Up in Ontario

What We'll be Remembered For

Is it just my selective points of observation or is there a growing momentum around the meme of our imminent environmental collapse as a planet? My points of observation are as follows:

• Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, tracing the origins of societal collapse back to environmental causes and conditions
  
• Richard Wright's extraordinary book based on this year's Massey Lectures A Short History of Progress, a trip through our 10,000 year-old experiment called civilization and where it is leading us
  
• An article by Heather Mallick in this past Saturday's Globe and Mail about the impact of the airline industry, how the cumulative air pollution created by passenger jets is larger than the cumulative air pollution of India
  
• A report from a few years ago now on how 90 percent of the large predatory fishing of the oceans have disappeared in the last 50 years as we have strip mined the seas
  

When our children and their children and all the coming generations of people look back on our time in history, if they can look back and we have not fouled this planet to a point where we exterminate ourselves, what will we be remembered for? More and more I believe we will be remembered as the last generation to have a chance to stem the tide of global environmental degradation.

I don't mean to sound too pessimistic about our chances. I mean to sound realistic and reasonable. If we continue the way we're going we'll slowly poison ourselves. When we talk about environmentalism we're not talking about saving just whales and trees and baby seals with photogenic black eyes; we're talking about saving ourselves. As George Carlin has pointed out, the earth will do just find without us. It may be better off. We are the parasite.

Just in my lifetime I've seen bottled water and filtered water become a habit of everyone. I've seen air pollution alerts become part of a standard summer weather report. Asthma diagnosises have ballooned. If a whale of seal dies today off the west coast it is considered a toxic waste site because of the concentration of toxins in its body, collected at the top of the food chain. I read today that cancer now causes more deaths than heart disease.

So what to do?

I once had a wise friend who said to me that projects don't succeed or fail in chunks, they succeed of fail every day, day by day, bit by bit. I'd like to propose that any approach to environment accountability succeeds or fails in same way: day by day, bit by bit. Our habits determine our impact. There's no shortage of tools to find out what each of our own habits contribute to the world every day. But it's hard to change.

So again, what will we be remembered for?

On Hyping a Blog Revolution

A few months ago I discovered that Slate, a web magazine with revolving ownership (Microsoft, Washington Post), had RSS feeds available. Being a nerd, I signed on to suss out the quality of the writing. I remembered finding a few gems in the past on Slate, particularly from Steven Johnson, and I was curious if they still ran the good stuff. Well, good news, they do.

Today I came across a post on the press box column by Jack Shafer entitled, Blog Overkill, The danger of hyping a good thing into the ground. Shafer writes after attending the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference at Harvard and within a larger historical context of new media, new media evangelists and the underwhelming revolutions they so zealfully herald. His point: the true believers of new technologies oversell their impact and that "new media technologies almost never replace old media technologies, they merely force old technologies to adapt and find new ways to connect with their audiences."

This is good stuff that starts to cut through some of the aggregate bumpf of the bloggy world (named 'The Blogosphere by the in crowd) to find some clarity on the real issues at play here. My own point of view is that blogs need to be re-estimated. A blog is nothing but a web page built with a free or cheap, lightweight, content management system that by default creates new content items in reverse chronological order and allows additions to the content items by anonymous users. The blog content management systems have all kinds of skookum automated features built in that allow blog writers to distribute their work widely and optimize their sites to be found, particularly by the finders of the web, search engines. So the promise of personal publishing heralded since the beginnings of the web is made simple and inexpensive, in a standardized format. This is why there has been such a sharp uptake of blogging. The tools became easy enough, accessible enough and cheap enough that anyone could use them.

According to the Pew Internet Life Project, probably the best source for great information and statistics on Internet trends and use, report The State of Blogging:

• 8 million American adults say they have created blogs
  
• blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users
  
• 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online
  
• 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs
  
• 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is

People don't care about blogs, they care about stories and good writing and compelling voices that speak to them in a conversational format that they can participate in. On the internet and in life. The blog is just the technology that enables the behaviour.

