Hard Up.

It seems the folks at Maclean's, Canada's equivalent of Time, were hard up for something to put in the latest issue.  One  of the cover headlines is "Ian Tyson's Secret Lover Tells All."  No offense to him if he reads this, but Ian Tyson isn't exactly hot news these days amongst Canadain celebs.  "Justin Bieber's Secret Lover Tells All" might get you some buyers, but I can't see Tyson's doing so.  Of course as anyone familiar with Maclean's knows a few years ago you probably wouldn't have seen a headline like that on the cover at all.  Their covers have gotten somewhat more sensationalist in recent years.

Disposal.

I'm a considerable way from being one of those people that are the focus of certain TV shows these days.  But I do have lots of stuff lying around collecting dust for no go reason.  I've been thinking about getting rid of it for a long time, and today I finally got around to at least making a start.  I took a bunch of magazines to the local recyling spot after thumbing through them to see if I wanted to keep any.  I didn't, because the material in them is either very dated or available online these days.  Still, it was interesting looking through old issues of Air International to see what was going on with various air forces and military procurement programs in the '80s.  There were things like the Chinese wanting to buy US F16s, this of course being before the events of 1989 soured Western attitudes towards selling the "good" Communists in China weapons.

Some might ask if I considered trying to make some money off of these.  I did, briefly, but realised it wouldn't be worth the time and effort to say try and sell the good condition ones eBay, while others weren't in sellable condition.  Still, it's fair to say that one of the reasons I have kept so much of what I kept is that I paid for it in the first place, making it seem like a waste to throw things out. 

Confirmation.

This may come as old news to some visitors to this blog but I'm going to write about it anyway.

One thing I'd noticed of late visiting the magazine area of the Saskatoon Public Library is that a new issue of the right wing news magazine Western Standard hadn't turned up in a bit. I finally got around to checking out my suspicions today and sure enough publisher Ezra Levant announced October 5th that they would be going over to a strictly digital format. Frankly I wasn't hugely surprised. There had been talk for a good while that the magazine wasn't doing well, especially after they sent out an e-mail to various folks asking for unpaid volunteers who might be interested in working on the magazine.

Looking for the website on Google I came across a few comments on Western Standard's demise. There were of course the expected nonsense about horrible socialists and left wing media. The more sensible comments generally said things I agreed with. Most obvious is the problem of starting any sort of magazine in our increasingly online oriented age. There was also the suggestion that some of the big media outlets have drifted right and undercut the market for an openly right wing magazine in Canada. You can see that with Macleans, the Canadian equivalent of Time. In the past while it has gotten more right wing in its editorial stance and choice of contributors, such as the signing on of Andrew Coyne as national editor and columnist.

I also wonder if perhaps the magazine wasn't Canadian enough. I was never a big fan of Alberta Report, the right wing magazine that expired in 2003 and for which the Western Standard was intended to be a replacement for. But to me at least it seemed to have a lot more Canadian flavour to it. Western Standard had too much syndicated American stuff in it. I remember one issue I thumbed through had a column by some American pundit that had little relevance to Canadian readers. There are differences between Canadian and American culture and politics, and you just can't lazily assume discussion of elements of one automatically apply to the other.

Sitting here reading about scam medical devices made me think of the amateur radio(ham) magazine 73. Imagine my surprise when I looked it up on the Net and found out it only went out of business in late 2003. Its been years since an issue has turned up in shops here in Saskatoon, so I assume it had gone out of business years ago.

The connection with medical pseudoscience? 73 founder and publisher Wayne Green. By the time I started thumbing through the magazine in the early '90s Green had gotten well and truly hooked on all sorts of odd ideas, such as electrical devices for treating this and that medical problem, none of which are considered anything but foolishness by mainstream medicine. I've also read that it was Green who helped spread the idea in the '80s that CDs would sound better if you used a felt tipped marker to colour the edges. You can see his website, and see what kookiness he's into these days, here.

