Magic Mushrooms and Giant Spiders

There is a story on the National Geographic website about glow-in-the-dark mushrooms. Or rather, the story is about bioluminescent fungi in Brazilian tropical forests. These mushrooms -- several of which are newly discovered species -- emit a pleasant green glow when the sun has set. Check out the pictures at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061026-fungi-glow.html.

Another interesting page on the NG site is a little bit grosser. Now, I don't mind spiders of the ordinary kind, but the goliath birdeater tarantula quite literally makes the hairs on my neck stand up. Not only is the spider quite large -- so are its teeth. You can find a video of the spider at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061027-tarantula-video.html. The squeamish should be warned, however, that the video contains acts of violence against bugs and mice.

Thoughts as I Listen to Music

I am sitting at the computer listening to traditional anglo-celtic folk music. My stereo is in the other room, practically untouched over the weekend.

I am not one of those technologically obsessed people who purchase the latest toys, only to discard them when something better comes along. I do not own an iPod. In fact, I've never even owned a Walkman, much less a Discman. I kept buying cassette tapes long after CDs showed up on the scene.

Having said that, I am not a Luddite. I have both a digital camera and a digital video camera. I burn CDs to my computer to listen to while I work. I enjoy technology when it can work for me and make my life richer.

So why am so melancholy as I sit here listening to my music? Is it because I am listening to mandolin-filled tunes that speak of sadness and heartache? Is it because I just realized how much technology has changed since my youth? Or is it perhaps simply the fact that I am sitting alone in my home office listening to songs that were meant to be heard by a live audience?

36 Minutes in the Griot's Life

I saw a magnificent sunrise this morning. Words cannot describe it. Even these photographs do not do it justice.

The show began at 7:05, when I first noticed the sun rising in the east.

When I returned to the living room at 7 :26, the sky was beginning to transform itself.

Seven minutes later -- at 7:33 -- the sky had begun the metamorphosis from black to orange.

What a change a minute made. By 7:34, the sky had turned into a peach bellini.

At 7:35, the skyline had transformed itself to a living version of a 19th Century English landscape painting.

Within another minute, the sky had continued its fluid dance of colours and shadows and the cloud layers parted and reformed.



By 7:40, the sky was a sea of oranges and yellows.

When I left to go to work at 7:41, the sky had transformed itself yet again, and all the blues and greys had departed.

Me and B. B. King

So I'm at this concert in Toronto -- I think it was at Massey Hall -- and I'm not in the audience, I'm standing in the wings. The stage is real dark and there is a single spot light focused on an old black dude sitting on a stool playing guitar. He opens his mouth and he starts to sing.

I recognize the song -- Every Day I Have the Blues -- and I silently sing along with the man on stage. When the song ends, B. B. King looks over to the side of the stage and catches sight of me.

"Hey, man," he shouts out to me, "How you been keeping?"

"I've been fine," I reply.

"How's the diabetes?" he asks with the concern of an old friend.

"It's under control," I lie. "But I still hate testing my blood," I decide to tell a truth, "Makes my fingers real sore."

B. B. King grins at me. "I told you the brand to use, man."

The great blues hero turns to the audience and announces in a grand voice, "Folks, it is my genuine pleasure to introduce a dear friend and a sometime colleague of mine."

He waves me on, so I join him on stage. He asks if I brought my guitar, and I tell him I didn't. (To be perfectly honest, I don't even own a guitar.) When he hears this, he hands me the famous Lucille and he asks me to play the folks my signature song.

As I take his place on the stool, B. B. King stands by a mike and softly says, "There's some that says the best blues are Chicago blues. There's some that says the best blues are Mississippi delta blues. Well, folks, the man you're about to hear ain't never been to Chicago and he doesn't come from the Mississippi delta. Put your hands to together and welcome my good friend, Little Jimmy Phillips, king of the Mississauga delta blues."

At this point I started laughing and woke myself up from the dream. Too bad -- I'll always wonder how the Mississauga delta blues compare to the ones from Mississippi.

News from the Zoo

Sad news from the Toronto Zoo. Kunik the polar bear, who died in September, fell victim to West Nile Virus. The 26 year old bear likely contracted the disease from a mosquito bite. According to Zoo officials, it was the first known case of a polar bear succumbing to the disease.

