I have unfortunately let cynicism creep into my life lately.  I have somehow rationalized that most of what i do is generally is quite meaningless, but i continue to do it anyway as i love the people and most of the time love the work even though i know it is barely a drop in the worlds body of knowledge and my position in this life holds little if any power to influence the issues that i think are really important.  Events in the last couple of days are suggesting that i should not slide into that cynical terrain and that i should continue to maintain a sense of naive hopefulness. 

Today, something very big and important happened in Canada.  Today the years of hard work by Monia Mazigh Arar has born fruit.  This woman took on Canada’s, the US’s and the world’s legal machinery to correct the injustices the current climate of fear has wrought upon her husband.  Her husband was sent to a third party country to be incarcerated and tortured as he was wrongfully suspected of being a terrorist.  Maher Arar, a Canadian Citizen with dual citizenship with Syria was wongfully sent to Syria in 2002 on a hunch, speculation, misinformation, incompetence, in a climate of fear and a tip of the power scales.  He spent 1 year in a Syrian prison while our nation’s leaders where under the anesthetic threat of terrorism that tempered their will to get him out.  The Canadian public was no better as we let draconian laws infringe on our rights to legal council, to a fair trial and the principal of being innocent before being proven guilty.  We let a man be knowingly tortured by a third party, cuz we do not do that sorta thing here.  These laws came into place as we were drugged by fear, apathy and comfort.  As my son would say "forget your rights and they will disappear".  And forget we did, as the laws got passed, rights got taken away and our lives seem unaffected.  These laws and that climate however did affect Maher Arar, his wife Monia and their son.

Today, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) apologized in the House of Commons for the wrong doing done to the Arar Mazigh family shortly after Judge O’Connor’s Arar Commission Enquiry report was released.

I know some of the people who worked on this case and let me tell you they made incredible sacrifices in their lives to make sure that the Arar Mazigh family was vindicated and that we as a nation learn what it really means to be sovereigh, responsible, democratic and a nation based on equal rights and justice.  To them i give thanks.  Below i paste the full article from the CBC newswire as this is truly groundbreaking and an example what will, love and the determination of one person can do:

Vanessa had a marvelous birthday party at her aunt’s home in Santa Monica.  She invited lots of friends, cooked some goodies and used up a ton of energy to heat the pool and the whirlpool! Well no one would swim, cuz it was a cold 20C California evening! 

So I sacrificed myself, demonstrated some Canadian Hutzpah and was the first to get into the whirlpool. I pretty much stayed there for the duration of the evening (3-4 hours!).  It was not easy but i was trying to show my appreciation! Eventually the hot cement pond filled up with a rotation of great people, many speaking Hebrew with accents from Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico, and i met a fine couple from NY!  Fortunately Sam (red head!) brought me some beverages as my pal Nadav was way busy with the birthday girl (i forgive him though)!

Check out Heather McAdam’s Site Maps for Canadians!

The feds plan on canceling access to our paper topo maps with lower grade dig versions!

Just try to print a useful topo map on your home printer for a canoe camping trip?  The site is full of action items. 

Now there is a fine word for the types of leadership regimes we are currently experiencing on a global scale! And it ain’t on wikipedia yet!

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Fill ‘Er Up With Dictators
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Today’s most infectious geopolitical disease is petro-authoritarianism.

NY Times pay for article so…

Here is a great audio piece of an Interview with Thomas Friedman and Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

Thomas Friedman on "Petropolitics", Iraq, Israel-Palestine and the "Excuse Makers"

He defines petro-authoritarianism as:

authoritarian regimes, some of them elected authoritarians, like in Venezuela, who are using their huge oil windfalls to ensconce their authoritarianism and power. So what are we seeing in the world today? The wave of free markets and free people that was unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall is now meeting a counter-wave of petro-authoritarianism, by petrol estates called Russia, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea, you can do gown the list. And they’re creating a very poisonous geo-politics.

…we’ve got a part of the world over there [Iraq] that is basically entrenched in a whole set of pathologies, pathologies that produce the kind of characters that produce 9/11, who I think in the long term pose a real fundamental threat to open societies all over the world, including ours.

 

My pal & now neighbour Mark does all kinds of interesting stuff.  Right now he is at the O’reilly open source conference talking about open source projects that could make a big difference to us all socially - Grand Challenges for Open Source Problem Solving.  In this photo he is talking to Michael about CWNs in my yard using the ogWiFi ALHC WiFi Hotspot & Michael was at a Cafe in Montreal.

