…highly entertaining: Two guys get arrested for creating a public disturbance. Apparently they had planned to rob a grocery store – one of the big chains. The “mastermind” of the two told his flunkie friend to distract the manager by pretending to apply for a job at the store. The flunkie does so, while thecontinue reading
Driven to Quit
Driven to Quit, for the uninitiated, is a provincial contest for which the prize if you quit smoking is that you get to enter a draw for a car and some TVs. It’s always struck me as all wrong, so I blogged it as politely as I could manage for work. Comments here or therecontinue reading
Yea!
Stephanie Martin has signed a three-year contract with SMM.
The grinch that stole Labour Day
“No more long weekend blitzes, no flavour-of-the-day enforcement, no more humorous stories about those who compromise public safety. Rather, every day, 24-7, OPP officers will be deployed in an all-out effort to put an end to the senseless carnage,” Fantino wrote. Full story here. The good news is that I don’t think Julian Fantino’s attemptcontinue reading
More like Regent Park, this year
After giving the $7 Farnese a nice write up, er, maybe yesterday, now we have to take it all back. That was 2004, this is 2005. Green and vegetal, no fruit to speak of. Yech. The Citra Sangiovese currently in the stores, about the same price, is much better. Assuming they haven’t changed the vintage,continue reading
Book #1: Inside Toronto: Urban Interiors 1880s to 1920s
“This room is a “home office” a few years after the turn of the century,” the guide began. “Look at the cumbersome desktop computers, heavy and expensive. Some of them cost more than a thousand dollars, several months’ rent, and had to last for years. “Just a few years before this, a user would havecontinue reading
Visions of subways
It’s clear that Toronto needs more transit infrastructure–the Yonge line is overcrowded at rush hour, getting crosstown at the latitude of King and Queen St. is a major hassle, the Spadina LRT doesn’t quite work the way it’s supposed to, etc. Hence a proposal for new subways: What I have in mind is a combinationcontinue reading
Aggravated stupidity
One of the really interesting questions in criminal law (to me, at least) is whether there is a point at which negligence crosses the line from ordinary negligence leading to civil liability to something that ought to attract criminal sanctions–and if so, what crosses the line and why. Consider these transcript excerpts from the Sacramentocontinue reading
And in other news…
The Guardian has a fascinating article with an update on the state of the Sunni insurgency in Baghdad. Seems like they’ve woken up to the possibility that as a minority, triggering a civil war might not be the best strategy. Rather too late, it appears.
Anna Netrebko: A Most Pleasant Revelation
Despite my reservations regarding the medium, I went to the Live HD Broadcast of I Puritani, a revival by the Met for Anna Netrebko. I have never seen her live and was convinced that she is overrated, a product of the hype machine currently running the “classical” music industry. Beautiful to behold, yes… but cancontinue reading