TORONTO, ONTARIO - Today is not only the last day of calendar 2010, but the last day of my working for my employer of the last two months.
Regular readers of this blog may not even have been aware of the fact that I was working again. I made no announcement on this forum. Careful re-reading of the last two months of entries will reveal only a few very oblique references to e-commerce, but also a lack of references to being unemployed, which were never especially common here in the first place.
It wasn't that I wasn't proud of what I was doing, that I wasn't enjoying the customer service position, or that I was anticipating that I would be switching jobs so rapidly, which wasn't at all obvious to me until well into December. Instead, I had long structured many aspects of my life such that returning to a regular 9-to-5 job, as this one was, would have minimal impact on my activities. Sure, I wouldn't be going railfanning in winter daylight hours, or listening to daytime radio live, but little else needed to change. This blog had for many months generally been written in the late evening intentionally so that my routine would not need to change when I became employed. Sure enough, I started a job, and the impact on my blogging was nearly imperceptible.
One thing that I learned in the past two months is that, indeed, I could have a very comfortable lifestyle in Toronto working a 9-to-5 job. A look at this blog will see that I attended not only events at the CBC (a very short walk from where I was working) but also evening community events around the city. My social life, such as it is, was not suffering as a result of the position. My weekend activities had no need to change whatsoever.
I had long suspected that commuting by subway to downtown, which took me only about 45 minutes each direction, would be far more sustainable than my previous mostly-bus commute into the suburbs, which could take 80 minutes on a bad day. Even when the subway was disrupted, as happened at least three times I remember in the past two months, it never took me much more than an hour to complete the commute. During the winter, especially, it was quite nice to be mostly underground.
Fundamentally, the job that I held for my first two years in Toronto always felt unsustainable, even in the beginning. The hours and the commute were always draining; I slept in significantly on Saturday by necessity. For the last two months, I've instead been getting up earlier on Saturday for volunteer work than on weekdays. There's no way I could have done that before.
I could have kept going in my recent job for a long time; I could easily imagine staying with that employer for years. However, when one is aggressively pursued by an employer in a potentially-growing industry, it's pretty hard to ignore and turn down an attractive offer.
My cushy, predictable lifestyle is over, at least for the foreseeable future. I will now be in field service, with unpredictable travel. I have no idea what this will mean for the publishing schedule of this blog. Yet, I am satisfied that I have demonstrated that blogging can be part of a sustainable lifestyle. It's not inconceivable that I might miss that.
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Culture: The Busiest Time of the Year
TORONTO, ONTARIO - At midnight, the eleventh month of the year comes to an end and the twelfth begins. That's my way of avoiding saying that there are barely over three weeks to a certain major winter holiday that tends to involve a lot of shopping. I wasn't trying to avoid writing "Christmas," but when one grows up in secular greater Seattle, one by necessity learns the multitude of ways to avoid making any references that could be construed as religious.
Just because there are only "giving" and "holiday" and not "Christmas" trees around Seattle (at least if taxpayer money is in any way involved) doesn't mean that people take the winter holiday any less seriously. The "shopping season" begins abruptly the day after US Thanksgiving with stores opening--well, in recent years 5 am has seemed late with some opening at midnight for overnight bargain hunters. Holiday cultural events, office parties, and other time sinks make it difficult to work in all the shopping and preparation right through to the family vacations at the end of the month.
Once upon a time--when I was an undergraduate--my routine was to start on holiday cards the Saturday after Thanksgiving by writing up a letter, and getting them all mailed by the middle of the following week, the first weekend of December at the very latest. That was quite a bit easier when my address book was smaller.
By those standards, I'm already behind. I haven't mailed a single card. I just received my custom-made order today, and even if I had them earlier, I'm not prepared with a letter or even finished e-mailing people for address changes. My European friends are just going to have to live with late cards.
I'm not going to catch up. There's too much to do--special events to attend and cover on this blog, parties to attend, and shopping to do, never mind that normal life activities don't stop for the month of December. Most years this blog has to go silent for a few days while I try to catch up in mailing cards. This year will likely be no different.
Some people send new year's cards instead of Christmas cards. I can respect that, but on the other hand I rather like being done with the process before the celebrations for the same reason that I preferred academic schedules with finals before the holidays to the Harvard-style schedule with finals in January. A busy December is a great excuse for relaxation during the last week of the year and, for that matter, well into January.
In the end, it's that tradition of trying to do everything in December and doing almost nothing in January, not any particular religious, spiritual, or other cultural tradition, which I observe and intend to keep respecting for the foreseeable future.
Just because there are only "giving" and "holiday" and not "Christmas" trees around Seattle (at least if taxpayer money is in any way involved) doesn't mean that people take the winter holiday any less seriously. The "shopping season" begins abruptly the day after US Thanksgiving with stores opening--well, in recent years 5 am has seemed late with some opening at midnight for overnight bargain hunters. Holiday cultural events, office parties, and other time sinks make it difficult to work in all the shopping and preparation right through to the family vacations at the end of the month.
Once upon a time--when I was an undergraduate--my routine was to start on holiday cards the Saturday after Thanksgiving by writing up a letter, and getting them all mailed by the middle of the following week, the first weekend of December at the very latest. That was quite a bit easier when my address book was smaller.
By those standards, I'm already behind. I haven't mailed a single card. I just received my custom-made order today, and even if I had them earlier, I'm not prepared with a letter or even finished e-mailing people for address changes. My European friends are just going to have to live with late cards.
I'm not going to catch up. There's too much to do--special events to attend and cover on this blog, parties to attend, and shopping to do, never mind that normal life activities don't stop for the month of December. Most years this blog has to go silent for a few days while I try to catch up in mailing cards. This year will likely be no different.
Some people send new year's cards instead of Christmas cards. I can respect that, but on the other hand I rather like being done with the process before the celebrations for the same reason that I preferred academic schedules with finals before the holidays to the Harvard-style schedule with finals in January. A busy December is a great excuse for relaxation during the last week of the year and, for that matter, well into January.
In the end, it's that tradition of trying to do everything in December and doing almost nothing in January, not any particular religious, spiritual, or other cultural tradition, which I observe and intend to keep respecting for the foreseeable future.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Blog: The Two-Year Mark
TORONTO, ONTARIO - According to the calendar, today marks the two-year anniversary of this blog. In the Internet era, that's not saying much--the earliest blogs started almost a decade before this one, and any blog that is regularly updated for more than about three months tends to last for years.
Along more than 850 posts so far, this blog has clearly changed in focus. Originally intended to try to point out some aspects not receiving much attention in the political races in Canada and the United States in the fall of 2008, political posts are quite rare now. That's mostly because the tone of this blog was intended to be largely non-partisan (though I doubt any regular reader had any doubts who I would vote for long before the elections arrived). Nobody wants to hear that. Reasoned analysis is not considered to be of value, only partisan point-making. There's no interest in centrism.
The bulk of the posts now are of the glorified diary variety. Photo blogs of events that I've attended or places that I have visited dominate other attempts at commentary on the state of the world. Still, a perusal of any given week of posts shows a variety of topics, often including media, heritage, transportation and societal trends.
