Jake to Universe

Communism, Billy Jack, and OWS

2011-12-20T16:58:00.001-05:00

I came accross this heavily discounted paperback about 20 years ago in a bookstore clearance bin. I was at the time a Philosophy student with a particular libertarian bent. The Berlin Wall had just been eroded by decades of Cold War, and Glasnost had melted away the USSR. It was clear to everyone in those days that Communism was dead for good, so buying The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels for $1.99 that day was perhaps a purchase made with an ironic flair and a nod to the quixotic.

I don't remember if I had actually read it previously to my recent perusal. With the fresh perspective of two decades of hindsight I went through it and was surprised at how relevant it still is and also how bold and fearless it was.

It was published in 1848 during an era of revolutions in Europe but it has much to say about our current year of revolutions within the Arab world and the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The Communist Manifesto is an unapologetic twisting of a knife into the ruling classes of the world. It is written with the confidence of someone who feels the force and motion of History behind him.

Growing up in the 70's and 80's I must have watched the film Billy Jack a dozen times. It's the story of peaceful namesake who is confronted with so much injustice and oppression that he takes matters into his own hands and beats the daylights out of the racist oppressive ruling class of a southern US county. One of the coolest scenes ever for an adolescent boy such as myself was the one in which Billy is squared off against the main bad guy in a face-to-face encounter. I was reminded of this scene while reading The Communist Manifesto. Billy and Marx both telegraph exactly what they're going to do, outline it precisely to the representative of their respective ruling class and go ahead and do it.

Postwar America fell heavily under the influence of an out-of-control and paranoid military-industrial-complex. The middle-class kids growing up in 60's rebelled and a revolutionary spirit took hold amongst them. Marx was for many a guiding inspiration for revolution. Their indignation was fanned by the oppression of minority races at home and the killing of foreigners half a world away at the hands of an imperialistic American military.

Today's OWS movement is similarly spurred, moved and represented largely by middle-class educated youth. They are reacting to a set of injustices that have resulted from the progression of a Capitalistic system that seems to have worked its way towards its own demise. Capitalism has had a long and successful run, creating vast wealth and prosperity for the world. But this wealth has become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few that now directly or indirectly control not only the money but the government that sets the regulations for the flow of that money and the media that tells everyone that this is the best that we could hope for.

I don't believe Capitalism is dead or needs to die. Free movements of money and goods seems clearly to be the most efficient way to create wealth and prosperity, but that doesn't mean that a completely unfettered system would therefore be even better. Everyone seemed to realize and recognize this not too long ago. Free enterprise was allowed, vast wealth was created and it was taxed at a substantial rate to create a more humane and tolerable common realm. The founding fathers who wrote the American constitution recognized that a concentration of power is not healthy for a society and wrote the rules to discourage it in the political realm. That concentration of power is equally degenerative in the realms of money and media. The concentration of money has been able to buy media power and ultimately political power by helping to design a political system that runs on the fuel of money that they provide to help elect leaders and write the legislation that perpetuates and grows the system in a manner that benefits the moneyed above all.

At a certain point this unchecked growth can eventually lead to a diagnoses of a cancer. Marx advocated that we kill the body and build a new one. I think we are definitely sick but let`s not lose our heads. OWS should be supported because it is probably the only way to circumvent the existing power of money, media and politics to get us talking about necessary change. Those who oppose such democratic discussion are not doing the body any good. It makes no sense to continue stacking the rules in favour of ever concentrated wealth when any smart billionaire will tell you that there`s no use running a business if your customers have no money or time to buy your goods.

This should of course only be the beginning of a discussion that will go on to ask tough questions about growth in general and what it means to be happy and prosperous now that we`ve discovered that these should not only be measured by money.

Rockem Sockem Robots, Capitalism and Drug Dealers

2010-01-11T18:02:00.008-05:00

The goal of almost any successful business is to have loyal repeat customers. Some businesses like Starbucks or Crack Dealers have products that are conveniently habit forming. If you liked the coffee or crack you'll buy it again.

Not all products are so naturally addictive, so the seller must rely on satisfying the needs of the buyer with quality or reliability or customer service. If this is successfully done then the buyer doesn't fear buying something new from the same seller if they see it advertised. If you like the iPod you're much more likely to buy an iMac or iSlate.

While this inclination to repeat purchasing can be focused on a product like coffee or a company like Apple, a more far-reaching habit can be formed with buying in general. One sees a product advertised, buys the product, and if they're satisfied are more likely to buy the next product that is promoted to them. Satisfied customers for any product helps the next product that comes along.

As a kid I would get up early on Saturday mornings to watch the slate of cartoon programming and be bombarded with commercials for the irresistible Rock'em Socke'm Robots. The commercials made them appear to be remote controlled robots that fought each other until the loser's head popped off. I was mesmerized. The commercial was repeated to me hundreds of times and each time I became ever more convinced that I needed to have this product.

I finally received these virtual fighting gladiators as a birthday present and couldn't wait to open the box and set up the first match. It was probably 5 seconds after the package was opened that I realized that I had been had. The reality of the user experience was very far removed from how they appeared on TV. I learned a lesson that day that has stuck with me ever since. I developed a strong shell of skepticism that makes me almost impenetrable to advertising seduction.

Around the same time a friend of mine had ordered those sea monkeys from the comic book ad only to find months later that he had received a package of freeze-dried shrimp in the mail. Even the crack dealer knows not to kill his customer but those consumer experiences killed the consumer in me.

It's interesting to note that Rock'em Sock'em Robots were made by a company named Marx.

Nostalgia for the Future

2009-04-08T13:11:00.002-04:00

The Big Takeover

2009-03-23T17:37:00.004-04:00

I was going to write something about the economic meltdown but it's probably better if you just read this article by Matt Tabbi in the upcoming Rolling Stone Magazine.

Glass Houses

2009-03-19T15:46:00.017-04:00

I live in an unusual house. It was originally one of the first Loblaws stores on a busy street in West Toronto Junction. It is unmistakably a retail storefront building. When I renovated it and turned it into my living space I wondered what to do with the front exposure. I toyed with the idea of leaving it uncovered and simply living my domestic life in full view. I was reminded of the 1921 novel "We" by the Russian Zamyatin. The world in which the protagonist D-503 lives is made mostly out of glass. People literally live in glass houses and everyone's daily activities are visible to anyone passing by.

I decided against such a bold move and constructed a wall inside the storefront to separate my private space from public view. During the past 4 years in which I've lived behind that wall I've been engaged in another kind of exposure. I started blogging, signed up for Facebook and began using Twitter along with over a dozen other social networking platforms that essentially reveal more and more about what I'm doing when, where, and with who. It allows anyone willing to sort through the content to be able to develop a pretty good sense of who I am and what I stand for. People who choose to participate in this Panopticon are tearing down walls and replacing them with windows. We are moving closer to what D-503 must have experienced in his world.

It should be noted that George Orwell didn't really hide the fact that his 1984 owed a great deal to Zamyatin's novel. In Orwell's dystopian world Winston Smith and all of its citizens are constantly monitored with a telescreen. This is a two-way communication device that allows for the mass distribution of information while also monitoring the activities of its viewers. Big Brother's omnipresent omniscience of everyone's activities is stifling and oppressive. Big Brother goes even further by trying through the activities of the Thought Police to monitor what each person is thinking. The irony in our world is that many of us are doing the job of the Thought Police by voluntarily posting everything about ourselves online.

Why are we so untroubled by so much exposure? It probably has to do with the general feeling that our governments are not so nefarious. Most people don't seem to think that our governments are evil or corrupt enough to use this information against us. In short there is a trusting relationship between the parties involved. You have probably noticed that when you share private information with a close friend, a stronger bond and trust will often result. This will work as long as your friend is not a psychopath, in which case they will simply file it away and use it against you in the future to manipulate and control you.

Big Brother is not as evil and psychopathic as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe but perhaps it should be the cause for some concern that all of this information that we cast out into cyberspace is permanently available if, or when, an evil and nefarious government does take control. Even with that realization I'm still not very concerned simply because as we increasingly replace the walls around us with glass we make increasing demands on our governments to do the same. As we develop a taste for transparency and it's transformative powers we insist that anyone or group that we elect to rule us will have to reciprocate the exposure. We are Little Brother and we insist that Big Brother also live in a glass house or we will simply refuse to support or elect them.

If you live your life afraid to express your inner fears and desires to your friends because you worry that you might not be able to trust them not to use it against you, then you might find yourself without any friends. By putting it all out there for everyone to see you'll find that others will feel more comfortable doing the same and eventually a more open and transparent situation will result; in your personal life as well as your politics. But this will only work if you demand the same from your friends and leaders.

Yeti In Love (The Director's Cut)

2009-02-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Yeti In Love

2009-02-14T02:14:00.000-05:00

Acertain Ratio

2009-02-13T23:59:00.001-05:00

hard pillow soft sheets
awake for hours

listening to Eno songs
about airplanes and flowers

my mind
wanders
to pi(e)

Melting

2009-02-11T23:54:00.001-05:00

after the thaw
where once there was snow

what's yet to be born
and what's died below

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Memento Vivo

2009-02-09T23:59:00.001-05:00

being is now

not is later

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Untitled 2.08.09

2009-02-08T23:59:00.001-05:00

moving through rippled tunnels

linking meaning to words

through symbols

we transcend

this mortal

coil

long title for a short poem about the future of life on Earth

2009-02-07T23:19:00.000-05:00

we'll be grateful

if the robots

enjoy

antiques

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Economics of Scarcity

2009-02-06T23:09:00.001-05:00

with a surplus of joy

each crack can be filled

with squandered beauty

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Terrain

2009-02-05T12:36:00.001-05:00

not what you say
but how you say it

I ask for metaphors
you give me maps

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Almost Free Gallery Space for Artists

2009-02-04T17:52:00.001-05:00

I have a storefront on Dundas St. West Junction in Toronto that would be very well suited for an art space.

25 ft wide window exposure.
12 ft ceilings with abundant track lighting.
800 sq.ft. bare bones gallery
+ 2000 sq.ft unfinished basement
+ another 2000 sq. ft. finely finished space with up to 16 ft. ceilings for an opening party.

Here's what I suggest:

I would offer the space to an artist or collective of artists to use the space on a short term basis (nightly, weekly or monthly) to host art openings and/or to display their art for show or sale. I may ask only for works of art as payment in lieu of rent.

Let me know what you think and pass this on to whomever you think might be interested.

jake@jake2universe.com

Still Looking

2009-02-04T13:10:00.002-05:00

what you lost can't be found here

but this is where you search

because you think there's more light

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Unititled 2.3.09

2009-02-03T23:59:00.001-05:00

I told you
before the ship went down

that I was
already drowning

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Untitled 2.2.09

2009-02-02T14:18:00.005-05:00

I climb the pillars
and undo the heavenly hatch

let's pretend
it's not too late

to die young
and leave a beautiful corpse

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Drifting

2009-02-01T23:39:00.003-05:00

i am a river

you are a pond

i wish

we were

an ocean

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

This Art is Shit

2009-02-01T23:27:00.001-05:00

I Miss My Dog

2009-01-14T00:07:00.004-05:00

Moniker

2009-01-13T01:51:00.005-05:00

Art and Mortality

2009-01-12T01:15:00.005-05:00

Filler Blog Posting

2008-12-30T23:45:00.004-05:00

This is the end of my third full year of blogging. During 2006 and 2007 I averaged about 1 blog posting every 3 days. In 2008 I averaged a miserable 1 posting every 13 days. I can't promise I'll post any more frequently next year to this blog but my creative output should increase through some other projects that are underway for the new year.

Film:
I'm working with director Andy Keen to produce and write a basketball-related feature length documentary film called DUNK! You might be hearing more about this as the project progresses. It is now in production and slated for completion in early 2010.

Visual Art:
I've teamed up with long-time friend Robert Anthony to produce a regular web comic strip that doesn't yet have a name. You will see the first of them in January 2009 and probably on a weekly basis thereafter.

Literary:
I plan on finishing one and possibly 2 novels during the next year. One novel is a sci-fi-psy-phi love story about a physicist while the other is written as a memoir/bio by a philosopher about his troubled childhood artist friend.

Music:
I've got nothing here besides a few Garage Band mixes that I've created on my iMac, but I would be willing to play drums with anyone who'd be interested in jamming.

Plus there's some talk of a podcast with a broadcaster friend of mine and also that screenplay that's been half finished for over 5 years.

If I blog one more filler posting before the year is over I could get my average up closer to once every 12 days.

Circling the Drain?

2008-12-01T03:18:00.001-05:00

What if a billion people were suddenly removed from our Planet? I had a conversation recently at a family gathering in which it was suggested that this was our only hope if we were to avoid an upcoming environmental and economic collapse.

I'm not going to even consider the residual environmental effects of what would be a massively unbalancing event. Let's assume that one billion people in Asia (only because that's where it's most densely populated) were removed in a magical way without any radiation, toxicity, or similar side-effect. Because our global economy is so interconnected I would contend that such an occurrence would probably wipe out at least another billion people and probably more in other parts of the world. Think of how many industries rely on products, parts or services made in China, Japan and India. Most global industries would grind to a halt. Food production would be affected, trade routes would be disrupted and the resulting starvation and geopolitical chaos would likely sink the world into another dark age. It would probably take at least a generation to recover from such a radical depopulating of the Earth.

I've heard some others say that things are probably not as bad as it seems. Citing historical situations in which it seemed hopeless until things changed in ways that were not anticipated. They seem to have immense faith in our capacity for technological innovation and count on these kinds of developments to save us.

I believe that the solution to the upcoming environmental and economic crisis does not require us to radically and rapidly depopulate the Earth. Nor must it rely on future technological innovations to save us. It requires another kind of innovation to help us to make necessary decisions in a way that overcomes our paralysis. I feel strongly that we already have all of the technological tools necessary to avert the collapse and that we are already aware of what needs to be done. The problem is that we are stuck in a kind of Prisoner's Dilemma.

1. If we all fail to do the right thing then we all suffer economic and environmental collapse in the future.
2. If you do the right thing but others don't then you end up suffering the collapse in the future anyway, but worse, you have the added indignity of losing out economically to your competitors and being poor until the collapse arrives.
3. If we all act to do the right thing then the worst of the collapse could be avoided.

