Premier Dalton McGuinty is to announce today that clotheslines can no longer be banned in subdivisions or almost anywhere else in the province. I can’t say I know very much about the clothesline ban other than it’s mostly based on aesthetics. Apparently it’s built into the contract buyers sign with the builder. The idea behind the change is to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions. Unfortunately I don’t think our culture is ready to go back to the clothesline full time. I’m sure people might take advantage of a nice sunny Saturday or Sunday afternoon with a portable drying rack (which I’m sure they already do) but I don’t think people are going to be chomping at the bit to install full blown clotheslines, or even a Hills Hoist, despite the fun entertainment it can provide to any weekend gathering.
Archive for April, 2008 Page 2 of 4
More than 90,000 online pages of Charles Darwin’s photographs, sketches, and manuscripts, including the first draft of his theory of evolution. My hand writing might be childish but at least it’s very readable. I’ve never had an easy time reading handwriting from any document pre-1930.
Ran across this ridiculous sidewalk chalk drawing.
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From this photostream, but not his drawing.
Almost 4 months back in Canada and I still find my self floating to the left side of sidewalks when I’m out walking. I guess I should take heart in the fact that this habit does not translate to the road.
Pound-for-pound gonorrhea is the strongest bacterium ever, able to pull with a force 100,000 times it’s body mass. That’s a strong meatball — err — organism.
A new brain scan study showed that a brain scanner knew what a person was going to do 7 seconds before they actually did it. Scott Adams is happy becuase he often talks about the illusion of free will on his blog.
On May 10, 2008 at 18:00 GMT organizers will kick off the first Pangea Day, a global event bringing the world together through film. The premise of the global event is to screen 24 films from around the world over a 4h period. There will be events held in most cities around the world, but I suspect most people will tune in over the Internet.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.
Pangea is the name given to the landmass that existed some 250 million years ago, when the continents we know today existed as one. A noble undertaking to say the least, I will be checking it out to see what is going on.
An innovative take on placing geo-tagged photos into Google Earth. Currently it’s possible, with a bit of manual labour, to geo-tag your photos and get them to show up at the correct coordinates in Google Earth. The problem is that they just sit in a pile on the screen. Flat. The premise behind Viewfinder is that they somehow orientate the image so that it meshes seamlessly with the terrain in the right perspective. Learn more from the site for the project. The NY Times also had an interesting write up about the project in a recent article.
An Amazonian tribe, the Surui, have joined forces with Google to use their high-resolution satellite images to combat illegal logging. The tribe didn’t venture out of the Amazon until the later half of the 20th-century, but apparently are on the cutting edge of technology, using GPS to navigate trails in the area. Nice.
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