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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 |
annafdd
|
10:19a |
Kitten Diary, day three and four (morning)
She now plays in her pen, and meows for attention (well, squeaks, really). This I take to be a very good sign. I has become easier to retrieve her by playing with a peacock feather, although it still involves a bit of traumatic airlifting from under the back of the sofa. She obviously resents the leash, but if it's too loose she slips from it, as I learned to my sorrow. Zip is growing bolder: instead of hiding under the bed in another room (day one) or sulking on the back of the sofa in the computer room, now she comes close to the pen and growls. I have now a Feliway diffuser in the room, let's hope it does the trick. I probably should have bought the spray as well and followed Zip around spraying her surroundings. |
kittypix
[ hyperoma ]
|
4:27p |
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frumiousb
|
9:40a |
Pet Shop Boys-- June 2009 Amsterdam
A few shots from the show.  B. and I were really too tired for this. Too close to the wedding and the move. The boys were in good form-- put on a good show. My problem was that my favorite period in their career is the least popular in terms of most of their fans. So I was a weird mirror to the rest of the fans-- singing along to the songs where everyone else was bored. Two things: It was entertaining to see Neil dressed like Sinatra-- they have started to look alike. Second, they did do a good version of "Love, etc.", my favorite from the new album: ( a couple more pictures ) |
33mhz
|
2:57a |
John Oswald: DAB
"After sliding into recognition this Michael Jackson cut follows the format of a video game - as it progresses the levels of complexity and abstraction increase." |
nwhyte
|
9:58a |
It's not what you first thought it was...
...trawling eBay for Whovian bargains, my eye was caught by an entry which ran as follows: Blood and Justice: The 17th Century Parisian Doctor Who Sounds interesting - another bit of canon that I had been unaware of, I thought. But then I checked out the full listing: The 17th Century Parisian doctor who made blood transfusion history...
In 1667 a Parisian doctor by the name of Jean-Baptiste Denis performed an operation that had never previously been attempted - he transfused blood into another human being. Ah well, that explains it. (That phrase "made blood transfusion history" is odd, isn't it? Makes it sound like he had it abolished!)  |
nwhyte
|
9:47a |
July Books 20) Dalek I Loved You, by Nick Griffiths
I enjoyed tremendously Griffiths' more recent book, Who Goes There?, so thought I should read his earlier memoir about growing up as a Doctor Who fan. It's amusing enough. Griffiths had a slightly but not very unusual childhood (much older parents, few close friends), and since then has had his fair share of career setbacks and failed relationships; he writes about it all with self-deprecating humour which could perhaps have been spiced up with a bit more passion. I imagine that people who like me and Griffiths were children in the UK in the mid-70s will enjoy this, but I think his other book has wider appeal. |
nwhyte
|
8:49a |
July Books 19) Verdigris, by Paul Magrs
A novel featuring the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, UNIT and Magrs' own invention, Iris Wildthyme, a renegade Time Lady whose Tardis is shaped like a double decker bus and who claims to be the Doctor's on-off girlfriend. Magrs recycled a lot of the jokes and some of the plot from this book for the Big Finish audio Excelis Dawn, with Iris (as per usual) played by Katy Manning. But Verdigris is an amusing sideways look at the Third Doctor era, with the bad guys in one scene trying to convince Jo that it is all a cruel hoax: "Think about every alen artifact or creature you have ever seen. Weren't they always surrounded by a nimbus of blue light? Didn't they sometimes look a little ... unconvincing?" And Mike Yates gets reduced to a two-dimensional cardboard cutout, so not much change there then. It's not terribly substantial, with some promising elements (eg Iris' companion, Tommy) left unexplored, but quite good fun. (I've also been listening to The Magician's Oath from Big Finish, also set in this period; Verdigris is better.) |
jrittenhouse
|
1:13a |
Another annoying movie:
Saw the trailer for 2012 at Harry Potter 6; I was going oh geeze and razzing the ridiculous POS. Maybe my present health situation has made everything-go-boom Novels and Stories a whole lot less interesting, but this one is just trading on the latest millennial fear nonsense. I say it’s spinach |
| Friday, July 17th, 2009 |
1fish_2fish
[ nuts_at_times ]
|
9:56p |
Summer time and heat sucks. So does anyone have summer water temp issues and if you do how do you keep your tanks cool? Excluding a/c unit since I don't have a/c. This coming week is supposed to be really warm high 80's at the start and low 100's by the end of the week. Typical summertime temp is only in the 70's so apartments are not equipped with a/c. Last time we say temps into the 90's I lost 10 fish between all my tanks, and although I haven't added any new fish, I'd like to try and prevent more mass death. I used ice last time but could not make it fast enough, as it melted within a minute. |
alexpgp
|
10:23p |
A philatelic moment...
