I got my 500th hit on the counter for this page today. Thanks to everyone who has visited so far, especially those of you actually bored enough to come back. :-)

Its been a while since I posted a Japan themed link, so here we go. Only this time its not the country, but the British pop group Japan I'm talking about. Nightporter is Paul Rhymer's very comprehensive site on the group. Folks who are interested in Yellow Magic Orchestra and British guitarist Bill Nelson might also find it worth a look. And anyone who's a fan of Duran Duran might find it interesting given that the early image of Duran Duran, if not the music, was quite influenced by Japan.

You could easily call this the Summer of Destruction in Saskatoon.  I can't think of a time when more large buildings have been under demolition.  I've already mentioned the old Hudson Bay parkade coming down.  The site is now nothing more than a big hole full of rubble.  Nearby another commercial building has just been knocked down over the past few days.  Located on 23rd Street by the City Transit bus mall it had contained various businesses over the  years, but had largely been empty in recent times.  The city ended up with it when the previous owner defaulted on his taxes.  Its been claimed that the bus mall has screwed things up for that building, but frankly I think there was something more than that going on.  In any case the city decided to demolish it because it was not only empty but suffering from some sort of mold problem. 

Then there's the Gathercole building by the river.  A former technical college in more recent years it had served as headquarters for the Saskatoon Public School Board.  Lots of folks, for reasons that really don't resonate with me(the building has never had any real appeal to me, it looked like an old box), wanted the building preserved.  But the consensus amongst city planners and others was that it should be knocked down to make way for the long planned and still nebulous South Downtown redevelopment project.  And so down it goes.  Of course things might have gone a bit differently if the tv series Body & Soul, filmed here in Saskatoon, including in the Gathercole,  had been successful.  Starring current garden products spokesman and miniseries favourite Peter Strauss it was filmed in 2002 for the US PAX Network, but was cancelled after 9 episodes were filmed.  Given how minor league of a channel PAX is the series must have done really poorly.  At the time production began the folks behind the series were optimistically talking about as much as a four year run.  Of course no one will have much luck marketing a series if they don't make lofty predictions.

I wonder how stupid the typical online con artist really thinks people are.  Over the last few days I've received a boatload of fake "verify the security of your bank account" spammails.  But the interesting is that they're arriving with words  missspelled in the subject line, presumably to get around spam filters.  Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe a spam e-mail with misspelled words is actually the product of the fraud department of a bank, especially when you get several hundred of them?

Just spent some time reading the first bits of Ben Watson's new bio of free improvising guitarist Derek Bailey via the time honoured nuisance making activity of standing for a while in a bookstore.  Very interesting and amusing stuff reading about how he grew up in 1930s England and his early days as a professional guitarist.   Reading about the conditions of his childhood reminds me of the similar conditions that Bill Wyman describes from his childhood in his autobio/Stones history.  For that matter the thought just popped to mind of how my own father grew up in rural Saskatchewan in the 1940s.  Arguably better conditions than they did, but still they didn't have electricity on the Gueguen farm for the first few years of his life, and when they did get electricity it was via an on farm battery plant and not from the provincial electricity grid.  That would come several years later.  Anyways I hope that my local library gets a copy of the Bailey bio, as I just don't have 50 bucks to drop on a single book for the foreseeable future.  Other expenses take priority.

Its interesting to realise that despite the role the Internet has come to play in current North American society there are plenty of people who don't have even a lingering trace of their activities online.  Just out of curiosity I looked up the names of a couple of girls I went to high school with tonight.(No, I'm not going to tell you who they are, although one might not be hard to figure out for some people I went to school with.)  The only trace I found of them was a mention of the one winning a contest here in Saskatoon in the 1970s.  Otherwise there was nothing.  I know one of them got married a few years back, so she may not use her maiden name online anyways.  The other I have no idea what she's up to.  But whatever it is its not something that's generated an Internet presense under her name. 

The Statcounter.com counter I use to keep track of the hits on this blog is a nice piece of kit.  Amongst the things it tracks are were the hits are coming from, and what link if any brought them here.  Some hits come from not very surprising places, like the places where I've posted a link to here.  Others can be a bit of a surprise, like a number of hits I've gotten in the last few days because of my comments on the Canadian Forces maritime helicopter decision of last week.  One of the oddest was a hit from India back in May from someone looking for tips on ovenless cooking on Google.

