As Canadian get ready for an election this came by my mail box today. Pretty good read, unfortunately.

CLASSIC VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper
has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE END

THE CANADIAN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks

he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. So far, so good, eh?

The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know
why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less
fortunate, like him, are cold and starving.

The CBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering
grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm

home with a table laden with food.

Canadians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The NDP, the CAW and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in
front of the ant’s house. The CBC, interrupting an Inuit cultural festival
special from Nunavut with breaking news, broadcasts them singing

“We Shall Overcome.”

Sven Robinson rants in an interview with Pamela Wallin that the ant has
gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate
tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share”.

In response to polls, the Liberal Government drafts the Economic
Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the

beginning of the summer.

The ant’s taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire
grasshoppers as helpers.

Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed
retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The ant moves to the US, and starts a successful agribiz company.

The CBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the
ant’s food, though Spring is still months away, while the government
house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles
around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it.

Inadequate government funding is blamed, Roy Romanow is appointed to
head a commission of enquiry that will cost $10,000,000.

The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Toronto
Star blames it on the obvious failure of government to address the root

causes of despair arising from social inequity.

The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders,
praised by the government for enriching Canada’s multicultural
diversity, who promptly set up a marijuana grow op and terrorize the

community.

THE END

I quite enjoyed the Sunday edition of the New York Times - here are a couple gems.

You need an account with the NY Times (it’s free), so sign-up or use BugMeNot or if you use Mozilla (Firefox) use the BugMeNot extension.

Here is one from Ben Stein; monotone teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , lawyer, economist and presidential speech writer - Don’t Beat Up on Big Oil. It’s Just Doing Its Job.

Here is one on Little Italy and what it was like at the turn of the century - for those that have been in this part of NYC this is a great article, if you not been here, it is still really good. “The Smell of Hope” By MELANIA G. MAZZUCCO

People look at me oddly when I tell them that Manhattan was more densely populated at the turn of the century. I agree that this seems odd as when you are here you see large apartment buildings that are 40 - 50 stories tall and the old buildings that are from the early 1900’s are generally not higher than 10 stories. Well according to this, and I would hazard a guess it is somewhat accurate Manhattan reached the height of its population in 1910.

Population density of Manhattan “In 1910, it reached a peak to 46,428.9/km²”. 46,000 + people in a square kilometer, or 2,762,522 people in Manhattan!

In the 2000 census the population was only 1,537,195 or a population density of 25,849.9/km².

If my back of the napkin math is right, Manhattan had a population almost 80% higher than it is today! Granted there are a lot of tourist and such here that perhaps would not have been here in the turn of the century given that it was much more difficult to travel the globe at that time.

Here are some photo’s from our trip to Redwoods. They are late in coming, I forgot that I did not post them. I still have photo’s from when Douglas rented a plane and we flew over Manhattan… they will be posted at some point as well…

Bridge in San Francisco, I snuck into the city while I waited for NAN!.

Fire, cause I like fire.

Big tree, little NAN!.

After a good solid marathon finish, nothing like a cup of Joe and a cigarette.

We did a little back packing trip into Desolation Wilderness, it was great and super quiet and secluded.

NAN! in camp.

NAN! reading.

My best attempt at looking like a criminal… it wasn’t on purpose but I look like a sleaze bag.

NAN! - the ninja.

NAN! the photographer.

Absolute tranquility. No wind, no birds, no insects, no noise… “So quiet you can hear your ears.” This might be as calm I have seen water, it was neat.

WARNING: Geek Post!

Okay, I have a new look and feel, a new name, a new tag line and the site is no longer in Beta - which really was just a reminder to me to finish my little project as the other one didn’t feel finished.