Winter Olympics Realism, part 2

In a previous post (Winter Olympics Realism, part 1) we here at Up in Ontario lamented the distance that current winter olympic events had drifted from their practical origins and from the quotidien wintry experience of the Canadian hoser. Below we present the second week of competitive events in our version of the realist Winter Olympics.

Once again, we're open to contributions from our fine readers. So please add them in the comments section and we'll create a committee or something to deliberate over a pitcher of lager. Any volunteers? I promise corruption.

Bumpershining: competitors latch on to the back of a car travelling down a slippery street and see how long they can hold on. A stealthy approach works best since drivers always get wigged out by toqued heads poking up over the hood, dragged along in the rearview mirror. Lace up your slippiest shoes (a particular favourite was always boat shoes), get a good grab onto the bumper or wheel well, ski along on your soles. Bumpershining is strictly banned in schools so this event should take place in the evening, perhaps after having a couple, when it will seem a good idea at the time and kids are less likely to see it and emulate it.

Full-Contact Bumpershining: upping the ante, Full-Contact Bumpershining involves a tow rope and tow vehicle, some planning in selecting clothes, and the wearing of old hockey gear for protection. Rules? Who needs rules? The winner is the one who can stay on longest, anything goes. Three competitors start each heat and only one finishes. Get knocked off five times and you're out of the contest, replaced by someone riding in the car, trying to order a pizza by cell phone to a moving vehicle, "We'll meet you at the corner of Buckingham and Eldridge in 20 minutes. Oh, you'll know us when you see us."

50 m Driveway Shovel: choose from a scoop-style or push-style shovel and go crazy at the 50 m x 3 m driveway, pitching as much snow as quick as possible. Start at one end of the driveway, wail to the other end, race back to the beginning. First one back to their starting point wins. 10-second time penalties imposed for each shovel full of snow remaining on the driveway.

Triathalon: a multistage event incorporating three disciplines that test competitors' endurance, ingenuity and daring. The object is to race a snowed-in car from the starting point to the end point of the race. Sounds simple right? The stages unfold as follows:

• Shovel out the car from a snowbank. Make sure to create enough room to get the doors open or to crawl in the window.
  
• Jump start the battery. Start black live to black dead, then red live to red dead. Avoid sparks from crossed cables, rev the engine when cranking the dead car.
  
• Race the car to the finish, which is not as easy as it sounds. First, scrape the windows, or, alternately, don't scrape the windows and risk the drive by either (a) hanging your head out the window while you drive or (b) cranking the fan to high on the defrost setting and crouching in the drivers seat to peer out as the clear spot in the windshield next to the outlet emerges.

Extra points alloted for pulling the e-brake into a sliding donut while crossing the finish line.

Winter Olympics Realism, part 1

In lieu of the usual winter olympic sports we're familiar with, I propose bringing the olympics back to their roots - friendly competition in sports derived from everyday life. Below are some examples of potential events that my friend Jason and I came up with while driving out to our hockey game on Monday night. If you can come up with additional events, please add them in the comments.

Long Tobogganing: riding a toboggan for distance. Cram the largest folks you can find onto your toboggan, wax down the planks with good floor wax, tuck everything up onto the toboggan and launch. Keep the momentum going no matter what gets in the way. Keep going.

Speed Tobogganing: just like it sounds. Strap in and lean back, hook your legs around the person in front of you, launch with a little butt hunch and some paddling with mitts, hold on for dear life. Judges will employ a radar gun at the bottom of the hill to record speeds.

Crazy Carpet Jumping: apply your butt to the crazy carpet at the top of a steep declination, tuck in feet and try to hit the jump straight on. Don't think about the sound a tailbone makes when landing on ice.

Parking-Lot Donuts: where the balded rubber meets the icy road - around and around and around. Reverse when the mood strikes.

Front-Wheel Drive Donuts: around and around and around in reverse.

Figure Sliding: interpretive driving on a frozen lake, in the dark, with the headlines up on high beam so they shine out across the ice as the contestant's vehicle twirls. Spins, slides, drifts: the natural evolution of Donuts and Front-Wheel Drive Donuts.

