People have told me they think Flight of the Conchords is the best comedy act/show going these days. Well I can't think of a better one (LMOTP comes close), but FOTC is still really just OK. They do a good job of humanizing marginalized parts of urban society (muggers, druggies, etc.) but they're also perpetuating problematic stereotypes in a way that evokes nervous laughter from at least a few female and minority viewers. Here we have another couple of slick "white" guys, singing songs about how and how not to get laid, about racial equality, the triumphs and tragedies of inner city life, etc. But let's take a closer look at one of these issues: racial equality. Their "black paper white paper..stick it together with the tape of love" song champions love's ability to overcome racial antagonism. And yet, when you look at the "hottest" women according to Brett and Jemain's characters, they're all tall, thin, blonde, symmetrical "beauties"...no sterotype being challenged here.
In fact, the show is generally dealing with stereotypes, which I guess is normal for comedy shows. The trouble is, FOTC stereotypes aren't all that insightful and in my view serve to entrench negative stereotypes as often as they deconstruct or parody them.
So there's a little rant on last year's New Kids On The Block comedy troupe. Go Monty Python! http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2008/09/monty_pythons_guide_to_the_mud.html
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Brain, Muscle, Fat - In That Order
Following recent coverage of the US and Canadian elections, I feel moved to write a brief dialectic. A major shift in our collective priorities seems called for if are to free ourselves from the economic malaise and brutal militarism that is the natural outcome of certain aspects of the North American way of life. Our culture is rooted in a shallow, and often meaningless, form of hedonistic consumerism, which offers little promise of real fulfillment or concern for greater goals.
I was lucky enough to find myself seated across from Jack Layton a month ago in an airport lounge. After five minutes of trying to think of a question worth asking him, we ended up having a pleasant and meaningful conversation about a variety of things related to sustainability, including his former involvements with the Toronto Cycling Committee through which he knows my dad. He also gave a good answer to my question about the NDP's strategies for growing environmental awareness across Canada by funding community-level advocacy. It was a good ten minute conversation, by the end of which I had renewed confidence that despite being a political animal, Mr. Layton has a genuine passion for the environment and sustainability...and space exploration! Hahaha :) (He said as he was taking his seat on the plane, quite out of the blue, that he's reading a book about the Apollo project.)
So, here's my dialectic on the shift in priorities that I see helping us kick the habit of exploiting the wealth of nations less powerful than ourselves. This is part of addressing "security issues" that are of such importance to our US counterparts, and restoring Canada's good name in international circles as a peacemaker, leader on the environment (and now sustainability), and a country that not only contains enormous wealth, but generates prosperity beyond its borders.
------
Canada needs to maintain its sovereignty. How do we do this? With economic and military power? Perhaps. Certainly this is the strategy pursued by those nations with the highest degree of sovereignty around the world, i.e. the G-8. How then do we increase economic and military power? We increase economic power by improving productivity while reducing consumption. This gives a net benefit to our country, while benefiting our trading partners and countries in which we're involved in humanitarian work and peacekeeping as well. It's no good to be highly productive if we then go and consume an equivalent amount of resources to the income we've generated. By doing so, we increase global inequity and miss opportunities to direct surpluses into investments for the good of society.
Instead, we should focus on funneling those resources into wealth creating enterprise -- investments in knowledge creation (education), culture, technology, particularly information technologies that give people access to the information needed to improve their own lives and make better decisions. We should dwarf the significant value of our natural resources with a culture of wealth creation that will garner the respect of powerful nations and individuals around the world.
We should have access to, control over, and actively be developing technologies and intelligence that allow us to carry out effective warfare, not the sloppy "death from above" tactics being increasingly relied on in Afghanistan. When you deprive civilians of their human rights, you harden their culture against you. The reality is that there are people, subcultures, in this world whose ideas do not deserve a voice. I am referring to organizations or structures that promulgate hate, such as terrorist organizations, or to borrow a historical example, Apartheid. For good reasons, these are always in the minority, and so we should not be forced into dialogue with them because we're incapable of overpowering or outsmarting them. Overpowering a terrorist subculture can often be done more effectively through diplomacy and appealing to the better judgment of moderates than through firepower. Improving the the quality of life of people in foreign nations is a much better way to secure our county than living a lifestyle that necessitates their exploitation. Power is a measure of knowledge. If we lack the knowledge to achieve our aims, we have only ourselves to hold responsible.
I was lucky enough to find myself seated across from Jack Layton a month ago in an airport lounge. After five minutes of trying to think of a question worth asking him, we ended up having a pleasant and meaningful conversation about a variety of things related to sustainability, including his former involvements with the Toronto Cycling Committee through which he knows my dad. He also gave a good answer to my question about the NDP's strategies for growing environmental awareness across Canada by funding community-level advocacy. It was a good ten minute conversation, by the end of which I had renewed confidence that despite being a political animal, Mr. Layton has a genuine passion for the environment and sustainability...and space exploration! Hahaha :) (He said as he was taking his seat on the plane, quite out of the blue, that he's reading a book about the Apollo project.)
So, here's my dialectic on the shift in priorities that I see helping us kick the habit of exploiting the wealth of nations less powerful than ourselves. This is part of addressing "security issues" that are of such importance to our US counterparts, and restoring Canada's good name in international circles as a peacemaker, leader on the environment (and now sustainability), and a country that not only contains enormous wealth, but generates prosperity beyond its borders.
------
Canada needs to maintain its sovereignty. How do we do this? With economic and military power? Perhaps. Certainly this is the strategy pursued by those nations with the highest degree of sovereignty around the world, i.e. the G-8. How then do we increase economic and military power? We increase economic power by improving productivity while reducing consumption. This gives a net benefit to our country, while benefiting our trading partners and countries in which we're involved in humanitarian work and peacekeeping as well. It's no good to be highly productive if we then go and consume an equivalent amount of resources to the income we've generated. By doing so, we increase global inequity and miss opportunities to direct surpluses into investments for the good of society.
Instead, we should focus on funneling those resources into wealth creating enterprise -- investments in knowledge creation (education), culture, technology, particularly information technologies that give people access to the information needed to improve their own lives and make better decisions. We should dwarf the significant value of our natural resources with a culture of wealth creation that will garner the respect of powerful nations and individuals around the world.
We should have access to, control over, and actively be developing technologies and intelligence that allow us to carry out effective warfare, not the sloppy "death from above" tactics being increasingly relied on in Afghanistan. When you deprive civilians of their human rights, you harden their culture against you. The reality is that there are people, subcultures, in this world whose ideas do not deserve a voice. I am referring to organizations or structures that promulgate hate, such as terrorist organizations, or to borrow a historical example, Apartheid. For good reasons, these are always in the minority, and so we should not be forced into dialogue with them because we're incapable of overpowering or outsmarting them. Overpowering a terrorist subculture can often be done more effectively through diplomacy and appealing to the better judgment of moderates than through firepower. Improving the the quality of life of people in foreign nations is a much better way to secure our county than living a lifestyle that necessitates their exploitation. Power is a measure of knowledge. If we lack the knowledge to achieve our aims, we have only ourselves to hold responsible.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
AAAAAHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/global_business.shtml
Global Business updates weekly. The original broadcast is available here.
