Friday, October 31, 2008

Boysterous: Starfish's oyster po' boy and the quest for sustainability

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The Daily Photoist: October 31, 2008

via Torontoist by David Topping on 10/31/08

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve.

dowtown in the fog II

BY SPYHOPPHOTO

20081031photoist.jpg

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

The war on Halloween

Silly teachers



via Daimnation! by damian on 10/30/08

These stories always seem to come from Toronto, don't they? (Mind you, this will be your city in five years.)

...the Toronto District School Board has several "concerns" with respect to the imagery – and even the foodstuffs – associated with All Hallow's Eve. In fact, some schools in Toronto and elsewhere now refer to Halloween as "Black and Orange Day," fearing the H-word itself will be as potentially offensive to certain groups as Christmas may be for some non-Christians. The TDSB's Halloween policy is outlined in its 2008 Teaching Resource for Dealing with Controversial and Sensitive Issues in Toronto District School Board Classrooms. This document, dripping with spine-tingling bureaucratese, outlines six reasons why Halloween isn't as fun as you might think.

Damian P.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Mad Men Meets the Simpsons

Iceland edition



via megapundit « WordPress.com Tag Feed by Chris Selley on 10/29/08

"Usually I don't notice politics," Björk writes in The Times of London. "I live happily in the land of music-making." But no more. She's mad as hell at Iceland's leaders for getting her and her happy-go-lucky nation of geothermally coddled poets, experimental musicians, hobbits and winged reindeer into their current financial fix, and she's also right pissed at... the aluminum industry? Really? Huh. It seems we know nothing about Iceland. Go, learn.

Keep an eye out for tomorrow's Independent, too, where Jónsi from Sigur Rós will weigh in on the IMF bailout in Hopelandic. Okay, not really.


Salmon in the Credit!

Storm-battered Yemen



 
 

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via The Big Picture on 10/29/08

Last weekend heavy storms crashed through Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. The wind, rain and lightning killed a number people initiallly, but the subsequent flooding took a much larger toll, in both lives and property. The hard-hit Hadramaut region is home to the ancient walled city of Shibam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, nicknamed the "Manhattan of the desert". The structures in Shibam and neighboring villages are mud-brick construction, and were damaged badly by the rain and flooding, many collapsing when their foundations were undercut. The World Health Organization has estimated that 180 people have died, mostly in building collapses, though that number is likely to change as debris is cleared away. (22 photos total)

A file photo from April 2007 handed out by the Aga Khan Award for architecture shows the ancient city of Shibam, Yemen, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and and one of three major urban centres in Wadi Hadramaut. Heavy rains swept through Yemen's southeastern province of Hadramaut, which has now been declared a disaster zone, local officials said on October 24,2008. (ANNE DE HENNING/AFP/Getty Images)

 
 

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Wassup Revisited

Bud's Wassup commercial tweaked for the election.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

How Music Companies Lose Billions. . .



via All Things Digital by Peter Kafka on 10/27/08

Even people who don't know anything about the music business know what's wrong with music business: No one wants to buy music anymore.

Right?

Well, sort of.

While people are buying a lot less music than they used to, they're still spending a couple billion dollars a year on iTunes from Apple (AAPL) and the like, and many billions more on actual, hold-in-your-hand compact discs.

So in theory, at least, a well-run company should be able to do something with a market that big.

That company, at least for the last several years, has not been EMI Music Group. That's not just in MediaMemo's judgment, by the way. That's the judgment of EMI Music's owners: The United Kingdom's Terra Firma private equity group, which bought the company for some $5 billion in the summer of 2007.

Terra Firma's assessment of the company, delivered via a 101-page annual report, makes for amazing reading. We've embedded it below (you'll need to click on "Full Screen" to make it legible).

But in case you're time-pressed here's the executive summary:

  • EMI has a relatively valuable publishing company, which administers the copyrights to the underlying compositions to songs. That unit makes money.
  • EMI also owns a valuable catalog of song recordings. That unit could make money, but it's all being eaten up by the group that burns money by signing and recording artists who make new recordings that no one wants to buy.
  • Terra Firma knew EMI was badly run when it bought it, but it didn't really know how badly run it was until it owned it. It figured, for instance, that there was a lot of waste at the company. But it had no idea the U.K. division was spending $1.1 million a year on a London taxi service. And it had literally no idea how much money some of EMI's executives were making, because EMI wouldn't disclose that during due diligence.

