Experts

I have just spent several hours watching videos from Expert Village. If you are wanting to blow a couple of hours this evening, go ahead --- enjoy!!!
I have to admit, this "expert" freaked me out a bit.

Why are airports so boring?

IO's note: This was written Thursday but I had trouble posting it because I was, er, stuck in an airport.

I am stuck in an airport. That's a bad thing. Airports are like the bland yet evil automatons that populate sci-fi movies. Veritable zombies of the travel world. They are pretty much all alike: devoid of personality, soulless and vaguely annoying. (An exception is the colourful Morun airport in northern Mongolia, which features a billiard table, sandstorms and squat toilets.)

But it doesn't have to be so. Here are five ways to improve airports:

1. More comfortable seats. What is it with these bench-like things with stubby armrests and nowhere to put your beverage?

2. Cheaper prices. The airport is like some former Soviet republic where inflation is always running at 483 per cent.

3. An Internet cafe. What better place for one?

4. A craft co-op. Why not a spot where the vibrant, cool art and handmade goods produced in our city can be displayed and sold?

5. A giant aquarium. Travelling can be stressful. Watching seahorses cavort and tropical fish glide through the water is a good way to relax. They are the smart ones, choosing to swim rather than fly.

The feeling of dreams

We millenia-old semi-mythical dog types spend a lot of time weaving through dreams, the subconscious and the unconscious. It's in the job description. So, when, a couple of days ago, Japanese scientists announced that they'd taken tentative steps to 'read' images in people's brains and display them, I raised an eyebrow. The mechanics involve a lot of big expensive, cool science-y stuff, described in science-y language, but there's a slightly simpler translation here.

The commentary I've seen so far is along the lines of "Cool! In ten years I can show my friends my dreams! In Technicolor®™!"

Does anybody else feel alarmed?

Until now, we coyotes assumed that our thoughts and dreams were very private things, unless we ourselves chose to describe them to somebody else. Considering some of the things I've thought, that's a comfort. Because the idea that others might see them leads my thoughts down a very dark Orwellian alley. Coyote's 116th Law states if such a tool exists, somebody, somewhere, will find a way to misuse it, probably in the name of something like, oh, homeland security. The corollary to Coyote's 116th Law is that such equipment will eventually be consumerized, be manufactured in quantity and then fall into the hands of officious masses of un- or under-trained idiots who think they know what they're doing, simply because they're packing the gear and had a half-day workshop. Think airport security screeners. Or Tasers.

You may also be thinking that the paranoid doggy dreams of imaginary monsters under his bed, but that leads to my point. My dreams are mine, and you very probably can't understand them unless you are me. I don't know what you dream, of a night, when your paws scrabble as if you're chasing bunnies across a pristine prairie, but I'm not convinced that somebody else peeking in on the complicated swirl of oddly dis/un/connected images that is a dream is gonna interpret it with any reliability. I have trouble articulating it because of the nature of dreams themselves, but I suspect that they are far more about individual background, context and feeling than about a fragmentary movie playing on a voyeur's monitor. Without the associated feelings the movie is really out of focus. I also suspect that any equipment freak who thinks he can parse 'em in anything other than the crudest way can dream on. In Technicolor®™.

Breaking News. . .

Major transit strike + major snowstorm = excellent timing.

I blame Larry. But I always do...

Tank Top Tuesday

Green mesh sweater, green tank top, black bra