floccinaucinihilipilificate

Oh, the sheer experience of this trip doesn’t end! Right now I should be back in Toronto, in the office, in meetings all day. Instead, I’m sitting in O’Hare, trying to stay awake after a night of just three hours sleep. Yesterday, we manage to wrap up on time in the Chicago offices of one of our business partners. I give credit to the careful forward planning. We’re a bunch of process oriented people – and having an agenda for meetings really does help. My original flight last night was at 8:20, but knowing that a storm was heading to Chicago, I arrived early at the airport, and got on the 5:20 flight. Whoo-hoo! Or so I thought. Around 7:30PM, the snow storm hit the airport. Visibility was gone. I couldn’t see the top of the air traffic control tower. Around 8:30, I finally got to board the American Eagle plane. It was a small plane – an Embraer 145, proudly assembled in Brazil. It was packed. It was hot. But it was ready to go. Whoo-hoo! I’d be getting back to Toront...

I'm sitting in the Corner Bakery Cafe , downtown Chicago, enjoying a chicken and mushroom stew with coffee. It's lunch time. I'm also giving my feet some rest, since I've been walking for the past couple of hours, taking random photos. The food is good, it's quiet and not too busy, and I can indulge in the bromidic adventurers trudging by. Lunchtime entertainment I suppose. I flew into Chicago last night, from Toronto. My departure was planned at 6:30PM, but the plane didn't take to the sky until after 7:30. I was the only one on the flight. Yes, the only passenger. I walked on the plane, and the stewardess, an amiable black woman with a bit of a southern American accent, feinting incredulity, declared, "You! You!" I sheepishly told her I was sorry. She told me I could sit wherever I wanted, and so I took the seat at the front of the plane. As we were taxiing to the deicing station, she told me she wasn't going to do the usual safety d...

The NYTimes chronicles a female circumcision event in Indonesia, where women take their daughters, usually before their 14th birthday, to have their genitals brutalize by older women who should really know better. It's a sickening, misogynic act, practiced to keep women in a station of life -- made much worse by women who offer up their daughters to this torture. The thumbnail image to this post is of a 9-month-old baby, who had her genitals mutilated. Backwards -- culturally and religiously. Some places of the world, people are still living in the dark ages.

I had the second opportunity to see, and more importantly, listen to, Stephen Lewis , this past Monday. Lewis, now in his 70s, was the keynote speaker at on Ontario Heritage Trust event, celebrating their 40th Anniversary. In attendance, on his 86th birthday, was the Trust's chairman, Lincoln M. Alexander . Lewis, while stretching his usual répertoire of being the voice of the poor, the underprivileged, and women, especially in the third world, to the cause of preserving the heritage of Ontario -- remained a remarkable speaker as ever. His topic didn't demand his usual appeal to emotion -- but it nevertheless tugged at the strings when he made mention of UNESCO's championing the allocation of millions of dollars for five national parks in the Congo , while the region remain the most dangerous place in the world for women . To paraphrase the eloquent poetry my youngest daughter used to describe the talk: for Lewis, words are like an artist's palette; it's wondr...

The NYTimes has an article on the changing food chain. There used to be a time when we ate what was grown locally. That was a long, long time ago. With the advent of packaged foods, we could eat foreign food anytime, anywhere, as long as we could afford it. Then came the global shipping industry, making it even easier to eat foreign. Foreign foods didn't need as much packaging anymore, as fresh food can be expedited just about anywhere. Even with shipping, foreign food could be had for cheap. So while we in the industrialized nations bulldozed our farmlands and poured concrete for crop after crop of suburbia, we were secure in the knowledge that the developing world was there to continuously provide slop in our biggie-sized troughs. We should have known that it wouldn't last. Economically, environmentally and socially, it was not sustainable. We fought economics long and hard, assured in our industrialized superiority to the developing nations of the world. With car...

On Martin Luther King Day, Barack Obama addresses parishioners at Martin Luther King's church. He's honest, and takes on what's wrong not only in America, but across the world -- the lack of empathy for our fellow men and women. It's one hell of a powerful speech. He takes on homophobia, anti-semitism, xenophobia and lack of hard work to do the right thing. Obama is too good for America. The man preaches tolerance, truth and respect, in a profession that doesn't value those things. You've got to wonder how long he's going to last. How long will the machine of politics tolerate his flirting with restoring America to its people? For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system. And yet, ...

