Author: smartpeopleiknow

In saner places in the world, a church hall is going to be turned into a mosque

According to CBC News a church hall is going to be turned into a mosque:

A group of Muslims in Sydney, N.S., has bought a church hall to convert into a mosque.

The Antigonish Roman Catholic diocese sold the parish hall affiliated with Sydney’s Holy Redeemer Parish Church because a shrinking congregation means the church no longer needs the space.

The more than 30 families who make up the group that bought the hall had been worshipping in various rented spaces throughout Sydney.

According to Archbishop Vincent Waterman from Cape Breton: “This is one of the greatest things I’ve heard so far. As a prayer centre, I welcome it.”

As a proud Cape Breton expat, I am glad to see this. It sounds like the deal is mutually beneficial to boot.

Karl Marx takes a drive


It looks like Marx is going for a Sunday drive. According to SPIEGEL ONLINE:

Berlin’s Marx-Engels monument near the Alexanderplatz square is being moved because of construction work on a new subway line. This photo shows the sculpture of Marx being loaded on a truck to join Engels in a new position. Berlin’s iconic TV Tower can be seen in the background. The sculptures of the founders of modern socialism Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) were made by German artist Ludwig Engelhart and unveiled in 1986.

A odd defense of States Rights in the Globe and Mail

It was bizarre to come across this article in the Globe and Mail today (1863 and all that: The issue of where federal authority ends – The Globe and Mail). What was the point of it, I thought, as it recalled some very specific occurrences of events that happened in American history, back to and including the U.S. Civil War. Towards the end of the article was this passage:

In the midst of the self-perpetuating slaughter in Missouri and Kansas, slavery was indeed an issue: Missouri was a slave state. But states’ rights were an authentic issue, too. The Civil War definitively answered the first question. It did not definitively answer the second. Now many Americans are beginning to ask it again. It took exceptional intrusion by federal forces to make this happen.

Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, in his revivalist rhetoric, invokes a historic resistance to the simple phrase “federal forces.” In his big rally the other day at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, he implicitly asks the very question that motivated the Confederate raiders: Where does the authority of the federal government end? Or does it?

From what I can tell, the author started with Glenn Beck’s rally and worked backwards. The ending question in bold and non-italics is a valid one. Americans – indeed, anyone living in a modern state – has reasons to question the authority of a central government and how much power it has over individuals. But to invoke States’ rights is a poor way of doing it. States’s rights are associated with efforts to prolong slavery, provoke the Civil War, uphold Jim Crow laws and foster racial segregation. Why anyone would want to bring them up I can’t tell, unless they were ignorant or racist.

As to the other phrases I put in bold italics, I highlighted those because it is a terrible way of elevating the issue of States’s Rights. There is an implied equation when in fact there is no such equation: slavery as an issue, as an evil, vastly outweighs any issue concerning the rights of States. I am surprised to see it stated like that. At best phrasing it that way is lazy thinking.

On my new egg dish: eggs a la puttenesca! :)

I have made this for a few days now, and I love it. I gently fry some
chopped salami, a couple of tablespoons of onion, a chopped olive together
until the onion is soft and the salami has softened. Then I beat 2-3 eggs
together and either make ’em scrambled, an omelet, or something resembling
a frittata.

I call it ‘a la puttanesca’ because while it reminds me of puttanesca
sauce, the ingredients differ. The spirit is the same though, since it uses
earthy ingredients easily available and thrown together.

I also put some homemade tomato salsa with it, though it is not much more
than sauteed onions and garlic and a cup of diced tomatoes cooked and then
tossed with some cilantro. Just enough to moisten up the eggs if they get
dry from cooking, and also to add more robust tomato flavour.

I generally like eggs with cheese and marjoram, but that is a richer and
subtler taste. This is a basic and more rustic taste. Both are good,
depending on your mood.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Great music of 1979, a pivotal year in popular music

If you don’t know much about music of this time, you might think there was no good music from this year. (Wasn’t that the end of disco?) In fact, there was some truly great music released this year. One of the greatest bands of all time, The Clash, released one of their greatest albums, London Calling. And from London Calling was this huge hit:

The punk music of the time had an odd consequence: great bands like The Rolling Stones rose to the occasion and produced some great music of their own, including Miss You from the great album, Some Girls

1979 marked the end of disco, the rise of punk and then new wave, and the birth of hip hop/rap with Rapper’s Delight

It still has a heavy disco influence, but it is the beginning of the end (of disco) and the beginning of the beginning (of hip hop).