Because successful blogs stick to a single topic that has a target audience that returns regularly, this blog was not expected to be wildly successful, as I had no interest in a single-topic blog. Still, I expected that more comments would be posted to the blog to argue with points raised. Those have been few and far between. Frankly, there's been more deleted spam than challenging comments.
Near as I can tell, the bulk of the regular audience are friends and family checking in on what I have been doing. As a result it seems like the future of this blog might well be limited to the diary-type entries to save time in e-mail and phone communications with friends and family.
Certainly, the idea that this blog might directly or indirectly lead to employment has proven to be a pipe dream. I've been explicitly told that I have no blogging skills by two potential blogs I expressed interest in contributing to, and I can't say I've met anyone as a result of this blog, much less a potential employer.
I rather like the idea of reaching one thousand posts, though, so shortly of having nothing of consequence on my mind, the near-daily posts will likely continue in the present format until that milestone is reached.
Along more than 850 posts so far, this blog has clearly changed in focus. Originally intended to try to point out some aspects not receiving much attention in the political races in Canada and the United States in the fall of 2008, political posts are quite rare now. That's mostly because the tone of this blog was intended to be largely non-partisan (though I doubt any regular reader had any doubts who I would vote for long before the elections arrived). Nobody wants to hear that. Reasoned analysis is not considered to be of value, only partisan point-making. There's no interest in centrism.
The bulk of the posts now are of the glorified diary variety. Photo blogs of events that I've attended or places that I have visited dominate other attempts at commentary on the state of the world. Still, a perusal of any given week of posts shows a variety of topics, often including media, heritage, transportation and societal trends.
Because successful blogs stick to a single topic that has a target audience that returns regularly, this blog was not expected to be wildly successful, as I had no interest in a single-topic blog. Still, I expected that more comments would be posted to the blog to argue with points raised. Those have been few and far between. Frankly, there's been more deleted spam than challenging comments.
Near as I can tell, the bulk of the regular audience are friends and family checking in on what I have been doing. As a result it seems like the future of this blog might well be limited to the diary-type entries to save time in e-mail and phone communications with friends and family.
Certainly, the idea that this blog might directly or indirectly lead to employment has proven to be a pipe dream. I've been explicitly told that I have no blogging skills by two potential blogs I expressed interest in contributing to, and I can't say I've met anyone as a result of this blog, much less a potential employer.
I rather like the idea of reaching one thousand posts, though, so shortly of having nothing of consequence on my mind, the near-daily posts will likely continue in the present format until that milestone is reached.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Technology: Computer Issues
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Regular readers of the blog will have noticed that it has been behind in publication essentially since I returned to Toronto more than three weeks ago. There's a simple explanation--my computer suffered a major failure just before my flight back, and I've been fighting it ever since. This blog is my lowest priority (well, maybe captioning pictures is even lower in priority) of computer activities, so if I have to spend time maintaining the computer, then I don't spend time blogging.
To be frank, I'm not very happy with Apple Computer right now. I've had some great Macintosh computers in the past, and some great service experiences with Apple over the years. My first laptop, referred to yesterday, was a Powerbook 5300cs that I would ultimately take all the world. It never had a serious performance failure, and when the case cracked, I took it to the local service center for repairs and even though it was way past warranty, they fixed it with all new parts for no charge. In an era in which I was seriously thinking of switching to Linux or even Windows to save money, that action won me over as a continued Apple customer.
My next computer was another great one. The iBook that I purchased in 2000 lasted for five years with no serious issues--in a time when most people figured on getting no more than four years out of a desktop computer, I managed to get five years out of a laptop. In fact, I probably could have gotten more out of it, but at the time I was financially secure and decided I was pushing my luck with it and decided to get a new one.
Since then, my experiences have not been as good. The 2005 iBook G4 that I purchased had a quirk right from the start, not being able to see wireless networks as well as my older machine. That could be an issue when traveling, but otherwise that computer was fine until suddenly in summer 2008, a full year before I had any intention of searching for another machine, the trackpad slowly stopped working. First, the button started sticking, then it wouldn't work at all, and then it wouldn't move the control icon.
A Genius at the Apple store tried to work with the issue for quite some time, but it appeared that the problem was the logic board--a mouse plugged in to the computer suffered from the same issues, so there was no bypassing the problem. Already, that computer design was obsolete and four years old (even if my system was less than three years old), and Apple actually couldn't offer to get me a logic board, no matter what I was willing to pay. I would have to find a service dealer that could find one. I decided I didn't want to deal with that and just bought a new MacBook--that basically put me back on my original four-year cycle. I figured I'd get the old computer fixed when I had disposable income again.
Unfortunately, the 2008 MacBook has been a lemon. A portion of the casing chipped within months, before I had even done any traveling with the machine. That was a purely cosmetic problem, and I suspect Apple probably would have fixed that under warranty, but I didn't want to be without a computer during a job search, and never had that addressed. Then, starting about six months in (as I now realize), the hard drive started to fail. It would just randomly corrupt a set of files. Usually, they would just be data files, and I would have to go back to my backup and restore files. Sometimes the files would be new since my last backup, and I'd lose a few pictures or have to spend a couple hours recreating work.
However, starting last fall, occasionally system files would become corrupted. This was a much larger problem. I've had to completely re-install the system software four times since, as the computer would not boot after these events. After the process was done, I'd discover that all my data files on the computer would be intact, so I had mostly lost a lot of time through these incidents.
Since the failure before my latest return to Canada, though, things have been much worse. The system software apparently didn't install properly the first time, as I could not run System Update. About a week later, I pulled an all-nighter re-installing it again, and this time it at least updated with the latest security patches. However, last night, it completely lost my default profile. Fortunately, I had the foresight to see that coming and had backup profiles already available, and I write this piece after logging in to one of those alternate profiles. However, who knows who long it will be before this profile becomes corrupted.
Most of this time, I haven't been sure what was the actual root cause of the problem. I thought there might be a specific program or even a virus causing the file corruptions. However, the presence of "I/O Errors" in the system log concurrent with the events and their random nature even after I turned off suspect services like Spotlight seems fully consistent with a genuine hardware failure.
This means that I need to buy and install a new hard drive, and I don't like doing that without a backup computer to use. I have little choice now, so if this blog disappears for an extended period of time, it's pretty clear what's going on--my computer died and I'm trying to fix it.
To be frank, I'm not very happy with Apple Computer right now. I've had some great Macintosh computers in the past, and some great service experiences with Apple over the years. My first laptop, referred to yesterday, was a Powerbook 5300cs that I would ultimately take all the world. It never had a serious performance failure, and when the case cracked, I took it to the local service center for repairs and even though it was way past warranty, they fixed it with all new parts for no charge. In an era in which I was seriously thinking of switching to Linux or even Windows to save money, that action won me over as a continued Apple customer.
My next computer was another great one. The iBook that I purchased in 2000 lasted for five years with no serious issues--in a time when most people figured on getting no more than four years out of a desktop computer, I managed to get five years out of a laptop. In fact, I probably could have gotten more out of it, but at the time I was financially secure and decided I was pushing my luck with it and decided to get a new one.