This image was taken by Kevin Carter of a starving child struggling to a UN food station, a kilometre away, in 1993. A vulture patiently waits for the child to die. Kevin Carter won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in April. In July, he committed suicide. "I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky." Today, despite photos like these, children continue to starve around the world, including in our city. How can we look at ourselves in the mirror?

We’ve been had. The world has been hoodwinked by an environmental genius. I’m still shocked by the realization. It suddenly dawned on me this morning that it’s all been a farce. Wow. Such deception. Such acting ability. The lies, the blatantly moronic actions and seemingly idiotic policies. All pure genius. It all makes sense now. In the 90s, Dubya knew that Global Warming would cause irreversible damage to the world. Never mind Manhattan and polar bears, Bush knew from his PhD in Geography that countless millions in the lowlands of Bangladesh were in danger, and that if Gore got elected he would try the useless tactic of convincing industry to change, at which he had been failing since the 60s. Heck, Al even invented the internet to convince people and it still didn’t work. Something had to be done. Enter George. All along he had a seven step plan to save the world: Get Jeb elected in Florida and stack the Supreme Court. Make sure the people of Florida have no chance to express who ...

A training manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats has included the US and Israel on a list of countries where prisoners risked being tortured. Under pressure from the US and Israel, Canada has now removed them from the list. WTF? There is enough evidence that the US and Israel sponsor the torture of prisoners ... this is yet another example of Harper waxing GW's behind with his lips. We're a sovereign nation. Don't we ever think for ourselves?

I've come across the garden variety video sites in my travels on the internet, and they are the usual fare. Only a few cater exclusively to original content from filmmakers that I would want to see. Today I came across a site that hosts films I definitely want to see. Isuma.tv is a Nunavut based video site for and by indigenous peoples from around the world, founded by the producers of Atanarjuat The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen . It's a site with a noble goal -- to try and get indigenous stories, told by indigenous peoples, to a wider audience -- even if you don't understand the language of the films. The site also restores old videos and digitize them for the internet age, ensuring their preservation for future generations. The site's content comes from filmmakers who wish to share their creation, free, to the world. In return for allowing Isuma.tv to hosts their films, the site links to sites where the films can be purchased. The site asks...

Guess who's building a green city ? Well, to build a city -- from scratch -- needs loads of cash and an autocracy. A western democracy and industrialized nation could never pull it off, as the many self-serving interests and pork would choke the attempt. There wouldn't be any interest anyway -- we're too vested in the status quo to make the investment. To pull off such an audacious goal, you must have the need buy your praises. There are only a few places in the world where that could happen. Booming China, and the oil rich Middle East. China is already terraforming its past in its race to modernize -- and are even pursuing some environmentally respectable city plans. To go fully green though, you'd have to go to the Middle East -- Abu Dhabi to be exact. Plans are in place to raise a zero-emission city from the desert sands of Abu Dhabi by 2016, with limited occupancy for some of the planned 100,000 residents available by 2009. Masdar City will embrace renewa...

Well, apparently Google invented cloud computing . Or that's what you'll get out of this BusinessWeek article, that profiles the 27-year-old Christophe Bisciglia, chief-cloud-guy, at Google. Have a read, as it gives a good sense of where Google is heading, and why they will take over the world if they're successful. Worse case scenario: Terminator or the Matrix. It will make us wish for the days when Microsoft dominated the computing market. Watch out future, here we come!

Micro-lending was such a novel concept to help the poor, help themselves. It started with not-for-profit organizations, lending to the poor in developing countries -- lending really small amounts of money to help folks start a small business and give themselves a sustaining chance. And it is still going strong around the world, sustained by not-for-profits -- but these days, the greedy feeding frenzy of for-profit business is taking over. The thing about lending to the poor is that most often, they are honourable, trusting people. Getting a loan establishes them in the group on their way out of the hovel, and they would do anything to not default on that status -- anything, including not going into personal bankruptcy. The poor also tend to be uneducated and unaccustomed to the sophistication of modern banking. They care only about how much they regular payment needs to be, and how long they need to make them. They are ripe and ready to be plucked. Easy pickings for those that...