Tovey talking to Lenczner
Originally uploaded by tlauriau.

He is also living with 3 other folks, mostly open source geeks of all ilks, who are creating an intentional urban community.  They share an appartment & shopping and aim for farm to kitchen, they cook together and try to be home for dinner, they are trading skills and expertise and also trying to have a low impact on the environment.  You gotta luv people who do stuff like this! 

He gave me a heads up on this alternative electicity supply org called BullfrogPower!  I can pay my bills to these folks and support the use of green energy!  I am gonna check it out and may even switch! 

For about the same price as a bottle of water a day, you can ensure your electricity dollars are supporting EcoLogo-certified low-impact water and wind power instead of nuclear and coal.

Now I don’t drive, nor do i have a license, and well i know almost nothing about cars, but if i did, had lots of mulah and lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, Florida, Chicago or New York, then i would have this one!

These folks also know how to sell their cars! Not with the environmental band wagon normally associated with this sorta vehicle, but with all the fine things a driver is looking for (Amos told me and he drives & is a cool guy!).  They also have an excellent presentation that discusses the pros & cons of different types of fuel along with the ecological footprint associated with each.  i know i know where is the data associated with these stats?  I dunno but i am willing to bet they did their homework!

I am looking forward to seeing who killed the electric car too!

Anything to help with our air quality woes! 

My pal Christine is so smart! She is doing tons of exceptional research on gambling addiction in Canada,  has been actively engaged on this topic as a sessional professor and a social worker. She has now gone and started herself a brand new blog called Gamblor a name inspired by a Simpsons episode where Marg got a little addicted!  I expect she will be getting lots of action on the thing soon!  She is also in the process of putting together a documentary that yours truly here got to work on - i was - ahum - the sound engineer! All those dials oye veigh!

I try when ever possible to visit libraries where ever i go!  La Grande Bibliotheque in Montreal and the Westmount Libraries are two of my faves, and to that list i now add the Beverly Hills Public Library.  It is situated right beside the Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) where i think the boyz in blue wear Hugo Boss numbers .  Lets just say all the folks here, excluding the hired help bused in from South Central are in a whole other snack bracket and my mountain equipment coop backpack just does not cut it!

I’ll share pictures later when i get home, but til then, lets say the free WiFi in the large reading room, surrounded by windows facing tropical gardens and fountains, with lovely huge wooden reading tables, large fossils and quaint table lamps is grand indeed!

I send my kids to school expecting them to be safe. 

Last night, a famous kids radio programme had a psychologist on it to discuss the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. 

Last night i had to discuss safety with my childrend.  I asked that today, when they go to school, that they make themselves acutely aware to where the exits are.  That they visualize these as they walk through the halls, and when they get into each classroom that they visualize escape routes.  I asked that they do this once or twice to brand this information into their brains in the event they have to get out fast.  I explained how mobs of frigtened people behave, forwarned them about getting jammed in staircases, corners and doorways.  I explained that calm level headedness and a cool and calm demeanor will keep them and their classmates safe.  Even if their heart is beating fast.  I asked that they help and protect the less vulnerable around them at all times and to assist the wounded.

I also asked that they pay acute attention to people around them and that they never ever bully or harass those that are different, who look like outcasts who they perceive as weird.

I did this as a result of yesterdays shooting where a man with a 45, a 12 and a semi automatic weapon opened fire in a school cafeteria in a school in downtown montreal.  Also, because for sick societal reasons, others sometimes copy these actions. 

Today, i hope they are safe at school.

Yesterday i watched little kids being escorted out of their daycare near the school by police officers in bullet proof vests, and tears streamed down my face - mums and dads have to explain to them that something very bad has happened - and then have to say goodbye to them the next day when they send them back to school or daycare.  Proximity and knowing the geography of a place somehow makes it more relevant.  My kids were once locked down in primary school as bullets were fired in the viscinity.  Yesterday, i saw the distraught faces of young adults as they escaped to safety from the shooting at Dawson College and heard the reports over and over on the Radio Canada.

I then stood dumbstruck when my kids said with complete certainty and in a matter of fact tone that the killer deserved to die and that all shooters like them deserve to die.  I was stunned!  After all these years of discussing why and how people become criminals, how sometimes physiological brain development prevents reasoning, that a history of abuse, growing up in poor conditions, addition, or mental illness leads people to do terrible things, how society abandons certain people, how institutions fail them, how we are fed garbage violence in movies, games and music that for some, if not for just a moment makes them do terrible things! That we should feel sorry for people who suffer like this and not wish them illwill.

