Three weeks without my PC! But now I'm flying with an excellent broadband connection -- indeed, yesterday I ran a test at BandwidthPlace.com in which my throughput rate was deemed "fantastic" as determined by connecting with the host's server in San Antonio, TX. I live in a small (pop: 5,000) community in which both high-speed ADSL & Cable services are available. I choose the former account. Here in Canada a so-called "Condo Model" has been used to encourage ISPs to deploy their broadband services on a quite rapid pace of rollout. It is essentially achieved by customers committing to buy the fiber optic services as an incentive for companies to run fiber optic cable to their locations. Canadian municipalities have created an affordable system with this commitment from end-users. This is comparable to time-share buyers purchasing condo apartments at a discount before they are actually built. Additionally, municipalities in Canada have intervened in the market, leveraging their telecom purchasing power by awarding contracts to a consortium of service providers that agree to run fiber optics throughout the metropolitan area. The municipality is relatively aggresive in providing incentives for the "build-out" in infrastructure, while the private companies provide the fiber optic broadband service to customers. However, I suspect the Canadian model may not be feasible for large US cities where high labor costs and municipal red tape prevent any further cost-effective expansions of fiber optic service. Moreover, I think that in cities such as NYC & Chicago, currently strung fiber optic technology is heavily concentrated in commercial building zoned in the downtown core sections. Although there are sizeable numbers of fiber optic "highways" running outside these core areas, there may not be cost-effective ways to build a system of feeder "roads" that will take the fiber optic wiring to greater numbers of business & residential customers. But the future may well lie in 3G & other wireless protocols -- with up to 54Mbps throughput rates....

Tomorrow we venture to the cinema for a Matinee showing of The Two Towers -- our SEVENTH viewing of this absolutely wonderful motion picture....

Today I am using a terminal at the local Public Library -- first for me. Web-browsing functions admirably fast -- although I expect that next week my new broadband service will exceed (although not necessarily "blow the socks off") this throughput data rate. My brand new modem was delivered to my door this morning, and I hope to be back online either on the 21st or 22nd of January. Whooeee!

Test

Test

I am sending this note from a friend's computer, as last week my PC went into a coma. The good news: Next week I'll have a new system -- and, what's more, an activiated High Data Rate (Dedicated) Digital Subscriber Line account! Smokin'!

I am uploading this note from a friend's computer, as my PC went into a coma last week. The good news: Next week I'll have a new system - and, what's more, an activated High Data Rate Digitial Subscriber account! Smokin'!

LIT. CRIT. -- R.I.P. Lit. crit has become more fully involuted. Its apostles maintain that the author is dead, the text-function is a plot to preserve illicit privilege -- and "meaning" ia an ambiguous social construction of no more than sardonic interest. Theory itself has grown too esoteric to be of any viable use. They say, "Derrida knows things!" "Deconstructionism is rife with wisdom!" Well, I ask, "Is true knowledge passé?" And: "Is genuine intelligence a liability these days?" You can wave goodbye to "meaning" as well. Let's consider the University English Lit Departments (from which I extricated myself 25 years ago, in a state of utter dismay & great relief).... Specifically, the Master's Degree Program's Exam: Two days, a few marginally relevant questions. The panel says, "Okay, you essentially know this stuff." Then, it's done! You don't even get to flex your argumentative skills. The whole English Lang. & Lit. profession has become a total pyramiding scheme. The entire process of gaining a post-grad degree is such an intellectually demeaning bilking. The Eng. Lit. Dept. is an entrenched class-conscious society: The dept. tenured-for-life superstars snobbishly lord it over their minor tenured colleagues, who in turn saddle all the junior faculty with crap-work. The latter take their anger & resentment out on the senior grads, who have no time for the master's candidates -- the latter people, finally, hold the undergrads in utter contempt. And that's not even mentioning the nonacademic staff! The foregoing thoughts gestated in my mind about six months ago, and were ultimately induced to birth by the account in the New York Observer which provided an informative, snarky overview of the recent MLA convention in Manhattan. Trust me, enough said....