Here are some of the little items we’ve taken care of:

• New Name - There was nothing random about my thoughts before, and there likely isn’t going to be so the name didn’t work. I won’t provide a summary or reason for the new name - you get to infer your own - or postulate by posting a comment.
• New Look - I think this is cleaner; although I am not sure that I like the font color on the background, might not be the most readable for longer posts. Let me know what you think.
• The body of the page is wider, this will make for less scrolling down.
• Updated the side links - I’ll try and do a better job of letting you know what is in the 8-track and bookshelf (the bookshelf will remain static for quite some time as Atlas Shrugged is quite a tomb.) I lost both the Road to Serfdom and Cadillac Desert as I left them on planes. So that including Don Coxe’s book, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and a few others have all been donated…. I hate losing books.
• Reduced the number of posts on the main page - 10 was too much if I had posts with lots of pictures. It is now 5.
• There is a search, not sure why this is important but put in weird words and see if I have used them
• Started tracking stats for the site using Google Analytics - not cause I drive massive traffic but it has a neat map that shows the globe and where people are reading from. Once I collect some more data I will post the map up. I have been using myWebStats but I will slowly stop using that.
• I am uncertain if I should add an image to the header or if the stylized font is good enough - I think I like it how it is but post comments and I might add a pic from the library. (The title is generated on the fly using GD. I have no idea what that means, but I had to putz around in PHP a tiny bit to get the description on there… I’m a hack.)

So some questions:

1. Picture or no Picture on the header?
2. Font - the primary is Optima - which looks great, so Mac users get the best result! I don’t know how many Windows users will have this font installed, but I suspect not many. Here is the order of preference - on fonts “Optima, Lucida Grande, Monaco, Verdana, serif”. If there is a font that the Windows world out there would like to have let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
3. Is this better or should I go back to the old one?
4. How many people think NAN! should post more than once every leap year?

I figure I’ll post a short review of the concert last night.

Ryan Adams was good, he was wasted and was not very well organized on stage - I do think that I will purchase a few of his albums. I no longer am happy just having a single album from an artist as it doesn’t seem long enough, 2 - 3 is the sweet spot, I can just put the iPod on play and I have 2 - 3 hours of the same artist - when I have 6 albums like I do for Pearl Jam - I listen to them less as there is no easy way to select 2 - 3 of the albums and 6 is too much.. I’m weird.

The concert hall was stunning. It was at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side. Here is a little description of the Theater:

“Opened in 1928, the Beacon Theater was originally a vaudeville hall. Then it became a “movie palace” with the advent of talkies. Now a nationally registered Art Deco landmark, the theater presents both stage and music performances for almost three decades. It’s an ideal place to catch national rock acts before they play arenas, as well as dramatists and rap, gospel and world music acts.”

The interior was stunning and bold - I wish we had more courage in the buildings and theaters that we put up today - they simply don’t seem to have the impact… I wonder if that is what folks said in 1928 about the Beacon.

The crowd covered an amazing cross section of demographics, generations, and incomes. There were young 18 year old punkers in the crowd with noise rings to seemingly wealthy seniors out for a nice evening to sit and watch Willie and everything in between - from a Willie Nelson look a like, to the hipster sitting beside me with his sunglasses on through the whole show and smelling of enough pot that I almost felt high.

The crowd went nuts, each in there own way, when Willie came onto the stage. I had no expectation other than he would be an old dude and sitting 4 rows from the stage I knew I would get a close look. The other thing that I was really excited to see was the famous hole in his guitar (remember I’m wierd).

Well Willie came on stage looking like a bit different than my stereotype of him, he was more plump. He was sporting a black cowboy hat, black jeans worn like a 70 year old man wears his jeans (he appears to have missed the low rises jean fad - he prefers them nice and high). Willie pounded through the first 5 songs and did not seem into it. By the time his second set rolled around he was in a groove and putting on quite a show, he impressed me with his dexterity and the ability to hammer out solo’s on his guitar. He hit lots of his popular songs, including Crazy (DeAnn, it was early on so he did just an okay job of it).

Overall it was a good show, he could have been more into it and could have played for longer, but what he did play was done well and it was a good experience to get to watch him from so close.

One of the things that I am beginning to really enjoy about NYC is just being able to go and see entertainment at a whim that in other areas you would wait and look forward to for months. This is good for someone who doesn’t like to plan too much.

I’m not sure I’ll have much more of an update before I head back to Calgary at the end of the month - I’ll try and do something interesting and post about it.