Its amazing the kind of niche market magazines you can find today, presumably made available by the rise of sophisticated desktop publishing tools. Now there's one for drunks. Its called Modern Drunkard. Frankly the whole article sounds like something from The Onion.

Spinning away in the computer CD drive as I write this is Cosmo's Factory by Creedence Clearwater Revival. A classic. Go out and buy a copy.

Looking at the cover of the latest Wired today, which features James Cameron and a blurb about all these high tech research things supposedly on the way, I couldn't help but think of how similiar it can be to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. It features the same kind of breathless techno fetishing of stuff that often doesn't actually appear. Anyone who has paid attention to PS and PM content over the years will be familiar with all the "gee, that REWLS!" high tech stuff they've blabbed about that has never come to pass, including stuff of questionable scientific credibility in the first place. I'm probably not the first person to see similarities with the long defunct "pop science" magazine Omni as well. Omni often did the same kind of thing, but like Wired tried to appear more upscale that PM and PS, and was more interested in fringe stuff like life extension and psychics.

A magazine I read each month, albeit in the library, is Gun World. Three guesses what its about. Interestingly Gun World is rather restrained when it comes to the always contentious US gun control issue. Sure, there are the occasional complaints in the articles about this and that regulation, but there isn't the same kind of advocacy/editorial articles found in some of the other US gun mags, and even those complaints tend to be rather restrained. Perhaps the editorial staff assume that most of their American readers don't need someone telling them every five minutes what to do regarding gun control issues.

Had a bit of a surprise recently when I saw, for the first time in a long time, an issue of Small Arms Review in a local shop. This is a US magazine primarily intended for fans of what are considered "Class Three" weapons under US law, that is machine guns, which includes submachine guns, automatic rifles and so forth, as well as silencers/noise suppressors, certain types of shortened rifles and shotguns, and so on. It is legal in 39 US states to own automatic weapons, but federal regulations require you to have such weapons registered and you must pay a federal tax on their purchase. However manufacture of new automatic weapons for the civilian market has been outlawed in the US since 1986, so owners and potential owners of such firearms must compete for a limited, and ultimately very slowly shrinking, pool of these guns, made and registered before 1986, for sale, driving up prices. The cheapest are examples of the Ingram Mac10/M10 family, going for around 1000 bucks. So if you're interested in such weapons, or just interested in the idea that someone not only can own such things, but would want to, you might want to check the magazine out.

A while ago I mentioned that a spider is living on the thermometer outside my kitchen window. Well, he's still there, despite the fact we've already had several evenings of below freezing weather this fall. Tough little guy isn't he?

Recently I've been reading Black Belt magazine in the library, Black Belt being America's longest running(as far as I know) martial arts magazine. A couple things in the articles have amused me. One is that a certain writer seems to think the Christianity of certain interviewees is important. Fair enough, but its kind of funny when you consider that the Asian martial arts often have a connection with spiritual/religious practices like Buddhism. I suppose this is something anyone with a strong faith must resolve for themselves. Studying something like Shorinji Kempo might not be your first choice if you're an Evangelical Christian. Another was a very American whining at the end of one article in the latest issue about the possibility of those horrible "gun grabbers" taking everyone's guns, so your martial arts will come even more in handy.

The ads are interesting as well. You can buy stuff ranging from very straight ahead books on things like karate katas(forms) to videos offering to teach you some supersecret "unbeatable" martial arts style, no doubt so you can beat the jokers who buy someone else's "unbeatable" martial arts style tapes. Not to mention all sorts of training equipment, including gizmos to help you learn to do all those cool Jean Claude Van Damme splits. You know, the one he does in every bloody movie he's in. I can only wonder what the old masters of certain arts would think of doohickies like that. I can just imagine some Okinawan karate master muttering under his breath in bemusement about very idea of wanting to do such moves, let alone buying some Rube Goldberg device to help you do them.