Pick your zombie party

More people should listen to CBC radio for its magazine shows. Much like the public library, CBC radio is a wealth of knowledge often under appreciated. Not only do you learn about the world, but CBC reporters regularly win awards around the globe for their radio docuwork. Despite the ever-shrinking budget of the ceebs, it's a Canadian institution I fully believe in, heartily support and will love until my final days.

With that said, the current feature on 'Ideas' with Paul Kennedy is a three-part broadcast titled "Climate Wars".

Here is the synopsis:

About 2 years ago I noticed that the military in various countries, and especially in the Pentagon, were beginning to take climate change seriously. Now, it's the business of the military to find new security threats. It's also in their own self-interest, since they need a constant supply of threats in order to justify their demands on the taxpayers' money, so you should always take the new threats that the soldiers discover with a grain of salt. You know, never ask the barber whether you need a haircut.

But I did start to look into this idea that global warming could lead to wars. It turned into a year-long trek talking to scientists, soldiers and politicians in a dozen different countries. I have come back from that trip seriously worried...

- Gwynne Dyer

This might sound like an audiobook version of an inconvenient truth, but so far it has been much more focused on presenting the latest research and exploring little discussed consequences than it is about brow beating.

Not just "the world is ending" but having respected minds discuss how that might happen politically, culturally and environmentally helps really lay things out with a different perspective. Moreover, it explores both sides, weighing the consequences of ecoengineering, ecoterrorism and how both those evolutions are impacting the world on a political level for both good and in many cases, not so good.

Probably one of the most informative pieces of journalism about our current climate (literally and otherwise) that I've ever enjoyed.

I highly recommend you check it out.

Fringe 2009: Love and Human Extinction

It’s easy to laugh at tragedy. Not due to callousness, of course, but because humour is one of the few ways humans can rationalize absurdity. Without Jon Stewart, for example, following politics would be entirely soul crushing.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising then that when watching local writer/poet Shaista Justin’s latest one-act tragicomedy for the Toronto Fringe Festival, you end up giggling more than grimacing, witnessing an awkward drama set at the brink of the world.

Aptly titled ‘Love and Human Extinction’, Justin’s tale picks up the story several years into the end times. Only three human beings remain following a mysterious and global culling of life, including all animals sea and sky. The trio, played with conviction by Jennifer Neales, Matthew Manhire and Damien Gulde, spend most of the play coping internally and as a group with their shared dystopian fates.

Neales plays the fragile Roberta, the lone woman on earth and, as such, the most popular person on the planet. Vying for her affection are Andy and Elliott, played by Manhire and Gulde respectively. Different as night and day, Andy clings to his belief that God has a reason for everything, while Elliott roots through what’s left of the world he knew, piecing together the past and gathering clues to figure out what happened.

Although the details of the extinction are mentioned vaguely during soliloquies and expository conversations, none of the characters actually know what happened and, more importantly, why it didn’t happen to them.

Indeed, despite the context of an entire world in ruin, Justin and director Saniya Ansari delve into three internal struggles to comment on the dysfunction of society, portraying the final people alive as too self-absorbed to even cohabit the same room.

"People are tired of being talked at -- they want interesting conundrums to think about," explains Justin in a release. "In my play, the worst has already happened, the debate about what could happen is over … I wanted to write about the actual consequences of our negligent behaviour towards the earth and each other.”

There’s no football-in-groin humour here, but witty dialogue and the surrealism of the entire premise provide ample comedic opportunities, both ironic and intentional.

Part ‘Lord of the Flies’ mixed with a pinch of ‘Reality Bites’, the tiny ensemble cast entertain and enlighten in a tidy 40 minutes, waxing philosophical with enough gusto that you don’t notice the modest set nor care that Andy’s shotgun is a yellow super soaker.

‘Love and Human Extinction’ is fun and definitely worth checking out amongst a bumper crop of acts in this year’s Fringe. The play will have a six show run through to Saturday, July 11. All shows will appear at the Royal St. George Theatre (120 Howland St., Bathurst & Bloor). Tickets ($10) can be found at www.fringetoronto.com or purchased at the door.

