instinctive to type Gag 4 every time I think of their management tactics.

Here's Leo's third version of Leoville Town Square.

Check out Leo's homepage.

Read Leo's blog here.

Leo's on the radio with written responses online!

See the Canadian Call for Help show Leo's now hosting, if your service provider carries it (yes, it's Gag 4 in Canada). I think people are still whining about not getting Leo's Call for Help back in the USA, but maybe that will change if the whining becomes shrill enough.

Boycott Bell

Disgusting...especially the word "antivirus" across the breast area.

Postively. Rude. Ingorant. Churlish. Kooky. Stupidity.

Let's make it simple: boycott Bell. Tell Bell, "the female body" is not de facto pornographic, even if that's how they seem to think about women. Block pornography, not women.

Update:

Bell Canada
Executive Office of Customer Relations for Bell
1-866-317-3382
executive.office [at] bell.ca

The message at the above number says to press "1" if you haven't yet talked to Customer Service. I tried talking to Customer Service earlier today, and their responses consisted primarily of "um," "I don't know," and "ad? what ad?" Accordingly, I'd recommend you press "2" for management and then "5" for other concerns (i.e., marketing abominations).

I'm Your Father, I'm Your Father

Continuing on in the Gizoogle theme, here's Star Wars, gangsta style. The animation's pretty amazing, (you can click past the annoying commercials while it's loading).

A Jedi's gotta do what a Jedi's gotta do.

Thanks to a regular reader for the link tip.

Gizoogle

Ok, these folks should win some kind of comedy web award:  go to this site and type in the full url for a website that has a significant amount of text on the front page (it doesn't work well on some blogs). Then click "Gizoogle it" and wait for the page to be translated into...gangsta.

I did it with the Guide to the Canadian House of Commons. It's, um, too funny to describe. Check it out, but I'm not going to tell you which of your favourite sites to, um, transform ; )

Be creative 'n' trackback! I gotta see what ya'll come up with!

Er, on second thought, don't track back if you're transforming, say, your work site. Don't want anyone to get dooced.