The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I still have to use the sizable gift certificate for GotStyle that sister and brother-in-law gave me for my birthday. So which outfit should I get — the shirt/tie combo with the exact same colour and pattern, or should I rock out like the guy on the left with the “Old-school Fred from Scooby-Doo” neck kerchief and Bay City Rollers hairdo?

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

That’s right — DemoCamp, the gathering of the bright lights of Toronto’s tech community takes place in a couple of weeks! Here are the details:

• When: Monday, February 25th, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (Doors typically open around 5 – 5:30)
• Where: Toronto Board of Trade, 1 First Canadian Place (King and Bay), Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Niceties include: Free food and a cash bar
• Cost: Free, but you have to sign up, and there’s also the option of making a donation (see below)
• After-party: After the presentations, we’ll adjourn to the nearby Duke of Westminster (77 Adelaide Street West)

I’ll go into more detail about DemoCamp in a later posting, but in the meantime, here are some handy links to get you started:

• We use this Eventbrite page for sign-ups. You need to sign up to attend, and there are three sign-up options:
  • You can “purchase” a free ticket, which as the name implies, means that it costs nothing
  • You can purchase a Community Supporter ticket for $5
  • You can purchase a Community All-Star ticket for $10 (I bought one just now)
• You’ll find more details about the event at the DemoCamp 17 page on the BarCamp wiki.
• If you want to do a demo or Ignite presentation at DemoCamp 17, sign up here.
• DemoCamp sells sponsorships! Sponsorship means prominent placement of your logo during the opening comments, and a representative from your company or organization gets 2 minutes at the podium. Sponsorships go for a mere $200 — contact Jay Goldman for details.

As I wrote earlier, I’ll post more details later.

A Reuters news report says that Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide instead of water to give them enemas.

For more information on hydrogen peroxide, here’s its Wikipedia entry.

Courtesy of Boing Boing and photographed by Sean Bonner in Los Angeles, here’s what’s quite possibly the most plain-and-simple political poster you’ll see:

Click the photo to see the original on its Flickr page.

After watching Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (the one where we meet Anakin Skywalker), I remarked that in that movie, everybody knows that the Jedi are the powerful, guardians of peace and order in the Republic and wielders of the mysterious power called The Force. But by the time of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (the one where we meet Luke Skywalker), which can’t have taken place more than a mere thirty years later, almost nobody remembers the Jedi and the Force is considered to be myth. I remember joking with my buddies that it would be like someone in the 1970s saying “Hitler wasn’t real!”

Well, as I like to say, the satirist’s job is a hard one these days, because reality keeps one-upping you. I’m not sure how many people think Hitler was a myth, but according to this news story, one quarter of Brits think Winston Churchill was a fictional character.

Also believed to be myths by the Brits surveyed:

• King Richard I, a.k.a. King Richard the Lionheart (47% of those surveyed)
• Florence Nightingale (23% of those surveyed)
• Charles Dickens (3% of those surveyed)
• Mohandas Gandhi, a.k.a. Mahatma Gandhi (in the top 10 of real people belived to be myths by those surveyed)
• The Duke of Wellington — the first one, who beat Napoleon at Waterloo (in the top 10 of real people belived to be myths by those surveyed)

Even worse, here are some mythical characters believed to be real by the Brits surveyed:

• Sherlock Holmes (58% of those surveyed)
• “Biggles” (33% of those surveyed)

While some people — such as The View’s most moronic host (and she’s up against some stiff competition) Sherri Shepherd — would argue that this isn’t the sort of knowledge you need, I argue that you need some sort of historical context to understand the news and to vote. I am reminded of the Churchill quote: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” a telling quip from one of freedom’s most eloquent defenders.