Since then, my experiences have not been as good. The 2005 iBook G4 that I purchased had a quirk right from the start, not being able to see wireless networks as well as my older machine. That could be an issue when traveling, but otherwise that computer was fine until suddenly in summer 2008, a full year before I had any intention of searching for another machine, the trackpad slowly stopped working. First, the button started sticking, then it wouldn't work at all, and then it wouldn't move the control icon.
A Genius at the Apple store tried to work with the issue for quite some time, but it appeared that the problem was the logic board--a mouse plugged in to the computer suffered from the same issues, so there was no bypassing the problem. Already, that computer design was obsolete and four years old (even if my system was less than three years old), and Apple actually couldn't offer to get me a logic board, no matter what I was willing to pay. I would have to find a service dealer that could find one. I decided I didn't want to deal with that and just bought a new MacBook--that basically put me back on my original four-year cycle. I figured I'd get the old computer fixed when I had disposable income again.
Unfortunately, the 2008 MacBook has been a lemon. A portion of the casing chipped within months, before I had even done any traveling with the machine. That was a purely cosmetic problem, and I suspect Apple probably would have fixed that under warranty, but I didn't want to be without a computer during a job search, and never had that addressed. Then, starting about six months in (as I now realize), the hard drive started to fail. It would just randomly corrupt a set of files. Usually, they would just be data files, and I would have to go back to my backup and restore files. Sometimes the files would be new since my last backup, and I'd lose a few pictures or have to spend a couple hours recreating work.
However, starting last fall, occasionally system files would become corrupted. This was a much larger problem. I've had to completely re-install the system software four times since, as the computer would not boot after these events. After the process was done, I'd discover that all my data files on the computer would be intact, so I had mostly lost a lot of time through these incidents.
Since the failure before my latest return to Canada, though, things have been much worse. The system software apparently didn't install properly the first time, as I could not run System Update. About a week later, I pulled an all-nighter re-installing it again, and this time it at least updated with the latest security patches. However, last night, it completely lost my default profile. Fortunately, I had the foresight to see that coming and had backup profiles already available, and I write this piece after logging in to one of those alternate profiles. However, who knows who long it will be before this profile becomes corrupted.
Most of this time, I haven't been sure what was the actual root cause of the problem. I thought there might be a specific program or even a virus causing the file corruptions. However, the presence of "I/O Errors" in the system log concurrent with the events and their random nature even after I turned off suspect services like Spotlight seems fully consistent with a genuine hardware failure.
This means that I need to buy and install a new hard drive, and I don't like doing that without a backup computer to use. I have little choice now, so if this blog disappears for an extended period of time, it's pretty clear what's going on--my computer died and I'm trying to fix it.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Margin Notes: Will Power, Oil, Blog, Ferry
Will Power approached the start-finish line during a testing session in Toronto, Ontario on 16-July-2010
TORONTO, ONTARIO - It turns out that I took only one picture of the car that would win Honda Indy Toronto--Will Power's #12, sponsored by Verizon. (What was I thinking? The guy was the points leader!) It's been said many times, but Will Power has to be one of the all-time great race driver names, right up there with Lake Speed.
* * * * * *
The Indy race was a nice distraction from real news in the world, much of which centers on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Is anyone else amused by the fact that the local accent there makes the word "oil" sound a lot more like "Earl" to my ears? I'd hate to have that name and be living in that region right now; everyone would be watching for me, wanting to clean me up, and despairing that my peak had probably passed.
* * * * * *
I was questioning my own hearing at another point earlier this week, as a story on the radio started talking about "vets." As I pictured military veterans, it seemed to make no sense in the context of the story. Was I losing my hearing? No, the story was just talking about veterinarians.
* * * * * *
That story proved to be graphic enough that it almost needed censoring. One thing I learned in my recent travels is that if you are reading this, it's not in a public library. Libraries across the United States censor pretty much every low-traffic blog, including this one. Yet, high-traffic ones with sexual allusions and swearing (yes, I mean you Blatherwatch) are not censored. I'd love to figure out that algorithm. I think there's a real free-speech issue there--the little guys can't have their say to the whole public.
* * * * * *
One of the libraries that censors this blog is the one in Kennewick, Washington. The city of Kennewick had a moment of pride this week when Washington State Ferries announced that the third of the new 64-car Kwa-di Tabil class ferries will be named the "Kennewick." The second will be named "Salish" and the first, of course, now in sea trials, is the "Chetzemoka." Hopefully, this completes the class of boats which have been nicknamed "Tub Toys" and the next ferry to be built will be a more generally useful 144-car model.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Margin Notes: World Cup, Perks, Blog, Media
A car was decorated with many Spanish flags on Dundas Street West near the Humber River on 7-July-2010
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Not that there weren't many Dutch fans and plenty of red, white, and blue striped flags on cars, but I have to say that the Spanish fans here really came out for their team, long before the final match yesterday. The most flags I saw on a single car before yesterday is pictured above, and I will not soon forget the Spanish flag draped across the hood of a red pizza delivery vehicle waiting for its next call at the local Pizzaiolo outlet as two Spanish-speaking individuals waxed its sides.
* * * * * *
Now that the World Cup is over, it would be nice if I could finally get K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" out of my head, particularly the World Cup duet version with Spaniard David Bisbal. Somehow, I suspect it's still going to take awhile.
* * * * * *
The World Cup helped Toronto get over its recent memories of violence during the G20 summit. Whatever one thinks about his politics, I have to give Ward 14 city councillor Gord Perks a lot of credit for the most thoughtful and surprisingly balanced views he presented on the event, in particular this essay presented in his weekly newsletter, and a subsequent follow-up. The world needs more politicians with communication skills like Perks, regardless of ideology.
* * * * * *
One might wonder if humans are even a thinking species considering what one did to this traffic cone on Dundas Street West in Toronto, Ontario observed on 1-July-2010
I suspect a G20 protester may have had something to do with the message on this traffic cone seen above near Dundas and Dufferin in Toronto, Ontario: "We are not the only species that can think." My question is whether the message was written by a human or a raccoon.
* * * * * *
The previous item seems like something that might be reported on CBC Radio One's evening news magazine As It Happens. Sometimes in the summer, the fill-in hosts really impact the quality of the show, but I have to say this week's team of Peter Armstrong and Chris Howden was absolutely first-rate. I've criticized Armstrong's work as an anchor of World Report, but he's great in an interviewing role. Perhaps when Michael Enright retires we can get him on the Sunday Edition?
* * * * * *
Speaking of radio people, it was quite nostalgic to have Lynn Neary fill in this weekend as host of Weekend All Things Considered on NPR (which, by the way, no longer stands for National Public Radio, but has become another acronym-turned-non-acronym that stands for nothing). I still consider Neary the quintessential host of the program, a role she held from 1984 to 1992.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Media: The Janitor is Listening
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Like anyone who writes for anything smaller than the local newspaper, I often wonder if anyone bothers to read what I write here. Sometimes I'm tempted to place a paragraph of grammatical nonsense (some would say this whole thing is topical nonsense) in the middle of an article to see if anyone bothers to say anything in a comment or personal e-mail.
