So, earlier today, on twitter (and then facebook) I posted the following:

http://bit.ly/bfvxp I love the surprise by the journalists & the reasonable commentators. The mask slipped. They walk among us.

Click the link, I’ll wait.

Ok, so we can all agree that, regardless of what we think about Obama, his policies etc, that the comments about his daughter and her t-shirt start at racism and wander out, way out, to Crazytown with some really nice stormfronty shit and some lovely death threat/near death threat stuff.

A bit later I posted this:

RT @novenator via @RawStory Freepers refuse 2 apologize 4 calling Malia Obama ‘typical street whore’ http://is.gd/1wqdB http://tr.im/s2q4

Again, you can click the links. I’ll wait.

So, in the face of criticism they’ve gone and busted out the Photoshop fun (where “fun” means “homophobic bullshit”).

To this I received the following:

@ronindotca That Kos is disgusting isn’t it? Talking abt Malia Obama that way & not aplogizing. Just like Bristol Palin.

So, let’s stop for a second and think about this, shall we?

1) Kos? Eh? Ohhhh.. I see you’re talking about a liberal website that you feel aggrieved by. Ok. Thanks.
2) Kos didn’t say anything about her.
3) The comments about Bristol Palin were not about Bristol Palin. They were about the hypocrisy of a woman who wants to tell people how to run their reproductive lives having a pregnant daughter. The problem was a whole “do as I say, not as my family does” thing.
4) How old is Bristol Palin again?
5) (psst: this is the important bit, so pay attention)  ARE YOU SERIOUSLY USING A SERIES OF JOKES ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN GETTING PREGNANT BY HER IDIOT BOYFRIEND TO JUSTIFY OVERT, DISGUSTING, IGNORANT, KNUCKLE DRAGGING RACISM (WHICH CONTAINS DIRECT THREATS OF VIOLENCE) DIRECTED AT AN INNOCENT YOUNG WOMAN WHO DID NOTHING WORSE THAN PUTTING ON A T-SHIRT?
6) Honestly, I have nothing else.

Oh, I replied to her:

@jaxbchgirl521 Umm.. you’re an idiot.

What else could I say?

Oh, as a sort of post script, I encourage you to go and read her twitter timeline, it’s a wonderful jumble of bigoted ignorance. I would suggest the medical application of whiskey after you’re done.

https://twitter.com/jaxbchgirl521

So for a few months now the headphones on my iPhone have not been working properly… music comes out of them but I can’t use the line mic that was included with them. I imagined all sorts of problems, faults with the wireing, faults with the button etc etc… what I didn’t do was look it up online or drop by Vodafone (or mention it to my buddy Dean or his lovely wife Veronica,  when I was up in Wellington. You know, the couple who worked at a premium Mac retailer). 

So it finally bugged me enough to drop by the Vodafone store.. the nice man there (HI AARON!) said “oh, it’s probably lint and proceeded to pick out a huge piece from the headphone jack. He gave it to me and said “there you can go home and make a jersey”. Works like new. 

Which brings me to two questions:

1. Why is vodafone’s instore and email help so good when their telephone support is such utter complete crap? 
2. Why don’t cases for the iPhone ship with a little flap to cover the headphone jack?

Ok, I’m not an architect, though I have an amateurs love and understanding of some of what’s involved (which is to say I obsess over my Frank Lloyd Wright books, Gerry books and Chris’ Dwell magazines). I also figure that as the ultimate user of architecture (even if it’s as a passing pedestrian) I’m entitled to an opinion on it.

So here’s the thing, any building that needs an area around it roped of with yellow safety tape due to falling ice and snow has failed completely, in the most important way possible: user safety.

If you’re designing for Montreal, a city that at least 5 months of winter a year and you can’t figure out a way to make sure that you don’t build a ramp for snow and ice that feeds nicely onto the heads of passersby, you’re not really thinking about where your work is going. Worse still, if you’re a architect who builds public buildings and you still manage to build them with ice and snow chutes that drop said frozen precipitation in the area of the front door… well let’s just say that the entrance of the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal is not Moshe Safdie at his very best.