River Skate Marathon: a 26-mile long skate along a frozen river or series of frozen rivers. A start line and a finish line. Anyone who finishes wins. A bonus allocation of points for the tightest suit and the sleekest glasses.

Snow Drift Diving: from the highest fence in the neighbourhood, into the highest drift in the neighbourhood, launch yourself and let gravity do its trick. Points for distance, effects, flips and twists, general styling. Swim out of the drift, clamber back onto the fence, repeat in a different place, never jumping into previous marks in the drift. Later, savour each imprint in the snow.

Quinzee Building: pile up as much snow as you can find, let it harden, tunnel into it and hollow out the inside so you've got a nice little dome that traps the warm air. Quinzees are measure on durability, warmth retention and speed of completion. The winner doesn't have to spend the night in their quinzee.

Snow Football: a team sport for whoever shows up, we break them into teams. Tackling allowed as long as you're not too close to a fence and there's enough snow. Most popular play call in the huddle: scrambled eggs on three. Ready? Break!

Mitt Toss: stretch your hand out inside your loose-fitting mitt, crank your arm back and let fly with as much force as you can muster, launching your mitt at the optimal angle for distance and height; similar to the javalin. Best with garbage mitts.

Open Water Skidooing: seeing how far you can skim across open water when you hit it, and you're drunk, on your skidoo, in the dark, with the rest of the mickey of rye sloshing in your pocket. Car drunk or skidoo drunk? Just car drunk.

As a venue for these events, I suggest the snowy, wintry climes of Winnipeg, Manitoba, my hometown. Perhaps, even in coordination with wonderful Le Festivale du Voyageur?

Idleness, doodling and social suicide

Do you ever find that you don’t have enough time? That maybe if there were more hours in the day, you’d be able to do everything that you needed to do in order to feel satisfied with your accomplishment?

I often feel this way, but why? Why do I wish for superpowers to stop time so that I can work more. Nobody’s gravestone reads, “wish I’d spent more time at work.”

What happened to the Sabbath? The seventh day, the day of rest and worship.

We’ve made ourselves into workaholics. We perpetuate the myth of busyness is better, idleness is laziness, laziness is bad. Be an ant, not a grasshopper.

But Aesop’s grasshopper had fun. He played music all day and danced. The ant toiled away--every day. He chastised the foolish grasshopper who showed up cold at his door. But why shouldn’t we support the grasshopper? Why shouldn’t we support different kinds of work, different models of balance. When we look back on our memories of fine times they are times spent with loved ones in pursuit of pleasure, not spent alone in the office on a Saturday.

I spend my daylight hours with people who 10 years ago would have been labelled "workaholics," but the business of business is has become the new religion, the new lifestyle choice. The focus is commute and cubicle. You are good and noble to work. Mention of life balance is subject to mockery.

People brag about how many hours they work, one-upping each other with their claims of dedication, of single-mindedness that somehow never seem to stand up to scrutiny (“I worked a 70 hour week last week”).

Foolish ant.

But the fight against work requires time and patience. You work to make a living but you don’t have to live to work. “Yes, that’s right,” you might say, but the media tells us differently. Do you recall those horrid real estate ads were the agent arrives upon the honeymoon scene or in your gym. The tagline was something like “we work so that you don’t have to.” What purpose does this serve? We enslave others to their jobs so that we can have leisure time. We’re enslaved to our jobs so that we can pay for our leisure activities.

The alarm rings and it's like the starter gun for the 100 metres. But the problem is you’re not running the 100 metres, you’re running full speed for the whole day. The race keeps extending until you collapse, preferrably having made it through the day. Expectations of performance rise. The next day requires something more: higher, faster, stronger indeed. Just do it. You don your Sisyphus nightshirt and prepare for the next day.

We work to afford the house, the car, the 2-child family with the dog and the private schools, ski lessons and coolest clothes. Leisure is high priced. If you want something, you have to work for it. Time is money.

Ever think, money eats time?