But nobody is inclined to be the first to voluntarily take the appropriate steps to avoid collapse because they can't rely on the others to do the same. This applies inter-personally as well as internationally. Why should I sacrifice or why should Canada sacrifice when others with whom we are competing won't do the same? This is why it becomes much like what's called a Mexican Stand-Off in gangster films. Imagine a scene in which several people have guns pointed at someone else in the room. If any one of them shoots their gun then it will likely trigger a cascade of bullets and all of them will probably die. If one of them does the right thing and lowers his gun then he risks being killed by the person pointing at him who may not act as honourably. So they're all frozen in indecision until someone takes the initiative to fire or somehow convince everyone to lower their guns simultaneously.

The social innovation required is to find a way in which we can all lower the gun at the same time. The Prisoner's Dilemma is only a dilemma because each prisoner is not allowed to consult the other and to act in concert. If they were allowed to collaborate and cooperate they would arrive at the best result for both of them. We can perhaps subvert the prisoner's dilemma by communicating to each other that we will simultaneously do the right thing in order to arrive at the best possible result for everyone. The innovation which is required is social innovation and effective cooperation. Perhaps our ever-expanding access to ubiquitous media could help us to achieve this.

The Promise of Collective Intelligence

2008-10-26T03:58:00.008-04:00

I've been involved with a group of thinkers called Overlap who annually organizes a conference of just 50 individuals. When we gather we like to sit in a large circle so that the lines of communication can be readily drawn between all participants. We believe this to be better than the more traditional "one-to-many" method of communication when someone stands at a podium and delivers to a listening crowd. At the end of each of our conferences some of us wonder whether we have accomplished anything beyond encouraging a sense of community through stimulating conversations. Most of us believe that even this is enough to consider our gatherings to be a success.

Even with the circular seating arrangement and openly democratic structure of discussions we inevitably find that there will often be an imbalance of input between various participants. The conversation is usually steered by a handful of the bolder participants. We just accept this to be an inevitable imperfection of human interaction. Beyond the circular seating arrangement I find it ironic that Overlap gatherings are very minimally designed given their attendance and organization by some very gifted designers.

Buckminster Fuller discovered that in order to build the most efficient structures he needed to mimic nature's design tendencies. Nature tends to organize matter in a way that optimally balances the tensions within structures. This is how he came upon the geodesic dome as an example of maximum strength made with minimal materials and surface area. Tensegrity is the name given to this optimal balancing of tensions.

I recently went to a talk at the Rotman School of Management. The speaker from Syntegrity Group was describing how their consultancy uses the structure of the icosahedron to help their clients reach goals and solve problems. They claim to be able to overcome the imbalances of human groups by mimicking the perfection of Platonic solids. They employ a system of collaboration that allows a complex web of stakeholders to work together in the most efficient way possible. They start with 30 people and identify the twelve most important questions or goals to address.

Each person is assigned one of the 30 line edges on the solid. There are 12 vertices where 5 people meet to address one of the twelve issues. Without getting too deep into the process the thinking is that mimicking the ideal way in which the lines are organized in an icosahedron will allow us to get closer to perfection when organizing how people can meet, talk and work out the issues at hand. It's interesting to note that many viruses occur naturally in the shape of an icosahedron as it is the most efficient way of organizing identical repeated proteins.

Naturally I wondered if we shouldn't apply the Syntegrity structure to our Overlap gatherings so that our collection of gifted participants could start to tackle real world problems but I couldn't help wondering if it could also be applied to personal therapy. What if I was to gather a group of 30 or so people from my life; family, friends, people I've dated, hated or worked with. Maybe we could finally find a purpose for my life.

Wassup 2008

2008-10-25T02:10:00.001-04:00

Tragedy

2008-10-23T00:52:00.003-04:00

The presentations which came to be called Greek Tragedies often coincided with the sacrifice of a goat. There were recitations of goat songs, and the people of the chorus in the drama often dressed as half-man, half-goat satyrs. The word Tragedy comes from the Greek tragōidiā or "goat song". Remember this the next time you hear something described as "tragic".

P.S. Aristotle and Nietzsche had some interesting things to say about tragedy.

Democratic Capitalism

2008-10-22T00:40:00.008-04:00

George W. Bush recently made a point of stressing that Democratic Capitalism is still "the best system ever developed". This, despite the fact that his administration has recently engaged in some economic activities that even his party members have called "socialist" or even "communist". I don't often agree with this President but I found myself nodding in agreement but also chuckling a little bit when I heard him make this pronouncement. It seemed like he didn't want anyone to think he was going all pinko on us, he just needed to pull some pinko tricks to save the banking system and stave off the worst financial calamity since the great depression of the 1930's.

Democratic Capitalism while clearly not perfect is a reasonable and efficient means to the end of maximizing happiness. What we've seen championed by the recent White House has definitely been Capitalism, but Democratic?... Not so much. As long as the Democratic side of that characterization is prioritized then Capitalism can be employed to arrive at some excellent results. What happens sometimes, as it has recently in the Western financial system is that we've forgotten that Capitalism is a means towards the ends of Democracy, not something that should be pursued at the cost of Democratic priorities.

Just because Capitalism is an efficient means of arriving at economic results doesn't mean that the most extreme version of laissez-faire Capitalism will therefore be the best possible road to success. Why do we create wealth in the first place? If you think it is only for the purpose of lining your own pockets at the expense of anyone else living on Earth now or in the future, then you might want the most open system of unregulated markets, especially if you already happen to be someone of wealth to begin with. If you think that wealth should be created so that you and as many of the people on your planet as possible could also live happily then you might accept that Capitalism is an efficient way to arrive at this goal. With this in mind you wont mind that the system is regulated and occasionally tweaked to ensure that we keep our priorities in focus. Trickle-down economics only works to a limited degree. After certain high levels of wealth have been attained the trickle mostly stops.

Capitalism went too far recently and the resulting pendulum swing may destroy wealth faster than it created it in the first place. Why can't we learn that fundamentalism of any kind is a dangerous and doomed mindset to embrace? The free market capitalists that were pushing for the deregulation of markets and the decommissioning of government are just as dangerously fundamentalist as the extremists who wish to destroy them. The key to surviving any crisis is to try to avoid whip-lashing in the opposite direction. Just because Capitalism is flawed and has caused this current turmoil doesn't mean that a hyper-controlling style of government is therefore better. Let's try to keep our heads, remember our priorities and move toward our New Capitalism to meet those needs.

Does This Image Make You Want To Rape?

2008-08-25T01:38:00.001-04:00

I am a strong proponent of liberal expression even when it is somewhat offensive. At the same time I am sensitive to the issues surrounding the exploitation of women. American Apparel ads have served lately to cause a schism in liberal circles between those who would more value one consideration over the other.

When this ad appeared on a billboard in New York's lower east side someone eventually spray-painted it with the message "Gee, I wonder why women get raped?". I've seen the same ad on a billboard on Yonge Street in Toronto and I have to say that I didn't decide to rape anyone as a result of seeing it. Consider that this photo is a self-portrait taken by the Artist Kyung Chung. Her backside wrapped in tights is turned to the camera as she's slightly bent over. It is undoubtedly an erotically charged pose but I fail to see any exploitation. She is a strong women artist in a strongly sexual pose, completely in charge of the situation. There is no hint of compulsion within the narrative of the photo. The character is bent over suggestively and one of the reasons it is so alluring is that she is in charge of the situation and seems to be demanding the service of her imaginary lover. Chung's photo does not portray the female character to be vulnerable in any way in which she doesn't want to be.

People seem more sexually liberal in Europe where you're likely to see this kind of advertising but with even more nudity. In cultures where women are presented and represented in scant cladding we don't find them to be at higher risk of being sexually assaulted. I would argue exactly the opposite. Cultures wherein the revelation of skin is discouraged seem much more dangerous to women. If a women shows any flesh in Saudi Arabia she might be considered a slut and therefore much more likely to be raped than in Copenhagen where she can walk around (weather permitting) in next to nothing.

Someone is quoted in a newspaper article about Chung's photo saying "I don't think you need a PhD to recognize that ... [this] is nothing but an ad for - and I'll put this gently - anal intercourse," - What? First of all who would produce such an ad? Would it be presented by the AIAA (Anal Intercourse Association of America)? Secondly, why does penetration of one kind seem demeaning to her besides another kind. I think there are actually some people who enjoy such things and don't need to be forced to do it. Also she might want to note that that's not the the only kind of penetration possible in that position, but if your dirty mind causes you to leap to that scenario then you have to see that the model in the picture is demanding it not resisting it, so how does rape or a demeaning scenario even come into it?

What if instead of discouraging sexually suggestive ads we just didn't make such a big deal about them? Wouldn't women be safer in a society that viewed such images as commonplace? It seems to me that sexual repression is more likely to lead to desperate acts of violence against women than sexual liberation. I'm sure that the critics of these ads have nothing but the best of intentions to protect women from harm but that photo of Kyung Chung can also be seen simply as a beautiful and powerful image created by a beautiful and powerful women.

As a point for comparison the story being told in the D&G ad below seems to more clearly cross the line. The narrative within this vignette clearly suggests a gang rape scenario. Even though this ad is aimed at women and even though some women may have such fantasies I can see why it may be offensive.

September 9, 2001

2008-08-12T00:10:00.008-04:00

I was on a 23 hour bus ride from Rize Turkey to Istanbul on September 9 2001. My shiny new MP3 player was busted and the cassette Walkman I borrowed from a cousin was drained within the first hour after departure. I was seated at the very back and centre of the bus so I could see everyone's business in front of me.

The buses in Turkey have stewards working the aisles just like on airplanes and I was able to observe the hard work they put in. I wasn't sure if I would rather work with them instead of sitting for 23 hours. It was also interesting to realize that the entire trip was captained by the same driver who tried his best to exhale his cigarette smoke out of his driver's side window. He made an apologetic statement claiming that despite the smoking ban it was surely better for everyone's sake that he smoke to keep from falling asleep.

People started drifting off and after several hours of numbing boredom I was mercifully able to doze in and out for short stretches. The first few hours seemed like days and I fell into a surreal haze. The short naps made the trip seem even longer and during one of these I had one of those hyper real and frightening dreams. I was in a tall building in New York. We heard a tremendous noise and looked out the window as everything started shaking. While we wondered aloud if it was an earthquake the building directly across from us just crumbled before our eyes and disappeared to the street below.

I immediately knew what was about to happen and to our horror the walls around us started to cave in and everything went dark. I instantly knew that we weren't going to make it out of there alive. I heard a ringing bell and a very distant yet familiar bittersweet feeling started to come over me. As our building started to fall down I was transported back to recess break in my grade 4 schoolyard.

Children can play as hard as any adult can work and during some of those games we would become so entirely immersed that we would completely forget where we were, what time it was or that it would ever have to end. Only when the bell rang were we brought back to the reality that we had left completely behind. Only then were we reminded that it all had to end and only then did we experience that bittersweet feeling within which one simultaneously appreciates the value of the game just as the tragic realization of its ending sets in.

Stuff ist Angst

2008-07-18T04:17:00.003-04:00

I've got this fantasy of selling everything I own and living a simpler and more meaningful life. The more I have the more stressed I seem to be. Owning more things just means more to maintain, more to worry about and more to feel guilty about owning.

This guy has taken on the project of limiting the things in his life to just 100 items. His goal is to arrive at that number by November 2008 and he has been blogging about his progress. He's gotten it down to 132 when I last checked. Many people have been inspired to follow suit and there's been some discussion online about what counts as a single thing. Does a pair of shoes count as two or one? Should you count each piece of your cutlery, socks, underwear etc? Some people are being more fundamentalist than others. One girl insists on counting her 20 pairs of shoes as a single item for her list.

Of course 100 is an arbitrary number. It may be an incredibly difficult count to attain but this type of exercise is a great way to force yourself to focus and prioritize what's important to you. It reminds me of the Dogma 95 restrictions for film making that were devised by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. Also, the endless variations of the "desert island question" that asks you to pick your 5 books or 5 albums or 5 movies that you couldn't live without.

All of these regimes are limited arbitrarily but all of them will force you to ask something of yourself; what do I really need and what is superfluous? Each of them will force you to be more efficient, more effective and more conscious of yourself, whether it's by reducing your environmental footprint, allowing you to make a leaner film or discovering and being able to express that which is truly important and inspiring to you.

I don't think it really matters if you're so strict or not. I'm guessing that whoever decides to limit their possessions to 100 things will gain the invaluable benefit of perspective no matter how they choose to do it. Simply counting the number of things you own will undoubtedly cause you to think about those things in a new light. Whether you pare them down to 100 or 200 things you will likely come to realize that you may not actually need to have so many material possessions.

I have some friends who are talking about establishing an award to be given to someone not for their creation of something great but for their removal of something not so great. We rarely reward such things. Rather, we have become obsessed with growth as the only indicator of prosperity. This leads our current form of capitalism to encourage unhealthy growth. We have become far removed from any paradigm of balance and have embraced what can aptly be described by the metaphor of cancer which is the best example of unhealthy and unchecked growth. It eventually eats away and kills the system within which it grows.

iPhone, Rogers and Genghis Khan

2008-07-09T18:57:00.008-04:00

Most successful leaders have this in common: They love to be loved but don't mind being hated. The name of Genghis Khan enjoys god-like status in some parts of the world. But it would not be surprising to his devotees to find that others would revile the historical man. It is a part of the game of being a conquering hero that your own people will probably love you and those you vanquish will paint you as a baby-on-bayonet rape and pillager.

As a child living at one end of the legendary Silk Road I had heard stories about the great Genghis Khan. I was even named after him. Even though I've been called Jake since coming to Canada my real name is a derived form of Genghis. But growing up in the west I noticed that his name was often associated with a less than heroic narrative.

Billionaire Ted Rogers is a captain of industry well known by Canadians as a leader in the realm of telecommunications. Shareholders in his Rogers Communications love him while his competitors likely don't. His customers however seem to despise him. Owing to actual or near monopolistic positions in various businesses people have had to grudgingly make monthly payments to his companies while seething and hoping for some competitive horizon to level the field. As it turns out Apple's iPhone will only be offered for service on the Rogers network and they've taken up their monopolistic position by gouging their customers with exorbitant data plan rates. What has resulted is an explosion of displeasure that expresses itself in countless thousands of Internet postings decrying their rapacious opportunism.