It's blacker and than black, darker than dark ... it's a material made of the ever versatile carbon nanotube, configured to reflect 0.045% of all light shone on it. The material was created by researchers at Rice University who were never as cool as the kids who wore black when they were younger. The material will be used to make really black jackets.

It's a visual dictionary of all the nouns in the English language, arranged by semantic meaning, and linked to 79,302,017 images culled from image search engines. Randomly click on the tiny images to see a popup of the hidden word and thumbnails representing the word. Totally cool ... in a "I not sure why they did this" kinda way. See the related research paper on the work for the techno-babble.

Nigerian scambaiting at its best -- here the baiter got the Nigerian scammers to copy, by hand, the entire contents of a Harry Potter novel . It doesn't get any better!

We saw David Suzuki tonight! He delivered the keynote, albeit a short keynote, at the Naked Ape Party -- which raised funds for the David Suzuki Foundation and the New Leaf Yoga Foundation. Suzuki was cool -- for those who find environmentalists and what they do, cool. Suzuki's keynote focused on the environment, naturally, and our place in it. His key message, we are the environment. There is no way to separate us from the environment. The environment isn't out there, separate from us. It is everywhere. Every molecule we breathe in has been circulating the planet since the time of the dinosaurs; we are made of the stuff that has been around since life took hold on Earth -- and in the great emptiness of space, we should realize that Earth is the only home we have. We need to stop using it as a garbage dump. Of course, Suzuki was mostly speaking to the converted. His message was delivered to those who already know, and are hopefully doing their little bit to save the...

Scientists have developed a more efficient thermoelectric silicon nanowire that could be used in generators to covert heat from various sources, including the human body, to electricity. While the physics of the new nanowires are not fully understood, the results are. Previous nanowire-based converters were not efficient for production, but if the promise of these new nanowires hold through, we could see countless applications hitting the market. The US DOD & DOE would definitely be interested, but so would commercial interests. Think of powering your laptop or other gadgets and toys using your own body heat ... makes power trips to the local fast food trough almost excusable.

What happens when you take Michael Jackson, well, his white glove, and throw in some Java coding? You get a giant white glove . Don't ask why. But if you do, see the White Glove Tracking open source project.

The most massive black hole known, has been discovered -- weighing in at a massive 18-billion Suns. And it gets better. This black hole is so massive, it has another black hole, weighing about 100-million Suns, orbiting it. The smaller black hole makes a complete orbit of the larger one every 12 years, ploughing through its accretion disk twice during an orbit. Each time the smaller black hole moves through the larger's accretion disk, huge outbursts of radiation is released, causing the system to brighten. The two black holes form the heart of the quasar QJ287. As general relativity predicts, astronomers have observed the decay of the smaller black hole's orbit. At the rate of decay, the smaller black hole will be swallowed by the larger in 10,000 years.

Dharavi is reportedly one of the biggest slums in the world, with a population of more than 1 million people, spread over an area of 175 hectares. Unless you live in a slum, you probably can't fathom this level of congestion. Stuck in the middle of Mumbai, between the city's two main railway lines, Dharavi is rapidly evolving into a city within a city. It is a place where the unwanted of India's caste system are kings -- where an informal economy is humming away, creating products that make it all the way to the shelves of big boxes in North America and Europe. It's a testament to the human condition that such a place exists -- and despite the odds, such a place is working. Read more in: The Economist: A Flourishing Slum National Geographic: Dharavi: Mumbai's Shadow City BBC News: Life in a Slum Dharavi via Google Maps: View Larger Map

Never judge a book by the cover ... so we're told, cause you never know what's lurking beneath the covers. But how often do we actually heed those words? Everyday we practice our prejudices -- even when we know better, our subconscious betray us. Biologically, there may be something there. The way someone looks, usually is a good indicator for what we can expect from them. It has served our species well in the past. We are prejudiced. We can't help it. We are attracted to the beautiful. They are showered with love, while the ugly are avoid. And while beauty may be subjective, there are definitely quite a number traits that we all agree on as being beautiful. Those are usually associated with how healthy a person appears to be: skin and hair for example are very susceptible to illness. Studies also show that the beautiful are also smarter -- scoring better at general intelligence than those less attractive. So prejudices aside, your first take on someone may ac...

