sqwabb

[caption id="attachment_10480" align="alignnone" width="497"] A Cossack horsewhips one of the members of the band Pussy Riot. From the video.[/caption]

This morning The Province newspaper had a story straight out of the history books; apparently Cossack militia (also known as "thugs") attacked the anti-Putin agit-punk group Pussy Riot with horsewhips on Wednesday in Sochi, Russia, for trying to play their music in public under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.

Cossacks? Horsewhips? Wow! Russia really does still have one foot firmly planted in the 18th Century. But their other foot is on the gas pedal of a brand new Beemer and they also have the latest model iPhones and high-speed Internet.

So hours before I saw The Province I had already seen what I took to be smartphone footage of the attack in the music video Pussy Riot put out on the Internet this morning for their very excellent song "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland."

Singer Madonna, a vocal supporter of Pussy Riot, posted a still of a Cossack swinging his whip at one of the band members to accompany her amazed tweet this morning:

"Are you kidding me? Are the police in Russia actually whipping Pussy Riot for making music on the streets? Is this the dark ages? GOD bless P.R. They are fearless!" she wrote on Twitter.

Madonna also included a link to an International Olympic Committee spokesperson describing the pictures and the video as "very unsettling."

I agree with the IOC flack that the pictures are unsettling and with Madonna about Pussy Riot being fearless. And while I do not love the Motherland I do really like the song.

[caption id="attachment_10233" align="alignnone" width="497"] This pinko Commie bear has nothing to do with the Capitalist Olympic Games in Sochi.[/caption]

Unlike the dog-eared and bedraggled pink teddy above, the Russian bear has cleaned itself up and is fairly resplendent in full rainbow colours -- all the better to wow the rest of the world and steal the thunder from any pesky gay rights advocates.

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics are in full swing and by all accounts the tribute to Vladimir Putin's one man rule is packing them in. Someone even hijacked a plane to get there; unfortunately they ended up in Istanbul and completely missed the opening ceremonies.

The superficial aspects of venues and spectacle change every two years but the underlying mechanism of the Olympic machine seems to runs like a turn-key operation from one country and one season to another. So it's interesting to note that Russia does bring something unique to the Olympic mix: an unparalleled expertise in, among other things, counter-propaganda.

[caption id="attachment_9964" align="alignnone" width="497"] One of the 95% of ATMs which NCR says are running Windows XP. -- 2fmagazine.com[/caption]

After 13 years Microsoft is about to finally turn off vital life support to the aging Windows XP operating system. But it's hard to properly say goodbye to XP, not because of love but because so many people still use it whether they want to or not.

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will discontinue automatic security updates for Windows XP. Significantly, Microsoft says it will will also stop providing the XP-compatible Microsoft Security Essentials for download.

To say that this is going to create a huge security hole in the very fabric of human civilization may not be the overstatement it sounds like.

[caption id="attachment_9189" align="alignnone" width="497"] Wires bring power into a Fairview building, from who knows where, thanks to Nikola Tesla.[/caption]

January 7th -- Tuesday -- will mark 71 years since Nikola Tesla died in Manhattan, New York City, at his suite in the New Yorker Hotel in 1943.

Tesla was a Serbian-born American electrical engineer and a prolific inventor. He is the father of the system of alternating current and long-range electrical power transmission which underpins pretty much everything else.

But for Tesla's monumental creative and technical act of conceiving and designing an entire practical AC system for generating and transmitting electrical power, the world might have followed Thomas Edison down the road of Direct Current, with power generating stations located within blocks of one another. Click the image to enlarge it.

I'm a little late in my reporting, but this year, in May, the International Space Station (ISS) dumped the last of it's laptop installations of the Windows XP operating system to go all Linux, and furthermore dropped Red Hat Linux in favour of Debian 6. According to the Linux Foundation, which provided two training courses geared specifically for the USA/NASA team’s needs.

Banksy, the famous street artist, may be British, but I understand, from reading media reports like this one, that he just paid Canada a giant compliment by saying on his blog -- of the magnificent, new, World Trade Center in New York City -- and I quote:

“it looks like something they would build in Canada.”