The November issue of Harper’s Magazine had an article on the virtues of idleness. The article makes the case that idleness is not leisure, nor is it laziness. Idleness is a psychological necessity. It constitutes a kind of political space, a space necessary to democracy. Idleness means that we have time to think about who we are, to reflect on the things that are truly important, to consider our beliefs, to be allowed time to analyze what the news is telling us. The perpetually busy, the frenetic, the righteous doers of work can lead us into wars. We’re so busy that when the 5-second, keyword-rich news cast tells us, "Suddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," we think, "yes, eradicate evil." If they keep you moving, there’s no time to plot the escape.

It is social suicide to confess to idleness. What did you do this weekend? “Oh, nothing.” Unacceptable. “I caught up on some work.” Now, that’s good.

But no! It’s not good. Be idle. Think about the world. Why not doodle? Be a grasshopper, even if it’s just for one day.

See more bunny doodles.

Heading to Miami

I'll be heading to Miami tomorrow morning to attend a conference in line with what I do in The Day Job. I've never been to Miami before but I watched a lot of Miami Vice episodes in my formative years. My expectations: honking cigarette boats, girls in bikinis jiggling down the boardwalk, art deco architecture, Ferarris, the jacket-over-t-shirt, sockless-sandals dress code and hoochie mamas. Or, leathery seniors on scooters queued up for the dinner special at 4:30.

I also have about 2/3 of a free day on Friday to see the town. Is there anything I should do in Miami? Tennis perhaps?

The Duck Goes on Tour

Lucky ducky that I am, I will be attending the Blog Business Summit in Seattle on Jan. 24 and 25.

Step 1 to ruling the world.

Harper's Magazine Weekly Review

Last Christmas my brother presented me with a two-year subscription to Harper's Magazine, a wonderful gift that I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy.

Since then the hard copies have arrived in my mailbox on a monthly basis and I have shouldered the burden of reading the magazine. I mean this a little facetiously and at the same time I mean it seriously. For a certain type, to have a subscription to a magazine is a commitment of time and energy. You can't let an issue pass by without reading it cover to cover, giving each article a chance to be read based on its merits. Receiving the magazine is a responsibility, and I am one of those types.

So I have kept my eyes on the issues of Harper's as they've arrived, though through the course of the recent (re)election in the U.S. the plaintive, accusatory tone Harper's has been pitched a little high for me. Lewis Lapham's editorials, though they have never ceased to be written to the highest standard, have mimicked a man shouting into a culvert.

Then I discovered the Harper's Weekly Review, a collection of summaries of the news pared down to their absolute barest essence, selected by the editorial team of Harper's, and published on the Harpers.org website. The summaries roll together into one long paragraph that every Tuesday ties up the week in news, as seen from the centre of the empire. It's almost surreal in its devotion to minimalism. The aesthetic somehow seems to strip the events of their reportage clutter and present them in the plainest way possible. Here, have a look at this week's Harper's Weekly:

January 11, 2005

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

WEEKLY REVIEW

by Theodore Ross

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. He dedicated his victory to "the soul of the brother martyr Yasir Arafat and to our people." Earlier in the week, Abbas called Israel the "Zionist Enemy" at an election rally, then announced he would pursue peace talks with it. Israel shut the border at Gaza, then offered Abbas personal security in Jerusalem, which he refused. Kofi Annan visited the site of the South Asia tsunami disaster and said, "I have never seen such utter destruction." Colin Powell toured Indonesia and called it "amazing" and "heartbreaking." He also said providing disaster relief was a good public relations move. Religious leaders blamed God for the tsunami, the United Nations said pirates were threatening relief supplies, and the Indonesian government made it illegal to leave Aceh province with a sixteen-year-old. Aid efforts were temporarily halted when an airplane carrying emergency supplies hit a herd of cows. Nearly 25 percent of Iraq will not be secure for the election, according to one U.S. military commander, who still insisted the poll date should not be changed. "I think there is a greater chance of civil war with a delay than without one," he said. Iraqi Security Force General Mohamed Shahwani said the insurgents outnumber the U.S. military, and President Bush called the upcoming Iraqi elections "hard." A suicide bomber killed twenty people at the Baghdad Police Academy, Iraq's thirteen police dogs weren't getting enough to eat, and the U.S. Army Reserves were "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," a high-ranking officer said. The Iraqi government extended a state of emergency for the country for another 30 days. The U.S. killed as many as fourteen people in one family when it bombed the wrong house in northern Iraq, and the second assassination attempt on the governor of Baghdad succeeded.

