Knowledge

So with my incredibly expensive university tuition, I get access to a tonne of scholarly journals, publications, books, articles etc. I should probably take advantage of the fact that I can pretty much research anything I want, whenever I want.
And if I can't find something online, well, I can still visit the massive Robarts Library and sift through old dusty tomes neatly sorted in fourteen floors' worth of books.

It turns out I have a small research essay due in a couple weeks about the collapse of Easter Island. This is for my Anthropology 101 class, and I really should get ahead on that. I have a tendency to leave things like this to the last minute - but don't all university students? Well, anyway, I have to find some good scholarly information about the collapse of this society and argue against environmental factors as the primary reason for collapse.
If you don't know, Easter Island is that place where they have giant stone heads (called Moai), supposedly created by the old inhabitants a few centuries ago.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent.
I wish to speak more about knowledge, or more specifically, my seemingly unlimited access to it as a UofT student.
It's a little bit exciting! Knowledge is power, right?
The problem I have is that I'm short-sighted. I should clarify: I mean to say that I tend to strive for short-term goals, not long-term ones. It's a flaw of mine.
Arguably, one of the only long-term goals I've managed to keep is writing this very blog.

Anyway, I don't want to make this too long (as I should be keeping a good sleep schedule and going to bed very, very soon), but I just wanted to give an example of how I've used my unlimited access to scholarly works for personal gain.

It turns out that the city of Windsor has decided to end the fluoridation of drinking water.
And I found out about this by stumbling upon a reddit debate on r/canada.
I'm no expert on the pros and cons of fluoridation of water (personally, I'm against it), but what's striking to me is the sheer amount of people there who are outraged that the city decided to stop fluoridation.
If you don't know, fluoridation is mainly advocated as a way to stop dental cavities from developing.
And so many users there have said "there are literally hundreds of scientific studies that prove that fluoridation is safe" - without ever really providing proof that they exist.

Well, I have the ability to look up said studies, and there are indeed quite a few (about 5000 total with "water fluoridation" as a topic, according to my search).
And while many of them supposedly prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that fluoridation is beneficial (i.e. not harmful), there are others that mention such things as increased lead accumulation in children, as well as infertility in populations with high fluoridation levels in drinking water.

I have a lot to say about the subject of drinking water fluoridation (including some ethical concerns), but for the purposes of this post, I just wanted to give you an example of what I, as a humble undergrad, have the ability to do when it comes to researching any given topic.

And on that note, goodnight.

Le cachot infernal

Ça fait combien d'années que je me réfugie dans le sous-sol? Je ne vais pas répondre à cette question. Mais je veux quand même dire que si je trouve un confort, ou même une certaine sécurité dans mon domaine ligneux, je sais très bien que je ne peux vivre ici pour le reste des temps.

Je fais des efforts de temps à autre pour me distancer de cet endroit. J'ai déjà passé des semaines à éviter mon cachot, souvent à cause d'une étincelle qui me fait réaliser que le temps que je passe enfermé en bas ne me fait que du mal.

J'aimerais bien vivre chaque instant vivant avec plus de punch, plus de vie. La plénitude de l'instant de m'échappe. Et c'est entièrement ma faute.
Bien sûr, vivre dans une ville peut m'offrir une multitude d'aventures. Et j'en ai déjà vécues, bien évidemment, et j'en vivrait d'autres.

Mais ce cachot infernal est infernal justement pour une raison: j'ai l'illusion d'avoir un certain contrôle sur mon environnement, mais à vrai dire, c'est mon environnement qui me contrôle. Je suis isolé du soleil, du vent, bref, de la terre elle même. Ce n'est pas naturel du tout de vivre comme ça, et c'est vraiment la nature qui faut que je prenne pour guide, comme dirait Ciceron.
Réellement, un des seul avantages de mon cachot est le fait que c'est très tranquille, et que quand je suis motivé, je peut jouer mon djembe en toute tranquillité.

J'ai quand même essayé de m'installer un espèce d'autel non-religieux, pour apporter un peu de spiritualité dans ma vie. C'est dommage que je ne l'utilise pas très souvent, mais quand je pratique mon djembe, c'est mon lieu de concentration, mon focus. Loin de l'écran, bien sûr. C'est un peu une continuation de mon "twilight sanctuary" que j'avais érigé quand je vivais à Vancouver. Peut-être vais-je trouver un nom presque autant cool pour mon autel.

Voici une photo:

J'adore les chandelles à cire d'abeille. À gauche, mon djembe. À droite,  un bâton de pluie qu'une chère amie m'a donné comme cadeau de noël.

On a jamais utilisé la cheminée, alors j'essaye d'en profiter pour utiliser l'endroit.

C'est tout pour aujourd'hui! Mes excuses si vous ne comprenez pas le français :).

A momentary lapse of music

I've always liked A Momentary Lapse of Reason, an album by Pink Floyd. It sounds like something you'd hear if you were floating in the mesosphere, or maybe even the stratosphere. That is, if somehow there was music playing up there.

I like asking people what their favourite Pink Floyd albums are. I mean, it's rare that people know more than a few, but if they really like Pink Floyd, then it's nice being able to discuss the differences in taste within the Pink Floyd universe with someone else.
You know what I'd like to do some day? Listen to an entire album with someone cool, maybe someone I don't know very well, and seeing if you can bond that. No need for drugs or anything, just some good ol' fashion hangout with someone who happens to like Pink Floyd.
Maybe I feel that urge now, but would I ever remember to ask said person: "Hey! Let's go chill and listen to a Pink Floyd album!". Maybe, maybe not.

I wonder what it would have been like, back in the 70s, when that brand new vinyl was coming out, and everyone would be talking about it. You could ask someone if they'd listened to it, where they'd bought it, and so on. In that way, listening to music was a bit more of an experiential event, I think.
It seems like listening to music nowadays is just a matter of how fast you can download it online or just look it up on Youtube. It's fantastic being able to listen to music so quickly, but I feel like listening to music now is less of a monumental event than it would have been in the past.

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I want to end this post with a picture. Words are a little dry and probably a little dull to read in the long run, so adding a little multimedia is the fix. Unfortunately, I'm too tired/lazy to find anything cool to take a picture of, so I'll just take a picture of my clever writing utensil container.

New Year's Explosion

An atomic clock, says he. "My watch is synced!" And yet, we still foiled the countdown by a whopping 15 seconds. It was like having different time zones in the pub. On one side, the people watching TV with their countdown, and on the other, a group of friends gathered together counting down early.
And so it was twice the countdown and free champagne, courtesy of our friend S.

Reminds me of the time I was in London, ON with my katimafriends, and Five Man Electrical Band was playing a gig for New Year's in a place called Victoria Park (or so I remember). There was a stage, and beside it was a big clock counting down till the new year. The clock had been counting down for days, if not weeks already, and by the time we got the last few minutes or so, we realized that the clock was quite wrong. The band had their own watches, and they couldn't see the big countdown clock, so they counted down from their time and enticed the audience to celebrate with them, but that didn't work out because a number of people were counting on the big clock to officially celebrate the new year. So it was a whole big epic fail.

Oh, I guess celebrations are fun. They don't need to be such a big deal, but they are, so might as well celebrate.

I almost kissed a girl tonight right as the clock struck 12, but I acted like a complete fool instead and jerked my hands in front of me and half-yelled "Noooo! I can't!". So instead she kissed the (very) beardy guy on the couch next to her. It's really a shame; I thought she was cute.

Jeez, this is starting to sound like a teenage girl's personal journal, except plenty of people can read it.
Oh well, it's new year's, I'll make an exception and publish this.

Happy New Years!