I couldn't be prouder. I almost don't want to quibble, but honestly, I think the new World Trade Center is a little too "out there" for Canada -- too flashy, and, at a height of 541 metres, far too tall for comfort! There's a reason the tallest building in Canada, First Canadian Place, in Toronto, Ontario, is only 298.1 metres -- better safe than sorry!

Banksy's glowing praise of the new landmark tower was not unequivocal. For one thing, he felt that two towers would have been even better. Displaying a surprisingly intemperate tongue, Banksy inexplicably declared that the terrorists had [somehow] won.

It's interesting that Banksy should bring up the terrorists. He may be a bit jealous -- al-Qaeda is still better at getting itself in the news than Banksy, but he sure is trying to catch up.

The media-savvy artist is still doing his New York City residence, creating an artwork each day somewhere in the Big Apple.

I'm not surprised by Banksy's display of respect for Canada. I think it's safe to say most British subjects have a warm spot in their hearts for my country (Canada). We're really kindred spirits, with many shared values, and both our countries spell the word "colour" the same way.

[caption id="attachment_6580" align="alignnone" width="497"] Left: What you can see from a a height of about three, or four storeys. Right: Roughly what a current U.S. Keyhole satellite can reportedly see from Earth orbit.[/caption]

I ended my post on the Russian Search engine Yandex with a flip comment, hoping satellites hadn't learned how to lip-read. Had to look that up.

According to available information on current U.S. spy technology, the answer is still no, but they're coming close. The Kennan “Keyhole-class” satellites are verging on 30-year-old technology. They're basically Hubble telescopes pointed at Earth, or to put it another way, giant digital cameras.  They reportedly have a resolution of five to six inches, That means each pixel in one of their digital black and white images represents five to six inches. That was the state-of-the-military-art, back in 2001, and is still supposed to be today.

Let's just play this one straight. This is Fukuppy, the cartoon mascot recently unveiled by Fukushima industries, an Osaka-based maker of refrigerators. The Internet took this one and ran with it, and it wasn't the design -- a cutsey, winged egg -- it was the name of the mascot, coupled with the name of the company.

[caption id="attachment_6427" align="alignnone" width="497"] Banksy stencil on Melrose Avenue, and Orange Street, in Los Angeles, California.[/caption]

British street artist Banksy is kinda famous for his thought-provoking stencils. He might have started on the streets of London, England, but he's definitely global now. And Banksy isn't a graffiti artist anymore, he's an artist artist, and one who doesn't need a publicity agent -- he can handle that himself, thank you very much.

[caption id="attachment_6428" align="alignnone" width="497"] Banksy stencils selling in Central Park, NYC, over the weekend. The elderly vendor is not Banksy.[/caption]

His recent "residency" in New York City has been a public relations bonanza. Over the weekend, for instance, he set up a pop-up booth in Central Park on Saturday. On his website, Banksy wrote: "Yesterday I set up a stall in the park selling 100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases. For $60 [USD] each." The Guardian newspaper' item points out this is less than a tenth what his original stencils sell for in art galleries. Banksy's says the day's take was $420 USD. Earlier he made some noise with his moving installation "Sirens of the Lambs" -- a slaughterhouse delivery truck full of shrieking stuffed animals. But all of this is nothing compared to the video he's released on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsF3HspQY6A

Graffiti and street art: Banksy vs. King Robbo ►
Banksy makes himself scarce ►

Today I met a young ESL student from China, who told me his name was Kyle -- a clever rhyming Anglicisation of his actual Chinese given name. We talked about ESL, and the importance of finding people to talk to. For whatever reason I made a passing reference to raccoons -- dead air, blank stare. Kyle had never heard of them. A Google image search showed him the first pictures of raccoons he'd ever seen. More searching confirmed that China did not have raccoons, but -- they did have something called raccoon dogs...

[caption id="attachment_6383" align="alignnone" width="497"] Your new cuppa? leaves from the South American Guayusa holly tree -- high in caffeine, amino acids, anti-oxidants, and marketing potential.[/caption]

Listen. Can you hear the probiotic, anti-oxidant, fad-mongers rolling out one new must-try, herbal panacea after another? The process is continual now, because the more we look at common plants, the more goodness we discover. In a world where Yew tree bark goes from being a waste product of the forestry industry to the source of Paclitaxel, a potentially powerful anti-cancer drug, any plant that isn't under the microscope for close re-examination only has to wait it's turn.