Media make it cool to have a gun, to be tough and resolve problems with violence.  Essentially acting as free commercials for the gun manufacturing industry.

Fuck you gun manufacturers who create products with the explicit intent to harm

Fuck you US national rifle association who actively market tools to harm

Fuck you Harper for wanting to cancel the gun registry, and

Fuck you media companies who colonize the minds of our children and youth with violent games, images, sounds, archetypes, and music.

Fuck you to the people who saw the gunmen’s website and its content and did not take it seriously, did not have the wherewhithall to regiter that this person was a ticking time bomb.

Fuck you to the gunmens friends, family and acquaintances who did not try to temper this man, to reason with him and to point out that something was very very wrong.

Fuck the rest of us for being irresponsible, who vote against investment in social policy and community development, who do not adequately support child welfare institutions who are supposed to take care of our children, for not taking care of our neighbours, who spend so much time working to acquire and are so busy in our day to day lives that we not longer have the time and energy to care for the people in our communities, and for not not taking care of our children.

Please, let my children come home without incident and safely from school today.

There is this great psychogeography gathering happening in NYC - Conflux that i will not be able to go to!  There is even a smelling committee meeting that will capture the whiffs of Brooklyn’s smellscapes led by Caitlin Berrigan and Michael McBean both new media artists.

I had some fun with olfaction at work and here is a small bit from a paper in Canada’s Cartographic Academic Journal - Cartographica.  In fact i think it was the most fun i have ever had writing!

Lauriault, T. P., & Lindgaard, L. (2006). Scented Cybercartography: Exploring Possibilities. Special Issue of Cartographica on Cybercartography, 41(1), 73-91.

The following are extracts from the paper: 

Most people are familiar with a smell that has transported them through space and time to a trip to the sea or a childhood home.  Rodaway (1994:62) in Sensuous Geographies suggests that an “olfactory geography would be interested in the role of smell in geographical experience, such as organization of space, spatial relationships, locatedness, orientation in space, and characterization or senses of place (Rodaway 1994:62).  In western episteme, and indeed in the discipline of cartography, there is a strong visual and textual bias. Traditionally, a map enables the user to view the cartographer’s spatial abstraction. Cybercartography, a new approach to cartography, aims to explore other bodily ways of knowing and create a holistic and experiential cartography that immerses users in a rich sensory information world that includes olfaction. In the material world scents reveal the unique character of a place, and may provide a more meaningful experience of an environment (Pow 2000).  Since humans mediate and organize territory and space with their noses (Press and Minta 2000), it follows that cartography and virtual environment (VE) can be qualitatively enriched with the addition of scent. Further, scent may add a novel dimension to primarily visual representations of space by evoking the memory or emotions associated to a particular place rather than simply its spatial structuration (Rodaway 1994; Pow 2000).  Olfaction enables us to gain new knowledge about human interaction with the environment (Classen 1993, 1998, 1999; Howes 2005; Press and Minta 2000; Porteous 1985; Rodaway 1994) and a scented cartography may provide greater access to that dimension.  Furthermore, a fuller use of the body’s sensory capacities may provide valuable ways to navigate, understand, and interact more effectively and in a more engaging manner with the vast amounts of spatial information currently available.   Finally, scent may reveal previously hidden elements of space and place, facilitate the questioning of visual assumptions or messages and its ambient qualities can be used to immerse, persuade, mislead or create a more pleasurable cartographic experience.

Geographers are beginning to collect scents data and cartographers are mapping scent as an attribute, but are not yet scenting their maps.  Artists are incorporating the immersive properties of smell into their work but have not yet developed what we might call a “scent aesthetic” and marketers seduce us to purchase via our noses.  …..

Our Elusive sense of smell 

We navigate the world primarily using sight, sound, and touch while the roles of our olfactory and gustatory senses are relatively unknown.  Our sense of smell in particular has been relegated to the bottom of the sensory list (Watson 1999, Classen 1998; Press and Minta 2000).  Scent does not lend itself to empirical trust; it is primitive, linked in its raw, unfiltered form to our emotions (Press and Minta 2000). Classen, in The Color of Angels, discusses the sensory symbolism of western culture from the 14^th century onward, and argues that sexism, racism, classicism, and empiricism have played an important role in placing smell at the bottom of the sensory hierarchy.  The sensuous times of pre-modernity (17th and 18th centuries), she suggests, were superseded by a scientific and mechanical world view; the universe became figure, magnitude and motion.  The symbolism of sensory qualities was thought to lack reality and the world people lived in, rich in colour, fragrance, texture and sound, became cold, colourless, silent and dead (Classen 1998) -  in other words deodorized.  With modernity:

the sense of smell is usually associated with the instincts and emotions rather than with reason or spirituality.  With few exceptions, smell and smells have been discredited and removed from the arena of intellectual discourse, and, in many cases, from cultural life in general (Classen 1998:36).

