Adventures in Art Time!

Sometimes, when I would like my kids to do something, I don't ask them to do it. I do it myself.

This morning, I sat down and drew this sketch that I copied from this totally rhombus cover:

Then I left the table, with my pen and paper behind, and did something else on that lazy Sunday morning. And later that morning, I found this:

This trick doesn't always work. But it works many times when asking, offering or cajoling doesn't. Sometimes my meme seeding doesn't work on the first pass. Sometimes it takes time.

(I made this last week. My son made this a week later.)

And many times this trick doesn't work at all. But it works much more often than you might have guessed. It is a lesson that I find myself learning and re-learning over and over again: parenting is not lecturing.

*  *  * 

Here is my lecture on fanart and fanfic.

*  *  * 

A couple of weeks ago I was returning home from Toronto by train, and for four hours I was able to watch the screen of the laptop of a passenger that was sitting  in front of me, just across the aisle.  I had my own laptop screen to entertain me, but I have to admit that on more than one occasion I stole glances at what my fellow passenger was doing on her computer. Because beside doing normal young adult things like looking at Facebook and reading web comics online - she was doing awesome things. She made her own version of a Japanese wave pattern with a graphics program. She used a wacom tablet to take a photo of a woman and transform it into a surreal dark illustration of some sort of half-woman, half crow). She made beautiful things.

I watched her.  And then I realized that I wanted to do the same. 

* * * 

I didn't grow up with an affection for comics books, role-playing games, or science fiction and I don't really have a strong affection for those things now. I have never been to a con and I have never engaged in cosplay. I still feel a tinge weird when I go into a comic book shop. It's just not my tribe.

But - I am jealous of those communities. I am jealous that these 'interests and hobbies' have become large and strong enough to support its own ecosystem of economies and local businesses; large enough for media coverage and to have their own TV shows on local and national levels; and large enough to have an entire conference circuit that wraps around the world. 

And I admire these communities. And in particular, I admire how they lay a path for fans to become to move from being a consumer to conference organizer or from a fan to an artist. 

Here's an example. Adventure Time is a cartoon on The Cartoon Network that I am currently in love with.

Adventure Time is well known for it’s open relationship between staff and the fans. The official Adventure Time blog [6] shares official artwork, early drafts and storyboards before new episodes air. Some of the writers and animators are open to fan questions about the show, its development and its universe. They often reply to fans via Formspring accounts. [Knowyourmeme]

I love that these shows respond to fan art work with mutual admiration and even love. I love that the artists and the other creators who work on these shows are visible and public as themselves as artists. And it's really really interesting when the interactions between artists and the fanart changes the art altogether:

In 2010, just months after the premiere of Adventure Time on Cartoon Network, character designer Natasha Allegri designed gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake called Fiona (now renamed Fionna) and Cake, a cat. (See also: Rule 63)

These versions of the protagonist resulted quite popular that many fans wanted more and made fanart that proved that.     

On December 29th, 2010, Natasha Allegri confirmed on her Tumblr[11] that an episode of Adventure Time starring Fionna and Cake was on the works. On September 5th, the episode titled “Fionna & Cake” premiered on Cartoon Network[12] scoring a total of 3.3 million viewers[13]. [Knowyourmeme]

There is a lot of Adventure Time fan art. 

I suspect that cartoonists don't mind young aspiring cartoonists trying to copy their work because that's probably how they started themselves as young artists. It's understood to many that when you start out as an artist that you learn the rules of your genre by copying your favourite things and making homages to your favourite heroes.

You copy the art that you love because you don't know how to make it.

Then, in time,  you make DeviantArt as you stretch your own skills  and ideas as you try to make your own contributions of work. In doing so, you develop your own style.  

I'm not there yet myself. I'm still in the copying stage. 

Political interference is hazardous to your health

On Monday, Windsor City Council will be holding a special meeting that will discuss whether the city should continue fluoridating Windsor's water supply. I'm pleased to read that the Windsor Star's Saturday editorial board takes this stand on the matter:

We can only hope council makes an educated decision; one that considers the mountains of research done by trained professionals in this field. It must not be swayed by those who have neither the credentials nor the research to back up their argument.

I was pleasantly surprised by this editorial because I've been troubled at how many of the city's reporters had been adopting the language of our local anti-fluoride lobby group. Here's one simple example: the first line of "Despite WUC recommendation, fluoridation of water continues"

Almost a year after the Windsor Utilities Commission’s board voted to end fluoridation of the city’s drinking water, the additive long used to combat rotten teeth in kids — but described by critics as toxic — is still being mixed in with local tap water.

Well, not quite. Water fluoridation is done to prevent cavities in kids and adults. It's worth taking the time to understand that poor dental health damages the health and economic well being of the working poor far beyond what we in the middle class might remember as just the temporary annoyance of a cavity in a baby tooth. “Almost every time we asked interviewees what their first priority would be if the president established universal health coverage tomorrow,” Sered and Fernandopulle write, “the immediate answer was ‘my teeth.’ ”  A third of the population of Windsor does not have dental insurance.

Also, the use of the word "toxic" is used by fluoride critics to discredit the practice. And yes, fluoride has a degree of toxicity. And so does caffeine.  Drinking 80 cups of coffee can kill you. You need to drink more than a bathtub of water for the fluoride in Windsor's water supply just to have an effect. I'm not a toxicologist but I would go so far as to suggest that the amount of caffeine in our pee is more toxic than the fluoride in our water.

Word association is the modus operandi of the anti-fluoride lobbyists. They have crafted their message very carefully over the years and they have a small stockpile of phrases designed to generate maximum doubt to the listener. But scratch under the surface of their words and you see that their evidence is scant when compared to the overwhelming amount of research that supports the practice. Unfortunately, it's an exhausting process because arguing against fluoride seems to be a full-time job of this small but uncompromising lobby group. Who has the time to do the research against their tidal wave of counterfactuals?

And this is why we have health officials who work for us and for our public health. They have the expertise and the ability to read and understand the research to measure the pros and cons to this practice. They need to do their job as free from political interference as possible.

It's troubling to know that Eddie Francis, the mayor of city, as well as city councillors Bill Marra and Alan Halberstadt have already publicly stated that they are going against the advice of the Windsor-Essex Public Health Unit and will vote in favour of the removal of fluoride from our water. One has to wonder if the the vote has been influenced by already established bad feelings over the fact the Windsor-Essex Public Health Unit went against the City's wishes and budgeted for a 7% increase this year:

Francis, who is still seething over the health unit's failure to back the city's passionate position on issues like heart and lung disease during the border infrastructure fight with the province...

I'm hoping for the best on Monday but it would not surprise me if reason and cooler heads will not prevail in the theatre of politics.