This last part is crucial for EMI's future because the people who funded the deal last year–Terra Firma's investors, as well as Citigroup (C), which provided the debt financing–need to be convinced that the people who didn't understand what they'd bought last year are the people who should be trusted to turn it around.

But that's a question for later. For now, if you want to see how a music company managed to lose $1.17 billion in 12 months, this is the document for you:


EMI report - Get more Business Documents

[Image Credit: Lorelei]




Sunday, October 26, 2008

Bwahahaha

Man I wish I had a title that people understood.

Zen Living!

Go Christine!

 
 

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via Kevin & Christine's Adventures by Kevin and Christine on 10/25/08

The Guardian newspaper (a UK financial newspaper) approached me for an interview on how life is after the credit crunch. This was weeks ago and I didn't think my story would get published, but was very excited to find an article written about me on the front cover of the "work" section of the Guardian newspaper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/oct/25/workandcareers-creditcrunch


Kevin and I were super excited indeed!

 
 

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Historicist: Andrew Carnegie's Toronto Legacy

via Torontoist by Kevin Plummer on 10/25/08

Every Saturday morning Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.


The Grits prepare to self-destruct, pt VI

Pt. 1 being PET vs. Turner
Pt. 2 being Chretien vs. Turner
Pt. 3 being Chretien vs. Martin, Jr. (Martin Sr. having lost his chance back to PET)
Pt. 4 being Rae vs. Ignatieff vs. Other (with anybody but Raetieff winning)
Pt. 5 being Dion against Raetieff and himself


via inkless-wells « WordPress.com Tag Feed by Paul Wells on 10/25/08

It is always pleasant to learn that the Quebec-wing president of a political party believes his role is to deliver the party, bound and hog-tied, to one of several still-undeclared candidates in a leadership race whose rules and players have not yet even been determined. Say hello, not for the first time, to Robert Fragasso, Grand Poo-Bah and Lodge Master of the Liberal Party of Canada-Quebec. Let us try to decode his comments on the race to succeed — well, succeed isn't necessarily the right word, is it? — Stéphane Dion.

The next leader must have support from one end of the country to the other. "I don't want to personalize my remarks," he takes pains to emphasize, "but we must have candidates whose popularity extends past Moncton or the Atlantic provinces, or on the other hand who are not known only in Quebec and nobodies once you get past Cornwall," he says.

It takes my colleague Hélène Buzzetti about a second and a half to figure that one out: Fragasso is cheerfully kneecapping Dominic LeBlanc and Martin Cauchon, though not in a personalized way, mind you. Elsewhere in her article Hélène reports whispers among Quebec-wing federal Liberals that "the #2 victim on October 14, after Stéphane Dion, was Bob Rae," because the economy is sputtering and Rae had a bit of a bad moment there with a large economy in the 1990s.

Well, golly. If it can't be a nobody from Moncton and it can't be a Quebecer who's faceless past Cornwall and if it can't be anyone who's already left his fingerprints on a large economy, who could it be? And what's the criterion that should decide it?

If you're Robert Fragasso and an apparently not inconsiderable chunk of the party's Quebec wing, you look at the ruins of the last election — during which the issues in Quebec were arts funding; youth criminal justice; economic management; environmental stewardship; foreign policy adventurism — and you decide the winning policy is constitutional tinkering. Because don't you always decide the winning policy is constitutional tinkering?

The time has come to break through the Liberal party's institutional resistance. "I'm not asking the next leader to promise to re-open the Constitution, but to show a certain openness, even if it means giving a certain constitutional dimension to the Québécois nation," Mr. Fragasso says.

Quiz time: How do you give ideas a certain constitutional dimension without re-opening the Constitution? Hint: It's a trick question. Prediction: There'll be more of those before long.

