Ben....Whaaa?

By now, everyone knows about the death of wrestling superstar Chris Benoit. What's new is that it now seems that news of the murder/suicide was reported on Wikipedia hours before police issued any statement. Weird.

I learned of the tragedy the same way I get all my wrestling news: from my god buddy Sean McLoughlin. It was Sean who called me seconds after Owen Hart fell to his death. It was Sean who alerted me to the death of Eddie Guerrero. And it was Sean who was on the ball with the Benoit story.

What that says about Sean or me I do not care to guess. What is sad, though --beyond the obvious tragedy of the story-- is that Benoit has long been considered to be the single finest technical "pro" wrestler in North America. Yet he has never acquired the fame of his technical lessers, like Hulk Hogan or The Rock. It took becoming a family annihilator before he was mentioned on the Tonight Show. The irony is that Benoit, unlike his hard living contemporaries, was known for his clean cut "family man" image.

See, I used to be a proud wrestling columnist. Back in the era of the Monday Night Wars, my columns got more readership than either of my books or anything else I've ever written. It got to the point where USA Today contacted me to be a consultant on a feature they were doing on premature deaths in wrestling. While that may seem prescient to some of you, you must understand that the phenomenon of "dying young" is nothing new in wrestling. It all has to do with physical abuse, drug use, and hard living.

Benoit was closely associated with the royalty of Canadian wrestling, the Hart family. Owen Hart --another clean-living family guy-- plummeted to his death during an ill advised live stunt. Owen's brother Bret retired as a result of a kick to the head by Goldberg, resulting some time later in a stroke. Bret's brother-in-law Davey Boy Smith died of premature heart failure, after a lifetime of steroid abuse. Benoit's mentor, the great Dynamite Kid, was retired to a wheelchair during his prime, the result of pain killers and drug abuse. And Benoit's best friend, Eddie Guerrero, also died of heart failure, the likely result of similar steroid abuse.

The list goes on and on... I can give you 20 names off the top of my head of wrestlers dead or crippled before the age of 45, mostly as a result of drug abuse... and now it seems likely that Benoit himself suffered from 'roid rage and was attempting to inject his 7 year old son with human growth hormone.

There is nothing good about this story. Nothing at all.


Computer Update

Okay, my attempts to migrate to Windows Mobile have now resulted in XP itself rebelling against me. Yes, my droogs, my beloved computer Landru collapsed on me. By the grace of Zod, I was able to backup all (I think) of my critical data and am now in the process of wiping the drive and re-installing the OS. Is it all worth it? Better be!

Page Three Boy

If you're having any doubts that George Bush's Amerikkka is slipping further along the path to an Orwellian paranoid police state, take a gander at this innocent article. Excerpt:

One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description—a Middle Eastern man driving a white Beetle with out-of-state plates—and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on the faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, "What country is he from?"

"What country is he from?!" she yelled, indignant.

"Ma’am, you are associated with the suspect. You need to step away and lower your voice," he told her.

Yeah, campus cops who think they're FBI. Great. The warmongering set likes to make comparisons between the modern Bush era and the "greatest generation" of WWII. Well, back then (when they weren't interning Japanese citizens), folks inspired each other with tales of courage and comfort. Today, we get highway signs reminding us to "report suspicious activity".

As Bill Maher put it, "For some inexplicable reason Republicans have taken to comparing Bush to Harry Truman -- a comparison that would make sense only if Harry Truman had A) started World War II and B) lost World War II."

In other news...

• The first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials saga has been voted the best children's book in 70 years. I heartily extend by congratulations, as both a fan of Pullman's writing and an admirer of his courage in extending this controversial vision. The 20th century saw three great fantasy sagas in the English language: The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials. Most North Americans have yet to discover this gem, but they will when the movie comes out. The runner up --Tom's Midnight Garden-- is, however, my personal choice for best children's book. That one inspired me for many years from early childhood onto adolescence.

