Janelle Monáe video, Tightrope is brilliant and visually striking. But it’s the song itself that’s great all by itself. It has a great Motown/James Brown to a feel to it. And it’s as upbeat as anything. Perfect to fire up your day/week.

This is a good story for the U.S.: Interracial marriages at an all-time high, study says – CNN.com. There’s lots of good material in there that’s well worth a read.

So while you still have the likes of people like Sen. Jake Knotts in South Carolina calling people racist names, that type of thinking and the fear it brings with it is dying out. Instead you have people loving people for who they are and people supporting that. And that is a smart thing indeed.

You can find out more about this great poem, Lake Isle of Innisfree, at that link. But first, read it for yourself:

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,     
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;      
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,     
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.     
    
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon apurple glow, all a glimmer:
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.     
    
I will arise and go now, for always night and day  
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;      
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,     
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

So you have a router at home, or you are using your laptop in a cafe or an open space and you have an unsecure wifi network setup. You might think: what’s the big deal? How’s that going to help anyone? Well as Oscar González shows, you need to be careful when using WiFi. Your files could be exposed. (from his Techie of All sorts) blog. Even exposing a little information via wifi can potentially expose alot.

Now, you might think: fine, he can look up all that information about me, including personal information…big deal. Well, actually for someone malicious — unlike Oscar — it can be a big deal. Alot of institutions use that information to establish your identity. Someone can get that information and commit some nice identity theft (not to mention other theft as well).

Short of it is: follow Oscar’s advice and secure your connections as well as other information about yourself out there.

P.S. Even if you are not a techie, you should check out Oscar’s blog and in particular this post.

What is black humor? Well the wikipedia definition is a good one: a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo are treated in a satirical or humorous manner while retaining their seriousness. Synonyms include dark comedy, black comedy, dark humor, and morbid humor.

This image of how not to fast-rope onto a ship is an excellent example of that:

The recent events of the Israeli Defence Forces trying to stop the flotilla trying to break the embargo of Gaza is a deadly serious matter and it hardly seems worthy of laughter. However, this pseudo-instructional image satirizes and mocks the IDF for doing what they obviously should not have done. (At least in the eyes of the illustrator). I am a big fan of black humor: it is sometimes the only way to deal with extermely difficult subjects. This is a well done example of it.

From Fast-Roping 101 – The Daily Dish  By Andrew Sullivan

First up is  Django Reinhardt – J’attendrai Swing 1939

Watch how Reinhardt’s plays the chords and compare it to the other guitarists. (You can find out why he has to play that way here). Bonus: Stéphane Grappelli!

And just a reminder of some more brilliant playing from this guitarist from Botswana:

Are Moules marinière, mussels in white wine, the “fast food of the gods”, as this blog, Mastering the Art of 10 Minute French Cooking, says? I think so! And even if you don’t, if you like shell fish, you will like this recipe.

The recipe I use, from Lucy Waverman, is slightly different and uses a cup of white wine and a cup of water. Instead of the scallion, it uses four cloves of garlic thinly sliced and two onions chopped. (You could get by with one.) As for herbs, it uses two dried teaspoons of thyme, which I really like.  Finally it uses 2 pounds of mussels.

However you want to make it, really, it’s the combination of white wine, herbs, and onions that create a wonderful broth and the means to steam open the mussels. Feel free to experiment. While the mussels are great all by themselves, if you want something to go with that, frites, or at least a good bagette to soak up all that delicious liquid. Finally drink the same wine you cooked with.

Enjoy!

It’s pretty tough to improve on the original version of Biill Withers performing Ain’t No Sunshine, seen here:

However, I came across this version by Sting on the sublime music show from the 80s, Night Music. Sting, combined with David Sanborn and with some other great musicians, perform a great version of it as well.

Enjoy both.

One of the greatest moments in hockey’s history: Bobby Orr scoring the winning goal to given the Boston Bruins the Stanley Cup. Taken from  File:Orr.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your first responsibility as a great leader is to stabilize the debt.  And if you click on that link, you will see what choices you have in front of you. Ross Douthat an American right of centre commentator at the NYTimes.com, has made his choices. You can go to the stabilize the debt site and make yours. If you are going to be honest, you should make hard choices and reflect that if you are to the left, you will have to support left-wing choices that add to the debt. Likewise, if you are right-wing, you will have to make some right wing choices and that too will add to the debt. Anyone who thinks they can just make choices that reduce the debt regardless of political pressure is not ready to be a great American politician.

Give it a try.

Alot of people are using ReclaimPrivacy.org, a Facebook Privacy Scanner. I’ve tried it and it’s pretty effective. It will give you a rundown of where you may have potential exposures, and try to take action to correct openings you may want to close. Highly worthwhile to check this out.

Easy: just use my Yahoo! Pipe here: Pipes: NYTimes-The-Moment-High-Low. It combines the RSS feed from the Men’s and Women’s fashion on The Moment blog on the NYTimes.com, then it filters out everything but items that contain “high low”.