Global Business updates weekly. The original broadcast is available here.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
What makes The Diableros so great (for a Scot/Brit descended twenty-something who grew up in Scarborough/Ajax/Whitby/Oshawa)
Like an old leather boot stepping on the rusty gas pedal of an Oshawa-built jalopy, The Diableros roar out of the stable with balls a-blazin' ...for peace.
Is there a contradiction in this music? Of course...it's a rock show. It's not supposed to make sense. It reflects reality but it's not real. It's art. Yes my few and faithful blog readers, this is art.
So why do I like this band so much...
The Lyrics
They've got a message that rust-belt industrialists need to hear, condensed into "cause it's not home, just miles of road"
"You got held up, I got the afternoon."
"...just miiiiiiiiiles...." awesome hold over.
They're honest.
Is there a contradiction in this music? Of course...it's a rock show. It's not supposed to make sense. It reflects reality but it's not real. It's art. Yes my few and faithful blog readers, this is art.
So why do I like this band so much...
The Lyrics
They've got a message that rust-belt industrialists need to hear, condensed into "cause it's not home, just miles of road"
"You got held up, I got the afternoon."
"...just miiiiiiiiiles...." awesome hold over.
They're honest.
Broken Barns
the crooning. oooooooh the crooning.
"far...ooo, three days drive in a car and he's still what he used to be"
The Feel
S.O.L.I.D. yet organic and collaborative.
Song construction
The way it takes so long to get it...you have to listen to the whole song, i.e. it's not soundbite music. It takes time to say something important.
Non-cyclical: it goes somewhere. It's progress baby, like a good child of industry.
Subtle but uncontrived time changes: long 6/4 signatures inserted over 4/4 ([song])
Instrumentation
Pete Carmichael: voice, twelve-string guitar
Ian Jackson: guitar
Phoebe Lee: drums
Matt Rubba: organ, tambourine
Ian Worang: bass
But the number one reason I like The Diableros is that they create identity for me as a kid who grew up in the eastern GTA at the end of the 20th Century.
Here's a song by song break down of why I like this band so much I'd (almost) trade in my degree to be playing at this level in my late twenties.
Up In The Mountain Range
This song is a beautifully vivid, hard-hitting criticism of Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan. I'm not sure whether the political caricature is Harper or Bush; it's equally applicable.
Ever Changing
Nothing Down in Hogtown
strut keyboards
thick rock
drum thing sounds like Beetles Twist and Shout
Lyrics
"not ready for the country, high up above"
what is this, heaven? retirement? living having given up a dream?
"I've been pouring out energy into a vat and sipping it down"
"So I'll take this liberty, I'll wear an axe if you take a vow
And I don't want to sing that song, sounding hard core"
"to fuel the strong"
Any Other Time
stars, looking at the stars song
Torontoness
sentimentality
colours, yellows and oranges,
Lyrics
"Any other time I make like I've been a fool...
(pause) I've played a fool.
a fooooooooo.....00000000lllllll
I got the crush, that gives me that sanctity (so perseptive)
Is it enough when I'm left in solitude
sweeeping the dust, paying the propper dues
fool... [driving, bass drops and...] foooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,0000 oool
You got held up I go tthe afternoon
Is it enough to really give up on you.
Now we are lost"
patterns with chords changing underneath...signature NY
"we should take the time we get and give out
when it's gone and we're apart, i'll try to work without regret and carry a charge
work without regret and carry a chaaaaaaaarrrgge..."
guitar changes
rhythm guitar harmonic interference
added two beats and...lead goes up the 8ve, amazing
Turning Backwards
country feel, swagger
rolling triplets
such a story teller
Lyrics
"Regret the
trouble grasping good sounds
I find it hard to get by only once in a while
when I'm leaving my silence behind
Well you have gone insane and I see it in your eyes
well it's only dark in corners of your mind
rivers in your veins can carry thoughts downstream to valleys where branches can grow again"
restored nature, life! lifelike imagery
nature allusions...so beautiful
"Through hazy skies come golden rays of light, that can only take my mind
(it all plays out so slowly...drama!)
where trails of smoke unwind
I can hear the clocktowers
turning backwards
chiming to a time I was waiting there outdoors"
I dwelled out there (dwelled as the wrong emphasis... too Handelian)
bass sounds like its revving
crash...lead... crash
through the ashes emerges the plaintive guitar smoking through
keys, so much pathos
band bass fives
oh the soaring Ian's holds steady over, switches and band harmonies follow
crashes fall on the one
Mist
oh mist...
sweeps in guitar, perfect twang
thwang...
"The party died" (what is this style)
bass
"and then so did you"
change
"didn't say much together white mist overdue" (over dew?)
sexy...
"I remember your honey, and ice pickles too
I remember your jewelery and merry cackles you made"
Guitar pulls us out of it...like a winch
thwangk, thwank
"So here's our goodbye. It's long overdue" (falters)
"Can't speak for forever. And I can't blame what's true. Just say that I'm sorry, for the pains that broke you.
And I'll just say I'm happy for all the things (emphasis amazing) that you gave.
Ian pulls us up...
Merry cackles you made...
swing, grhh
Telepathic Love
overtone hangs over....
"Would you send a message via a telepathic vibe
sen dit now because I'm feeling so deprived
Could you send a...
Telepathic affair.
Send a message via telepathic vibe
Give me something without giving a thing"
So this song is a cover. Shows respect for our collective musical heritage.
Kicking Rocks
Awesome.
in. tro.
bam boodu bam boodu bo....
"I've my bastion. You've got your shell.
You're always pushing ...on what you dwell"? what?
"So I've been thinkin, what's up with that
You say you're silent well get used to that
you open building doors for working class"
...somthing about cadillacs
"You're only kicking rocks from the East.
I see you hanging like a scarecrow when your fields are dry.
I get up and fill my hamo in the morning.
I hear the ..
I've got a move on and cut the slack
2.5 million won't hold me back"
...rocks forin
"and you aim to high" (2nd time slightly different, such sublty!)
"When will you light my soul?!!
When the nights are cold!
When will you light my soul.
dee dee dee dee dee dee dee
I don't care how punk rock you want to be. It just doesn't mean anything ..."
drumm... da datata. da datata. sets up
Incredible feel. OMGosh
Left From The Movies
"All of my friends are gone and I'm fire fighting
As I stand on your lawn, I remember slightly. How the sparks surprised me.
And it made a wonderful sound. I couldn't believe how loud. It felt like I had just left from the movies...
so I recorded..." (the sentence just goes on adding a piece to the story with each line)
"but not anymore"(so honest release)
"Now it's all coming through me."
music mirrors the process
then it comes
And I was led astray, far from your way
said a fool
don't think he's on holidays
beautiful story.
No One Wants To Drive
Oh man...this song is so amazing.
magical sonorous
Bass.
Do do do do "...the night we took the car without tellin your dad
thoughts of not comign back the best dreams we ever had
houses and amber spaced out like a waitresses teeth who served us coffee on the way to a useless speach
kids in the parking lot just barely gettin by
I want to leave this town, but no one wants to drive.
'cause it's not home. I'm goin back, not goin home.
Sometimes your looks at me remind me of your mom
back in my high..." etc. sugary sentimentality. a bit much
guitar...Ian that pattern fits
"Kids in the parking lot just barely gettin by
I want to leave this town, but no one wants to drive."
wtf is happening in the guitar. Ian we love you.