This isn't my first experience with very small media. As a senior in high school, I spent one semester on the air about an hour or two a week on my high school's radio station, KASB 89.3 FM in Bellevue, Washington. (There were only three people in my on-air class, so generally speaking I was on Tuesdays and most Fridays.) A part of a vocational educational program in broadcasting, the station's claim to fame was that it was the last 10 watt mono (not stereo) FM station west of the Mississippi River. That meant the station was not only less powerful than a light bulb, but its signal went about as far as the light from one. I once proposed a promo "From I-90 to 520, from Lake Washington to 405... this is KASB" but it was rejected because that eight square-mile area might have exaggerated where we could be heard.
Yet, that didn't mean people weren't listening. The signal could be certainly be heard on campus. One day I ended up filling in on the air when I normally would have been at lunch, and two people in my next class complimented me for a piece I had done on the air. Even on a normal day, though, I could count on at least one call when I gave out the station's studio phone number. Gary the Janitor would call in at least once a week, always with the same request, "Can you play Alice in Chains?"
At the time, we only had one Alice in Chains song on a cart (yes, this was when radio stations still played things off tapes), Them Bones, and in the normal broadcast studio, we couldn't play things off a CD even if we wanted to (there was an auxiliary studio where that was possible, but it was usually in use during the day). The song matched the station's alternative-music format quite well (in fact, it was used on a "Nothing's Harder Except Your Head" promo). So, I'd check the logs to make sure the song hadn't been played yet that day (and at 9:30 in the morning, it usually would not have), and if it hadn't, I'd get it on the air.
A lot has changed at KASB since I was on the air. The station has changed frequencies to 89.9 FM and now has a 60-watt signal that can be heard beyond the city limits of Bellevue. Still, I bet students are wondering if anyone is listening. They needn't worry--I'm sure Gary is, if nobody else.
I can see the comment coming up now... "Can you write about Alice in Chains?"
This isn't my first experience with very small media. As a senior in high school, I spent one semester on the air about an hour or two a week on my high school's radio station, KASB 89.3 FM in Bellevue, Washington. (There were only three people in my on-air class, so generally speaking I was on Tuesdays and most Fridays.) A part of a vocational educational program in broadcasting, the station's claim to fame was that it was the last 10 watt mono (not stereo) FM station west of the Mississippi River. That meant the station was not only less powerful than a light bulb, but its signal went about as far as the light from one. I once proposed a promo "From I-90 to 520, from Lake Washington to 405... this is KASB" but it was rejected because that eight square-mile area might have exaggerated where we could be heard.
Yet, that didn't mean people weren't listening. The signal could be certainly be heard on campus. One day I ended up filling in on the air when I normally would have been at lunch, and two people in my next class complimented me for a piece I had done on the air. Even on a normal day, though, I could count on at least one call when I gave out the station's studio phone number. Gary the Janitor would call in at least once a week, always with the same request, "Can you play Alice in Chains?"
At the time, we only had one Alice in Chains song on a cart (yes, this was when radio stations still played things off tapes), Them Bones, and in the normal broadcast studio, we couldn't play things off a CD even if we wanted to (there was an auxiliary studio where that was possible, but it was usually in use during the day). The song matched the station's alternative-music format quite well (in fact, it was used on a "Nothing's Harder Except Your Head" promo). So, I'd check the logs to make sure the song hadn't been played yet that day (and at 9:30 in the morning, it usually would not have), and if it hadn't, I'd get it on the air.
A lot has changed at KASB since I was on the air. The station has changed frequencies to 89.9 FM and now has a 60-watt signal that can be heard beyond the city limits of Bellevue. Still, I bet students are wondering if anyone is listening. They needn't worry--I'm sure Gary is, if nobody else.
I can see the comment coming up now... "Can you write about Alice in Chains?"
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Travel: Catching Up
TORONTO, ONTARIO - When I left home for what proved to be five weeks of travel around the new year, the vast majority of the blog posts that occurred during that time were focused on the experiences I was having as I traveled. As a result, I gradually collected a list of things that I would have written about that were effectively "bumped" by the travelogues. Yesterday, I finally cleared that backlog.
That, of course, was not the only backlog from that travel. My mail was piling up for five weeks. I had five Christian Science Monitors and four Chemical & Engineering News issues waiting to be read, along with other mail. Only this morning did I finally clear the stack of newspapers, and now I can start working down the other reading stacks. Podcasts? I think I had 2.5 days worth of programming backlogged when I returned six weeks ago. It's down to about half that now. Railfanning notes? That's a complicated one since I still had material from 2005 to catch up on, but suffice to say I've only written up what I saw after the New Year on my recent trip. Pictures? Those paying attention will notice that I still haven't presented the pictures from Arizona yet.
The fact that one can spend a much longer time dealing with the aftermath of a trip than one spent traveling in the first place is a reality that I have long loathed. Some people deal with it by intentionally taking a few days of home vacation after traveling (in some sense, I have that but taking a job search seriously is much more like telecommuting to a job than being on vacation). Most of the time, one just has to gradually catch up as I have been doing. There's a reason why I preferred to only spend 25% of my time or less traveling (on business or pleasure); three-quarters of time was about enough to catch up and stay sane.
In any event, now that the blog is in some sense caught up, it may quite often be less than daily. It is clear to me that quality of writing and topics has suffered of late; I'll be writing only when I think I can present something well, even if it means a few days are skipped.
That, of course, was not the only backlog from that travel. My mail was piling up for five weeks. I had five Christian Science Monitors and four Chemical & Engineering News issues waiting to be read, along with other mail. Only this morning did I finally clear the stack of newspapers, and now I can start working down the other reading stacks. Podcasts? I think I had 2.5 days worth of programming backlogged when I returned six weeks ago. It's down to about half that now. Railfanning notes? That's a complicated one since I still had material from 2005 to catch up on, but suffice to say I've only written up what I saw after the New Year on my recent trip. Pictures? Those paying attention will notice that I still haven't presented the pictures from Arizona yet.
The fact that one can spend a much longer time dealing with the aftermath of a trip than one spent traveling in the first place is a reality that I have long loathed. Some people deal with it by intentionally taking a few days of home vacation after traveling (in some sense, I have that but taking a job search seriously is much more like telecommuting to a job than being on vacation). Most of the time, one just has to gradually catch up as I have been doing. There's a reason why I preferred to only spend 25% of my time or less traveling (on business or pleasure); three-quarters of time was about enough to catch up and stay sane.
In any event, now that the blog is in some sense caught up, it may quite often be less than daily. It is clear to me that quality of writing and topics has suffered of late; I'll be writing only when I think I can present something well, even if it means a few days are skipped.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Margin Notes: Winter Views, Cards, Emergency
Osgoode Hall was visible at the end of York Street in Toronto, Ontario, as viewed from the Skywalk between Union Station and the CN Tower on 30-January-2010
TORONTO, ONTARIO - The disappearance of leaves in the winter reveals a variety of views that cannot be seen the rest of the year. Despite having walked through the Skywalk between Union Station and the CN Tower dozens of times in the winter, I had never noticed that one can look north up York Street and see Osgoode Hall in the winter. Yesterday, the sun was shining on the headquarters of the Law Society of Upper Canada so that it was hard to miss.