Hopefully this comment won't scare anyone off from visiting here.

Well, here's post #100.

Had another pleasant surprise tonight.  Deborah Goldsmith has posted chapter 2 of her fanfiction Notes From Julliard.  Its a continuation of the storyline started in Genma's Daughter, a fanfiction based on the popular Japanese cartoon and comic series Ranma 1/2.  If you're in any way interested in fanfics based on this series read her stuff, its damn good.  The basic idea has been done before, but the execution is what makes this series so interesting.  Her fiction page is located here. 

A pleasant surprise drifted out of my radio tonight.  Blue Jays broadcaster Tom Cheek was back on the air for a couple of innings tonight.  Cheek has been undergoing treatment for a brain tumour discovered earlier this year.  He sounded very much like his normal self, and you really couldn't tell he's been battling a very serious illness. He had been broadcaster for the Jays since their very first game, and had called all of them until the death of his father earlier this year.  This was followed by the discovery of the tumour soon afterwards, in another one of those "some people have all the luck, and all of its bad" kind of situations.  Hopefully he'll be able to get back in the saddle soon on a extended basis, even if its only a couple games a week.  It was interesting to here him comment how because of the illness he's actually had the chance to watch and listen to the games the way we baseball fans do, and several times had wanted to throw his radio at something because of how poorly they were doing. 

This morning the Liberal government finally announced the selection of a replacement for the Canadian Forces' aging fleet of Sea King maritime patrol helicopters, the Sikorsky H92.  This is a decision that should have been made years ago.  Of course if the Chretien government way back in '93 hadn't cancelled a contract for the purchase of EH101 helicopters the Sea Kings would have long been put out to pasture.  But the controversy isn't done, since losing bidder EH Industries, which offered a version of their Cormorant helicopter, claims the bidding process was biased against them and that they may sue as a result.  Then there's the fact that the Canadian Forces purchased a version of the Cormorant for search and rescue,  leading to the obvious question of why the Forces should be using two different brands of helicopters for maritime roles, losing the benefits of having similar aircraft from a single supplier.   And we may see concerns about the H92 being a modified version of the civilian S92, versus it being an aircraft designed from the ground up for military use.  There have been criticisms in certain quarters about the CH146 Griffon helicopter being developed by a similar route, claims being made its commercial heritage has made it a poorer aircraft than a purpose designed military copter.

This whole mess once more makes me feel that a major, comprehensive review of Canadian defense policy is needed.  Canadians need to decide what we want our military to do in the 21 Century, and develop a comprehensive plan of how to impliment these goals.  This especially needed since various systems are coming to the end of their useful lives, and we need to decide what to replace them with, or even whether we will replace them at all.   But with our current minority government we aren't likely to see anything along these lines happen anytime soon.

Speaking of military matters an interesting fact came to light this week.  Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Carlos Delgado has been coming off the field in American ballparks when they sing God Bless America during the 7th inning.  This is a protest both against the current war in Iraq and a continuation of his opposition to the use of Vieques Island in his native Puerto Rico as a US Navy gunnery range.  What I find fascinating about it is that he's been doing so without making a big deal about it.  He's just been doing it, not throwing himself at the media and shouting, "HEY, LOOK AT ME!  I'M PROTESTING!" like celebs tend to do.  Very classy.

Its amazing the kind of things you can find if you put enough imagination into examining common objects.  Like this.  And to think I was involved in a thread on Space:  The Imagination Station's bulletin board just this week about that wonderful example of '70s paranoia, subliminals.

Ah, the irritating "joys" of high tech.  In our house we have Shaw digital cable.  Today was the introduction of a new set of menues and so forth for the digital terminal used.  But, surprise! the new software is causing problems.  I could change channels and turn the cable box off, but otherwise nothing was working.  A phonecall to customer service has given me audio at least.  From what the service guy said they've been getting lots of calls today regarding similar problems.  Hopefully things will be completely operational soon and I won't have to call them again in the morning.

I just found out that Jerry Goldsmith has died.  Anyone who has ever watched more than a movie or two, or any amount of dramatic tv has heard his work.  Its a shame this very prolific composer has passed away.  Yet another music world loss in a year that has seen way too many.