Broken Barns
Why The Diableros are so amazing cont.
sonically
narrative
song structure
Nothing Down in Hogtown
well they're wrong about that
the crooning. oooooooh the crooning.
"far...ooo, three days drive in a car and he's still what he used to be"
The Feel
S.O.L.I.D. yet organic and collaborative.
Song construction
The way it takes so long to get it...you have to listen to the whole song, i.e. it's not soundbite music. It takes time to say something important.
Non-cyclical: it goes somewhere. It's progress baby, like a good child of industry.
Subtle but uncontrived time changes: long 6/4 signatures inserted over 4/4 ([song])
Instrumentation
Pete Carmichael: voice, twelve-string guitar
Ian Jackson: guitar
Phoebe Lee: drums
Matt Rubba: organ, tambourine
Ian Worang: bass
But the number one reason I like The Diableros is that they create identity for me as a kid who grew up in the eastern GTA at the end of the 20th Century.
Here's a song by song break down of why I like this band so much I'd (almost) trade in my degree to be playing at this level in my late twenties.
Up In The Mountain Range
This song is a beautifully vivid, hard-hitting criticism of Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan. I'm not sure whether the political caricature is Harper or Bush; it's equally applicable.
Ever Changing
Nothing Down in Hogtown
strut keyboards
thick rock
drum thing sounds like Beetles Twist and Shout
Lyrics
"not ready for the country, high up above"
what is this, heaven? retirement? living having given up a dream?
"I've been pouring out energy into a vat and sipping it down"
"So I'll take this liberty, I'll wear an axe if you take a vow
And I don't want to sing that song, sounding hard core"
"to fuel the strong"
Any Other Time
stars, looking at the stars song
Torontoness
sentimentality
colours, yellows and oranges,
Lyrics
"Any other time I make like I've been a fool...
(pause) I've played a fool.
a fooooooooo.....00000000lllllll
I got the crush, that gives me that sanctity (so perseptive)
Is it enough when I'm left in solitude
sweeeping the dust, paying the propper dues
fool... [driving, bass drops and...] foooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,0000 oool
You got held up I go tthe afternoon
Is it enough to really give up on you.
Now we are lost"
patterns with chords changing underneath...signature NY
"we should take the time we get and give out
when it's gone and we're apart, i'll try to work without regret and carry a charge
work without regret and carry a chaaaaaaaarrrgge..."
guitar changes
rhythm guitar harmonic interference
added two beats and...lead goes up the 8ve, amazing
Turning Backwards
country feel, swagger
rolling triplets
such a story teller
Lyrics
"Regret the
trouble grasping good sounds
I find it hard to get by only once in a while
when I'm leaving my silence behind
Well you have gone insane and I see it in your eyes
well it's only dark in corners of your mind
rivers in your veins can carry thoughts downstream to valleys where branches can grow again"
restored nature, life! lifelike imagery
nature allusions...so beautiful
"Through hazy skies come golden rays of light, that can only take my mind
(it all plays out so slowly...drama!)
where trails of smoke unwind
I can hear the clocktowers
turning backwards
chiming to a time I was waiting there outdoors"
I dwelled out there (dwelled as the wrong emphasis... too Handelian)
bass sounds like its revving
crash...lead... crash
through the ashes emerges the plaintive guitar smoking through
keys, so much pathos
band bass fives
oh the soaring Ian's holds steady over, switches and band harmonies follow
crashes fall on the one
Mist
oh mist...
sweeps in guitar, perfect twang
thwang...
"The party died" (what is this style)
bass
"and then so did you"
change
"didn't say much together white mist overdue" (over dew?)
sexy...
"I remember your honey, and ice pickles too
I remember your jewelery and merry cackles you made"
Guitar pulls us out of it...like a winch
thwangk, thwank
"So here's our goodbye. It's long overdue" (falters)
"Can't speak for forever. And I can't blame what's true. Just say that I'm sorry, for the pains that broke you.
And I'll just say I'm happy for all the things (emphasis amazing) that you gave.
Ian pulls us up...
Merry cackles you made...
swing, grhh
Telepathic Love
overtone hangs over....
"Would you send a message via a telepathic vibe
sen dit now because I'm feeling so deprived
Could you send a...
Telepathic affair.
Send a message via telepathic vibe
Give me something without giving a thing"
So this song is a cover. Shows respect for our collective musical heritage.
Kicking Rocks
Awesome.
in. tro.
bam boodu bam boodu bo....
"I've my bastion. You've got your shell.
You're always pushing ...on what you dwell"? what?
"So I've been thinkin, what's up with that
You say you're silent well get used to that
you open building doors for working class"
...somthing about cadillacs
"You're only kicking rocks from the East.
I see you hanging like a scarecrow when your fields are dry.
I get up and fill my hamo in the morning.
I hear the ..
I've got a move on and cut the slack
2.5 million won't hold me back"
...rocks forin
"and you aim to high" (2nd time slightly different, such sublty!)
"When will you light my soul?!!
When the nights are cold!
When will you light my soul.
dee dee dee dee dee dee dee
I don't care how punk rock you want to be. It just doesn't mean anything ..."
drumm... da datata. da datata. sets up
Incredible feel. OMGosh
Left From The Movies
"All of my friends are gone and I'm fire fighting
As I stand on your lawn, I remember slightly. How the sparks surprised me.
And it made a wonderful sound. I couldn't believe how loud. It felt like I had just left from the movies...
so I recorded..." (the sentence just goes on adding a piece to the story with each line)
"but not anymore"(so honest release)
"Now it's all coming through me."
music mirrors the process
then it comes
And I was led astray, far from your way
said a fool
don't think he's on holidays
beautiful story.
No One Wants To Drive
Oh man...this song is so amazing.
magical sonorous
Bass.
Do do do do "...the night we took the car without tellin your dad
thoughts of not comign back the best dreams we ever had
houses and amber spaced out like a waitresses teeth who served us coffee on the way to a useless speach
kids in the parking lot just barely gettin by
I want to leave this town, but no one wants to drive.
'cause it's not home. I'm goin back, not goin home.
Sometimes your looks at me remind me of your mom
back in my high..." etc. sugary sentimentality. a bit much
guitar...Ian that pattern fits
"Kids in the parking lot just barely gettin by
I want to leave this town, but no one wants to drive."
wtf is happening in the guitar. Ian we love you.