While reading through some of the thousands of comments on fuckrogers.com (which became ruinediphone.com) I noticed a pattern among the more colourfully metaphorical postings. There were countless references to the "raping and pillaging" of customers or how Rogers has engaged in "a scorched earth approach" to the sensibilities of the Canadian wireless consumer. These kind of characterizations are usually reserved for other types of leaders. The Genghis Khan brand is finally getting some reprieve for his name and legacy in the west through films like The Mongol but it has taken the better part of a millennium for this to come about. Maybe Ted Rogers doesn't mind being hated but he should take note and realize that the rehabilitation of the image of such a leader could take a very long time; longer perhaps than shareholders are willing to wait.

Waiting in Limbo

2008-07-02T21:07:00.007-04:00

While waiting in a New York City emergency room someone fell off their chair and died. No one noticed for about an hour. The security video shows patients, nurses and doctors walking past as the woman lies face down on the floor. I could write about the sad diminishment of our instinctive concern for the well being of others or how such a thing is surely only typical of a cold-hearted metropolis like NYC, or validly make enquiries about class and race but I think something else needs to be considered here. If that person were to fall over on the street, in a subway car or in a store I think people would probably call for medical help. Ironically where medical help is most abundantly available no one moves to do so.

We need to consider the context and environment within which the event occurred. Whenever one finds oneself in a typical human environment there are a whole set of understandings, assumptions and expectations around what happens in such situations. To some extent the sidewalk on which you walk, the subway car in which you sit or the mall in which you shop can be viewed with some ownership. It is your town, transit system or shopping area. If something unexpected occurs like someone falling face down in front of you, this event is processed within the background of what you would expect and what you are supposed to do as citizen, customer, or human being. You would in most cases do something to help and we would all be reassured of our human dignity.

The hospital ER is an alien place unlike many environments that people know. It feels more like a transitional realm between the living and the dead. Like one of Dante's circles of hell it is terra infirma and terra incognito. People don't really know how to act or what to expect while waiting there and the fact that it is a highly regulated and designed environment leads people to assume that every contingency has been considered and that things will funnel through this process and fall where they should. They have an implicit faith in the system to take care of their needs.

Unlike their everyday earthly surroundings patients have no sense of ownership of their environment in an ER. In their alienated situation they are disassociated from their otherwise normal set of human practices; like acting in concern for another human being. All of this while very likely being acutely concerned with their own injury and their own mortality. One can almost understand, if not accept, the failure of the other patients to act but the callousness of the staff is unacceptable. It is here that we can question whether something more basic like human dignity is being compromised. As functionaries within a way of life in which they are also the designers they should have been able to notice the anomaly and acted accordingly. If they couldn't, then they need to be criticized for how they have so poorly designed the system in the first place.

Fellini's Roma - Catholic Church Fashion Show

2008-06-25T02:55:00.001-04:00

You just don't see such magnificently self-indulgent film making any more.

David Lynch on iPhone

2008-06-05T23:00:00.001-04:00

Three Minutes of Perspective

2008-05-15T17:16:00.001-04:00

New Capitalism

2008-05-07T00:22:00.004-04:00

It's now considered a myth or gross exaggeration that the Inuits used to put their seniors on ice floes and send them adrift into oblivion. In extreme times of famine such things may have been considered but it was not a normal part of their culture. This approach however has become an acceptable practice in times of extreme wealth such as we have in the west.

In our GDP growth obsessed economics the value of companies are based on their ability to continue growing. The value of all things are reduced to their exchange value within our system which monetizes everything. Nothing is real unless it can be counted and booked within the appropriate column on a ledger sheet. This system is so efficient and works so well that we have erroneously applied it to everything in the world and begun to use it to measure every kind of value including the value of people.

When taking count of value we seem to be missing a great deal because we don't have the appropriate columns within which to place some things. Is a young university grad worth more than a aging retiree? To corporations looking at their human resources the answer is clear. The young person has more future growth potential and therefore more value. Almost everyone one will agree that there is considerable value in the life of a senior but because these values are not the kind that can be represented on balance sheets they are considered by some hardened capitalists to be wishy-washy and irrelevant. So our culture metaphorically sets our seniors onto ice floes by warehousing them in homes, over-medicating them to make them more manageable, and generally disrespecting their value.

A similar insensitivity to cost is ironically causing ice floes around the world to melt. Corporations produce their products and in doing so expel a great deal of pollutants into the atmosphere. Up to now no appreciable cost had been assigned to the damage that it was causing. Because they were not held accountable, there were no costs to enter into their ledgers. But just because it wasn't counted doesn't mean that there were no costs to consider. The costs were simply shifted and distributed societally. The corporations didn't pay for it but collectively we all pay for it in the end.

We have to do a better job of considering social value and social cost when redesigning our new capitalist system. This process is already fully underway even if it hasn't been noticed by the old capitalists. A new capitalist system is being designed in an open source way by all of us collectively. We do this when we engage in free music downloads, support companies that try to do no evil, and create content and applications to share amongst ourselves. This new system of value exchange seems better suited to address questions of social value and social cost as these considerations seem often to be at the heart of the discussion when they were not even considered before.

Law of the Living Dead

2008-04-10T12:33:00.002-04:00

The Romans had a very peculiar legal designation. A man could be deemed a Homo Sacer and thereby could be killed by anyone with impunity. He would lose all rights associated with being Human thereby reducing him to Bare Life or Zoe. It's a bizarre notion that can't just be attributed to an uninformed and primitive culture. By this time the Romans had a lengthy legal and political tradition and they had legal scholars who could argue the fine details of proposed legislation. So it seems anomalous that such an advanced culture could devise such retrograde legislation.

Recent developments have shown us that it is quite possible for a highly advanced culture with a long tradition of Human Rights to go seriously off track in much the same way as the Romans did. Those who have been held prisoner in Guantanamo Bay over the last several years have effectively been stripped of their human rights and been reduced to Bare Life. Some have debated on American television that these prisoners had no rights because they were the intended targets of American bombs and just happened to accidentally survive the attack. They have actually been called "ghost prisoners". Are they to be considered zombies or living dead? Everyone knows it's OK to torture and kill zombies because they're not really human, right?

I grant that it's possible that some of these prisoners are really bad guys. It's also very likely that most of them are probably clueless zealots who were at the wrong places at the wrong times. We have a process for sifting through this indeterminacy. It's called a functioning legal system that works for the most part in arriving at guilt where there is evidence of guilt. Let's just put them through the system and see what sticks.

Canada has been well regarded throughout the world for its stand on Human Rights. It has mostly deserved this regard until now. The current Harper government refuses to respect the rule of law when it goes along with the US insistence on incarceration without charge. Furthermore, Canadians have been pioneers in advocating child soldier laws for African children but its government has been sitting idly by as one of its citizen children has been languishing in Guantanamo Bay for the last several years without charge. Omar Khadr was 15 when he was shot in the back and captured by US soldiers in Afghanistan. He should have been classified a child soldier and dealt with through the processes that have been designed for children who are caught up in military movements often within the control of malevolent adults or family.

Let's bring him back to Canada and deal with him like we would any child soldier. Hopefully he will not be too far gone to reintegrate into society and come back to the land of the living.

Scrap Metal

2008-03-27T02:02:00.000-04:00

Sometimes paying more costs less. Why pay over a thousand dollars for a washing machine when that other one looks almost as good for half the price? But what if the more expensive machine will last more than twice as long? What if it uses half the energy? What if it was made from recycled materials and will be fully recyclable after you're done with it? All of these considerations might move you to pay more.

Beer fridges in basements and garages are usually ancient appliances that were already inefficient when they were made. Eventually the insulation inside these fridges turned to dust so that most of them consume four to ten times more power than a newer energy star fridge. Encouraging people to recycle inefficient machines will have a huge impact on overall consumption and carbon emissions.

We are entering an age of carbon credits and offsets. If governments are going to get serious about reaching overall reduction targets then at some point in the future they may have to consider some novel incentive programs. Might we one day consider enticing people to recycle their SUV's by offering to give them a highly subsidized or perhaps a free hybrid car in exchange? Or better yet, how about a 5 year transit pass? I wonder what the overall true costs of such a program would amount to. It might seem ludicrously expensive at first glance but what if you consider all of the environmental and social benefits of taking a million SUV vehicles off the road? Someone should do the math.

If the price of fuel continues to rise along with the value of carbon offsets then these recycling credits might be the only tangible value that these vehicles will be able to maintain.

Geography of Hope

2008-02-24T01:49:00.003-05:00

I was at the Gladstone a few days ago to see Chris Turner's slide show about his book The Geography of Hope. This was part of the This is not a Reading Series.

The standing room only crowd indicates to me that people are thirsty for his kind of message. It's too easy to feel hopeless when those in power either don't get it, don't care, or strategically ignore the climate and pollution crisis. Too many of us just feel overwhelmed and as if we're just reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic but Turner wants to stress that the science and the technology required to solve or significantly mitigate our problems already exist. What's lacking is the will to do something about it.

Another point he made is one with which I agree: that we have to stop preaching to the converted and start speaking to corporations in their own language. I believe that there are strong business cases to be made for environmentally responsible approaches to business. The short form of the argument is to say that The Environment is the Economy.

Some governments are catching on and they come in all political stripes. Governator Schwarzenegger of California has surprised everyone by becoming one of the greenest leaders in America. The government in BC made their province the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax. They are shaming their next door neighbours in Alberta who are turning their province into an environmental disaster zone with the hyper-developed Tar Sands projects which are under way.

Left to their own devices both corporations and governments can do a good job of messing things up. But corporations are very skilled at bringing about rapid and efficient change. Governments need to use the levers at their disposal to create the incentives and disincentives for business and let them do what they do best. The Conservative Party in Canada seems unwilling to even treat the Environment as a serious issue. The Liberal Party talks a good game but does not seem to have the will to carry out important changes. The NDP seems to distrust business and ironically will often support dirty industries to mollify their labour constituents. The only reasonable choice for responsible action seems to lie with The Green Party.

I've been voicing my support for the Green Party for some time here in this forum and amongst friends. A federal election is just around the corner and this time around I will be volunteering to help the Green Party.

The Great Interview Experiment II

2008-02-20T22:10:00.002-05:00

I interviewed Chris of cdcstudios.com as my part in The Great Interview Experiment.

You share a birthday with a famous man from Nazareth. How's that going for you?

When I was a child it wasn't the most spectacular thing (either nobody could come to my birthday party due to being out town or else I'd get combo presents from relatives). Typically when people ask me nowadays if I'm a Christmas baby I just reply so far, but then I have a rather dry sense of humor. As for the guy from Nazareth, it's a shame that his standard bearers are so very unlike him.

How a long haired hippie who hung out with the dregs of society and copious amounts of THC (turns out the anointing oil was 70% Cannabis according to the Smithsonian) could be similar in any way shape or form to the right wing neo-con movement is almost as confusing as Ann Coulter (off topic I still think she's secretly a very good performance artist that we just don't "get") being a sane person.

You've written how wonderful it was to hold your baby for the first time and you've got another one on the way. Would you consider yourself a daddyblogger? And what's with the funny spelling of Alexandr's name?

Holding my son is and was one of the greatest things ever! As for being a daddyblogger I split my blogging topics evenly enough to say I'm an all around blogger not just a daddyblogger. Besides, the term daddyblogger makes me think they should make a live action movie based on the comic strip "Adam" with Michael Keaton in the lead role.

As for the spelling of his name it's the spelling used for a long dead ancestor. His full name is Alexandr Phelan O'Rourke so he's got a healthy mix of easily pronounceable yet unique names. If he wants to spell it differently when he's older, no problem by me.

What is a Nerd and are you a Nerd? If not, then why are you a fan of XKCD and write at length about CSS?

I am a firm believer in the hierarchy of status (not really) and think that a nerd is a very smart person with negligible social skills. The lowest rung is dork (smart with zero social skills). Geeks are the penultimate state of the really smart (almost too smart but with decent to good social skills). xkcd is a hilarious geek comic with some very profound ideas (the chinese proverb strip is amongst my favorite).

CSS is a geek designers wet dream. Combing the best of semantics with the structure of art is something that is astounding to see. Even more so when it's accepted by all (for the most part) yet not being the intellectual property of some greedy corporation.

Mac or Windows?

It depends. I like to mix the two but am leaning more and more towards Apple in the workplace. Lesser cost of deployment for server infrastructure ($999 for an unlimited client license copy of Leopard Server) than a windows environment plus a greater amount of functionality out of the box. I hope that Microsoft can clue into that.

Of course, on the other hand Mac is still playing catchup in the gaming world but happily that's changing (dear Valve, plz give us an osx steam client soon). My overall preference is about 60% mac / 40% windows. (No offense to the Linux crew but I work on broken computers all day long. The last thing I want to do when I get home is tinker with an OS).

Drum and Bugle corps? Do you do it for all the ladies?

Drum & Bugle corps is the coolest thing ever. Like marching band without all the woodwinds. Good brass blowing your face off plus huge meaty drum licks equals an awesome way to spend the summer. I miss being able to march since it's only for 14-21 year olds (at least the competitive side of the activity) but hope my sons will follow in my footsteps.

I do it all for the great feeling of playing an intricate multi-metered exercise spotlessly clean with no ticks. There is nothing like that feeling. If you've never experienced it there are tons of videos on youtube as well as multiple events in most parts of the country all summer long.

You've started a film-related site called DreamFlicks.com. Seen any good movies lately?

I did start dreamflicks although it was originally purchased for a vastly different reason than it ended up being. A friend of mine and I thought it would be neat to have a site where people could suggest ideas for movie casting for properties the studios hadn't done anything with. Implementing that proved to be something we both lost interest in, so after owning the domain for 4+ years I started a wordpress multiuser blogging site.

Good movies? I watch tons of them. My recent favorites were Juno (phenomenal cast, script, music, everything. I hope Ellen Page gets the Oscar) and Across the Universe (everything I liked about Juno plus Eddie Izzard & Bono add just the right touch of hilarity).

iPhone user eh? Do you remember the Apple Newton?

I am an iPhone user (and love nearly everything about it although there are a few things I'd fix/change:

1. either make notes sync to my mac or else get rid of them
2. hard disk mode
3. copy and paste
4. unlock for tmobile to use).

As for the Newton I do remember it quite fondly. I knew they'd eventually bring it back in fact when the iPod was originally released I predicted something like the iPhone because the name iPod was too generalist to just be a media player.

I was in Portland many years ago to entice Intel into a buyout. Have those bastards started spending again? What else is going on in Portland?

