The Breadbin

...an answer to that endlessly annoying question "where do you find the time?"
I've been asked this question many, many times in my life. I've heard it phrased as a statement rather than a question even more often, viz.: "You have too much time on your hands".
Nope. Twenty-four hours a day, same as you.

Absolutely phenomenal article here.

How long did it take to create Wikipedia in its present form? About a hundred million hours, give or take.

Americans spend a hundred million hours every weekend watching commercials on television.

Think about that for a minute. Really think about it. Even a tiny redirection of cognitive resources would have staggering effects.
The article above suggests that media is, at long last, beginning to twig to the fact that people are no longer quite so happy at sitting in their couch's ass-divots, being spoon-fed. We want to produce our own media; we want to share the media we've produced. Reading between the lines...as a societ…

I find myself rather viciously torn watching people tearing their hair out at the gas pumps.
On the one hand, I think gas prices are only just starting to become realistic. It was known and understood nearly four decades ago that oil reserves are not infinite. It should also have been obvious at that time if not earlier that China and India would not remain backwaters (albeit very populous backwaters) forever.
Robert Heinlein, in his 1980 work EXPANDED UNIVERSE, said that "oil is far too valuable to waste on personal transportation". At that time, he urged we begin work to take advantage of unlimited solar power available in orbit...R and D required on existing (1980) technology only. But "in orbit" means "space", and the American people have by and large decided there's nothing in space worth wasting time and money over. Of all the shortsighted mistakes America has made, that one may actually turn out to be the most costly.
Meanwhile, the world's …

Well, that was a disappointment.
Yesterday marked our fifth visit to the Good Food Festival. It was probably also our last.
Quite simply, this Festival is a shadow of its former self. Every year it has declined a little: vendors either downsize their displays, cut the value of their coupons in half, or disappear entirely. But at least until this year, we felt the $12 admission fee was more than worth it. Besides the swag-bag you get as you enter, containing twenty bucks worth of free merchandise and about that much in coupons, there are deals to be had all over. The highlight for us has always been the Reynolds kiosk: three for $5, mix 'n' match...but then they'd always throw in freebies. In our first visit we discovered Reynolds Release non-stick aluminum foil, which found a place on the Breadner grocery list right quick. Last year they introduced their Slow Cooker Liners to the Canadian marketplace at the Festival. I quickly fell in love with these things--cleaning the in…

Today is 4:20, the national pothead holiday, and that means I'm supposed to do a column on grass. (Perhaps that should be "...concerning grass.")
Not gonna do it. (Although I'll be discussing smoking...)
I won't cover off weed today because (a) everyone else is doin' it and (b) I never have. Nothing against those who indulge--the idea of getting high, of perhaps losing control, doesn't appeal to me, is all.
I thought about doing a whiplash blog entry, whiplash being the kind of wild mood swings I get when I consider our future as a species. You've seen the doom and gloom often enough, I'd warrant; I haven't covered the positive stuff near as often, but it's out there. They've cloned bamboo, for instance...great news, as you can make damn near anything out of it and save most of the world's trees in the process. Between bamboo and, uh, hemp--shhh! Ken just said he wouldn't write about that!--we could solve a whole hell of a lot o…

This one's dedicated to my stepfather, John McCallum.

This song damn near makes me cry every time I hear it. In some alternate universe the second verse would hold true. This video...Jesus, the man in it even looks just a bit like John at 21, the age he was when he first met me, and if you put Coke-bottle glasses on the kid...

My wife likes cheesy '80s movies, the cheesier the better. We're not talking the box office smashes like Ghostbusters and Footloose (though she likes those, too); we're talking about things like My Chauffeur. If you haven't seen it...keep it that way.
Me? I like bad music, or what's often described as bad music. While floating around Wikipedia today I discovered that Blender magazine (an offshoot of Maxim) compiled a list of "the 50 worst songs ever".
I can't say my favourite songs of all time are on that list, but I like most of them and really like a few. And let's just say I disagree with Blender's take on almost every one of them. In some cases ("My Heart Will Go On", "Follow Me", and "Your Body Is A Wonderland spring to mind), the song is bad through no fault of its own (or at least not much) but because it's been played several gajillion times on the radio. Actually, most of the songs listed here have been ove…

Sorry for the long run between posts. I've started three--on the housing collapse in the U.S., increased food prices, and Obama's "bitter" comment--and abandoned each of them halfway through when research showed others had covered all three topics quite well.

Okay, well, I can use the third one as a springboard, then.

I really must add to Lisa Van Dusen's already cogent synopsis of why "Bittergate" just might kill Obama's chances. I'm not so sure "bitter" is the problem. Here's the offending quote in all its glory:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter,…