CHRISTMAS DAY! This is the most special day of the year -- even if one has experienced a year of trials, this remains a time for consolations -- if not redemptive notions. Last night, we watched (as is traditional for us the past 10 or so years), The Blue Carbuncle, starring the genius "becomer" of Sherlock Holmes, Jeremy Brett. Also on DVD, the wonderful mass love-in fest of a concert, Paul McCartney's Back In The USA Enthusiastically recommended for all those who truly relish enduringly great music performed by a grandly gifted artists who, regardless of the abundance of wealth, honour, fame which he accumulates, still continues to give to others joyfully. Two quotations have come readily to my mind this morning -- and they are, I believe, delightfully suitable for these celebratory moments: "I have a great confidence in the revelations which holidays bring forth." (DISRAELI) "The home should be the treasure-chest of living." (Le CORBUSIER) This afternoon I will bake an Almond-Semolina-Soufflé Cake, refrigerate it overnight, and serve it at tomorrow's assembled-family (Boxing Day) dinner with Pistachio-Crème Anglais & either Dried Cherry, Apple & Port Sauce OR Morello Cherry Glaze. (I saw a jar of Lingonberry Preserves, aka 'Mountain Cranberries', for sale recently -- that would have made an equally nice glaze.) Tonight: Our third viewing of The Two Towers -- which one film critic has described as "worth going to prison for!" Well, as long as the facility has a DVD player & a Hi-Res. Widescreen...We could cope for a while!

WINTER Rx's Today being the Winter Solstice, I had intended to resume 'blogging by offering some consolatory words re fortifying ourselves against the coming difficult winter months. (But, oh! I've seen THE TWO TOWERS twice in the past four days....Can I possibly focus my attention fully on any other meaningful topic at this time? More on the most wonderful all-time movie experience later today....) Last evening, I read -- as I do annually on this date -- Leigh Hunt's (1820) brief essay, "Getting Up On Cold Mornings," the text of which is comprised in my copy of The Oxford Book of Essays. He asks, in an effort to avoid confronting such frigid A.M.s, whether it is best to lie in bed until noon. He sums up his counter-argument with the answer "No." He writes that there are "better and warmer things than pillows and blankets." How true! I think it is preferable, and much more beneficial, to haul yourself out of bed, do some light calisthenics to limber up, take an invigorating shower, then prepare & eat a nurishing full-range breakfast....And Cornflakes Be Damned! I don't expect that I could ever develop a purposeful rapport with anyone who doesn't appreciate a wholesome & relaxing breakfast. (I mean the type of breakfast every sane person used to enjoy...not a mere cigarette & coffee, or this foolish thing called brunch.) I love a full hot breakfast and refuse to understand why so many other people skip such a glorious meal. When I read what our most important political leaders wolf down upon rising each day, I wonder why the nation hasn't split apart at the seams. When I encounter an acquaintance who doesn't take nourishment before noon who's miserably choked up with sinus congestion or the flu, I can hardly express much sympathy. And show me the unthinking fool who finds something sensible and dignified about offering zarf-handled plastic cups of cheap instant coffee and pathetic slice of factory-baked, toasted bread as a grown-up alternative for a business breakfast, and I can only hope he collapses from lack of adrenaline & brain-power before the meeting is finished. Sure, you may call me intolerant, arrogant, or eccentric -- but when it comes to the gastronomic, aesthetic, and nutritional advantages of breakfast, my oriflamme flies high! Exactly when the demise of the nutritious hot breakfast began in this country, is anybody's safe surmise. But there can be no doubt that today many of us would disagree totally with the sagacious Mrs. Beeton, who wrote in her 19th-century Book of Houshold Management that "the moral and physical welfate of mankind depends largely on its breakfasts." I would venture to remark that until about 20 years ago, we valued this important meal as much as the English & Scandinavians do to this day. Some of the almost orgiastic matinal repasts consumed by our ancestors were, I agree, a bit excessive; but they made a good deal more sense that packaged, over-processed cereals, instant liquid breakfasts, frozen waffles, "drive-thru" fast-food handouts, or this anemic modern-day absurdity know to travelers as the continental breakfast. The continental is a gastronomic outrage that somehow fascinates people who stay in cheap all-inclusive hotels -- and those morons with certain social pretentions and placates others with an absurdly misinformed mania about cholesterol levels. As far as I'm concerned, it should be banned by the food inspection agencies as a public health hazard! Those of us who do savour a full morning meal day after day, NOT only on weekends, enjoy reminiscing about certain breakfasts the way others like to talk about rare ceremonial dinners. The most important point I wish to establish here is that you get into the healthful rountine of eating good, solidly nutritious breakfasts in order to warm up your system and to relearn what a gustatory superlative this meal can be when it's approached intelligently. Trust me, you will find it virtually impossible to begin a day without this meal -- and who knows, eventually you might even find yourself indulging in my own never-ending quest for the quintessential centerpiece: a double-yolk egg laid by free-run pullets. Incidentally, I am very gratified that my 15-year-old, bodybuilding neophyte, bright-as- a-torch, nephew is now a dedicated eater of great breakfasts. He tells me that he wouldn't dream of living any other way....Now that's true zeal & zest for Life: Bravo, Jamieson!!