For more information go to www.loveandhumanextinction.com

#iranelection

Twitter has arrived.

The VT incident was a glimpse, but right now in Iran, students and tech savvy reformists alike are using Twitter as the tool of choice for instant and first-person communique coming out of Tehran and the tumultuous protests going on right now.

I can't think of another situation where one was able, in real time, to access the thoughts, sights and messages of so many people concerning one event.

Can you imagine if this was possible during 9/11? People would be tweeting their location in buildings. Rescue services would be checking it for information. Pictures would instantly have been sent to the outside world.

This marks a pretty powerful point for social media, with the U.S. State Dept. even admitting it pressed Twitter to hold off on a scheduled maintenance to allow Iranians to continue using the site as a point of reference on source of information.

Ingenuity has allowed many Iranians to continue using the site through proxy servers, getting around the general bans the government has levied against cell phones, text messages, email, facebook, blogs and even twitter itself.

Yes, 90% of the comments I receive in twitter are asinine. But when something like this happens, the potential of not just the internet, by social networking is plain to see.

If McLuhan's global village was a tribalized network of communities that redefined individualism, social media has perhaps ushered in a evolved state of the village -- one that modifies what we deem individual but more importantly, what we consider to be our tribe.

I am fascinated by what's going on in Tehran. The political repercussions of the reformist backlash cannot be understated -- the potential for change is most definitely in the air.

But perversely, I am even more fascinated by what's going on on Twitter.

As important as the tool has become, I truly believe at the end of this, the true winner will be the mainstream media. It may not look like it now, because compared to Tweets, the 6pm news is painfully outdated and slow to react to breaking events. But the vetting process of true journalism cannot be undervalued.

It's great to get breaking news from the mob. But the wall of noise eventually gives way to deeper questions -- who can you trust? what information is accurate?

Unlike a lot of others, who believe social networking is "the new journalism," I think that's simply not true. Journalism will always be sharing of stories in an accurate, timely fashion.

Twitter is but another tool. But perhaps one of the biggest we've seen in a generation.

This post is banned in China

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I stood slack jawed, standing in the hallway of the Richard Ivey School of Business having just left my first ever university english class.

CNN was on several TV's overhanging the dimly lit linoleum hall. Hushed voices and wide eyes mingled reacting to the stuttering commentary coming from the television as dozens of us stared in awe at the unbelievable sight of an airplane smashing into an iconic New York landmark -- then horror as that landmark came crumbling down to the earth. It was hundreds of miles away, but we could feel the dust flying at us through the screen. The fear at least, was most certainly palpable.

Before 9/11 however, there was 6/4.

As much as one act of terror defined a generation (and many to come), on June 4, 1989 an act of courage inspired the world.

More iconic than the tallest building in the world, selected as symbols of capitalism, one Chinese student stopping a battalion of tanks by himself idealized notions of freedom, democracy, humanity and self-determination to a world in the grips of political conflict.

Blood was shed that day. On a pivotal moment that to this day defines the Chinese government and to a certain extent, it's people, freedom lost the battle in Tiananmen -- but it won the war.

Five months later, the Berlin wall would come crashing down. Two years later, the Soviet Union would be no more.

We speak often of tipping points, and in this age of over-saturated, over-analyzed, over-blown media coverage, hyperbole is part and parcel of information dissemination.

I was seven years old on June 4, 1989. At the time, the events were lost on me, the symbolism and gravitas of the situation blissfully irrelevant compared to the opportunity to stay up late into the night to watch TV, even if I didn't know what we were watching.

Little did I realize the world I woke up to the next day would never be the same. Even 20 years later.

I love China. Most would probably not suspect this, but I am proud of my heritage, proud of our tradition, proud of my family's roots and lineage. It is for this reason that we privileged enough to live here in Canada shouldn't ever, ever forget 6/4, and what it means as a moment in humanity shared not just by our home country, but inspirational to people all over the world.

Most importantly however, is that there is still much work to be done. Those who would purposely choose to ignore history seem to be ignorant of the fact that they are setting themselves up to repeat it.

