Torontonians shouldn’t travel. They only find out how slow and backward our city is. Lloyd Cooke made the mistake of visiting Madrid recently and created the comparison map above. The Spanish city is similar in size to ours, buy they’ve figured out how to make and fund a 21st century transit system.
We’ll get there, but by that time, it’ll be the 22nd century.

Ready reference for what’s happening and when:

I was quite pleased to capture this flyby today at Ashbridges Bay. Even got a bit of motion blur in the background as I tracked the bird. The Canada geese were completely unimpressed and the one in the middle mooned me.

I haven’t heard from these lowlifes for years, but apparently they are still out there. Hostpapa just sent warnings to its customers. (BBB report)
The scam involves sending out what look like invoices asking for absurdly high prices to “renew” a registered domain name. It’s just an attempt to get people to pay far too much for domain registration. Even though the renewal form looks “official” it’s not. See a sample below.

Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know now how pervasive government snooping is … beyond legal, but laws and constitutions aren’t stopping them. It might be best to simply get off the internet and ditch mobile phones altogether, but most of us won’t. So let’s at least try to Reset the Net and stiffen our resistance.
Get your privacy tools here.

Here’s our reasoning:

1. The other parties suck
2. The Green Party has some good ideas
3. The mainstream parties may steal those ideas
4. Greens have influence, seats or no seats

The potluck get-together is good too, but what I like is the poster. So much better than we would once have expected for a local community event. We have had the means for a long time, but few have seized the opportunity to exploit all of the great, free graphics we have at our disposal. To whomever brightened my day with this refreshing announcement, thank you.

Wasn’t that the driest, dullest bickerfest you ever heard? I couldn’t stand to stay through the whole contrivance, but I saw enough. My vote is going to the unrepresented Green Party, and not as a protest vote, either.

I hope the Greens get at least one seat so we can hear something other than uninspired sloganeering delivered by dead parrots.

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Only 3 shots from the back room of the Flying Pony Café turned out so that’s all I have to show of the latest installation. (Oh, good! You can see them better here.) This month, there’s variety … not the work of one artist, but many, from the Engine Gallery.
I liked a painting by Margaret Glew, oil on canvas priced at $3800, that reminded me of Cy Twombly‘s work. It’s in one of the slides. Artist Howard Day filled a wall with 24×30 canvases, priced according to the row they were in. $750-$1200 each. The nude is by William Lazoz. 40″x60″, $9500.

People who know me might not be surprised to learn that we seemed to have quite a bit in common. (Facebook login required) Michelle Power clowns professionally … not the kiddy party stuff … edgy, burlesquey, serious clowning. She also writes, and that’s what got us chatting at the Flying Pony Café.
Michelle was planning to write up the bronze sculpture I just wrote about below. Using the café wifi, I showed her my blog and Ben Viccari’s write-up from 2010, too.
Funny fact: Danica and I have seen Michelle at work, though we’d never have recognized her out of zombie makeup. She was one of the creatures pawing at the windows of the diner when we went to see Diner Her at the George Street Diner last year.