Photos: Niagara Falls

Both the "American" and "Canadian" Falls were viewed from Niagara Falls, Ontario on 26-June-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's update to my photo site features a trip to Niagara Falls. On 26-June-2009, I had the opportunity to visit the Ontario side of the falls with my visiting uncle Arne Carson and aunt Meri Carson. The trip included some of the classic stops of a Niagara Falls day trip including Niagara-on-the-Lake, a ride on the Maid of the Mist, and a walk around Clifton Hill.

Radio Pick: The Comedy Factory

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick is actually a podcast. Topical programming that matches the end of summer mood always captures my attention at this time of year. This week, it was the CBC's Comedy Factory podcast that served the role, with segments on why an anticipated election in Canada ruins the mood, a great skit rewriting the Archie Comics wedding, and an analogy between gang membership and pyramid schemes in this 14-minute program. Specific Canadian knowledge might be required to fully understand the GPS and political segments, but those who do may have trouble controlling their laughter.

Listen to MP3 of the Comedy Factory "Just Ignore It..."

Heritage: Walking Bâby Point

One of three groups taking Heritage Toronto's "Bâby Point: 10,000 Years of History" walk made its way along Bâby Point Crescent in Toronto, Ontario on 30-August-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The Heritage Toronto walk through the Bâby Point neighbourhood near where I live has become an annual tradition for me. This year's walk on 30-August-2009 had been especially anticipated since, last year, an update on whether early explorer Étienne Brûlé had really passed through the neighbourhood had been promised.

Brûlé has become a well-known historical figure really for all of Toronto as supposedly the first European to visit a portion of the city. He had been sent west by the French in the early 1600's to live with the local tribes, learn their language, and be able to serve as an interpreter. Étienne Brûlé Park lines the Humber River near the Old Mill in honor of the long-standing belief that he had passed through the area, if not right through the park, when traveling with the Huron tribe that he had lived with between Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario.


A painting nominally of Etienne Brûle with the Huron tribe was held up during the Heritage Toronto walk through Bâby Point on 30-August-2009

The Bâby Point walks have been led for some years by la Société d'histoire de Toronto, and obviously Brûle is an especially important to them as a key French figure in the city's history. However, in recent years, the long-standing story that Brûle and the Huron had traveled down the Humber River to Lake Ontario on what would later be called the "Toronto Carrying Path" had been questioned. There is evidence based on later writings that the Huron may have actually used the Credit River to reach Lake Ontario, meaning that Brûle would have passed through Mississauga, not Toronto.


The Bâby Point walk paused along the Humber River for a talk on Hurricane Hazel as it traversed Étienne Brûlé Park on 30-August-2009

So what was the update this year? In some sense, the society has given up on having a definitive history. As Brûle did not keep copious records, it may be impossible to determine if he traveled to Lake Ontario down the Humber or down the Credit, and it seems clear that the Huron used both routes. Short of an unexpected discovery in the future, the line now is that we will never know if Etiennne Brûle really was the first European to pass through what is now Toronto or not.

Education: Declaring a Major

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Recent discussions among some of my acquaintances about the hoops they had to go through to proceed with a course of study have reminded me of the amusing story of when I declared a major as an undergraduate. I had behaved for most of my early undergraduate career as a chemistry major. However, the reality of the need for a PhD in order to be taken seriously in the field, and the realization that a surprising number of my graduate student teaching assistants in chemistry courses were miserable--not a common thing at a sunny California university--caused me to reconsider. (One teaching assistant of a lab course even committed suicide while I was in his section, which made that course pretty hard to complete with any enthusiasm.)

Toward the end of my sophomore year, I finally decided to declare chemical engineering as a major, while taking only the introductory course to the field. At the time, the department's policy was that all students wishing to declare the major had to meet with the department chairman. That year, Dr. Gerald G. Fuller was serving as chairman, so I arranged a meeting with him. I was instructed to bring my transcript.

Upon being invited into his office, the man that I would eventually come to know as Gerry (it was a small department) requested my transcript and then asked some banal question about my experience at the university. As I tried to give a reasonable answer, he started to peruse my transcript. After about twenty seconds, he held it up in front of his face, seemingly to get a closer view. When I paused in my answer, he moved his head to the side and asked another banal question I do not remember, then returned his head to my transcript. When I finished answering his second question, he put the transcript down on his desk, looked me in the eye, and said:

"You're going to be successful in this major."