* * * * * *
I am intentionally missing the fact that this is my 600th blog post, seeing as I haven't found anything insightful in the past 200 posts worth writing about. Maybe there will be something to say by the 750th post, which at the present pace will come sometime in late spring or early summer.
* * * * * *
Some of the temporary track work on the Toronto's Bloor-Danforth subway on the Keele viaduct was noted on 23-January-2010
By that time, the Bloor-Danforth subway in Toronto should be operating at speed again over the Keele viaduct. Trains have been operated at restricted speed over the viaduct since structural problems were discovered last summer. Repairs are well underway, but the temporary track work intended to reduce the weight of the structure remains in place, as shown above. I was especially amused that the plywood-against-structure technique used to hold the tracks in place was the same method we had used in constructing portions of the miniature railway in Roundhouse Park.
* * * * * *
We're not doing much work on that miniature railway in the middle of the winter. The end of January is the time I put away my holiday card materials for the year, figuring I shouldn't have to re-send any additional returned cards (though last year I did get one returned well into February). The final tally this year is 97 cards sent, two returned to sender. I received just 22 cards, but that doesn't count reply e-mails, and I don't care if someone takes until the summer to check in with me, as a former boss did last year. I appreciate hearing how people are doing any time; thank you for writing!
* * * * * *
I can appreciate amusing radio at any time, too. Someone alerted me this week to a bit of hilarity from radio history, before I was born. The Emergency Broadcasting System apparently had a bad day on 20-February-1971, resulting in this amusing air check from Bob Sievers on WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Commentary: Incentives for a Better Decade
KENNEWICK, WASHINGTON - There's supposed to be a certain significance to this, my last blog entry of a decade. That might mean something had I been actively blogging for a decade, but while I have a history of commentary material dating back more than twenty years, this blog has existed for not much more than a single year. And, considering that the way we count decades today the first decade must have only had nine years (1 CE to 9 CE--CE is "common era," the secular term for AD or Anno Domini which had been used for most of two millennia), it seems to me that it could be argued that next year is really the time to present a retrospective anyway. Some things just aren't worth fighting; I like the metric system but I'm never going to convince even Canadian railways to convert their mileposts to kilometer posts.
More importantly, my philosophy in this blog has been to not do "me too" commentaries making points widely made elsewhere. Most commentaries out there capture my thoughts about the decade quite well--about the only good things that happened the whole ten years were related to the Internet and the election of a African-American as President of the United States. Pretty much everything else has been awful, broadly speaking. Just think back to what it was like to fly on a commercial airline in 1999, to listen to commercial radio, or even use the postal service.
Where I diverge from the majority of the commentaries is in their belief that the new decade will usher in substantial improvements. Just as defining the end of the decade as today is entirely arbitrary, this belief that things will almost certainly improve strikes me as extremely arbitrary. In order for macro, societal-level things to change permanently, incentive structures that help shape human behavior have to be changed.
Has the financial system in North America changed to favor longer-term thinking in business? No. Has the banking system in North America changed to encourage more loans to small business or individual entrepreneurs? Perhaps temporarily, but not in any fundamental way. Have business that are "too big to fail" been broken up or restructured so that they are no longer in that category? No. Has anything been done to encourage local media instead of ever-centralized media control? No. Have the world's nations agreed to provide incentives for sustainability? No. Have governments done anything to encourage more sustainable living by individuals? Only in a handful of municipalities in North America, not at any broad level. I could go on, but probably few people are even still reading this paragraph.
The coming decade could well be a excellent era that people will look upon as a mini-renaissance. For that to happen, though, there has to be fundamental change, not just hope for improvement. Health care reform in the United States might be a start, changing some of the incentives in the health industry, though that is far from clear at present. It will take many more changes in incentive structure to make it happen, and until the answers to some of the questions in the previous paragraph (and others) start to become "yes," it seems a better use of energy to try to change some of those incentive structures, rather than naively hoping for the best.
More importantly, my philosophy in this blog has been to not do "me too" commentaries making points widely made elsewhere. Most commentaries out there capture my thoughts about the decade quite well--about the only good things that happened the whole ten years were related to the Internet and the election of a African-American as President of the United States. Pretty much everything else has been awful, broadly speaking. Just think back to what it was like to fly on a commercial airline in 1999, to listen to commercial radio, or even use the postal service.
Where I diverge from the majority of the commentaries is in their belief that the new decade will usher in substantial improvements. Just as defining the end of the decade as today is entirely arbitrary, this belief that things will almost certainly improve strikes me as extremely arbitrary. In order for macro, societal-level things to change permanently, incentive structures that help shape human behavior have to be changed.
Has the financial system in North America changed to favor longer-term thinking in business? No. Has the banking system in North America changed to encourage more loans to small business or individual entrepreneurs? Perhaps temporarily, but not in any fundamental way. Have business that are "too big to fail" been broken up or restructured so that they are no longer in that category? No. Has anything been done to encourage local media instead of ever-centralized media control? No. Have the world's nations agreed to provide incentives for sustainability? No. Have governments done anything to encourage more sustainable living by individuals? Only in a handful of municipalities in North America, not at any broad level. I could go on, but probably few people are even still reading this paragraph.
The coming decade could well be a excellent era that people will look upon as a mini-renaissance. For that to happen, though, there has to be fundamental change, not just hope for improvement. Health care reform in the United States might be a start, changing some of the incentives in the health industry, though that is far from clear at present. It will take many more changes in incentive structure to make it happen, and until the answers to some of the questions in the previous paragraph (and others) start to become "yes," it seems a better use of energy to try to change some of those incentive structures, rather than naively hoping for the best.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Media: 20 Years Ago Today
TORONTO, ONTARIO - One of the reasons that I kept this blog going in 2009 was the fact that I knew I had a lot of twenty year-old material that could be recycled. In 1989, prompted originally by extra time at home provided by snow days, I ended up recording 395 audio commentaries of about two minutes in length, a practice that I kept up, if less prolifically, for four more years until I became an undergraduate. My model for these commentaries were The Osgood Files, a set of four, two and a half minute commentaries that Charles Osgood had been producing for the CBS Radio Network since 1987 that continue to this day. (Osgood had been doing reporting and commentaries in some form for CBS since 1971.) I called my flagship commentaries "The Glitchon Files," usually recorded in the morning before school.
By chance, 1989 turned out to be a pretty incredible year to be doing commentaries on the news, with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China, the invasion of Panama, and the fall of the Berlin Wall among major world events. Most of the time, I would write up my script ahead of time and then record it (I once even did a commentary on my routine for doing a commentary), but sometimes I would simply take out my tape recorder and try to do a coherent summary of a breaking event as information came in about it. Most often, I would do this for a report that I only did certain days that I called "Highlight," recorded in the early evening.