• Have a look at the Let's Talk Science June newsletter. There's a special section on me! Page 3--- I guess that makes me a Page 3 boy!

Fruit Fly Cherrycaust

I would have called this post "Fruit Fly Holocaust", but "holocaust" implies "death by fire", whereas what we're talking about here is "death by cherry brandy".

See, I have a fruit fly problem. Or maybe they're drain flies. I don't know. The fact is that I have fruit flies buzzing about my kitchen. No, there are no bits of rotting vegetation anywhere, and I've bleached every exposed surface I know about. So where the little beasties are nesting is a mystery to me. (Hence my suspicion that they might be the dreaded "drain flies".)

So after a failure to find the source of the infestation, I decided to just kill the frackers. Now, running about with a kleenex, trying to smush them all, is satisfying in the short term, but it's not a viable longterm solution. So instead I devised the Deonandan Cherry Brandy Trap, because this time... it's personal:


I placed a couple of centimetres of fine, sweet Guyanese cherry brandy in an otherwise empty jar, then stretched a taut piece of plastic wrap over its mouth, poking tiny holes through the plastic, just big enough to allow a fruit fly entry.

The little buggers are attracted to the scent of the brandy, find their way through the holes, but are too dumb to find their way out. They die a good death: drowned and drunk and filled to their bellies' contentment. I awoke this morning to find a jar filled with their little corpses.

Ahhh, science.

Clash Of The TyTn, Part Deux

Well, my slow migration from Palm OS to Windows Mobile continues. Here's the problem:

1. My years of data are all stored on Palm Desktop
2. Windows Mobile only supports MS Outlook
3. It is possible to convert Palm Desktop data to Outlook format
4. All conversion attempts so far have resulted in corrupt or incomplete data

Most of this is due to the fact that Outlook sucks as an easy to use Personal Information Manager (PIM). If only Windows Mobile could sync with Palm Desktop, then I could continued to use the latter while upgrading to the former. Anybody got any solutions?

Clash Of The TyTn

I'm still a little overwhelmed by this. But whatever.

So, as most of you know, I'm a long time user of Palm products. I began with the Palm III, then IIIe, before upgrading to various incarnations of the Handspring Visor, then moved on to the Treo 180, 300, 600 and now 650. I've been a loyal supporter of the Palm OS and its simple interface.

However, it's rapidly becoming clear that the industry has no intention of supporting the Palm OS with significant upgrades or with new devices configured for use with this OS. Moreover --and more importantly-- the latest version of Palm Desktop, which syncs with my 650, has the dangerous habit of erasing my data without permission.

As a result, I began the slow migration to a Windows Mobile system. Sigh. I've been trying to locate an affordable Treo 750 for this purpose, to no avail.

Enter my good buddy Andrew Currie who, this past weekend, presented me with an early birthday present: a very valuable HTC TyTn, considered by many to be the finest smartphone on the planet:



I'm still trying to figure out all the bells and whistles, so have nothing to report. But thanks, Andrew! He shares his version of the exchange here, complete with creepy photo of me accepting the swag.

Andrew also shared today's funniest links:

First, the funniest 5 seconds on the internet, the Dramatic Chipmunk:



And continuing with the rodent theme, here is a hamster video featuring one particular fat asshole of a hamster.

Kevin Leto.... You're On My List

The following tale is embarrassing for me to tell, as I pride myself in being a savvy and experienced online navigator.

Back in April, I purchased a used Treo smartphone off Ebay, from a fellow in France named Kevin Leto. I've bought and sold on Ebay many many times, hence the "auctions" item on the main menu on Deonandia. I know to take appropriate steps against being scammed, and always purchase through PayPal, one of the better online escrow services.

Leto denied receiving my payment of 146 Euros, though Paypal confirms it went through. When I confronted him with this fact, he reneged and insisted he was "confused" and that he would send the phone the next day.