Nope, Intel are still the cheap disorganized un-streamlined companies they've always been. I think their success is in spite of their organization rather than because of it.

Portland is a hugely tech-friendly place. It's sort of become the Berlin between the East (Microsoft/Seattle) and the West (Yahoo/Apple/Bay Area).

How has your thoughts on the war in Iraq been shaped by the loss of your friend Mike?

I'll support our troops through thick and thin but I have yet to see a valid reason why our troops are in Iraq. Afghanistan makes sense since our fight with the Soviets 25+ years ago helped the Taliban rise to power but Iraq was and is a quagmire that we need to either find humility and ask the rest of the world to help or risk losing forever what little respect we have left.

Mike is a perfect example of why we've lost sight of things. He was a devoted caring father who didn't ever want to hurt anyone. He joined for his daughter and she'll never get to know him because we needed more cheap oil. I really wonder how anyone in government sleeps at night. In their shoes I don't think I could.

The Great Interview Experiment

2008-02-16T03:18:00.003-05:00

I've been interviewed by blogger Matthew of Childs Play x 2. You can read his posting with my answers to his questions here.

This is part of something started by Neil at Citizen of the Month which will have me interviewing another blogger in kind. Look for the results of that very soon.

Still Ill

2008-02-11T03:46:00.001-05:00

During my morose teenage years The Smiths played their one and only Canadian concert at Canada's Wonderland in the summer of 1985 and I was there. I had to open the Kiwk-E-Mart in the morning that day on Hamilton Mountain and worked there until mid-afternoon. After work we piled into my blue Renault and headed up to the Kingswood Concert theatre north of Toronto. We got there well before the concert but too late to see Morrissey and the opening act Billy Bragg galavant through the park. They had apparently taken advantage of their free park passes and tried nearly every ride and rollercoaster on the premises. They were followed by a posse of young fans, some of whom got a little too much celebrity intimacy when both singers apparently puked during one of the rides. About midway through the concert Morrissey introduced a song by laughing and saying "this is a song about our favourite subject, 'Still Ill'". By then the story about their misadventures had made it around to everyone in the crowd and we all laughed at the inside joke.

There is a question posed within this song:

Does the body rule the mind

Or does the mind rule the body?

Descartes couldn't even be sure that he had a body. The only thing that he could be certain of was that he thought and therefore he was. So the mind was primary and the body followed. Plato before him considered the realm of ideas to be the true reality and the realm of experience to be merely shadows of that more basic truth. Sometime between them Budhha, Jesus and countless other holy men spoke of the body as merely a husk that housed the kernel of the soul. Throughout most of western and eastern thought the body is relegated as a secondary and profane adjunct to the true reality that is somehow separate and distinct from the mind. The so-called mind/body problem arises when we have to consider how two totally different modes can affect each other.

It is not really until the previous century that the mind comes to be seriously considered within the realm of the physical. Materialist thinking reduces the mind to the brain and thus psychiatry and biology intersect to understand the mind/body problem. This approach is still dominant today and is responsible for the pharmacological approach to mental illness. If you are depressed or manic or violent or can't sleep then a pill or injection will be administered to alter your physical chemistry to achieve desired changes within your brain to therefore alter your mind. The physical is now understood to be the primary basis that can affect the mental.

But what about the Placebo Effect? This seems to be a process that goes in reverse. If you give someone a regimen of non-medicated sugar pills but tell them that they contain powerful medicine then in many cases these people will undergo physical changes similar to the people who are given the actual medicated pills. The power of positive thinking has also been well and widely documented to affect the speed and extent of recovery from illness. As much as the body alters the mind it seems clear that the mind can alter the body. This points to the possibility that things are not so clear cut. It is reasonable to consider that everything around us is comprised of physical matter and therefore subject to physical laws but that does not preclude the possibility that the mental could be understood as another mode of reality.

The study of Emergence considers the circumstances when certain properties arise out of more fundamental properties but is irreducible to them. The process is uncomfortably similar to magic but nevertheless employs a useful language in which to frame our understanding of exceptional things like mental events. When Morrissey poses the question he wisely and immediately answers "I dunno... " because there isn't a black and white answer to that question. Each rules the other and they can spiral upward or down. When I'm down I don't feel like going to the gym which brings me down further and I'm even less likely to exercise. This positive feedback loop can be altered and stopped dead in its tracks simply through the act of making a decision. I can decide to break the loop and start a new one. If I'm busy doing productive and enjoyable things then my spirits are lifted and I'm capable of doing even more.

I'm going to go to a yoga class tomorrow.

Modeselektor - 2000007 (Feat Ttc)

2008-02-08T03:35:00.001-05:00

French Electronic Rap

Let it play through. It really grows on you.

Fuck Earth

2008-02-02T23:34:00.001-05:00

The feminine is associated with the Earth while the masculine is associated with the higher realms. The results of this simple rule of thumb has had disastrous consequences for both the Earth and the female souls that inhabit her. The earthly bits of our being are all around us and because of their abundance are debased and rendered to a lower rank than the ethereal bits.

First, with respect to women: Desires of the flesh are so outside of the realm of reason that they are described as a form of ecstatic madness. The men who wrote about these matters had an unhealthy view of sex it seems and so began to debase not only these sexual desires but also came to resent the objects of their desires. Women were thought to be incapable of higher purposes and their roles relegated to that of executors of worldly functions like birthing, feeding, and sexual gratification. The injustices of this world view became glaringly obvious with the advent of a more industrial and technological age. We have been slow in rectifying it in the West while it seems to have stalled completely in much of the Islamic world.

Secondly, this separation of the profane and divine along the lines of the physical and spiritual have lead to an inherent disrespect for the environment. Religions and cultures that don't make the delineation in this way almost always have a comportment to the Earth that is not one of seeing it simply as exploitable material. These cultures have a more sensible sense of the divine which considers it to reside in the world around us. In fact it is often this very Nature and Earth within which we live that is considered divine and such divinity is achieved through accepting and living with this revelation.

Descriptions of the sexual act are sometimes used in hurtful and derogatory ways such that to "fuck something" means to damage it; as in "Capitalism has really fucked the Earth". But Capitalism doesn't have to be rapacious. Both rape and lovemaking can be described as fucking. I advocate fucking the Earth but in the attentive caring and gentle ways that one would make love to a woman, considering her joy as much as your own.

Silver II

2008-01-29T23:49:00.000-05:00

[More of my family's misadventures with silver.]

It turns out that my great grandfather had saved a small chest full of those silver coins and it had been passed down to his son (my grandfather) who then didn't get around to officially giving it to anyone and almost everyone forgot about them. His daughter (my aunt) somehow got possession of them. By the 1970's these coins had been sitting locked up for about a century when my aunt came across them when she was moving some boxes around.

She had recently been over to dinner at one of her friend's house and was very impressed with their beautiful silverware. She coveted them but couldn't imagine being able to afford such a nice set of her own. That's when she came up with her scheme. She took the box of useless old silver coins and brought them to a silversmith. They made a deal in which she gave the coins to him and a pretty good sum of money to melt the coins down and turn them into a set of flatware.

My Father shakes his head when he tells the story convinced that the silversmith would have been far too shrewd to melt those antique coins. He probably kept them for himself and acquired a set of flatware to give to my aunt, telling her that it was made out of the coins that she gave him. I don't know what a set of 1970's silverware is worth today but I'm guessing a lot less than a chest full of rare Ottoman coins.

Here is another silver scam.

In The Beginning... of The End?

2008-01-26T14:18:00.001-05:00

The picture above is a partial shot of the gene sequence of a life form that was replicated from scratch. Just think of all of the possibilities for good and for bad.

Internet Party: When Google's parents leave town...

2008-01-22T17:42:00.001-05:00

laptop.org

2008-01-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

I ordered my OLPC laptop a few seconds after they opened up the order page in November. I only received it a few days ago despite their promise to try and deliver before the holidays. It's an ambitious effort to get computers into the hands of the poorest children in the world and they're off to a decent start.

I've been testing it and am impressed so far. It's a lot smaller and lighter than my 12" Apple PowerBook and has a more powerful WiFi receiver. In my local Starbucks here at the edge of High Park where I do some writing I normally can't pick up any open router transmissions but with the XO laptop I can see a few available signals. The browser is a little slow compared to the PowerBook and seems to have trouble with Flash video but otherwise is quite robust.

When we featured it at the last Juice Dialogues by bringing in a representative with a working model we had a very positive response from the participants although I was surprised to hear from some of the more radical young people that it was perhaps just another example of our cultural imperialism imposing our techno centric and even logo centric culture on more traditional and probably richer oral cultures. Even though that interpretation may factually be true I'm not sure what the alternative is supposed to be. Unfortunately the game is rigged and one needs to be able to read, write and electronically communicate in order to escape poverty in our world and this is an elegant way to give some children the opportunity to develop these skills.

If you'd like one you can pay a total of $400 for two laptops. You will be sent one and automatically donate one to some deserving child in a developing setting. Every time I open it up in public people inevitably ask about it and this is really the reason I got it. It is a way to spread the word. I encourage you to buy one, donate, or just talk it up.

[Update: The first wave of the Buy 2 Get 1 program seems to be over for now]

No Silver Lining

2008-01-15T19:25:00.000-05:00

My father's family has had some bad luck with silver. It starts with a story about one of his ancestors that made a living on the Silk Road. It seems this woman went to ask a holy man for some advice. She wanted to know what she could expect for her son in the future and what she could do to ensure his success. The young man in question was my great great grandfather and his mother was worried that he wouldn't amount to much.

The young man was asked by his Mother to find her a kurus coin. He went around town and couldn't find any of the older coins so he brought her instead a newer coin with a higher denomination. She insisted that she needed that specific type of kurus coin and pestered him for weeks to collect these for her. He soon found that other young men were also asking around for the same coins and began chatting them up. Through a series of conversations he was able to piece together an emerging story.

The mothers of these young men all had been known to seek the advice of the same holy man. It seemed that this holy man told his mother that he would be a successful man and grow to produce a large number of grandchildren but only if she were to produce the appropriate sacrifice in the form of the specific coins that he requested. If she did not produce these coins in sufficient quantity she was told that her son would end up in a terrible mess, possibly even in prison. The young man also had several conversations with people about rumours that some silver coins were about to be replaced with copper versions and thus was able to put two and two together.

Angrily and without much consideration for the consequences he went to visit this so-called holy man and ended up giving him a pretty good beating. It was clear that this charlatan was engaged in an effort to collect all of the soon-to-be much more valuable silver coins and he was exploiting the hopes and fears of the simple women of the town in order for them to do his bidding.

When his mother came to visit him in prison she apologized for not finding enough of those silver coins to give the holy man crying that his fortune-telling was obviously very accurate since he did end up in prison just like he had predicted.

Stuff

2008-01-04T03:00:00.000-05:00

The Story of Stuff

Zig Zag Man

2007-12-30T17:28:00.000-05:00

My friend G was one of the biggest guys in our school and yet displayed much speed and agility on the playing fields. His talents didn't go unnoticed and he was given a football scholarship to an American university. I went off to University in Toronto and enrolled in classes in philosophy, psychology and linguistics while he went south to play football and enrolled in classes in bowling and archery.

When I saw him again over the Christmas holidays that year I couldn't believe how much he had changed. He looked like he had packed on about 50 pounds of muscle. He wasn't shy or secretive about it, he told me that the team medical staff had put him on a course of anabolic steroids. This was just what every school did and every professional football player as far as he knew also injected himself with the stuff.

Ricky Williams has been twice suspended from NFL football for testing positive for marijuana use. This is somewhat bizarre since nobody is claiming that it has given him any advantage while working as a professional running back (unless it's actually what suppresses his fear while running full speed into 350 pound linemen). Meanwhile it is pretty likely that almost all of the larger players in the NFL and Major League Baseball have used or still continue to use performance enhancing drugs.

Unlike alcohol or anabolic steroids; marijuana is not known to make the user violent or aggressive. So it's use is quite irrelevant for a football player. It also does not make one particularly quick, either mentally or physically. This is why the Olympic people rightly reversed Ross Rebagliati's initial disqualification of his gold medal win in the snowboarding event after he tested positive for THC.

The video below could be made into a very useful public service announcement.

Santa Claus, Faith and Fascism

2007-12-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

By the time I had reached grade two I had already decided that I didn't believe in Santa Claus. My ethnic immigrant parents didn't really know anything about Santa and my three older sisters made it clear by their words and deeds that it was just a fairy tale which was not to be taken seriously. On the last day of school before the holidays someone put up their hand in class and asked if there really was a Santa Claus. My grade two teacher laughed with incredulity and said "Of course dear. Santa Claus has been working hard all year and he'll be delivering your gifts on Christmas Eve".

This took me by surprise so I entered the fray and asked a series of questions "but how could he have the time to make the gifts for every boy and girl on the planet? Reindeer can't fly, can they? What about this chimney thing? I live in an apartment building, we don't have a chimney." The teacher proceeded to give a strained explanation for each of my objections while some of the more smarmy kids gave me the stink-eye, laughed at me and questioned my intelligence. Apparently this immortal being could work magically fast, had magical reindeer and seemed to be some kind of shape-shifting creature that could fit not only through chimneys but also through apartment ventilation systems or even door cracks if you didn't have a working HVAC system in your shack.

I loved and trusted my teacher and couldn't imagine that she would deceive me so I began to question my skepticism, especially when she said that it would only work if I truly and honestly believed in him. So as I walked home I tried to truly and honestly believe in Santa Claus. When I got home I told my family about what I had learned and my sisters laughed at me and my parents didn't show much support but I resisted the efforts of these unbelievers who were testing my faith. I insisted on leaving out cookies and milk for Santa. My mother reluctantly agreed to humour me but refused to remove the covering over the heating vent citing that if he was so magically gifted he could figure out a way around it. As the evening drew to a close I was doing all kinds of mental contortions to make myself truly and honestly believe in him. One part of me had serious doubts but the other side tried to douse them because I wanted it so much to be true. I really wanted to get those Rock'em Sock'em Robots and there was no way I was going to find them in my living room the next day unless I could somehow manage to truly believe.

I fell asleep squinting with the intensity of belief, struggling to throw aside any aberrant thoughts of doubt. In the morning I awoke and rushed out to our living room only to find that the cookies and milk were still where I left them and no presents were anywhere to be found. At first I was crushed by my inability to truly and honestly believe in him but soon decided that I had been duped. I don't think I have ever felt so foolish in my entire life and I immediately began to question the motives of my beloved teacher. If she lied about this, she might been lying about everything she's been teaching us. How could I ever trust her again?