I never asked him what he was looking for on my transcript. At the time I was borderline offended that he reached that conclusion apparently based on what he saw on a piece of paper, rather than any real knowledge of my capabilities or enthusiasm for the material. Perhaps he was at least in part seeing how I would react to his attention being somewhere other than on what I was saying, even if it was focused in some sense on me.

In any event, for an instant at least, I had been given a vote of confidence in a field about which I still knew very little. That's something any declaring student could use, and made the "obstacle" of having to meet with the department head not much of an obstacle at all.

Media: No Audience for Facts

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans has been surprisingly limited in the mainstream media (and that includes the CBC). While most "national" papers in the United States (e.g. the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor) have followed up on the story well, the broadcast media has not. The only two audio programs that have consistently reported on New Orleans have been Open Source (first in radio form, then as a podcast) and, of all programs, Harry Shearer's satire show LeShow.

Last week in an appearance on the Dave Ross show (from KIRO-FM in Seattle, Washington), Shearer talked about his attempts at concrete activism surrounding New Orleans. His main critique of the mainstream media was that they had not reported on the fact that I had heard many times on his show that the levies did not collapse because of Hurricane Katrina per se, but because they weren't built properly in the first place. He had the opportunity to ask Brian Williams, anchor of the top-rated NBC Nightly News, why it had never been reported on his program. Williams' response, which Shearer commended for its honesty, amounted to "our audience is better served by personal stories."

In other words, the "tell me a story" approach to news pioneered by 60 Minutes' recently-deceased Don Hewitt does indeed run NBC's evening news broadcast. While I do not have an issue with using such a strategy for a magazine show like 60 Minutes, I do have a problem with it dominating a hard news show like a network's nightly newscast. Editors should be choosing the most important news of the day, and THEN the reporting staff should figure out the most compelling way to present it.

I find it especially galling in this particular case because it seems to me there is a good story to tell here. (In fact, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Shearer have told it.) The fact that a government agency--the US Army Corps of Engineers--had failed to properly build levies cries out for an investigative report showing how widespead the problem is across the country or how specific circumstances in New Orleans made this failure possible. Done right, it should be a very interesting story to tell.

Implicit in Williams' statement is not just a preference for story-telling over fact-reporting, but that the audience doesn't want facts but does want human interest stories. Hogwash. NBC is being lazy (as are all the other networks, for that matter)--they aren't putting in the time to figure out how to make facts turn into compelling stories. It's easier to take a known human interest story and present it, sometmes much harder to take a set of facts and figure out a story-telling version of it. Nothing is holding them back other than their own talent. (Some would also argue that money is holding them back, but I contend that with adequate talent, the stories to tell could be found at existing budget levels.)

The sad part is that audiences don't even know what they are missing, unless they also partake in alternative media. If New Orleans feels forgotten, it's for good reason. The mainstream broadcast media in the United States has decided that there are no good stories to tell there, even when some of the basic stories have not been told.

Politics: Here We Go Again

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I've substantially kept my fingers off the keyboard with respect to Canadian politics for basically the entire summer. It's not that nothing has happened, but various events have been pretty well-covered by the mainstream media and I didn't really have any further insight to offer. (Some of you probably think I never do, and I wonder why you are even bothering to read this entry.)

Now, with yesterday's announcement by Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff that his party will no longer "prop up" the Conservative government and will defeat it at the next possible opportunity, the free-for-all of election preparations is suddenly underway. While it is far from certain that there will be an election this fall--the NDP and Bloc Québécois could suddenly decide to support the government, or the Conservatives could adjust policies and make Ignatieff change his mind (though that seems pretty doubtful), the conventional wisdom seems to hold that there will be one by the end of the year.

At least three of the four major parties have said and done some bizarre things this week. Ignatieff accused the Conservatives of fiscal imprudence by not addressing the deficit and at the same time faulted the government for inadequate action on the economy. How exactly was the government supposed to do both? The Conservatives--and satirists--are going to have a field day with this. Could not have Ignatieff picked one or the other and emphasized that?

In response to the Liberal announcement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper predictably countered that Canadians did not want an election. Do Canadians EVER really want an election? This time, Harper cited the state of the economy as a reason to not have the distraction of an election. It's a little hard for him to credibly make that argument when it seemed perfectly okay to him to prorogue parliament in the middle of addressing a recession. Emphasizing stability can be argued much more (if not fully) credibly, and it would probably serve him best to stick with taking the argument only that far.