Anyway. On to the who-could-it-be question. Since re-opening the constitution was not mentioned as an issue by any player in the last election, and since the Québécois nation resolution doesn't seem to have had any effect on anything, Fragasso and Co. are all about the Certain Constitutional Dimension. And do we have any visitors from that dimension? Indeed:

Despite this functioning balance, the province of Quebec has not given its assent to the Constitution of 1982, and until it does, our federation's architecture remains unfinished. Creating the conditions for a successful negotiation to complete our nation-building will take time. Ratification of a new constitution will require good faith and political will on all sides. When these conditions are in place, Canadians should be prepared to ratify the facts of our life as a country composed of distinct nations in a new constitutional document.

Author! Author!

You were way ahead of me, weren't you. You knew that if the leadership couldn't be given to

(a) a New Brunswicker

(b) a Quebecer

(c) a guy who's ever actually run anything

(d) someone who doesn't think it's possible to show constitutional openness unless you open the constitution

...then we could really only be talking about one fellow, no?

Here it must be noted that Michael Ignatieff has made a strong showing of things since he got elected to Parliament. Lately I picture him walking around carrying a sign saying 320 ON-THE-JOB-DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT. This is a real achievement and must be taken into serious consideration by those of us who cast ourselves as his critics last time around. It must be assumed he has given new thought to all the issues that bedevilled him in his first run.

Still, a mother worries. The trajectory of Ignatieff's constitutional policy last time could perhaps best be summarized thusly: (1) tambours et trompettes, as above; (2) quick backtrack, emphasizing the "will take time" part of his manifesto, and insisting that he was talking about vague wishes for someday, not a near-term policy of constitutional upheaval; (3) resolutions at Liberal party functions calling for constitutional change; (4) deciding, when Stephen Harper introduced the Québécois nation resolution to short-sheet the Bloc, that this was all he had ever called for in the first place and that he should have credit for putting the issue on the agenda.

But already (4) appears to have been discarded and we are pretty close to being back to (1). Here our text comes from Brigitte Legault, the party's francophone vice-president (it's a title; there's also an anglophone vice-president) who showed promise as a candidate against Michael Fortier and the Bloquiste who beat them both in Vaudreuil, and who says a lot of insightful things near the top of Hélène's article. Lower down she says this:

(On whether a symbol like Harper's 2005 Laval speech is needed) "Not a symbol, because people in Quebec realized it had no impact, that's why the Conservative Party face-planted in Quebec in 2008," Mme Legault estimates. "It's time to make a real statement. We have to make a bold move to demonstrate that we're there, in the Liberal Party, to represent Quebec."

So nothing Harper has done on/for/to Quebec was "a real statement." The Liberal brass in Quebec wants the party to outflank the Harper Conservatives in appealing to Quebec nationalism. And it is hinting pretty strongly that it's found the man for the job.

This will be interesting.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Dept. of peripherally campaign-related things we've been talking about

quirky


via inkless-wells « WordPress.com Tag Feed by Paul Wells on 10/23/08

From a long column on Barack Obama, which for our purposes you can mostly ignore:

"He had drawn 175,000 people to two events in Missouri that day, larger crowds than I'd ever seen at a campaign event."

We were talking about this thing only this morning at the sprawling Maclean's Ottawa bureau nerve centre: Why are there never big rallies in Canadian campaigns?

This question was actually put to me by a German diplomat a few weeks ago, while we were having lunch and chatting about the super-top-secret Canada-EU trade negotiations that nobody ever writes about. Buddy said to me, "Why are there no big rallies in Canadian campaigns?" I have to admit the thought hadn't occurred, but it's an obvious question once it's raised. Almost every day this month, McCain and Obama and Biden and sometimes Palin are in different cities, addressing crowds of 10,000 or 15,000 on a slow day, and 75,000 or more on big days. In Paris, it was common to see handbills posted around town inviting everyone to see Sarkozy or Royal or one of the lesser presidential candidates on a few days' notice, in venues that would look culpably empty if 5,000 people didn't turn out. Germany, apparently the same thing.

Of course, Canadian politics isn't utterly devoid of large rallies. There was one at Place du Canada before the 1995 referendum, which you may have heard about. There were a few thunderstick affairs during the recent unpleasantness that featured Dion or Harper addressing perhaps 1,000 people. But by the standards of some countries whose politics is in other respects quite similar to Canada's, 1,000 people at a rally is a joke.