So, move over green coffee bean extract, here comes holly -- you know the stuff -- red berries, spiky, green leaves -- long used in many Western countries to make wreathes, and other decoration for the Christmas season -- holly is quietly being reinvented, and reinterpreted, on the basis of a growing appreciation (at least in the Northern hemisphere) of it's chemical, and commercial, properties. There are lots of varieties of holly; bushes, shrubs, and trees -- nearly all contain xanthines, such as caffeine,. The toxicity in English holly is due to high amounts of Theobromine, a caffeine-like, xanthine compound, which acts as a stimulant when it's present in small quantities, such as in chocolate.

[caption id="attachment_4304" align="alignnone" width="497"] If this is wrong, I don't want to be right! Click the image to enlarge it.
[/caption]

The very widely reported public kiss between two female Russian athletes, Kseniya Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova, on the winners' podium at Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, oer the weekend, was in direct defiance of a new Russian anti-gay law.

July 2, 2013, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning the "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors," It's important to point out the law does not apparently make homosexuality itself illegal, it makes public displays of homosexuality illegal. I say "apparently," because, in English translation, it is a very vaguely-worded law, but basically "propaganda" = "public display."

What a great song that is -- Gates of Steel, I mean, by Devo. But the gates, or gate, of steel we're looking at above, however, is not a song. Although, with an estimated weight over two tons, it does qualify as heavy metal. And it most certainly wasn't made for a song. The people behind the design, and construction, Maca Studio Art Metals, describe themselves as a Vancouver, BC-based "bespoke designer and manufacturer of goods that are distinguished by the combination of aesthetic strength, function and quality craftsmanship" -- if you need to ask what any of that means, you can't afford what they make -- so look, but please do not touch.

This is coolest security gate I've ever seen. Whoever commissioned it is getting their money's worth. The very original conception of making the gate halves look like one shattered piece of metal, has been masterfully executed, using a special steel alloy called COR-TEN steel (often just Corten, without the hyphen), which is probably why I can see it. Maca has deliberately left it outside, because the Corten family of steel alloys are designed to rust -- the first layer of rust, which takes a few years to form, acts as a stable surface  which protects the steel from any further corrosion -- which sounds like the initial oxidisation layer on aluminium, or like a coat of paint, only better. Corten is meant for very utilitarian construction, such as bridges, marine shipping containers, and outdoor sculptures. Increasingly architects are taking note of it's rusty "charm." The Endo Shuhei Architect Institute has designed a number of buildings employing Corten steel in their construction, notably the Looptecture Fukura Tsunami Disaster Preventive Control Centre, located in Minamiawaji-city, Hyogo prefecture, Japan.

[caption id="attachment_3181" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Jaeger is © Legendary Pictures. Minions are © Felonious Gru. Click on the image to enlarge it[/caption]

Pacific Rim's lacklustre opening weekend shows anime themes still don't have mass market appeal in North America, but there's always the rest of the world to consider.

Pacific Rim, which opened July 12, came third in North American weekend box office receipts, with only $38.3 million US, behind Despicable Me 2, with $44.8 million US, and even the Adam Sandler comedy Grown Ups 2, with $42.5 million US. according to The Hollywood Reporter. ► Pacific Rim finishes it's opening weekend with an estimated worldwide box office total of $91.3 million US. Despicable Me 2, in it's second week of release, finished the same weekend period with a worldwide box office of $100.5 million, making it's total global box office $472.4 Million US.

Various sources estimate Pacific Rim cost at least $190 million US. Various sources report the budget for Despicable Me 2 was 76 million US, and for Grown Ups 2, around $80 million.

The Hollywood Reporter article attributes what success Pacific Rim had to "fanboys," citing strong IMAX sales, which they describe as "the favored venue for fanboys."  Basically it's a weird movie which has appeal for geeks and otaku fanboys, but not the mass audience of normal people necessary for blockbuster success.

Everyone expects Pacific Rim will perform well in Japan, and other Asian countries. In fact, the filmmakers may have anticipated the cool North American response. With it's story featuring an international alliance of 21 nations --  each getting their own nationally-themed Jaeger robot, for a kind of anti-kauju World Cup -- Pacific Rim might be a rare American film designed, and engineered to succeed, first and foremost, in the international market.

