Of kids and basketball shoes....

My kids amaze me. Here’s the story…

Colin got himself a pair of very stylish Kelly green “Dada Triple Double” basketball shoes that he bought off the web. (Check Amazon.com and do a search on “Dada Triple Double” under “Sports and Outdoors.”) Not expensive, but as Colin put it, he’s probably the only kid in Nepean that has shoes like that… ;-)

On the other hand, Marc has been exploring the counter-culture. He got a subscription to Adbusters, and looked at buying some Blackspot sneakers . Marc would almost certainly be the only kid in Nepean to have shoes like that, but for a different reason…

Talk about going from one extreme to the other! I can’t wait for what happens next.

Oh, and by the way, feel free to comment on my posts. (I know who you are!)

One difference between Canada and the United States

Another article which got my dander up: The American government takes another step to increase research funding. Here's an excerpt:

"Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has sent a letter to President George Bush asking him 'to develop the necessary consensus that will ensure America will remain the world’s leader in innovation' by a 'tripling [of] the innovation budget - federal basic research and development - over the next decade.' Wolf is the chairman of the newly-formed House Science, State, Justice and Commerce and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. "

Argh. Would we see a bill like that coming from one of our federal MPs? Never in a million years.

The long tail

I came across an interesting article in the on-line edition of Wired Magazine, entitled “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson. He writes: “Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.” Read it and be enlightened; it’s a great article.