Updates from July, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 21:20 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  This may be one of the silliest things I’ve ever blogged about. Photos of Gilles Villeneuve, displayed on Crescent Street during the Grand Prix, have involved the Gilles Villeneuve Museum in a $2,000 fine for breaking laws on tobacco advertising because Villeneuve had the word Marlboro on some of his kit on the cusp of the 1980s – long before the ban on tobacco advertising in sport.

  Our taxes are being spent on inspectors who can’t understand a cultural context, think the sight of a logo in a vintage photo poses a risk, and find it fair and just to fine a museum – a museum – for displaying interesting and relevant historical images. Are they supposed to keep the images under wraps now? Photoshop out the offending logo?

  If I had to defend the museum I’d simply say the logo wasn’t advertising. Advertising is paid for. The museum was, I presume, not receiving payment from Marlboro. Q.E.D.

  Is Gilles Villeneuve still taking sponsors? – Fagstein is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  

• 20:47 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  The MUHC opened the PPP funding of its superhospital with the floating of a three quarter billion dollar bond issue today.

   

• 20:44 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  

  Signs point to a ferocious ragweed season although the accompanying CBC photo is laughable. Ragweed doesn’t hide out in closely trimmed lawn grass. It grows most happily in recently disturbed soil and likes the strips of earth beside parking lots and similar sites, but it’s not super picky.

  It’s not hard to find, either. It gets quite tall, although even when it’s very young its deeply cut bright green leaves are unmistakable. Also, the whole plant has a nice scent.

  A healthy ragweed plant before it goes to seed looks like the picture above. The flowers, when they appear, are very unobtrusive, at least to the eye. Not so much to the allergic human nose.

  However, if you dream of eradicating ragweed, consider this from the Wikipedia entry: The seeds are an important winter food for many bird species. Ragweed plants are used as food by the larvae of a number of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). You can’t just take it away, and I write this as someone who sneezes a lot in mid to late summer.

  Later note: Someone emailed to tell me I’m wrong-o and ragweed can and does grow around the margins of lawns.

   

• 18:58 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  This weekend there will be big public outdoor screenings of the final two games in the World Cup at the TOHU – weather permitting, I assume.

   

• 18:19 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  Andy Riga finds there’s already an urban myth about the crosses embedded in the walkways in Dorchester Square. Yes, they do commemorate the presence of a long-ago cemetery; no, each cross does not indicate where a specific skeleton was found.

   

• 17:58 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  Possibly useful list of the major road repair sites around town this summer. Doesn’t include the excavation on Park Avenue or some work on Jarry west of the Main about which I got a city notice today in my mailbox – both of which are to start next week. The city’s list of construction sites may also be useful.

   

• 16:44 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  Globe & Mail has a list of restaurants it finds admirable and a brief aperçu of nightlife.

   

• 16:41 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  Onetime Just for Laughs czar Gilbert Rozon has his eye on a mayoralty bid in 2013.

   

• 15:25 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  A chain of thunderstorms has broken the four-day heat wave, a wall collapsed in the Plateau (although the address the Gazette gives is wrong – the restaurant mentioned is not on Laurier East, or else something else is mistaken about the report), and other troubles ensued as a result of the storm.

  The death rate jumped from an average of 40 a day to 80 yesterday, and the assumption is that the heat wave must have had something to do with it.

  I did not know we had 40 deaths a day. It seems like a lot, although I’m not sure what number would seem reasonable.

  Kate and Carlos are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Carlos 16:11 on 2010/07/09 Permalink

    You are right, it’s on Laurier west. Google has it wrong too.

  • Kate 16:16 on 2010/07/09 Permalink

    CTV says it’s on Laurier between Park and Hutchison.

• 15:02 on 2010/07/09 Permalink | Reply  

  Metro has continued its interesting series on endangered sites: the Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine house on the devastated Overdale block, orphaned by lack of sufficient interest from all levels of government; the future of the Planetarium building on lower Peel; the Eaton’s 9th floor restaurant which closed in 1999 and has lain fallow ever since, its 1930s luxury liner interior out of sight of the public since that time.