randomosity

The Transcript

Soothing Sine Waves

Lists of lists

I was finally was able to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age today and was not disappointed. This a movie worth seeing at the theatre. The settings are sumptuous, superbly shot and Cate Blanchett seems to be able to do no wrong. She is Elizabeth.
I am staying away from historical commentary here. This is a story for the screen and I appreciate it as such. However, I will say that I enjoyed the first installment ten years ago more. The two installments shared the lavish settings that set Shekhar Kapur apart, but the web of intrigue in the first was much more taut and tense. In the second installment, there is far less of tension. Where tension exists, it seems weary or puerile. Relationships that may have been mined and explored such as that between Elizabeth and her cousin Mary Stuart are left docile and tepid. Mary, who I expected to speak with at least a French accent is unimposing and a mere dupe (certainly a faint shadow of Fanny Ardant’s Marie de Guise in the first). Although this fits in well with her role vis-a-vis Philip of Spain’s intrigue, this political and fratricidal battle between ‘princes who are female’ could have been mined and illuminated the ongoing struggle between free-thinkers and Roman Catholics. Kapur’s Mary is a stupid, unthreatening victim, and this doesn’t work well - far too simple.
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The Wilson Centre in Canadian History officially launched an awesome new learning tool destined for the classrooms of local schools last night. The People and the the Bay is an historical environmental documentary created by Nancy Bouchier, Ken Cruikshank and the wizards from Pixel Dust Studios This stunning production brings a vivacity, zest, and probing depth to explore the unique relationship between the Hamilton harbour and the lives of people in the area and the city itself. The occasion was celebrated at the Canada Marine Discovery Centre, a uniquely appropriate site for presenting this production. The centre sits on the harbour and is an interpretative museum dedicated to Canada’s rich aquatic heritage.
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The History of Health and Medicine Seminar series continued today with a rather provocative paper by Dr. Ann Herring and Stacey Lockerbie. “The Coming Plague: Global panic, local repercussions and avian influenza,” contends that globalization and spread of information has preceded the potential epidemic with outcomes that alarm potentially unduly and have enormous local economic and social impact.
Herring is well known for her work on the history of infectious disease and very specifically on its impact on native populations. Lockerbie work involves the transition of aquaculture in central Vietnam from local to a global commodity. Their work coincides as a result of Lockerbie’s first-hand experience in Vietnam with the impact of poultry culls and the movement towards larger state-controlled factory operations as the government (over)reacted to the bird flu.
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Google Humour

Check out AideRSS - an exciting new tool to help manage information overload. It takes your existing RSS feeds, ranks posts and returns a list weighted by perceived quality.
Wonderful paradigm shifting technologies are supposed to streamline our lives and allow us to rise to new creative heights. The promise of the paperless office was to provide electronic communications to free us from distractions and the minutiae of the deskbound cubicled-existence. Mobile technologies were to unchain us from the physical offices to let us quickly complete necessary tasks while simultaneously participating in those pasttimes that we want to. You could ’seal the deal’ while watching your son’s soccer game for example. But, for all the promise, we now deal with more information and have to find ways to cope with greater engagement in more tasks than we have ever faced.
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Creative Whack

Emergency First Aid