Such was the case twenty years ago today. Just one hour after what came to be known as the Loma Prieta earthquake took place, I did a "Highlight" report without a script, the core of which was the following:
Much of the information I had reported came from the radio station that at the time called itself KCBS Newsradio 74. Local station KIRO in Seattle had chosen to directly broadcast the feed from KCBS for quite some time, giving people in the Seattle area the same information that those directly affected by the quake were receiving. Television images of the collapsed section of the Bay Bridge, and what later proved to be the collapsed "Cypress structure" of I-880 in Oakland were repeated throughout the evening, as the sun soon set on San Francisco within a couple hours of the earthquake.
While this blog in many ways is the reincarnation of "The Glitchon Files," one of the nice things about this medium is that it is much easier to cite sources in the Internet era, as many may simply be linked to, and others can be referenced with less distraction than in an audio commentary.
I've missed most of the major event anniversaries from 1989 to present again in this blog in favor of contemporary thoughts. However, don't expect that this entry will be the last to draw on my old material--there will be 20-year old material through 2013, and then it will all start being 25 years old.
By chance, 1989 turned out to be a pretty incredible year to be doing commentaries on the news, with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China, the invasion of Panama, and the fall of the Berlin Wall among major world events. Most of the time, I would write up my script ahead of time and then record it (I once even did a commentary on my routine for doing a commentary), but sometimes I would simply take out my tape recorder and try to do a coherent summary of a breaking event as information came in about it. Most often, I would do this for a report that I only did certain days that I called "Highlight," recorded in the early evening.
Such was the case twenty years ago today. Just one hour after what came to be known as the Loma Prieta earthquake took place, I did a "Highlight" report without a script, the core of which was the following:
At 5:03 pm Pacific Daylight Time today, an earthquake hit and shook up all of northern California, especially the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. The quake was felt as far as Sacramento and 120 miles away in Fresno and has caused major damage. A fifty foot portion of the Bay Bridge has collapsed in the double-deck section. Candlestick Park itself where the baseball game was to take place seems to be structurally sound; we know that because there were so many reporters there to cover the World Series. It seems ironic that everyone was there ready to cover the world series and then another very newsworthy event occurred. There are many fires including the Berkeley Library which is on fire which is unfortunate considering what a university library contains. There are several fires in northern and northwestern San Francisco, and the Ferry Building, one of the buildings that survived the 1906 earthquake is still intact, except for its flag pole. It is unknown at this time if anyone has been injured, but it seems inevitable. There were people spotted in the bay but a Coast Guard cutter has picked them up. It's a very sad day in the San Francisco Bay Area.The report seems rather disjointed and incorrect in its emphasis twenty years later until one considers that it was filed just an hour after event from a location about 850 miles away.
Much of the information I had reported came from the radio station that at the time called itself KCBS Newsradio 74. Local station KIRO in Seattle had chosen to directly broadcast the feed from KCBS for quite some time, giving people in the Seattle area the same information that those directly affected by the quake were receiving. Television images of the collapsed section of the Bay Bridge, and what later proved to be the collapsed "Cypress structure" of I-880 in Oakland were repeated throughout the evening, as the sun soon set on San Francisco within a couple hours of the earthquake.
While this blog in many ways is the reincarnation of "The Glitchon Files," one of the nice things about this medium is that it is much easier to cite sources in the Internet era, as many may simply be linked to, and others can be referenced with less distraction than in an audio commentary.
I've missed most of the major event anniversaries from 1989 to present again in this blog in favor of contemporary thoughts. However, don't expect that this entry will be the last to draw on my old material--there will be 20-year old material through 2013, and then it will all start being 25 years old.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Blog: New Web Site Colors
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Regular users of my personal home page may have noticed that I changed the color scheme this week. Considering that the style sheet (which defines various aspects of the appearance) used on my personal site was more than ten years old, I had been contemplating a change for some time and decided to finally do it.
The old scheme (see the Internet Wayback Machine for a 2007 rendition) was actually based on the corporate colors of US Genomics, my employer at the time. As I served as the webmaster for the company in that era, I had a variety of software widgets and tools set up to work with compatible colors, so it was simply easier for me to use the same set of colors for my personal web page. At the time, Cascading Style Sheets were a relatively new method for establishing the basics of a page's appearance, and I actually used them on my personal site before they ever appeared on the company web site.
One of the ideas of the Cascading Style Sheet was that they made it quite easy to change the look of multiple web pages without having to modify any of the pages individually. Thus, it is remarkable that I didn't even bother to take advantage of that capability for more than a decade, which is certainly an eternity on the Internet.
When I first started thinking about changing the appearance of the page long ago, I was just going to change the background color to a nice shade of gray instead of green, change the logo at the top of the page, and keep the rest of the color scheme the same. However, for some time I have been looking for ways to incorporate the "monad" or "yin-yang" symbol into more of my work.
The "monad" is significant to me as it was used as the corporate symbol of the Northern Pacific Railway which employed my recently-deceased paternal grandfather for nearly four decades. However, its origins actually lay in 11th century China, where philosopher Chow Lien Ki used it to demonstrate the concept of yin and yang in balance. The traditional Chinese version included a dark dot in the light area and a light dot in the dark area, to show that not only were yin and yang parts of the same thing, but parts of one were in the other. The embodiment of this concept of balance, which I find to be almost completely lacking in modern North American society, has made the monad very attractive to me as a personal symbol. The Northern Pacific Railway Historical Society has put on the web a pamphlet published by the railway explaining more of the history and meaning, and the story of how it came to be used as a corporate logo.
When I sat down to change my web page, it was clear to me that I wanted the top graphic to incorporate the NP "monad" logo. The easiest way to make that work was to adopt the diesel locomotive paint scheme used for freight service by the Northern Pacific, which was mostly black with yellow stripes and white and red highlights. That is the color scheme that appears today on my web page.
The actual monad appearing on my home page right now is derived from a picture of the Northern Pacific logo taken at the Northern Pacific Museum in Toppenish, Washington. In the future, I may switch to a more stylized version incorporating the center dots--but the red and black colors used by the Northern Pacific will remain in any event. It's my way to call for understanding of the concept of yin and yang in today's society, and to honor the memory of my grandfather.
The old scheme (see the Internet Wayback Machine for a 2007 rendition) was actually based on the corporate colors of US Genomics, my employer at the time. As I served as the webmaster for the company in that era, I had a variety of software widgets and tools set up to work with compatible colors, so it was simply easier for me to use the same set of colors for my personal web page. At the time, Cascading Style Sheets were a relatively new method for establishing the basics of a page's appearance, and I actually used them on my personal site before they ever appeared on the company web site.
One of the ideas of the Cascading Style Sheet was that they made it quite easy to change the look of multiple web pages without having to modify any of the pages individually. Thus, it is remarkable that I didn't even bother to take advantage of that capability for more than a decade, which is certainly an eternity on the Internet.
When I first started thinking about changing the appearance of the page long ago, I was just going to change the background color to a nice shade of gray instead of green, change the logo at the top of the page, and keep the rest of the color scheme the same. However, for some time I have been looking for ways to incorporate the "monad" or "yin-yang" symbol into more of my work.