Congress officially ratified President Bush's election victory after a two-hour debate about voting irregularities in Ohio. Senator Richard Lugar called the lifetime detention of untried terrorism suspects a "bad idea," and Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales said he did not approve of torture. Federal authorities arrested a New Jersey man for menacing a jet with a hand-held laser. A U.S. appeals court told Evel Knievel that a website that called him a pimp probably meant it as a compliment and that he could not sue. Scientists discovered that gecko feet are self-cleaning. The Chilean Supreme Court ruled Augusto Pinochet fit to stand trial for his crimes, and Edgar Ray Killen was arrested in connection with the 1964 murder of three voter-registration workers in Mississippi. Airlines cut prices and tried to cut pensions. The U.S. decided not to classify the sage grouse as endangered, and the evolution of the great tit, a kind of bird, contradicted Darwin. China said it would make aborting a female fetus a crime. Francois Vacavant won a Parisian bakers' confederation award for the best Epiphany cake, a Pennsylvania man tried to kill workers in a fast-food restaurant when they ran out of french fries, and a $20 million art project described as a "visual golden river" broke ground in New York's Central Park. Veteran foreign policy experts met with Kofi Annan to teach him how to lead, and gun sales in South Africa were down. Political leaders in Sudan signed a peace deal that did not include Darfur. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress, died, as did Nelson Mandela's last surviving son. Andrea Yates's conviction for murdering her five children was overturned because an expert witness didn't watch enough television.

Representative Alan B. Mollohan said recent congressional rules changes "would seriously undermine the ethics process in the House." Congressman Zach Wamp said the changes made him feel like he had "just taken a shower." Tom Delay was still not indicted. Donations to the Bush inauguration reached $18 million, and federal regulators made it easier to kill wolves. Jennifer Aniston dumped Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock gave $1 million to charity, Scott Peterson's ex-girlfriend called him a liar, and Bill Gates announced the arrival of the digital lifestyle. Then his computer crashed. Director Oliver Stone blamed audiences and the critics for the box office failure of "Alexander." Recent studies showed that women are using less birth control. The Dingman family of Virginia was auctioning off the right to pay for surgery on a tumor infecting their 9-year-old son. Bids reached as high as $200. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts announced that it has bad credit and that the Atkins diet was not to blame. Houston was named the fattest city in the U.S. for the fourth time in five years, and researchers found that commercial diet programs don't work very well. Sales of Ford automobiles were down. Online jewelry sales were up. The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry told consumers to watch out for bad veneer jobs. The song "Snappy the Little Crocodile" made the Top Ten in Germany, with its signature lyric "Schni schna schnappi schnappi schnappi schnapp." Boston announced a crackdown on illegally parked garbage cans, and scientists found that organic ketchup fights cancer better than the regular kind. The Vietnamese government executed 450 ducks.

In reading the Weekly Review I find humour often arrives from the juxtaposition of news items and some zen-like clarity comes from the paring of details. The subtlety of the performance acts a nice counterpoint to the screaming of most news outlets. Room seems to exist in the spaces between the items for interpretation, meaning to be created, play. The other thing the Weekly Review highlights for me is how innundated we are with news, we're swimming in it, and how roughly 95 percent of our news is perfectly trivial. 'Bumph,' is what I like to hear others say.

That Starbucks Feeling

There is a Starbucks coffee shop about 100m from the front door of the office building where I work at The Day Job. Almost every day I visit this shop for a coffee and almost every day I am surprised by a new variation on ordering a coffee. I am not alone in my wonder at the complexity of Starbucks coffee orders. Conversations I have participated in prove this. Now someone has built a web page dedicated to listing and explaining all the potential variations of ordering coffee at Starbucks. And it is quite something.

