Screaming Blue's New Writeups

Starbucks (thing)

2001-02-11T21:24:02Z

Interestingly enough, Vancouver was the first city outside of Seattle that Starbucks opened a branch in, back in the late 80's. Even then the push towards global market domination was there.

Despite the fact that Starbucks tends to muscle in on established markets (occasionally pushing out Mom and Pop coffee shops), Starbucks is at the same time mostly responsible for these same small coffee houses being commercially viable. Back in the 70's you might only find specialty coffee houses in Italian neighborhoods (ie. Commercial Drive in Vancouver), whereas they are almost as omnipresent as Starbucks is now.

On a side note, Vancouver is the only city in the world (IIRC) where there are two Starbucks kitty-corner to each other (Robson & Thurlow), with different clientÃ¨les and (somewhat) stable bottom lines.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (idea)

2001-02-11T04:06:03Z

I recommend that anyone checking out this node who has more than a passing interest in Attention Deficit Disorder check out Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception by Thomas Hartmann (ISBN 1-887424-14-8).

The main thrust of the book is this: ADD is neither a deficit nor a disorder. It is merely a difference in the way the mind works. The ADD mind is referred to as the "hunter" mind, as opposed to the more prevalent "farmer" mind. Ritalin and other pharmaceutical straitjackets simply force the ADD hunter brain to operate like a farmer brain as opposed to recognizing the inherent strengths of the ADD mind. I won't go so far as to regurgitate the book in its entirety, but I will make one observation: more than 3 million Americans are on Ritalin to medicate them into behaving like "farmers".

I'm very passionate about this topic seeing as, at the age of 29, I've recently been diagnosed with ADD. This explains many of…

Canada is a verb (idea)

2001-02-11T01:06:28Z

The other day I was helping my 9-year-old son with his homework, trying to teach him the component parts of a sentence. When we came to a sentence about Canada (I don't recall what it actually was) I asked him to identify the verb in the sentence. After a moment of intense thought, my son replied, "Is Canada the verb?"

A brief fatherly chuckle later I gave him the correct answer, but his first response started me thinking. Being Canadian occasionally means agonizing over what it means to be Canadian, and what exactly Canada is. It occurred to me that perhaps Canada is a verb. All this running around like headless chickens trying to define Canada, this agonizing over what we are, this argument and discussion is in fact what Canada is. We are creating Canada every day by merely going about our business, being Canadian, and doing whatever it is that we do.

I suppose this is not unlike what goes on in other countries (eg. the…