In looking at my late mother's papers, I am chagrined at finding so many envelopes with missing stamps. Back in the day, however, the drill for young collectors involved clipping stamps from envelopes, soaking them in water, and then drying the separated and gum-free stamps between sheets of blotting paper under heavy books. I did find one envelope, however, that escaped my notice back in the day. It was a letter from my mother's French pen pal. The stamps on it are fairly ordinary, but just for laughs, I decided to check them against the catalog. Three of the stamps, copies of a 1932 issue with a face value of 50 centimes depicting a woman representing Peace, are indeed completely ordinary, though they are worth slightly more canceled (€0.3, according to the Yves catalog) than unused and hinged. On an envelope, the stamp is worth slightly more, about €1. The fourth stamp, with a face value of 25 centimes, was first issued in 1927, and depicts a woman sowing. Starting around 1929, however, a variety of the stamp appeared, and this is the stamp on the envelope. The "normal" stamp is worth €0.2 used; the variety, €27 used, and €50 on an envelope. That's a pretty impressive multiplier. Now for the bad news: Most stamps are "actually" worth 10-20% of catalog value, so we're talking the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee. Moreover, the stamps on the envelope are not in pristine condition - they're okay, just not pristine - which drops the price by half or more, so we may not be talking even that cup. In addition, the number of collectors who specialize in envelopes (called "covers" by the cognoscenti) is pretty small, according to Feht, so finding someone who might be interested is a fairly long shot. At this point, one might as well pay for the coffee with cash. Still, it did make my heart go pitter-pat, for just a second. Cheers... |
| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 |
thebitterguy
|
12:13a |
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absinthe_dot_ca
|
12:07a |
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gunlord
|
12:05a |
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| Friday, July 17th, 2009 |
toronto
[ versayce ]
|
11:48p |
meal with parking
hey dudes - i have a problem! my parents like to take me and my brother out for lunch sometimes on the weekends. that's pretty sweet, except my brother and i don't drive so all the yummy food we know of is downtown-ish and usually somewhere without free/decent parking. for our parents, the ttc is a hassle, not a legitimate mode of transportation. i'm really sick of eating at wendy's. i want some thai or sushi or vietnamese or something! just no more burgers and anemic salads in plastic containers. so, any of you frequent some non-fast-food place that is easily accessible by car in north york and has parking? preferably a place that isn't much more expensive than $10 an entree. thanks to anyone who can help! |
toronto
[ akimova ]
|
11:37p |
WTF Go Board
Hello Toronto, One of my friends is scratching his head trying to figure out where to buy a Go Board similar to this one in our fine city. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks! |
brunorepublic
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11:30p |
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james_nicoll
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11:26p |
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| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 |
angel80
|
1:21p |
#17 The Clean Industrial Revolution
Author: Ben McNeil who is a scientist from UNSW with a masters in economics. Subtitle: Growing Australian Prosperity in a Greenhouse Age. Publisher: Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2009. This is a useful little book that, instead of endlessly repeating the doom and gloom scenarios coming out of the science, discusses the positive changes that can be made and are being made. Probably the strongest point that comes across is that business is already seeing the way things are going to go and is making investments to reduce carbon emissions. Business is, in many respects, streets ahead of government - especially the Australian government which, for some reason seems beholden to the coal industry. I marked a few points: 1) He quite effectively deals with the local idiots who argue that we can't make any difference because we're too small and it's a global problem, therefore basically we should wait until the big boys have reached an agreement. Our insignificance, he points out has never stopped us doing research on global diseases or going to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. 