I don't have children of my own but I was once a child. I would strongly suggest that if you do have children to not to extend the deception and let them know that there is a rational order to the Universe and that such magical powers are not possible. I'm not suggesting that you crush a child who willingly believes in Santa Claus but if they already have doubts then for the sake of their intellectual and emotional growth please don't try and convince them with faulty logic and science. What purpose does it serve? Children rely on us to tell them the truth. All you're doing is training them to force themselves to believe what is reasonably unbelievable. All that will do is create a generation of people who are perfectly suited to be swayed by political and religious extremists because forcing one's self to believe something just because you'd like it to be true is exactly how these groups operate, propagate and survive.

Let's Put our Heads Together

2007-12-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

Who's more likely to accurately guess the weight of a large ox; a livestock expert or a large group of amateurs? Francis Galton was surprised to discover that the average of the guesses of the crowd of amateurs was more accurate than the estimate of any single member of the crowd including experts. James Surowiecki has written a book called The Wisdom of the Crowds. The subtitle of the book is Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.

Western societies have an inherently dichotomous approach to authority. We believe fiercely in the ability of the individual to make decisions for one's self but we willingly acquiesce to the wisdom of the crowds that control the outcome of electoral democratic elections. We elect leaders by giving every single person the opportunity to choose not just professors of Political Science. So it's not difficult for us to accept that a very large group of citizens can arrive at a better decision than a group of oligarchs just like a small group of jurors can arrive at a better decision than a judge (or not).

The world of business has always at been at peace with this approach as it is just plainly true that whatever price a crowd of investors is willing to pay for a share is what accurately determines the price of that share. The futures markets essentially makes bets on what people believe will be the price of a commodity at a certain time in the future. These markets have been shown to be uncannily prescient in these matters as they tend to be incredibly accurate. Even futures markets that bet on who they believe will be the winners of elections have been shown to be more accurate than most polling results. But this seems to work well only when there is something to win or lose by the result of your prediction. People could respond to pollsters' questions in any number of ways but they become much more focused and accurate when there's something immediately at stake.

Businesses are now starting to apply this approach internally by giving away prizes like iPods to employees who can predict something like the date of completion of a particular project. The results they collect from the entries are much more accurate than the time-lines they find in the reports given to them by their subordinates.

Recent technological developments are giving rise to similar innovations in social and political realms. A mass of text-messaging teenagers are given the task of choosing the next American Idol over the expert opinions of that really mean Englishman panelist. A Wikipedia entry is not written by a single expert but is now the source most trusted to supply accurate information. The impressive adoption rate of Facebook gives us an unprecedented opportunity to apply this wisdom of the crowds in myriad ways to our everyday lives. The potential of a large network of individual peers to help us make decisions has not yet even been touched.

Future By Design

2007-12-09T02:40:00.000-05:00

I just went to a screening of Future By Design by William Gazecki. It features the thought and works of an extraordinary 91 year old inventor name Jacque Fresco. This man still spends his days thinking about ways to redesign cities in a way he wants to resist calling utopian but I can't think of a better description.

When Sir Thomas Moore wrote 500 years ago of an island he called Utopia he was making a play on words: The Greek ou-topos, meaning "no place", and eu-topos, meaning "good place". It is an imagined place of perfection that does not exist and some would say cannot exist. The ideas brought forth by Jacque Fresco are all within the realm of possibility but so many factors stand in the way of them ever coming to pass. I admire the determination of such a person but can't help but feel sad for his quixotic quest.

I know we will need to make some radical changes to the way we build, consume, govern, and do business to save this world but I'm afraid we probably won't really want to do these things until we're on the brink or past the brink of disaster. Unfortunately that is probably the worst time to make reasoned and rational choices. In such instances immediate survival will be chosen over long term benefits which consequently could make it worse.

Another reason I'm saddened is that even if we could all agree that we needed to redesign our entire world the unintended consequences of such radical overhauls are bound to be disastrous in their own right. You simply cannot remake a world with a single blueprint. There are millions of competing blueprints from which we're all simultaneously building our world. Whenever a single design is chosen it is bound to succeed on many fronts but fail on countless others.

Some of the city designs which Fresco advocates are marvels of rational, mathematically rigid design. All the cities in his world would be nearly identical and their efficiencies would be vastly superior. But what would we also lose? The architecture of a city influences and inspires it's inhabitants. Such a rationally pre-structured design doesn't allow room for a natural cultural growth. In such surroundings one could imagine that the very innovation required to continue improving the world and to grow culture would be diminished or lost.

This Week in Political Elections

2007-12-05T03:22:00.000-05:00

Russian President Putin seems to have played every trick in the book to get a mandate from the people to remain as de facto dictator. Some complained that even elections under the old Soviets weren't this corrupt. Did anybody really think that someone like Putin was going to give up that much power that easily?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez didn't seem to cheat nearly as much as Putin did and consequently didn't win his bid to remain as dictator. He was holding a referendum to attain the power to remain as President for life, take control of the Central Bank and enact legislation at his discretion without parliamentary assent. He lost the vote 49% to 51% but remains in power until 2013.

Peter Garrett was the lead singer for Australian rock band Midnight Oil. The fiercely political singer was frighteningly energetic on stage when I saw them in concert about 20 years ago. He has apparently been in parliament for the past three years and was this week appointed as the Environment Minister after his Labour Party ousted the global warming denying and Bush ally John Howard.

Another pop star politician Gilberto Gil of Brazil is resigning as Culture Minister to attend to an illness.

Enjoy the videos below.

Vladimir Putin: Russia's New Dictatorship

2007-12-05T03:19:00.003-05:00

Hugo Chavez vs Bush

2007-12-05T03:16:00.001-05:00

Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning

2007-12-05T02:50:00.001-05:00

Gilberto Gil - Turn Your Lights Down Low

2007-12-05T02:44:00.001-05:00

Writer's Block II

2007-11-30T19:03:00.003-05:00

Video in support of the striking writers.

Writer's Block

2007-11-30T17:31:00.000-05:00

During the last 30 days I've blogged everyday and managed to write a novel while participating in NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo. The novel has already gotten a very emotional response from its first reader.

To be honest I'm actually surprised how easy it all was.

I'll be sure to come back to the previous sentence whenever I think I'm suffering from writer's block.

Don't Make a Big Production Out of It!

2007-11-29T23:51:00.000-05:00

I went to see a staged reading tonight. What is that exactly? You ask. It's the performance of a play without any stage design, props, extras, music etc. This particular reading had just three people on stage; two actors reading from a script and the seated director who read out the stage directions.

The play was Espresso by Lucia Frangione at Theatre Best/Before. It was a little confusing at first and one had to pay close attention because each of the two actors had to speak the parts of several characters and sometimes even switched between characters. Once I got the hang of it I was no longer confused and the actors began to win me over.

The story is about a thirty year old Italian/English Canadian girl who rushes back home after her father is seriously hurt in a car accident. The characterizations of Italian Canadian culture were spot on and very funny at times. Domenic Calla who played most of the Male voices through the avatar character of Amante was most charming when he spoke in the exaggerated voices of the various Italian family members. Laura Duralija started slowly but came into her own as the tension increased and more emotion was required of her.

Other than the occasional David Mamet play I haven't been to see much theatre mainly because I really don't like all of the excessive production of most of the popular plays. The focus on the text of a play without the distraction of over production is an interesting approach to theatre and I will probably go to other staged readings in the future.

Filler' Up - Coal or Nuclear?

2007-11-28T23:13:00.000-05:00

If I decide to ever buy another car I thought it might be an electric one like the Zenn (Zero Emission Zero Noise) vehicle. They don't spew any exhaust, take up less space and are completely silent. Switching to vehicles like these would have profound effects on life in a city like Toronto. But wide scale adoption of these could lead to some unintended results. Remember the massive blackout during the summer of 2003? It was possible because every summer our air conditioners overextend the capacity of our electricity suppliers. Population growth coupled with a booming economy means that electricity supply problems will get worse not better.

So what would happen if a significant number of drivers switched to electric cars? Our current power delivery systems would become swamped. Whenever we need to buy more electric power on the open market our suppliers tend to purchase it from US sources which are almost all derived from burning coal. These cars would in effect be be powered by coal. One way around this would be to do as the French do and invest in new nuclear plants but then these cars would ultimately run on nuclear energy and a lot of people can't come around to supporting Nuclear energy.

No matter how you slice it there will need to be massive reductions in everyday power consumption if innovations like the Zenn car are going to be effectively adopted. So maybe hybrid is still a better choice. It's too bad because I had my eye on this electric car below which is made by Tesla Motors.

Checkmate Knockout

2007-11-27T23:23:00.001-05:00

I started a Facebook group over 6 months ago called Intellectuals Who Enjoy Boxing. We peaked at 3 members and have been sitting at 2 members since one of my so-called good friends left the group inexplicably a few months ago.

Chessboxing is a sport that is tailor made for intellectuals who enjoy boxing. Competitors in this sport alternate between playing chess and pounding on each other in a regulation boxing ring.

The best chess players in the world have recently been surpassed by computer chess machines and it's just a matter of time until robot boxers start beating the crap out of us flesh-based pugilists so I'm starting to promote the ultimate chessboxing match of the future.

IBM Deep Blue v.11.b vs Rockem Sockem Red Rocker

Live at the MGM Grand II in Las Vegas, June 7, 2019.

Much Ado About Nothing

2007-11-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

We learned long ago that an atom was comprised mostly of nothing. Inside the electron shell there is a vast area of nothing until you get to the nucleus where you'll find the Neutrons and Protons. The amount of stuff in there is almost negligible in size but significant in it's force since it's this stuff that makes it what it is.

In order for much of modern cosmological theories to work theorists have postulated the existence of Dark Matter. It is another type of matter than the stuff that we can see and from which we're all made. It doesn't react with our regular baryonic type of matter so we can't observe it directly but is thought to comprise the vast majority of the mass off the matter of the Universe anyway, about fifty times more Dark Matter than regular matter.

But wait, that's not all. As much Dark Matter as there is, it's only about a third of the theorized amount of Dark Energy. Even though it is just energy and not matter, there is so much of this Dark Energy that it nevertheless makes up about three quarters of the mass of the Universe.

According to these theories the stuff of planets, stars and galaxies only comprise about less than one half of one percent of the stuff of existence. We're more special than you might think.

Body By Jake

2007-11-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

I don't believe in all of those fad weight loss diets. It shouldn't be about the weight. If you adopt a healthy lifestyle then the weight loss will be a bonus side-effect. My friend has developed a diet that's very simple and effective. It's called the Shut Your Cake Hole and Start Moving Your Ass Diet.

I'm one of those people who others say can eat anything and not get fat. It's true that I often eat ice cream and cookies before going to bed and regularly spoon Nutella directly from the jar but I don't think that I've won the genetic lottery. I've got a couple of secrets to add to the diet above.

1. Chew your food - I mean really chew it well. It tastes better this way, you're more satisfied, you'll have fewer tummy troubles and you'll eat less.

2. Small portions - The first five bites always tastes better than the last five bites, so just eliminate the last five bites and have another first five bites later.

3. No Sugar - Just don't add sugar to anything. After your body kicks the habit you won't even miss it, your cravings for sweets will diminish and you'll start to notice that a lot of cake is just too sweet to eat.

That's it. If you take this advice to heart then you'll have success. I guarantee it or your money back.* But you must heed all of the above because I haven't been moving my ass that much lately and I'm starting to feel a little soft. Boxing lessons start again next week.

*offer not valid in GPEG (Greater Planet Earth Region)

Ride'em Cowboy

2007-11-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

“We call this a 'Brokeback Mountain' game, because there's so much penetration and kickouts,” Jackson said. “It was one of those games.”

Sports personalities aren't known for their original observations or verbal acuity. Phil Jackson is one of the more enlightened people in sports. The multiple championship winning NBA coach of the LA Lakers threw off one of the funnier quips I've heard from a sports guy in some time. During a game this week the San Antonio opposition was repeatedly able to penetrate into the scoring zone then kick the ball out to a shooter who easily made the long 3-point shot. When asked about it he delivered the quote above.

I thought it was hilarious. It showed a knowledge of sports, cinema and comedy as well as a hip ease with referencing gay culture. Most of the reporters also thought it was funny as it generated a round of laughter within the scrum. The NBA however reprimanded Jackson this week for his comments. I'm not exactly sure why but I'm not surprised it would happen within a nation that embarrassed themselves to the world by freaking out over the momentary exposure of a single breast during a half-time show.

Phil came out to make the obligatory apology but he did so again with an hilarious flourish.

“If I've offended any horses, Texans, cowboys or gays, I apologize,” Jackson said.

The Persistence of Memory

2007-11-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

The amounts of data being created on the Internet is staggering and we've got to find a way to store all of it somehow. Rich media Internet applications like YouTube, Myspace and Facebook are accelerating the rate at which the amount of data is being added to the pool. Below is a pretty funny graph produced just ten years ago in 1997. It estimates the amount of data on the Internet at that time to be just under 2 Terabytes (2 million megabytes).

Here's what you can do with 2 TB worth of data. You can store it on this Lacie 2TB hard drive which anyone can put on their desk for about $600.
When the Large Hadron Collider becomes operational next year some of the most important physics experiments ever devised will be carried out. Some really interesting data will be produced there at the annual rate of about 15 Petabytes (15 million million megabytes). This is just from one source. Now imagine all of the ways we will continue to create data. If we extrapolate into the future the growth we've seen thus far it quickly becomes mind boggling to consider where to store it all and how to maintain it so that it doesn't disintegrate and disappear into the ether.

La desintegración de la persistencia de la memoria
Salvador Dali (1954)

Making Green Lemonade

2007-11-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

Some people have a knack for making the best of a bad situation. I'm not talking about Mary Tyler Moore whose character "can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worth while." For some people calamities, catastrophes and disasters aren't always so bad.

Disaster Capitalism - The new book by Naomi Klein is a follow up to her huge hit No Logo. In the new work she claims that political powers exploit disasters of many kinds to push through legislation that would otherwise be met with much resistance in safe and peaceful settings. The implication is that there is actually a disincentive for some to seek peace and incentives for them to sustain disaster scenarios so that they can enact legislation like The Patriot Act after 911 or bring forth the privatization of the school system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Military Industrial Complex - More than just the simple opportunism of disaster capitalism, the Military Industrial Complex is a much wider construct that is said to be more or less designed to encourage war in order to profit from it's ability to destroy capital which then needs to be recapitalized or replaced.

