Glenn Kubish

The run up to the end in Cambrai of stage 4 of this year's Tour de France delivered a telling moment, my favourite moment in the race, so far. Froome hands off water bottle (Eurosport, steephill.tv) It was there that race leader Chris Froome was captured on video dropping, gently, a water bottle in front of a fan standing on the road side. Of course, the usual move would have been for a cyclist to jettison the water bottle with no small degree of force, launching it in an arc that brought it down in a field or in stand of crops or trees, the goal being to lose ballast quickly, rather than to deliver a souvenir kindly. It was an image television viewers witnessed go by at the speed of it all, but a moment that was then masterfully and thankfully rescued from the flow. "Chris Froome, what a gent," Carlton Kirby, the Eurosport commentator, immediately told viewers. "He takes a big toot on a bidon, thinks about putting it in the cage, 'cause there's ...

Beneath the surface is where the cool stuff happens. The Latin preposition is infra, meaning below, under, and, by extension, out of view. The related word that comes first to mind is infrastructure , a noun whose currency has risen to the level of the title of government departments. The minister of infrastructure is, accordingly, in charge of the highways and sewers and the electricity lines, and all the rest of the technologica that supports the communication and commerce of modern life. Some of these thoughts bubbled up while watching CBC's coverage of the Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Today, there is a pageant of boats on the Thames and anchor Peter Mansbridge is, in this video, talking via smartphone to James Raffan, who is steering Canada One/Un, a canoe from the Canada Canoe Museum, down the famous river. (Jack the audio on your computer.) About 9 seconds in you see a briefly frustrated Mansbridge gesture and mouth the words "Just ...

It is mid May in Edmonton, the days are longer, the light is more confident, and that makes it the perfect time to watch hockey on television.  And to think about slow motion. This evening, I am struck by how quickly technology that is good shows its age. Bam, you're old! For as long as I can remember, this has been the speed of video dissection. It is from tonight's Memorial Cup game between the Oil Kings and the London Knights:  It's very good. Instructive. Cool. Dramatic. Until it's not so much any of those. Until it's up against a bigger, stronger, slower opponent. This is from tonight's Stanley Cup semi-final match between the Coyotes and the Kings: The same game becomes a different game when viewed and shared differently. The nature of the moving image allows this kind of division. He wasn't talking about hockey at the time, but Ong (1982, p. 31) makes the point that unlike sound a moving picture camera can stop (or, in our cas...