Sunday, January 21, 2007

Empty words and empty calories

The use of a snappy name seems to lead ultimately to an empty solution. The Zone, the South Beach diet, the Atkins diet, the grapefruit cleansing diet- all of these seems to be attached to a product, in as much as a diet plan is a product.

Of course, the Canada food guide with it's mundane "eat a balanced diet" is a brand that appeals to those of us that mistrust glibness. Now, it's true tht the food guide spins food choices- in Asia, you wouldn't find recommendations for dairy products, because many asians don't consume dairy products. Western europeans adapted to consuming the milk of othe animals, and so now we have dairy lobbiests pressuring health Canada to include milk and the like in the food guide.

That being said, health Canada doesn't recommend diets based on the faddish notions cooked up by diet guru's to sell diet books and products.

Having been exposed to this humbug for the last few years, I'm willing to advocate the notion that a glib name is the sign of a charlatan's diet.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Better late than never?

This morning the local CBC radio morning show reported on a speech given by the new mayor of Ottawa, Larry O'Brien. Six weeks prior to the election he gave a speech saying he would fire a large number of city bureacrats.

Why didn't the CBC, who had taped this speech, report it when it happened? It was the closest thing to a policy statement O'Brien made during the election, other than opposing the light rail system(what does he care, he drives a Mercedes). Yet it isn't until a month after the election we hear about this.

I don't believe in shooting the messenger, except in this case, it seems the messenger was incompetently late.

Friday, January 05, 2007

I-plodding

So i've finally figured out some of this podcasting stuff. Within the next week I hope to have some more audio available, but until then I've included a little ditty The Wife and I improvised some time ago.

There always seems to be a learning curve to these things, depite the recording stuff i've done over the years.

better late than never, I suppose...

 
"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
-E.M. Forster