Measuring Wealth with GDP - Gross Domestic Product measures the value of all products that are produced within an economy. This positively counts product growth without taking into consideration the possibly more costly side effects of the events that created the demand. This is why such a terrible thing as an oil spill will increase the GDP of an economy because many costly products will be produced to nominally clean up the environmental mess and to replace the oil liner.

Blood for Oil - This seems to creatively mix all of the above. It's a fact that war in the Middle East has greatly benefited the petroleum sector as well as companies that sell their services to the US Government. It might be more than coincidental that many of these companies have close ties to the offices of the US Executive and many of the people in their cabinet.

Disaster Fundraising - Lobbyists are known to exaggerate their causes in order to get the money flowing. It seems that those in non-profit, charitable or humanitarian organizations are not beyond this approach. The UN has just had to restate their AIDS numbers for Africa. It seems that the incidence of the disease has been over reported for quite some time now. Stephen Lewis is disappointed but puts it into perspective by explaining that even these new lower numbers are so staggeringly large that it shouldn't discourage us from further investment in his efforts to eradicate the disease.

The Upside of Down - This is the title of a book by Thomas Homer Dixon who writes that not only can catastrophes lead to positive change, they sometimes are necessary for such change. When it comes to Global Warming it seems that this has not registered with most people as a catastrophe yet and therefore not much is being done. Because such shifts happen so gradually it is hard for the human imagination to put it in the same category as a catastrophe that occurs over a holiday weekend. Some are trying to make this link by pointing out that many of these more immediate disasters may intensify and become more common as a result of Global Warming.

Making Green from Green - Despite what Ayn Rand has so poorly written, I don't think greed should be the only primary motive for economic activity. But someone trying to convince people who are swayed by greed could use this motivation to their benefit. I have been trying to convince people of the benefits of green initiatives using the language and practices of a business case. It is not hard to make a compelling case that accepting the challenges of adhering to initiatives like the Kyoto Accord will create massive opportunities for those jurisdictions who lead the way. The innovations required to succeed can and will be sold to those who lag behind. That's why the levers of incentives and disincentives which are held by our governments should be pulled now before we get left behind.

We'll Fix it in the Edit

2007-11-21T22:06:00.000-05:00

This month I've made the dual commitments to blog everyday and to write a full novel from start to finish in thirty days. So far so good as I'm on track to succeed with ten days to go. I had started on another novel last year which began with a quick flourish and then had stalled. After about eleven months of thinking and writing I was stuck at about fifty pages of a novel that was in danger of never being completed.

I was happy with the quality of the writing within that first novel but that's the problem. I only allowed myself to write what I considered to be quality writing. During this month's NaNoWriMo the approach was to write whatever comes to mind, never look back and never second guess. The result is that I have now written over a hundred pages of a novel that may turn out in the end to be even better than the first one. I've found that you need to jump in, let yourself go and allow yourself to make mistakes.

Before this month it was like I was trying to make an epic movie by planning every shot and directing every scene in advance. The approach to writing a novel this month has been more like the process of documentary film making in that you point your camera at something interesting, let the events unfold and then worry about tying it all together in the editing. A good documentary film will in the end take on the drama of a good epic film anyway, without the need for all of that obsessive planning in advance.

As it happens I've also started work on a feature length documentary film tentatively called Dunk: The Art and Science of the Jam. I'm collaborating on this with a friend who is a Juno award winning documentary film maker. I've also started planning a documentary film festival with another friend who teaches at OCAD. When it rains, it pours. But that's OK because I've discovered that I can swim.

What if We're not Responsible for Global Warming?

2007-11-20T19:34:00.000-05:00

Soon it will be even more difficult for those who deny the human responsibility for Global Warming to keep a straight face while making their arguments. A report is about to be published by an exceedingly impressive list of respected scientists outlining the state of the globe and prospects for the future with regard to climate change (as the deniers prefer to call it). The report comes just in advance of the meeting of industrial nations to follow up on the Kyoto accord. USA, the most important signatory of that treaty has of course abandoned it and justified doing so with some very poorly done, lobbyist sponsored science.

Canada has actually dramatically increased it's greenhouse emissions since signing the accord and the Conservative government tried initially to minimize or debate the truth of global warming, but even they have had to come around and might even surprise some people in the next wave of treaties. They are probably doing this more as a reaction to recent polls that suggest Canadians are becoming more green every day and are even willing to vote for the Green Party. Research also shows that we are willing to pay more for green products and services and would even pay higher taxes if it went toward cleaner environmental policies. Elizabeth May is well positioned here with her party, the Liberal party is making changes to their policies, while the NDP need to find a way to balance their commitments to labour and heavy manufacturing to become greener or they will be left in the dust.

I have always been amused by those who deny that we humans are having a dangerous effect on the climactic shifts of our planet. I understand science is always open to debate and I would always encourage it. The evidence in this case is so dramatically shifted towards one set of theories over another that anyone who argues the weaker case would need to be seen as a maverick in the best case, a quack in a middling case or a fraud in the worst case. I don't mind that some middling science is poorly done and can create false conclusions. I accept that this happens but these instances are easily shown to be faulty and soon discarded. The worst cases are those that take money from lobbyists and then fraudulently produce custom results. These people are the scourge not only of science but of all things dear to humanity and they should be vigorously exposed.

As for the best case scenario in which a scientist authentically engages in science and insists on findings that go contrary to commonly accepted understanding. These people often point to the examples of Galileo or Copernicus as their models. For every Galileo or Copernicus there have been thousands upon thousands of people who also went against commonly accepted notions of science and were never in the end proven to be right simply because they were wrong. Just because you're a maverick and everyone thinks you're too extreme doesn't automatically make you right. There's the distinct and more likely possibility that you might just be an idiot.

Let's take the extremely unlikely possibility that one of these deniers of Global Warming is not a middling and incompetent scientist but is rather a maverick, does science authentically without skewing his results to suit lobbyist or political masters and arrives at the conclusion that Global Warming is not caused by Humans. If this remotely unlikely possibility which I am in principle willing to entertain is true then what? Even if this were the case how could anyone deny the benefits of removing millions and millions of tonnes of pollutants from the atmosphere, making the air fresher to breathe, reducing toxin originating cancers, birth defects and other ailments? How could anyone deny the benefits of conducting business more efficiently and the creation of new innovative technologies that would result from these reductions? Even if we're wrong about the real cause of Global Warming which is really not in debate, then we still need to go full steam ahead in reducing emissions for all of the other benefits that would result.

Florida Shines a Light on Toronto

2007-11-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

I recently bid on a nearly condemned property that would have needed over $100k in renovations to make it a viable rental property or a nice house for someone. It was priced a little low so I bid $37k above asking price. The winning bid was $87k above the asking price. This scenario is playing out in every category of real estate and in almost every neighbourhood in Toronto. People are being paid $2,000 to stand in line so their benefactors could be the first to buy $10M condos.

Despite all of this many experts will tell you that Toronto is still a bargain on a world scale. We used to have a bit of an inferiority complex and dreamt of being compared to other world class cities. People around the globe are finally starting to see Toronto in precisely those terms. The ultra rich of the world, especially those from less politically stable environments are finding that they will not find a more open, safe and tolerant city anywhere else in the world and they're buying property here to hedge their bets in case they need to relocate.

Several ultra luxury condos are being built in town and they're selling for record prices. But when you put it in the category of so-called world class cities then there is still a lot of room to go up in value. So despite all the market turmoil in the US, New York City is not suffering price declines. While Florida properties are selling at deep discounts in the US another kind of Florida is moving to Toronto.

Richard Florida is the world authority on how the Creative Class help make a successful and livable city. His books have sold in the millions while he taught at Carnegie Mellon. But now Richard Florida has relocated here to teach at the University of Toronto. Florida will be heading The Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management as well as working with the MaRS Discovery District which is another group that will have a hand in bringing global attention to the innovations going on in this city.

I know a lot of people who used to dream about moving to New York that no longer do so. They are starting to see that we've got something cooking right here at home. It's no accident that Toronto has the highest Facebook penetration of any city in the world. The people here are the most socially integrated people on Earth and this collaborative approach will be priceless in the future. Real estate trends are just the tip of the iceberg. People will pay more to live where everybody else wants to live. What this means for affordable housing is another matter altogether.

Bringing Up Baby

2007-11-18T23:38:00.000-05:00

During my undergraduate specialization in Philosophy I also completed a minor in Cinema Studies. I remember one professor of some renown who taught the introductory Film101 course telling our class that the finest example of a Hollywood movie ever made was Bringing Up Baby (1938). He screened it for us and most of us scratched our heads.

The first thing going against it was that it was a black& white film; my generation had made the switch to colour TV and had come to consider B&W movies to be just filler for stations that couldn't afford the newer stuff. The film also seemed to be just like any other old movie and not that different from most screwball comedies. In fact, Streisand's What's up Doc? (1972) and Madonna's Who's That Girl? (1987) are both based on this film.

I got a chance to see the original recently during one of my insomniac hazes and now have a new found respect for the film. The content may not be that original but the execution is nearly flawless. Howard Hawks' pacing and tone of the film is masterfully integrated with the perfect timing of the repartee dialogue of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Their chemistry is sparkling as she gets the hapless paleontologist in one ill conceived situation after another and eventually charms him, keeps him from getting married and eventually wins him over.

It's also interesting to note how "gay" Cary Grant is during the film. He was suspected of being bisexual and his character in the film appears in drag, appears to be the bottom to Hepburn's top and even uses the word "gay" for the first time in a Hollywood film which up until then had only been used by insiders of the gay community. Hawksian women in this director's films were also gender-bending by virtue of their aggressive verbal and sexual behaviours

You will find hundreds of examples of more recent movies in which lovable female leads like Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock play similarly constructed roles only to come across like irritating and precocious children. Hepburn somehow makes the zany airhead charming and sexy without trying too hard to be cute. The film was a terrible flop and nearly ended Hawks' career. Only much later did the film gain the respect and admiration of filmmakers and critics. Add me to that list.

A Scam By Any Other Name

2007-11-17T14:38:00.000-05:00

"Poetry is like fish: If it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat."

-Osbert Sitwell

Here is a poetry site for people without cats.
Here is what some people are saying about it.

What's in a Name?

2007-11-16T23:31:00.001-05:00

I came across this very useful site that analyzes the significance of your name for your life. Here are some of the insightful analyses you will find.

Jesus
While you could do well in certain positions of authority, you have a certain lack of initiative and a tendency to procrastinate.
[No kidding. We've only been waiting 2000 years for you to return.]

Satan
If you are in sales work, you could do well because of your friendly personality, interest in people, and desire to please.
[If vinyl siding sales doesn't work out, you could try being Vice-President]

George
You are deep, philosophical, and refined, but your extremely sensitive nature causes you to become depressed over any real or imagined slight.
[Huh? ]

If you don't believe the veracity of this powerful tool check out what it says about you if your name is God.

Your First Name of: God

Click here for a report on the impact your first and last names combined have on your life.
You will be amazed at our accuracy!

Although the name God creates the urge to be reliable and responsible, it can cause an unscrupulous, materialistic approach that frustrates higher humanitarian qualities.
This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the reproductive system, worry, and mental tension.
Your name God gives you a strong sense of responsibility in business and material affairs, and the practicality and determination to make a success of anything you undertake.
Your ability to organize and direct the efforts of others enables you to excel in any managerial position because you have the ability to grasp the concept of a goal complete with an understanding of the steps to be taken.
This name has allowed you to develop depth and breadth of mind.
You are able to retain facts, to grasp new information to your existing store of knowledge.

Your full name creates the overall conditions in your life as well as your destiny. It is a very important factor. Click here for a report on the impact your first and last names combined have on your life. You will be amazed at the accuracy of this report!

Welcome to Canada

2007-11-15T23:48:00.000-05:00

This is wrong on so many levels but is yet another example where Little Brother is at work keeping an eye on the system. The video footage above was confiscated by the RCMP from the person who shot it and attempts were made to keep it from him and the public until a legal challenge was successfully made.

This poor guy Dziekanski on his first ever flight, after 10 hours of waiting in a terminal with no food or water and clearly distressed meets his end at the hands of some pretty unprofessional police work. All of this could have so easily been avoided:

If someone had noticed that a man had been walking around the luggage area for over 6 hours.

If the airport had a PA system in the luggage area his mother would have been able to contact him.

If one of the staff just walked fifty feet into the area they could have found him waiting for his mother.

If the police just slowed down to assess the situation before acting and unnecessarily tasering him.

This last point is really disappointing. Does it have to be that the type of person who works in law enforcement needs necessarily to be of a thuggish nature? It's as if some of these guys are just looking for any excuse to engage in some ass-kicking. This is an exceptional situation in which the incident was caught on camera. There are countless such incidents that never see the light of day. Clearly these men are either very poorly trained or not following their training.

On a lighter note:

Fuck Death

2007-11-14T23:55:00.000-05:00

Here is an organization that we could all get behind. The Fuck Death Foundation's mission statement outlines that they are "dedicated to the elimination of death through the generation and distribution of funds to strategically selected causes and initiatives worldwide." They plan on seeking official charitable organization status.

I've been saying for some time that we need to start debating the issues around the likelihood that technologies will arrive within our lifetimes to extend life much beyond the averages we decry today. Stem cell research and nanotechnology alone could offer therapies for many diseases as well as ways to slow down if not stop or reverse aging. The upheavals that could result from such a possibility would make the industrial revolution look like a tiny blip in sociopolitical development. Like most new desirable technologies the wealthy will have primary access to them. Can you think of a more motivating reason to revolt than the chance to attain immortality?

Ray Kurzweil believes we will have technologies that will allow human immortality to be possible in about 20 years. So I think the Fuck Death Foundation's birth might be well timed to serve a goal that will soon come to be taken more seriously.

This Week in Fat

2007-11-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

It's a Fat World After All
Disneyland denies that they're shutting down their "It's a Small World " ride in order to make changes to accommodate heavier passengers. Miceage reported that the boats kept getting stuck forcing the staff to more frequently ask some patrons to get off the ride so that the boats could continue floating. It's been reported that in order to make these patrons feel better they're being offered food vouchers.