My personal review of Pacific Rim ►

Mr. Hallorann. What is in Room 237?
Nothin'. There ain't nothin' in Room 237. But you ain't got no business goin' in there anyway. So stay out. You understand? Stay out.

No one listens anymore. Last week I watched a 2013 documentary called Room 237, all about Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining, and some of the ways people interpret the film. I had read that the documentary was popularizing the practice of watching the film backwards -- In fact, it details the practice of running it both forwards and backwards, superimposed simultaneously, which is ... interesting.

[caption id="attachment_2940" align="alignnone" width="497"] Bloody hell. This backwards and forwards stuff is scary! Click the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

There was the interpretation that the Shining was about the American slaughter and subjugation of aboriginal people. Apparently Bill Blakemore laid the groundwork for this in his 1987 essay The Family of Man. Certainly there is scads of overt native symbolism in the film: The Overlook Hotel is filled with Apache/Navajo art, and built on top of First nations' graves. Hmm?

[caption id="attachment_2941" align="alignnone" width="497"] See, Danny represents the Apollo launch, oops, I’ve given away the secret. The black helicopters will be coming for me.[/caption]

The third interpretation caught me off guard, but really shouldn't have: Stanley Kubrick faked the U.S. Apollo Moon landing footage, and used the vehicle of The Shining to "say" that he'd done it. The proponent of this theory, Jay Weidner, had the most ground to till; several Kubrick films: Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as The Shining; then there's all that lunar footage -- more than enough for his own documentary, which he did in 2011, entitled, Kubrick's Odyssey - Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick; Part One: Kubrick and Apollo.

Weidner can really go places with all the liberties Kubrick took with his adaptation of Stephen King's novel, For example, in the book, it's Room 217; in the film, 237 -- Mean distance from the Earth to the Moon: 237,000 miles. Shazam! He can do this all day.

I can see how Kubrick's well known penchant for perfection would drive this search for hidden meanings, and I have no doubt there are hidden meanings throughout Kubrick's great body of work. All I got from this documentary though, was a strong desire to watch The Shining again. I did. I still think it's still a great film.

Roger Ebert's review of Room 237  ►

[caption id="attachment_2865" align="alignnone" width="497"] Chin up Mark! Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press. Click image to go to the source CBC page.[/caption]

Wow! Mark Carney seems too good to be true. Carney is the former Governor of the Bank of Canada who's just become the first ever non-Briton to head the Bank of England. He's only been on the job for one business week, and The Telegraph newspaper has already lauded his performance, saying an action he took together with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi "tore up the policy rule book" -- in a good way. All Governor Carney seems to have done was signal that interest rates would not be going up. Apparently, it was how he did it: plainly and transparently. Watever! The financial markets loved it. Earlier in the week the British people loved that Carney eschewed a chauffeur-driven ride to take the Tube to work in the City. It didn't hurt his "ooh wot a luverly man" rating when he missed his stop.

The 48-year-old Mark Joseph Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, but he seems to have grown up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He earned degrees in economics at Harvard, and then went to work for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. He worked his way up company ranks for 13 years, and then, effectively, took a big pay cut to become a civil servant in the Canadian Government's Department of Finance. From 2003 to 2004, he joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor, but went back to Finance to serve as senior associate deputy minister of finance. By 2008 he had been a high-flyer in Finance under both Liberal, and Conservative governments.

From February, 2008 to June 2013, Mark Carney served as the eighth Governor of the Bank of Canada. He was credited with successfully steering Canada's economy through the global economic crisis which ran from 2007 through 2009 -- only a month into his term he issued an important rate cut, and later in 2009, used, what Wikipedia describes as a "nonstandard monetary tool: the 'conditional commitment.'" What I remember about his tenure as Gov' of the Bank of Canada was how direct, and plain-spoken he seemed, also, he was very young.

According to this interesting profile in the Star-Phoenix, Carney had been a managing director at Goldman for barely a year when he quit to become Canada's deputy bank governor in 2003. A bank director who knew the details, said Carney traded “at least $2 million a year,” for the governor,'s salary of $508,000 CAN. In the article, his friends describe him as being "obsessed with policy," a real policy wonk who believes in serving.

