for everything, spin, spin, spin

Only these days could you take the data from the same poll (albeit one with a plethora of questions covering every subject regarding the next year) and come up with two stories with exactly opposite headlines: Americans optimistic for 2007, and Americans see gloom, doom in 2007.

(with a tip o' the hat to fark)

Also, happy New Year! They burn effigies down here for the celebration! Plus, of course, fireworks. Go effigies! Actually, I remember ringing in the New Year last year with a friend from Ecuador, and his family would always burn an effigy, symbolizing getting rid of all the bad things in the year past. It must've looked pretty weird to the locals, having a group of foreigners suddenly appear on the part to light a doll on fire, watch it burn, then scramble out like a sloppy Marine extraction.

two years and unforgotten

Each place has it's own tragedy to be remembered. Obviously, for NYC, it's 9/11. Taiwan has the 9/21 earthquake (the giant one in 1999), China has the Tiananmen Square Massacre (though it's not a tragedy, according to the government, and is not remembered, going so far as the fact that it is torn out of the Lonely Planet guidebooks sold in the country), SE Asia has the '04 tsunami. In Buenos Aires, it's the tragedy of December 30th, 2004 at a little bar called Cromañon (which was, incidentally, located about 4 blocks from our apartment).

You can read all about it here, but essentially, in a New Year's celebration a couple of years ago, a night club caught on fire after people set off fireworks in the club. The club was filled with improper insulation (in some places it was teddy bear stuffing) and had a big plastic net, which promptly melted and rained fire down on the panicking crowd. The big problem: four of the six doors had been wired shut to prevent people from sneaking in. It was a big event: 3000 people were in to watch the band, and there was even an improvised nursery in an upstairs bathroom. 194 died in the resulting chaos, most from smoke and poisonous gas inhalation, and 714 were injured (according to official statistics). You probably heard about it on the news when it happened, though maybe not - it was mere days after the tsunami, after all.

The fallout was huge. People blamed everyone they could, from the government to the club owner to medical personnel to the band and so on. The club owner is now in jail. Clubs all over the city were closed for some time in order to comply with strict new safety codes, some never to reopen. The band playing that night played their first show since then in the last couple of months. The mayor at the time, Aníbal Ibarra, was accused of ignoring safety concerns and was eventually impeached from office (though I seem to remember news from around the time that we arrived clearing him of criminal charges and not imposing a ban on political activity, as some of the families had suggested. I just can't seem to find it anywhere.)

On Saturday (the anniversary), we were sitting around, checking out goth girls and the like when we heard drums from near-by Rivadavia Ave. It was a protest/rememberance march that had apparently started in protest central, aka Plaza de Mayo (where all the best protests are in the city) and marched all the way up to where the club was (a grand total of probably 20 blocks or so), passing a half a block from our apartment. It was a relatively quiet group of thousands of people (I'm not one for estimating, but I'd say more than 5,000 people went by over the course of 30 minutes or so), carrying homemade signs and giant banners. There was a definite lack of piqueteros, career protesters who usually stir up trouble when they get involved (and who have had the tide of public sentiment turn against them in the last five years as the economy has stabilized).

We went by the memorial site today, characterized by shoes hanging off ropes (the official symbol of memoriam is a pair of shoes, I haven't gotten a clear reason as to why), pictures of victims, and flowers. One man introduced us to a man who had been there, then took Chris around and explained a bit to her. Well, he actually went on about justice. I really feel for the families who lost loved ones in the fire, but other than jailing the club owner, I'm not clear on what more justice they can get. I guess the people most responsible would be those setting off the fireworks, but how can you identify them? Some want the band thrown in jail, some want police officers responding punished. I guess they just don't want their loved ones to be forgotten, a goal we can all at least sympathize with.

end of the calendar year

Happy New Year, everyone!

(click to embiggen photos)

To see the end of the year off here, everyone in office buildings tears up their yearly planners (and other documents, if what I saw on the street was to be believed. I wonder how many times that has led to a case of, "Uh, where's the Johnston contract?" on January 2nd?) and toss them out the window. It seemed like a small snowstorm downtown, and when the government office and bank next to our apartment did it late in the afternoon, a strong breeze carried all the phone numbers and appointments off down the street and into the trees. It was the most wintery thing I've seen yet.

(It would kind of suck for the guy who had to sweep the streets later on, though.)

science fun!