Unfortunately for me, I had to go traveling the next day, and keeping track of this niggling item was not high on my list of priorities. When I returned to Ottawa earlier this week, I wasn't too surprised to find that the phone had not in fact arrived.

"No problem," I said to myself. "I'll just resort to one of two foolproof insurance systems to get my money back --Ebay and PayPal."

But no. Unlucky me. In my travels, I exceed by a handful of days the amount of time Ebay and Paypal will insure its transactions. So I'm out a lump of cash.

Some people might argue that I have no one to blame but myself, since I did not keep track of the time. I disagree. I have someone else to blame: Kevin Leto of France. It's not a common name in that country, and this blog and its affiliates (including Farcebook) have a wide reach. So if anyone out there knows where I can find this Leto fellow, do let me know, for I so wish to speak with him. What's a few more Euros to shell out for a plane ticket, so I can, um, take my dispute to him personally?


In other news...

Cousin Ajay sends us this video of costumed fools. Methinks Optimus Prime is about to pull a muscle.

EK Hornbeck sends us yet more analysis on the guaranteed entry into the 2008 Presidential race of Albert Gore.

Now this is interesting. It's a photo collage of famous writers. Guess who made the cut? ME! I'm up there with Noam Chomsky, Isabel Allende, Isaac Asimov and... Al Gore!

Filler Fest

The way I blog is that I typically have 3 or 4 topics chosen days in advance, with links and arguments also saved. The problem with this method is that it assumes I'll be in the correct mood to chart out a cogent argument when the time comes to attack a particular pre-assigned topic.

Well, today I'm not. So instead you get another "filler" link fest!

1. From Manoj comes this great video of an animal confrontation on the African savannah. If you watch it, make sure you watch the WHOLE thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

2. From Linda GF comes this mildly amusing (hilarious to academics) video of an unusual conference presentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

(The associated PDF is here.)

3. Ed Wong sends us info about the Bloggies, the annual blogging awards. Know of anyone you'd like to nominate?

4. Cousin Ajay sends us this very important site celebrating ...um... male mammaries:

http://manboobs.co.uk/

5. EK Hornbeck sends us this discussion that explores the needs of public health versus the civil libertarian mindset:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119236.html

6. EK also sends us Jackie Mason's take on exercice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBD0AfwNoQA

7. Here's a note to Rogers customer service and marketing: I'm already a customer, but a good way to lose me as a customer is to phone me every week to try and sell me new products. So stop it already!

8. Today's Daily Perv Links (TM) are here and here. This is where I remind everyone that I am not advocating these acts, merely keeping track of them for largely epidemiological purposes. Please consult the disclaimer.

9. Lastly, here's an animated GIF I stole off of someone's MySpace page. It looks sooo familiar. Can someone tell me what it's from?

Creepy Comment

In response to last Friday's blog post which mentioned my wonderful five year old neighbour, Deonandia received the following creepy comment, which I disallowed from being published here:

"give me girls adress/photos" (sic)

The person posting the comment self-identified as "R R Ranjith Jayarathna". It goes without saying that his is a disturbing and possibly criminal request. If anyone personally knows this asshole, I encourage you to either confront him or report him.

In accordance with the official policy of Deonandia, unless "Mr. Jayarathna" explains his actions pretty damn soon, I will forward his IP address to the authorities. The lesson here, as so many are slow to realize, is that once you post anything on a website, there is no such thing as anonymity, given an investigator with sufficient authority and sufficient resources; and an issue concerning child predation will certainly command such sufficiency.

For those living in Canada, an easy way to report such matters is to visit Cybertip.ca.

Churrascaria Madness

Today's post is what I'm calling "meta blogging". What I want to talk about is my recent fascination with the Brazilian BBQ style called "churrascaria". In the past 5 months, I've been to eight churrascarias in four cities and three countries... weirdly, none of them Brazil.