I know that there are many critics of zoos, but I personally enjoy going to the Toronto Zoo. People like me are highly unlikely to get to see animals like Kunik in the wild. Still, it is ironic that Kunik lived a relatively long life in captivity, only to be killed by a disease he would never have caught in his natural habitat.

Insomnia

Sometimes, I cannot get to sleep.

Other times, I wake up and I cannot fall back to sleep.

Occasionally, I just lie in bed and imagine that I am living somewhere exotic and tropical. Most times, I just wait to fall asleep.

But there are some times when I take advantage of my insomnia and take pictures like this photo of a couple of ugly monkey salt and pepper shakers.

It doesn't do anything to cure my insomnia, but it makes me feel as if my sleeplessness has not been a total waste of time.

A Mouse's Eye View of the World

If you read this blog regularly, you know I recently bought a new digital camera. What you may not know is that it has changed the way I see things.

Take this picture, for example. The local Weston Produce grocery store has fall items for sale, including pumpkins and bales of hay. In the past, I would have noticed the bales of hay and thought back upon a childhood where hay bales were not just a seasonal accoutrement.


When I saw the bales last week, I immediately wondered what it would look like "on film", and once I brought my camera to the store, I began to look at the bale of hay as if it were an environment on its own. I may not know exactly how a mouse sees the world, but I think that, at least part of the time, it looks like this.

The View from Here

This is the view from my balcony. I took this photograph a couple of days ago on a morning when the clouds were particularly striking.

Movie Review - The Departed

With a reported budget of $90 million and a stable of big name stars (including Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Martin Sheen), The Departed has little in common with the movies I normally go to see. Having said that, this is one of the best movies I have seen in years.

The movie is a masterpiece. When it ended, I said there for a minute while the credits rolled just so that I could catch my breath from the incredible performances. Mark Walberg in particular gave an award-worthy performance.

I am not going to discuss the story line. I would rather you see the movie for yourself. The movie is extremely violent at times, but when it is over, the you will not be thinking about the violence -- you will be thinking about the magnificent movie you just saw.

Mein Geständnis

Ich habe ein Geständnis.

Mein Familienname ist englisch, aber meine Familie ist deutsch. Meine Mutter war in Deutschland geboren. Mein Vater war in Kanada geboren, aber seine erste Sprache war Deutsch. Meine Eltern sprechen Deutsch -- ich nicht.

Wenn Sie mit mir auf Deutsch sprechen, ist meine Antwort "Ich spreche nicht Deutsch" oder "Geben Sie die gummi Bären frei. Unten mit den Plastiktaschen!"

Requiem for a Lost Soul

89 years ago today, a 41 year old exotic dancer and courtesan named Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was executed by a French firing squad. Better known by her stage name -- Mata Hari -- the Dutch dancer had been convicted of spying for the Germans.

There is something incredibly sad about Margaretha's life story. A woman of mixed Dutch-Javanese descent, she was born in the Netherlands and moved to Java at 18 with her naval officer husband. They had two children, but she lost custody when the couple divorced.

Margaretha moved to Paris after the divorce, where she eventually became famous -- or infamous -- as an exotic dancer and a courtesan. Although she was well-known for displaying her body, one of the many sad legends about Mata Hari says that even though she was skilled at making love, she was so sensitive about her small breasts that she never uncovered them for her lovers.

As can be expected from an engaging, exotic courtesans, Margaretha had relationships with a number of important men from a number of countries. Before 1914, this only added to her legend. After the war broke out, however, it reeked of treason, even if Margaretha was a neutral citizen, being Dutch.

1917 was a bad year for the French. Casualties were high after slaughterhouses like Verdun and army units mutinied across the length of the front. When the French intercepted and decoded a message implicating the infamous Mata Hari as a German spy, they seized her and tried her for treason. Some people argue that the evidence against Margaretha was weak or even fabricated, but the French authorities had little trouble finding her guilty and sentencing her to death.

The misfortunes of Margaretha did not end with her death. Because her family did not claim the body, it was used for medical study. The head, which had been preserved and sent to an anatomy museum in Paris, disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

I have no idea if Margaretha was guilty or innocent of the espionage charges. It would not surprise me if the French decided to use a foreign woman of "questionable" morals as a scapegoat to distract the masses from the realities of war going sideways. (The French army, after all, had executed men who had refused to fight any longer after having endured three years of indescribable terror.)

What I do know, however, is that Margaretha Geertruida Zelle had an unhappy end to difficult life, and I wish her peace.

