Margin Notes: Perspective, Ghandi, Napoleon

Dan Garcia peered through the number boards of a F7 locomotive cab that he was turning into a simulator at the John Street Roundhouse in Toronto, Ontario on 10-April-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - While not possible to apply in all situations, I've always been a big believer that how one manages to frame a subject in a photograph is often more important than the subject itself. A classic example presented itself yesterday in a volunteer session at the John Street Roundhouse. Seeing Dan Garcia at work on the locomotive simulator has become rather routine in recent months, but seeing him through the number boards of the locomotive--that made a nice photograph.

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I haven't been taking many photographs lately, as the record temperatures of last weekend gave way not just to spring showers, but actual wind-swept snow flurries as I walked through the neighbourhood Wednesday evening. Spring tends to be the season that can't decide what it wants to do--one day it's winter, one day it's summer, but it's not very often actually spring.

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Spring may traditionally be a time of hope, but not for Arundhati Roy, a recent guest on the Open Source podcast. Amongst her profound, but not particularly inspiring, comments was "Ghandi was India's first NGO... It took a lot of money to keep that man poor."

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Sticking with history, leave it to John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, to point out in a recent column that what I have called Glitch's Razor actually originated with Napoleon, translated as: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." From now on, I'll call it Napoleon's Razor.

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History sounds better than politics to me right now. Between discussions of a new Governor General in Canada, more maneuvering in the Toronto mayoral race, the recent scandal surrounding now-former Conservative cabinet minister Helena Guergis, and the prospect of a political fight over a Supreme Court nominee in the United States, I have discovered that I have no appetite for political stories at this juncture. Wake me up when a real campaign starts.