Science has long known that at the nano-scale, materials get stronger. Take a sheet of nickel for instance: you can bend it with little force; but a nano-sized piece of nickel would require far more force to deform. Although this has been well known for sometime, what hasn't been known is why that happens. Until now . Materials deform because of existing defects in the planes of the materials crystalline structure. As force is applied to a macro-sized material, these defects increases, colliding with each other and multiple. In effect, with the right amount of force, you can cause a runaway increase in defects in a material, which results in deformation. In nano-scale materials however, the opposite happens. As force is applied, defects in the material dissipate in a process called mechanical annealing . In effect, as force is applied to nano-scale materials, the material becomes stronger, as defects disappear. (With enough force however, defects return and rapidly in...

Physics is sooo much fun! Click and play . Updated: Jan. 25, 2008

The US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine has just published Science, Evolution, and Creationism -- a book "designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom." In the book , the Academy makes it quite clear that evolution is central to modern biology, yet continues to be challenged in the classroom by proponents of creationism and intelligent design. The Academy states in the book that science and religion can coexist, and present different ways of understanding the world. This book is an update from previous versions published in 1984 and 1999. The Academy is trying to appeal to religious moderates in the face of rising religious fundamentalism in the US and educate the masses of uneducated in the US (aka: the general public). In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based...

Intolerance is a well practiced; well documented; universal; and comes in many guises. Even in Canada, we're not safe from intolerance. Someone may hate you for reasons you can't begin to imagine. It could be the colour of your skin, your religious affiliation (or lack thereof), your political ideology or sexual orientation. I just came across a forum posting, titled, Why Gays Fight Back . The content is very disturbing. It contains graphic images of the intolerance towards gays from around the world. There is an image of a 3-year-old Ronnie Parris , killed by his father for being potentially gay. Ronnie's father belongs to an evangelical church that preaches a strong anti-gay message. There is only one reason to be intolerant -- and that is to be intolerant of intolerance itself. We can all make a difference if we speak up against intolerance when it is happening. The worse we can do is remain silent .

The Edge Foundation has published their annual question, with responses coming in from 165 of our great thinkers. As usual, the question is weighty, with the answers thought provoking -- hopefully enough to spur an intelligent dialogue. The question: When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy. When God changes your mind, that's faith. When facts change your mind, that's science. WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY? Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind? On the surface, the question doesn't appear to have much depth, and could easily lead to a dismissal of the answers as being the navel gazing of those who consider themselves the intellectual elite. Such a dismissal, however, would be very narrow minded. As a society, we tend to look down on those that change their minds -- pointedly dismissing them as being inconsistent and never being able to stick to an opi...

What killed off the dinosaurs? Asteroid impact has been the leading candidate in most scientific circles -- with Fred, Barney and the great flood in others -- but now a new argument has been put forth in the book What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous by George and Roberta Poinar. In the book , the Poinars suggest that the extinction of dinosaurs, which may have occurred from hundreds of thousands to millions of years, could have been caused by the appearance of insects and the diseases they carry. The authors don't discount the effects of geologic and catastrophic events, but contend that those events by themselves couldn't have led to the slow death of the dinosaurs. The Poinars have accumulated a lot of evidence for diseases to back up their claims, via insects preserved in amber and dinosaur feces. They also suggest that insects played a further role of changing the vegetation of the planet, favouring more flowering plants. The combin...

America is so looking for something different -- for change -- and they voted recently in Iowa for change. Barack Hussein Obama answered the call of a demoralized, distressed and cynical America. America has taken a look at the candidates before them, and saw just more of the same -- embarrassment -- except for Obama. In Obama there lies hope -- America sees hope -- even through his missteps, chalked up to naivety and inexperience. The guy actually appears to be genuine. If there are flaws, America will not see them -- that is the state of the American public. So abused by their democracy, Americans are pinning dreams on Obama. It's an infatuation; a state of hero worship. So what can go wrong with this love affair? Obama could totally screw it up by making a huge political mistake. Clinton could still whip his ass in the primaries and take the pole in the Democrats race to the White House, although she would have to thread carefully, as an all out attack on Obama could b...

100% Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are here! They're just a bit small. The H-racer is a toy car from Horizon Fuel Cell , a company that develops fuel cell technology for real-life cars. The H-racer comes with its own hydrogen refueling station that generates hydrogen for the car using solar energy and water. It retails for $115US and can be ordered directly from Horizon . Now how cool is that? Related: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car -- Wired Magazine Are the Auto Industry's Arguments Against California's CO 2 Rule Just Hot Air? -- Autopia from Wired.com

Cracked.com has a cynical piece on five well known brand names and the role they played in supporting Nazi Germany. The companies are Siemens, Bayer, IBM, Volkswagen and Hugo Boss. What did these companies do to support the Nazi war effort? Hugo Boss made the uniforms worn by the Nazis -- and you can probably recognize the Nazi influence in today's Boss wear. Volkswagen created the Beetle to be the affordable wonder car every German could own. IBM supplied the Nazis with systems to keep an inventory of Jews and others, allowing the holocaust to be executed efficiently. Bayer (then part of IG Farben) produced the Zyklon-B gas used in the gas chambers. And Siemens was the Nazi infrastructure machine -- everything from railways to the gas chambers themselves. Those five are not the only businesses to prosper and support Nazi Germany. There were many others -- and they weren't limited to German companies. Businesses around the world, including Western Europe and the US, ...

Surprise-surprise. Blackwater has dropped its membership in the mercenary industry group, the International Peace Operations Association . IPOA was engaging Blackwater in a review of their processes to ensure they were complying with IPOA's Code of Conduct -- a code that stresses human rights, corporate ethics, International Humanitarian Law, transparency, accountability, and responsibility and professionalism in relationships with employees, clients, and partner companies . Blackwater apparently didn't like the scrutiny -- so it withdrew its membership from IPOA. Bet no one saw that one coming.

I've been aware of GlobalAware for sometime now and was reminded today that I wanted to give them a spot on the blog. GlobalAware is a Canadian collective pursuing the noble goal of environmental justice and social change. They provide media services to charities, non-profits and ethical businesses, as well as champion campaigns for change. Check them out. They do some great work, and you may have some skills they could use. Together, we can all make a difference.

You're an asshole. You're an asshole, driver of the Volvo S40, license plate ABVR 226 . You're an asshole leaving your car running, with no one inside, as you went grocery shopping. The temperature was only -11C. It shouldn't matter what the temperature was -- you're an asshole for leaving your car running. You're an asshole because it's behaviour like yours that contributes to the poor air quality of Toronto. You're an asshole because you're demonstrating a casual disregard for the environment. You're asshole because at the current price of gas, you can afford to waste it, and you've demonstrated that you do. You're an asshole that probably lives in my neighbourhood. I don't like assholes on general principles. I like them even less when they live my neighbourhood.

BBC has published their annual list of things that surprised them last year -- things that they reported on, that the editors found "most interesting and unexpected." From the list, here are a few that I found most interesting and unexpected -- but was not necessarily surprising or unknown to me: Dishcloths are purged of 99% of their bacteria during two minutes in a microwave. Antony and Cleopatra were ugly. Chimpanzees make their own spears for hunting. To be found attractive, women should sway their hips and men their shoulders (although researchers call this a "shoulder swagger"). The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites. Serving anything more than tea and biscuits at a political meeting is an offence called "treating" and punishable by a year in prison or an unlimited fine, under the the Representation of the People Act 1893. Kryptonite exists. Spiralling obesity rates are forcing councils to upgrade their crematoria, to take wider coffins...

Glenn Albrecht coined the term solastalgia to describe the sadness, distress, sense of loss and depression that result from missing one's home and sense of belonging -- not because of a move away from home -- but because environmental change has resulted in the change in the identification one feels for home. Home can mean different things to different people -- at different times -- and in different context. Home can be one's country; hometown; or even online locale. Albrecht aptly describes it as, ... the homesickness you feel when you're still at home. We now have a name for the condition some of us are already experiencing -- and more of us will come to experience as our world changes for the worst. 2007 ended with an awakening of the general public to the threat of climate change. Granted there are those with their heads still firmly buried in the ground, but enough awareness has been raised. As futile as our efforts may now be to halt large scale changes, ther...