Why is Ottawa Not The Worst G7 Capital?

The best that guest on a CBC show could do to defend Ottawa essentially boiled down to: the locals are excited about the possibility of a new library.

Suck it, Paris.

I think a better question for those people who don't think Ottawa is the worst G7 capital city would be -- ok then, name one of the other capitals which Ottawa is better than. Just one.

2015 Was The Year Of The Datsun 240Z

2015 was the Year Of The Datsun 240Z. What you see here are the black and white 2015 Mainline cars, the red 2015 Real Riders car, and the silver (nominally) 2014 Cool Classics Series 3 car.

This casting has always been something of a disappointment to me. Even though the car cuts a beautiful profile and a nice head-on view, there is something about the geometry that just doesn't look right when you have the car in your hand, something to do with the way the nose is very flat and not dipped and the way the headlight covers are placed. I can't really describe it, but it doesn't look entirely like the car it is based off of.

When you have all of them together, it is easy to see the differences. Of them all I like the Real Riders car the best. The paint is beautiful and the tampos are not overly busy. It has a nice weight in your hands thanks to the metal base. I personally find the Cool Classics car as disappointing, because despite the nice metal base the car has very poor roll qualities due to a manufacturing/assembly defect that leaves the rear wheels fouling on something.

All that said I was surprised to get the Cool Classics car and the Real Riders car last year. Normally models like that don't come to Canada, and if they do, they get scooped up so quickly the only thing left is Twin Mill things or the like.

Happy Cat

I haz a warm

Ceili finds a warm place to sit in the sun for the morning. The fact that she's partially concealed from Nathan is just a bonus.

Now THATS Old School

That's right, I used ed. In 2016. Why? Because the 1998-era Solaris installed on this E450 was complaining that vi couldn't load any termcap information. So, ed.

The Big Short

Financial Capers Made Easy To Understand.

What I don't understand from the whole thing: this doctor guy went to the banks and said I want to buy insurance that pays me if other people's mortgages fail. And the banks said, OK. (Which was dumb.) But then the banks started to sell each other insurance on whether or not that insurance would have to be paid out. And then insurance on THAT insurance. And so on. So: how was this EVER a good idea? I understand short selling -- you borrow a share and sell it, on the assumption that when you need to return the share you can buy it at a lower price -- because there's actual skin in the game (theoretically the share you borrow has to exist somewhere first). I also understand margin buying (basically the investment banks are lending you the difference between what you have and what you want to buy on the assumption that A) if you need to pay off the margin call you can sell the shares, presumably for more money than you bought them for and B) the shares you are buying actually exist somewhere and acts as a form of collateral. But this selling each other insurance on conditions they don't actually have any skin in the game on, that's either gambling -- or outright fraud. The insurance payout doesn't have any relationship to the underlying insured "property" (which itself is a terrible word for this situation but you know what I mean).

So people losing their homes -- that part was always going to happen because the loans were always bad. The financial market imploding, though, that was because of this synthetic CDO insurance bullshit they were selling each other. And yes, you have to bail out the banks because while people losing their houses is bad, you can say well they shouldn't have received the loans in the first place, but all the retirement investments that people have tied up in the banks would have been lost as the whole CDO thing unwound and took out all the banks' assets. And the alternative, bailing out a wide range of individuals because they've lost everything, is hard.

But the movie was a lot more fun than financial fraud had any right to be.

Toon'd Pajero

Mitsubishi Pajero (Toon'd)
Mainline 2004-054

This is a rare car in my collection -- a 'Toon'd car, where the wheels are exaggerated in proportion to everything else and the car is generally cartoony. I usually don't like these kinds of model, I am more interested in a realistic portrayal of the car I am collecting. This is one of two exceptions, and I got it because the 'tooning does make the car look like the Dakar racers that was running around northern Africa around the turn of the century, in particular a Renault powered one-off called a "Mega". In this case, the 'tooning works for the model rather than against it.

Ferrari F12berlinetta

Ferrari F12 Berlinetta
Mainline 2014-031

This is also one of the highlights of 2015. This car represents one of the last, if not the last, common Ferrari casting for Hot Wheels. Despite being a 2014 series casting, this car was almost depressingly common through the early parts of 2015, the bright yellow standing out on both the racks and in dump bins. And it was hard for me to resist because I found the car so attractive and because of what the car represented. I have three or four of them tucked away somewhere.

That said, this particular model doesn't seem to photograph well. The combination of the yellow and the harsh white lights I am using for lighting seem to emphasize every flaw on the car, while simultaneously turning the detail into yellowish mud.

It is still a favourite, to the point that it is one of the cars that grace the desk at my office.