Someone Has a Sense of Humour.

Now that's a road trip. This began making its rounds over the past week or so, but I hadn't taken the time to check it out until tonight. It seems the programmers (or at least one of them) at Google Maps have a sense of humour (look for forthcoming trademark on "Giggle"). And maybe some very strong arms. Simply enter a point of origin in North America and a destination in Europe before choosing "Get Directions" and you'll find out just how long it will take you to get there. London, Ontario to London, UK? Apparently, such a voyage should take you "about 29 days and 16 hours" to cover the 6,955 kilometres.

Point number 25 on the left-hand side, though (click on image for larger view)? "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean." Only 5,572 kilometres! Alas, there's no mention if the time calculation includes any compensation for having to strap your car to your back.

No Lakes, Nor Swimmers, But Great.

With tremendous anticipation, I went to see Great Lake Swimmers last night at Aeolian Hall, an intimate setting with excellent acoustics and a pleasant ambience, replete with an older gentleman volunteer handing out ballots for the evening’s door prize. Can’t say I’ve been to many rock (okay, folk) concerts offering door prizes. Aeolian Hall is also where GLS recorded their latest album, Ongiara.

Meeting a number of friends, the evening started off with a pleasant surprise as the first of the evening’s three bands, ohbijou, threatened to steal all the thunder. Well, as much thunder as a seven-piece band decked out with cellos, banjos, glockenspiels and the odd melodica can muster, anyway. Ooh, and a tiny xylophone. Okay, it wasn’t that much of a barn dance – the audience seemed spellbound, likely in part out of surprise, at the beauty of the performance. They alone were worth the $10 admission. ohbijou's debut album, Swift Feet for Troubling Times, is a spectacularly packaged (and individually numbered) ensemble produced using letterpress and salvaged engravings. But it’s the music that’s most highly recommended.

I had also been looking forward to the evening’s second act, the Two Minute Miracles, in part because their memorable song, Rayon Queen in a Nylon Dream. To me though, they fell a little flat, but gathered strength as the set progressed. Both in style, and in performance, they just didn’t measure up to the evening’s other two acts.

No ifs ands or buts, though, everyone was there to see the spellbinding Tony Dekker and Great Lake Swimmers. Generally, it’s nice to have live performances vary from the performance given on an album, but as Ongiara was recorded in the same room, it was almost haunting to hear the performance duplicated. It was crisp and polished. And beautiful. Stepping between the band’s three full-lengths, Dekker et al. played most of the favourites, including some solo, though a notable absence was merge a vessel, a harbour (a shout-out to Joyce, who took my camera to a better vantage point and provided the shots found here).

A real treat was having Basia Bulat join GLS on stage to perform four songs. Bulat, a recent musical obsession of mine, has been opening for the band on their recent tour, so I found it surprising she wasn’t on the bill for her hometown show. Such a talent. She came out and sang accompaniment, which added another dimension to Dekker’s voice. A very nice touch.

Oh, and the door prize? My name called out from the stage, leading to pats on the back from those around me. Raised arms and loud hurrahs. The prize? A hippie candle set from a local retailer. It sort of led me to think: “Hey mom, I won you a candle at a rock (okay, folk) concert”. And really, how often do you get to say that?

Bio Meets Tron. And Insects Scatter.

Having watched this project develop from being just a concept and a plot of land, I was glad to finally have the chance yesterday to tour the nearly completed Biotron, a new $30-million research facility on campus at The University of Western Ontario. A name like that makes me think of some futuristic movie rather than a very large science experiment.

A movie, it is not -- but futuristic would certainly apply. The one-of-a-kind facility is, according to the international scientific community anyway, a decade ahead of its time and will allow researchers to reconstruct entire mini-ecosystems so they can address complex interactions that occur between biological organisms in air, soil and water, particularly in light of changes to our climate and environment. Specially constructed chambers will even allow biologists to reproduce climates ranging from 40 above to 40 below.

Why? Among key studies, researchers will be better able to evaluate issues of biodiversity, safely testing genetically modified organisms and performing gene transfer experiments for developing crops. Providing particular benefits to third-world countries, these crops could be used to grow food in harsh environments and to develop protein-rich plants used in pharmaceuticals.

Another neat component of the project is that, through high speed computing, researchers around the world will be able to conduct and monitor experiments at the Biotron without ever leaving their desks. Using computers and imaging tools installed in the facility, they will be able to control and manipulate microscopes while receiving real-time data and communicating with colleagues across the globe about their observations. It does indeed almost seem to be the stuff movies are made of.

Walking around in awe of the size and capabilities the facility will have once construction is complete, I still found myself chuckling at what was without question the funniest part of the whole tour: we were told there's going to be a full-time "bug chef" employed to make food for insects that will be part of the various modules. Yum -- I have to get my hands on one of those business cards.

Chalkfitti?

Roving through the blog for Toronto urban landscape magazine, Spacing, today, I found this story and was immediately drawn (pun intended) to the piece about public chalkboards.

Started by a Halifax art student, the chalkboards -- replete with chalk and cleaning rags (and in this case, thankfully, a ladder) -- have begun popping up in the Nova Scotian capital.

"Locations were chosen based on how the site might normally be used as a place for advertising or other forms of communication that members of the public would normally not have access to, other than through the illegal act of graffiti," says the artist, on the project's web site.

Not one to be bored, this is chock-full of potential. Clever, though I can't imagine chalk would be too easy to read from billboard height. Still, it's an interesting way to look at, and question, communication in an urban landscape.

As an aside (isn't everything here?), I found these buttons on the Spacing site. While I collected buttons as a child (Mary Brown's apparently felt I was pretty special, or at least a 'Tater Lover'), I can't say I ever had a full set detailing Toronto's subway stops, right down to the stations' tiling patterns. Now I can. But I still don't think I'm stuck on them, though I can't quite pinpoint why.

School Spirit.

I had intended to post this last month when we hosted the Chinese Ambassador to Canada, but it got shuffled under a bunch of other papers in anticipation of the American Ambassador's visit soon thereafter.

In this rah rah world of alumni, boosters and school pride, I found it funny to read in Mr. Lu's Curriculum Vitae that he had "graduated from a university in China". No university in particular, but...a university, nonetheless. A lack of connection to the school? A fear its reputation was less than stellar? School mascot was the dreaded Beaver? Then again, it's not like the Chinese government has a reputation for nailing down specifics on a number of fronts anyway.

No Ordinary Joe.

Often, the best marketing tools are the simplest ones. With the number of meetings held on campus, I thought whomever came up with the idea to spice up coffee cups with comical information hit a home run. If caffeine wasn't enough, it's added incentive to stay awake as hours melt from the clock during back-to-back meetings. And a great branding effort to boot.

These cups were dreamt up by the Faculty of Science and include references to the chemical structure of caffeine, a chart showing the increasing risk of heart attack based on coffee consumption and -- my favourite -- the scientific basis behind the formation of a coffee stain. Brilliant. Also included are the scientific genus of the coffee plant, a discussion of fluid mechanics related to the mingling of coffee and milk, and the quote: "A mathematician is a device that turns coffee into theorems" (Alfréd Rényi).

Alas, for a university known for its environment-related research, these aren't exactly 'green'. Unlike me, who has envy wishing I had come up with the idea.