I've heard a few possible explanations for the decline of the big rally in Canadian politics. In the 1997 campaign, an old Liberal hand told me these sorts of big rallies were no longer useful to Canadian campaigns, for two reasons. One, they're essentially parlour tricks: any half-decent organizer, given two weeks to get his act together, can get 40 busloads of supporters into any hall anywhere. They don't show real support. Two, these rallies usually happen in the evening, at the end of a day's news cycle, and so they don't do much to advance a party's message-of-the-day. Not worth the hassle.

But surely all that would be true in Little Rock or Nashua or wherever Barack Obama will meet his next 40,000 supporters/ spectators tomorrow, as well as in Lyon and Munich and Leeds and any number of other places where mass demonstrations of support for a leader are still, today, seen as a basic element of election campaigning. So why there, but not here? One of life's little mysteries.


Rebuilding the Big Red Machine



via CalgaryGrit by calgarygrit on 10/24/08
The Liberal Party has a problem. And the first step (or twelfth?) in solving any problem is to admit you have a problem. And the biggest problem right now is that too many Liberals won't admit there's a problem. So here are a few inconvenient truths:

-The Conservatives raised 12 million dollars more than the Liberals last year. Sure, it may not always be well spent, but it pretty much guarantees that, come May, whoever emerges from the Liberal leadership bloodbath is going to face a relentless barrage of negative ads.

-The Conservatives have well over four times as many donors as the Liberal Party. Think about that for a second. More than anything, this shows how the Liberal Party has been unable to connect with Canadians.

-And the lowly NDP? Oh yeah, they have more donors than the Liberals too.

-If you give the Liberals every riding they finished second, within 10% of winning, that gives them a whooping 109 seats. Even if you give them every riding they finished second, within 20% of winning, that still only leaves you with 137 ridings where they are mildly competitive.

-Want a different definition of competitive? Let's say 25% of the vote. Well, then the Tories lead the Liberals 218 to 144. If you consider anything less than 15% a "dead riding", then there are 80 dead Liberal ridings and 27 dead Tory ridings.

-Over a third of all Liberal-held seats are in Toronto. They hold 7 seats in Western Canada and did not crack 20% of the vote in any of the four Western Provinces. Of those 137 mildly competitive ridings I mentioned, 17 are in Western Canada, leaving them as a non-factor in 77 seats west of Ontario. That's a lot of seats to write off, especially when you consider it isn't going much better in rural Quebec, or rural Ontario.

-The Liberals are losing ground with one of their traditional voter blocks – new Canadians.

So what's the solution? Well, these guys have some good ideas – I've stolen the best ones they put forward for this post and I encourage everyone to steal any of my own I toss up. I also need to offer a giant hat tip to tGPOitHotW, as he was smart enough to suggest a lot of these things long before

So, in my humble opinion, here's what the party needs to fix, and a few ways we can go about fixing it:


Growing the Membership
...

Rebuilding the Ridings

...

Engaging the Membership
...

Finding the Coalition

...

Raising the Dough
...

Quebec City at night

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Mapping Rivers & Mountains

All in one map. BibliOdyssey: River Deep Mountain High

Where the dogs are in Toronto (part two)

very cool charts!


via Map of the Week by Toronto Star on 10/23/08

Here is the second part of our dog map series - a series of maps, one for each of Toronto's top 20 dog breeds. (If you missed Part 1, click here.)

In 2008, these were:

2008 rank
2008 total 2004 rank

1 Labrador retrievers 3,529 2
2 Golden retrievers 2,360 3
3 German shepherds 1,793 1
4 Parson Russell Terriers 1,422 16
5 Shih Tzus 1,384 8
6 Beagles 955 5
7 Pit bulls 895 11
8 Labrador retriever mix 834 *

9 Miniature schnauzers 802 20
10 German shepherd mix 771 *

11 Bichon Frise 758 18
12 Miniature poodles 752 7
13 Yorkshire terriers 666 23
14 Cocker spaniels 660 9
15 Siberian huskies 653 6
16 Border collies 625 12
17 Standard poodles 622 31
18 Soft-Coated Wheaten Terriers 587 29
19 Rottweilers 567 4
20 Boxers 524 25









* (classified differently in 2004)






You can start with our top-rated breed, Labrador retrievers, and work your way through all the maps, or use the links below to go to one directly.