2) Another myth debunked. Reducing GHG emissions is not necessarily going to stuff the economy. Since 1996 Australian GHG emissions have grown by about 15% and the UK's have fallen by 10%, but the Australian GDP has grown by 65% and the UK's by 55%. Australian GHGs seem to have fallen for the first time in 2005 (GDP growth rate unchanged). I wonder if that has continued. On p. 165 there is also a graph showing how US emissions growth initially fell and then grew much more slowly after the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, while GDP grew at a much faster rate (even if you only look at the data up to 1990 so you avoid all the complications introduced by bubbles). 3) Longer-term costs of adaptation are lower for early movers and higher for economies that delay. This is because economies that defer the introduction of a carbon price become more carbon-intensive, so when the carbon price is eventually introduced they will lose a lot of money. 4) The major problem I have with his argument is that I don't know and he doesn't tell me the relationships between different carbon emitting parts of the economy. If, for example, a significant part of the population switches from flying to business meetings to online conferencing, will we be emitting more or less carbon? I'm asking this because airlines run on oil which is a lower polluter than coal which produces most of the electricity (90% in this country) that runs the computers. A CEO (or similar) of IBM told my radio a few months ago that the IT industry actually emits more carbon than the airline industry. McNeil's focus is too micro. But it's a good start to getting the debate out there. I hope Kev will read it, and then stop pussyfooting around. |
| Friday, July 17th, 2009 |
toronto
[ daisylo ]
|
11:08p |
Recommedations please!
Hello all, I would like to know the name (address if possible) the place that serves your favourite 1. Pho 2. Apple pie 3. Jerk chicken/Jamaican food coz I'm going to be really hungry when I'm in Toronto next week. THANK YOU!! |
jrittenhouse
|
10:05p |
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eveglass
|
10:41p |
Living together before marriage - what's your take?
I read a blog called the Art of Manliness, and there was a recent article about meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. (Caveat: Yes, I know the blog is geared towards men. Despite that, I find it often has a lot of really useful, gender-neutral advice. This particular article happens to be male-centric.) I seem to have got into a mini-fight with someone in the comments section about whether it's advisable to live with your partner before marriage, and I was wondering if any of my readers felt like weighing in on it. (Here, of course, not on Art of Manliness.) ( Relevant part of the post and the comments exchange here -- only three )That said, does anyone have any thoughts, one way or the other? Living together before marriage: yay or nay? |
| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 |
angel80
|
12:29p |
Boycott
Ken Loach withdrew his film from the Melbourne Film Festival because the latter has sponsorship money from the Israeli Embassy. The director was on my radio this morning being superciliously "balanced". Last year, he said, we had something pro-Palestinian. I want to write to him and ask if it's right to be "balanced" about apartheid and if the Israeli Embassy contributed funds that time? |
| Friday, July 17th, 2009 |
queens
[ rima_bhatt ]
|
10:25p |
MINI-FRIDGE ON SALE! CONTACT IMMEDIATELY IF INTERESTED
Hi,
I am a graduate student at the Queen's School of Business. I will be leaving Kingston by end of August and I have mini-fridge in excellent condition (and room for enough items) for sale. If interested, contact me at dbchuk@gmail.com. Price for the fridge is at $20.
Please contact me as soon as possible, if interested.
Thanks!
|
fengi
|
8:22p |
Up and down
Deadend Margo and I saw Up and damn if it didn't push my buttons, hard. I recognize the film's flaws and mixed messages, but the moment Ellie and Carl meet, they were vivid enough that the mauldin part of me started to get choked up. Later there's a scene where a character is looking at his dead wife's scrapbook which left me struggling not to bawl, let alone cry. Up is informed by a very adult melancholy about the brevity of life, dreams altered by time, work and death, and the loneliness created by the ultimate absence. I think anyone who easily moved by movies might find parts of Up emotional, but if you are also old enough to be aware of mortality and in a happy relationship of any sort, there are parts which are surprisingly tough. Up manages to rise above the grim reaper with comedy and action sequences which thrilled and amused enough to satisfy and even a few convincingly creepy/scary moments. I was entertained, but I don't know if it's a movie I'd watch again. |
eveglass
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9:18p |
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