Flying the Fat Skies
A doctor in Australia is advocating that airlines should charge a premium to obese passengers to be levied for every kilogram above a certain weight, just like they do for excess baggage. I think this idea's going to have some legs and will eventually become policy. The price of fuel continues to rise as we run out of oil while no one seems to be working on any serious alternatives for jet fuel. I could imagine one day soon being weighed with all of my luggage and paying for my ticket based on the total weight.

Fat Old Opry
Nashville Tennessee is the fattest city in America with 68% of it's residents overweight or obese. Forbes Magazine has also written that the most sparsely populated areas of the country are also the fattest while the densely filled areas like NYC and L.A. are less so. Dense urban living is more efficient in more ways than one.

Fat is no Joking Matter
Unless you go here, where it is.

This Monarch's Not Smiling

2007-11-12T03:49:00.001-05:00

Hugo Chavez is a shit disturber, there's no denying it. He pisses off a lot of people especially oil people like the Bush clan. Recently he got into a spat with King Juan Carlos of Spain calling him a fascist. When he tried to interrupt during a conference the Monarch yelled at him to "shut up" on live TV.

Just an excuse for me to dig up something cool from the 80's.

Abecedarians - Smiling Monarchs (1985)

Eat The Rich

2007-11-11T23:48:00.000-05:00

A restaurant in NYC is offering a $25,000 dessert. I don't mean to add to the free publicity that is restaurant is receiving. We should probably just ignore these asinine attempts to get our attention but I excuse myself in that this will mostly be a meta comment on the matter. I don't really care what the ingredients are: they're probably a mix of some rare and therefore expensive ingredients and usually include some jewelry that the buyer can take home after they've licked their plate clean.

This kind of thing makes the rich seem like clueless showoffs as represented in popular culture by the Thurston Howell III's or the Montgomery Burns of the TV world. It's just too easy to despise the wealthy when such things are publicized. "That's rare and expensive, let's consume it" is a very unsophisticated approach to riches. I'm quite sure the people who drink gold flakes, much like the people who rent stretch limousines to go to rock concerts, and also like those who strut in white Bentley roadsters in music videos aren't really the rich but only those who want to appear to be so. The appearance of wealth is as valuable to some as actual wealth. This is probably why people rent exotic cars to attend their school reunions.

Eating gold flakes in a sundae or drinking them in a Goldschlager martini can't be good for you. But if you must so conspicuously consume I've got a suggestion for you. You know what's even more rare and valuable than gold? Plutonium costs $120,000/ounce. Why don't you sprinkle a little bit of that in your martini.

No Country For Old Men

2007-11-10T21:59:00.000-05:00

I first saw the Coen Brothers film Blood Simple (1984) at the Broadway in Hamilton and I was a little puzzled at first. It was very different than most of the movies I had seen up to then and it started my appreciation for art films. Here was a movie that was glacially paced with sparse dialogue and yet it held your attention for nearly two hours. I liked it the first time I saw it but I liked it more the second time I saw it.

This has now become a pattern for me with their films. I remember thinking Fargo was pretty good but subsequent viewings made me believe it was great. One just doesn't absorb all of the detail the first time around. They have an unusual sense of humour that's brought out in the pacing and the eccentric folksy dialogue of their movies. I remember being disappointed by The Big Lebowski the first time I saw it, thinking that it was too slick and silly but it has gotten funnier each time I've watched it. I now consider it one of the funniest movies ever made.

I just watched No Country for Old Men and I'm assuming that the same thing will happen again. I liked the movie but I look forward to loving it the second time around.

Hot Girl Robot on Girl Robot Action

2007-11-09T23:16:00.001-05:00

Bjork Video - All is Full of Love
There's something sad and tragic about sentient robots.

Message in a Bottle

2007-11-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure most people realize how big the Universe really is, despite Carl Sagan's valiant efforts to educate us about it. Light travels at about 1 billion kilometres per hour and yet it still takes about 4 years for that light to travel to the nearest star system to ours. It would take you 15 billion years to cross the Universe at the speed of light.

The farthest human made object from Earth is Voyager 1. After 30 years it is about 16 million km away from Earth but at the wicked fast rate of 60,000 kph it will take about another 50,000 years before it gets anywhere near another star system and millions of years before it gets to any denser parts of the galaxy where it is more likely to be found by an alien species.

When Voyager is found the aliens will discover a gold recording disc that we've included on board. The instructions on how to play the disc is on the record sleeve which is reproduced in the photo above. The record includes sounds and images of Earth.

This is one of the saddest and most quixotic undertakings that I can imagine. It is probably one of the surest bets in the Universe that Voyager will never be found but if it ever was found it would likely be a billion years after we've all died on Earth.

You can track Voyager 1's travels at this site.

Mainlining Sugar

2007-11-07T23:28:00.001-05:00

I listened to a podcast that aimed to give some writing advice for NaNoWriMo participants. Some of the advice included the obvious like coffee but went beyond by suggesting cream donuts, Pringles chips and blue ice cream.

The really bad white flour donuts have immense amounts of sugar and fried fat so they're packed with energy. They suggested crushing the Pringles chips in the container so you could just "drink" it without wasting the time required to pick up and place the chips in your mouth. These are also loaded with sugar to complement the pressed starch that is the main ingredient and when you're done you could use the can as a hacking aid. The blue ice cream apparently has the most sugar of any flavour probably since it's aimed at children's taste.

It's long been a cliche that writers abuse themselves especially with coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs but I've been good at avoiding these. I drink decaf and I don't smoke. I did have a cuba libre last night but only after I finished writing and I haven't tried the bug powder yet.

If anyone were to follow the advice given by this broadcast I'm sure they'd go into some kind of hyperglycemic fits. But I am feeling a little sluggish tonight and it's too late to get myself to the gym so I've gone out and got myself a six pack of chocolate cream donuts. I'll let you know how it goes.

Texas Bound?

2007-11-06T17:56:00.000-05:00

The Canadian dollar closed today above $1.08 against the US dollar. A few years ago it was just under $0.62. If I chose to buy a $200,000 property in the US back then it would have cost me about C$323,000. But today that similarly priced property would only cost me C$184,000. That's a 44% savings just from the currency exchange appreciation.

Add to this the sub-prime meltdown in the US which is causing a rash of foreclosures and price reductions down there and you could easily pick up an American home for less than half price. The dollar might stabilize and recover a little and most people think that real estate prices will continue to drop before they rise again in the US but there probably has never been a better time for a snowbird to pick up a bargain.

So let's go shopping. There are stories from California and Florida of builders selling remaining houses for less than half the initial price. But these tend to be new housing developments in suburban type settings that I'm not sure I'd consider buying at any price. The cooler neighbourhoods are cheaper but still not cheap. NYC seems a natural choice but I haven't seen too many bargains there yet.

So where to buy? I would choose a city with active arts and music scenes, a highly educated workforce, a major university in town and if you listen to Richard Florida a vibrant gay community would also help. I've done some research and Austin Texas seems to come up at or near the top on many indexes that one could use to gauge the coolness of an American city. Perhaps a Texas winter home is not out of the question for this suddenly snowbird. Maybe I'll check out SXSW in March.

Curb Your Buzz

2007-11-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

When Jerry Seinfeld got his own TV show I avoided it like the plague. I used to see him on the Tonight Show asking his "what's the deal with ketchup?" questions and I really didn't need to be irritated for half an hour each week. It wasn't until I was in residence at university and couldn't successfully avoid TV any longer that I happened to watch a few episodes of Seinfeld and found it to be very amusing. Despite the fact that all of the characters were extreme sociopaths it was an innovative show that highlighted the absurdities of everyday minutia. Perhaps I was wrong about this guy. Maybe he wasn't such a superficial simpleton.

Years later while on vacation in Mexico I saw this show called Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. I nearly pissed myself laughing and remember thinking that it was another step above the bar set by the Seinfeld sitcom. I watched two episodes during that vacation and it started to dawn on me that this Larry David guy was the same guy who created and wrote on the Seinfeld show. It was also implied that the George Costanza character was loosely based on himself. Curb Your Enthusiasm has of course become a successful and well known show and Jerry Seinfeld hasn't done much of anything since the end of the run for Seinfeld. He would occasionally do a stand-up routine and audiences seemed enthusiastic but it was always the kind of material that wouldn't get a comic very many laughs if he weren't already as famous and powerful as Jerry.

Now we finally have a major project that was initiated, written and produced by Jerry himself and everyone is buzzing about how mediocre Bee Movie is. I'm not at all surprised. If you haven't caught on yet it has become abundantly clear that Larry David was the creative brains and the funny bone behind Seinfeld. Jerry was well known and comfortable in front of the camera so he became the face of the show which I'm convinced would have been just another canceled Pauly Shore type star vehicle if it wasn't for Larry David.

Culture Clash

2007-11-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

I saw this commercial on TV tonight. The music is a cover of Pressure Drop by the Clash.

When I was a kid there was this quaint concept around music we used to talk about called "selling out". It was a cute notion that art trumped everything else and making music for money or popularity was an act of betrayal and if you tried too hard to profit from your art then you'd be compromising it and just "selling out". That's why you couldn't imagine hearing a Led Zeppelin song on a TV commercial. If you did hear their music used in that way you could have been assured that they would have lost all credibility with their fans.

Later on the punks were much more hardcore about this concept and the Clash was a band that epitomized this ethos having once insisted on releasing a triple album for the price of a single album and then allowed to do so because they made a deal with their label to tour for free to make up for the loss. I remember hearing Generation X speak for punks and deride the earlier generation by singing "we'll never sell out, like they did" and then watched as Billy Idol sold every shred of dignity he had as a punk in the following years by cashing in with cheesy songs, videos and staged concert hyperbole.

Things have changed. When Moby licensed every song on his album Play for TV ads no one begrudged him. Instead he was praised and admired for his business acumen. Hip-hop artists often prefer to be called entrepreneurs first and musicians somewhere down the list. The latest generation perhaps has a more accurate understanding of the music business by understanding that it is a business after all. That doesn't mean that they don't appreciate true art. They just don't think there's anything wrong with getting paid. It's considered perfectly OK to fleece those suckers at the ad agencies for the privilege to play their music. Just don't ask these kids to pay for the privilege of listening to that same music. They'll then tell you that music should be free and not about making money.

Conservative Rant

2007-11-03T21:34:00.000-04:00

It's easy to be lulled into complacency with this Conservative government. They mostly stay out of trouble by being bland, boring and uncontroversial. Every now and then you're brought down to earth when you realize who these people really are. This past week we've had a series of developments that should give us pause.

1. They have brought forth a series of massive tax cuts and reduced the GST by 1 percent. Some economists think that some of that tax reward could have been better used as debt retirement or increased program funding after years and years of cuts. But it seems that nearly every economist including those strongly aligned with the Conservative party have said unequivocally that cutting the GST makes absolutely no sense at all.

2. The Chief of Defense Rick Hillier spoke openly about Afghanistan saying that it would take at least a decade to sort out that mess. This doesn't jibe with the official party line so he's been admonished and told to keep quiet. A few years ago some Military men gave George Bush more reasonable estimates of requirements and time lines for war in Iraq and they were sent packing or silenced and the results have been horrific.

3. Mark Warner was recently disqualified by the Conservative Party from running in Toronto Centre against Bob Rae even though he was democratically elected by his riding association. It seems they didn't take too kindly to him having opinions of his own about income and equality.

4. The Harper government refused to intervene in the case of a Canadian on death row in Montana citing that they didn't want to have such a monster like him back in Canada to serve a life sentence. The fact of the matter is that this person could serve life in Montana if he were given clemency and there would be no need to have him back in Canada. This is all beside the point. If you are a Canadian citizen you have the expectation to be defended by your country in accordance with your countries sense of justice and it is clear that Canadians consider capital punishment to be an abhorrent and uncivilized practice. What's surprising is that so many of the prominent Conservative Party members actually publicly support capital punishment.

5. The Mulroney saga got more interesting this week. It seems that he had accepted $300,000 in cash payments in secret meetings in hotel rooms and then delayed paying taxes on them until it became quite clear that people were going to find out about it. This kind of 3rd world opportunism is embarrassing to Canada and should be exposed and punished. And I know it's not just the Conservatives who have shady dealings in their recent past.

6. The Harper government continues to obfuscate and stall when it comes to environmental action. The old Progressive Conservative Party was much more palatable even with Mulroney at the helm when it came to environmental issues. With such a name one has to wonder what it is that the Conservatives are actually trying to conserve.

American Gangster

2007-11-02T23:37:00.000-04:00

There is a tradition of glorifying the gangster in American culture. The Godfather Trilogy and the Sopranos are some of the obvious examples of the Italian-American variety but more recently the African-American Gangster culture has had it's fair share of glorification. Hip-hop and Rap videos are dripping with the ostentatious glamour that showcases gangster/drug dealer/pimp lifestyles.

American Gangster starring Denzel Washington is somewhat of a hybrid. It's the story of a poor African American who makes it big in the world dominated by the Italian American Mafia of 1970's New York. It's so natural to elevate the criminal element because criminal activity is so structurally similar to business activity. America admires the entrepreneur for his audacious confidence and his ability to struggle against risk in order to arrive at success. Frank Lucas (played by Denzel) is a perfect example of a man that possesses a combination of fearlessness, strength and innovativeness that allows him to reap the reward of fantastic riches.

Most Americans do not really feel like they have access to the opportunities to succeed in their lives. Criminal activity allows the fantasy of bypassing that difficult process of education and hard work and going straight to the riches. Of course it's just a fantasy since most of those who choose the life will soon end up dead or in prison. But Hollywood is in the business of selling fantasy and they do a pretty good job of it. Despite the occasional display of psychopathy, Denzel's portrayal of Lucas is mostly sympathetic. Lucas did end up in jail and penniless but it seems a small price to pay for someone who sees no hope for the future.

Peak Stupidity Theory

2007-11-01T23:16:00.000-04:00

Judging by the price of crude these days it seems that people are beginning to accept the peak oil theory of fossil fuel supply. Supply is on the way down, demand is on the way up and prices are soaring and are likely never to go substantially back down again. Canada has a domestic answer since we have billions of barrels of oil trapped in the Tar Sands of Alberta. The American response to peak oil also seeks out a domestic solution with their recent focus on bio-fuels. America can produce a lot of corn very efficiently and some have decided that corn would make a nice replacement for fossil fuels.