Some breeds have clear patterns, while others don't. Purebred Labs are centred in the high-income areas along Yonge St. south of the 401, while mixed Labs are spread out across south Etobicoke, Riverdale, the Beaches and part of the coastline part of Scarborough.

Pit bulls form a rough V across the city, with strong pockets around Bloor and Dufferin and Queen and Coxwell. (The ban on pit bulls seems not to have had much of an effect on their numbers over the last four years.)

As an aside, two dogs in the database are listed as a Siberian husky/wolf cross, one near Bathurst and Sheppard and the other near Brown's Line. An animal described as a 'wolf cross' lives around Birchmount and Sheppard. Hopefully none of them have to live in small apartments.

1: Labrador retrievers | 2: Golden retrievers | 3: German shepherds | 4: Parson Russell Terriers | 5: Shih Tzus | 6: Beagles | 7: Pit bulls | 8: Labrador retriever mix | 9: Miniature schnauzers | 10: German shepherd mix | 11: Bichon Frise | 12: Miniature poodles | 13: Yorkshire terriers | 14: Cocker spaniels | 15: Siberian huskies | 16: Border collies | 17: Standard poodles | 18: Soft-Coated Wheaten Terriers | 19: Rottweilers | 20: Boxers |


Let us now praise Alan Greenspan



 
 

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via Paul Krugman by Paul Krugman on 10/23/08

At least he's admitting that he got something wrong. That's actually rare these days, especially among the people Greenspan associates with. That said, praise also to Steve Goldstein at Marketwatch for this memorable line: For a man who was once remarkably hard to decipher, Alan Greenspan is now as clear as an empty Lehman Brothers office. No [...]

 
 

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

No Obvious Triggers for Housing Crash, but...


http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/feature3.pdf

Googley treats for Goose Creek

we should aim to stick one of these next to a hydro plant in NB, Quebec, Northern ON or MB...

 
 

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via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog by nick on 10/22/08

There are a few things we know about Google data centers:

1. They cost $600 million.

2. They employ 200 people.

3. They open with a down-home ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring politicians, oversized scissors, a local band, balloons, and a tent stocked with "Googley treats."

The latest such hoedown was held on October 7 at Google's new data center near Goose Creek in Berkeley County, South Carolina. In addition to the governor and the mayor, the event was attended by a passel of reporters and a lucky group of 50 local citizens who won a lottery for invitations. The Digitel has a video of the proceedings, and Heather of Lowcountry Bloggers offers a report:

I have lived in Berkeley County most of my life and was pleased to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for Google's new data center located between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner in Mt. Holly Business Park.

People have asked why Berkeley County? It all comes down to money and resources. South Carolina and Berkeley County officials were willing to negotiate; {local electric utility] Santee Cooper played a big role ensuring enough electricity would be available (at a reasonable rate) ...

Attendees of today's event were treated to bluegrass, food, live demonstrations of Google's products, speeches, and of course the ribbon cutting.

There were a few curmudgeons in the audience, needless to say. Joshua Curry, of the Charleston City Paper, offered a particularly dyspeptic take on the celebration:

What a letdown ... I was stoked to drive up there hoping to see the latest in high tech facilities, ie racks and racks of servers silently blinking and digesting data. I'll admit it, I geek out on that kind stuff. Because I like to see how things work, no matter how banal it may seem to other eyes. The problem was, they didn't let anybody inside. No photos, not even a peek. I asked at least five different people who were connected to that kind of access in some way and was politely told 'no', followed by a Google smile.

The Google smile is a happy go lucky California kind of vibe that cloaks a complete distance from the rest of the world. It says "I can't tell you anything about what I do or see and my stock is vesting soon. Enjoy the festivities." It seems taken directly from that Star Trek episode where everyone gets "absorbed", "Are you of the body? Peace and tranquility to you."

Total buzzkill. Clearly, Joshua Curry did not ingest a sufficient number of Googley treats.

But if you scroll down through Curry's post, you'll be treated to some sweet data-center porn, including photos of the center's liquid cooling system and a row of backup generators that, writes Curry, "could probably power the whole county."

