new blog

Where will this show up, I wonder?

Anyway, NEW BLOG:

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fish -> birds?

We were discussing the first land animals in historical geology today, having learned about the first land plants yesterday.

The teacher asked if we knew what some of the first land animals were, and one girl guessed birds. I'm not kidding. How do you possibly make the connection that sea creatures sprouted wings and started flying in air?

Tha answer that he was looking for was amphibians, of course. Insects were also early land colonizers.

what is music?

"And it's not even close to music, but it reminds me of the way I felt when I heard the album."

From this post by Seth Godin.

Something about that one line really touched me. I don't want to forget about it, so posting it here for future reference.

The Brothers K

I have a book here that I'm afraid to read.

It's The Brothers K, by David James Duncan, and it's received nothing but stellar reviews on Amazon. It's about baseball (I think) and I usually enjoy well-written baseball books.

So why am I afraid to read it? I'm afraid it will be a disappointment and won't measure up to his first novel, The River Why, which was the best book I read in 2004. Possibly the best book I read in the three year span from 2002 to 2004.

The River Why was about appreciation of nature, coming of age, and fishing. It was funny, it was sad, it made me cry. And by the end of the book I felt like a different person.

I'm afraid to read The Brothers K because I don't think it can possibly measure up.

Leaky condos

Hrm, this Firefox nightly doesn't seem to like the Blogger compose thing!

I wrote an essay for my Canadian urban geography course about the impacts of the leaky condo crisis on the urban development of Vancouver and Victoria, and I got 25/25. Yippee!

Some background...

Due to some ill-thought-out changes to the building code and an economic boom that resulted in hurried construction, approximately 100,000 condo units were built in British Columbia from 1985 to 1999 that had severe problems with leakage. In many of these buildings, the exterior wood frame of the building literally rotted away. The cost to repair each unit is on average $25,000, so the total cost to repair all leaky condos is $2.5 billion. This ain't chump change.

And yet, there has been very little study done on the implications of the leaky condo crisis, as it is known. The ongoing saga was covered extensively in the local media, of course, but they did not focus on long-term implications at all.

I didn't expect this. When I chose the topic, I expected there would be a few books or at least academic articles that I could get my hands on for some ideas. Instead, there was very little written, and I actually had to think and analyse the situation myself. *gasp*

One very interesting thing that I noticed was that the leaky condo crisis caused different things to happen in Vancouver than it did in Victoria, due to unique conditions in the two cities. I'll modify and shorten the essay and post it here.

eye contact

"Normally, one makes eye contact one-quarter to one-half of the time."

From this article.

I'm unusual there, I guess... I think I maintain eye contact around 80% of the time when I'm talking to someone. Provided it isn't in a situation such as while driving, on a walk, or so on.