The most recent visit has renewed my deep relationship with both Metamucil and Magnesium Citrate.

Andrew Currie does a splendid job in photo-depicting our most recent outing.

Yes yes, I know... I really want to be more of a vegetarian... but baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Grade One

I don't have any children (that I know about), but I'm surrounded by toddlers-- and I love it. I get a glimpse of the absolute joy of parenting when I interact with the young'uns who surround me, especially my parents' neighbours, two adorable half-Korean kids named Nathan and Claire, who consider my parents to be their secondary grandparents, and me to be their big brother of sorts.

There is an indescribably perfect feeling of bliss when I'm walking towards my parents' house and one of the kids notices me a block away, then races the distance to jump into my arms. Yes, it's a sappy thing to write, but so what? It's the truth.

Today is Claire's graduation from kindergarten. She will start grade 1 in the fall, and just came by to tell me all about it.

The funny thing is that I remember my last day of kindergarten and first day of grade 1 (it was the same day) like it was yesterday. I remember it with the emotional complexity of a fully formed human being, and not with that of the proto-chimps we sometimes consider children to be. As a result, I'm constantly aware that little children see the world as fully as we do, only a little more honestly and lacking only in information and experience.

On my first day of grade 1, I was terrified (as usual), and cowered in the corner, checking out all my new fellow students. Then into that room walked a vision of perfect 5 year old femininity: a little blonde girl named Allison Cameron, bedecked in a flowing white princess dress.

It was toddler love at first sight, a love that did not dissipate for years, well into my pre-teen agonies.

I am convinced that the emotional impact of seeing Allison that first day allowed me to anchor those experiences solidly in my living memory, as that little experience proved to form the bedrock of my thoughts, ambitions and conceptualizations for years to come. Yes, sad as it may sound, pretty much everything I've done in my life has been somehow linked to the unrequited love of some woman or other. Or spite. Both are excellent motivators.

Before you get any weird ideas, I lost my obsession with the lovely Miss Cameron very early on, though we remained friends, then acquaintances, well past the high school years.

However, her impact on me has been immortalized in the short story, "Sanjay & Allison", which has since been reproduced in several venues.

I can't help but wonder what impactive experiences Claire will have in her first days of grade 1, that will linger with her for years, and form the basis of her personality for the rest of her life.

Energy

Dr. Who Update

Man, last week's episode --Blink-- was so fracking scary that I had a hard time believing I was watching commercial children's television. The lesson for horror writers is this: it's far more scary to imply than to show. Aieeee. Shiver.

Grammar

Meanwhile, my earlier post titled "The Grammar Nazi Strikes" continues to grow as a monster comment repository. I'm just sitting back and watching the train wreck. I have no intention of participating!

Energy

Speaking of grammar and style, now is the time for me to reveal one of my biggest linguistic pet peeves: overuse and misuse of the word "energy". Having just spent a week in Vancouver, Canada's California, where feng shui and yoga fashions are acceptable office discussion topics, that bloody word is especially grating on me.

"If I move the couch this way, the energy of the room flows better."
"I didn't like his energy this morning."
"There's a great energy in the room tonight."

And yadda yadda. "Energy" is the lazy catch-all replacement word for those whose brains are too marijuana- and Oprah-addled to consider "attitude", "disposition", "enthusiasm" or a hundred other more precise, correct and meaningful options.

This wouldn't bother me so much but for two reasons. First, those who misuse "energy" are often those who work in the language or communication industries ---they should know better! And second, "energy" already has a very specific and hugely important scientific meaning.

I know, it's not uncommon for the lay person and the scientist to use the same word in different fashions. The problem with this setup where "energy" is concerned, however, is that misuse of the word by the spandex and tofu set has, I believe, greatly contributed to the epidemic of scientific illiteracy in our society.

My belligerent ex-brother-in-law (who sometimes reads this blog, so I will be kind) once insisted that energy, in a physics context, is a "ball of glowing stuff". I slapped my head, then I almost slapped him.

