Raven's View

A Renaissance Man is someone who is constantly learning new skills, both in artistic and scientific areas. Some are mastered more than others, the point is continuous exploration and challenges. While a generalist, knowledge is more than superficial in each area.

Looking back on all the things I've explored over the years - and all I still hope to do - I think am a Renaissance man. Didn't happen overnight, sort of crept up on me. Will I swoop out of the sky like a superhero in cape and tights? I think not. I'm a little too old mature for that sort of thing. Not that I'm a chair-bound scholar, I did try white water rafting a couple of years ago. Enough to say - been there, done that, got a t-shirt, and that was enough. Things like biking and skiing are fine now. Although I do still have hot-air ballooning on my list. I am missing the multi-language skills of a Renaissance man, but I never said I was perfect.  That would imply no more need to explore and learn - what point then?  It's like those annoying people who, when asked how they are, reply "excellent". I'm tempted to where do they go from there, do they have a secret they can share for those of us that are less than excellent? Or have they just learned to lower their own standards? 

And yes, there can be Renaissance women too.

Moved some pics to Flickr, House of Paint, from 2003, and Kosmic Komply from 2004. Also have some from a breakdance/bboyin comp at Babylon last night, I'll post a link once I sort and edit them. Info on the show follows:

Bridging the Gaps is a FUNDRAISER that supports black Ottawa Youth to attend the International Black Summit in Chicago & Miami (some are going to Chicago & some to Miami) August 4-7.

The event will feature all the elements of hip hop and more:

• Wednesday, July 6 Where: Babylon Night Club, 9-2am Tickets: $5
• Event host: Mike Check

1) Spoken Word Showcase

• Valerie Armstrong
• Kevin Matthews
• DJ Morales
• Ritalin
• John Akpata

2) B-Boy Battle judges: Kamikaze (Speedrock Crew), Benjammin (CFM), Crazy but Smooth (Esoteric/CFM)

3) b-boys

• flo rock
• esoteric
• speedrock crew
• decypher cru
• quod squad

4) MC Showcase

• Lakota Jonez
• Flip Kuma
• Boogaloo Trybe

5) Live Band

• Presswon & Alanna

6) Live Grafitti

• Daser
• Maki
• DJ Morales

7) DJS

• t-wrecks (mc 7 live band)
• d- mass (opener/closer)
• daser (breaks)

Bought some RAID Ant Traps and the label reads:

• Guarantee - chloropyrifos 0.03%
• Warning: contains peanuts

Curious. Especially since that drug is a cholinesterase inhibitor. These can be used in the treatment of Alzheimer. I'm not sure if that means if grandma is a little forgetful we open an ant trap and spread a little on her bagel.

Not likely to be as infamous a date as "nine eleven", but still horrific events in London today. I had just woken up and turned on the radio to hear someone describing a scene with emergency vehicles, smoke, confused and injured people walking around. I thought maybe it was someone reading from an account of the Sept 11 attack in New York, or perhaps an excerpt from the War of the Worlds movie. Then I realized this was a live report. It has been a while since Londoners had to worry about bombs in their city - and for us here in Ottawa it seems even more unlikely. But only a matter of time I suppose.

We are supposedly on a Al Qaeda "list" of 5 countries, and the only one not hit so far. Not sure why - we don't have troops in Iraq, our foreign policy is not "walk softly and carry a big stick and use it often" but we didn't specifically oppose the "war" against terror(ism). We did send some troops to Afghanistan, maybe that's enough. We had a G8 summit here in 2002, and no real violence happened, but I suppose someone could try to blow up our Parliament this coming November 5th. The TTC in Toronto has heightened their security level, especially for the subway. Similarly for other transportation systems across Canada. The group claiming responsibility, called "The (formerly) Secret Organisation Group of Al-Qaeda of Jihad organization in Europe" says Denmark and Italy are next, unless they pull troops out of Vietnam Iraq.

CBC Newsworld has a rerun on of a program they did last year after the March 11 2004 train bombings in Spain (3-11). The program was done with the New York Times, and PBS. It discusses how Al Qaeda is not a classic hierarchical organization you can cripple with the loss of a central leadership, but a web of terrorist cells. They show that Europe was indeed a serious target, while we listened to Bush's assurances of thousands of terrorist arrests, that Al Qaeda was in disarray and running scared.

And if you do a Google on "911 numerology" you'll see that the people in the tin-foil hats found all sorts of links between that event in 2001and those numbers, I suspect only a matter of time before 77 gets analyzed to death. Forgetting that the significance of the date was just that the G-8 conference was on in Great Britain.