Remember those bean plants that we’ve been growing? And how I wasn’t sure if they’d actually produce anything? It turns out reproduction was the least of our worries.

Indoor Bean Fecundity

Not long after my previous bean post, we noticed that the bean leaves were suffering. It appears that the bean plants attracted what google informed us are are spider mites. I started spraying the leaves regularly with a mixture of soap and water, and that seemed to slow the invaders down. I figured that the beans plants would survive until harvest time, and then we’d pull the plants out.

What Spider Mites Will Do To a Leaf

Unfortunately, the mites spread to the rest of our little indoor garden. They annihilated our thai basil before it really got started, killed the thyme and mowed down the oregano. Our sweet basil and parsley are also affected, but seem to be soldiering on.

Today we picked the beans and turfed out the troublesome bean plants. Unfortunately, the rest of the garden is looking a little thin. While I’m happy that my crazy bean idea actually produced some edibles, I don’t think it was worth the cost in other plant lives. I should probably have responded more aggressively at the first sign of mite trouble. Oh well. The neophyte gardener learns a lesson.

A Snack

The Survivors

The Toronto G20 summit is getting under way, and so are the protests. From what I can glean via the web and twitter, the protestors don’t have one single issue they’re upset about, but are using the summit as an opportunity to air any number of grievances in front of the world media. There are two summits going on: one on the inside of the fence, which is all very orderly and scripted and staid and ultimately not that interesting, and one on the outside, which is chaotic and jumbled and much more “democratic”, in all the meanings of that word, good and bad. I hope the summit on the inside results in something productive (though, with climate change off the agenda, there’s little to hope for), and the summit on the outside stays relatively peaceful.

In between both summits are the police, who really have the roughest time of it. The people on the inside get whisked in and out of their plush surroundings on fancy helicopters, the people on the outside have come voluntarily and can go away whenever they please, but the police have to stand guard the whole time, with little say in the matter. And, Canada being a democratic country, the police have the difficult task of separating the dangerous and the violent from those who have come to exercise their fundamental right to shout loudly and wave signs. They can’t just break out the tear gas at the first sign of a crowd… can they?

We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.

I have recently read two books about anarchism and about the police who fight against it. Both are about century old, and both treat the anarchists as more than a little bumbling. As the recent firebombing of a local bank and subsequent arrests illustrate, this might still be true of anarchists a century on. I don’t really have much sympathy for violent anarchists: I’m a pro-civilization man, myself, and strongly anti-violence. I think burning down banks is wrong, even when nobody gets hurt. Fires are dangerous, and in lighting them, activists only damage own their cause by making themselves look irrational and dangerous. Who wants to listen to the argument of a man with a bomb in his hand?

The two books I mentioned are “The Secret Agent,” by Joseph Conrad, about a failed bombing of the Greenwich Observatory (published 1907) and “The Man Who Was Thursday,” by G.K. Chesterton, about a police detective’s efforts to infiltrate a group of anarchists and thwart their murderous plans (published 1908). Conrad’s is pretty heavily satirical, and Chesterton’s is quite fantastical. After reading them, I’m still as puzzled over the motives of the “dynamite throwers” (as they were apparently called in turn-of-the-last-century-England) as I was when I started, but I have a few new insights into the difficulties that the police in a free country must face.

In the “war on terror,” we often hear the hard-liners lament that it’s unfair that the good guys “have to fight with one hand tied behind their backs”. It may be unfair, but it is inevitable, because that’s what makes them the good guys. Restraint is civilized, victory at all costs isn’t, and, as I said above, my sympathies are with civilization. In “The Man Who Was Thursday,” the under-cover police detective makes a promise to an unsuspecting anarchist that he won’t report any of what he is about to be shown to the police. As the story unfolds and the detective penetrates deeper into the anarchist world, he finds himself sorely wishing for some “backup”, but refuses to break the promise he has made. This probably sounds crazy, especially to our modern sensibilities, and it seems a little crazy to the detective himself, but he decides that the ability to keep a promise (even one made to an enemy) is one key thing that separates him from his enemies. Civilization keeps its word, anarchy has no word to keep. The ability to exercise restraint by not breaking a promise as soon as it is convenient is a civilized virtue.