Some thoughts on why happiness is difficult to achieve and what to do about it

I was reading a post just now that said happiness could be achieved if we
put off the habit of avoiding pain at the same time we seek immediate
gratification. This sounds like a reasonable assertion, but the more I
thought of, the more I thought that isn’t true.

I am more and more convinced that happiness is difficult to achieve because
it is a state of alignment, and alignment is difficult. It is an alignment
of everything we have with everything we want. If our wants are simple,
then happiness can be easier to achieve. For example, if all I want is to
do my job well to be happy and I don’t have any other wants in life that
matter, then as long as I am doing my job well I am happy. However, if I
want to do my job and do something else well, and both things have demands
on my time, then it is going to be harder to be happy. That alignment is
harder to achieve now.

That’s why people are often happy on vacation. They simplify their lives
and line things up so what they are doing makes them happy. However it can
only last for a short time because other demands through off that
alignment.

The other thing that makes happiness difficult to achieve is familiarity or
repetition. I may align my wants with what I have on a short vacation, bu
on a long vacation I may become bored with, say, lying on the beach doing
nothing. The alignment goes away. I may not be unhappy but I am no longer
happy.

Alignment is important, but so is positive emotion towards the thing you
have. The thing you have may seem slight to others. You may be happy
tending your garden, watching sports on TV, or sitting in a cafe chatting
and daydreaming and reading. But the point is that you have a
signifigantly positive emotion towards doing it. You want to do it. And you
are doing it. Then you are happy.

So that’s great, you might grumble, happiness is difficult to achieve.
Thanks for that. So how does one achieve happiness? Well based on two
people I know, I think there are two ways at least to do this: a minimalist
approach and a maximalist approach.

The minimalist approach is to simplify your life to the point that you are
have in your life only the things in your life that you have a strong
positive feeling towards and reject and eliminate everything the detracts
from that. Find a vocation that you love and do that, associate mainly with
people who support and agree with that, and minimalize everything else in
your life. If you can do that, you’ll be happy. I think athletes and
gardeners are two examples of people who live that way, but anyone who is
devoted to a role and gains a lot of positive emotion from it will be
happy.

The other approach is the maximalist approach. With that approach, you try
to find a way to extract a positive emotion from everything you have. You
don’t try to manage what you have in your life: you try to manage how you
thing about what you have in your life. This doesn’t mean you accept things
without question. Rather: you try and see the positive side of what is in
front of you while moving towards what you prefer.

Now you might think both are easier said than done. Both approaches take
will and determination. If you want to see things positively, you need to
work on it. Optimism is like a muscle: you need to exercise it to make it
stronger and have it overcome obstacles. But you will need that muscle if
you are going to take a maximalist approach. Likewise concentration and
focus is also like a muscle and you will need to exercise it to make it
stronger. But you are going to need that muscle if you are going to take a
minimalist approach.

Thanks for reading this. I have been able to align what I have – spare
time, a relaxing place to sit – with what I have – a blackberry, some ideas
on happiness – and I have been happy writing this down.

Pick an approach. Work those muscles. Get happy! 🙂
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

How to replace your office PC with an iPad (Hint: the Cloud helps)

This good article at itbusiness.ca has a run down of someone who is describing how to replace your office PC with an iPad.

Their conclusion is this:

It’s clear the iPad is not a perfect replacement for a laptop (or desktop PC). The connectivity issues create hassles that will slow workplace adoption, and the constrained data exchange and poor cloud-apps compatibility will restrict iPad business usage to basic office productivity work and, via thin clients or where specialty iOS apps exists, to niche field-force usage such as for hospital staff, construction foremen, and the like.

In my opinions, just like netbooks, the feasibility of this all depends on your use of the PC. I believe that if you use a device for accessing the Web and are good with using Cloud based apps like Google docs or Zoho, then you can go along way with an iPad as your main PC. The more you depend on installed software, the less likely this becomes as an option. For now.

