Greenpeace has launched a tongue-in-cheek website touting the tourism potential of the Alberta oil sands. The Greenpeace-produced site, travellingalberta.com, has an address similar to Alberta’s official tourism page, travelalberta.com, and is the conservation group’s response to the province’s $25-million campaign to improve the environmental image of Alberta’s energy industry.
Minister of Tourism, Parks and Recreation Cindy Ady was not impressed with the website.
“I’m a bit disappointed mostly on behalf of those who work so hard in this industry, but I also would say it’s not an accurate representation of this province.”
Every five years my dad’s side of the family holds a “Milner” family reunion. I’ll be up in the mountains this week to celebrate. Here are some historic Milner photos that were recently scanned by my uncle that I posted for this weekend.
These are interesting as just a collection of old photographs, aside from the obvious groove that I get from the fact that I’m related to these folks.
Play this audio clip again after it finishes and hear it continue to “creep up”.
See Wikipedia’s entry on Shepard Tone for the full scoop.
A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.
Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, at a 2005 TED Talk speaks about the economics of car seats. The data led him to ask the morally difficult question: Are children’s car seats worth the time and expense it takes to use them?
The other day a friend asked if I would take part in the Foothills Charity Triathlon for Kid’s Hope Ethiopia. It’s actually a “mixed” triathlon in that, the three segments of the race are done by different people, so I’ll only be doing the 500m swimming section in Crystal Shores Lake (Okotoks, Alberta).
I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve never been much a distance swimmer, and though 500m isn’t exactly FAR (by most swimmers’ standards), it’s slightly out of reach for me to sprint the whole way though it wouldn’t surprise my former swim teammates if I tried.
Wish me luck, and if you’re in the Calgary/Okotoks area, come and cheer for my team! The race happens Saturday, July 5th, 2008 starting at Crystal Shores Lake at 8:00am.
Last September, four of the world’s most famous sceptics, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens gathered together for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion on religion, belief, and scepticism.
I wasn’t going to go anyway, but Coldplay has cancelled the Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Calgary shows of their Viva La Vida tour. I know it has disappointed a couple of my friends. Sorry Canada, but Coldplay just doesn’t love you enough to make it to the boring middle parts of your country.
In other Coldplay news, the band Creaky Boards has posted a YouTube video accusing the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin, of plagiarizing their song, “The Songs I Didn’t Write” when he wrote “Viva la Vida”.
The idea that a band as big as Coldplay would stoop to copying someone else’s melody seems unrealistic, nevertheless, this video seems pretty damning for Chris Martin. I’d be interested to hear Coldplay’s side of the story.
Update: Creaky Boards frontman Andrew Hoepfner has retracted his allegations of plagiarism.
Well, it appears that Chris was actually recording in London during my October show and Coldplay demoed Viva La Vida in March 2007, before I taught my band “Songs” in June 2007. What’s most likely is that both Chris and I were inspired by The Legend of Zelda’s “Fairy Theme”, causing us to write similiar songs in 2006. What a coincidince! I guess Nintendo’s the big winner. But isn’t it weird how in 2008, an independent artist can make something in their bedroom that receives almost as much attention as EMI’s biggest marketing push of the year?
My conclusion? At first when I read headlines about his retraction, I figured it was a pay-off, but now I think it’s probably just a coincidence.