And that worries me because I have a conspiracy theory of my own. The same zealous anti-fluoride activists who are working around our Public Health agencies actually have a larger mission in mind. This is the just first offensive of a local anti-vaccination brigade.

DeYong said the trend across North America has been municipal authorities recognizing that “they can’t play doctor and continue to give us medication without our consent."

I wish that these individuals were as committed to removing CO2 from our atmosphere as they are from something relatively harmless from our water.

[editorial note: I will not be accepting arguments for or against fluoridation in this post's comments. thanks]

Get a real coffee maker

It's Christmas time and as I have small children, talk of gifts received (from Mom and Dad) and gifts to come (which will be opened once the aunt and uncle join us late tonight) falls steadily through the air, like the snow outside.

Well, that's an exaggeration. My children are excited, but it's to be expected. They generally only get new toys at Christmas and on their birthdays, so it would be odd if they weren't happy about the excuse for presents.

But for us adults, the matter of presents is more complicated. Most of us don't wait for birthdays and holidays to treat ourselves to the things we covet. And this makes the act of giving gifts an almost absurd exercise. We either need to guess what our loved ones want but don't know they want or purchase an something deemed too extravagant to buy for one's self.

This modern day dilemma is so pressing that I think there are entire products lines that exist just to fill this need. How else can we explain the sudden ubiquity of single-serving coffee makers.

Or as someone I follow on Twitter calls them, #landfill.

My husband owns a food store that grew out of a coffee stall and he has sold a great deal of coffee beans over the last ten years, and so, by osmosis alone, I do know a little bit about coffee brewing.  I know enough to know that the notion of better brewing by barcode is a pile of hooey.

This 3 minute video from America's Test Kitchen demonstrates why: the feature that contributes most to good coffee is a good heating element, and all the bells and whistles of most coffee makers feature are distractions from the fact that they all use the same tepid heating element.



So if you want to make good coffee at home, you can - like we did - invest in a Technivorm Moccamaster or - if you have more time than money, watch and learn how to make amazing coffee without a coffee maker at all.

But a caveat: we imagine our future selves blissed out of our minds each morning from Irish Cream barcode blended coffee (or the robost and complex Technivorm brewed coffee), but this is because we always forget (and this forgetting seems to take a year suspiciously enough) that material pleasure is something that we quickly acclimatize to.  I love my morning coffee but I will never love it as much as the first week with our new coffee maker.

I am coming round to a line of thinking that I was first introduced to by either Kevin Kelly or Bruce Sterling.  The problem at hand is not we care too much about material things - the problem in this disposable age is that we don't care enough about the things we buy.

There is no doubt in my mind that once those fragile single server coffee makers break, that those who were gifted them will not spend a dime to repair their machine - no matter how much love accompanied it - and, instead, they will bury it underground and wait for next Christmas to come around.  And that's an opportunity lost because something interesting and good happens when you start a long-term relationship with your everyday tools.

When our coffee maker suddenly started misbehaving, we took it to Windsor's Appliance Medic (whom I would recommend doing business with) and he marvelled at how easy it was to take apart, and how simple it was to diagnose and correct our problem (a sticky internal switch that came about because we had neglected to descale our coffee maker). It gave me the confidence to consider trying to fix the machine myself if we run into trouble again.

Christmas (for most of us) is over and thoughts of the New Year have begun. So let's end this post with a resolution as suggested by Bruce Sterling:

Now, you can argue that you should economize and just buy cheap things, or try and de-materialize. Not be materialistic, and content yourself with things that are very cheap or very organic. 

That’s not the way forward. Economizing is not social. When you economize, you’re starving somebody else. Really. If you don’t give them money, they don’t have any money. And if they don’t offer you any money, you don’t get any money. That’s not a social flow, or even a sociable relationship. 

What you need to do is re-assess the objects in your space and time. And I’m going to explain to you how to do this.  

The king of objects, the monarch among objects are not fancy objects. They’re not high-tech objects, they’re not organic objects, they’re not biological objects, they’re everyday objects. Things that you’re with every day. 

Whatever is in your time most, what’s taking up most of your time, or in your space most. The stuff that’s closest to your skin, on your skin, inside your skin, in intimate areas. Space and time. That’s what’s going on, that’s where it’s at. That’s where it’s happening. 

Common everyday objects. You need to have the best possible common everyday objects. 

Number one, a bed. You’re spending a third of your life in the thing. You never take it seriously. Rich people have great beds. You should go out and get the best bed you can get. Money is no object. On a per hour rental basis, beds, super important. The sheets, the pillows, pretty high up there too. 

Every morning when you wake up you will thank me for this. 

I know you’re resisting it. It’s like: “Why? Why am I buying a fancy bed? It’s bad for me, I’m being taken outside of my comfort zone.” 

You live in the thing! Get rid of the wedding china! Get rid of the tuxedos! The exercise equipment you never use! The things you never touch! The heaps of things, the heaps of material objects in your closet and, God help you, your storage locker. Sell them all, buy a bed. Get a real bed. 

Get a chair.  

I shouldn’t have to tell people who work with computers to get a chair. No, they’d rather whine about their wrists blowing out, their spines blowing out. They wouldn’t come up with a chair that would cost them maybe fifteen cents an hour over the first amortizable period. The world is full of beautifully designed ergonomic chairs. Get a real damn chair! 

Sell the other chairs, the fancy chairs, the couch, the over-stuffed thing, your grandmother’s chair. Get rid of your grandmother’s chair, it was never properly built to begin with. 

Get rid of it. Get rid of it, if you don’t use it! If you haven’t touched it in a year, get rid of it immediately. Sell it, buy real things you really use. 

I agree. Get rid of the presents you don't use and get a real coffee maker.

We need to talk about politics

Death count in CT school shooting up to 27 now, including kids. No politics right now. Let's just mourn.
— Dalson Chen (@WinStarChen) December 14, 2012

I didn't watch the news yesterday. I watched the after-shocks of yesterday's horrific shooting in Newton, Connecticut in the reflections and reverberations from my circle of friends and of other people I follow online. There was an outpouring of grief - people were sick with grief - and then there came the anger and the fury - and it still comes in waves - the grief, the sickness, and the anger.  And between the grief, the sick, and the anger there too was politics. For myself, the only one - of whom I follow online - who asked for "no politics right now" was the local journalist, above - but I know it was a more common refrain for others.

Politics doesn't have a place in the media's blueprint for covering mass shootings. I have to agree with Roger Ebert: if we want look past the complicated issues of gun control and mental illness and instead turn a tragedy into an absurd Rorschach ink-blot test then I'm going to choose mainstream news programming for my scapegoat.

