Bowring goblets may be flawed

This is an add-on. I heard from Bowring and so far my wife and I are the only folk to have encountered problems with these glasses. The local store may have been sent a bad batch. At least, that is the working premise at the moment.
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Recently, my wife and I bought some glass goblets from the Bowring store in Northwest London, Ontario. Before we had even paid for the ones we had removed from the shelves and carried to the checkout, we discovered three of the glasses had serious and potentially dangerous flaws. The rims were unfinished, jagged, rough and slightly sharp.

Tonight one of the glasses we did buy broke while my wife was drinking from it. She noticed a line near the top of the bowl. When she inspected it, the top lifted free. The wine glass had broken. The break was so sharp, one might have thought it had been done with a glass cutter.

I've written Bowring warning them that one of the wine glass lines they are carrying may be seriously flawed. If I hear back from the Bowring customer service, I will add their response to this post.

Note the shape of the glass, it is made in China and sold at Bowring. Don't buy any. You have been warned.

A murder, followed by an indignity to the body, featured in the Centennial film Helicopter Canada

Misrepresentation at core of opinion piece.

It’s five a.m. and I can’t sleep. I’m upset, haunted by the horrifying story brought to my attention by my local paper, The London Free Press. 

An “Indian” was murdered, the body desecrated and the local journalist called the nation-shaming incident simply “crude talk.”

Why do I say nation-shaming? Because the incident is a featured vignette in Helicopter Canada, the film released by the National Film Board to celebrate Canada's Centennial.

I watched Helicopter Canada and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. If you’d like to stop here, go ahead. The following is difficult to write and it will be difficult to read.

At the 40:50 minute mark, while a honky-tonk piano plays in the background, the narrator of the film tells us:

The Canadian West is still pretty well strung out but it's held together by legends. (Here a new voice is heard, that of an aged, Western man, possibly a cowboy or an oil man, relating one of the region-binding tales.)

“And they started to shoot up ‘round the fort, that is, they were shooting all around the fort and raisin’ cane there. And at that time they killed an Indian an’ scalped him. They took seven scalps off the one Indian. Now many people think when you talk about a scalp, it’s the whole thing but it’s not. It’s only about the size of a 25-cent piece with a strand of hair. That’s just about the size of it.”

WHAT THE HELL?!

 

I’m numb. Absolutely numb. And my local newspaper headlines its story on this film with “Lights, camera - misrepresentation!” Misrepresentation? We all wish. And the newspaper story talks about the roundabout, crude terms used in the film. Roundabout? A man was killed. Murdered. The body mutilated, desecrated, scalped. And the entire squalid episode driven by racial bigotry and hatred.

I'd like to say the journalist simply didn't view the film, but he clearly did. He tells his readers “an old-timer explains that a ‘scalp’ taken from a skull was only about the size of a quarter.” It is the local paper that is unable to address the horror in anything but the most roundabout way.

The writer found the film, Helicopter Canada, “now badly dated.” When the Globe and Mail revisited the 50-year-old National Film Board production, that newspaper called the film “cringe worthy.” That's it?

Eugene Boyko, the film's editor/cinematographer, delivered a film that on the surface is pretty light fare: a tongue-in-cheek narrative accompanies often spectacular film footage shot entirely from a helicopter. But this film is clearly not just high-end visual fluff, it is not, and never was, just a light-hearted look at Canada. 

At its core, this film is subversive. One of the hidden messages that slipped past the sponsoring Centennial Commission in 1967 is things are not always what they seem. Here, I could list example after example supporting this contention but let's move on to another clear message: “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

I am absolutely stunned that so many saw this film on its release and so many more have viewed it over the years but no one, as far as I can tell, has ever gotten passed the honky tonk piano to see, to question, to discuss the horrific way Canada and Canadians treated people of the First Nations.

Eugene Boyko is simply too good a filmmaker to have included this incident simply to entertain us. I believe Boyko is holding a mirror up to Canadians and what they see is not always what they thought they would see. Boyko's film is not ignoble as one opinion writer wrote. It is us, us Canadians, who are ignoble.

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This post could end here but, if it did, it would not be a complete look at the little, aging, documentary film: Helicopter Canada.

Shooting a film entirely from a helicopter is an awesome undertaking, which director-cinematographer Eugene Boyko pulls it off with great skill and style. 

Remember, Boyko worked before most of the technical advances that have made shooting aerials like these easy. He used big, heavy, Panavision equipment to record his inspiring images. Amazing!

Next, the choice of the little vignettes could be seen as simply veering toward the quirky but I see more. Sadly, what opinion column writer Larry Cornies calls “whimsical” is the tone that causes most folk to miss the underlying problems being addressed.