Starbucks Observation One

Every item for sale at Starbucks is priced at its highest possible point.

I have no evidence for this, but I believe that Starbucks performs extensive price-sensitivity testing and targets their pricing as high as they can and no higher, at that precise point just before customers start to feel abused.

Here in Vancouver you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks. We are slaves to the chain. Catchet exists for those carrying their logoed cups. The scene in the movie Best in Show where the two horrifying yuppies tell the story of meeting each other in Starbuckses across the street from each other; that scene was inspired by the reality of Vancouver's Starbucks density. That corner exists at Thurlow and Robson.

(Speaking of having no evidence of this but believe it nonetheless, Jason Kottke has a wonderful question posted on his website: 'What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?' The responses are wonderful and the question provides the basis for an excellent parlour game. A hat tip to Kottke as well for the link to the list of Starbucks drinks.)

Starbucks Observation Two

There is an almost perfectly indirect relationship between the complexity of someone's coffee order at Starbucks and how much power they feel they have in the world at the moment they make the order.

I am beginning to believe, with nothing but anecdotal evidence, that the great allure of Starbucks for so many is the implicit notion that we can make the barista do whatever we want with that espresso machine and paper cup. The more complex our order, the more we're exercising ourselves, our frustration, our sense of injustice that we're not more recognized in the world, our sense of entitlement. Ergo, the downtrodden middle manager or office drone orders up the venti, no-whip, half decaf, extra shot, long, dry, non-fat, extra-hot latte, with a twist of lemon. (Nod to Steve Martin, L.A. Story) Does this jive with your experience of the coffee-ordering process at Starbucks? The complexity of the ordering is vindication and motivation at once for those not receiving their rightful respect / love / money / fawning / etc.

Come to think of it, (Hey!) most service-oriented companies exist to fill this need. The real growth in the neighbourhoods I walk through every day is in just these types of services: manicure / pedicure, spas, fancy bakeries, high-end toiletries, mix and match yogaesque lifestyles, doggy toy stores (because your pet can help with your entitlements too). The hard goods or service is just the excuse for the real transaction.

Digression
An imp of a comedian from Newfoundland named Ron James does a bit about walking into a Starbucks in L.A., paying twenty dollars for two coffees, and thinking to himself as he watched the spectacle of relaying orders and rigid terminology, that 'Jesus lordy, this is what the world would be like if Hitler had won.'

Report on Big Night, la terzo

A first-person account, by way of my friend, Craig Riggs, filed in homage to the largesse of Big Night, la terzo.

Epilogue: Big Head in the Morning

Sitting here, puffy and baggy-eyed from two weeks of excess, one night
stands out with staggering clarity from the holiday just gone: Big Night
Trois, the latest, numbered installment of the now legendary cook-up at
2686. As BN devotees have come to expect, the incomparable Josh (Primo,
to those who know their pesto from their pasta), the undeniable Chad
(Secondo), and their able crew threw down a major throwdown.

Whether or not you embrace a particular religious practice at
Christmastime, there's no denying that God is in the house as your
crockery is graced with zuppa, then terrino, then risotto--and these
only to warm you up for the courses to come.

The food is adventurous and exquisite. The courses and the guests are
well lubricated with bottle after bottle of wine. But the real capper
here is that these guys have created something special in Big Night,
something both sophisticated and elegantly simple, and something that
reflects a real generosity and enthusiasm. A night so big, and the
people that come with it, are a gift at any time of year.

There's more to say, but I've got a physical to prepare for and an organ
donor card to tear up. So, in lieu of the next 1,000 words of waxing
poetica, some photos from the event itself...

Photos available through the link below.

From left to right, Uncle Dan, Emily, Kita and Trevor dip into the zuppa, our first course at Big Night III.

From left to right, Damian, Peter and Chad belt out the Christmas carols in front of the piano at the intermission between courses at Big Night III.

The kitchen where the magic of Big Night III was created by Josh (Prima), our chef.

Our host, Secondo, enjoys the evening in a merry and most-gregarious fashion.

Il Timpano makes its appearance to applause. What is Timpano?