Energy is, to be pedantic, "the ability to do work". It comes in many forms: kinetic, potential, electrostatic, etc. Among the most common form for humans, and the least understood by the lay person, is potential energy, which is ironically the best example for typifying the definition, "the ability to do work."

A boulder sitting on top of a cliff, with gravity pulling on it, but with the cliff preventing its fall, is chock full of "potential energy". This energy cannot be perceived by us in any fashion, nor can it be scanned for; but we can compute it by measuring the boulder's mass and its distance from the ground.

The only form of energy that is directly perceivable by human beings is light. (And heat, as well, but many consider them to be the same thing.) Photons (the particles which make up light) are in fact packets of pure energy. Light (and indeed all matter, as well) is more complicated than just that, since its properties are also described as that of a wave. So the quality of energy can be measured as the light's wavelength or frequency.

When I talk to students new to these concepts, I like to use the additional example of a water wave as being a way to indirectly perceive energy. If a meteor crashes into the ocean and a wave is produced, which smashes into a nearby beach... what exactly constituted the wave? At each point of the wave, from its initiation at the meteor impact site to its impact on the beach, different particles of water were involved. The water that hits the beach is not the same water that the meteor struck. Somehow the energy of the meteor was transferred to the beach via the medium of water.... and we can see that transfer as the undulating wave of energy that radiated from the crash site to the beach. A wave, in its purest mathematical sense, is energy.

Which brings up the next important point, the Laws of Thermodynamics, one of which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. The kinetic energy of the meteor became the water wave, which became the tsunami crashing on the beach, which became flying debris or was dissipated as heat energy upon impact, etc.

Similarly, the kinetic energy of moving the boulder to the top of the cliff was converted to potential energy. Imagine now that we could somehow teleport that boulder to the ground without dropping it... It would reappear on the ground, but would it still have its potential energy? No, since it can no longer fall. But the Laws of Thermodynamics state that that energy had to go somewhere, so there's a good chance that such a teleported boulder would be glowing hot as the potential energy is converted to heat energy. This is an example of some of the things a competent science fiction writer has to think about when weaving believable, but fictional, technologies into a narrative.

Moreover, Einstein taught us that mass and energy are the same thing, and that we can convert between the two. A nuclear explosion is the conversion of a minute piece of matter into light and heat energy.

Conceptualizations of both matter and energy constitute the fundament of our understanding of the physical universe. Visualizing "glowing balls of stuff" or a stoner's attitude or a room post-feng shui does nothing to help us grasp with these enormous concepts.

Codeine Dreams

Here's the score. I had a migraine, so I popped a Tylenol 3. No, scratch that. I was afraid it was going to be a massive migraine, so I popped two Tylenols 3. Not my finest decision-making moment, I'm afraid. Long story short: I am presently stoned off my ass. So please forgive the shallow nature of today's post.

Since while I'm stoned on codeine, I can't do anything productive, all I can do is surf random websites. I came across one particular individual calling himself Raju Abju, and his posts typically describe things that "suck". At first, I thought Raju Abju was a genius underground comedian, but upon further codeine imbibing, I suspect he might just be an angry frat boy. You decide. Here are some samples:

Britney Spears Sucks
Madonna Sucks
Cell Phones Suck
Jennifer Lopez Sucks

You get the picture.

At the other end of the thought/content/quality scale is a remarkable blog called Polite Dissent. This fellow claims to be a family doctor and comic book fan. His great service to the world is in dissecting the medicine and science that are protrayed in mass media (comic books, TV shows and movies). I particularly like his commentary on the medicine in House, MD.

Here are some samples of his excellent work:

House Episode 23, Season 3: "The Jerk"
Amazing Spider-Man #539: A Medical Review
Picture Quiz: Batman #658

Thank you, Internet. We need never be bored again! Of course, things might not be so peachy in Iran, where bloggers now might need to register with the government!