(all courtesy reddit

Fun with matter!. I've always loved non-Newtonian liquids. Cornstarch and water always made for fun times in my classroom with the kids as well.

The only way to win (or at least have a draw) at the Why game with a three-year-old: be a chemistry professor

Empirical proof of global warming.

on the bandwagon

Toot toot! Chris has raved about loving her photoblog so much that I decided to start my own. I don't even have time to write here, so there's no design there at all, but the simplistic works well for photoblogs, I've found.

I started this because I've found myself only photographing special occasions. Planning my photography, I guess, which isn't what I want to do. While traveling and especially in Taiwan, I enjoyed finding beauty in the ordinary. I'm still jealous that Chris can just whip out her camera and snap off a picture, while I have to dig the camera out of the backpack, take the lens cap off, focus, fiddle, and snap, then reverse the process to put it away. Hopefully this will provide for more challenge and stimulation.

I figured January 1st made a good starting point for one of these things. Get on over there and take a gander!

nuts to santa...

Down here, Santa is given lip service - most of the kids acknowledge his, uh, parentality when they're quite young. January 6th, usually called Epiphany in English, is known here as Día de los Reyes - Day of the (Three) Kings. And they totally believe in that instead!

On the night before, kids leave their shoes out (sounds like Sinterklaas, a month before!), ready and waiting for gifts of candy, nuts, and dried fruit. They also leave out a dish of water and some grass for the camels (nothing for you, kings!).

Just something a little different. This is why I like living in other cultures. I mean, who knew?

errorata on cromañon

Wouldn't you know it, just after I write about the anniversary of the Cromañon tragedy, the local paper I copy edit for comes out with a 'researched' article with the 'facts'. A few things to correct:

• There was no nursery/child care in the women's bathroom. Apparently, the men's bathroom was closed off that night and the women's bathroom was a free-for-all. Hardly room for child care. Some children did die, but they were children of people working that night.

• Emergency services did not arrive in any kind of useful numbers until two hours after the fire. Two hours.

• As to the corruption issues, it appeared that the fire department was bought off, and the trail appeared to head up to City Hall.

• A recent newspaper report found seven bars here that aren't complying the with the new strict rules, potentially setting up the possibility of this happening again.
  

Thanks to the Argentimes

35.5% of home accidents occur in the shower

Please be careful.

canadian music that's good

I still like Canadian music. There's lots of good stuff out there, but most of it never gets heard, unless you're hanging around clubs or happen across a neat-o festival or something of the sort. I've subscribed to the newsletter of Six Shooter Records for a long time, and though I haven't been in Canada to use the tour information, I don't listen to most of their artists (they're Captain Tractor's label - pick up their newest album, they've got some terrific stuff on it!), and I never enter their contests, their newsletter writer has never failed to amuse me. How can a company whose motto is "Life is too short to listen to shitty music" be bad?

Ok, so popcorn is something I understand. Cob of corn falls into fire, corn pops, caveman tries it, next thing you know we are asking for more “butter-like topping”. But how in tha heck did anyone come up with olives? From what I understand, olives are pretty much inedible unless you soak ‘em in embalmer's fluid or something (like sherm!), so how did anyone discover that? If I found an olive sitting in a bucket of lime (the white caustic alkaline kind, not the keylime pie kind), I’m pretty sure there is no way I’d be popping that thing in my mouth. The same goes for capers, how the heck did Fred Flintstone think to pickle the lil’ buds off his bramble-like southern European shrub and add ‘em to putanesca sauce? And what about cookies? Considering all the cooked food in the world, why do they get the privilege of the name Cookie?! The world makes no sense!

(an excerpt from the latest newsletter)

Also on the podium today is Zunior.com. This is how easy and cheap online music should be. I don't use the iTunes store, maybe it is already and I'm some old crank complaining about hills and snow and how kids should take more cod liver these days, I don't know, but this outfit is pretty smooth. It's specifically for Canadian independent music, which is even better - Shout Out Out Out Out, Captain Tractor, even Stuart MacLean - and almost every album is $9CDN, with sales every now and then, and a free sampler album twice a month if you subscribe to the newsletter. Not bad.

Check them out. Support Canadian music.

how history should totally be taught

Or, I Never Knew So Much about George Washington. (Caution: it's not for kids).

YouTube: teaching you stuff you never knew before. 12 stories tall? Wacky.