Broken Barns
Why The Diableros are so amazing cont.
sonically
narrative
song structure
More on Up in the Mountain Range
Lyrics
"when the daylight gets drowned under the shadow of your second home
you're lost in the
what you've done wrong
our blood won't drip down if we don't get up
our position stays soft up in the mountain range
you can have a think about"
blaring sirenesque guitar clash, beauty
"when you're over making sense and the rhetoric's on your back
when the fire's buring smolders following another attack
we wait for the day that you fall down
our blood won't drip down, if don't get up
our position stays soft up in the mountain range"
lyrics work together so wonderfully
working class work ethic, like a father's authoritative advice, "you can have a think about it"
Ever-changing
squeeking distorted guitar,
"I got the minions" ... Pete exposes his views, slowly for those who care to listen or pay attention
"it's time we got along...(a long) way out...the connotation changes" brilliant
"it only takes hours, but we've been gone for days"
meaning one: friends who take longer than necessary to resolve their disputes
meaning two: creative process facilitated by a retreat
weather, West, East allusions, beauty
guitar singing with Pete (Ian and Pete)
to the west, the frontier's ever changing... like the sentiment. ever-changing
Work where I can be proud
but I am bound to the windbags
whiny organ...perfect
strutting sound
honest comments on the state of things. "it's not home, just miles of road" "nothing down in hogtown"
guitar solo at the end of Any Other Time
Up In The Mountain Range
Slow lyrical delivery gives listener options...to listen to words, or just the music
psychedelic sonorities (overtones)
Ever-Changing
"when the daylight gets drowned under the shadow of your second home
you're lost in the
what you've done wrong
our blood won't drip down if we don't get up
our position stays soft up in the mountain range
you can have a think about"
blaring sirenesque guitar clash, beauty
"when you're over making sense and the rhetoric's on your back
when the fire's buring smolders following another attack
we wait for the day that you fall down
our blood won't drip down, if don't get up
our position stays soft up in the mountain range"
lyrics work together so wonderfully
working class work ethic, like a father's authoritative advice, "you can have a think about it"
Ever-changing
squeeking distorted guitar,
"I got the minions" ... Pete exposes his views, slowly for those who care to listen or pay attention
"it's time we got along...(a long) way out...the connotation changes" brilliant
"it only takes hours, but we've been gone for days"
meaning one: friends who take longer than necessary to resolve their disputes
meaning two: creative process facilitated by a retreat
weather, West, East allusions, beauty
guitar singing with Pete (Ian and Pete)
to the west, the frontier's ever changing... like the sentiment. ever-changing
Work where I can be proud
but I am bound to the windbags
whiny organ...perfect
strutting sound
honest comments on the state of things. "it's not home, just miles of road" "nothing down in hogtown"
guitar solo at the end of Any Other Time
Up In The Mountain Range
Slow lyrical delivery gives listener options...to listen to words, or just the music
psychedelic sonorities (overtones)
Ever-Changing
Nothing Down in Hogtown
well they're wrong about that
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
British Columbian Emotions
Having returned from my trip to visit my brother's family in Victoria, I'm just coming down off the high of a range of new experiences, ideas, and even a few new emotions. This photoblog is an attempt to communicate a few of these. I'm aware of the irony of the shirt, but I don't fly very much, and I'm involved in connectivity solutions that reduce air travel. So, I feel comfortable wearing it.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Reflections on two days in Vancouver, a photoless blog
Sitting in the quiet calm of my brother and sister-in-law's guest room, this feels like a good space to process the last two intense days in Vancouver, intensely beautiful, intensely ugly, and intensely sad.
I guess I regret not bringing a camera along, since I would've enjoyed highlighting these reflections with a few photos. But, since I didn't, I'll put extra care into describing the experience vividly and accurately.
The benefit of not bringing the camera, is that now I get to let my memory have final say on what's worth saving rather than whether or not I happened to take a picture of something.
So what stands out...
Delight, connectedness with my past (my family visited Vancouver in 1986 for the World Expo, aka Expo '86), formative experience, and the soberness of
The ride up Chancellor Blvd. and Broadway's West Coast retail, boardsport shops and designer sunglasses
Light wispy tree canopy, cement, moss-aged road
view of mountains, riding up the hill with a tea in one hand, young girl practicing skateboarding, forest trails,
anthropology, the big penis. oh what would Jon Hines say if he were here....
tour
tour highlights
potlatch
woman with face vagina and round, red circle lips
Bill Reid's raven on the old gun turret, an aboriginal creation story that incorporates and reclaims the Canadian military battlements
totem poles "outside"
enjoying nature, reading in the grass, the feeling of clean earth, mountains
meeting Eve, remembering what attracted me to her. seeing some beautiful things in her and Dave's life, and wondering if I also sensed something Dave wishes was different, or whether it was my imagination.
terrible collision
mangled bicycle, pool of half-dried blood on the road, a large pool. crushed helmet
I asked the police officer, how did this happen? He said, "A bike and a truck got together."
it took a minute or two to process, then I began to cry as I lifted my bike onto the rack on the bus, hoping this wave of tears would stop by the time I entered the bus to pay my fare
Sign seen from the bus: "Ours to preserve with hand and with heart" -Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR)
Needless to say, the cyclist fatality put a damper, a big damper, on the rest of the morning. It made me start questioning
it made me remember the value of life
solar powered trash compactor?
I guess I regret not bringing a camera along, since I would've enjoyed highlighting these reflections with a few photos. But, since I didn't, I'll put extra care into describing the experience vividly and accurately.
The benefit of not bringing the camera, is that now I get to let my memory have final say on what's worth saving rather than whether or not I happened to take a picture of something.
So what stands out...
Delight, connectedness with my past (my family visited Vancouver in 1986 for the World Expo, aka Expo '86), formative experience, and the soberness of
The ride up Chancellor Blvd. and Broadway's West Coast retail, boardsport shops and designer sunglasses
Light wispy tree canopy, cement, moss-aged road
view of mountains, riding up the hill with a tea in one hand, young girl practicing skateboarding, forest trails,
anthropology, the big penis. oh what would Jon Hines say if he were here....
tour
tour highlights
potlatch
woman with face vagina and round, red circle lips
Bill Reid's raven on the old gun turret, an aboriginal creation story that incorporates and reclaims the Canadian military battlements
totem poles "outside"
enjoying nature, reading in the grass, the feeling of clean earth, mountains
meeting Eve, remembering what attracted me to her. seeing some beautiful things in her and Dave's life, and wondering if I also sensed something Dave wishes was different, or whether it was my imagination.
terrible collision
mangled bicycle, pool of half-dried blood on the road, a large pool. crushed helmet
I asked the police officer, how did this happen? He said, "A bike and a truck got together."
it took a minute or two to process, then I began to cry as I lifted my bike onto the rack on the bus, hoping this wave of tears would stop by the time I entered the bus to pay my fare
Sign seen from the bus: "Ours to preserve with hand and with heart" -Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR)
Needless to say, the cyclist fatality put a damper, a big damper, on the rest of the morning. It made me start questioning
it made me remember the value of life
solar powered trash compactor?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Three feet away from Alan Kay
It was a little surprising to find an invite in my inbox a month ago to a "special David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science Distinguished Lecture". It was addressed to Comp Sci alumni and included lunch with the speaker, Dr. Alan Kay. As this sounded like a unique and interesting opportunity, I RSVP'd despite the fact that I'm not a CS alumnus and was only enrolled in CS for two academic terms.
Sometimes casual decisions lead to some pretty amazing experiences. I didn't realize it at the time, but after hanging off Dr. Kay's armchair for over an hour, I began to understand that I was listening to one incredibly remarkable man. His ideas are among the most astonishing, while also being perfectly reasonable, that I have heard in a long time, on both philosophical and practical levels.
At 2pm the same day, we (that is, me and handful of CSers who met at lunch) also got to hear Eric Veach, who was one member of a small team of 'software architects' at Google describe some of the behind-the-scenes workings of Google Maps. Veach was both the top of his class and the top student in the university when he graduated from CS in 1997. Here are my notes from the afternoon, as well as additional ones from Kay's convocation address the next day. I couldn't get enough of this guy!