Random Thoughts on a Chilly Night

This week saw the first big snowstorm of the season in southern Ontario. At one point, over 300,000 people were living without electricity in the Niagara region of Ontario and New York. We had some brief flurries where I live, but nothing too bad.

Today is the 940th anniversary of the battle of Hastings. It's hard to believe that it has been nearly an entire millennium since the Normans successfully invaded England. It doesn't seem more than 800 years!

There is yet another scandal in the United States involving a Republican congressman. I can't wait to learn how the Democrats are behind this one.

Two more Canadian soldiers died in the line of duty in Afghanistan. They were building a road when they were ambushed by Taliban fighters. Ironically enough, many Canadians clamour for our forces to move from a combat to a provincial reconstruction role which involves building roads and schools and hospitals.

A recent poll has identified Bob Rae as the most popular candidate for the Liberal Party leadership. I know a lot of Ontarians still have bad feelings about his time in office and I wonder what impact that would have in a federal election. Perhaps the Conservatives would finally get their big breakthrough in Ontario.

The Edmonton Eskimos have failed to make the playoffs for the first time in 34 years, ending a North American professional sports record. This sounds really impressive until you realize that the CFL is so small that even teams with losing records have made it to the finals in the past.

A candidate claiming to be a "drunken pirate" is running for Congress in the United States. I know he is trying to prove a point, but I can't help but think that this is just another blow to the whole democractic process. Democracy is too important and under too much fire for people to be running gag campaigns. Sure, it may sound "cool" to vote for a drunken pirate or a rhinoceros or a monster raving looney, but a vote wasted on a parody candidate is a vote wasted.

I spent part of the evening watching Weird Al Yankovich videos on YouTube. I am simultaneously impressed with his wit and talent and chagrined by the fact that I will never get the time that I wasted back again.

A Ray of Sunshine in Indonesia

Since I have been on the topic of new species being discovered, I should probably mention the most spectacular of recent announcements -- the discovery of more than 50 new species of marine life in the waters off Indonesia.

The species were identified during recent expeditions to the waters off the northwest portion of Papua. Two of the species are small sharks that "walk" along the seabed in search of prey, while 22 of the species are other varieties of fish and eight of the species are mantis shrimps. The remaining 20 species are hard corals.

Scientists attribute the number of new species to a combination of geographic isolation and low human population density. Unfortunately, news of the discovery is tempered with comments that pollution and destructive fishing practices (such as the use of poison and explosives) pose a threat to the overall biodiversity in the area.

Check out the following link to watch a video of some of the new species:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060919-shark-walk-video.html

A Ray of Sunshine in Cyprus?

Yesterday, I wrote about the new bird species discovered in Columbia. Today, it is Cyprus' turn to take the spotlight as home to a newly discovered species.

In this case, the species is a mouse, not a bird. The Cypriot Mouse (mus cypriancus) is a bit of a throw back to extinct species of mice. In fact, one report refers to it as a 'living fossil' because its head, eyes, and teeth are larger than other European species of mice and pre-date more common European mice.

In some ways, the discovery of a new mammalian species in Europe seems even more remarkable than discoveries of birds and monkeys in remote parts of South America. Given how long scientists have been classifying species in Europe, it is amazing that the Cypriot Mouse was not discovered sooner. Having said that, the scientists who discovered the species did not actually classify it as a new species until DNA tests proved it was more than just a sub-population of other European species.

Once again, nature has surprised me with its unexpected diversity. One can only hope that we start doing a better job of taking care of the environment so that these new discoveries -- as well as all other species -- can continue to survive.

A Ray of Sunshine in Columbia

What a terrible week for news. North Korea appears to have tested a nuclear device. Murdered children are buried in Pennsylvania and Ontario. A report suggests that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since the US invaded that country. Gunfire erupts in a Toronto-area shopping mall. A baseball player crashes a light plane into a New York apartment building.

Amidst all this sadness, there was a bright news story -- a new species of bird has been discovered in the cloud forest of Columbia. A joint Columbian-British team of scientists announced the discovery of the Yariguies Brush Finch, a fist-sized bird with a reddish plume and bright yellow feathers. The bird is considered "near threatened", but its discovery has already led to the Columbian government setting aside some of the forest to be protected.

