I’m probably showing my age, but I’m relieved that the grownups have intervened and cancelled a planned rave in the old Don Jail. The new owner’s site had the wrong tone, and something like this was probably inevitable. More here and here.

The old jail could be used as a performance art venue, but in all decency it has to be in a context that works with themes around suffering and despair, both experienced by the inmates and by their victims, and by the people who worked in the building before it was a Doors Open curiosity.

The place has a dark history – not playfully Gothic dark, but really seriously dark, and I don’t think that’s registered with the people offering ‘ghost tours’. More below the fold.

Update: More here

As Putin rears his head

and comes into the airspace of the United States of America,

where do they go?

It’s Alaska.

It’s just right over the border.

It is from Alaska

that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation,

Russia,

because they are right there,

they are right next to our state.

Saturday July 7, 1792

“I walked this evening in a wood lately set on fire by some unextinguished fires being left by some persons who had encamped there, which in dry weather often communicates to the trees. Perhaps you have no idea of the pleasure of walking in a burning wood, but I found it so great that I think I shall have some woods set on fire for my evening walks. The smoke arising from it keeps the mosquitoes at a distance, and when the fire has caught the hollow trunk of a lofty tree, the flame issuing from the top has a fine effect. In some trees where but a small flame appears it looks like stars as the evening grows dark, and the flare and smoke, interspread in different masses of dark woods, has a very picturesque appearance.”

The TTC has just begun installing a new 2008 edition of its subway network maps in subway cars … The TTC did away with just displaying the approximate address numbers along Yonge, Bloor, Danforth and Sheppard (only printing the street name where the subway deviated form one of those four streets), and now has the precise municipal address for each station. Coxwell Station now has a Strathmore Boulevard address, instead of 1568 Danforth Avenue, and Rosedale is now at 7 Crescent Road instead of 1009 Yonge.

This new system is useless when looking for the closest station to an address on Bloor or Danforth. On Yonge, this is especially redundant, as not only are the stations already named for the cross streets, Yonge is also the origin point for addresses east and west of that street. So knowing that Dundas Station is actually at 3 Dundas Street East is not that helpful.

–

Has anyone else noticed that two of the addresses are wrong? St. Andrew Station should be on King Street West, not East, and Castle Frank Station should be on Bloor Street East, not West.

Comment by Annika

June 26, 2008 @ 12:18 am

“Our trucks are supposed to carry 21 tonnes. But every time we are pulled on a scale, it’s around 28, 29, sometimes 30 tonnes in there.

“That’s dangerous, not only for the driver, but for everyone else on the road. The brake system is designed for a load of 21 tonnes. When the truck is eight or nine tonnes overloaded, the momentum doesn’t let you stop unless you really stand on the brakes.

“When the truck is overloaded and you’re going 100 kilometres an hour, how do you expect it to stop?”

Gill said drivers aren’t allowed to get out at a job site to check and there’s no way from inside the truck to determine a load’s weight.

Even worse, he said, is that drivers who question overweight loads are often banished from a work site.

rest here

Afghanistan’s opium crop is forecast to fall by up to a half this year after 2007′s record harvest, counter-narcotics officials in Kabul said, as evidence emerged that some poppy farmers are switching to legal crops because of rising food prices.

“Anecdotally, a lot of farmers have calculated that, with wheat prices being what they are, they can make money out of planting wheat,” (Brigadier Andrew MacKay) said.

rest here

I first saw Beyond the Orchard apple slices in the local Sobeys in early January, but didn’t see it again until mid-March. They’ve been in stock steadily since then, so presumably people are buying them. This package­­­­—a plastic box containing five individual sealed wrappers—contains just 285 grams of sliced apples, equivalent to about one and a half regular-sized apples. Each package contains seven very small apple wedges that together represent about one quarter of an apple.