Watson notes that the world is rich in scent, yet “there is no semantic tradition, no critical study of the origin and function or words used to describe smells in any country, and no learning process in any culture assigned specifically to the sense of smell” (1999:4).  Press and Minta (2000) suggest that “olfactory cognition can proceed without instantaneous linguistic representation” and that “olfaction is a fundamentally different, non-symbolic, way of knowing” thus “the diversity of odours holds vocabulary at bay’ (Press and Minta 2000:182).  Some cultures such as the Ongee in the Andaman Islands, Sereer N’Dut in Senegal, Dassenth of Ethiopia, the Tukano in the Columbian Amazon, and South Tunisians are culturally and socially organized around their sense of smell, each with their own semiotic olfactory way of communicating. 

Howes (1991) advises social scientists to develop bodily ways of knowing to understand sensory forms of communication. This is particularly important since odours play an important role in rituals, social interaction and in biological communication conveying information such as gender, disease, and family association (Doty 1981). It seems that western visuocentric and verbocentric biases do not provide the necessary framework to understand and express olfactory and gustatory dimensions.  Brady (2005) argues that we need to recognize the smell events in our lives, immerse ourselves in smellscapes and try to develop and expand our scent vocabularies.  

Olfaction is highly specialized; it influences emotions, behaviour, perception of other people, and people’s mood (Chen 1998; Vroon, van Amerongen and de Vries 1994; Porteous 1985, Howes 1991 and Ackerman 1990).  Smells are also politically charged and can lead to social conflict and displacement. A classic example was the smell of the fishing industry (e.g. Chinese squid dryers, sardine canners and unions) combined with competing land-use demands (e.g. the Hotel Del Monte, tourism and real estate agents) along the Monterey Peninsula in California (Chiang 2004).  The olfactory system detects danger, guides eating, and is also deeply connected to memory (Maylor, Carter and Hallett 2002; Vroon and others 1994 and Engen 1982). 

Scents are episodic; they have a point source, dissipate in space and are associative; few know how to systematically use this sense, yet scents remain deeply meaningful.  Scents are subliminally immersive; we readily become part of the invisible scent of a landscape.  When we inhale a scent its chemical composition becomes part of us, it passes through our bodies and returns changed into the environment and for some this process is considered as the “breath of God” purifying the body (Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno in Classen 1998; Ackerman 1990 and Howes 1991).  It provides a direct means to sample the environment just like we sample the chemical compositions of its objects (Press and Minta 2000).  We experience scents, absorb them without reasoning. This chemical aspect of scent makes olfaction a direct sensuous geography; it is immediate, local and can emotionally bond subjects and researchers with their environment (Rodaway 1994).  Its absorbing; personal qualities may have hampered its scientific enquiry:

unlike the purely subjective senses of smell and taste, those of sight, touch and hearing lend ‘an empirical thrust’ to the perceptions of external objects. In the act of seeing, one remains oneself; in the act of smelling, one dissolves. The eye looks at something out there and the mind’s attention is out there. The perception of the nose seems invasive to the mind because there is an immediacy of the self with the subjective emotion elicited by odor (Press and Minta 2000:173).

Empirical research investigating the application of multisensory and multimodal data representations in cartography is relatively new (Griffin 2001).  Results are often inconclusive and conflicting largely because we do not yet understand how best to mix different display modalities and technologies.  The report IT Roadmap to a Geospatial Future acknowledges the need for fundamental research into information conceptualization, perception, representation, and for complex multisensory multimodal input/output data displays (NRC 2003). Cartographers will first need to understand how the sense of smell works before designing smell into their maps.

Our knowledge of smell perception, odour evaluation, as well as our ability to discriminate scents has not been widely explored. Likewise, the potential physical and emotional impact of smell on preferences and performance is not well understood.  To date there are few non-associative taxonomies.  Theories seeking to explain how we detect smell conflict with one another (e.g. Shape versus Vibration theory)….

thanks for sending the links to this event michael!