So how are the modern-day anti-anarchists doing with restraint and promise-keeping today on the streets of Toronto? Not very well, I’m afraid. The G20 police were granted special powers of arrest by a very-quietly-passed Ontario law. The “secret” was outed when a man was arrested for failure to show ID near the G20 security zone. In Canada, one does not ordinarily have to show ID to the police (this being one of the fundamental differences between free and totalitarian states, after all), but the new law overrides that for people near the G20 fence.

The law by itself sounds pretty dubious and anti-constitutional to me, but by not publicizing it until people started getting arrested, the Ontario government broke a fundamental promise to the people. Any government has to be up-front with its citizens about what the rules are, otherwise, how can it expect people to follow them? Arbitrary arrests and secret rules are characteristics of tyranny, and tyranny is just as uncivilized as anarchy.

Nowadays, when it comes to “security”, restraint is something we see less of. It’s a dangerous trend.

I have an iPad.  I got it last week at the Apple Store in Montreal, where we spent the weekend being tourists.  I would have picked one up sooner, but they sold out pretty quickly in Ottawa.  I’ve had it for a week now, and figured I’d post a little review here on the old blog.

In short, I like it.  It’s definitely a luxury item, and doesn’t replace an actual computer, but I’m finding it useful and fun, and will probably continue to do so after the initial novelty wears off.  I have one of the 3G models, which carries the added cost of a monthly data plan, but the iPad really shines as an “always connected” device.  I understand that most folks use their smart phones for their Internet-on-the-go, but I’m a telephony Luddite and my phone is categorically “dumb”, so the iPad fills that role for me.  I like that you can adjust your data plan month by month, and so can save some money when you don’t actually need cellular internet access.  While we were visiting Montreal, the 3G came in handy for checking email and finding our way around the city.  Since the trip I’ve pretty much just used wifi at home and at the office, except for browsing the web on the bus a little bit (more on that later).  I think during normal operation I won’t bother to buy the 3G data, but it’s great when traveling, and is much preferable to paying for hotel wifi, not least because you can take your connectivity with you when you leave the hotel.

It’s while traveling that the iPad really shines.  At a pound and a half it’s much easier to lug around than a laptop, it can always get online (unless you’re beyond the range of the cell towers), and it fits comfortably in a backpack or shoulder bag.  It’ll even download and beautifully display photos directly from your digital camera, which we would have made great use of on the Montreal trip, if only the Apple Store hadn’t run out of camera adapters.  Oh well, I’m looking forward to using the  iPad for in-the-field photo viewing in future.  In the mean time, I’ve contented myself with loading the photos of our trip via iPhoto on my Mac after we got home.  There are also some great on-the-road apps, such as the excellent Urban Spoon, which shows you nearby restaurants along with reviews and ratings, and the built-in maps app, which told us which subway line to take and how much it would cost to get to the Montreal Biodome, where I took this and many other pictures of penguins.

I’ve taken the iPad on the bus everyday this week, where I’ve mostly used it as an ebook reader.  Canadian publishers haven’t got their act together and so new books aren’t available on the iBooks store yet, but I don’t mind, because there is a ton of public domain material on Project Gutenberg to be downloaded and read.  I’m half way through The Three Musketeers and am enjoying it immensely.  I wasn’t sure how I’d like reading on a lit screen, but I’ve found it to be just fine, especially with a bit of daylight to counteract the screen glow.  It looks not unlike an actual book, and flipping pages with a finger feels natural.  And the iPad is more portable than the copy of Anna Karenina I lugged around for a month a while back.  I’m also quite curious to see what iPad magazine issues turn out to be like.  I’d ditch my paper New Yorker subscription for an electronic one if the experience is right.