The Government of Canada doesn't knowingly headhunt fools, and neither does the United Kingdom. Mark Carney clearly knows his stuff. Great Britain is clearly hoping his made-in-Canada reputation is justified. England is part of Europe, after all, and can be dragged under by a wreck in the EU, or by some of it's own weak economic fundamentals. They need a decisive, sure hand on the economic tiller.

Mark Carney may even be a kind of game-changer; his skill and competence is trusted by both his peers, and by the financial markets. Couple that with his known ability to successfully apply unorthodox solutions, and you have a kind of mainstream radical who isn't afraid to break the rules when he thinks they need breaking. It seems a high-stakes gamble on the part of Great Britain, but that's what makes it all so interesting.

How Mark Carney spent his first day deciding whom to put on the new £5 note ►

It's the 146th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, and many Canadians across this great land will, without realizing it, pay tribute to the father of Confederation -- Sir John A. Macdonald -- by getting really drunk, and throwing up, just like the great man himself would surely do if he were here today!

On July 1, 1867 Canada became a new federation with its own constitution by signing the Constitution Act (known before 1982 as the British North America Act). Canada may seem like a bland place, next to the show-boating United States of America, but, like probably everywhere, Canada has enjoyed a steady stream of colourful characters in every walk of life. Our First Prime Minister, the Father of Confederation, the political architect of the transcontinental Canadian railroad -- Sir John A. Macdonald, wasn't simply colourful, he was technicolourful!

Sir John was a drinker, seriously so. It is a beloved bit of Canadian lore, true or not, that once, during a debate, he was so drunk, that he began vomiting on the stage. His opponent charged that an alcoholic such as Sir John should not be running the country. Macdonald, rising to the occasion, literally, with his usual wit, famously replied that he was sick “not because of drink, but because I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent." ► Sir John's personal life was, in fact, full of great sorrow, so probably it was no wonder he took to drinking so heavily. It was said, however, the public frankly preferred John A. drunk to his enemies sober.

Hooray for Canada, a land of great promise. Today we celebrate. Tomorrow, we go back to work, each in our own way, trying to keep that promise.

[caption id="attachment_2666" align="alignnone" width="497"] This film doesn't even have good stills! But click the image to enlarge it anyways.[/caption]

Blockbuster movies starring the Pacific Ocean have a poor track record. It's been little more than a year since audiences told Universal Pictures, "We sunk your battleship!" Now comes Pacific Rim, a science fiction, action-adventure film, set to open July 12. The trailers I've watched make it look an awful lot like Transformers, and Battleship, and Cloverfield, all rolled together -- and, did I mention "awful?"

[caption id="attachment_2493" align="alignnone" width="497"] This water-logged snow globe, left out by a dumpster, brought to mind the floods which hit Calgary, Alberta, this last week. Click the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2492" align="alignright" width="187"] Calgary is 970 km from Vancouver; ideologically farther.[/caption]

In the Canadian Province of Alberta, next door, and to the East of British Columbia, the city of Calgary is just beginning to clean up after five days of flash flooding caused be heavy rains. The city centre was hit hard enough to raise doubts about the fate of this year's Calgary Stampede, a signature rodeo event which draws tourists from around the world.

Displaying the can-do spirit typifying Calgarians' response to the natural disaster, Stampede President Bob Thompson announced today the 101st Calgary Stampede will run as scheduled from July 5-14. Sometimes I think of Albertans as reactionary rednecks, thick as the oil sands crude they're promoting for American petroleum self-sufficiency, but, this week, I've been really proud of them.

Alberta flood recovery ►

Calgary Stampede to go on ►

[caption id="attachment_2287" align="alignnone" width="497"] A colourful floral display, classy, and nutty, at the same time.[/caption]

Here's what currently graces the planters along South Granville, in the Fairview Neighbourhood. These pictures are taken at 15th Avenue, a block from 16th Avenue, the Northern Edge of the old moneyed Shaughnessy neighbourhood. I do not know how long these responsible-looking, tightly-wound shrubs will be featured, and I do not know what will replace them, so I shall just enjoy them while they last. Click the images to enlarge them.

See what South Granville hangs on the light poles ►