The benefit of this is that if you are simply interested in great fashion bargains, you don’t have to wade through everything else.

Also, if you use iGoogle or My Yahoo, you can get it on those pages too. Heck, there are lots of ways Yahoo Pipes will deliver it to you. Check them all out! And if you find this useful, please let me know.

The Obama administration continues to take the lead when it comes to using the latest technology. Not only do they take the lead, but they succeed. Their latest effort is moving the site Recovery.gov to Amazon’s cloud (reported on O’Reilly Radar). Anyone looking to move parts or all of their site to a cloud should consider this, as well as read the article, which provides some interesting facts as to why they’ve done this.

can be seen here

If that’s too small, click on this. As you can see: quite alot.

I had always suspected that our oldest citizens drive Buicks. It was confirmed in this article by David Olive on the surprising rebound of GM and Chrysler in the Toronto Star.

Recently, it turns out…

“GM’s decision not to renew its Tiger Woods endorsement contract is a key sign of a culture change essential to GM’s long-term prospects.

Tiger Woods and golf were the wrong message for Buick. During Woods’ long association with Buick, the average age of Buick owners rose to 72.

Liberated from appealing to older consumers, GM has outfitted its latest Buick LaCrosses and Regals with satellite navigation systems and DVD players important to the younger couples and family buyers to whom Buick strongly appealed only two decades ago. Thanks to that and sharper design, the average age of Buick owners has quickly dropped to 65.

So, the average age has dropped from 72 to 65. I guess that is progress of a sort. But I also had the morbid thought that maybe the older owners just, well, died. Or the owners in their 70s didn’t like all that stuff GM was putting in their Buicks and switched to something else. (Cadillac?)

Actually, I have rented Buicks before and I liked them. But I also thought: I can see why older people like to drive them. Soon enough, I will be older too: perhaps I will buy a Buick then.

Interestingly, according to the wikipedia entry, Buicks are big in China. In fact, the entire wikipedia entry is interesting. Take a look. And also, David Olive’s column is typically good.

John Ibbitson makes two mistakes in his otherwise good article, Parliament takes another step toward being a true arm of government inThe Globe and Mail. First up, he says this:

For 24 years, from 1980 to 2004, majority governments ruled at the federal level. Successive prime ministers used those majorities to expand their own powers at the expense of their party caucus and Parliament itself….

Cabinet ministers were turned into ciphers; parliamentary committees became rubber stamps; the opposition was demonized or ignored.

It’s the part in bold that I think was a mistake. While PM have expanded the powers of the PMO, ministers, at least in the Chretien government, were anything but ciphers. As I recall, Chretien was consistent in having his ministers be front and center on the files that they were working on. I saw an awful lot of Allan Rock and Paul Martin in the days that the Liberals held consecutive majorities. In general, good ministers have a way of getting out there. Bad ones, not so much. (Or in a bad way).

Second, he says this:

There have been mistakes. The attempt in 2008 to force a coalition government on the Canadian people was an adolescent effort by the opposition to wield its newfound power. As coalition negotiations in London this week demonstrated, voters expect the party with the most seats to be part of the government.

I don’t think this is true, either. Stating categorically what voters want is a losing game. But in terms of preferences, I think what voters want first is good government. And if good government can come as a result of the smaller parties joining together, most voters would prefer that.

I also find this mistake ironic, since I believe Ibbitson is not a big fan of first past the post. I thought he would have said, voters expect the party with the most votes to be part of the government.

Otherwise, a good article.

2004 live version:

1984ish live version:

From Sunshine+Design. When…

…Architects Martín Fernández de Lema and Nicolás F. Moreno Deutsch weren’t allowed to remove any trees on the grounds of this Buenos Aires spot [they went aboutw with a] design of the house was built around the landscape using poured concrete and slabs of wood.

Here’s one great example of the result:

Sunshine+Design has more great shots of the house.

If you don’t get it, well…then, it’s not likely for you.

From ReflectionOf.Me.

Check this out: Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options – Graphic – NYTimes.com. It also says that “Facebook says it wants to offer precise controls for sharing on the Internet.”. Frankly, that is nonsense. Facebook no doubt has many highly competent developers on staff. And any good developer would tell you that rather than have to make those settings at a lower level – as depicted in the diagram – you could be provided with the ability to set things at a higher level. For example, you should be able to have a “Friends Only” for each and every setting and have that set all at once. Facebook could then go through and make all those privacy settings to “Friends Only” all at once.

Instead, my belief is that Facebook sets those things to be public, and then makes YOU go through each and every one of those settings. Most people will not bother or give up.

That’s just one example of the bamboozlement. The fact that it’s privacy statement is so long is another.

Sad.

Or at least, there is an Oversharing Backlash based on this post on The Daily Dish  By Andrew Sullivan. His post has a rundown on how younger people are reining in the amount of sharing they are doing via the Internet. Some of this could be attributed to sharing fatigue (i.e. maybe people are tired of blogging). Some could also be attributed to younger people growing up and feeling that with more responsibility, the need to act more responsible on the ‘Net is greater. But I also think some of that is a growing awareness that the need to protect one’s privacy is important.