And what of the other iPad capabilities?  As mentioned, viewing photos is great.  I watched an episode of Doctor Who on it the other night, and found that to be quite acceptable.  I’ve used it as the world’s largest iPod, and while the iTunes-like-but-not-quite-iTunes interface is a bit confusing, music via headphones is just fine.  The built-in speakers are understandably not super.  Except for some online chess, I haven’t done much gaming on it yet, but it seems like it could be a good gaming device.  I am looking forward to exploring that aspect.  

Typing with the on-screen keyboard is pretty good.  My one quibble there is that it takes two taps to get an apostrophe.  I typed the bulk of this blog post on the iPad, and while it took a bit longer than it would have on a real keyboard, it wasn’t unpleasant.  Unfortunately the included notes app with its cartoon felt marker font and lack of wireless syncing is a bit of a letdown.  I wrote this using the free version of Evernote, which syncs to my Mac via the cloud.  I’m not sure if Evernote is the answer to all my iPad writing needs, as the free version won’t save notes on the iPad so you can access them when you’re offline (so forget looking up the grocery list from the grocery store, for example). Also, it crashed on me at one point while writing this and cost me a paragraph. When my current month of 3G runs out I’ll either shell out for the paid version (5 bucks a month or 45 for the year) or ditch it for some other app. Maybe I can write my own notes app, I am keen to do some programming for this gizmo at some point…

Surprisingly, given Steve Job’s assertion that the iPad is the best browsing experience ever, I’m only feeling luke-warm about the web in the iPad.  I find browsing a little constrained.  Perhaps that’s because I normally open a million browser tabs at once, and the iPad’s browser doesn’t really allow that.  This is also the one area where the lack of multitasking hurts the iPad: it’d be nice to be able to go do something else while waiting for webpages to load in the background.  On the whole, one doesn’t really notice the lack of multitasking most of the time, as apps load quickly and remember state very well.

I don’t know if the iPad is quite the “magical and revolutionary” gizmo that Apple’s marketing department would have us believe, but it is pretty slick, and using it makes me feel a little like a character in science fiction.  I think I’ll probably discover more uses for it the longer I have it, too.  I’m not running around recommending it to everyone, but I like it a lot.  

Be warned: an iPad is surprisingly hard to put down once you pick it up.

This summer we decided to grow some herbs in our apartment. Sweet and Thai basil, oregano, parsley, mint, and… beans?

Guess which one isn’t a herb

I chose bean seeds on a lark. I wanted to try to grow a few bean plants, even though beans are not too space-efficient when it comes to indoor gardening. Realistically, the best I can hope for is that my harvest will provide a fresh side-dish for one meal later this summer. People tend to laugh when the see our little bean patch, but I am undaunted.

From past experience we have found it is better to grow the plants entirely indoors, rather than putting them on the balcony periodically where they can be exposed to wind, hungry birds, and punishing afternoon sun. For herbs, this is fine, but urban apartment-dwelling vegetables face certain challenges that their rural cousins don’t have to worry about. I mean that delicate issue which might be metaphorically referred to as “the birds and the bees”, or, in this case, literally referred to as “the bees.” In other words, sex. Vegetables grow from flowers, and flowers require pollination, i.e., the male flowers have to send their magic dust to the female flowers. Outdoor veggies enlist friendly insects to help with this vital transfer, but there are no insects where my beans live.

When flowers started appearing, I realized that I’d have to midwife my little beans into existence. I googled for “manual pollination” and started reading up on how to play floral match-maker. However, it turns out that I needn’t have worried, because indoor beans are randy little creatures capable of pollinating without extra help from q-tips or delicate paint-brushes. All I need to do is stand by and wait.

And lo: the bean patch has produced its first bean.

I’m following “Junior’s” progress with great interest

If that bean is the only one I manage to get, I’ll still be happy with the indoor bean experiment, ridiculous as it may be. Growing things is fun.