The "monad" is significant to me as it was used as the corporate symbol of the Northern Pacific Railway which employed my recently-deceased paternal grandfather for nearly four decades. However, its origins actually lay in 11th century China, where philosopher Chow Lien Ki used it to demonstrate the concept of yin and yang in balance. The traditional Chinese version included a dark dot in the light area and a light dot in the dark area, to show that not only were yin and yang parts of the same thing, but parts of one were in the other. The embodiment of this concept of balance, which I find to be almost completely lacking in modern North American society, has made the monad very attractive to me as a personal symbol. The Northern Pacific Railway Historical Society has put on the web a pamphlet published by the railway explaining more of the history and meaning, and the story of how it came to be used as a corporate logo.
When I sat down to change my web page, it was clear to me that I wanted the top graphic to incorporate the NP "monad" logo. The easiest way to make that work was to adopt the diesel locomotive paint scheme used for freight service by the Northern Pacific, which was mostly black with yellow stripes and white and red highlights. That is the color scheme that appears today on my web page.
The actual monad appearing on my home page right now is derived from a picture of the Northern Pacific logo taken at the Northern Pacific Museum in Toppenish, Washington. In the future, I may switch to a more stylized version incorporating the center dots--but the red and black colors used by the Northern Pacific will remain in any event. It's my way to call for understanding of the concept of yin and yang in today's society, and to honor the memory of my grandfather.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Margin Notes: Soot, Messing with Joe, Digital TV
Canadian Pacific trains #240 and #159 met above the Humber River in Toronto, Ontario on 25-February-2009
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Most weeks, it seems I complain about the weather each Sunday, but the above picture shows why the winter is so enjoyable in Canada--the white covering adds quite a bit to a picture of a meet between two Canadian Pacific trains at the Humber River in this neighborhood. It won't look nearly as attractive once the snow disappears until the spring growth starts to occur.
* * * * * *
Spring may start sooner according to some researchers. Recent research by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies appears to be backing up claims first publicized in 2003 that soot accelerates global warming. By making the snow less white, the soot causes the ground to reflect less energy and absorb more, thus accelerating global warming by what the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics recently reported may amount to snow packs in the mountains of the western United States melting a full month earlier than it would otherwise!
* * * * * *
While a spring melt one month earlier than usual might sound like a good idea right now, many of us are far more interested in the economy improving one month earlier than it otherwise would. In a major speech last week, US President Barack Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden will be placed in charge of making certain that stimulus spending would occur as intended, "because nobody messes with Joe." I thought Joe Croce sang to us in 1972 that You Don't Mess Around With Jim, not Joe.
* * * * * *
I had occasion to listen to news about Obama and the rest of the world on the analog television channel signal of CBC Television (VHF channel #5 in the Toronto area) this week, and the thought occurred to me that there are already places in the US where listening to analog television is no longer possible. Analog television will disappear everywhere in the United States on 12-June-2009. Our time will come in Canada, though. The CRTC has currently scheduled the end of analog television to be 31-August-2011 here. Maybe by then I'll have a smart phone that will be able to pick up the live Internet feed of CBC Newsworld.
* * * * * *
This blog made available new material on the Internet every day during the month of February (radio picks on Saturday and photos on Sunday don't count toward that feat, so the post total is padded to 36 instead of 28). Now that I've proven I can do that, expect a few random days to be missed in the coming weeks as I worry more about quality than quantity.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Blog: Lessons from the First 200 Posts
TORONTO, ONTARIO - The blogger software has been nice enough to inform me that this is the 200th post to this blog. Amongst other things, this means that I have spent approximately 200 hours writing at a computer for public consumption since 8-September-2008.
So what have I learned in the past five months or so?
* Most new readers to the blog are attracted because they are using RSS feeds for the keywords that a given blog entry cites. While I have made no effort to track reader behavior, I suspect most people read at most the given entry that came up via RSS, discover that this blog is varied in topic, and never return unless their key word comes up again.
* A surprising number of people have RSS feeds for their own names, and actually read at least one entry in this blog as a result of those feeds. Undoubtedly, there have been people cited in this blog that have read at least that entry without my ever knowing it, while others have posted comments or took other actions that caused me to find out. The message here: If you want to reach a public figure, write about them in a blog. They just might read it!
* If one writes about the band sometimes known as BNL, but using the full form of their name, it will attract spam. Furthermore, it won't just be run-of-the-mill spam, but really explicit spam of a sexual nature. So, it's best just to refer to them as BNL.
* Conservatives (that would be a lower case "c" were it not at the beginning of the sentence) are far more organized than liberals in responding to material on blogs. Look back at the few political comments that have been made on this blog. Every single one has come from a clearly conservative viewpoint (the only possible exception would be the comments on rank-order voting, which while hard to place exactly on the political spectrum, were probably to the left of my perspective--that was a better example of a RSS feed for a topic again more than political standpoint). I have criticized liberals, in particular the Liberal Party in Canada, and not one comment has resulted. This was not a particular surprise, but it was interesting to see this impression of the blogosphere confirmed.
* It's hard to predict what kinds of posts will get a positive response. Some, like the recent post on modern art, felt like they would get a positive response when written. Yet, some posts that I did essentially on a lark, like Glitch's razor and From Chemical Statistics drew rather surprising levels of responses both privately and publicly. On the other hand, I never received a direct response to Help with the Best Music of 2008, which I thought would at least draw some of my friends into private e-mails.
I still have nine topics back-logged on my scratch pad, so I think I'll keep writing on most days. We'll see what I learn in the next 200 posts.
So what have I learned in the past five months or so?
* Most new readers to the blog are attracted because they are using RSS feeds for the keywords that a given blog entry cites. While I have made no effort to track reader behavior, I suspect most people read at most the given entry that came up via RSS, discover that this blog is varied in topic, and never return unless their key word comes up again.
* A surprising number of people have RSS feeds for their own names, and actually read at least one entry in this blog as a result of those feeds. Undoubtedly, there have been people cited in this blog that have read at least that entry without my ever knowing it, while others have posted comments or took other actions that caused me to find out. The message here: If you want to reach a public figure, write about them in a blog. They just might read it!
* If one writes about the band sometimes known as BNL, but using the full form of their name, it will attract spam. Furthermore, it won't just be run-of-the-mill spam, but really explicit spam of a sexual nature. So, it's best just to refer to them as BNL.
* Conservatives (that would be a lower case "c" were it not at the beginning of the sentence) are far more organized than liberals in responding to material on blogs. Look back at the few political comments that have been made on this blog. Every single one has come from a clearly conservative viewpoint (the only possible exception would be the comments on rank-order voting, which while hard to place exactly on the political spectrum, were probably to the left of my perspective--that was a better example of a RSS feed for a topic again more than political standpoint). I have criticized liberals, in particular the Liberal Party in Canada, and not one comment has resulted. This was not a particular surprise, but it was interesting to see this impression of the blogosphere confirmed.
* It's hard to predict what kinds of posts will get a positive response. Some, like the recent post on modern art, felt like they would get a positive response when written. Yet, some posts that I did essentially on a lark, like Glitch's razor and From Chemical Statistics drew rather surprising levels of responses both privately and publicly. On the other hand, I never received a direct response to Help with the Best Music of 2008, which I thought would at least draw some of my friends into private e-mails.
I still have nine topics back-logged on my scratch pad, so I think I'll keep writing on most days. We'll see what I learn in the next 200 posts.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Blog: Prorogued? No...