But I'm not really interested in scapegoats. I'm interested in making sure that this tragedy never happens again. That's why I think the time to politicize the matter of lack of gun control is right now.

Politicizing events is the norm. It's just not very well distributed across the political spectrum:

One guy tries to use a shoe bomb = Everyone at the airport takes their shoes off. 31 school shootings since Columbine = no changes.
— Joshua DeRosa (@bonafidechicken) December 14, 2012

To conservatives: Both voting and gun ownership are our rights. Can you demand the same high bar for gun buying that you want for voting?
— Anil Dash (@anildash) December 14, 2012

Norms change. Many Americans are now challenging the belief that gun ownership in the United States will be forever immune from the aftershocks of shooting rampages. But whether that this belief can be turned into better legislation will take more than a petition - it will take organization, effort and time.

But it is possible. Here's a remarkable story that shows us how:

In 1971, over 400 children died in cycling accidents in the Netherlands. This was a time - as explained in this short video and blog post - before the bike-friendly infrastructure was in place in Holland. And this continuing 'child-murder' drove the Dutch to the streets to protest the horrible situation and to 'Stop de kindermoord'. And it was these protests that helped the Dutch get organized and politicized and positioned to develop their coveted safe for children cycling infrastructure.

A child's death is an tragedy. A preventable child's death is an outrage. Preventing others from trying to save children's lives in order to preserve an intangible historical construct is the worst kind of politics.

The time to tighten gun control and to extend mental health support to everyone is now.

As Canadian looking as possible (under the circumstances)

Are you kidding, Canada? Image of "Asian-looking" woman purged from new $100 bills after focus groups complained bit.ly/R6Ciy6
— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) August 17, 2012

"The Bank of Canada said its policies are to avoid depicting any specific ethnic group in such designs." - Globe and Mail, August 17, 2012

My responses to this story came in waves that were short and choppy and just piled on to each other:

• The notion that "whiteness is neutral" is a form of racism but it's largely not recognized as such  because there's no 'hate' involved.
• The flip side of 'whiteness is normal' is that non-white is other.
• To say that someone who "looks Asian" does not "look Canadian" is blatantly racist. Most Canadians know this and so they rationalize their racism in other ways. I wonder if those focus group participants who felt that having an Asian woman in a lab coat was problematic because it was stereotypical were concern trolls
• Women are still are not a numbers that they should be in science, technology and engineering. So, for me, I think of the Asian female scientist as an aspirational image and not a stereotypical one
• Most Asian women I know are not scientists
• Still, I find stereotypical images more honest than anti-sterotypical images
• I'm bewildered by people who seem to make no categorical difference between those who have recently immigrated to Canada and those who are the children and the children's children of immigrants to Canada. Yes, we look the same. But we are not the same. The erased Asian woman could have been a third generation Canadian.
• Can a visible minority ever "represent" the majority?
• If a visible minority can never represent the majority, they will be invisible. Forever.
• In Toronto, the Asian woman was seen positively because those citizens feel their identity is multicultural and so they saw themselves in that Asian woman.
• I love you Toronto.
• I'm very glad that this story came to light because it allows us to have conversations about national identity and race. These stories are few and far between because Canadian don't tend to be open and honest about our ideas and feelings around race. The last story that I can remember that came closest was from a couple years ago was the story from Maclean's about how some universities (well, namely the University of Toronto) are seen as "too Asian."
• The story came to light because the Canadian Press filed an Access to Information request.
• If the Queen of England - a living, breathing, symbol unto herself, can be represented by Adrienne Clarkson, then I see no reason why a Canadian scientist can't be represented by an "Asian-looking" woman. (Also, Queen Elizabeth? Not Canadian!)
• While I understand why the Bank of Canada held focus groups to get an understanding if their designs would be widely enjoyed by the Canadian public, I am disturbed that it chose to respond the way they did. Currency is, in essence, symbolism. Why would the Bank of Canada outsource the rationale to set a design standard to random Canadians? And when these random Canadians said racist things, why didn't they just ignore them?
• When I read the comment from the person from Fredricton ("The person on it appears to be of Asian descent which doesn’t rep(resent) Canada. It is fairly ugly.”), I immediately thought of this passage from a book I'm reading by Richard Sennett called Together:
  
  "For much of my sociological life I've studied what our trade calls ressentiment, the feeling of ordinary people that the elite does not know much about their own problems first-hand, even though presuming to speak on their behalf. In the families of white, working-class Americans I studied in Boston, ressentiment appeared to cross class with race. The liberal elite identified with poor blacks but not with these white workers, many of whom were indeed racially prejudiced at the time.... in Europe, ressentiment appears particularly in attitudes of native workers to Islamic immigrants The elite seems on the side of the oppressed, but not on the side of the ordinary."

• We will never know the real reason why the design was changed. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would start ranting that the government is committed not to offend Quebec between and during Federal elections. Since I'm not, I will opt for the more boring theory that the Bank of Canada simply went with the most boring and least controversial design on hand. That's what focus groups are for: to create bland and inoffensive designs
• To be Canadian is to be boring
• That's why I'm glad I look like an Asian woman

LEGO Girl-FRIEND, let's talk

So LEGO's Friends - their new line of toys for girls continues to generate criticism from those shocked and dismayed that LEGO could engage in such stereotypical gendered play.

The definitive response to the matter, I think, is Thinking Brickly's The LEGO Gender Gap: A Historical Perspective who convinced me that LEGO Friends isn't the first or the worst way LEGO has tried to appeal to girls.  Still, the debate seems to be missing some important considerations... which is why I am writing this.

LEGO Friends have breasts. Just like girls.

Much of the original uproar about the LEGO Friends line is that the mini-figures have breasts. To be honest, I didn't even notice that they have breasts because the LEGO figures are supposed to look like older girls and, as such, they have as normal-looking breasts as you can expect LEGO minifigures to be. We're not talking about Barbie-like endowments, here, we're talking about normal breasts. And breasts are normal.

I'd have a lot more respect from those who are outraged that LEGO Friends have breasts if these same folks were also upset that Superheroes are ridiculously muscle-y creatures designed to act as male power fantasies. 

Children's play is already gendered

It doesn't happen to all kids and it doesn't happen at all ages, but there are phases in a child's development when kids are completely caught up in "gendered play" (otherwise known as the 'I'm not playing with that! That's a girl's toy!" phase). For example, earlier this morning my 4 year old daughter and I played a game of I can do that! and she refused to play cards featuring Nick and would only play cards featuring Sally (or The Cat in the Hat instead).

