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Art Gallery for iPod

If you’re looking for a great affordable app for you iPod check out Green Robot’s Art Gallery Premium in the Entertainment Category. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a collection of over 7200 fine art images that you can browse. The app is simple, uncluttered and lets you create a library of favorites or save images to your local photo album.

What makes Art Gallery so interesting to me though is the broad diversity of images available, from stone age sculpture and Renaissance masters to Roger Dean album art and contemporary street art, installation and photgraphy. It’s rare to see such an inclusive collection, in any medium of presentation.

There’s a free version of Art Gallery available, but why on earth would anyone want something for free when you can pay to support good work?

You can also get more info about Green Robot’s Art Gallery Premium at their Facebook page, http://apps.facebook.com/artgallery/

Tech Myths that Just Won’t Die

Superstition isn’t just for old-world peasants – it’s part of our natures. For one generation, that tendency manifests as the belief that Protestants have cloven hooves (I’m not kidding: my grandmother grew up with that one) For another generation, it’s the story that Apple has a secret kill-switch built into your iPhone that they can use to shut you down whenever they feel like it.

Space Exploration is a Waste of Money.

• Bear Stearns: $29 Billion
• 80% share in AIG: $85 Billion
• General Stimulus Package: $150 Billion
• Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout: $300 Billion
• Proposed Bailout Package: $700 Billion
• NASA’s proposed 2009 Budget: $20.211 Billion

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Well, So What if Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?

That’s actually a fair question. It’s not like the problem is the general presence of radio waves in the aether, or that there’s such a thing as second-hand cell phone radiation that affects non-users or people who only talk a few minutes a month on their phones. On an individual level, no, it doesn’t matter much if you or I die of brain cancer or general misadventure. But if we’re talking a couple of billion people all getting brain tumors within the next ten to twenty years, then that’s a huge problem with the potential to bankrupt health care systems. And what if it turns out that limiting cell phone use to a few minutes a month is enough to mitigate the danger, potentially saving hundreds of millions of lives? Doesn’t that make it worth talking about?

Why Do Scientists Hate Technology?

One story that went quietly unnoticed in the background the last few days was that the link between cell phone use and brain cancer has now made it all the way to the stage of testimony before the US Congress. Just 8 years ago the only place you’d hear about this sort of thing was on the fringe sites like Rense, but mentioning it tended to evoke the same “What’s your fucking problem anyway?” response that people who warned about smoking got in the 50’s and 60’s.

It’ll probably take 20 more years for the message to filter down. Until then, most people will just shrug their shoulders and say “Well, I can’t get by without a cell phone”. We’ll just have to go through a couple of decades of a really big spike in brain cancers. Maybe by then we’ll have those cool new nano…things everyone’s talking about and brain cancer won’t be a big deal. Maybe.

In a Heartbeat

Much as I love my iPod touch and would love to upgrade to an iPhone, I have no particular loyalty to a company that still won’t let us perform as basic a function as cut and paste. Oh, the code’s in there all right, it’s just that Apple either can’t figure out why on earth anyone would want to cut and paste, or they simply feel that cutting and pasting don’t align with their vision of the iPhone’s primary purpose: the impulse-driven downloading and consumption of media.

It’s not that I have any great love for Google either, but at least Android, their would-be iPhone killer is based on an understanding that real people – as opposed to the imaginary hipsters who live in Steve Jobs’ head -  want to do more with their devices than just watch YouTube and passively surf.

Lies. All Lies.

Space exploration key to mankind’s survival: NASA chief

No! Space exploration is an arrogant extension of patriarchal imperialism, a relic of the cold war and a squandering of dwindling resources that distracts us from the exploration of our inner selves. Once we all become vegans and practice mass voluntary sterlization, we’ll be at peace with the earth and won’t feel this insane need to rape the cosmos.

Vitamins can Kill You, Say Unamed Scientists in Unspecified Report

Top Five Secret Reasons You May Need More Vitamin C

And don’t forget reason number 6: the unattractive appearance and obvious decreptitude of people who don’t get enough vitamin C – or any, in the case of a college roomate of mine who ended up in the emergency room diagnosed with the early stages of scury. Yes, scurvy.

Two Things I’ll Never Get Used to Down Here

Child beggars and packs of schoolchildren piled into the open backs of pickup trucks on the freeway.

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Haven’t been posting many images lately. My brain doesn’t seem to have been operating in that mode for the last few weeks. Sometimes though, all I see is images, and everything else is just noise.

“people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad.”

And the most likely to be endlessly blathering finger-wagging scolds, btw. There’s a rationalization mechanism that comes into play with activists and ethical preachers. People feel that because they buy Goretex hiking boots from Mountain Equipment Coop instead of t-shirts at the GAP – like those other BAD consumers -  they’ve earned the right to treat themselves. Carbon rationing is for the little people.

I’ve seen this in action with countless friends and acquaintances so I’m not willing to say “maybe” it’s the case. It just is. I’m sure the people who flew first class to the Bali climate conference, slept in air-conditioned rooms and sipped drinks with little umbrellas made of dead trees by the poolside convinced themselves they were doing a net good for the planet too. The human capacity for self-delusion is truly bottomless.

Updated: Why yes, as a matter of fact, I DO fly several times a year and sip umbrella drinks by the poolside. Sometimes I even run my laundry through a dryer. But I don’t tell myself that I’m more virtuous than other people because I don’t own a car and I’m not the one running around telling other people that they should be ashamed of themselves for shopping at Wal-Mart, now am I?

