I knew the actress' voice sounded familiar... She's the bipolar mom from Shameless:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0916050/

I've read that one reason Hong Kong construction workers prefer bamboo to metal scaffolding is that it's less likely to injure them badly in a fall -- it's flexible and gives under impact.

In Canada, this is considered an unusually long election campaign. The governing Conservatives have timed the campaign this way deliberately. They used their majority to change the rules and eliminate public campaign funding. This helps them as the right-wing business party that attracts the most donations. With a bigger war chest to spend than anyone else, they plan to exhaust the other parties' treasuries while they still have lots left to spend on a big ad blitz close to election day.

They are taking lessons from the way things are done in the U.S., which is not a good thing for Canada. Campaign finance in the U.S. is just unreal. It costs US$2 billion and climbing to elect a president, to say nothing of all the other races. It is literally the case that members of Congress spend half their time on the phone raising money rather than serving their constituents. I hope the American people wise up and do what it takes to reclaim their government from the political class. It will make things better for my country as well.

FWIW, I think it is sincere. Varoufakis has two points. 1) Austerity is contractionary. Forcing Greece to raise taxes, cut pensions and run escalating fiscal surpluses makes it impossible for Greece ever to grow its economy sufficiently to pay off its debt. (The debt is likely unpayable in any case, but Greece is being subject to needless suffering and endless debt peonage because Schaeuble and the lenders refuse to cede any ground.) 2) It's not possible for every country to emulate Germany and run a trade surplus, because one country's surplus is another's deficit. If you expect other countries to buy more from you than you buy from them, the money has to come from somewhere. In other words, if it's your policy to run a trade surplus then you will have to finance your trade partners somehow.

Whew. Anyone got a cigarette?

In the shots of Paul Calandra, on the left of the screen you can see my one-time high school classmate, Jeff Watson MP, clapping along to that horseshit.

Damn, nature... you scary!

I'm ready for a round of One on One with Dr. J vs. Larry Bird on my C-64... Dating myself, but that's the first place I ever heard that tune. Memories!

Sometimes I catch episodes of The Daily Show on CTV's streaming website. A shorter version of this commercial was running as an interstitial ad on that site -- so repetitively, in fact, that I got tired of it.

This is an almost perfect news story for today's media: totally unimportant in any real sense, yet spectacular and with a happy ending. The one thing it lacks is the search for a missing white girl. Maybe they can write that in somehow.

Yeah. Also, he'd better have those units in the South Ridge repaired by midday, or there'll be hell to pay.

Bought a new R2 unit to repair my billboard, but it had a bad motivator.

At the end of the video, I couldn't really see the angel in the snow. But then I realized it's about the journey, not the destination.

I live in Windsor, the Canadian city just across the river from Detroit... I've been witness to the sad decline of the city for my entire life, but it has recently reached just jaw-dropping proportions. Detroit is just an ugly city in a lot of ways and I think it must have been unpleasant to be in even at its height.

The people in the suburbs think they've escaped, but the reverse is more likely to be true in the long run as gas just keeps getting more expensive. That's why the M-1 light rail line is a good idea: precisely because transportation infrastructure for a focused, coherent urban core is more viable over the long term than continuing to build out a sprawling suburban road network that no one will be able to afford to use in a world where gas costs $10 or $20 a gallon. The suburbs will fail in their turn, and everyone who doesn't go elsewhere will move back into the city core where at least you won't spend half your income just travelling back and forth to get your groceries. (Once they get around to building any grocery stores in the city, that is.)

Anyone interested in Charlie LeDuff should check out his book:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15811520-detroit

I was dimly aware of McAfee's antics, but hadn't followed the story closely. Hard to deny, this has movie written all over it -- I think Werner Herzog would take a pass, Michael Bay would end up making it instead.

Reminds me of my friend's cat, who also has an oral fixation. Nothing to do with ice cream, but if you let him start licking you, he just won't stop -- ever.