wandering stars

again. i am here again. on a paper deadline and blogging. blah blah.

As Zach correctly noted, my blog is getting more and more link-ey. There is probably a reason to explain that, buuut I won’t go into it now. Instead, I leave you with a few pieces that have been floating around and occupying bits of my mind:

Is driving more environmentally friendly than walking/biking/rickshaw-ing? John Tierney argues that this is potentially true here. Interesting argument, although one that doesn’t convince me (and some of the people who commented on the post) too much.

Explorations of feelings though blogs and images here.

A commentary on a paper that argues that universal health care is perhaps not more equitable than private health care here. There is also a link to the paper for those who are interested. Written from a libertarian economic perspective, I think. And I think that many arguments can be leveraged to counter it, but an interesting perspective, I suppose. Also probably something that will be used by private insurance companies (especially in the U.S.) to lobby against health care reform. So it goes.

Also, various people have heard me go off on rants regarding Tim Hortons’ Roll Up The Rim To Win campaign. They proceed to laugh, pat me on the head, and sigh. Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that these types of events reduce the incentives for people to consider the amount of waste they produce. More here.

I am also very excited about a few upcoming dates. Including:
-dinner Thursday night (for more reasons than one! stay tuned.)
-snowboarding this weekend. mmm, yes. keeping my fingers crossed for a little more new snow.
-finally hearing some good breakbeats next week. The Autobots are playing at noTofu.
-April 11th. and not just because it’s the last day of classes ;)

One more: In my car, I found a CD my Dad made that’s titled “Bonch”, and I’m pretty sure it’s a compilation of songs that he loved during his university years (Bonch is the name of the college my Mom and Dad attended. It’s an abbreviated form of the name, and I promise that it makes more sense when articulated in Russian). It’s awesome. A lot of these are songs that I grew up hearing my dad play on the guitar. One in particular that I hadn’t heard in a while was DDT’s “Ne Strelay” (I really need to get some Russian letters going on this keyboard). It’s wonderful, and beautiful, and one of the most touching ways of articulating how falsely we glamourize war, especially when young. After listening to that, I skipped a few tracks and listened to “Vossmiklassnitsa” by Kino. It occurred to me that had this song been released in the North American concert now, V. Tsoi (the lead singer) would have probably been put into some sort of psychiatric counseling. The media would have been hounding him for ages, and concerned parents would be outraged at the levels of perversion our society has reached. Feminists would have had a field day. Ha. Ha ha ha.