-----------
Many of our themes co-evolved with the inventions of networked personal computers, graphical user interfaces and dynamic object-oriented programming. -http://www.vpri.org/
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2000 - PIXAR!!! website
------------
Chuck Thacker - invented tablet PC Xerox PARC
www.vpri.org
a research centre for augmenting human intellect
intellectual amplifier - 192 kilobytes which you can interpret to mean 1 Mhz, supported 20 users, UCLA, Butler Lampton operating system
Bob Taylor, UC R Linchider, Lang Roberts, Wes Clark, Paul Baron, Len Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, VMT Corp
1969 the intergalactic network, unlimited desktops, "Wat For" "ppl who were supposed to be thinking were believing. (I asked myself) do I love this because I understand it or because it's a good idea" coping is what humans were made for.
Math and Science give you an escape function from the current (now) [paradigm].
SAP 350 lines of code 17,500 books, "never met anyone in business who can deal with 350 M things unless they were dollars"
I think you should be more explicit here in step two - and then a miracle occurred "but it's the miracles which are important
------------
language, market, ?, ? - the four idols
normal is a construct
"no one likes the child who says the emperor has no clothes"
the problem with computer science in the university is that it has become incremental...new paradigms are hard to ...get funding for. got funding for something that had almost no chance of success from some woman who had seen 294 similar uncreative proposals and was upset and frustrated with them, so funded theirs. then he found matching funding...this was Xerox PARC-scale funding
when I walked up he was talking about The Bible and how people (cultures) use different parts of it depending on what problems they're facing... people don't read it.. not uniform how they're ...
------------
"Funded at the Xerox PARC level -- may not succeed but is likely to come up with some interesting stuff." Xerox PARC Smalltalk laid the foundation of windows ~200,000 lines of code is 10 books, 1/10,000th this would be Moores "Law" of Software
Ad Hoc organizations are messy. Math is clean. "do not touch any of the wires". Mine can run with 10% of ourselves disconnected
Ad Hoc | Science and Math
disorder order
No centre networks ARPAnet, Ethernet, Internet
No OS internet all the way down
No programming languages
No applications
No mainframes
-------
What do children do? -one laptop per child Teach kids variables -Brilliant
one kind of object, completely polymorphic
by learning one kind of abstraction you can deabstract...? Maxwell had to think statistically, Bonnie his wife, the original screenwriter of Tron. Gary Starkweather, John McCarthy's version of Maxwell's equation. APL, a toy language, David Reid's thesis Butler system designer simula - simulus calculus, semaphore (exactly the wrong way to do it.)
in the west, we like nouns and hate verbs. in the East, they like verbs and hate nouns. so to them a rock is a thing in process, and to us it's just a thing.
> 1 Million nodes and still be self-balancing - really amazed at the work of these early creators of the internet. TCPIP only a few heuristics added. Computer can simulate our own ideas, not just old media...printing press, it was 100 years before ppl realized what it was "before it realized what it was..." anachronistic.
No gears, no centres. ARPA/PARC Outlook everything is kind of like the internet. 100 trillion cells in body., 60 billion pants "the way you scale" any particular cell not critical (cancer cell?) Mathematicians will go through any amount of work to avoid doing work - kind of work won't do scunt work. one of the better Master's degrees his mother is a math'cian M for Marshal McLuhan..."widgets, apps, real? classes "dynamic mathematics". Google - type in lonely kernel (in so far best version of Javascript) Dan Engles computing has committed the great sin of trying to be smarter than the past, rather than building on it. "amplifying us rather than imitating old media" fold up into their natural entropy http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html
Ivan's 70th birthday, sorted ppl by whether they understood significance of what he did. something for humans didn't worry about what's wrong with TX2 or what's wrong with computers, Engelbert 75 papers very profound. computing is one of the great art forms of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Sometimes casual decisions lead to some pretty amazing experiences. I didn't realize it at the time, but after hanging off Dr. Kay's armchair for over an hour, I began to understand that I was listening to one incredibly remarkable man. His ideas are among the most astonishing, while also being perfectly reasonable, that I have heard in a long time, on both philosophical and practical levels.
At 2pm the same day, we (that is, me and handful of CSers who met at lunch) also got to hear Eric Veach, who was one member of a small team of 'software architects' at Google describe some of the behind-the-scenes workings of Google Maps. Veach was both the top of his class and the top student in the university when he graduated from CS in 1997. Here are my notes from the afternoon, as well as additional ones from Kay's convocation address the next day. I couldn't get enough of this guy!
-----------
Many of our themes co-evolved with the inventions of networked personal computers, graphical user interfaces and dynamic object-oriented programming. -http://www.vpri.org/
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2000 - PIXAR!!! website
------------
Chuck Thacker - invented tablet PC Xerox PARC
www.vpri.org
a research centre for augmenting human intellect
intellectual amplifier - 192 kilobytes which you can interpret to mean 1 Mhz, supported 20 users, UCLA, Butler Lampton operating system
Bob Taylor, UC R Linchider, Lang Roberts, Wes Clark, Paul Baron, Len Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, VMT Corp
1969 the intergalactic network, unlimited desktops, "Wat For" "ppl who were supposed to be thinking were believing. (I asked myself) do I love this because I understand it or because it's a good idea" coping is what humans were made for.
Math and Science give you an escape function from the current (now) [paradigm].
SAP 350 lines of code 17,500 books, "never met anyone in business who can deal with 350 M things unless they were dollars"
I think you should be more explicit here in step two - and then a miracle occurred "but it's the miracles which are important
------------
language, market, ?, ? - the four idols
normal is a construct
"no one likes the child who says the emperor has no clothes"
the problem with computer science in the university is that it has become incremental...new paradigms are hard to ...get funding for. got funding for something that had almost no chance of success from some woman who had seen 294 similar uncreative proposals and was upset and frustrated with them, so funded theirs. then he found matching funding...this was Xerox PARC-scale funding
when I walked up he was talking about The Bible and how people (cultures) use different parts of it depending on what problems they're facing... people don't read it.. not uniform how they're ...
------------
"Funded at the Xerox PARC level -- may not succeed but is likely to come up with some interesting stuff." Xerox PARC Smalltalk laid the foundation of windows ~200,000 lines of code is 10 books, 1/10,000th this would be Moores "Law" of Software
Ad Hoc organizations are messy. Math is clean. "do not touch any of the wires". Mine can run with 10% of ourselves disconnected
Ad Hoc | Science and Math
disorder order
No centre networks ARPAnet, Ethernet, Internet
No OS internet all the way down
No programming languages
No applications
No mainframes
-------
What do children do? -one laptop per child Teach kids variables -Brilliant
one kind of object, completely polymorphic
by learning one kind of abstraction you can deabstract...? Maxwell had to think statistically, Bonnie his wife, the original screenwriter of Tron. Gary Starkweather, John McCarthy's version of Maxwell's equation. APL, a toy language, David Reid's thesis Butler system designer simula - simulus calculus, semaphore (exactly the wrong way to do it.)
in the west, we like nouns and hate verbs. in the East, they like verbs and hate nouns. so to them a rock is a thing in process, and to us it's just a thing.
> 1 Million nodes and still be self-balancing - really amazed at the work of these early creators of the internet. TCPIP only a few heuristics added. Computer can simulate our own ideas, not just old media...printing press, it was 100 years before ppl realized what it was "before it realized what it was..." anachronistic.