Here's a follow up to the story about a Guyanese terrorist I blogged about earlier. My people can be so embarrassing sometimes. Many times. Often. Usually. Always.




[GEEKINESS]
One last thing... caught the latest two episodes of the new Doctor Who last week: "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood". David Tennant is now clearly the second best Doctor of all time (after Tom Baker, of course). This two-parter was --by Doctor Who standards-- deeply emotional and moving, due entirely to Tennant's superb acting. The babe-a-licious presence of Freema Agyeman didn't hurt, either.
[/GEEKINESS]

Okay gotta go pass out now and enjoy my codeine dreams....

Raywat Of Gob

Know what a "mashup" is in the musical context? It's the blending of existing songs to create a new song, usually by amateurs and usually without the permission of the original songs' authors. Typically the product is crap, but occasionally it's transcendent! This is my favourite, a blend of Madonna's "Ray of Light" with the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant" and "God Save The Queen". The result is something called "Ray of Gob" which, in my opinion, is better than the original three source songs:



Andrew Currie insists, however, that the grand daddy of all mash-ups is a Frankensteinian blend of Destiny's Child and Nirvana, called "Smells Like Teen Booty":



Meanwhile, more evidence that my 7 year old prediction will come true...

And EK Horbneck sends us the --gulp!-- Climate Change Video Game.

Silenced By The Man!

One last day in Vancouver, and almost the best yet! As I've hinted in this space, I've been toying with some ideas about how health and environment overlap, and what this means from a public policy perspective. A grand opportunity to crystallize these thoughts arose this morning when I received a call from CBC television, asking me to go on-air to discuss the health dimensions to World Environment Day (which apparently is today). I scurried to get my thoughts together... to no avail. The segment was cancelled.

The good news is that I'm now inspired to get off my duff and write that bloody paper now.


In other news:

From Ek Hornbeck, a paper erroneously reports that Al Gore would be joining the Democratic candidates debate. Hmmm, who else think there was no such "error" involved?

Cousin Ajay sends us this story about Guyanese terrorists plotting mischief in America. Great. Guess who's gonna get cavity searched at the airport now?

Hornbeck also points us to this article suggesting that North Africa will be the next flashpoint.

Professor Hornbeck also sends us this great list of antiwar movies. It's notable for its prominent inclusion of one of my all-time favourites: The Americanization of Emily.

Meanwhile, the regular idiots are stoking the flames of war against.... Iran. 'Cause, you know, two simultaneous clusterfracks in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't enough.

Brother B. sends us this argument for why the US Congress really okayed the latest Iraq spending bill.

In a very telling development that exposes the real priorities of modern pro-business Western governments, the USA is pretty much slandering Thailand in an attempt to get that country to stop offering cheap anti-retroviral drugs to HIV patients. To quote C.S. Lewis, "For shame, Dwarf."

Want more evidence that the 21st will be a brown century? Check out this. And this.

And here is a very telling window onto what passes for "conservatism" in Canada these days.

A Tale of Two Atwoods

Vancouver's Crackton

I believe that there might be a subtle environmental toxin being released into the Vancouver ecosystem, one that has caused many of this city's inhabitants to become borderline mentally retarded. It certainly appears to be a prerequisite to owning a BC driver's licence. Seriously, I have rarely encountered such unpredictably dangerous driving. The turn signal switch on my rental car is all stiff and sticky, likely because it has never been used by local renters!

I'm here for the Annual General Meeting of the Writer's Union of Canada, which is actually an enjoyable occasion, made moreso for the sylvan perfection of its host, the University of British Columbia. Despite the meeting's decided demographic homogeneity (all older white people, mostly women), I've been meeting some fascinating people. (Fascinating isn't always a good thing, but it's never boring.)