And there are some fine cinematic moments in Helicopter Canada. Moments that slip by journalist-reviewers unnoticed. The little segment featuring the Bluenose is wonderful. The filming and editing is first rate and the music accompanying the episode is provided by The Mountain City Four featuring Kate and Anna McGarrigle. To have included the McGarrigle sisters in a 1967 film was a stroke of genius.

I talked to film buffs about the movie and the criticism claiming it's dated. Of course, it’s dated, I was told. It’s a visual time capsule. It is meant to grow old. It was a look at Canada “warts and all.” It carried the message “we have problems but we can solve them.”

God, I hope so.

Lastly, I could not believe what I was hearing when the honky tonk piano started and the talk of the casual murder and mutilation of a First Nations man began. I contacted the National Film Board and they sent me their transcript of the soundtrack. I believe the transcript has errors but nevertheless it does contain the murder-mutilation story.

I don't hear the name Grayson. I hear "and raisin' cane there."

When will London act on the ReThink promise?

London, ON, endured a time consuming process called ReThink London. It was an urban planning exercise that invited community participation. ReThink was going to put this large, southwest Ontario city on the path to a denser future city.

It was, in my opinion, a lot of smoke with very little fire. Despite the claims of massive community involvement, I believe the participation numbers are quite questionable. But, all that aside, what I find most interesting is that the future envisioned by ReThink is not the future in many places but is reality today.

This is a great improvement on the big-box shopping mall.

Check the posted image on the right and below. Both are screen grabs from Google Streetviews. These images from Georgia are not artist's conceptions. These images show a mixed use development in existence today.

The development, a traditional retail and residential blend, even has a movie theatre in the mix.
  

In compact developments, stores front onto streets rather than parking lots.

Such mixed use developments are springing up throughout the world but not in London. London talks the talk but that's where it stops.

ReThink London promised an end to urban sprawl but unfortunately the ReThink ideas are little more than a gleam in our city planners' eyes.

Lots of parking with a wall separating much of the residential from the commercial.

More than a decade ago, journalist Christine Dirks told readers of The London Free Press about a new urbanist development planned for southwest London. It would be a first for the city. Talbot Village was the name of the new suburban community. Today the development is nearing completion and the only part of the dream that has survived is the name: Talbot Village.

ReThink London? Humbug.

Addendum: And yes, I know the new city plan was not in place when much of Talbot Village was being built. But, mixed use communities are now being built globally by those I would call enlightened. Why? Because mix use creates sensible, profitable developments.

Should you eat eggs? Do you feel lucky?

Where do I stand on eggs? Are they safe to eat or not? The answer is "yes and no." It really is. And that is the difficulty. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the egg question.

The answer depends on you and your actions depend on how you answer the famous question asked by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry: "Do I feel lucky?"

You see, eggs are safe to eat if you do not suffer from cardiovascular disease, from a build up of plaque in the arteries which carry blood to your heart, brain and elsewhere. But how does one know if their arteries are clear? Well, until tests show they are plugging up, most of us believe our arteries are clear. Often we believe wrong.

Even though cardiovascular disease afflicts or kills as many as one in two adults in developed countries, we feel lucky. Until, that is, a heart attack or a stroke occurs. Dying from this is not a long shot. This is not a lottery with long odds. It is not even a dice throw. It is more a coin flip.

The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health reports:

A healthy lifestyle pattern may prevent more than 50% of deaths due to ischemic strokes, 80% of sudden cardiac deaths, and 75% of all deaths due to cardiovascular disease. And what exactly is a "healthy lifestyle pattern?"

• Not smoking
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Staying active
• Choosing a healthy diet

And where do eggs fit in a healthy diet? That depends. Again, from the T.H. Chan school:

People who have difficulty controlling their total and LDL cholesterol may want to be cautious about eating egg yolks and instead choose foods made with egg whites. The same is true for people with diabetes. 

Unfortunately, one year you may test well for cholesterol but move into the danger zone in the future. For many of us, as our age increases so does our cholesterol. I had good readings until I didn't. And I found out that I didn't a little late in the game. I thought I was lucky. I wasn't. I no longer eat eggs, or at least not egg yolks. This is at the urging of my heart and stroke specialist.

If you are young and healthy and at little risk of  cardiovascular disease, you can take solace in the fact that  research has shown eating one egg a day is not associated with increased heart disease risk in healthy individuals. But note those last words: "healthy individuals." Read the fine print.

I believe my heart and stroke doctor would tell you not to flip a coin when it comes to your health. You can never be totally confident that you are "healthy." Don't smoke, maintain a healthy weight, exercise and eat a healthy diet by keeping saturated fat consumption low. And, to further increase your odds of avoiding what is commonly called heart disease, minimize your consumption of eggs.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/scientists-fix-errors-controversial-paper-about-saturated-fats