There’s an excellent article in The Atlantic this month by Henry Blodget on the ins and outs of “socially responsible investing.” Blodget manages to put into words something I’ve long felt but have never been able to adequately express:

At some level, after all, our very economic system is socially problematic. The benefits accrue disproportionately to owners (investors, this means you), who make fortunes off the labor of rank-and-file employees. Luck plays a role, as does timing. Education, connections, and money give some people an edge, and hard work doesn’t always carry the day. The key to increasing profit and wealth is improving productivity, and an owner’s glee at producing the same amount with 50 workers as with 100 is not often shared by those who got canned. If you’re going to invest in any free-market enterprise, you’re going to have to accept that no matter how enlightened you choices, your money will be supporting wealth disparity, inequality, and other arguably unfair conditions that go hand in hand with a successful free-market economy.

What’s in that paragraph that’s missing from almost anything else that considers the subject is simply the admission that owning a piece of the market economy is, simply by definition, unfair. For me, that’s the key, and it makes considering the issue so much easier because deciding whether to become an investor or not is thus a simple matter of deciding whether I can live with that essential quality of the enterprise.

If I can, then all bets, so to speak, are off: I could easily become an aggressive and completely socially irresponsible investor (tobacco, whale killing, nuclear plants: bring it on!).

When I came home on Sunday afternoon Catherine asked me to find out from Oliver what he meant by “water cake.” Earlier in the day she had asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, and that was his response. But she couldn’t get out of him what he actually meant.

Once I started talking to Oliver about Water Cakes it became clear that he knew exactly what he wanted — I could tell he was channelling a great vision in his head. It was also clear that the laws of physics and chemistry would prevent successful completion of a cake that involved tremendous amount of boiling water. Or, at the very least, our guests would be scalded.

So, using the kind of verbal judo that all parents in the readership will know well, I managed to convince Oliver that, although his cake vision was entirely valid, actual execution would demand some design modifications. By the end of our talk I had him around to a position wherein a normally baked cake would suffice, albeit one with interpretations of the graphical user interface of the Water Cake applied with icing.

Fortunately Catherine is brilliant, so at this point my work was done and I handed things over to her. Here’s the result:

Today Oliver turns 7. By coincidence I’ve been working to merge our various collections of digital photos from various Macs into one uber-collection. Which, given that we bought our first digital camera the month before Oliver was born, has been a good review of his life so far.

The most amazing photo of Oliver, for me, is this one:

It’s amazing because it was taken when he was three days old. After two days of lying motionless under a ventilated hood with tubes and wires strapped all over him, on the third day Oliver decided he was going to be okay; and so he was. This wasn’t a gradual phase into health, but rather a quantum leap into full-on babyhood. Indeed, as the expression you see there on his face suggests, he was a little taken aback by it all. As were we.

Happy Birthday Oliver!

Oliver and I had the pleasure of a repeat trip to the annual Open House at the Atlantic Veterinary College this afternoon. They know how to open house up there, and it’s always well organized, educational and entertaining.

The most intriguing discovery of our visit was a heretofore secret research lab where they are breeding freaky PigSheepCow combo-animals:

I’m selling my Nokia E61i on eBay. Although it’s a superior phone in almost every way to my old Nokia N70 — it’s got wifi, a bigger screen, a full QWERTY keyboard — in the end the N70’s smaller size won me over. Start your bidding.

We just booked an Alitalia flight to Milan for December, enabling Catherine, Oliver and I to reprise my visit last year to Colletta.

This means that it’s coming up to a full year since I began life as a highfalutin coffee drinker. Over the year I’ve documented 15 places in Charlottetown that serve cappuccino, and there have been a few more since; here’s a brief update on each:

1. Beanz - Since the L’affaire Voldemort in May I’ve only been back once; before then I’d settled into a routine of stopping in 2 to 3 mornings a week. I’d rate the cappuccino 6 out of 10; the service and the bagels elevated the experience into worthwhileness.
2. Timothy’s - Still in flux since their recent move from Kent to University, Timothy’s has won the bulk of my morning coffee business over the year. Their coffee isn’t to-die-for, but it’s adequate, and they make an awesome bagel with Swiss cheese and tomato, and Michelle is the best coffee server in town.
3. Mavor’s - Haven’t been there in months. Never got a taste for the coffee, and somehow its underground location never registers on my radar, even though it’s effectively next door to my house.
4. Bo’s To Go - Was the coffee place in the Atlantic Technology Centre, but it’s since be rebranded the “Hard Drive Café” and they ditched the espresso machine, so it’s out of contention.
5. Linda’s Coffee Shop - I always enjoyed the coffee at Linda’s, and the service was always tops, but its location — in the opposite direction from my office — and the lack of breakfast foods that meet my non-egg-eating tastes mean I’ve only been back a couple of times since winter.
6. Brett at the Market - With only a few exceptions I’ve had one of Brett’s coffees every Saturday morning this year, with two months of Wednesday visits in the summer to boot. Probably my favourite mix of quality coffee and atmosphere; staff are the most energetic in the city.
7. Cora’s - One coffee was all it took to drive me away forever.
8. Delta Prince Edward - Ditto.
9. The Charlottetown Hotel - They never had cappuccino, so I’ve not returned.
10. The Marketplace Café - RIP, alas. I miss it.
11. Great Canadian Bagel - No, no, a thousand times no. Although I do appreciate the fact they sponsor the School Breakfast program.
12. Catherine Miller - Catherine still makes the best coffee in town. I have yet to master the intricacies of her Gaggia, and when I try to make coffee for myself I’m inevitably disappointed.
13. Casa Mia - An unexpected gift to the city, and, hands-down, the best beans in Charlottetown. Casa Mia appeared from nowhere on Queen Street, and I’d move all my morning coffee business there if only they opened earlier than 9:00 a.m. Their service is still spotty — they get overwhelmed easily — but oh my is their coffee ever good.
14. The Island Grind - I went once, had a good coffee, went again and they were out of food, which pushed me over the edge and I haven’t been back.
15. Kickstart - The coffee part of the Urban Eatery. They serve Illy coffee, have an excellent fruit salad and some good pastries. There are two major strikes against them, however, as a morning coffee stop: the atmosphere of the Muzak-filled food court is dreadful, and they only serve coffee in “to go” cups, which I cannot bear.
16. Café Diem - Closed for the winter, alas. Staff problems of years gone by were eliminated this year, and the incremental renovations made each winter have turned the space into a very pleasant place to spend time, especially on cool summer mornings. Eating so many of their chocolatines probably took a few months off my life. And I always enjoyed the coffee.

These days if you’re looking for me between 8:30 a.m. at 9:00 a.m. you’re most likely to find me at Timothy’s; if a freak delay means I seek coffee after 9, then you’ll see me at Casa Mia.

From my Dad comes a link to the excellent World Clock page, a snapshot of statistics about the state of the world in real time.

Was ist das denn?: food humour from Germany.

Just as the Jean Canfield Building across Fitzroy Street is nearing completion and the neighbourhood here around Reinvented HQ was settling down to normal they’ve started construction on the new building between the Town and Country and the Island Tel building.

Sadly, the noise from said construction transits across Queen Street into the parking garage where it gets amplified 200% and then bounces down into my office window.

I fear I’ve another several months of truck backup alarms, banging dump-truck lids and steam shovel machinations ahead of me.