I suspect that this pre-school developmental stage might be less about gender and more about self-identity and group identity. But what is quite obvious is that this phase is very much being exploited by companies that are trying to sell a small spectrum of toys to a large population. That being said, there are still some very strong societal pressures that re-enforce the idea to boys that the worse thing that you can be in the world is a girl which sucks - no argument, there.

The girls are alright. Let them play

I'm a little disturbed by the line of thinking that says it's okay for girls to play with "boy's toys" but it's not okay for girls to play with "girls toys".  Case in point, the cover story of the June 2012 issue of WIRED is "How to be a Geek Dad" with a sub-heading of "How to NOT raise a princess". 

If boys are allowed to play in un-realistic fantasy worlds of comic book heroes, ninjas, star wars, cowboys or what-have you, why can't girls play in the fantasy worlds that they would like to inhabit? In other words, why can't girls be princesses?

Personally, I don't encourage princess play with my daughter (she's gets enough of it through her friends at daycare) But I don't discourage it either. What I do instead is try to expose her to lots of different storyworlds that she can imagine herself in and see what she takes to.

Besides, I suspect that playing Princess and playing Barbie is just a very specific form of dress-up for girls. At least it seems to be for my four year old:

Me: What's your favourite part about playing princesses?
Anna: It's just the clothes.
Me: Do you play with princes? With dragons?
Anna: It's just the clothes. 

Girls that imagine themselves - through dolls or other toys - older and in beautiful dresses and high-heels - are just imagining themselves in a more powerful state (although in my more cynical moments, I wonder if the reason why so many girls wish to be princesses because it's the only female job that has status). As a woman who personally feels vulnerable when wearing high heels and dresses, I'm actually quite sympathetic to this kind of play. I'd hope my daughter feels more confident than I did as a girl.

LEGO, to its credit, knew better to stay away from Princesses for it's LEGO Friends line and designed sets in "reality". A reality that girls might like: a beauty salon, pet grooming, fashion design, and musical stage (yes, there's also a invention workshop but this set is clearly an example of overcompensation as a means to achieve gender equity and racial harmony).

Still, the princesses are coming to LEGO and unfortunately, they are coming to the DUPLO line - the one place where LEGO had less-emphasised gender play done right and this news makes me more angry and disappointed in LEGO than their Friends line.

There are differences in the genders but they are small and should be made smaller

All the other LEGO sets (Star Wars, ninjas, underwater explorers, pirates, space aliens) are marketed as boy's toys and it's really very unfortunate that the mini-figs in these sets are almost all male.

I'm not saying all of this because I'm ultimately concerned that girls and their poor numbers in science and technology (that's another series of posts which boils down to this idea: the worlds of science and technology has to change more than girls have to change). I'm saying all of this this because I'm ultimately concerned with the failure to imagine a world where women and men find ways to work and play together and this is a massive failure of imagination from a company that is supposed to be at the forefront of imagination.

Don't tell me it can't be done. I just watched three seasons of a kids show that had lots of strong females who kick butt *and* smooch strong males. So where is my LEGO Appa?

If you don't have the time and effort to read the entirety of Thinking Brickly's lengthy history of gender and LEGO, just skip to the end to read his recommendations. This mom got it right and I'm going to follow her lead.

Why I bought LEGO Friends for my daughter

My daughter has an older brother and we already have a lot of LEGO in the house that she sometimes plays with and I didn't see much harm in buying Friends. Now all the pieces of her two sets are integrated with the larger mass of LEGOs in our house.

I like LEGO because it's open ended play. Sometimes my son plays with his LEGO Star Wars sets and re-enacts those stories. Sometimes he makes up his own stories. Sometimes he takes apart the sets and builds things. Sometimes his sister does it too and sometimes they even build together.

I don't expect toy companies to build the toys we need - just the toys that a large market will buy.  And I've been to enough girl birthday parties to see that girls aren't getting a wide spectrum of experiences through their toys. They get princess coloring books and sticker books and sets that allow them to make their own jewellery.  I've noticed that the girls never get games as gifts and that's where I've decided to try to influence their worlds.
 
I'm somewhat hopeful that forces like Kickstarter and small-production lines can bring about new lines of toys that are better for girls *and* boys.

But I'm not too wrapped up in toys to be honest. Toys are traditionally scaled down and safer version of real-world tools.  Kids mimic the world around them and I think the best way that I can prepare them for a world that I can scarcely imagine is to have them see me and work with me in building a better future with the tools and the toys we have.

A statement of belief towards a future way of life that is sustainable

Our current way of life is not sustainable. We know this. What we don't know - or perhaps more accurately - what we can't agree on - is what should be the shape of the future we should be working for.

I'm not a utopian but I think that without a vision of an alternative future that we  want to fight for, it will be difficult to determine whether we are getting closer to it or closer to the looming Dark Mountain.

The only sustainable country in the world is Cuba.

For human rights and geopolitical reasons, we can't hold Cuba as a model to us to emulate and follow. That's why Costa Rica is generally held up as a viable vision instead.

But I think that the average Canadian is still going to have a hard time understanding what a more 'Costa Rican' future would look like. At best, I think Canadians associate Costa Rica with ecotourism - and that's about it.

I think there is another model future that Canadians can understand and it's one that will not only emulate - it's one that they can emulate with enthusiasm.

I know this because many Canadians already do this two weeks a year.

It became clear to me a couple years ago. Friends of ours had won a charity auction for a time-share of a large cottage in Northern Michigan and they invited my family and another to spend time with them for a better part of a week. It was an ideal cottage experience. Surrounded by trees and bird-song. Visits to beaches and nature reserves. Board and card games. Reading and radio. Conversation. Trips to farmer's markets and roadside stands. Communal meals. Beer with lunch. Wine with dinner. Friends and family.

Let me be clear that I don't think that actual cottage life is sustainable. Evidence overwhelming backs up the once controversial statement that "the city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement."

But the cottage lifestyle is worth pursing - as is the cottage aesthetic. At the cottage, ordinary people have no problem buying biodegradable soap and taking  care so as not to upset the capacity of the septic tank. Second-hand unmatched furniture is the norm. Family photographs and local crafts line the wall. Bookshelves of books that are worn from sharing. Houses have names. Places have history.

Urban cottage living would be an understandably Canadian response to our global problems.

So please join with me in my new battle cry: "In the cul de sac, a lake!"

Vacation as Reset Button plus 30 Days of TED

I think I have bookmarked this amazing article about the importance of setting up a proper space that will compel you to do the work that you are meaning to do.

I can't find this article because I have too many unorganized bookmarks and such stored temporarily for later reading and proper adding into my digital library. Except I never make time to revisit these things later.

I have two weeks staycation coming up and part of me wants to use that time as a great reset button where I take the space and time to make my space and time more conducive to spending time in my space.