American isolationalism and the Kochs: from the John Birch society to the Tea Partiers

It’s interesting to see in this piece by Dave Weigel (Weigel : Sharia Today, Sharia Tomorrow, Sharia Forever) that a large percent of people believe President Obama wants to impose Sharia law on Americans. This got me thinking to how this is not all that different than some of the fears older Americans had with communists and the U.N. and the imposition of outside laws on Americans. Americans are proud of their laws and their Consistution, but right wing Americans have always had a fear of outsiders taking that away. Indeed, if you think of organizations like the John Birch society that “is against “one world government“, and has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. The society argues that there is a devaluing of the U.S. Constitution in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this trend is not an accident. It cites the existence of the Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.[8]” (taken from Wikipedia’s description of the J.B.S.). For some on the American right, the enemy keeps shifting, much like in “1984”, but the idea is the same: keep America free and isolated.

What is interesting is that Fred Koch, founder of Koch Industries, was a founding member of the John Birch society many years ago. Now according to this article in the New Yorker, two of the Koch brothers who own the current Koch Industries conglomeration, are waging war against Obama and funding opponents of climate change and the Tea Partiers, among other right wing groups. In seeing this, it also appears that the enemy keeps shifting, but the supporters of it also remain the same.

Smell-o-rama: or how Katy Perry could save the American Music and Manufacturing Industry

That sounds like a stretch, but as I watched this video on the packaging of her new CD, I was struck by a number of things:

  • Her new CD has Smell-o-rama! Seriously, when you open it, it will smell like cotton candy. It’s always been a joke that with advances in technology, you would be able to smell movies as well as see and hear them. With her new CD’s packaging, you are getting at least an inkling of that. Whether or not this will develop into something more sophisticated remains to be seen. But it is intereesting that smell is being used to promote music.
  • Smell – or scent – could also help sell more CDs. Unlike digital downloads, the only way to get this novel experience is to buy the CD. It’s clever marketing, and while it may not have much of a future, it may show the way that better packaging may help sell more CDs and make more profit for the music companies and the artists.
  • Novel packaging might also help American manufacturing. I was surprised that these CDs were NOT made in China somewhere. But who knows: with the right product, it may make more sense for things to be made in places other than China.

Who knew Katy Perry could be such an innovator? I am already looking forward to a re-release of that classic Spinal Tap epic: Smell The Glove.

60 Things to Better Appreciate in Life

The actual title of the blog post that I am commenting on is 60 Things to Be Grateful For In Life at the site tinybuddha.com.  However, the word “grateful” implies you are grateful towards someone or something. I prefer the word “appreciate”, not only because it does away with that relationship, but it has connotations of “growth” and “value”. Appreciating your sense of sight implies not only do you value your ability to see the beauty in the world, but also you are growing your ability to see the beauty in the world. I like that better.

Regardless of whether you are grateful, appreciative, or both, check out the list. It’s a good one.

Usain Bolt has style

The Guardian has an interview with the great Usain Bolt.

Unlike alot of sports interviews, in this one Bolt talks openly and casually about himself, his competition, and his goals. Barring injury, Bolt will be one of the greatest runners of all time. He has great style, too, as can be seen from the way he races AND from the way he dresses here.

Check out the article: it’s worthwhile.

Günter Grass on writing

Spiegel has a good interview with Günter Grass on his upcoming book – which sounds great – and gets his thoughts on a number of other topics. This one, for example, on writing:

Grass: I would like to put a stop to this movement toward reading on computers, but it seems that nobody can do this. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of the electronic process are already apparent during the writing of the manuscript. Most young authors write directly on their computers, and then edit and work in their files. In my case, on the other hand, there are many preliminary steps: a handwritten version, two that I’ve typed myself on my Olivetti typewriter and, finally, several copies of versions that my secretary has input into the computer and printed out, and into which I’ve incorporated many handwritten corrections. These steps are lost when you write directly on the computer.

SPIEGEL: Don’t you feel old-fashioned with your Olivetti?

Grass: No. On the computer, a text always looks somehow finished, even if it’s far from it. That’s tempting. I usually write the first, handwritten version all at once, and when there’s something I don’t like I leave a blank space. I fill these gaps in the Olivetti version, and because of that thoroughness, the text also acquires a certain long-windedness. In the ensuing versions, I try to combine the originality of the first version with the accuracy of the second one. With this slow approach, there’s less of a risk of slickness and arbitrariness creeping in.