SCIENCE NEWS Dartmouth Scientists Refine Musical Map of the Brain.... Statistical Report Exposes Scientists as Sloppy Cross-Reference Reporters.... Scientists Use South Pole Telescope (measuring Cosmic Background Radiation) To Produce The Most Detailed Images Of The Early Universe ....Stanford physicist pleads for return to "open-source" science

To date, I have read twenty-one film critics' reviews of The Two Towers -- seven of these reviews having been run off in print form and filed in a Cardinal Prestige® Slant-D Ring binder. Last December, I preserved 20 of the most positive reviews of Fellowship -- the reasoning (to paraphrase Carlyle) being that if something is not worth being read more than once, then it probably wasn't worth being written in the first place. Moreover, since I am so impassioned about these motion pictures, I want to have a fair volume of literature at hand which buttresses my enthusiasm and builds up my understanding (through others' views) of the tremendous degree of creative effort that is ongoing in producing the films. In the current issue of American Cinematographer, the films' Director of Photography, Andrew Lesnie, reports that the specialty cameraman in charge of producing shots of the fantastically detailed set miniatures (the "bigatures"), Alex Funke, recently "passed day 600" in his work. That aspect of the films being "in itself...an epic work-in-progress." Over the weekend, I read Stephen Schaefer's piece in the Boston Herald in which Peter Jackson is quoted: "By their nature, second films are darker. The vise tightens on the characters and you want it to get tough.'' The reviewers who have written the most perceptive & exhilirating responses to the second film work for British publications: Johnny Vaughan/The Sun; Christopher Tookey/Daily Mail; Alexander Walker/Evening Standard; Matthew Turner/ViewLondon. Walker, in particular, really demonstrates a bona fide ability to grasp the significance of the these masterworks in terms of their fully justified part in the lineage of great filmmaking -- and also in art history, as he mentions imagery in Two Towers reminds one of Frenchman Gustave Dore's "engravings of Paradise Lost," adding that Jackson's art-house crew have given those engravings the "gift of life." I own a copy of Dore-illustrated Inferno, and it requires only a modicum of imaginative effort to see how those 19th-century drawings could inspire PJ's darker vision. In sum, an intense obsession with mortality. Further, Walker was highly impressed by the various styles of historical architecture employed in the set designs -- notably, Graeco-Roman, Gothic, Pre-Raphaelite, and Hollywood Medieval. Conceptual artist Alan Lee has made a magisterial contribution! Good lord, the countdown clock now reads less than 48 hours before we see this movie....