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Way Out In The Margin is prorogued--no, Stephen Harper can't do that, though somebody in government might like to do so.
I'm on vacation--no, not really.
I'm on business travel--well, sort of, but that hasn't stopped me from blogging before.
I guess it's most truthful to say I'm behind in getting out holiday cards, and I won't be writing as much here until I catch up a bit.
I'm on vacation--no, not really.
I'm on business travel--well, sort of, but that hasn't stopped me from blogging before.
I guess it's most truthful to say I'm behind in getting out holiday cards, and I won't be writing as much here until I catch up a bit.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Politics: The Actual First Blog Post
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Officially, this blog started on Monday, 8-September-2008. However, it wasn't actually my first personal blog entry. Long before the term "blog" existed in the fall of 1999, I posted to my personal web site a piece of political commentary questioning the beliefs of then-presidential candidate George W. Bush with respect to the "ideal family."
The piece is presented as it appeared on 21-November-1999, nine years ago today:
That was certainly optimistic. Bush would become the President of course, and to the best of my knowledge has never had a second thought about his vision of the ideal family.
At the time I wrote that commentary, I was intending to write a similar piece weekly through the 2000 election, but after one week I decided I had better things to do and removed even that first post from my web site. Rather than being one of the many proto-bloggers, I kept my views off the Internet until this year, when everyone and their dog had a blog.
Expect my next post to show up in something a lot less than nine years this time.
The piece is presented as it appeared on 21-November-1999, nine years ago today:
SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS - This morning on the NBC Program "Meet the Press," Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush made a point of declaring that he stands for "the ideals in American society." To Bush, these ideals mean such things as the nuclear family and equality in selecting contractors. As a leader, he feels that he needs to oppose alternatives to these ideals, placing him in opposition to adoption by gay couples and quotas for minority-owned contractors.
Bush surprised interviewer Tim Russert on this latter point by not coming out against rules in place since 1983 that set a goal for Federal contractors of 10% minority ownership. In fact, Bush said that "10% seems rather low." While going on to state that he sees a problem in the same minority contractors repeatedly getting the same kinds of contracts over and over again, to the detriment of startup minority-owned businesses, he made a point of not ruling out considering the race and gender of an owner in selecting Federal contractors. In order to reach his implied ideal of selecting contractors by merit and having a reflective number of minority-owned contractors be selected without considering their minority-owned status, he is willing to continue to consider that status in the interim. It seems that rather than standing for an ideal, Bush is standing for freedom and fairness.
In contrast, Bush sees no compromise on the family ideal. He is adamantly opposed to gay marriage, saying that marriage is "for a man and woman, period." He gives no ear to the argument that allowing some kind of recognized partnership for same-sex couples might encourage gays and lesbians to live the kind of monogamous, stable lifestyle that he claims to encourage. He is adamantly opposed to gay adoption, giving no ear to studies that show that children are more likely to grow up mentally healthy when they have two supportive parents, no matter whether their parents are gay or straight.
While few would argue with Bush's implied ideal of ownership-blind contractor selection, many would argue with his ideal family. The new Chief Justice of Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court, Margaret Marshall, wrote in an earlier ruling that the societal definition of family appears to have changed to a broader one than the traditional nuclear family, incorporating a number of alternatives. So, who gets to set the ideal?
Perhaps nobody should get to make that judgment. This nation was founded on the concept of freedom, not any specific ideals. Existing laws allowing gay adoption have been passed in part in recognition that freedoms should not be denied to a portion of the population. On the other hand, going to the extreme freedom of allowing anyone to adopt a child is clearly even more dangerous than enforcing Bush's ideal, since that would allow pedophiles to do so.
The ultimate goal of the ideal family would seem to be to allow children the opportunity to grow up with the emotional and financial support to pursue their own happiness and contribute to society. If that is indeed the goal, it would seem that Bush's ideal family is not a prerequisite.
Perhaps Bush will review his position, much as he wants to review the minority contractor rules, and realize that what he is aiming for is freedom and fairness, not an ideal. Freedom and fairness applied to the goal of raising a healthy next generation of Americans does not necessarily require an ideal, nuclear family.
That was certainly optimistic. Bush would become the President of course, and to the best of my knowledge has never had a second thought about his vision of the ideal family.
At the time I wrote that commentary, I was intending to write a similar piece weekly through the 2000 election, but after one week I decided I had better things to do and removed even that first post from my web site. Rather than being one of the many proto-bloggers, I kept my views off the Internet until this year, when everyone and their dog had a blog.
Expect my next post to show up in something a lot less than nine years this time.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Blog: Origin of the Title
TORONTO, ONTARIO - The title of this blog originates from the commentaries I did for KZSU, Stanford University's student radio station, in 1994 while in the news department. They were entitled "In the Margin," and often included the phrase "way out there" after the title. Of course, many of the subjects of those commentaries, while regarded as marginal at the time, would later move mainstream. I believe I had only read about Ratko Mladic and Arkan in the Christian Science Monitor at the time of airing a commentary about them, but ultimately the world would recognize them as war criminals.
An author can always hope that comments made "in the margin" may prove of greater value down the road...
An author can always hope that comments made "in the margin" may prove of greater value down the road...
Blog: Other Sites Continue
TORONTO, ONTARIO - At least for now, the launch of this site does not affect the weekly updates on my other sites.
I will continue to pick an example of quality radio from the previous week and post it at this site each Saturday (or later).
I will also continue to update photographs from my life at this site most Sundays.
I will continue to pick an example of quality radio from the previous week and post it at this site each Saturday (or later).
I will also continue to update photographs from my life at this site most Sundays.
Blog: What is this Blog?
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Like any blog, this site will be used for my personal observations on the world. Expect occasional posts on anything from personality theory to transit to the state of media to comparisons of the United States and Canada.
Starting on the first weekday when two of the three countries in North America were known to face elections in the coming weeks, many of the initial posts will undoubtedly focus on politics.
Political posts on this blog will, for the most part, not advocate or disparage political parties or individual candidates. Instead, they will offer commentary and indeed judgment intended to foster further thought by the reader. Canadians generally seem to appreciate such food for thought even when the substance seems like rubbish, while Americans seem to have much lower tolerance for such discourse. Nothing would delight me more than to find reactions to this blog that rise above expectation.
While comments will be moderated, that process mainly exists to avoid vandalism. Thoughtful comments, particularly those in disagreement with the original post, will be appreciated.
Let the conversation begin.
Starting on the first weekday when two of the three countries in North America were known to face elections in the coming weeks, many of the initial posts will undoubtedly focus on politics.
Political posts on this blog will, for the most part, not advocate or disparage political parties or individual candidates. Instead, they will offer commentary and indeed judgment intended to foster further thought by the reader. Canadians generally seem to appreciate such food for thought even when the substance seems like rubbish, while Americans seem to have much lower tolerance for such discourse. Nothing would delight me more than to find reactions to this blog that rise above expectation.
While comments will be moderated, that process mainly exists to avoid vandalism. Thoughtful comments, particularly those in disagreement with the original post, will be appreciated.
Let the conversation begin.
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