Rich Miller, the Larry Flynt of data-center porn, has some more photos of the new center, which indicate that it has a different design than earlier Google centers. Noting that some of the ground floor appears to consist of a large undivided space open to the elements, Miller suggests that the center, like Google's other new center, in Lenoir, North Carolina, may have been built to accommodate server-packed shipping containers. If Miller's right, the Carolina plants would seem to mark a new generation of Google server farms.

Ads by Yahoo!

 
 

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● As close to a biography of David Foster Wallace as you'll get

Bye DFW

 
 

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via kottke.org by jason@kottke.org on 10/22/08

In 1996, an editor from Rolling Stone named David Lipsky spent a lot of time with David Foster Wallace and wrote a biographical piece that was eventually not published in the magazine. When Wallace died last month, RS sent Lipsky to interview his family and friends. The resulting piece, The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, is a unique combination of a look at a writer at the top of his game and a man at the end of his life. It was very difficult for me to read, for reasons which I may never really understand. Wallace meant a lot to me, full stop.

Here are some bits from the article that resonated with me. On the about-face that happened with his professors a University of Arizona after The Broom of the System1 was published:

Viking won the auction for the novel, "with something like a handful of trading stamps." Word spread; professors turned nice. "I went from borderline ready-to-get-kicked-out to all these tight-smiled guys being, 'Glad to see you, we're proud of you, you'll have to come over for dinner.' It was so delicious: I felt kind of embarrassed for them, they didn't even have integrity about their hatred."

On expectations:

The five-year clock was ticking again. He'd played football for five years. He'd played high-level tennis for five years. Now he'd been writing for five years. "What I saw was, 'Jesus, it's the same thing all over again.' I'd started late, showed tremendous promise -- and the minute I felt the implications of that promise, it caved in. Because see, by this time, my ego's all invested in the writing. It's the only thing I've gotten food pellets from the universe for. So I feel trapped: 'Uh-oh, my five years is up, I've gotta move on.' But I didn't want to move on."

On self-consciousness:

"I remember this being a frequent topic of conversation," Franzen says, "his notion of not having an authentic self. Of being just quikc enough to construct a pleasing self for whomever he was talking to. I see now he wasn't just being funny -- there was something genuinely compromised in David. At the time I thought, 'Wow, he's even more self-conscious than I am.'"

On fame:

At the end of his book tour, I spent a week with David. He talked about the "greasy thrill of fame" and what it might mean to his writing. "When I was 25, I would've given a couple of digits off my non-use hand for this," he said. "I feel good, because I want to be doing this for 40 more years, you know? So I've got to find some way to enjoy this that doesn't involve getting eaten by it."

On shyness:

He talked about a kind of shyness that turned social life impossibly complicated. "I think being shy basically means self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I'm hanging out with you, I can't even tell whether I like you or not because I'm too worried about whether you like me."

And I don't even know what this is all about:

"I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I'm not one of the good ones. But then I countenance the fact that at least here I am worrying about it, noticing all the ways I fall short of integrity, and I imagine that maybe people without any integrity at all don't notice or worry about it; so then I feel better about myself. It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am -- so where does that put me?"

You have to get the magazine to read the whole thing; it's worth it. Rolling Stone also has an interview with Lipsky about the article.

[1] Oh to have been wrong about the prediction I made here.


 
 

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Joe Clark's Got a Brand New Book



 
 

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via Torontoist by Robin Rix on 10/22/08

DSC_3922_1.jpg
Photo of the New Canadian Library edition of Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel by David Topping. Note spelling of "colors."

You probably write "honour" and "analyze." Quite possibly you write "cozy" and "axe." But do you write "jewellery" or "jewelry"? "Focused" or "focussed"?

To guide you through the mangrove swamp that is Canadian spelling, up pops Joe Clark—local writer, accessibility advocate, typographic aesthete, and cuddly curmudgeon. His new book, Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English, is a concise and engaging attempt at explaining why our country's unique spelling both exists and matters.

The book opens with the observation that "correct" spellings reflect popular usage: if enough people spell a certain word in a certain way for a certain period of time, then that spelling becomes acceptable. In other words, Canadian spelling doesn't follow the dictionary; rather, the dictionary follows how Canadians spell.

20081021joeclark.jpg

The book then describes Clark's research into how Canadians actually spell, in which he surveyed several million words from sources as varied as mass-market magazines and newspapers, small-market and niche publications, blog entries, court decisions, government websites, and literary pieces. His raw data findings are to be made available online.

