The “fab five” from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy are scheduled to appear on Charlie Rose tonight.

Karin LaRonde, as I’ve discussed here before, runs a business in Charlottetown that delivers healthy meals for lunch.

Steven and Daniel and I were talking just now, on the way back from the Formosa, about how what we really need is a healthy snacks delivery service that would bring much needed sustenance during the 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. post-lunch, pre-dinner catatonia period.

This period, characterized by the dueling inability to make practical decisions and extreme need for food and beverage, is where a no-decisions-required emergency snack delivery service would come in very handy.

Steven and I both realized that our reaction to this catatonia period right now is either to consume unhealthy panic-driven snacks obtained in a mindless rush for food or, more commonly, to simply push on through, thus creating unnecessary levels of snarkiness, inefficiency, and thoughtlessness that often ripple on to affect our ability to eat a proper supper.

We envision a Big Red Button in ones office that, if pressed, would simply cause appropriate provisions to be delivered.

We agreed that we would be willing to pay heartily for this service immediately.

This is a business opportunity waiting for an enterprising person.

Standard practise in the “replies,” “comments,” or “discussion” portion of weblogs is to allow anyone to comment about anything, and to, without proof of identity, enter a name, email and sometimes a website address to attach to their comment.

While there are some systems that require readers to register, sometimes with an emailed password to verify the email address they enter, this is rare, and thought, I think, to be too much of an impediment to free-flowing discussion.

The result of this free-form approach to identity is that it’s impossible to know who is commenting about what. That many readers favour using pseudonyms, or short forms of their names, exacerbates this problem.

Take this thread of discussion about a recent post here: there are comments from “blair,” from me (or at least someone claiming to be me; I happen to know it was me), two from “Rob L.” and one from “Brian.”

Because I give readers the option of not having their email address (approximately 2/3 of commenters choose this option), often all the reader of comments knows is the “handle” the writer used. And there’s no assurance that even the same handle always identifies the same person.

Indeed there was an issue that arose here last year where comments from one reader were subsequently read by another reader, with the same first name and last initial. This person took umbrage, feeling that if the comments were seen to have come from him, he would suffer harm.

Mistaken (or hijacked) identity is only one of several ramifications of this situation: not knowing, with any certainty, who is the writer of commentary diminishes their authority, strips them of context, and makes for confusing lines of responsibility.

Another example: if an anonymous person, using a pseudonym, writes a comment here that defames someone, who is ultimately responsible? My first reaction is that everyone owns, and is responsible for, their own words. But what if the writer can’t be identified, either publically or privately?

What, if anything, should we do about this?

I nominate today’s Toronto Star front page as the best of the year so far of any newspaper I’ve seen:

From Singapore Airlines comes this answer:

[A] route between the Scottish Islands of Westray and Papa Westray with a scheduled flight time of two minutes. However, it was once flown in 58 seconds (it’s amazing what a strong tail wind can do to get you to your destination ahead of time). The flights are operated by Loganair for British Airways and utilise a Pilatus Islander prop plane. It is believed there is no beverage service, since even coffee takes three minutes to brew.

In other airline humour news, I was heartened to stumble across this Retirement of Our Random Fare Generator page from Alaska Airlines.

It appears as though the whole SponsorGate fiasco might seriously hobble the Festival of the Lights in Charlottetown. Who would have thought that corruption could have such happy side-effects?

David R. Brooks, an Australian I found through his pages about the Half-Safe expedition (the book about which I reviewed here), has posted pages about his own trek, from London to Perth, undertaken by Land Rover in 1974.

Brooks’ original vision was to circumnavigate, and his plan included three phases: England to Australia, North & South America, and Africa back to England. As his website relates, however, “This Logbook records the history of Phase 1… In the event, we all decided to settle in Australia, so Phase 2 never materialised.”

Nevertheless, it’s a great tale, well-illustrated, and worth a read.

Liberals plunge into scandal and infighting, Conservatives elect a right-wing idiot as a leader and, with no other choice, anyone with half a brain is forced to vote NDP. It worked for Bob Rae.

The Michael Apted films 7up, 14up, 21up, 28up, 35up and 42up are airing this weekend, in repeating series, on the Documentary Channel. I’ve never seen any of them before, and I find them quite compelling: they follow the same group of British children from 7 to 14 to 21, and so on, the latest series filmed when the original 7 year olds were 42.

Whenever parents of young children get together, inevitably the conversation turns to our childless friends. Bill and Laurence and Catherine and I fell this way last week at dinner.

I recalled how a childful couple, in a sort of low-key propaganda move before Oliver was conceived (physically or emotionally), told me that all their deliberately childless friends seemed spiritually bereft and somewhat selfish, as though the absense of a need to think of their children caused an overabundance of inward focus.

My friend Stephen says that having children is liking being admitted to a club the rules and character of which can’t possibly be understood until you join.

This isn’t to say that having children is for everyone — I’m the last person to try and woo people into this life, however wonderful it might be — but simply that once you’re “in” the “time before” seems strange and foreign.

Laurence said it seems to her that couples without children are always “talking to their dogs, and about movies.”

That about sums it up.