But I'm not going to tackle this challenge on then. My resolve is not to make work when I'm supposed to be at rest. I'm not allowed to start any projects during my vacation. It will be a time to break my regular habits so after I my break I can slowly rebuild my days and in time, myself. I will read books. I will play games. I will let my mind wander.

Within the last week, I've stumbled upon two outlines how to establish good habits through 30 day challenges: this TED video by Matt Cutts and this much better post IMHO by Scott Young. I'm trying to start my first 30 day challenge with an easy win. I'm resolving to watch at least 2 TED Talks a day so eventually, I will have seen them all.

Now I've read conflicting information whether announcing your intentions makes one more likely or less likely to fulfill your goals so I'm not sure whether I should document my reviews for each TED Talk I see so as a compromise I'm going to opt out of the mandatory reviews for the moment. I'm going to keep it simple with one habit at a time.

My ultimate goal is to build a life that is more like vacation.

What are the technologies of the heart

I am hesitant in writing this. This is a post that will contain the words : heart, care, and compassion. As Krista Tippett says in her TED Talk, the term "compassion" is typically reserved for the saintly or the sappy. 

I watched Krista's TED talk yesterday along with a couple others. I always meant to watch all the TED Talks and I have tried to make it a habit. But what inevitably happens is that I start watching two or three a day, and then shortly thereafter, I get TooTooBusy and so I stop so I can attend to the work of my life. But then, after weeks of work, I feel empty and that I'm neglecting some part of my being and I so force myself to watch a couple TED Talks. Sometimes they inspire and resonate. Sometimes they make me feel sick with fear.

So, yesterday I saw Krista's talk about compassion and her plea for us to pay attention to "the technologies of compassion." And I started making a list in my head of possible technologies of compassion:

• stories
• the human touch (massage, hugs, hand-holding)
• yoga
• conversation
• play
• hospitality
• gift giving
• singing and music
• art 
• dance
• free time
• travel, pilgrimage
• helping someone 
• being helped

The next TED Talk I saw could not have fit any more closely to Krista's. It is His Holiness the Karmapa's The technology of the heart. I have to admit, I haven't finished watching his talk because his story of being whisked away from his family at age 7 to become a spiritual leader of Tibet struck me and sat with me. On my drive to work this morning, I re-wrote his story in my head as an anti-princess story that went like this...

And yesterday's third TED Talk I saw Eli Pariser's Beware online "filter bubbles". Eli makes a convincing case that as flawed as mass media is and was, at least the editors involved would nominally present "vegetable information" about wars and famines and other bad things that we don't want to see but we know we should whereas new technologies from Google and Facebook don't even pretend to have a moral centre.

And now, just now, the reason why I'm writing this post, I just read a great post by David Weinberger on Ethan Zuckman and the importance of serendipity and being cosmopolitan. And David, I think does a wonderful job of challenging Zuckman's notion that by introducing cosmopolitan elements (using libraries, geocaching, and other novelties) into our media diet that we, privileged North Americans, can come to care for Others Elsewhere.


But David does believe that we can be brought to care. And he uses TED Talks as an example.

WIRED is dead. Long live the Internet

WIRED magazine is dead to me. I'm sure you stopped subscribing years ago when the CEOs started pushing the cyberpunks off its covers but, like the fool I am,  I kept up my subscription through those grim years of profiles of corporate rebels.

I started reading WIRED magazine in1996. Coincidentally, that's the last time there has been a woman who was not a model or an actress woman on its cover.

The embarrassing rash of boobies that have recently graced the cover of WIRED is the reason I've decided to become the straw that I'm slam-dunking on the camel's back. The refusal to dedicate a cover story to a woman has been a long-recognized problem but what I find particularly distressing is how current WIRED editor Chris Anderson takes no responsibility for perpetuating this imbalance. According to his comment to Cindy's Open Letter to WIRED, Anderson thinks that there is not a single woman in this world (who is not in the entertainment industry) who could sell WIRED Magazine, so its not his fault.

Isn't it convenient that according to WIRED Magazine technology can and will revolutionize everything single aspect of our lives... except the privilege of white men?

So "forget you" WIRED Magazine. If I can't sell your cover, I won't buy it either.

5 books, group selection, depression, suffering, and games

One of my favourite websites of late is FiveBooks. The premise of the site is simple: Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject.  It's a simple project done well and well worth reading.

In July, I read Jonathan Haidt's five book selections on Happiness and I ever since I've been expanding the connections that he's made into a wider frame of reference to include some thoughts I've been having about games.

But before I get into games, I want to highlight a particular passage from Jonathan's Haidti's interview where he casually drops some ideas that are largely heretical to current evolutionary thinking

The reason I have found this book so wise is that I am interested in the possibility that human beings are products of group level selection. That’s the idea that we evolved in part by groups competing with other groups. I’ve come to believe that we have a variety of mechanisms in our minds that allow us to temporarily become like bees in a hive, and these experiences of collective merger are among our most prized and important experiences.

I was first introduced to the idea of group selection by Harold Bloom's book, Global Brain:  The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. Bloom is not a scientist but an uninhibited free-thinker and I found his ideas fascinating and the lens of group selection a powerful one (while reserving judgment of whether such thinking is 'correct' or not). For example, he asks us to consider depression as a biological 'self-destruct mechanism' that can be triggered when an individual does not have strong ties to family or friends.

Now obviously this is a very powerful and dangerous idea and I think all of us know someone in our own circle of family and friends who have suffered from depression despite having strong social ties to people who love them. But I mention this concept only because I have recently read two different accounts of how the force of depression can be pushed back by encouraging the depressed person to become more social.  The first was this article in the Guardian that gives a brief summary of the book The Depression Cure: The Six-Step Programme to Beat Depression Without Drugs.

The second example is the account of Jane McGonigal's battle with a concussion that also included a bout of depression. In order to save herself from thoughts of suicide, Jane created a game called Superbetter for herself *and* her caretakers. The game worked.

There are several other ties between Jane McGonigal and some of her games and Jonathan's Haidti's book picks on happiness, with most obvious being the common interest in positive psychology. But to me, the most significant connection is that both researchers address the changing of mind to address human suffering: see Jonathan's book pick of the Dhammapada  and Jane's cookie-rolling manifesto : "When we're playing games, we're not suffering.".

In short, it's got me thinking along these lines: is the transformation that removes the drudgery of work in a game, similar to Buddhist transformation that removes suffering from pain?

I think I can find five books that suggests this is so. I've got two so far: The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits and Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Let me know if you know other ones.

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A Jubilee for Haiti

I did not know that, in 2009, Canada "forgave" Haiti for $2.3 million in debt. I haven't done the research to see if Haiti owes any money to Canada still.