Meanwhile, the NDP suddenly seems to be looking for any excuse to "prop up" the government after complaining about the Liberals doing that 71 times. Despite party leader Jack Layton stating that Harper did not seem interested in the four main points of the NDP agenda that would have to be addressed for the NDP to support the Conservatives, the NDP is now adamant that it will keep trying to talk to the government. Do they want more time to figure out a new party name? My advice to the NDP: Start campaigning on issues before the Liberals take all the oxygen away.

As often happens in situations like this, only Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe comes off looking reasonably sane and consistent. So far, Duceppe has simply stated that whether or not his party votes for the government will be determined by what they think is good for Quebec. I guess that's more clear than "If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a tractor." Since Harper took office, that's meant voting against the government at every opportunity. Has what is good for Quebec changed? It would seem to me that's only true if Harper makes some sort of concession to the Bloc.

So, don't want to deal with another election? It seems to me you'd better be hoping for the Conservatives to convince the Bloc it isn't good for Quebec.

Philosophy: Consistency versus Variation

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In my essay earlier on the death of Ted Kennedy, I avoided the issues surrounding Kennedy's character flaws and checkered early personal history. A common theme to the response to these discussions, which have dominated conservative blogs and radio talk shows in the past week, is that greatness in any area is usually linked with great flaws. Apparently, at one point Kennedy himself was asked if about whether he knew any great people with great flaws, and he asked, "Is there any other kind of greatness?"

As a general principle in the universe, I'm not certain that greatness has to be linked with great flaws. In the realm of radio programs, for example, few would argue that This American Life or the original broadcast version of Open Source were not consistently great, without terrible, flawed shows mixed in. On the other hand, some shows do have a great deal of variation, On Point and LeShow are classic examples of shows that can be simply brilliant and inspiring or downright unlistenable depending on the hour.

One of the biggest such arguments I was ever associated with was in the sport of unlimited hydroplane racing. In 1995, the sport was using a starting procedure for its races called the flag start. All the boats had to be lined up properly, next to one another, or the green flag would not be displayed and the race would not begin. Lane assignment procedures varied somewhat, but were generally a function of qualifying speed and earned points at that race site. This starting procedure essentially guaranteed that fans were treated to at least a half-lap or so of side-by-side racing, if not even longer.

Purists, who favored the traditional clock start in which all drivers coordinated their watches to an official clock before the start of the specific heat race and tried to be at the starting line right at the official starting time (but not early, since that effectively meant a one-lap penalty), would point to specific past examples of "great" races. One that resonated especially well with me was the 1986 Evansville, Indiana final heat, in which the "Joe Ricci Spirit of Detroit" boat, driven by Tom D'Eath and powered by a World War II aircraft engine, made a perfect start and managed to hold off three turbine-powered boats for four of five laps before running out of nitrous oxide and slipping to third place at the finish, still ahead of that year's ultimate national champion. There's no way that could have happened with a flag start, as the turbines would have been side-by-side with D'Eath at the start and likely would have out-accelerated him to the first turn. Driver skill--both in timing the start and in knowing how to take advantage of a good start--was made less important by the flag start.

I responded to the purists by pointing out some decidedly awful races caused by the clock start. In the 1987 race in Seattle, Washington, driver Jim Kropfeld of the "Miss Budweiser" made a perfect start in the outside line and had such a superior boat that he could move to the inside lane by the first turn. The race was already over, assuming he did not run into mechanical troubles (which he did not). It was a boring ending to what hadn't been a terribly exiting day to that point. That could not have happened with a flag start, as the other boats would have been side-by-side with the "Budweiser" at the start and probably one may have been able to keep up with him for at least half a lap of moderate excitement before it pulled away for victory.

Basically, the choice in that sport was between consistently decent racing, and the possibility of a great race every once in awhile with a terrible race equally likely. For the sake of casual fans, people like then-Commissioner Bill Doner, then-Director of Communications J Michael Kenyon, and me argued vociferously for the flag start and a consistent product. We knew it would prevent greatness, but the casual fan was far more turned off by the bad races than excited by the great ones, so from a marketing perspective it was clearly the right choice. (Never mind that the major factor in preserving the flag start procedure in that era was the lack of availability of an adequate starting clock.) When the owners took firm control of the sport a few years later after all three of us had moved on, the traditional clock start returned.

Such is the typical choice--allowing variation (such as driver skill in racing or risk-taking in a radio show) can lead to both occasional greatness and occasional low quality. Suppressing it leads to more uniform performance, but also prevents greatness. That the same thing also occurs in humans, specifically politicians as embodied by Ted Kennedy, should not be surprising.