serendipityoucity

I was trying to figure out the fare from Ikea to home and discovered a way to do that using:

TaxiMe

I just wrote the following note to the CBC:

I thought the CBC was a public service supported with public dollars? If that is the case does Crown Copyright not already cover the content? And is your content not public domain and would a Creative Commons Attribution license not be the way to go? Otherwise why give you public dollars? You want my support, and I give it, but now you are going to far! This is not my CBC any more. My CBC broadcasts the news in myriad formats to keep us a critical thinking democracy, my CBC does not sell me the news or thwart me from sharing that news with others providing I attribute the source. My CBC is a knowledge disseminator and not a bounty hunter, that is not my CBC.

Via: CBC’s new licencing plan: Pay to Print, Email, and Blog, and outsource enforcement to American Copyright Digital Rights Bounty Hunters and

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation signs up with weird American copyright bounty-hunters

My Uncle John & his work will be featured on Humania, see below.

Le monarque voyageur, Jean Lauriault,

HUMANIMA à TV5 et HDTV5

30 janvier 2010 à 19h00

31 janvier 2010 à 8h30 et 23h30

4 février 2010 à 22h00

Pour plus d’info, voir le site de Humanima.

1. La population du monarque à son plus bas niveau en 15 ans

2. Quelles sont les causes possibles du déclin de la population de monarque en 2009?

Ask other New Yorkers about Montreal smoked meat, and you get a different response. “Sounds like a porno movie,” says one patron at Katz’s as he finished a Reuben on rye.

G&M: Doughy bagels and pastrami? Fuggedaboutit

Obituary: LeBreton Flats artist Dalal Chuaqui painted the labours of the everyday

My son and I are wearing our best to go to Dalal’s memorial today. A most wonderful woman, and elder moving on. Somehow, Midnight Oil is playing. I think the link is about how Dalal painted the regular people, the forgotten and faceless ones on the bus, the kids playing in the neighbourhood. Perhaps.

I am serious!  This looks like so much friggin’ fun!  Annual No Pants Subway ride 2010 (lots of great photos and captions)!

I did not know that!

Canada’s prime ministers stand alone among their Westminster-style peers when it comes to using prorogation to shut down Parliament for pure political gain. Richard Foot reports.

The Ottawa Citizen: In a (parliamentary) league of our own

Wot?

I have been bemoaning the lack of a scientific vision in Canada for some time. 

Scientists seem to mobilize around particularist research agendas and not on national collaborative projects that are good for them and good for Canada.  There is a ton of good work happening, but alas, we barely ever hear about it.  Especially since there is so little scientific journalism. Scientists seem to be terrible advocates and even worse communicators, unless it is to their scientific communities.  We also have few science translators who can explain the relevance of the science to the rest of us and few who work toward creating a mosaic of science in Canada - a picture connecting the knowledge dots/pixels so to speak.

We also do not have a national scientific association, analogous but not the same as the National Science Foundation in the US.  We have two funding agencies, and some science is funded via infrastructure grants (CFI) but that does not pay for bodies doing the work, libraries are being dismantled, NRC is doing science but it just closed / sold CISTI and just what are they up to? Funding science does not equate to thinking about science.  There is no scientific data archive, no institution or mechanism to link Canadian scientists with each other or a way to mobilize their minds toward the development of strategies for Canada on any particular issue.  There is industry driven pragmatic science but not a national project connecting public service, private sector and academic science, let alone citizen science.  There has been some great collaborative science during the International Polar Year, but that is now over and its focus was on a specific region.

At the moment, it seems, that the only real national collaborative, organized and vocal effort on anything in Canada is from the computer/new media/open data/legal/internet folks.  Let me call them the digerati.  The ones who focus on CRTC, copyright, broadband, concentration of power, cloud computing, wireless, gcpedia, open data, open access Internet stuff.  Wonderful! And while these boyz (mostly boyz) focus on communication content, creative works, gadgets and the managing of information pipes, the social system is falling apart, the government is being prorogued, the borders are thicker and harder, and science is no where on the horizon. 

We, myself included, have particularist wants, needs and specialties, and rarely leave the comfort of our knowledge spaces.  This creates a rather fragmented and often very socially exclusive group. These groups rarely harness energies to help the less technology savvy.  Imagine focusing a percentage of that digerati time, effort and knowledge to assist others on other Canadian policy issues (e.g. social policy groups, health, homelessness, status of women)? Mobilizing technology and ways of organizing on collective national issues. Imagine collaborating on the big stuff and not just the gadgets and pipes, focusing on the stuff that make this country a nation.

For the last two days I attended a few of the: Fullbright Re-Imagining the Canada-United States Border: Designing Public Policy for an Uncertain Future.  I try to attend lectures on topics I know very little about.  At this conference, I heard from some of Canada’s best and brightest on the topic of border policies, issues, theories, problems, asymmetrical power with the US, Canada’s lack of vision, changes, and fears.  This was the first conference I have been to in a very long time, where the digerati were completely absent.  Only one laptop, no twittering or live blogging, lots of suits and ties, DFAIT folks, Conference Board of Canada people, Academics, and so on, but no geeks.  Also, none of the panels included topics on the role of surveillance technology, the management of lists, scanners, RFIDs, mention of NEXUS, but no discussion about how tech sellers market fear to sell their products, how they manufacturing a security issue.  Noam Chomsky keeps coming to mind.  I also did not see technology ethicist, there was some mention of privacy, but alas the technoligization of border crossings and bordering were not discussed, only mentioned. Where were the digerati?  Who is politicizing them?  And what are they selling us?

So why was this group of really important policy thinkers not thinking with the technology thinkers/ people who think about the technopolitics of the gadgets we implement as part of "security".  Where are the technology thinkers and why are they not working on this issue?  Are these separate fragmented worlds? These worlds collide daily during the operations of how goods and bodies move across space.

Today’s soapbox was inspired by a post on Michael Geist’s Blog, (I see the irony) referencing a Nature article:

Call for a bigger vision : Science in Canada cannot realize its full potential without clear direction from government.

and

Canada Needs a Polar Policy: A lack of coordination in Arctic research funding leaves scientists without the support they need for fieldwork. John England outlines how Canada can set things right, and show leadership in the north.

Was the founder of Pen Haiti based in Montreal and Haiti.  Both he and his wife died in the quake.

John Raulston Saul, President of Pen international, wrote a tribute in the Globe and Mail about Georges and his wife Mireille Neptune.

Pen’s Primary goal

is to engage with, and empower, societies and communities across cultures and languages, through reading and writing. We believe that writers can play a crucial role in changing and developing civil society. We do this through the promotion of literature, international campaigning on issues such as translation and freedom of expression and improving access to literature at international, regional and national levels.