Haiti owes many countries millions of dollars from its long legacy of colonialism and dictatorship. And while million of people around the world are giving their money to the country, the IMF is instead increasing Haiti's existing loan program by $100 million to help it recover from the earthquake.

There is legislation being considered in the United States that would forgive Haiti of its debt so it can finally face a future unburdened by its past.

I so hope it catches interest and passes. I don't want to wait until 2051 for a Jubilee.

Mission 2

Go through the plastic containers in your home and toss out 3’s, 6’s and 7’s.

Your first mission

On December 30th, 2009, for the second time in as many years, Stephen Harper has asked the Governor General to prorogue parliament. Like last time, he will certainly get what he's asking for, forsaking his responsibility to be accountable to his employers, us Canadians citizens.

What can we do? Ask your MP to attend parliament anyways. What can we do? Ask your MP to attend parliament anyways. Think it can't be done? Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Parliament

from Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament

Flooding the scriptorium

I haven't been reading much as of late. Perhaps this is why when I happened to pick up two magazines from my towering unread magazine stack and randomly pick an article from each and find that both pieces are dedicated to the commoditification of text - well, then, its feels like what I've read is destined to be something worth sharing.

The first article is The Answer Factory from the November issue of WIRED. Its a profile of a company that cranks out HowTo articles and videos in pursuit of profit via Google ads. The magnitude and scope of the crap that they produce is breathtaking.

The second article is not available in its entirety online. Its Rebecca Mead, The Publishing World, “The Gossip Mill,” The New Yorker, October 19, 2009, p. 62 and it profiles another company that churns out words for coin as well, but these words form stories that are group- and ghost-written for the young adult market.

Thanks to these articles, I now believe that there is nothing inherently lovely about words.

Death of newspapers cliche is perpetuated. By me.

I try to avoid cliché in my intermittent blog writings but sometimes I can’t help myself. And that’s why today’s topic is the death of the newspaper. And since I have already given into cliché once, why not do it again? Let’s start with a personal anecdote!

I grew up in a house that had, at a minimum, two newspapers delivered every day of the week. And until recently, I lived in the house that was the same: one local paper and one national paper. But then I found I couldn’t keep up with it all so I dropped my daily subscription to The Globe and Mail to Saturdays only. And then last week, I canceled my subscription to The Windsor Star.

Now there are a number of reasons why I canceled both my newspaper subscriptions. There’s part of me that would like to present the long list of my complaints and outline the necessary actions required to win me back over as a reader. But this is where the cliché must end.

Instead, I would like to bring to your attention to two essays that I have recently stumbled upon that better illuminate the scary predicament that newspapers find themselves in. The first is from a piece entitled, Old Media Blues.

Journalism is not being brought low by excess supply of content; it's being steadily eroded by insufficient demand for advertising pages. For most of history, most publications lost money, or at best broke even, on their subscription base, which just about paid for the cost of printing and distributing the papers. Advertising was what paid the bills. To be sure, some of that advertising is migrating to blogs and similar new media. But most of it is simply being siphoned out of journalism altogether. Craigslist ate the classified ads. eHarmony stole the personals. Google took those tiny ads for weird products. And Macy's can email its own damn customers to announce a sale.

Don’t believe it? Look at this photo:



After I stopped subscribing to The Windsor Star, I started receiving a massive batch of advertising fliers on Friday afternoon. I have a feeling that subscriptions of the paper have plunged due to the city's recent economic woes. (Local CUPE union members have also canceled their subscriptions to protest the paper's coverage of the current 'work stoppage'). Has it gotten so bad that the paper is continuing to deliver fliers for free in order to keep their advertising rates up? Evidently it has.

What’s particularly sad is the paper’s own pitch to subscribe to their paper. “Love sports? Love movies? Then you’ll love the newspaper!” -- which in our case, is stuffed with crappy wire copy coverage on these subjects from other CanWest newspapers. Are these newspaper folks stupid? Don’t they know that folks can just get on the Internet and have access to some of the best written coverage of every sport, entertainment genre, and niche interest? Well no, says Michael Nielsen. Newspaper folks aren’t stupid and they aren’t evil either. The newspaper industry is just stuck in an organizational architecture that doesn't allow for disruptive change.

Part of me feels badly about dropping my newspaper subscriptions on account that I really do believe in the societal importance of good journalism. But, as I have mentioned before, The Windsor Star is a bloated mass of advertising and bland wirecopy, peppered with bizarre right-wing syndicated columnists.

Each day there are only about ten items of local reporting and local opinion and that's what I want to read.

And the irony is that I find that I can find and read this local material much easier by following my local paper using Twitter.

Media and peaceful protest

I've taken myself out of the ever-churning news cycle for the last year or so and I think it's time that I submerge myself again in the media. It would be an exaggeration to say that the recent protests in Iran brought about this change, but it has got me thinking again about the importance of an accessible and independent media on society.

I'm no Clay Shirkey, so I'm not going to weigh in on the whole Twitter pwns CNN matter directly other to say that we still greatly underestimate the importance of independent journalism. Please indulge me as I quote myself from 2003,

A story on NPR's Morning Edition has alerted me to the work of Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall and a whole new way of thinking. These two men were responsible for the documentary, Bringing Down A Dictator. This documentary was shown on an independent television network in Georgia (funded by George Soros ("Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros", Globe and Mail, Wednesday, November 26, 2003 - Page A1) shortly before the country's 'velvet revolution'.

A free press doesn't just feed democracy. It feeds us. Want to end famine in Africa? Then support the work of a free press there. That's one of the recommendations of Amartya Sen that I learned from the Harper's article, Let them eat cash: Can Bill Gates turn hunger into profit?:

In the midst of a severe hunger crisis, agricultural subsidies do not make much of a difference. And in the face of famine, a reliance on market economies is as ineffective as a reliance on loaves and fishes or manna from Heaven. Even so, said Sen, famines are not terribly difficult to avoid. Prevention requires the speedy implementation of emergency income-creation and employment programs, in combination with the broader social infrastructure of representative democracy and a free press, which happens to be the best early-warning system. Famine happens when rulers are alienated from those they rule, he explained, and a functioning democracy is a simple way to remove such alienation. Famine happens when there is no free press, because rulers tend to feel embarrassed when photographs of starving children appear on the front page.

Even if the protests fail in their objective of an election recount, the images of thousands of people risking their lives to peacefully protest have provided a wonderful antidote to the vitriol we were -force fed in 2008 in order to prime the American public to support to 'bomb bomb bomb Iran'. Not to say that the American mindset that public protest is akin to low-level terrorism will go away quickly, if at all, from those who wield power.