No gears, no centres. ARPA/PARC Outlook everything is kind of like the internet. 100 trillion cells in body., 60 billion pants "the way you scale" any particular cell not critical (cancer cell?) Mathematicians will go through any amount of work to avoid doing work - kind of work won't do scunt work. one of the better Master's degrees his mother is a math'cian M for Marshal McLuhan..."widgets, apps, real? classes "dynamic mathematics". Google - type in lonely kernel (in so far best version of Javascript) Dan Engles computing has committed the great sin of trying to be smarter than the past, rather than building on it. "amplifying us rather than imitating old media" fold up into their natural entropy http://www.smalltalk.org
Ivan's 70th birthday, sorted ppl by whether they understood significance of what he did. something for humans didn't worry about what's wrong with TX2 or what's wrong with computers, Engelbert 75 papers very profound. computing is one of the great art forms of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Friday, June 13, 2008
A Book Review
I've been pondering lately what kinds of media offer the best form of expression for different sorts of ideas. A lyricist told me a few weeks ago that he reserves his most controversial/challenging ideas for his art because they're received better when expressed abstractly, rather than simply stated outright. So I don't know whether a blog is the best place to post a book review. I guess some people write short blogs, with a handful of concisely expressed personal reflections. However, as someone who likes to mix media, I think I'll risk it and write a review here for Drive, A Road Trip Through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile.
Drive, by Tim Falconer, is a very readable, topical book -- particularly as the car, and our dependence on it, are under so much scrutiny in the age of climate crisis. The book has a lot to offer for anyone who is either casually or professionally interested in transportation history and culture.
Drive starts out strong, with a local focus on Toronto, and is jam-packed with meaty stats on the growth of motorization of Southern Ontario, as well as successful social movements that stemmed this growth, saving Toronto's unique neighbourhoods. Drive is accurately described as a road trip, since Falconer offers a narrative account of his journey through America in his 1991 Nissan Maxima. He makes planned and unplanned stops along the way, such as a surreal visit to the GM Power Center, where Cadillac and Corvette engines are made, as well as Detroit, Indianapolis, and other U.S. "conurbations" that have been shaped by the automobile. Woven throughout the narrative are Falconer's own reflections, along with insightful commentary and factual knowledge. Falconer uses pop culture references to good effect, retelling scenes or summarizing episodes from South Park and The Simpsons to add humour and context to his observations. The book loses speed a little towards the middle, while Falconer tries to squeeze unnecessary detail into the sections on car clubs, and personal visits. However, this is partially redeemed by the personal and participatory flavour it lends to the book. The author is careful to give space and credit to all those who insist on joining him along the way to share their story, or to simply show off their car. Four stars.
Drive, by Tim Falconer, is a very readable, topical book -- particularly as the car, and our dependence on it, are under so much scrutiny in the age of climate crisis. The book has a lot to offer for anyone who is either casually or professionally interested in transportation history and culture. Drive starts out strong, with a local focus on Toronto, and is jam-packed with meaty stats on the growth of motorization of Southern Ontario, as well as successful social movements that stemmed this growth, saving Toronto's unique neighbourhoods. Drive is accurately described as a road trip, since Falconer offers a narrative account of his journey through America in his 1991 Nissan Maxima. He makes planned and unplanned stops along the way, such as a surreal visit to the GM Power Center, where Cadillac and Corvette engines are made, as well as Detroit, Indianapolis, and other U.S. "conurbations" that have been shaped by the automobile. Woven throughout the narrative are Falconer's own reflections, along with insightful commentary and factual knowledge. Falconer uses pop culture references to good effect, retelling scenes or summarizing episodes from South Park and The Simpsons to add humour and context to his observations. The book loses speed a little towards the middle, while Falconer tries to squeeze unnecessary detail into the sections on car clubs, and personal visits. However, this is partially redeemed by the personal and participatory flavour it lends to the book. The author is careful to give space and credit to all those who insist on joining him along the way to share their story, or to simply show off their car. Four stars.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Jane's Marathon
This all started for me on Friday night, in Waterloo. I like to listen to CBC in the mornings, usually on my Macbook. Flip4Mac is a little clunky in that it stores an entire radio broadcast from the time you tune in until you close your browser tab. So, on Friday morning when I closed the lid of my laptop, it had stored Jane Farrell's interview with Sheila Rogers on Jane's Walk. When I got home in the evening and opened the lid again, there was Jane Farrell talking about this series of walking tours organized by the Centre for City Ecology. (It took me a minute to realize that the walks are named for Jane Jacobs, not Jane Ferrell :) The more I listened the better it sounded. I went to the website and the farther down I scrolled the better these walks looked. What caught my eye at first, were the names John Sewell and David Crombie, long-time figures in Toronto municipal politics (both former mayors), as well as the walk by Steve Brearton, called The Bicycle in Toronto’s History. Then I noticed a walk called Retracing Stop Spadina, and having just attended the book launch of Drive: A Road Trip Through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile and read about Jane Jacobs and her NIMBY coalition that put a stop to the radial, arterial expressways which might have choked Toronto's neighbourhood culture, I realized Jane's Walk was something I couldn't afford to miss.
This was all happening between 10:30 and 10:45 on Friday night. I called my dad to see if he wanted to join me at Parliament and Temperance at 11 am Saturday for Brearton's walk through bike history. His response was luke warm, "Maybe... I'll see how things look tomorrow and call you if I decide to come."
Next I called my friend Scott B. Scott is the man I always call when I get a last-minute, often hair brained, idea. Most notably, he once spent five hours with me in a gas station in Limerick, ON, on an invitation to attend an amateur car rally. He later graciously described this experience as "surreal". In response to the Jane's Walk invite, Scott told me he was moving tomorrow, but would've come otherwise. He'd caught the media blitz too, and apparently the minister at his church, Knox Presbyterian (on Harbord), had mentioned Jane Jacobs and the Stop Spadina movement in a recent sermon.
It was after 11 pm when I got off the phone with Scott. I scanned through the list of Saturday walks, and opened tabs on each of the ones that looked most interesting. Then I checked the Greyhound schedule and planned to catch a bus to Bay and Dundas at 7:30 am. With my bookmarked tabs I'd plan the day's walk schedule on the bus, after reading a chapter from Drive for added motivation.
The plan worked nicely. I found myself in Dundas Square the next morning, making use of Toronto's free wireless to load Google maps for the desired walk locations. I had two parallel day plans, or "Jane Plans":
1. John Sewell's Redeveloping Public Housing: the old and the new followed by Steve Brearton's The Bicycle in Toronto’s History.
2. David Crombie's Building Community: Swansea from Rural Suburb to City Neighborhood followed by Retracing Stop Spadina.
Whichever of these I chose, I was definitely going to be at Eglinton and Warden at 3:30 to catch The "City of Industry Tour", a snapshot of life on the Golden Mile, the economic locus of Toronto's ultramodern motor suburb in the 50's (i.e. Scarborough, spelled variously Scarboro, depending on how ultramodern you're feeling.) More on this history below.
Looking at my laptop clock and making a few rough distance/travel time calculations, I decided to go with Plan 2.