It's an impressive corpus, though one may query whether the methodology is skewed by the likelihood that many words in such sources would have been proofread and corrected according to institutional preferences. (For example, an author might have written "catalog," but a publishing house might have changed it to "catalogue." Which spelling is more authentically Canadian?) This isn't Clark's fault, of course, seeing as researchers have relatively limited access to the unvarnished spellings of ordinary Canadians, and his consideration of such a wide variety of sources goes some way toward mitigating the problem.

Clark directs some ire toward various authorities for misunderstanding Canadian spelling. His biggest targets are computer spellcheckers, which, even when set to "Canadian English," regularly tell users that correct spellings are wrong and that incorrect spellings are right. Other targets include mainstream media outlets for trying to lead rather than follow Canadian spelling preferences, as well as Canadian English dictionaries, which get the occasional word wrong. Clark's rebuttal of one dictionary's finding that "yogourt" is preferred over "yogurt" is particularly convincing.

The book's biggest weakness is being, at times, concise to a fault. It makes several incisive observations, but leaves a reader wanting to shake the pages for more information about why open-source spellcheckers are so powerful, why Canada's many governments continue to spell the same words differently, or any of the other nuggets within it. One may also want more discussion about the book's claim that top-down spelling reforms in English tend to fail, which is deserving of further examination in light of the efforts of, say, Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster.

Other quibbles are relatively minor and relate more to structure than substance. For example, Clark conjures up an arresting passage about the alternative reality of waking up in a society that has abandoned Canadian spelling in favour of either American or British spelling, and how we might feel in such a scenario. It captures better than perhaps anything else why Canadian spelling matters, but it lies buried in a few anonymous paragraphs in the book's final chapter. The book deserves a powerful hook to draw the reader in, so why not open with it?

These observations do not detract from what is overall an interesting and informative read. Note that the book comes in electronic format rather than more traditional paper format, and it's relatively short at approximately 20,000 words (though a short book, like a short speech, can often be more enjoyable than its longer counterparts). Its price, $17.83, may discourage readers who are accustomed to paying less and getting more bulk in return, but the book is generally free of padding, and, for the rest of 2008, Clark offers a nifty 10% off for every minor error that you spot, and 50% off for any major error of sense. To his credit, Clark lists online every one of his errors that gets spotted. The price also covers a cheat sheet with the correct Canadian spellings of many words that typically cause confusion.

Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours is available for purchase online.


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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Dion Steps Down



 
 

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via CalgaryGrit by calgarygrit on 10/21/08

We can all agree, I think, that the Liberals - from the leader on down - were not ready for this campaign, and were not ready to govern. But few races in this country have more underscored the extremely cruel nature of electoral politics. It's an elbows-out game for all concerned, and parties have to know that when they choose their leaders. Frankly, Dion should have known that before he sought the leadership in the first place. But if Steve Paikin ever writes a sequel to The Dark Side he may not need to look for a single other person to write about.
-Radwanski


The question immediately, in anonymous quotes and Conservative attacks, was one of leadership. Before he could even begin to go about trying to lead, he was defined as weak and cowardly, pursued by numerous rivals who, while they hadn't been able to beat him in a year-long campaign, were apparently better, stronger, more deserving captains. For months he was mocked without riposte. Maybe a more archetypal politician might've been able to transcend this, might've reassured those who doubted his abilities. But, in Dion's case, all that made him who he was only seemed to confirm what his opponents purported him to be. All that he supposedly stood in opposition to, he now needed to personify. And so maybe the question is how we now define leadership. Or how we know a leader when we think we see one.
-Wherry


There's always a lot of second-guessing in a campaign like this but the campaign – and Dion's leadership – were probably over 18 months ago. As Wherry laments above, within months of surprising everyone and winning the leadership, Tory ads had defined him as weak, the media had bought into that narrative, and the knives were being sharpened. I shudder to think of what would happen today to a wooden and uninspiring civil servant named "Lester" who talked with a lisp, wore bow ties, and lost his first two elections. It's pretty clear that the days of a "not a leader" like Pearson becoming Prime Minister are long gone.