In short, if can't find the information we need from the sources we are told to trust, we will look elsewhere.

Waiting for a Jubilee

In some sense all revolutions fail, although the brief interval of true revolution, like carnival and disaster, can lead to substantial change. There was a particular carnival of sorts that sought this renewal specifically, the jubilee that has always hovered as a promise and never been executed as an actuality. The jubilee described in Leviticus is supposed to happen every fifty years and "proclaim liberty throughout all the land," free slaves, cancel debts, return land to its original owner (who might be God or no one), let the fields lie fallow, and bring about a long reprieve from work. American slaves sang of jubilee, early nineteenth-century revolutionaries embraced it as a great redistribution of wealth, a starting over with justice for all, and the British group Jubilee Research (formerly Jubilee 2000) seeks Athe cancellation of Third World debt as jubilee's modern equivalent.

[THE USES OF DISASTER: Notes on bad weather and good government By Rebecca Solnit, Harper's Magazine, October 2005]

Until I had read Rebecca Solinit's remarkable article excepted above, all associations I had with the word Jubilee were tied into a plastic commerative coin I received at school in 1977 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's II 25 years of reign. But powerful ideas have a way of infecting you and the notion of jubilee has taken me.

I thought of jubilee when read Jill Lepore's article “I.O.U.,” in the April 13, 2009 issue of The New Yorker where she traces the remarkable history of debtor's prison. There used to be a time - not that long ago really - when only traders were allowed to declare bankrupcy and thousands of ordinary people were jailed for the smallest of debts.

I thought of jubilee when I learned that there are more slaves today than any other time in history.

I can't help but pass on the idea of jubliee to others.

And I think I may have been successful in transmitting this idea a little farther along from my introduction to it in 2005. You see, last year I played an massively muliplayer forecasting game called Superstruct and in the game I proposed that we reinstate the jubilee. Berkley's Institute of the Future has recently released exerpts of its forecast based on the ideas generated in Superstruct and in it I learned that they've included a Jubilee year in its projected 50 year timeline [pdf].

Its going to be in 2051.

The Real World of Women and Technology

It isn't often that you get to meet with one of your heroes.

I admired Ursula Franklin ever since I stumbled upon her Massey Lectures called The Real World of Technology at my university library. Not only did that book make me a fan of the Massey Lectures series but I would credit her work with forever banishing the idea from my brain that "technology is neutral".

But she wasn't one of my heroes until I had the honour of hearing her speak at a CAUT Status of Women Conference. That's because it was only then did I learn about her lifetime of work dedicated to science, to pacificism, and to equity. You really should learn more about her and her work too.

What I remember most fondly about that conference are the moments when I had to leave the hotel in order to make the long train ride home. Just before I left I gathered up the courage to say something to Ursula (I have no idea what I said) and then turned to the door to take my leave. And then Ursula Franklin also announced that it was also time for her to go and she turned her small and frail smiling self to me, took my hand, and we walked down the hallway out back into the Real World.

It isn't often you get to hold hands with one of your heroes.

(This post fulfills my Ada Lovelace Day pledge.)

News that stays news

There was a time when I couldn't help but feel dismayed when I would hear someone say that they didn't follow the news. As a good citizen, I felt that one was obligated to follow the news of the day.

While I can't say that I have let go of that idea completely, I have mellowed my stance. With so much meaningless noise and chatter that is packaged as 'news', I am much more forgiving of those who decide to concentrate their attention and their energies to their immediate surroundings.

For my own mental health, I have shifted the time frame of my news consumption. Instead of a daily news intake, I concentrate my efforts on weekly and monthly news reporting through magazines like The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Now I feel saner and I would argue that I have a better understanding of recent events compared to the sorry souls who seek enlightenment by watching cable television on a daily basis.

Here's an example. Some of my favourite articles about the financial crisis have been from Harper's Magazine. In fact, in the latest issue there's a wonderful piece called Infinite debt:
How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy by a labour lawyer from Chicago.

But what has impressed me most about Harper's coverage is that it started early last year:

• The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash - February 2008
  
• Fear of fallowing: The specter of a no-growth world - March 2008
  
• Numbers racket: Why the economy is worse than we know - May 2008
• Our phony economy - June 2008
  

Harper's Magazine subscriptions start at $17 per year and with it, you get access to their archives that go back to 1850. Its probably one of the best investments you can make.

Art as ambiguity

From Boing Boing, I learned about Sita Sings The Blues:

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by e-mail. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

I watched it online and if you'd like, you can too. Be warned: it's 2 hours long. If you just want to be entertained, watch up to 'Intermission; if you want to experience art, watch the whole thing.

I used to think that the difference between art and entertainment was related to popularity vs. morality. Entertainment gave us the stories we wanted but art gave us the stories we needed. When watching a depressing art flick or looking at an incomprehensible collection of art work sometimes feels punishing, its no wonder that this definition comes to mind.

But my definition has evolved to something closer to Steve Martin's definition: art is permanent conversation. Or, as Raph Koster says in his A Theory of Fun for Game Designers:

We also often discuss the desire for games to be art—for them to be puzzles with more than one right answer, puzzles that lend themselves to interpretation. That may be the best definition of when something ceases to be craft and when it turns into art.

Ramayana certainly lends itself to wonderful interpretation by animator Nina Paley, who has kindly and wisely released her work into The Creative Commons for further re-interpretation.

I don't know whether its the greatest break-up story ever told but its certainly a breakup story that never gets old.

The point of points

Judith Thurman, in describing Scrabble, calls its scoring system a work of “finesse and calculation” (“Spreading the Word,” January 19th). I would argue that it needs to be adjusted for inflation. The original scoring system was developed according to “educated English usage” in the nineteen-thirties, but the current Scrabble word list admits words far beyond that usage. As the word list has grown, certain letters have become overvalued and others undervalued. “X,” an eight-point letter, is now far more easily played than “C,” a three-point letter. When “za” and “qi” were added to the official word list a few years ago, no adjustment was made to the ten-point values of the “Z” and “Q” tiles. The result is that the current game encourages players to exploit the inefficiencies of an outdated scoring system. It also increases the role of luck: the player who draws the “X” is virtually guaranteed a big play. Meanwhile, the fifty-point bonus for using all seven tiles, what was once a home run, now seems like a ground-rule double. If the scoring was recalibrated to the current word lists, we might get to play Scrabble with the finesse of its original points system.

The above letter to The New Yorker is a wonderful example of how even small shifts in a game's mechanics can have an effect on game behaviour.

To non-gamers, the idea of playing for points may come across as hyper-competitive but that's not the intention. While points allow for a measurement of players against each other, the primary function of points is to provide personal feedback against the game. Spend the time to understand a game's point system and you can understand what behaviour the game designer is trying to reward.

