Polaris posters!

Canada just got a little prettier. The annual Polaris Music Prize (which I've mentioned a few times) just released the short list posters. Not only does this super-cool organization celebrate independent Canadian music it also brings a lot of attention to the visual artists who work with these musicians. Instead of awarding the short list nominees with an award or trophy, the Polaris Prize finds an artist in the band's hometown and commissions the design of a limited-edition poster. The poster must include the name of the band or artist, the year, and the words Polaris Music Prize. After that, the design of the poster is up to the individual artist.

Patrick Watson's poster. (You can see the rest of them on the Polaris Music Prize site)

Statistics are good.

I found the coolest thing on Ravelry today. Google has a trends lab search engine that allows you to figure out how many times people search for certain words. You can type in more than one word and the comparative statistics will be calculated for you almost instantly! One creative Raveler demonstrated by searching for knitting and poison.

This is what resulted:



The y-axis is number of times the word was used for a search.
The red line is poison.
The blue line is knitting.
The letters indicate important events that may have caused the spikes in the graph.

A. Poison Ricin Found in Sen. Frist's Office Albany Democrat Herald - Feb 3 2004
B. Dioxin expert says poison causes widespread damage KVOA.com - Dec 11 2004
C. Yushchenko's poison level extreme NorthJersey.com - Dec 16 2004
D. Photos show 'poison' toll on ex-spy in Huddersfield.co.uk - Nov 20 2006
E. MOSCOW Two American women are hospitalized in serious condition in Russia after ingesting the deadly poison thallium. WBAY - Mar 7 2007
F. Testing reveals melamine in recalled pet food, but not rat poison: FDA CJOB - Mar 30 2007

So, basically, when we're thinking about knitting we really don't have time to think about poisoning anyone. I suppose you could also swing this to say that knitting maintains civility and prevents us all from killing the people we know.

Also, these are the regions where the most knitting hits came from:

Regions
1. New Zealand
2. United States (note the US was the only region that had more poison hits than knitting)
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. United Kingdom
6. Ireland
7. India
8. Germany

Yay! New Zealand is in the lead, and even Australia is ahead of Canada. New Zealand has a much smaller population than Canada and Australia is most likely similar. I'm so glad to see where they turned up on the list because I plan on doing a whole lot of knitting in those countries later this year.

Summertime Water Issue Awareness.

This morning I received an interesting e-mail from one of the student's I TA'ed last semester in Doug's EcoMethods class. His name is Dylan White and this summer he's taking on an epic journey: Dylan and his friend Garrett will be riding their bikes across Canada. Not only is this one seriously long trek, but it's an expedtition with a much greater purpose than seeing our great nation. Dylan and Garrett will be carrying with them equipment to produce a film about water issues across Canada.

I think this is an amazing feat to take on at a critical time for natural resource management in Canada. Our neighbours to the south have finely elected a worthy candidate to lead their country. I imagine the pressure to move water to the States will relax and we NEED to move away from the idea of privatization of our fresh water sources. This line from the Canadian Odyssey Quest for Water website is truely inspired, "One of the film’s objectives is to help build a sense of commitment and even pride in our natural waters, an awareness approach that we hope will encourage a change to the current complacency Canadians have towards inefficient water use and pollution." The emphasis is my own, but just imagine taking pride in something that we've taken for granted for decades. So out of Canadian character. I think there's opportunity for change and these two are on to something.

You can find the group supporting this journey on facebook. Or at their previously mentioned website.

And while you're at it, check out what these two are up to this summer. Another student from BIOL*4110 is heading the opposite way across Canada to create a film about water issues and how they are perceived by Canadian Youth. I haven't been in touch with them yet, but I can't wait to hear all about their journey as well.