At 9:58, as I walked out of the Quebec St. exit at the High Park subway station, I was greeted by the following scene:
David Crombie was already well into conversation with the cluster of people. He had a mic and a small portable speaker. He was accompanied by a local historian, Norman, who brought along a photo album with historical photos from Swansea. At several points during the tour, we could actually stand on the spots where some of those photos were taken and see the changes around us.Before I jump into my notes and pictures from the walk, here's some background on the paper I'm writing which motivated my interest in Jane's Walk.
Soft Cities: The role of connectivity in greening and humanizing urban energy use
Introduction and Abstract
Since the end of the First World War, there have been distinct, macro-level trends in urban design that affect energy use in cities. Cities that once consisted of mid-high density, "walkable" neighbourhoods are experiencing nodal, linear expansion along arterial highways. Since the post-WWII energy and material resource boom, these trends have led to an explosive growth in low density, car-dependent neighbourhoods. The energy costs, as well as social and other environmental implications, of low-density suburbanism are becoming increasingly apparent, not only to planners but also to the general public.
Popular culture is reflecting a change in preference from "drivable suburbanism" to "walkable urbanism". City planners and municipal politicians are looking for strategies to reduce energy load in cities. Individuals are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment and climate change and looking for ways to reduce their energy footprint. Thus, there is impetus to assess energy trends in cities and develop creative strategies to facilitate both socially-intelligent and historically-informed solutions.
This paper explores emerging trends in the use of connectivity technologies, such as PDA's and wireless networks, in reducing energy consumption, particularly at the community- and neighbourhood-level. Community Energy Planning (CEP) literature is reviewed, as well as literature pertaining to the nature of community and environment. Following the literature review, implications for urban transport planning are discussed with case studies in active modes and car sharing.
Outline:
Introduction
Motivations for research
Research problem/question
Review of Community Energy Planning Literature
What is community?
What is environment?
Community Energy Planning
Urban Transport Planning: lessons from history
Social Implications of Car-dependent Transport System
Contribution to social segregation
Contribution to income disparity
Highway Insecurity: the dangers of inequality
Solutions from Community Energy Planning
Densification, Connectivity Technologies, and Active modes: the ways ahead
Conclusion
Here are my notes from the walk, along with a few pictures* and videos. They're a bit fragmented, but coherent enough to be interesting I hope.
----------
Swansea, High Park, Humber River, 1940’s, bounded on three sides by water. One hundred years ago, people in the village of Swansea grew up with a sense of being close to water, close to nature. The next closest village was the Village of West Toronto. During amalgamation, the Province listened to what they had to say, and promptly did the opposite~ No to service agreements. Here's a new Chair, Fred Gardiner. "I can't make people go to meetings, but if you tell them that grants come quicker and easier if you come to the meetings, maybe they'll come." Lansing, Willowvale, Newtonville - these were all villages like Swansea that we've never heard of because the people who lived there didn't care enough to protect their history, (i.e. give it value in the planning process.)
After this 15 minute history lesson, we turned towards....
Bloor used to stop at the Humber, and continue in Etobicoke. Like most of Toronto's oldest roads, it was originally a First Nations trail. West Toronto is celebrating its 100th anniversary of incorporation this year. Next year is its 100th anniversary of amalgamation. (It only existed as a city for one year.) Bill Temple, wife Mary wore those big flowery hats. Fine brewing, temperance movement. The issue in those days was "wet or dry". Bill Temple was a champion of the temperance movement. Near the end of his life, when the temperance movement had fallen out of favour, Bill Temple came to one of David Crombie's meetings when he was a young councilor, sat down at the back across the room, and watched him through the meeting. When it came time to vote, Crombie said, "It was like God was moving my hand."
Vierkoetter Sanitarium - mineral bath, "the minnies", "where boy meets girl"
Ernst Vierkoetter was a renown German swimmer who decided to make his home in Swansea after visiting on a swim meet. He was known as the "The Black Shark". Swam to Toronto Island, and other feats like this. Parents asked Vierkoetter how many days it would take their children to learn to swim. “With parents, 10 days. Without parents, 5 days.”
Toronto used to lock swings together on Sundays. Actual spring water flowed towards the lake, “We all learned how to skate on Grenadier Pond.
Great dip in the land. Wendigo Way (was the name of the ravine) Wendigo is equivalent to Manitou, meaning “great spirit”. Moses Znaimer and Ellis Way. Art Deco built in 1920's. One of ten Carnegie Libraries – highest # outside of New York, NY. Toronto Public Library – best run department in the City of Toronto. R. C. Smith – around 1900, Ethel. TB treatment at the Minnies.
Joy Station only one left in the world. In an "act of vandalism", developer tore down and then died in a plane crash. Swansea has a very harsh sense of justice, note that there are no courts in Swansea~ Dr. Generations? used to be York Bros. Funeral Parlour. Bill Small connection.
McDonald’s went through pains to build in the style of the strip. If fire ladder couldn’t reach it, then couldn’t build it. Five story limit. Snowden’s Drugs long-time fixture of the village, Snowden...saw this somewhere else (also Scott).
Island in the Humber River where a local bagpiper used to go to practice to avoid disturbing the neighbours. Crombie’s parents once went for a boat ride down the river; his father thought it would be a relaxing date, but they were serenaded for much of the trip by the sound of this fellow practicing bagpipes.
Runnymede Theatre started out as vaudeville, then ...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Retracing Stop Spadina
HiMY, Andrew, Antonio, Christina, Tristan, Adrian
HiMY charted the route where the expressway would have gone.
Genesis of Spadina Expressway. 50-60-70 yrs, private transpo companies provided public transit in Toronto. There was very little quality control. The streetcars would run out to the suburbs and end on “squatter’s land”, not actually squatters land, just inexpensive real estate. So workers would tend to buy land at the end of the trolley line where it was cheapest, but still with convenient access to transit.
The expressway was supposed to go to Harbord, demolishing part of the Casa Loma grounds.
U of T had the lobby power to stop it at Harbord. The proponents then looked into tunneling it, so hard set were they on the concept of an arterial road connecting the south and north ends of the city.
In addition to Stop Spadina, there was another coalition called Go Spadina. "Afterall, that’s what the big American cities were doing. "Led to the "hollowing out" of U.S. cities.
Subprime mess, not proven in the 60’s that expressways negatively impact the livability of cities
The argument was that they connect people, connect neighbourhoods.
Metro was out of money. What ended up being built was the Allen. People called it the Baby expressway. Metro level gov’t – Chairman Allen. City officials often get infrastructure named after them b/c of their position in the City not necessarily because of their contribution to the project. 1971 “If cities are built for cars, then Spadina expressway is a good place to start. If cities are built for people, then Spadina is a good place to stop.”
We’ll build the mall, developers put $ into the expressway, both directly and indirectly.
LA river, “the Davis ditch”
Jane Jacobs was living in Brooklyn, NY, and didn’t want her sons to go to Vietnam. So, she came to Toronto and found the same highway controversy.
Casa Loma # 1 tourist draw, attraction for school groups
Expressway architectural drawings easily available online
“air rights”
HiMY talked about the Aug. 16 Christie (pits) Street riots (great book review avail. on Google Scholar)
Union and construction jobs at stake. now the same union protects the neighbourhood
Italian, 2nd, 3rd generation – city much more complex than it was in 1960. Subway tunnel digging machines - $98 M by City of Toronto in ’95, sold for $4 M. Cost more to fill in the Eglinton subway. 40% of a highway’s land is taken up by on- and off-ramps. Toronto curfew. Metro Links City of Toronto can’t do anything with sidewalk – Bill Davis’ last act was to protect this sidewalk.