For example, from the scoring system of the crowd-sourcing, micro-content, forecasting MMO called Free Space (think Delphi Method 2.0), one can see that you get twice as many points to create an idea as opposed to responding to an existing idea. And, if take the time to come up with a really strong idea that generates lots of discussion or attracts the attention of "The Lab" and you can earn five times the amount of points.

But points can also be a distraction. In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Raph Koster puts forward the idea that we play games until we master that game's pattern. Once its mastered - tic-tac-toe, anyone? - the game becomes boring. I mention this because I now realize that, in general, I don't like to play for points. That's because I like to play for the feeling of flow and I don't like to interupt my fun for cognitive work. Unlike most real gamerz, my favourite part of the game tends to be those first levels in which the purpose of the game is to figure out how to play the game (Here's an example to play).

In the best games, the work that it takes to figure out the game doesn't feel like work and - as a bonus - it's rewarded with points.

Outliers: The Story of Class Struggle

I'm still a big Malcolm Gladwell fan even through Blink was disappointing and I don't deny some of things that his critics hold against him . Still, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Outliers: The Story of Success and how many times I have revisited the book's anecdotes in my mind.

Recently we had our neighbours over for dinner and they had noticed Outliers on my bookshelf. I pulled it down, handed it over and just as I started to tell them told them how much I enjoyed it, my neighbour opened its cover and started reading the inside jacket cover, which begins...

Why do some people succeed far more than others?
There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them -- at such things their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex -- and a lot more interesting -- than it initially appears.

It didn't take long - seconds, really - for my neighbour to hand the book back to me. I stopped my pitch because I knew that by that time it was too late : she thought that I was trying to sell her a self-help book.

But that marketing copy is the not the book I read. The stories that I remember are the ones that describe and espouse education and work. Now I don't believe in soul-eating busyness but it would be a sin not to acknowledge how much labour - work that sometimes is carried across generations - that immigrants and the poor must continuously and tirelessly shoulder until the stars align and their children can enter the promised land of The Middle Class.

Gladwell missed a chance to to express just how much 'white privilege' is actually worth. I'm not the only one who thinks so:

But I still can't help but feel that Outliers represents a squandered opportunity for Gladwell—himself an outlier, an enormously talented and influential writer and the descendant of an African slave—to make a major contribution to our ongoing discourse about nature, nurture, and race. [Slate]

I guess having to write books that stay away from such dangerous subjects is the price of success.

Thank you for adversting how to get cancer

Two months after a cover story on the merits of early cancer detection I was a little taken aback when I saw two ads for cigarettes in the March issue of WIRED. It feels like years since I've seen such ads. The other thing that struck me was how few advertising pages were in the issue.

I'm not sure whether the cigarette ads are the result of WIRED suffering from the financial crisis and taking any advertiser they can get or whether the cigarette companies deliberately sought advertising in WIRED in some sort of return fire in their ongoing PR wars. And there's a third option: that when times get tough, cigarette and alcohol companies make themselves available to help fill the void.

maglog backlog : Wired Magazine, February 2009

Outsourcing is common in the art world, but when MDM was established in 1993, its specialty was constructing props for theater productions and sets for theme parks. Then Damien Hirst came calling... As a rule, Schofield estimates, pieces command approximately 10 times their production cost. Yet despite the fact that Schofield and his team are literally the hands that make the artwork, he never confuses his role with the artist's. "It's their work that's being made," he says firmly. "It's not our work. It's theirs." While some artists collaborate intensely with the fabricators and closely oversee the production process, others provide little more than the fragment of an idea or perhaps a quick sketch. Either way, Schofield says, "they're the ones who have driven it on. You've just got your set of instructions to follow to make the piece."

From: Little London Prop Shop Turns Ideas Into Art, Wired Magazine, February 2009

Suck it blog-haters!

Its my blogging birthday - I've been at it since 1999!

Maglong: Maternity Dept.: Baby Food

By the end of the eighteenth century, breast-feeding had come to seem an act of citizenship. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792), scoffed that a mother who “neither suckles nor educates her children, scarcely deserves the name of a wife, and has no right to that of a citizen.” The following year, the French National Convention ruled that women who employed wet nurses could not apply for state aid; not long afterward, Prussia made breast-feeding a legal requirement.

from: Baby Food: If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk? by Jill Lepore
The New Yorker, January 19, 2009
(recommended reading - currently online in full)

Working for the future

I had a million thoughts and feelings flow through me as I watched and listened to Barack Obama's inauguration but as my daughter is due to wake up from her nap any minute now, I'll try to keep it down to one thought.

While covering the event, CBC Television went to a northern Toronto school of primarily black students to capture some personal reactions. A number of students said that what they learned from that day was that with hard work, they can do anything.

These reactions came from kids so I'll go easy on them but I will say that they completely missed the point. There are times - many many times - when hard work is just not enough. You may be a slave. You may be a lower class of person. Misfortune or ill health may fall upon you. You may be victim of the ill will of others. You may never have a chance to succeed. But, through a combination of sacrifice, cleverness, luck, hard work and opportunity, it is possible that your grandchildren can do anything.

I don't have the time to do justice to this idea but it struck me that it is almost always immigrants who say that they are working for their children. The notion of working for unseen generations isn't something that established middle class folks say out loud. I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success and what I took from it was how much an individuals success was built upon hard work and the hard work of their family, generations back.

Last week on BBC's Start The Week, there was an interesting exchange between an expert on kindness and the author of Q and A (which is the basis of the movie, Slumdog Millionaire). The kindness expert was suggesting that hope, such as for a lottery winfall, can be damaging because it often fails us and may even keep us from concentrating on our present situation. But Vikas Swarup was admament that hope was essential to humankind and said that in India even the poorest in the slums dream of a better life for their children.

Two of my heros, Steward Brand and Jane McGonigal both have been preoccupied with projects that try to encourage future thinking. Its making me think that I should be doing some future thinking myself. Perhaps the profoundly deep troubles that I know in my heart that will not be resolved or abated in my lifetime (global warming, peak oil, ecological devestation, global poverty, etc) need to be re-cast as something on a more historic timescale.

As aptly put by Obama in the last passage of his inagural speech ,

Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Maglog: Saveur December 2008

What I learned from "Oh, Canada!" in Saveur, December 2008:

Until the mid-20th century, Canada had no national library charged with collecting and recording culinary texts (and unfortunately, the cache that was shipped to the British Library for storage was destroyed by a bomb during World War II), so Driver had to prepare her project from scratch. Indeed, nearly half of the volumes profiled in Culinary Landmarks were discovered in private homes.