Category: Uncategorized

Self-righteous neo-luddism rears its ugly head: The Guardian’s George Monbiot, favourite whipping boy for warbloggers, conservabloggers and bloggers who’d have called Darth Vader a “liberal nancy-boy”, has managed to get up my centrist nose with an op-ed piece titled A Weapon With Wings. In the article, Monbiot says that we should be mourning, not celebrating, the upcoming centenary of the Wright Brothers’ flight.

Really, George, if you want to talk about technological advances that have caused suffering, you might as well go back to first principles and blame hay (which enabled year-round horse travel), the wheel, fire or writing.

I haven’t got time to comment on the ridiculousness of his article. Unlike Monbiot, I have a real job. But go ahead: read it and take in the journo-guano, if you dare.

If George doesn’t want airplane blood on his hands, he can feel free to give me any frequent flyer points he’s accumulated. I’m sure I can put them to good use.

It’s congratulations day here at The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

The next person whom I must congratulate is my housemate Paul Baranowski, who received his black belt in taekwondo last night. Now he’s really earned the nickname we’ve given him, the Drunken Master.

Congrats, Paul! If I ever have to assemble a team of misfit heroes to save the world, I’m going to pick you as the martial arts expert with the tragic hippie past.

I’ll post the pictures plus some pretty amazing video of “Triple B” in action later tonight.

Yesterday, my friends George (whom I’ve known for sixteen years) and Alicia (to whom I was introduced eleven years ago) became a family of three with the addition of a 7-pound, 15-ounce baby boy named Henry Gherardi Scriban. Both Leesh and Hank (Can I call him that, George? “Hank Scriban” got a ring to it) are doing fine and taking it easy at resting at NYU Medical Center.

Congrats, George and Leesh, and welcome to the world, Henry!

The good news:

A restaurant is making it easier to eat low-carb when eating out: they’ve introduced a new Atkins-approved line of foods to their menu.

The bad news:

That restaurant is T.G.I. Fridays.

Okay,okay, there’s nothing terribly wrong with T.G.I. Friday’s; it’s just that it reminds me too much of the restaurant in Office Space, where Jennifer Aniston plays a waitress who is scolded for not wearing enough pieces of “flair.” It just reeks of the sort of place where you’d eat if you worked in a cheesy suburban office park.

The strange coincidence:

I know a charming young woman who is in international business development. She is responsible for bringing T.G.I. Fridays to Central Europe.

The statement “no two countries with a McDonald’s have ever gone to war” is no longer true — the US/Serbia conflict negated that one. Perhaps T.G.I. Fridays can keep the peace where McDonald’s failed.

The Canadian news:

The Atkins site now has an Atkins Canada section. It has the headline: “Living the controlled-carb lifestyle in Canada,” which is a dead giveaway that whoever wrote it doesn’t understand us.

I would have written it as “Low-carb, eh? Give ‘er!“

For the love of God, please let this thing be a joke:

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: 

Mount your laptop or notebook to your car’s steering wheel and catch up on all your work while out in the field. Ideal for outside field sales and service professionals, real estate executives, students, etc.  ARKON’s Executive Laptop Steering Wheel Mount will hold ALL portable laptops up to 10 Lbs. in weight.  A ball point pen included conveniently attaches to the underside of the base of the mount.  The laptop steering wheel mount is very portable.  It conveniently folds up and can be stored under the seat while not in use.

First came the Clarke Axiom, named after the guy who coined it, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Now we have Maciej Ceglowski’s brilliant quip from the #joiito IRC channel:

Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from Canada.

Clever, and at least partly true.

My favourite neocalvinist, Gideon Strauss, isn’t afraid to ask some Pretty Big Questions. It’s food for thought, and stuff like this is why I like reading him so much.

If only he were into gangsta rap. Then I could buy him two brass knuckles — one with the word FAITH and the other with the word REASON (along the lines of “Radio Raheem’s” LOVE and HATE brass knuckles in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing). I think they’d suit him. He could even use them to bang loudly on his desk when his students aren’t paying attention.