chuma.org

Here’s the 411:

• Sometime this weekend, PINS.net, the provider to Guns Media, who host the Newtontalk.net server, messed something up, causing Guns’ T1 connection to go down.
• This was soon noticed by me and other Guns people, who wondered what was going on.
• After some running around and trans-atlantic phone calls, we found out from Bill of Guns Media that PINS had messed something up, and that they were aware of it now and were working on it.
• However, there’s still no ETA as to when things will be back up.

So, Newtontalk is not going anywhere, things will be back up, and in the future I will keep an offsite backup of the subscriber list to let everyone know.

Also, I believe today is the one year anniversary of the list moving to its current digs, and we’ve only had one major unscheduled outage!

Both of the above sites are down for now. I am working on getting a copy of the Newtontalk subscriber list so I can send a general announcement.
More to come.

I’m getting a little tired of this layout. It doesn’t lend itself to rapid updates, which is maybe why I don’t do them.

Glenn Gould and discarded newspapers, outside the CBC Broadcast Centre, Toronto. Do any American tourists know what this is? Probably not, ’cause they’re too busy riding in rickshaws that have ads like “HOT ‘OIL’ BODY MASSAGE”. Yeah. ‘OIL’.

The past few days I read two very interesting articles. One was called Power Steer and is about the production of beef in the US. It was pretty chilling, but very very well-written. I’ve since been reassured by some people that Canada does not produce beef like this, thankfully. I don’t think I’ll be buying any imported meat for a while.

The second was called Happy Birthday, North Korea and is a three-part article about one person’s visit to North Korea in September 1998. The descriptions of the total personality cult built around their leaders are very chilling. I still have to read part 3.

Yesterday was Evil Bus Day. Here’s why:

• Morning. I’m on the Greyhound to Toronto as usual, trying to get some rest, as usual. As I wake up in the middle of the trip, I look out the window and notice that we’re not on a major highway anymore. Taking a few more seconds, I realize that we’re in the middle of Highway 10 in Mississauga – aka NOT ON THE ROUTE. There hasn’t been service via Mississauga in at least a few months. Apparently this driver didn’t get the memo. A passenger was talking to him at the time I noticed and, after a cell phone call, he apologized to everyone and went on to Toronto – 45 minutes late.
• Evening. The air conditioning in the bus isn’t working. The temperature inside the bus is about ten degrees over the temperature outside (which is 17 degrees). Guy next to me is either claustrophobic, just nervous, or both, because he keeps on staring at me, looking behind him (at what? the seat?), and trying to make smalltalk with me while I’m wearing headphones.

I hope this gets through alright, because I was messing with the script and may have broken it.