A Few Quick Notes 67

-Another not so cold winter’s day in Montreal. Once again as soon as I walked out of my building I realized that I had forgotten my sunglasses yet again. This was particularly problematic as I was walking across the reservoir on my way to Thomson House.

It is Nithum’s belief that we are on our way out of winter in Montreal. I am hoping the same just so that I can ride my bike and unicycle again.

-I am now pretty convinced that my beard needs to go. I am having a hard time recognizing myself in pictures or the mirror. The problem is that it is much easier to keep my beard than to remove it. Additionally, once it is gone that will mean a return to at least semi-regular shaving, something that I have never been very good at.

-The Oscar party went well last night, though I had to duck out before any of the big awards. I am pretty sure that I surprised a few of my classmates with my baking. For some reason they didn’t seem to expect that I could. I was also able to demonstrate that it is possible to whip cream by hand; something that not many people in attendance seemed to have ever done.

-I have a mid-term tomorrow. Hopefully it will go well.

-We have really come up short on blog posts this month. Maybe we will be able to do a bit better next month. Certainly in the summer when all I have to do is work I should be able to crank out this junk everyday, maybe even a few times a day.

-As I was studying for my mid-term I came across the term ‘capitalist.’ Once again this was used in what I perceive to be an inaccurate fashion. As is frequently the case, this term was used to refer to what I would call an industrialist or, in more Marxist terms, the owner of the means of production.

It seems that as capitalism is an ideology and not a status, this usage is somewhat problematic. In this framework it seems that it would be impossible for a non-industrialist to be a capitalist, and an industrialist not to be a capitalist. If we look at the analogous situation for socialism does this mean that only those who avail of social programs are socialists? Does this make it impossible to be a socialist with a social safety net?

I don’t think too many people would agree with this use of the term ‘socialist,’ so why do we allow such sloppy usage for the term ‘capitalist.’ It doesn’t help either side of the debate to have such possibly confusing terminology.

-For some reason that I don’t understand, the number of people that have viewed my YouTube clip of a train entering Mont Royal Metro station is now 180. In the past few days I have had surprisingly large amounts of interest in this clip, probably about 20 views today. This is particularly surprising as the clip is pretty boring, as are all of my other YouTube videos. Why has this one ‘taken off’?