(Courtesy of my brother, whose birthday was just today, and whom, I'm sure, is, at this moment, at the Gentleman's club discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon in celebration.)

if this law existed today, i wouldn't be canadian

What an obscure law. I really feel for the people affected by it. Why would you have such a law, and choose such an arbitrary age?

*Oops. I can't even remember my own age. I was actually 24.5 when I left Canada. Still.

**Since I can't seem to comment on my own site (to reply to the first comment, Dad), I'll say this here:

The thing is, at least how I read the article, is that it was only for revoking citizenship of natural citizens, not for preventing immigrants from coming in. And you only had to be in the country on your 24th birthday - you could fly in two days before, leave two days after, party both weekends in Amsterdam, and still be considered a Canadian, while the person who arrived one day late was defrocked (or whatever you remove from a citizen). And no warning at all - it was all or nothing.

That's what I find so odd about it all.

Also, what's up with immigration revoking citizenships left and right lately?

saskatchewan!

It sounds like the province will soon be overrun with people, what with the new logo (which, I'm not kidding, is Saskatchewan! Just like that. Don't forget the exclamation point, the penalty is death. Also, do not use for West Nile outbreak letterhead. This is one upbeat logo that takes a punch and keeps on truckin'), the lowest house price in terms of average income, and an exciting legal dispute over Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon follow-ups (cause the owner lives in Swift Current. Probably taking advantage of the proximity effect of those low house prices).

Saskatchewan! (I like to insert jazzy hands after that.)

(Chris interjects at this point that it beats Michigan - "The Feeling's Forever")

portmanteaux

Chris has one student who speaks Korean and Spanish (being Korean, it makes sense. Just so you know, Spanish down here is usually called castellano instead of español. Also, the y or ll sound sounds like 'zh' or 'sh', rather than the everywhere-else 'y' sound) who took a phone call and spoke in a mix of the two. When she asked what he was speaking, he told her, "Korellano", even flipping the r. I don't know if it has the same effect on the web, but I have to say, it's my favourite combined language name yet.

Other language combinations I have heard of:

• Chinglish (Chinese-English) or, for foreigners, Wrongwen (wen means language in Chinese, I've spoken plenty of this)
  
• Konglish (Korean-English)
  
• Spanglish (Spanish-English, I'm almost fluent)
  
• Engrish (Japanese-English)
  
• Singlish (Singaporean-English)
  
• Franglais (French-English, I've spoken enough of this before)
  
• Denglish (German-English)

There's a tonne listed on this page of portmanteaux (God bless Wikipedia, and portmanteaux, while s/he's at it) under L. Yinglish? There's even Czenglish for my buddy Scott.

eating food

Over at the NYTimes, there's a terrific (12-page) article on our diets today by the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan. A short summary? Eat food. Mostly plants. Anything that makes nutritional claims has to because it isn't real food.

The article revolves around (though is not limited to) nutritionism - the practice of treating the individual parts of foods as the important things in the diet, rather than the foods themselves. This isn't helping our diets - people take supplements instead of eating properly and find themselves with the same problems (i.e. beta carotene taken in supplements, supposedly to reduce cancer, has been found to actually increase the chance of certain cancers appearing), food on the shelves fortified with this or that, fiber added, calcium added, etc. Even down here, we've found a it a hard time buying a regular loaf of bread - most have additives of one kind or another in them (there are some who are very health-concerned here, but only superficially. My favourite is the 'diet bread', which is the same loaf cut into thinner slices so that there are fewer calories per slice.)

One of the most poignant quotes in the article, to me, is this:

It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we’d have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That’s not what we’re doing. Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick.

This one's straight-to-the-point, too:

Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

Down here, with the huge number of tiny verluderias (vegetableries) on the street, we eat a lot of vegetables; outside of tuna, we almost never eat meat at home. We try and avoid processed foods and, despite the time it takes, prepare meals from scratch every night. It's gastronomically satisfying, even if we don't eat until 9:30 or later, to have something made with real food. I've been trying to be more aware of what I eat and where my money is going ever since I started ready some of the food blogs I pop into every now and then: Megnut, Accidental Hedonist, The Ethicurean, and some recipe blogs, including the divine Frugal Gourmet (in Edmonton!).

One of the best pieces of advice comes at the end - don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Only by getting back to real food are we going to pull ourselves out of the huge nutritional hole we've dug for ourselves.

now that's hardcore

I MUST USE ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM SO HARDCORE.

cardhouse, ho!