The interview is worth a read and can be found here: SPIEGEL Interview with Günter Grass: ‘The Nobel Prize Doesn’t Inhibit Me in My Writing’ – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

The incredible Audiotool

I came across the audiotool web site serendipitously today. I’m delighted I did, for it’s an incredible web site. What Audiotool does is allow you to virtually play with a number of classic electronic devices like 909s and 303s from to make your own electronic music, well, like this: August 27 by blm849 – Audiotool. In a very short time, I learned how to wire up the configuration below to make this piece of music. It looks complicated, but it was actually pretty simple. And alot of fun. With practice and inspiration, I think anyone could make some really interesting music with this site. What’s even better, the music can be downloaded by anyone as an MP3 file, so you can take it and play it on your favourite portable music device.

Once you would have had to make a big investment in equipment to do this. Now you just need a browser. Incredible.

Kodachrome in the silent movie era

Kodak ended it’s famous Kodachrome film in 2009, after making it for 74 years. Here’s a video of some of the earliest uses of it, from 1922:

To give you some perspective, here is a List of American films of 1922 from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. As you can see, at that time the main actors were Valentino, Buster Keaton, and Mary Pickford. We’re talking the very early days of film: black and white and silent. That makes this video all the more remarkable.

(Found at kottke.org)

Worry isn’t work….Work is the manifestation of value

So says Dan Pallotta at Harvard Business Review online. And he’s right. Too many people I know stress about things at work, instead of producing value. If you are providing me with a service, I don’t know if you provided it while singing a happy tune or were miserable the whole time, worried I wouldn’t like it. I would prefer you were happy about doing it, but what I am mainly concerned about is that you provide good service. Most people are that way, including the people you work for. So do good work, but being miserable about it is optional and in fact likely results in worse work, which we all do care about.

Penguin is now (RED)

Great news. Penguin has joined up with the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa by participating in the (RED) program. They have a smart selection of classics such as “Sense and Sensibility” and “Dracula” and 50% of the profits from each book goes to (RED). The books look great, and no doubt will be up to Penguins’ high standard of printing. I think if you wanted to get someone younger interested in these books, this would be a great way to do it. Not to mention these would look great on your bookshelf. What are you waiting for? 🙂 See Penguin Classics RED editions – Penguin RED Classics  for more information

Back to the future with the CBC Radio iPhone App


I was excited last night to try out the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation – The Canadian version of the BBC) Radio iPhone App last night for a few reasons: it is free, it has a nice user interface, and it provides access to a wide radio of programs on CBC. I especially like the jazz and classical music on Radio 2, not to mention the indie pop on radio 3. It was all excellent. But the other thing I liked about it, the back to the future part, was that I was able to lie in bed and listen to the “radio”, just like I did when I was a kid. Now it is a iPod instead of a transitor radio that I had turned low so my parents couldn’t hear, but the joy of listening to late night music is still the same.

For more on this great app — and it is not just limited to Canadians — you can go here: CBC.ca – CBC Mobile Services – iPhone. And if you like other forms of music, or very intelligent talk radio, I highly recommend this.

Great white wines under $10: Fuzion Alta Torrontés/Pinot Grigio, Argentina

The site Wine of the Weekend has a great description of a delicious wine that is also great value (which is not surprising given it is part of the Fuzion line of wines). It is a superb summer wine, great for sipping by itself or paired with many dishes found in fusion cooking. Pinot Grigio fans should note, however, that is has alot of flavour, including “opulent peach, pear and citrus flavours on the palate”/ I love it, but fans of very subtle wines might find it too much.

See Wine of the Weekend for more information.

Oh, and the price: $8.95 at the LCBO in Ontario.

What does free speech mean?

There’s some confusion that people have about free speech that Linda Holmes at NPR clears up nicely in one sentence

Because the “free” … means “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.”

The rest of the article is worth a read. Meanwhile, the next time you hear someone complain about their right to free speech being trampled upon, ask who is portrayed as doing the trampling.

What is the Hijab? Everything you wanted to know about this garment

This page at Wikipedia, Hijab by country, will tell you not only what the rules are for wearing this garment in many countries around the world, but it explains the difference between various form of Islamic dress. As you can see, the rules and the beliefs about this garment vary widely from country to country, not just in predominantly Christian countries, but in predominantly Muslim countries too. It is – pardon the pun – a very revelling page.

The new Music Hall and the unstoppable force of social media on music

Do you recognize this guitarist? In this video she does a cover of i’m yours” by Jason Mraz. It’s a good cover for sure, and it has almost 6 million views. Six million.

Here’snother version of that song.


It has less views, just under 250,000. However this musician has lots of videos and they all have that much. She has a version of “Hey ya!” that has over 500,000 views. Do you know this musician? I have never heard of her, but lots of people have watched her perform.