Thank goodness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scarborough Golden Mile “City of Industry Tour”
spur line = rail line servicing an industrial area
entrepreneurs from around the world get the opportunity to have their own space which they’re not be able to downtown
Michael Thompson - take ownership of the community
Mark Ripp performs "Everything is Made..." at 54east ;)
poverty in Wexford -> Irish came to Scarborough
Golden Mile – originally aboriginal land -> agriculture -> manufacturing base to services and retail
City of Industry
decontaminated and desensitized munitions factory and provided housing for returning veterans. later they were relocated to the newly built development of Regent Park, Shuter Ave.??
Golden Mile modeled on Brentford, England
Frigidaire one of the first plants to locate in Scarborough’s Golden Mile. Delco auto parts, 2500 jobs plant closed in 1993. SKF factory made ball bearings
land adjacent to 401 has replaced the golden mile post-war industrial powerhouse
Councilor Michael Thompson
exceedingly important to recognize history of comm’y
bike trails on Pharmacy Ave. (reducing the number of lanes). Create spaces that invite people to walk and cycle.
trees + greening the neighbourhood – recognize env’t
The Country Cougars
“a city that has some sense of its history would have preserved that sign.”
10,000 workers at GECo. “Our comm’y isn’t as young as it was before” (this struck me as an obvious comment until I realized that it was referring to trends around in- and out-migration as well as an aging population.)
GTA bloggers
work worth doing...Now House (CMHC)
Golden Mile
As a final comment on the city built for cars, now that many cars are imported or made by foreign-owned companies, we're sort of trapped in an economic dependency for these companies to provide the means to get around our own cities.
*For a full virtual tour of five different walks, feel free to explore the links below:
Jane's Walk 2008 - Swansea from Rural Suburb to City Neighbourhood
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=122610374&k=Z2E34VWXT2ZMYFBEPB5UQ
Jane's Walk 2008 - Retracing Stop Spadina
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=122610374&k=Z3L522PRW3WMYFBEPB5UQ
Jane's Walk 2008 - The Golden Mile "City of Industry Tour"
Part 1: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=122610374&k=ZXF3QVV4R53MYFBEPB5UQ
Part 2: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=122610374&k=Z3GXX35XQ2VMYFBEPB5UQ
Scarborough Music Series
http://www.facebook.com/p.php
Jane's Walk 2008 - Commies and Christians: A Riverdale Heritage Walk
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Leslie Street Spit - Slated for Development?
I was home in Scarborough for a couple days, and my mother mentioned that developers are proposing a parking lot and Wal-Mart on the Leslie Street Spit. Since I don't have a lot of time to blog these days, I'll let the good folks from OurFaves Toronto speak to the issue. It largely speaks for itself. Sometimes I wonder what's happened to Toronto since I left 7 years ago.
"It's really scenic and beautiful. As a relatively new Torontonian, I didn't discover it til my last marathon course took me there. Really a hidden gem." - Robin
"You get the best of the city and the country - with great views of the skyline plus lots of birds and other wildlife. To avoid the crowds, try a winter walk." - Morgan
"It's a nice bike ride out there, then you turn around and look back at the islands and the skyline in the distance, and feel like you're a million miles from downtown in the middle of Lake Ontario." - Sharon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digbytoast/sets/72157601216092134/
I couldn't find an article describing SmartCentres' proposal, or details of the discussion at city council. This is the closest I found:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080409.TORBRIEFS09-2/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/
Saturday, March 22, 2008
My friend wheel needs truing - any suggestions?
So I've been a bit conflicted lately about comments made by some of my friends which reflect on my other friends, and not sure how to manage/resolve the conflict. I guess one way to illustrate the nature of the situation is to look at my friend wheel (courtesy Facebook).
See the big lump of connections on the bottom left? Those are between my Grebel (i.e. religious) friends, and the rest are my non-Grebel (predominantly non-religious) friends.
The conflict derives I think from two sources. One is a kind of disconnect between my religious and non-religious friends, who generally know about each other, but don't actually know each other. The other source of conflict is that I can hear truth in the statements made by each group about the other, and am struck by a sense of how great it would be if each group were open to understanding how they are viewed by the other. Yet, I'm frustrated by being at a loss to see a workable way for this to happen. My impression is that were each group open to hearing and understanding the views of those outside their circle, then they would both benefit. Not only that, but the tendency for this conflict to manifest negatively would be reduced. Knowing the strengths of the other, not necessarily even by actively getting to know each other but simply recognizing that there's opportunity to learn from the other, could be a way to build bridges in our community and in turn benefit each of us as individuals.
See the big lump of connections on the bottom left? Those are between my Grebel (i.e. religious) friends, and the rest are my non-Grebel (predominantly non-religious) friends.The conflict derives I think from two sources. One is a kind of disconnect between my religious and non-religious friends, who generally know about each other, but don't actually know each other. The other source of conflict is that I can hear truth in the statements made by each group about the other, and am struck by a sense of how great it would be if each group were open to understanding how they are viewed by the other. Yet, I'm frustrated by being at a loss to see a workable way for this to happen. My impression is that were each group open to hearing and understanding the views of those outside their circle, then they would both benefit. Not only that, but the tendency for this conflict to manifest negatively would be reduced. Knowing the strengths of the other, not necessarily even by actively getting to know each other but simply recognizing that there's opportunity to learn from the other, could be a way to build bridges in our community and in turn benefit each of us as individuals.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
To Know
I recently made the choice to become a vegetarian. After realizing that the folks in Toronto who I surveyed for my grad thesis, and whose decision to take serious ownership of their energy footprint I hugely respect, were spending $15,000-$30,000 to reduce their GHG emissions by the approximately the same amount as I'm responsible for by being a meat-eater, I decided it was something I had to do. I'm a bit apprehensive about the switch - I've relied on meat as my primary source of protein, and being a very active person (preparing for a mini-triathlon in June) it may be a challenge to figure out how remove meat from my diet without it having some effect on my physical abilities. The decision fits with a much larger issue though, which is understanding the up- and downstream consequences of my purchase decisions. My resource management prof showed this picture of a piece of tar sands extraction equipment in class on Friday, and commented that "If oil sand developers were really about job creation, why wouldn't they use a lower impact form of extraction that employs more people?" 
Being educated about the sort of a world we're creating through our economic decisions is an important part of being a responsible citizen, and for me personally, part of being a Christian with some degree of integrity.
Being educated about the sort of a world we're creating through our economic decisions is an important part of being a responsible citizen, and for me personally, part of being a Christian with some degree of integrity.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
"When you want a glass of milk, why buy the cow?"
This is the catch-phrase of local car sharing organization I joined in December, and I must say, I have been very impressed with their services. For $10 per month, and $6/hour of use, anyone with a clean driving record for the last three years, and who is 23 years or older, can join and have access to several cars in the area of Uptown Waterloo. Compared to the expenses, both financial and environmental, of personal vehicle ownership, the car coop offers several advantages:
- $10 membership fee instead of monthly insurance payments (which are usually $50+)
- no repair worries
- 2003 or newer model cars, except for their Honda Insight hybrid which is a 2000 (and doesn't show its age :)
- no snow shoveling or other parking-related hassles
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