Margin Notes: Population, Harvest, CBC, Ross

The population of Hamilton, Ontario was "you" according to this public art noted on the MacNab Street South pedestrian underpass beneath the Canadian Pacific tracks on 28-September-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Sometimes, an idea appears that it's hard to believe hasn't been seen before. I had a feeling like that after encountering the above piece of public art during a brief visit to Hamilton, Ontario--the idea of the population of something being "you" (or, in the case of Toronto, you and 2.5 million friends) seems so obvious, but I could not remember seeing it before.

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A horse-drawn cart was offering rides inside High Park in Toronto, Ontario on 3-October-2010

Closer to home, when I took the above photo during the Harvest Festival in Toronto's High Park, I couldn't decide if I liked the bicyclist that got in the frame. Was the contrast between modern clothing and technology and the horses interesting, or had a picture out of another era been ruined? I honestly don't know; maybe readers will weight in.

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It was easy to answer a question on an employment questionnaire this week. Asked to rate the desirability of various activities, I encountered a listing for "operating a merry-go-round at a community event." Considering that I had spent the previous afternoon giving rides on a 1929 historic turntable for visitors to the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre, analogous in many ways to a merry-go-round, that one was easy: "Very satisfying."

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As explained at length in a previous post, I no longer find the Dave Ross Show on KIRO-FM satisfying, and looking at the logs (I didn't actually listen) last week, there's another reason why. A main reason to tune in had been the regular guests David Sirota, Thomas Frank, and Carl Jeffers. All three of them seem to have been canceled in favor of lifestyle talk.

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While not as fatal as programming decisions at KIRO-FM, sometimes programmers at the CBC mystify me. In the fall schedule for CBC Radio One, I can't figure out Saturday morning. Both the new show "Day Six" (airing at 10) and "The Irrelevant Show" (airing at 11:30) offer a lighter take on the world. Yet, programmers have scheduled "White Coat, Black Art," a serious show on medicine, in between at 11:00. Especially since I imagine much of the audience of "White Coat, Black Art" also tunes in to the serious "Quirks and Quarks" science show at noon, why in the world isn't the order "Day Six," "The Irrelevant Show," and then "White Coat, Black Art" and "Quirks and Quarks"? There's a reason I'm mostly listening to these shows by podcasts these days!