It’s Everywhere

After the touristy magic spell starts to wear off, you start to notice a few unpleasant things about the place you’re living. For example, there’s a really noticeable difference in appearance between Mexicans with an indigenous background versus those with an obvious Spanish background. After a while you observe that you never see people with a cleary Spanish appearance doing street work, or begging or doing other low-paying jobs. So after 500 years, there’s clearly, a certain level of social and economic discrimination that goes on, in spite of Mexico’s overt celebration of its indigenous cultural history. But to what extent that discrimination is systemic, or whether people are even conscious of it I can’t really say.

Canadian Cuisine

People here in Guadalajara keep asking me what “Canadian Food” is like. I’m not even sure what Canadian food would be. And no, not pea soup, beaver tails and maple syrup. We’re not talking Pierre Berton’s imaginary Canada.

I usually answer that there’s no such thing as Canadian food. I lived there for 45 years. If it existed, I’m sure I would have heard about it at some point. What am I supposed to say anyway? Cheeseburgers and Pepsi? Poutine? Grilled Salmon? Sushi? Crappy pizza slices? They have all those down here (including pea soup and our oh-so-Canadian beaver tails with maple syrup, btw) Help me out here: is there a single distinctly and unmistakeably Canadian food?

Physicists Should Never be Allowed to Name Things

Which is why the Large Hadron Collider, perhaps the most unimaginatively named device in history is now called Halo.

Progress

As of this morning I’ve matched the lowest weight I achieved last summer, and I’m a whopping 41 pounds lighter than I was at my fattest ever weight about a year and a half ago. That’s put me within 15 pounds of what I think will be my ideal weight of 80 kilograms or 175 pounds.

The last thing I want to hear is that “The last ten pounds are the hardest to lose”. That’s an old wives tale. A pound is a pound is a pound. It reperesents 3500 calories whether your 45 pounds overweight or 5. What makes it harder to lose those last few stubborn kilograms is that when people think they’re doing well and are within sight of their goal, they tend to cheat more and feel that they should “reward” themselves for all they’ve accomplished.

I’m more confident that the weight I’ve lost will be easier to keep off this time around because I’ve lost it more gradually and at a fairly even pace. I also haven’t been “dieting” really, just following a few simple rules. I try never to eat anything two hours before I go to bed. I try to drink a minimum of three liters of water a day, and I try to make lean protein about a third of my diet, with at least another third consisting of vegetables and fruit, with carbs counting for less than 10% of everything I eat in a day. I also take a double dose of B-complex vitamins, one in the morning and one at night.

Finally, and most important, I try to get 8 hours of sleep a night, at as close as possible to the same time every night. There are a ton of weight-management hormones, such as cortisol, that are only produced when you’re asleep. A lack of cortisol seems to be what makes your body think that accumulating stores of adbominal fat is a great idea.

Keeping your protein intake elevated is important too, because your body naturally wants to burn muscle mass before it dips into its fat stores ( intelligent design!) It also helps your skin stay flexible and allows it to shrink. If you’ve ever seen people who’ve lost a lot of weight and have that dessicated face look while their bodies look like a half-full bag of tapioca – not enough protein.

Changeless Montreal

Alec McClymont has posted some cool panoramas of his recent cross-Canada trip, including some of Montreal, where I lived for over 7 years. I haven’t been back to Montreal in over a decade, but I was amazed to see from these panoramas how essentially unchanged the city’s skyline is – compared to so many cities like Vancouver that have been transformed beyond all recognition during the last ten years. When I was living there, Montreal was in an economic slump caused by all that scary ultra-fascist separatist crap. Is that still going on? Or have they finally figured out that histrionic political rhetoric actually has real-world consequences?

“The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.”

Well. Good luck with that.

The problem is that people don’t just spread misinformation because they’re misinformed. In most cases, people spread lies because they enjoy doing it. They want to see how much damage they can cause. You spread rumors about certain vaccines being harmful to children. Some children who don’t get a critical vaccine end up getting sick and dying – COOL! You made something happen!

In order to combat that kind of sleaze, you’d need a pretty militant and powerful bureaucracy going around policing everything from science sites and political blogs to bullshit tech rumors on Digg and Drudge’s shock headlines. Is the net that pathetic that it needs that kind of oversight?

But Enough About the American Elections

Let’s talk about the Canadian election instead. Specifically, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton promising to stand up to the evil corporations and whining about the Conservative government’s 50 billion dollar corporate tax cut. I guess that sounds like a good thing on paper, if you’re a first year political science student playing at being an activist to get the cool chicks. Thing is, almost ALL small businesses in Canada are effectively required to be corporations – Revenue Canada doesn’t leave you much choice in that regard. So Mondolithic Studios which is a two person company consisting of myself and Kenn greatly appreciated our little share of that 50 billion dollar tax cut, thank you very much. But according to Mr. Man of the People Layton, we’re Stephen Harper’s boardroom buddies. We’re the enemy. So is every little mom and pop incorporated business in Canada.

You can’t have it both ways, Layton.  When you talk about corporations in Canada, by default you’re talking about small business, which is the keystone of the Canadian economy – not just big tar sands mega corporations and banking institutions. Large corporations operate under precisely the same rules and tax laws as our little two man company, or your local corner grocery store. They just operate on a larger scale. At what precise point on the spectrum of scale do they become exploitative parasitical entities?