It became common to refer to Dion as "an honest politician and decent human being" during the dying days of the campaign, as if these were horrible character flaws holding him back from becoming Prime Minister. At the same time, voter apathy reached all-time highs, because of cynicism towards politics and politicians. Go figure. Maybe Dion needed the "bastard side" Will Ferguson talks about. Maybe he needed to be more pragmatic. Maybe the failure was not in the product but in how it was marketed.

When all is said and done, the problem is that Dion wasn't "an honest politician" – he was "an honest man" thrust into the job of politician, a job he just wasn't well suited for. Brilliant academic, yes. Passionate fighter of Canadian unity, no one can deny. Talented Cabinet Minister, you betcha. But as a politician? It just wasn't his calling.

Even if you were never a big fan of Stéphane Dion and even if you think the party will be better served under new leadership, it's hard not to feel at least a little bit sorry for the man. The story of Paul Martin's leadership was probably a "greek tragedy" – for Dion, it was just a sad story.

 
 

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InfoVis Keynote: Command Post of the Future



 
 

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via information aesthetics on 10/21/08

command_post_of_the_future.jpg
Greetings from the InfoVis conference in Columbus, Ohio! Today we heard a compelling keynote presentation by Jake Kolojejchick, Chief Scientist at Viz / General Dynamics. Jake is one of the creators of the "Command Post of the Future" system, currently in active use by the U.S. military.

Jake talked a bit about the system itself, which is geared for realtime collaboration in situations that are, to say the least, stressful and demanding. But his main messages were lessons learned during the system's design and deployment. Three points struck me as particularly interesting.

1. Jake noted that his users were extremely smart and resourceful, which ironically made testing tricky. Given simple tasks, users were too good at figuring out even hard-to-use software. To get around this, users were given extremely difficult test tasks, so that they had no extra brain energy to solve interface problems.

2. Military commanders have always loved maps. Jake speculated that this wasn't just because maps convey information clearly, but they also convey possibilities for action. A bridge almost begs to be crossed, for example. Jake then showed a slide of various visualizations of the current financial meltdown. All of these charts showed how bad things are, but none held any hint of what to do next. (Alas!) Is there a way we can create visualizations with map-like "affordances for action?"

3. The part where I really sat up and took notice was when Jake said that he viewed visualization "as a medium." This is something I've heard (and occasionally said) before, though usually in the context of artistic or social software--so at first it was a surprise to hear the same message from someone talking about a military system. The viewpoints people choose and the annotations they make on visualizations tell you a lot about what they're thinking... and apparently this is as true on the battlefield as it is on a Web 2.0 social network.

Guest blogger Martin Wattenberg is the group manager at the IBM Visual Communication Lab. He is known for several successful visualization projects such as Many Eyes, Baby Name Voyager and Shape of Song.

See also Infovis'08 Conference Coverage.


 
 

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Monday, October 20, 2008

Just My Two Cents



 
 

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via CalgaryGrit by calgarygrit on 10/19/08

If the common sentiment in the Liberal Party becomes that the only reason we lost in 2006 was because of Adscam, and the only reason we lost in 2008 was because of Dion, then Stephen Harper is going to become the longest serving Tory PM since John A. Macdonald.


With that in mind, everyone should check out the opinions of Misters Silver and Axworthy.

As for Mr. Reid's belief that:

No. [Our goal] should be to win more seats than our competitors and ideally, more than the 155 seats required to form a stable majority government. Let's not over-think this thing, for Pete's sake. It's about getting more Liberal MPs in the next election, not increasing popular vote over the next decade.

Here's the problem. The Liberals won 76 seats. They were within 10% of winning in 33 other seats - so maybe the "quick fix" can get us up to 109 seats next election and if that's Scott's target, that's probably doable. If you're a little more optimistic and you assume the Liberals win every seat they were in second place and within 20% of winning this time, that gives us 137 seats next election. Not bad, unless you consider that using the same criteria leaves the Conservatives competitive in 208 seats next election.

What people need to recognize is that when the Liberal Party isn't even competitive in 155 seats, winning a majority government becomes kind of difficult. And unless real changes are made, it's not going to get better anytime soon, no matter what saviour descends from the heavens to lead the party.

 
 

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Trapped.



 
 

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via Indexed by Jessica on 10/7/08


 
 

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