I'm staying at the Patricia Inn on Hastings Street. See, Hastings is known as Vancouver's Crackton, the place where heroin addicts, homeless folks and legions of hookers spend their time. In fact, on at least one occasion, one of the down-and-outters tried to commit suicide-by-Ray by leaping in front of my speeding car in the wee hours. Luckily, old age hasn't completely slowed by deteriorating reflexes, and I managed to swerve to avoid him.

The homeless on Hastings are straight out of central casting. It's as if they are all players in a high school play production, so cliched and stereotyped that I have a hard time believing it's all real. Even the crack whores, who descend on my car every night as I pull into the Inn, make me laugh with their stereotyped nature: track marks on the arms, torn fishnet stockings, and 1970s dialogue --"hey baby, how about a date?"

I love it. The rooms are clean and secure and feature cable TV and free wireless internet, all for the very affordable price of $50 per night, with an additional $2 for all-day parking. I am quite content to stay here, so long as the junkies and crack whores stay outside. Hey, I just came back from 10 days in freakin' Guyana --any place with reliable internet, potable tap water and a private toilet is LUXURY to me.

A Tale of Two Atwoods

Margaret Atwood gave the Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture last night. I filmed part of it, but I don't think it would be interesting enough for me to post here. Her talk focused a lot on her brother Harold, who she claims was her first literary inspiration. She quoted hilarious snippets from Harold's earliest attempts at science fiction, back when they were both children.

Now... I know Harold Atwood. Harold Atwood was the Chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto, back when I was an undergraduate and then graduate student there. Harold Atwood is one of this nation's greatest neuroscientists, with many books of science to his name. Harold Atwood is also the father of my teenage friend Evan, with whom I played many geekish role-playing games and engaged in many heated discussions about science, philosophy,literature and society. I spent much time in the home of Evan and Harold.

I mention all this because I wish to convey my pleasant surprise at learning of this new side of Harold Atwood. Ordinarily I would not talk about a private person in this public forum, but Margaret Atwood herself brought him up as a public topic, so I will continue in turn. My take on Professor Harold was always that he was a brilliant but reclusive and silent man, very fair and kind to his students, but very much of the engineering brand of personality: a doer and a solver, not necessarily a dreamer and an abstract thinker.

What Margaret Atwood revealed about Harold was interesting: that within this solid, calculating and stereotypical man of science there once thrived an explosive literary imagination that probably forms the kernel of his personality to this day.

I guess the lesson is clear: people are complete, three dimensional beings who cannot be summarized by our convenient archetypes and labels.

Moby Khan

In other news, I am for the first time wacthing the 1956 production of Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck. I've never actually read the book (shame on me), but have read the, um, classic comic book. (It's true). I never till now realized how much Star Trek, and in particular the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan borrowed/stealed from Moby Dick. Just sayin'.

Yo

Greetings from scenic Vancouver, BC, where I am attending the Annual General Meeting of the Writers' Union of Canada. As predicted, I am one of only a handful of attendees under the age of 50, and apparently one of 4 who are not White. Welcome to the Canadian literary industry.

I have a lot to write about, but I am wayyy too tired to do so today. I will say, though, that a weird thing is happening on this blog. My earlier post about being a stickler for grammar, has suddenly been beset with a barrage of comments by erstwhile experts. I can only conclude that the post has been reproduced or linked to from a site with more traffic than Deonandia typically experiences.

The thrust of most of the comments is this: items that I have identified as grammar mistakes are in fact permitted because, to put it bluntly, lots of people -among them famous writers- use them.

Fine. Whatever. As I mentioned earlier, this is a losing battle for me because language is ultimately defined by the bulk of people who use it. If everyone wants to pronounce "kilometre" incorrectly, for example, then the incorrect way will quickly be accepted as the new correct way. I won't pretend otherwise.

So people, if that's your only argument, then save your breath and my commenting space. For the record, I will not be responding to any of the comments on that thread... not out of any sort of protest; I just don't see the point of arguing over some things that are not resolvable.