Archive for Jan-Aug 2010
Beautiful happy Vancouver Olympics
14 Feb 10: Yesterday I went strolling around my beautiful city yesterday with my iPhone and Nikon camera. You see some photos here and two videos of the Olympic crowd here and here.
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Krugman on Canada
13 Feb 10: Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist/blogger Paul Krugman calls Canada’s banks “Good and Boring” (h/t to PM):
Over the past decade the United States and Canada faced the same global environment. Both were confronted with the same flood of cheap goods and cheap money from Asia. Economists in both countries cheerfully declared that the era of severe recessions was over.
But when things fell apart, the consequences were very different here and there. In the United States, mortgage defaults soared, some major financial institutions collapsed, and others survived only thanks to huge government bailouts. In Canada, none of that happened. What did the Canadians do differently?
It wasn’t interest rate policy. Many commentators have blamed the Federal Reserve for the financial crisis, claiming that the Fed created a disastrous bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long. But Canadian interest rates have tracked U.S. rates quite closely, so it seems that low rates aren’t enough by themselves to produce a financial crisis. …
Canada’s experience does seem to support the views of people like Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional panel overseeing the bank bailout, who place much of the blame for the crisis on failure to protect consumers from deceptive lending. Canada has an independent Financial Consumer Agency, and it has sharply restricted subprime-type lending.
Above all, Canada’s experience seems to support those who say that the way to keep banking safe is to keep it boring — that is, to limit the extent to which banks can take on risk.
One thing I would add to Krugman’s analysis is that in Canada there is no income-tax deduction for home-loan interest payments, which means that home-buyers here aren’t encouraged by the government to buy homes they might not otherwise be able to afford. It also means that there is less real estate speculation. Yet: the percentage of Canadians who own their homes is basically identical to the percentage of Americans who do. And we have avoided the kind of housing bubble that wiped out so many Americans.
Canada also has the lowest debt-to-GDP radio of any of the G8 countries (under 20%). During Chretien’s reign, virtually every year the government ran a surplus to pay down the debt. We are thus not owned by China.
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Mayhew on Jazz
10 Feb 10: My good friend and prolific, brilliant author Jonathan Mayhew has started a new blog, devoted to jazz, to complement his blog ¡Bemsha SWING! From a recent post:
When swing style pop vocals like those of Tony Bennett became eclipsed by rock music in the mid 1960s, it freed Bennett up to be a jazzier singer. The same happened with Rosemarie Clooney–a pop star in the 1950s but a jazz artist later in life. Interestingly, rock musicians popular in the 1970s like Linda Rondstat and Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, also turned to the great songs of the great American songbooks much later in their careers–with varying results, some good, some bad.
Nat Cole began as a jazz pianist. When he began singing that talent eclipsed his piano playing and he became an international pop star. His brother, Freddie Cole, has had an interesting career as a jazz singer, using a Nat King Cole-like voice but a more jazzy, less pop feel. Even Armstrong did pop vocals in his later career that have little to do (seemingly) with his jazz roots: “It’s a Wonderful World” and “Hello Dolly.”
Vocal music, then, has always been close to the commercial side of jazz, often to the point of not being jazz anymore. To what point the dichotomy between jazz singing and popular music is valid, I don’t know. Is Sinatra singing jazz with Count Basie and pop with Nelson Riddle? For me, Sinatra is a jazz artist. He even tried to hire Billy Strayhorn away from Duke at one point…
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Downtown Eastside
6 Feb 10: With the Olympics in Vancouver, we’re going to see a whole lot more stories and slideshows like this one, in the New York Times, about the Downtown Eastside, alas. Visit Aha Media, run by the wonderful April Smith and her colleagues, to find stories and videos documenting that neighborhood’s many “positives.” [Stay up to date on Downtown Eastside news here. – 7 Feb 10]
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Zasada.CA
3 Feb 10: Get your Human Resources questions answered at Zasada.CA, the blog published by a brilliant former student of mine, Agata Zasada. Her personal website, Agata.CA, is also very well worth visiting.
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My Old Photo Gallery
1 Feb 10: I’m still PhotoShopping my upcoming photo gallery. You can still visit my old gallery, though.
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New basil.CA design intelligently critiqued
31 Jan 10: Regarding the new basil.CA design, my friend Val McMeekin writes: Thinking back to my first impression of your [old] website…it visually wowed me! It implied importance…vital information here…the art of communication in combination with the art of fast paced media attributes! The site looked more fancy…and importantly…it worked…yet the aspect of you was somewhat lost due to the linked-in aspect on your home page…being able to click to another person…the focus was less you…the concentration of your prior homepage was the links.
I just went through your site more in detail as it is set up easier for me! From my perspective…I spent more time on your site today. The prior times I went into your site I would click on something that was visually appealing or interested me through title. However, then I was in other peoples sites and not as concentrated on You! I went into your site because I wanted to learn about you!!
I like the new…but in all honesty…I prefer the more chaotic!
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Everybody looked beautiful
31 Jan 10: I’ve updated my iPhone blog to convey what a wonderful Sunday it was to walk around the West End and English Bay. I ran into some friends, including Val (by chance), and everybody looked beautiful and happy.
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New Kwantlen degree
15 Jan 10: Kwantlen Polytechnic University has launched a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Visual Arts degree program. Offered at Kwantlen’s Surrey Campus, this program provides learning opportunities ranging from traditional studio arts to new media technologies in a critically engaged academic environment.
Scott McBride, chair of the Department of Fine Arts comments, “Kwantlen’s new BFA cultivates creative excellence through technical expertise, conceptual approaches and innovative applications in a diverse community of students, artists and professional faculty.”
Read whole story here.
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TNR Gold Corp news
15 Jan 10: TNR Gold Corp. (TXS-V:TNR) and wholly owned International Lithium Corp. are undertaking the option to acquire 100-per-cent interest in the Fairservice mining leases adjacent to the company’s Mavis Lake property, located 15 kilometres northeast of Dryden in northwestern Ontario, from Rich Resource Investments Ltd., a private company in Edmonton.
The Fairservice property consists of six mining leases totalling 88.4 hectares and is dominated by east-trending spodumene-beryl-tantalite-type pegmatites considered to be part of the same dyke swarm as on the company’s adjacent Mavis Lake claim block. Past exploration identified 10 pegmatites and delineated a historical (non-NI 43-101 compliant) resource of 500,000 tonnes at 1.0 per-cent Li2O at pegmatite No. 1.
To earn a 100-per-cent interest, TNR has agreed to make payments totalling $120,000 and issuing a total of 500,000 common shares of TNR over a three-year period and incurring exploration expenditures totalling $500,000 over a four-year period. The vendor will retain a 5-per-cent net profits interest royalty of which the company has the right to purchase in entirety by paying the vendor the sum of $1-million. The agreement is subject to regulatory approval.
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Teaching is a blessing
8 Jan 10: I taught my first class of the semester today. It is a blessing to have this gig.
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Vic Chesnutt
8 Jan 10: The wonderful Teri Gross talked to Vic Chesnutt on her radio show “Fresh Air” a few weeks before his death.” Listen to the podcast, with comments by Michael Stipe and other friends spliced in. It is beautifully rich and smart and human, very emotional.
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Kwantlen prof honoured
7 Jan 10: Dr. Deborah Henderson, director of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Institute of Sustainable Horticulture (ISH), was named educator of the year by British Columbia Landscape and Nursery Association (BCLNA). Read more here.
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