Here's an interesting article from the New York Review of Books on the future of Turkey.  Hopefully democracy manages to take strong hold there, as we can do with more democracy in the Islamic world.
 
 

Regular readers (yes, they do actually exist!) of this blog may remember my recent post about Charles B. Horn.  It seems my musing about the article and April Fool's wasn't far off the mark.  Apparently it was a hoax, if reports like this are to be believed.  The thing is "Horn's" purported  theory is hardly any more outre than the actual conspiracy theories and bizarre pseudoscience ideas that people actually believe, like British media personality David Icke and his claims that various famous persons are actually shape changing alien space lizards. 

Its amazing who they actually let have a blog.  Even green skinned Freudian alter egos of hapless atomic scientists.  BTW ole purplepaints says that this article  from the Onion was not written by him.  Then again who really trusts what those weirdos print anyways?

More problems for Michael Moore.  A Canadian law student wants him prosecuted for violating the Elections Act, which amongst other things prohibits foreigners from trying to overtly influence voters.  I don't know which is sillier, the provision itself, or that someone actually thinks that Moore's statements had any sort of real impact on the election.  The kind of people most likely to listen to what Moore has to say are the same kind of people least inclined to vote for the current Conservative Party.
 
The whole thing brings to mind Charles de Gaulle, the late French president.  While in Quebec in 1967 he shouted "Vive la Quebec libre" during an appearance at Montreal's City Hall.  The statement was seen by many as supporting the then fledgling Quebec separatist movement, and still pisses off many federalists to this day.  de Gaulle advocating Quebec separatism is interesting when one considers that France ended its colonial rule of Algeria under his leadership only a few short years earlier, an act that split French society and lead to violence by the OAS, a right wing group opposed to French withdrawal from Algeria.  The OAS attempted to assassinate de Gaulle several times, acts which served as inspiration for Frederick Forsythe's classic nove The Day of the Jackal.  Some Quebec intellectuals even tried to draw a parallel between the Algerian independance struggle and their own desire for separation, an argument that ignored that Quebeckers had the same political rights as their counterparts elsewhere in Canada and were not ruled by a foreign power who suppressed their political movements by force.

Discussing that "wholistic" (as they spelt it) nonsense wasn't good for my blog, as for some reason the interface decided to post a bunch of copies of the post to the blog.  It was being a pain in the ass a bit yesterday as well.  I guess blogger.com needs its chakras aligned, or a LaStone thrown at the LaServer to get it to stop acting up.

For a while now a local bus or two has featured an external ad advertising something called Sage Stone Wellness Centre.  After seeing the phrase Raindrop Thearapy in the text I finally got around to looking at their website  I wasn't hugely surprised at the headshaking stuff I found, a bunch of weird "therapies."  For example they offer something called LaStone Therapy, which is supposedly based on Lakota practices.  Yet the description mentions chakras.  Someone getting their Indians mixed up perhaps?    There's other things anyone vaguely familiar with this kind of thing has probably run into before, like energy fields and talk about vibration rates of the human body and so forth.  "Science has proven that we are all connected and transfer information within the energy matrix or grid that surrounds all living things" is a statement found in the description of Geotran, which is a trademarked term btw.  I'm sure scientists who work in certain fields would be surprised to hear that this has been proven.  Not that I'm quite sure exactly what fields of science this gobbledegook is supposed to refer to.  And on it goes. 
 
Apparently there are enough people in Saskatoon who have fallen for this nonsense to make a go of it, especially since they're located in the Delta Bessborough, Saskatoon's premier hotel.  I doubt renting space in the Bess can be very cheap.  Unfortunately there's no price list given, the cost per hour I suppose depending on what they figure should be done to you.  Too bad, as I'd love to know how much they're fleecing people for.

Here's an interesting story a member
of a mailing list I'm on sent me. You really have to wonder at the
thinking of some people in authority. Unfortunately I've read at least a
couple of similar stories elsewhere. You can bet they'd be a lot more
reticent to do crap like this if 911 had been pulled off by fanatical
"white" Americans of some stripe or another. I put "white" in quotation
marks because to the best of my knowledge the 911 hijackers were all
Caucasian. Mohammed Atta, the purported leader, certainly was.