Hey where have I been? Working. And sick. All at the same time.
But on the plus side- Tusken Raiders.

Although I have never read any of the past winners of Canada Reads, I nevertheless made sure to tune in to Q this morning to see who this year's panelists and their books would be. I'm not surprised that I haven't read a single one of the five books put forward this year, but I hereby pledge to read at least two of them- the winner and one other.
What I have been reading is a book by the father of one of the panelists- Stephen Lewis' Race Against Time, which is the transcript of his Massey Lectures and deals with the Millennium Development Goals as pertain to Africa. Everyone should read this book, really, and then when you have time turn to the Canada Reads books. In a nutshell- the world is failing Africa.
There are a thousand appalling things in that book, but one figure I found interesting in a timely way is Africa's debt. The entire continent of Africa has a debt of $200 billion dollars (it was $240 billion but the international community canceled $40 billion. Thus far African nations have paid back $260 billion- mostly interest). $200 billion is not a lot of money- not when you consider the Americans were able to come up with over $700 billion to cover the asses of some incompetent bank managers (I know it's a little more complicated than that, but not by much). I hope the Obama era turns things around.
In the meantime here are some places you and I can go to donate some money to the cause of Africa, which is really the cause of humanity:
The Stephen Lewis Foundation- I especially like the "Give A Day" campaign- give a day's pay to help fight AIDS before World AIDS day on December 1. Less than a week to go!
Doctors Without Borders
Africa Action
Malaria No More

Some random thoughts after nightshift:

- I am kind of curious about the new GnR. Appetite for Destruction defines grade 9 for me in some ways, but by the time of Use Your Illusion, Metallica and Sepultura had pretty much supplanted them as my gods. Plus the release of Nevermind about the same time kind of rendered them obsolete. But all things come round again.

- Good Grey Cup game, even if Calgary won. It's hard not to like Henry Burris, though after all his Kanyeing this week about not winning any personal awards he dropped a few pegs in my estimation. Calvillo is a pure class act though and I feel bad for him.

- Tires grrr! I have a huge long story about how bad Canadian Tire sucks and how we should never ever shop there again, but I don't want to get into it. Suffice to say I spent $1500 on tires for my and Michelle's cars but I spent it in Hinton from a local who knows the meaning of customer service. So when one of those brand new tires gets punctured it can be a little frustrating.

- and to end on a positive note- check out these Martian glaciers. And this month's Nat Geo has a beautiful spread on Mars too. As well as the usual great articles on all sorts of things.

JimSmash reminds us that the Star Wars Holiday Special is 30 years old. Although my memory of that night is mercifully vague I remember how awesome that Boba Fett cartoon was. The rest of it? Not so awesome, though fans of Bea Arthur of course disagree. I showed Michelle some clips on YouTube and it was only a matter of minutes before she begged me to make it stop. Bad enough that just yesterday both of us were throwing up - we almost had a repeat episode there. I made it up to her by showing her the new Clone Wars DVD, much better.
Here is some fanart from the Holiday Special! By Hartter:

Back when gabrielle and I were room-mates I accompanied her when she had to take Poe to the vet. I don't think I blogged about the experience, but it was kind of traumatic. Poe went nuts- like, it sounded like we were torturing her. The vet had to get her aide to come in with a special claw-resistant glove to corner her and then catch and subdue her. People in the other room were asking what we were doing to that poor cat. I wasn't in tears but it was close- you know when your eyes get kind of watery and you have trouble swallowing? It was like that. And she wasn't even my cat.
So now with less than three months to go before the birth of my first child I am trying not to think about the labor and delivery process that my wife will have to go through. This weekend we took our prenatal classes, something which I wasn't looking forward to at all. My aunt was the teacher and it was actually pretty good- the first day was really encouraging in fact and we left thinking it would be a piece of cake. Today was a little scarier, and I had teary eyes and trouble swallowing when she talked about having a plan in place vis a vis burial/cremation/ organ donation should the worst happen. Actually it was more than just teary eyes, I was crying a little. But she said it wasn't to scare us but just so we wouldn't have to deal with all those things at the time. And also she reassured us that over 99.9% of the time everything goes really great and easy.
So I think I'm ready. But I keep thinking about Poe . . .

Did you hear about the new technology the US military has developed? They can regrow limbs and organs using a process called nanoscaffolding. How cool is that? It's not so different from how you use stakes to encourage an ivy to grow all over the side of a building. They stick these nanopolymers as a scaffold which are just there as a guide for your own cells to grow. I'm not sure how they encourage the cells to grow but maybe they naturally want to and just lacked the scaffolding until now.
So far only relatively simple things like fingers and bladders have been regrown but who knows what will be possible with version 2.0? And since it was the US military, who knows what is still all secret and classified and for James Bond's eyes only?
We live in a crazy world.

Fanart Friday: Asajj Ventress
Although she made her debut in Genndy Tartakovsky's animated Clone Wars, Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress was created by Dermot Power for Attack of the Clones. They eventually went with Dooku because if Christopher Lee is available you pretty much have to use him. Lucky for us Ventress takes a larger role in the new CG Clone Wars series. I still haven't seen the movie but I've caught the TV episodes and really enjoy them. Good fun.




Asajjs by: anjum, Medox, wardog zero & thisisanton (collaboration), jFury, mistytang (yay misty!) and MercurialMagus respectively.
Plus Mark Brooks just put up a sketch dump that has a nice Ventress in it.
That lightsaber duel between her and Anakin in Tartakovsky's series? Brilliant.
1500th poost!

Have you heard of Bookmooch? It's a site where you give away books for free- you even pay the postage, and you accrue points to mooch books off of other people for free. Great idea. I signed up a few months ago.
At first I was a little disappointed- no one seemed to want to give me any books. You can choose whether you are willing to send internationally or not. So far I have sent to Finland, Australia and the US (multiple times), all at the exorbitant Canada Post rate. Since the majority of the users are American, and most of them seem unwilling to send internationally it was looking like it was just a very expensive way for me to get rid of some extra books. But finally I'm started to get some books- today China Mieville's King Rat showed up in my mailbox! A beautiful, brand new trade paperback edition, no less. Sweet!

I think it was early Christmas (or extended Halloween) at work this week- every day we got a present from the company. First night it was a gift bag with a water bottle and some M&Ms, and the bag itself was one of those environmentally friendly reusable bags. So, not made of coal.
The second night we got hats. Actually everyone else got a hat, including Bad Busdriver Bob, but not me. They ran out before I got to the wicket. That'll teach me for dawdling whilst donning my steel toes.
The third night we got bonus checks! Sweet! Actually the first night was payday and I had an extra check in there and I was excited thinking it was the long-awaited bonus checks they promised us in the summer. When I opened it and it was only for $79 I was very sad. You don't see many coal miners bawl like a baby at work but there I was, until someone pointed out that it was actually a reimbursement for some X-rays I had to do. Phew! So our actual bonus checks were still to come, and they were significantly larger than $79.
And then last night we got surprisingly nice fleeces. And surprisingly large fleeces, too. Luckily Michelle is very pregnant right now and so she can have a maternity fleece.