Archive: Posts from July, 2004
July 31st, 2004, 4 Comments »
I recently read an article about surging university enrolment across the country. The big story, however, is the increasing gender gap between men and women. In the 2001-02 school year, there were 403,200 women and 286,500 men registered in undergrad programs. That means there’s now 71 men for 100 women. That’s a significant change from 1992-03, where the ratio was 77:100. Things are about equal at the graduate level at the graduate level, as the numbers in this article presumably reflect students at every post-secondary level .
Over the weekend, I was talking to a friend of mine who does recruiting for the University of Victoria. We didn’t particularly discuss gender, but he said that there had been a huge growth in trades training and education. I wondered if that could account for some of this phenomenon. I checked out the registration figures for a popular community college, BCIT. Page 16 of the 2003 BCIT Facts and Figures report (PDF) shows that 72% of fulltime students are male. Apparently the men are still going to school, but not opting for universities. I couldn’t find any meanginful historical data to show if male registration has grown at BCIT, so my theory isn’t exactly well-formed.
The long and the short of this, however, is that young men have no excuse for not getting dates at university. Remove the standard 10% for gay men (presumably they have it worst off, variety-wise), and that’s 64 men for 100 women. All you need to be is clean, disease-free and breathing. That’s a tall order, I suppose, for many university males.
4 Comments »
July 30th, 2004, 1 Comment »
Back in my early adolescence, my friends and I got our kicks by stealing golf balls off the 13th fairway at the prestigious Capilano Golf & Country Club (my friend once caddied for Sean Connery there–good golfer, good tipper, apparently). In fact, if you look at this photo, you can see the concealed slope in the fairway that enabled us to sneak out onto the course unseen from the tee. We’d sneak out from the trees at the left of the photo, behind which was a road down which we could take off on our bikes.
In Edmonton, our childhood entertainment has been taken up by the local squirrels (check out the hilarious photo):
One theory is they put the balls in nests to drive the magpies away. In any event, a ball hawk once reportedly recovered 250 balls from a single tree. Golf pro Dillon Wilder said someone spotted a ball in a tree in front of the municipal golf course’s pro shop in early June, started whacking at the branch and brought down 30 balls.
I read somewhere that squirrels forget where they store half their food for winter. Maybe the golf balls are simply more memorable?
1 Comment »
July 30th, 2004, 24 Comments »
I recently wrote about Max Payne 2, a great-looking game that tells the story of a police detective seeking redemption in a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world of wrongful accusations and AK-47s. Just yesterday, I was playing it and made a peculiar discovery.
Max was running from a bunch of gun-toting hoodlums, and runs into a middle-aged woman’s apartment. She looks a bit haggard. I’m just passing through, but I check out the bathroom to see if there are any narcotics kicking around (painkillers are this game’s health boosters). I’m about to leave when I spot something behind the washing machine. It’s long, narrow and a strange flourescent green colour. I may have a dirty mind, but I think its shape is unmistakable. See for yourself–safe-for-work screenshots after the jump.
The game is full of subtle jokes like this. Another one is a series of recurring TV shows that you can hear whenever you pass a TV set. One of them is a satirical take on the game itself–admirably post-modern.
Read more…
24 Comments »
July 30th, 2004, 7 Comments »
Back in the spring, it occurred to me that it might be fun to have a blogging conference here in Vancouver. I ran a little survey, and the results indicated that some other people were interested in the idea.
Along came Boris and Roland, who really liked the idea. We finagled Lauren–who has forgotten more about conference planning than the rest of us know–to join us and Northern Voice was born. Here’s a photo of of us, apparently enjoying each others’ company.
We’re pleased to announce Northern Voice, the first Canadian blogging conference. Go, right now, to www.northernvoice.ca and check it out.
Registration will open September 1st, but we’re already accepting submissions from speakers. We intend to divide the day between presentations and discussion sessions. The presentations will be traditional seminars, with one or more speakers speaking on a particular aspect of weblogs and personal publishing. The discussion sessions will be open-mike “teach-ins”, where facilitators will lead a group conversation on a blogging-related topic.
Be sure to check out the FAQ for more information and subscribe to our RSS feed.
7 Comments »
July 29th, 2004, 2 Comments »
My father and step-mother have recently retired and moved from the metropolis of Merritt, BC down to Victoria. They’re selling their house in Merritt, and they just sent me a link to a virtual tour of the property. CAN $229,000 and it could be yours.
2 Comments »
July 29th, 2004, No Comments »
Well, they amused me at least.
- I was at a wedding last weekend, where I spotted a woman sitting in a chair
wearing a more-or-less backless dress. She’d clearly applied the fake tan
earlier, but it had become rubbed off the tips of her shoulderblades on the
chair-back. I’ll just say it: it look kind of like her shoulder blades had
reverse nipples. If she’d had some self-tanning
monodose towelettes, she and her friend could have retired to the bathroom
for a touch-up.
- Outsource your dictation to India. Start with a
song by Journey.
- It turns out that Woody Guthrie lifted
the tune for "This Land is Your Land". This kind of diminishes
the Guthrie estate’s claims against those
JibJab dudes.
- Tag line of the week: Razorba
– We Got Your Back. (Thanks, SWT)
- Coolest iPod
amplifier ever.
- Scamming
the scammers.
- Stock photography for
the Christian marketplace. Why have sunsets come to be associated
with God? I wonder what the history of that branding is? (Thanks, Lindsay)
- Finally, that
Google mirror is up. I, definitely, am ykcul gnileef. Don’t miss the FAQ. (Thanks, Gwendolyn)
- ESPN’s filthiest
headline ever. Site unsafe for work.
- Who knew that cabbage was
good for that?
- An enormously
funny art project which publically chastises people with poor taste in
music. Check out the videos. (Thanks, Kris).
- A piece of trash, every
day.
If that’s not enough, Richard posted a (less gracefully-named) linkdump.
No Comments »
July 29th, 2004, 14 Comments »
My ISP and I are working on a security issue. Are you seeing a version this website with all broken images? I’m just trying to determine how extensive the issue is.
UPDATE: Thanks for the replies, everybody. Seems like it’s a problem only a small minority of people are experiencing. Hopefully matters will be resolved shortly.
14 Comments »
July 28th, 2004, 1 Comment »
Like many men I know, as I get older, I read less fiction and more non-fiction. I’m a casual reader of military history, and recently was given The Book of War Letters, a collection of letters written by Canadian military personnel throughout the 20th century. I just finished the World War II section, and was frequently moved by the bravery and selflessness of the letter-writers. Some of the most engaging letters are those written by POWs, who clearly misrepresent the conditions in their prison camps for the benefit of their families back home. RCAF Flight Lieutenant Ian Fowler of Castor, Alberta was imprisoned in Stalag Luft II in 1944, and writes of how the prisoners kept busy in the winter:
There are 3 small ice rinks in use around the camp now & the 4th, a much larger job is to be ready to-morrow. So I borrwed Eski’s skates this afternoon & really enjoyed myself for three-quarters of an hour. Then the first hockey match is planned for Xmas day & boy I’ll be right in the thick of things. Be the best thing that happened to me for months.
I’m sure they couldn’t actually describe the conditions–the censors would have edited the content. Each letter is framed by an introduction of the writer, and a description of what happened to them afterwards. The most poignant, of course, are those who didn’t make it home.
1 Comment »