Speaking of that song, here’s the incredibly good cover of Hey Ya by Mat Weddle of Obadiah Parker.


It has over six million views as well. Almost as many as Outkast has themselves.

Now these people aren’t famous in the way Jason Mraz is or Outkast or the Beatles or whomever else they are covering. Yet they are able to attract large audiences with little more than a camera and an instrument. They don’t have promoters or  producers or other talent helping with their songs. They are just simply singing for us, and getting alot of us to listen.

It likely helps that they are singing songs that are very popular. If they were singing an obscure song, it’s not as likely people would find them via YouTube as easily.  I think one of the reasons they do get an audience is that people want to hear people singing songs they like. Stiill, I think that  they would surface even without singing popular songs, either through tagging or other sharing mechanisms. YouTube is a platform that allows people to do that, much like radio was a way for bands to reach audiences that they could never reach simply by playing only in music halls. What people find interesting will rise to the top most of the time.

These artists might not get fortune this way. but it has never been easier in some ways to get a slice of fame. It reminds me of punk rock or the beginning of rock n roll, in that young people were just going out and performing and there was a willing audience to watch them. I think it is exciting and encouraging to anyone who wants to perform for an audience. You just need a camera, a good song, a good voice, and possibly one other instrument. The Hall, so to speak, is packed with millions of people, waiting for you to start.

BTW, I brought up the unstoppable force of social media on music because the music industry has been fighting for so many years to prevent people from taking over the music industry and making it their own. First there was file shariing, where you had listeners cutting out distribution of music. Now you have social music, where by the listeners cut out the promotion of music. There will still be that traditional way of making music of course, but that territory is going to shrink more and more as time goes by and the unstoppable force of social media on music keeps rolling on.

The greatness of “Wichita Lineman”

One indicaton of a great song is how well it can be remade by differenc artists, each time being something different and great in its own way. I think “Wichita Lineman” is one of those songs.

Now you may think: “that old Glen Campbell song?! Are you nuts?!” Hey, it’s a great song. It is wonderfully melodic, with evocative lyrics that flow from one verse to another.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out this version by REM

This reggae like version from Dennis Brown

This lush version by Cassandra Wilson

And finally here’s Glen Campbell, in 2008, no less, rocking it out

The visual saturation of M.I.A

I like the contradiction in some of the videos of M.I.A. like XXXO, Boyz, and to some extent, Galang. All three deploy a hyper visual style and are highly produced. But they do that using visual elements that are simple or kitchy. You feel like you are seeing something unlike what you would see in any other video. Not all her videos are that way. Paper Planes and Sunshowers are much more straightforward videos and not unlike what you would see for alot of big music groups. But those three videos are meant to visually overwhelm you, much the way her clothes do. It’s not for everyone, but I like it.

Here’s the ultra-kitsch of XXXO

Here’s the low-tech graphics of Boyz

And here’s the graffiti animation of Galang

On polls, Elvis Presley, and the Elvis Presley Margin

Back in 2002, when CBS ran this story, 7% of Americans still believed Elvis was alive, despite his death 25 years earlier. (“The King’s” Popularity Constant – CBS News).

This has led me to conclude that for any poll, there will be a margin of people — the Elvis Presley margin — who will agree with anything (or disagree with anything) that the pollster asks.

I thought of this because of 18% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim, despite everything that says he is a Christian. 18% is well above the Elvis Presley margin, which leads me to believe that there are people who should know better that still think this. Interesting.

What does the First Amendment to the United States Constitution say?

According to Wikipedia, it says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]

I can’t understand how people can say that the Constitution is of supreme importance, but there should be restrictions on where mosques are built. I can understand people who don’t respect the Constitution saying that, but not those that do.

Maybe the CEO of Google is just stupid

I am going to start to track this. A number of statements Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has said recently that are just dumb. For example, this one: Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name to Escape His Permanent Record. Yes folks, Google shouldn’t have to change anything. The onus is on YOU to change your name to make a break from your past. I don’t even feel like arguing this, it is such a dumb idea.

Here’s my prediction: Eric Schmidt will be out of a job in three years, and Google will be on the decline. But in the meantime, if you feel like talking his ideas seriously, by all means go to this article.

I think Schmidt should focus on other things, like why Google, which apparently has all these smart people with lots of spare time to come up with new ideas, keep coming out with such duds instead.