Something is very misguided here. We're looking for alternative sources of things to burn rather than looking for alternative methods of power generation, or better yet, ways to radically reduce usage. Oil is running out and it happens to be a very dirty and toxic way to create energy. Rather than finding truly creative sustainable solutions we're going to make the net effects worse while dangerously delaying what we'll eventually have to do anyway.

The amount of energy required to extract oil from sands in Alberta is staggering. You have to dig out 2 tons of sand and apply copious amounts of energy to process it to arrive at just 1 barrel of oil. Similarly you have to harvest tons of corn then apply energy to process it to produce some combustible to put in your tank but at the cost of removing acreage from the inventory of land that could be used for food production. Meanwhile food prices rise because of the shrinking availability of arable land. How are these good solutions to peak oil?

Scariest Costume Evah

2007-10-31T14:10:00.001-04:00

November is NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo during which I have committed to daily blogging as well as writing a novel from start to finish in 30 days.

I'm always puzzled by some of the costumes that people choose for Halloween. I was under the impression that they were supposed to be scary. I know that it's hard to resist when a little child wants to be Spiderman or a fair Princess like nearly every other friend of theirs but should we still pretend it's Halloween that we're celebrating?

So, with this in mind I am planning to dress up as something very scary this evening. I did a quick canvassing of American News Media reports to determine what it is that really scares people these days and I've combined them in the creation of my costume. This Halloween I will be dressed as a Young Black Male Pedophile Terrorist on Fire.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster vs the Invisible Pink Unicorn

2007-10-08T03:41:00.001-04:00

Hell is War

2007-10-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

I first met R when he was about 15. A little older than me, he was intimidating and strange. With his closely shorn bristly red hair and wide-eyed stare he looked like a young Johnny Rotten. His cousin was my best friend at the time and they came over to my basement to listen to music and drink some beer. When Devo came over my speakers R got up and danced in a manic swirl of movement, knees bent, arms swinging side to side like a new wave dance but with the energy and speed of a punk mosh pit.

He was quiet and awkward but trying to convey an image of strength and confidence. R had clearly been lifting weights and I imagined it might have been because he had sand kicked in his face once too often and had decided to do something about it. Over the next few years I would see R infrequently each time he would be a little wider and more menacing. He seemed to be very enthusiastic about guns, war and the action films of the time. He had relatives in the military so it was not surprising that he used to talk about rifles, knives, fighter planes and other military hardware even if it seemed a little bizarre to some.

I never got to know R very well and I hadn't seen him in 20 years. As a teenaged boy from Hamilton his dream was to be a member of the Airborne Regiment and he would occasionally and randomly belt out the following tune - the first verses at least. I never heard how the song ended.

I want to be an Airborne Ranger
Livin' a life of sex and danger

I said RANGER!
DANGER!
DANGER!
RANGER!

For the first time in decades Canadians are now involved in a war, and not just as peace-keepers. I guess all the gung-ho soldiers like R finally got what they must have been dreaming of all these years. Along with our involvement in the war in Afghanistan comes the occasional casualty reports on the evening news. My ears always perk up when these reports are aired and am relieved when I don't recognize the name of the dead soldier even though I feel for how their friends must feel when they hear their name on the news.

About a month ago there was a report of a Canadian soldier who was found shot dead in his barracks and his identity concealed. I wondered what story hid behind those headlines. Was it an accident, murder or suicide? A week later the dead soldier was identified as my friend R. Another week later the Military announced that it had in fact been a suicide.

Here is how that song ended:

Well C-130 rolling down the strip
Takin' off just like a rocket ship
Grab your weapon and grab your pack
clip the static line and it's out the back

Now if my chute don't open wide
I've got a second one by my side
If my secondary don't open true
Well look out ground 'cause I'm coming through

If I die in a combat zone
you can box me up and send me home
pin my metals upon my chest
And tell my momma I did my best!

Genocide, Satan and Salad

2007-09-21T23:51:00.000-04:00

On August 14 of this year 500 people were killed and about 350 injured in an act of religious genocide. We only heard about it in passing. See if you can find it buried here in the Economist weekly review. The group that was targeted were the Yazidi who are considered by some orthodox Muslims to be Devil worshipers. This seems tragically to be based on a linguistic confusion of nomenclature. The Yazidi believe that the world was created by God and left to the care of seven angels, the highest ranking one being Melek Ta'us. So Melek Ta'us is the angel that holds the position that is most similar to the Christian angel of St. Michael who is considered to be the leader of the seven angels who stand before God.

In one of the Yazidi creation stories Melek Ta'us is created directly from God's illumination and is later tested by God when asked to obey his newest creation in Adam. Melek Ta'us passes the test by refusing and citing that he was created from a higher origin than Adam. So melek Ta'us is the one that disobeys God and opposes him. The Arabic word that means opponent (one who opposes) is Shaytan.

In an Islamic story Iblis is a pseudo-angel that disobeys God's direction to prostrate to Adam and so this Shaytan (one who opposes) is cursed by God for infinity to the Lake of Fire from where he promises to lead mankind astray and tempt them into hellfire. This Shaytan or opposer/disobeyer comes simply to be named by the descriptor of Shaytan and is who we know in English to be Satan.

But remember the other Shaytan (one who opposes) who is really most similar to St. Michael? Because the highest Angel in the Yazidi belief system is also known as Shaytan (one who opposes) he is mistakingly confused and equated with the Shaytan from the Islamic story and therefore equated with Satan, the being that tempts humans to hellfire. This is ironic since St. Michael's name was the war cry used by the Angels in a battle fought in heaven against Satan.

So the Yazidis are considered to be devil worshipers and therefore free game to eliminate from this world. This must be what those car-bombers were thinking when they targeted and slaughtered the large group of Yazidi on August 14.

This is the state of religion in the 21st century. A preposterously misguided etymological misunderstanding can move one group of people to kill another group en masse. A little linguistic education could have saved everyone a great deal of trouble and trauma. With just a little digging one could easily discover that Melek means Angel and that Ta'us is clearly related to the Greek words Theos or Zeus denoting God and thus Melek Ta'us is an Angel of God not an agent of evil.

A similar misunderstanding but with much less tragic consequences is made by the Yazidi themselves. The Yazidi believe that these seven holy beings are occasionally reincarnated in earthly forms as Koasasa. Their word for lettuce is koas which sounds like, but has nothing whatsoever to do with koasasa. This aural similarity however is enough to make it taboo for the Yazidi to eat lettuce. If only linguistic ignorance would lead to eating less salad and not to more killing.

Joel Plaskett Emergency

2007-09-18T01:37:00.000-04:00

The album Ashtray Rock was recently nominated for the Polaris Music Prize.

Blogification

2007-09-14T15:12:00.000-04:00

I've recently started watching a TV show called Californication. It's ostensibly about a writer going through a protracted period of writer's block accompanied by a similar obstruction in his personal growth. How apropos. David Duchovny of X-Files fame stars as Hank, a loveable self-destructive writer who has so fallen on hard times that he has been forced to take a job writing a regular blog, all this while trying to win his wife and daughter back.

The show is only so-so. Better than most things on TV but not as good as the best from HBO. What continues to grate on my nerves is that Hank constantly ridicules and derides blog writing as somehow meaningless and something of which any self-respecting writer would be embarrassed. It's true that blog writing is the only writing I've been able to finish on a semi-regular basis lately but this is not a self-defense response.

It should be admitted that most blogs are not written at the level or sophistication of most published novels, but some are. For every dozen mommy-bloggers who fill their pages with fastidiously chronicled minutia of every baby step and diaper change there's a Cognitive Daily For every hundred cat-bloggers who furnish us with their daily furry photos there's a Cosmic Variance. The point is that the choice of medium in which the writing is presented cannot determine the quality of the content. There are some horrifically bad books that sit on the shelves of your local bookstore just as there are some excellent poetry blogs online.

It's true that anyone can write a blog while you must be chosen to be published, so the odds are better that you'll find quality in one medium compared to another but the art is ultimately in the content. There is also a natural process of selection that begins to work when you link from blogs you like to other blogs that they like. Eventually you discover dozens of blogs that you might want to read on a regular basis.

Art can be found just about anywhere a producer chooses to put it. Film snobs like to brag that they don't own a TV as if shielding one's self from any medium could somehow be considered noble. Art can be found in any medium you choose to look at. It can be found in the content that is produced specifically for your TV, cellphone, flash player, sidewalk, milk carton, bus shelter or toilet stall. Snobbery directed prejudicially and wholesale against various media like TV, blogs or even comic books (the most artful of which are now called graphic novels) belies a misunderstanding of what and where art is.

Muslim Democrat?

2007-08-30T00:56:00.000-04:00

Turkey has elected a so-called Islamist as President. This might sound alarming to some paranoid western ears. Any word containing or having as cognate the word Islam has in recent years taken on a connotation of fundamentalism and extremism. But look past the descriptive terms and you'll find that the oppostional forces in that country's politics has less to do with religion versus secularism and has more to do with rich versus poor.

Turkey is socially and politically very unconventional; for one thing the military has on four occasions deposed the national government and forced it to adhere to the constitution which it holds dear. Unlike most other military establishments this one doesn't consider the constitution to be a pesky document that gets in the way of their path to power. They consider it their raison d'etre to protect it.

I am strongly in favour of secularism. I don't think there's much wisdom in mixing the church with the state. So one would guess that the recent presidential ascendancy in Turkey should trouble me. It does not trouble me because I think that the people have strongly supported the AKP not because they necessarily crave a government that mixes faith and politics but because they have been given so few reliable and honest politicians from which to choose.

The secularist parties much like the Federal Liberals here in Canada had become much too comfortable in their position as the natural governing option. While the constitution and reforms brought forth by Ataturk in 1923 were impressive and necessary at the time they are clung to by the secularists with even more vigour than a religious zealot clings to his scriptures. If Turkey wants to join the European union (and most of the population strongly does so) then they need to realize that the tenets of Western Liberal Democracy can supersede the proclamations of Ataturk who it must be admitted was not infallible. His innovations, it could be argued were right for the time but can be improved upon and therefore must be subject to criticism.

Along with the comfort and ease of power came the temptation of corruption. It should be admitted that the rich and the powerful have for decades colluded in corrupt practices that have fleeced the average Turkish citizen of their deserved economic success. Their untiring work ethic has largely been wasted by scandal after scandal in which those in power made it very easy for those with the purse-strings to abscond with the country's liquid resources and to do so with relative impunity. This gave the secularist parties a bad name and the poor not surprisingly flocked to their shepherds.

Recep Erdogan and his chosen President Abdullah Gul are probably no more frighteningly Muslim than Stephen Harper is frighteningly Christian. They all knew how to seek favour with voters to oust a naturally governing party: they did so by giving the voters an option to sweep aside an establishment that was shown to be too comfortable in power and too prone to corruption. Ironically in Turkey it took the efforts of a so-called Islamist party to truly put into practice the various virtues of Western Democracy. Those previously in power, despite being ostensibly advocates of right-leaning capitalist thinking, had no interest in true competition because having already the most they had the most to lose through it's introduction.

There has been a long tradition of Christian Democrat parties in Europe who despite their religious sounding names have upheld the values of Liberalism and I propose that the party in power in Turkey be labeled similarly as Muslim Democrats. If we could somehow keep those corrupt politicians from using the electoral process for their own personal economic enrichment instead of the enrichment of their people then the people wouldn't have to resort to voting in religiously linked parties to oust those same corrupt politicians.

This Music is Gay!

2007-08-11T16:54:00.000-04:00

Men in Istanbul walk hand in hand, kiss each other in greeting and occasionally lather each other in a Turkish bath, and those are just the straight men. Turkey has a very macho culture where so-called manliness is highly prized and praised. Every time I look up at a TV or glance at a tabloid here in Istanbul I seem to come across the face of a rather severe looking female singer by the name of Bulent Ersoy who it turns out was once a man.

People can't seem to get enough of her. She seems to be hosting a different show every night, her photos are on the front pages of most newspapers, people are talking about her plans to adopt children and about what her 23 year old husband was doing with another woman last week.

It seems very strange at first to find that they have elevated a transgender performer to the pinnacle of their entertainment pyramid, and it should be noted that this is not just a freak-show curiosity since most everyone really appreciates her singing talents and her bravery. There is a surprising readiness to accept LGBT people in the world of entertainment even if these people aren't readily accepted in the more mundane workplaces of the everyday world. As a very young child in Istanbul I remember asking my Mother why people said Zeki Muren was a man when he clearly looked, dressed and sang like a woman. Later when I moved to the West I confused him with Liberace who begged the same question.

As a youth I remember watching Mick Jagger strut on stage like a preening girl more or less kissing Keith Richards while tough-guy biker-types in the crowd roared their approvals. As an aside, for years I confused Ron Wood with Rod Stewart (another male performer with clearly gay mannerisms). Freddie Mercury of Queen also strutted around on stage like a prima donna but by this time I had chalked it up to the understanding that British people were just more pimp and circumstance than the rest of us. It never really occurred to me that these people might be gay; It's just how rock stars behaved.

If you survey the pantheon of pop music you will find a very lengthy list of male rock stars who were either gay or behaved in a stereotypically gay manner on stage. They wore makeup, tight tight jeans, wiggled their asses and stroked their bodies like strippers. The hair bands of the 80's represented the extreme manifestations of this tendency.

During my teenage years it was so much fun watching Robert Smith of The Cure prance around in Love Cats that it almost made me want to wear mascara, hairspray and elaborate jewelry. The straight male population is accepting of this style even if most of them aren't accepting of gay culture in general but the female populace seems to simply adore it. Most heart-throbs marketed to little girls are soft smooth effeminate boys who are also highly attractive to the gay male population. It baffles straight men why women are more attracted to pretty-boys over manly men but the advent of the Metrosexual seems to be an effort to appeal to this tendency in women.

This is not new. Dionysus, the original rock star gave the women of Thebes ecstatic fits and the men were so drawn to the spectacle that they dressed up and joined the women in their adoration of Dionysus. The Dionysian is often aligned with the feminine spirit of humanity while the Apollonian is aligned with the masculine. Meaningful art results when both are twined in an interplay of the forces of human natures. Whether you are drawn to Apollo or Dionysus you cannot help but appreciate the art that results in their admixture and even the hardened men of a militaristic middle power like Turkey appreciate the beauty of art made by a creature borne of a mixed spirit. Rock stars as well as audiences seem to know this intuitively.