(Title stolen from Dan Bern’s song about the baseball pitcher Cy Young.)

And the subject of this post is certainly small. Eri Yoshida, 18 years old, 5 feet 2, is about to make her American professional baseball debut in the west-coast Golden Baseball League for the Chico Outlaws. She’s a pitcher. She throws a side-arm knuckleball that floats in at 55 miles per hour. And apparently, putting the Japanese teenager on the squad wasn’t just a publicity stunt by the Outlaws: the word is that the girl can pitch.

From this article about her recent two-inning performance in a pre-season exhibition game:

She retired six batters on two pop-ups, two fly balls and a grounder, walking one but then picking him off immediately. The 5-foot-2 pitcher drew a walk at the plate, stole second and later scored on Mikael Jova’s two-run single.

She picked someone off! She stole second base! She’s clearly a competitor. I’m rooting for her. I think I’m going to be looking at a lot of box scores from the Golden Baseball League this summer.

The Daily Mail reports on the latest trend among young British drinkers: Vodka Eyeballing. As in, pouring vodka into your eye. Go click on the link and look at the ridiculous photos of people with bottles stuck in their eyes. This seems to fantastical to be real.

Apparently, vodka-in-the-eye gets you drunk quickly, which I suppose I’d buy, given that there are lots of little blood vessels in your eye to absorb the alcohol, and it is a but a short vascular hop from the eye to the brain, but really? People actually think this is a good idea? Mind boggling. Also, apparently, damaging to the eyes.

Rest assured, I’m not in the habit of reading the Daily Mail. I only found this after following a link from a google image search for hedges trimmed to look like animals. Which I’m not really in the habit of looking up, either.

Ah, Facebook. Walmart of the Internet. Sad to say, I have a profile, though it’s becoming increasingly bare: the more they strip away the screen of privacy, the more information I delete. It’s not that I really miss the privacy. I’ve always considered anything on Facebook as being effectively public anyway, I’ve been under no illusions in that regard. I’m just not really sure why I should be so cooperative as to neatly present all my vital statistics in a form that can be easily data-mined and sold to marketers. Hmm…

Two articles:

In The Guardian, Facebook is just the latest sensation to contract a case of megalomania suggests that Facebook now thinks it can own the entire internet, and that it will eventually pay for this hubris.

In Wired, Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative suggests that the admittedly valuable functionality of Facebook ought to be taken out of the hands of one company and turned into an open internet standard, which is an interesting, but I think far-fetched idea.

I don’t know if I’ve reached the point of actually deleting my profile, but I’m having some serious thoughts about it. I wonder if Facebook might face a bit of a backlash. True, they’ve been slowly dialing back the privacy settings for years and nobody complained all that much, but it seems like the pace of it is accelerating. Every other king of the social networking scene fizzled eventually, can Facebook hold on forever?

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and enoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment

Albert Einstein, as reported on one of my favorite blogs these days, Letters of Note.

I was lying in bed, deep in the middle of the night, wishing I was asleep. I got up for a drink of water, and then climbed back into bed. I fell into a dozing half-sleep state where I knew I was still in my room and in my bed, but started having a dream at the same time. The dream was about some bizarre game of ninja assassins played in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people, wherein the participants snuck up on each other and shouted “bang”.

Then I woke up. Damn it, I thought, am I going to get any sleep tonight at all? I was thirsty, too. Wait a minute. Something’s not right here. How could I still be thirsty? I just had a drink of water. I thought back to that drink carefully. I distinctly recalled floating through the air to the kitchen and back. Hmm. That’s unusual.

I realized that I had, in fact, just been asleep. I had been dreaming that I was awake in bed trying to sleep. I had dreamt that drink of water. I had dreamt that I had fallen half-asleep and had another dream. Now I was actually awake, I was pretty sure. It’s difficult to tell that, sometimes, apparently.

I rolled over and wondered if I was going to fall asleep or wake up next.

This, the view from my window as the sun set yesterday.