The one sad thing about the whole thing is the back story about the bird's names. The Yariguies tribe used to live in the region in which the bird was found. According to some stories, the tribe committed mass suicide in the sixteenth century rather than submit to Spanish colonial rule.

To see a picture of the bird (and to get more information about the discovery), check out the following link to the National Geographic website:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061010-new-bird.html?source=rss

The Living Sunset

I have spent a great deal of my life living in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Although there have been benefits to living in Vancouver -- the oceans and the Gulf Islands, Kitsalano, the mountains -- I always missed having four distinct seasons.

At the moment, we are at the beginning of autumn. The days are getting shorter. The nights are getting colder. Some mornings, you can see your breath when you go outside. Best of all, the leaves are changing colours, painting the land with a palette of yellows, oranges, and reds.

One of the joys of living in Ontario is being able to drive in the countryside and look at the autumn leaves. In a lot of ways, it is like watching a beautiful sunset. It is different every time you look at it and you know it is not going to last. Perhaps that is what makes it so beautiful.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I try not to be one of those Canadians who mistake anti-Americanism for nationalism. You know the type -- the ones who act as if the only benchmark for being Canadian is how much we are not like our neighbours to the south. Recent legislation, however, makes me wonder if perhaps some of the hyperbole might actually be warranted.

On September 28, 2006, the Military Commissions Act passed in the United States, giving the president unprecedented powers. According to www.bushwatch.net, the legislation violates 4 out of 10 articles of the Bill of Rights. Given the near religious reverence most Americans feel for their Constitution, I am amazed by the lack of vociferous response.

More surprisingly, the MCA suspends the right of habeas corpus which has been a hallmark of our justice system since the signing of the Magna Carta. There is something so patently un-American and so totalitarian about permanent detention without a trial that it staggers the mind to see both parties voting for the Act. (And yes, I am aware that Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War, but I am also aware that the Supreme Court ruled against him.)

If you listen to the most pessimistic critics, the Act pretty well authorizes torture, since the US President is now the judge of what constitutes torture, rather than international agreements like the Geneva Conventions. Torture may yield information, but you don't necessarily get the truth. As emotionally satisfying as torture may be to certain types of people, the fact is that results gained from torture are not worth the blood spilled to obtain them.

Even if the results are good, I think there is a bigger issue at stake -- the nature of what America (and Canada, for that matter) stand for. I, for one, do not believe that you can protect democracy with secret police and hidden gulags. If we really value concepts like justice and equality and democracy, we have to fight according rules that reflect our beliefs.

If the terrorists don't honour the rules, screw them! We can still beat them, like we beat the Nazis in World War II. (I know, our conduct was marred by things like strategic bombing of Germany and Japan, nuclear strikes against Japan, and the like, but the western Allied chose to pass fight according to rules that hampered them and cost the lives of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.) It may be more difficult and more costly, but winning the so-called War on Terror honourably is more likely to result in a lasting peace than winning by any means possible is.


Unfortunately, this is a return to the Fortress America isolation that rears its face periodically when the US feels insecure. This was a deplorable response to world events in the 1920s and it is even more deplorable today, when the US is actively flexing its hyperpower muscles and putting hundreds of military lives at risk. What the US government seems to forget is that once one party decides they can set the rules aside, there is no incentive for other parties to stick to the rules.

Toronto: We're Number Two!

Well, the regular baseball season is coming to an end and my Blue Jays are not going on to the playoffs. While I would have preferred to see them in the pennant race, I have one consolation to cling to -- we're number two!

I know what Ricky Bobby says -- "If you're not first, you're last" -- but I am willing to settle for second place this year. After all, this is the first time since 1993 that Toronto finished above 3rd place. After years of hearing about "rebuilding" the team, we actually were competitive.

With any luck, we'll get some decent trades in the off-season and some healthy players during next season, and we'll be off to the World Series next year.

Good News on the Frog Front.

Today my wife and I visited the Luther Marsh conservation area east of Arthur, Ontario. It was a very pleasant way to spend the day, even when it began to rain.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the number of frogs we saw. At one point, we took a trail down to the marsh itself and the path came alive with giant grasshoppers and frogs of varying sizes. Some were the size of my thumb, while others would have taken up a decent amount of space on my palm.

It was nice to see so many amphibions, especially when you consider how endangered they are. Even though I am decades away from boyhood, I still found it exciting to watch the little creatures hop from the path to the tall grasses.