I expect to see more on this meme in the upcoming months. If someone is smart, they will come up with better privacy in the social networks they create. If they do, they could turn Facebook into the next MySpace / Friendster / AOL.

..and a — ahem — appropriate comment to get with it.

Wednesday music should not be too up tempo, but it shouldn’t be too quiet. To me, it should be something like…well, these two pieces:

First up is Finley Quaye and Your Love Gets Sweeter Everyday. It reminds me in parts of Sam Cooke, Van Morrison and Fine Young Cannibals. How can you not listen?

Second to no one is Melanie Fiona doing Cupid on Billboard.com’s Mashup Mondays (Melanie is great, but those video overlays are so annoying…look away)

Both songs have good vocals and good acoustic guitar work.

Hey, there’s a few more hours of work until Friday: these tunes will help you get there.

BlogTO.com has a run down of the Best Greasy Spoons in Toronto, and I have to say that, having eaten in many of them, they have a really good list. If anything, it is a bit of a disservice to call them “greasy” spoons, since many of them have tastier food than you will find in alot of fast food joints or pubs. Plus these diners have plenty of charm and are often in great locations. As the article says, these types of establishments are fading fast. Get out a grab a club or an open faced sandwich while you still can.

I would also add Sunset Grill: it does mainly breakfast, but the cooking style is in line with these other places. And if you are ever in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, you have to go to Mike’s, my all time favourite restaurant service just this style of food. Delicious!

It certainly looks like it, based on this recent work in T.O.

I’ve seen his work referenced on a few sites, but I wanted to point to Show & Tell Gallery because they are also a site you want to see for more than just Banksy. Check ’em out. They have more Banksy images, as well as more on the work of the artists they represent.

Monday morning is coming. You need something to fire you up! Try this: Buraka Som Sistema – Sound of Kuduro

This post on rocket.ly,  Why You Should Still Quit Facebook, and in particular, these alternatives:

I am not aware of any good solutions for privacy in social media. Facebook has expressly moved away from providing one. But there are plenty of good opt-out solutions. Twitter works fine for status updates. For photos, we’ve had Flickr for years. For video, YouTube. For link sharing, Digg. I’ve picked these because they are all independent companies, but there are dozens of solutions for sharing social media.

This article about a young woman who wears a niqab while in parts of Yemen (Los Angeles Times) is revealing in a way that the niqab is concealing. Reading about the …

“..20-year-old university student Layla Asda decided to wear the face-covering veil niqab, her father went ballistic. A relatively secular artist, he told her that the black cloak made her look like an old woman.

Still she continued to wear it, even though her family opposed it.”

..what I thought was how much wearing the niqab for this person is about protection and the negation of identity. I thought that was interesting. I also thought it was sad. I don’t think anyone should live in any society and be afraid for themselves, or to think that need to hide their identity. I had expected to hear she wears it more to promote an identity, a personal identity or an identification with a group. I had expected to hear more positive reasons to wear it. At least in this interview, those did not come across. I wonder if there are interviews with women who have a more positive outlook when it comes to wearing this.

This is Leonard Nimoy using Twitter. It’s from twitpic and they force this bad quality if you embed it on your blog. That said, I like this photo, but what I really like is how he and William Shatner and others of older generations tweet. For example, with this photo, he tweeted: Me “Tweeting” to everyone in my studio. LLAP. William Shatner does something similar, where they both make a tweet almost a letter or a note. (LLAP, live long and prosper, is his signoff). Leonard Nimoy has adopted the technology, but he still maintains conventions of communicating that is different than people of younger generations. You can see generation differences in how people communicate using social media, even though there is a degree of overlap forced on them by the constraints of the technology.

(This photo is property of Leonard Nimoy)

Frank Rich has a scathing column,  They Don’t Report. You Don’t Have to Decide on the NYTimes.com in which he criticizes the mainstream media for it’s poor coverage of the Times Square bomb scare, where they were yucking it up with the President  at the White House Correspondents Dinner instead of breaking to report on the breaking news event. There are a number of indirect criticisms in the column, but the overall impression is that Rich thinks today’s journalists are so busy celebrating themselves that they can’t be bothered to actually do their jobs. At first I thought it was a bit unfair, but then I came across this photo from the blog Sunshine + Design:

Then I thought: Frank Rich, as he always does, has a point. It reminded me of this photo from another great blog, Iconic Photos. It’s of nine European kings, taken in 1910, at the funeral of the English King, Edward VII:

Also at the funeral was an Emperor, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. By the end of the decade, most of these Kings were swept away. The same may be true with the Media Kings above, and the media empires they represent. Especially if they don’t smarten up and deal with the changes that are coming along and threaten to sweep them away as well.

Face it: you have likely told one of these three lies…