Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday Jere!

It seems odd to me that if, say, you want to demonstrate to someone what a particular song sounds like, there's nowhere you can really go to listen to a song on-demand, but it's nearly effortless to go to Youtube to watch a video of the same song on-demand.

My educated guess, with no evidence whatsoever, is that while Canada likely suffers from a (chronic) low level of troops, we at least have the luxury to address troop shortages and work overloads by changing missions, rather than "digging deeper into the barrel than we were before." So, I'd assume that the armed forces here don't resort to those tactics.

That said, I can't be sure: I've never heard anything about how Canada deals with recruiting, or how readily Canadians volunteer for the armed forces.

Oi.

I especially like how one of the excuses being used for the US military recruiting more people directly out of jail is that "only three in 10 Americans of military age meet the army's medical, moral, aptitude, or administrative requirements, army officials point out."

Apparently this high standard can only be met by people who need waivers because they're in jail for things like "stealing, drug offences, manslaughter, sex crimes, and nine convicted of making terror threats."

Does anyone know if Canada is having this same problem?

Alright I know today is a little grey thanks to the snow...

So here is a song that always lifts my spirits whenever I hear it... don't laugh it's a guilty pleasure:

My weekend has been rather bookended by Stephen Fry. On Friday, some site pointed me in the direction of this documentary he did on the Gutenberg printing press: The Machine That Made Us. Even for someone who falls well short of calling himself a bibliophile, it's fascinating (Stephen Fry's sense of wonder about the printing press and its implications for civilization is infectious.)

And tonight I've been pointed to his podcast (or, as he calls them, Podgrams). I just listened to episode 1 and two things came to mind: first, it's really quite apparent how much radio background he has, considering that he manages to so effortlessly improvise a decent 25-minute program; and second, he's one fucking busy guy. I mean, between his (ambitious!) project to do a documentary covering all 50 states in the union, to his film that's a 20-years-later update to Last Chance to See (a non-fiction book by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine looking at endangered species in 1985), to guest-starring roles in British and American TV, he doesn't stop.

It's really hard to complain about how busy you are when you hear that. (Still, I recommend giving it a listen if, say, you've got 25 minutes.)

Why Bother?, by Michael Pollan:

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

For the curious, the "Numberwang" video is from That Mitchell and Webb Look. Here's another sketch from the first episode that really got me:

Yay! Macbook back!

One complaint: it seems to insist that it can't find any batteries, yet it seems to run just fine while not plugged in. Perhaps they've stumbled onto a solution for the energy crisis...