Archive for January, 2006

Jan 30 2006

The problem with Syriana

Categorized under Film

I saw Syriana last week. It was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who also wrote the screenplay for the Stephen Soderberg-directed Traffic. (Soderberg executive produced Syriana.) I really liked Traffic — in the same way I liked last year’s Crash. I like long ensemble films with interconnecting stories, at least when they are nicely [...]

9 comments so far

Jan 27 2006

Proportional voting?

Categorized under Current Affairs

I don’t know how proportional voting would work in Canada, but statistics released by Fair Vote Canada on this week’s federal election certainly help make a case for it:

In the prairie provinces, the Conservatives got three times as many votes as the Liberals, but they won ten times as many seats.
There are more than 400,000 [...]

5 comments so far

Jan 24 2006

Bush’s first phone call to Harper?

Categorized under Current Affairs

Bush is supposed to call Harper soon. Which of these conversations do you think is most likely?

8 comments so far

Jan 24 2006

Fleur de sel

Categorized under Food and Drink

Someone recently asked me about Fleur de Sel, the pricey French salt that one finds in swishy specialty shops.
Fleur de Sel is a bit of a sham, but it’s a nice sham. It’s basically just lumpy salt that’s been harvested the old fashioned way by people in the south of France who wear straw [...]

21 comments so far

Jan 19 2006

Scanner

Categorized under Uncategorized

This guy has kindly loaned me a film and negative scanner. I’m looking forward to making copious use of it, as I’m running out of ideas for my Monday Morning Photo Blog (and I don’t seem to be creating many new photos — at least not interesting ones).
I have thousands of negatives and contact sheets [...]

One comment so far

Jan 18 2006

Pissaladière

Categorized under Food and Drink, Recipes

Loyal readers know that I think a pizza just isn’t a pizza unless it has a lot of fresh tomato sauce. So what was I thinking a few days ago when I made this creation, which has no tomato sauce at all?

I was thinking “It’s not a pizza, it’s a pissaladière!” A pissaladière is a [...]

5 comments so far

Jan 16 2006

Blogging is like karaoke

Categorized under Culture, Weblogs

It occurs to me that blogging is the karaoke of publishing.
With karaoke, anyone can sing along and pretend they’re a rock star. You can sing loudly, publicly, and badly — and have fun doing it. You don’t even have to be a good singer to be pretty good at karaoke.
Ditto blogging. Pretty much anybody can [...]

10 comments so far