Uninhabited Spaces

I received an upsetting email from Ron Hartling, the president of the Kingston and the Islands Federal Liberal Association . Apparently, dirty, U.S.-style tactics are being used to turn Kingston electors away from the Liberal candidate, Ted Hsu.   "I am writing to warn you about a new and especially dirty political tactic that has already been used to target other Liberal candidates in various parts of Canada and is now being used against the Ted Hsu campaign here in Kingston. Residents are receiving rude phone calls, often in the middle of the night, by people fraudulently claiming to be working for our campaign. This is a classic Republican-style dirty trick that is obviously intended to anger those who would otherwise vote for Ted in the hope of turning them against him and/or discouraging them from voting. People who have been woken up by these calls report that they apparently originate from a call centre in the 701 area code in North Dakota, effectively putting t...

Queen's University students put together an incredible lib dub video, showcasing the legendary school spirit and community that defines Queen's. Chagheill!!

A fomer colleague of mine, Hetal Shah, has founded and launched Social Payout . As it states on the company's website, "SocialPayout buttons are sophisticated viral marketing tools that gently persuade your customers and visitors to give you referrals". Neat!

We were recently gifted a bottle of Navan , a new vanilla cognac from the folks at Grand Marnier.  The name comes from Navana, a small village on the north-eastern coast of Madagascar, one of the island's most renowned vanilla-producing regions. It is a 40% alc/vol liqueur, an ideal balance between the complexity of cognac and the smoothness of natural vanilla. As Darcy O'Neil writes on his blog Art of Drink , " Navan is a deep amber/golden colour with a strong, sweet, vanilla scent which is almost candy like. The liqueur is viscous and is almost syrupy and clings to the walls of the glass. The impression when taking the first sip sweetness followed by pure vanilla. This is quickly followed with a pleasant touch of alcohol, which balances the sweetness, to round it out. There is a warm, spicy finish from the cognac. The vanilla sweetness is still present, but extremely well balanced with the cognac. The best part is the gentle warming sensation the cognac p...

2010 was a banner year for Leonardo DiCaprio as his two movies, "Shutter Island" and "Inception" grossed over $1-billion. The latter, buoyed by the built-in audience of auteur-de-jour Christopher Nolan, was celebrated as the next "Matrix" and pulled in the lion's share of revenues. For all of the impressive editing, special effects, and solid direction of each film, both have a remarkably similar and poignant tension at their hearts: the failure of the protagonist to deal with the death of his wife. DiCaprio's Teddy ("Shutter Island") and Dom ("Inception") are each shackled by their subconcious, unable to work through conflicting feelings about the nature and cause of the death of their wife. In each film the protagonist goes on a constructed journey through layers of memory and imagined pasts to get to the truth. Both films also end with striking similarities: Teddy appears to understand his reality but chooses to stay in...