Hopefully next time, the pendulum will swing the other way, and yet another date will go down in the annals of humanity not for tragedy, but for victory.

Pondering parenthood.

Perusing the new Globe&Mail today (side note: love the site, hate the long loading times. Lots of potential but the back-end clearly has some loose ends to tie up), and stumbled upon this story out of the Vancouver desk about Marriage stability and children. Here's a quote:

Today's parents seem prepared to set aside all kinds of pleasures to nurture a child – from their sex lives to careers, not to mention happy-hour beers – but there's one thing even the most kinder-friendly couple is loath to give up: their marriage.

And when one child rocks the marital boat, a growing number of couples are sticking with just one to keep their union strong.

That doesn't make them wimps, though. In fact, research suggests that children are more taxing on marriages than they used to be.

Essentially the article discusses how many modern couples are stopping at one child because having children is so stressful, and after struggling in their marriage to raise one, many don't want to go through it all over again and again. It actually goes so far as to posit that happiness is inversely proportional to how many kids you have, citing a 2005 study that determined mothers with one child were happier than those with multiple children.

There's nothing wrong with this story. It's well written, and although it's based on some entirely anecdotal quotes backed by "evidence" of studies that are as dependable as a GM stock option, these are more symptomatic of a leaky premise than they are of shoddy writing.

I guess upon reading this, more than anything one has to reflect on the cultural context from which this story was made possible. Clearly, nobody would have written this article in 1940, even if they had the concrete backing of a Danish sociology professor circa 2005.

Attitudes surrounding the entire concept of marriage and family, and the many interrelationships that compose those two entities, seem infinitely more complex these days than they once did. And for the most part, those complications stem from a forward march to break down what were once the most concrete of human connections; your spouse and kids were once inescapable, really, but we have moved into an era were if something doesn't quite work for you, it's completely possible to move on.

I am not casting judgement. I simply find these paradigm shifts fascinating. The implications of familial relationships, if you think about it, really has a hand in almost all the cultural and social evolutions of the last 10-15 years, both in the liberal movement and the aggressive partisanship rift that ensued.

How have social values changed? What is important to us now, asides (and likely after) ourselves? How much of every decision we make every day is painted by these broad cultural engravings and, looking back, how did today's seemingly quaint ideological cliches dictate the ebb and flow of generations past?

When it boils down to it, I guess after reading that article, I really was left wondering only one thing:

Why are these parents having kids in the first place?

I have a feeling if they can answer that question honestly, then deciding whether or not to have another one shouldn't be a very difficult question at all.

*****

In other news; awesomeness.

The Toronto Star is desperate.

As circulation numbers dwindle and advertising revenue plummets, our city's biggest daily is having to find new ways to stir up interest in itself.

From what I've seen of the website over the past month, apparently, that strategy is simple:

Print bullshit.

I used to like The Star. It was a Liberal rag, but at least it carried insightful and personal news that was relevant to the Torontonian. These days, the layoffs are showing.

From a cursory skim, almost half of the stories I read on The Star are based on a single source. This is leading to some tremendously biased and incredibly non-balanced pieces. This is basic journalism. One voice doesn't make a story.

What's even more frustrating is that they are using this half-assed approach with controversial issues seemingly on purpose; Tamil protests, sensationalizing Ruby Dhalla's situation, anything involving religion.

At the same time, they are barely covering world news or doing stories anymore that actually dig deep into the body of Toronto and teach us more about the city we live in.

They did an entire story and video where they left wallets lying around the city, then video surveyed the contraband to see if people returned them, took money, and generally were honest.

REALLY? That's what you're spending your money doing? Seeing if 20 people are willing to return a lost wallet?

I feel bad for the Star. In my opinion, their downfall came when they stopped printing Sunday comics. Hopefully, when the economy rebounds, so will this newspaper. But for now, it's little more than a joke.

When your sports section is the most serious part of a publication, you know there's some serious soul searching to do.

Technology in schools

Was listening to CBC Radio this weekend and they were having a show discussing the relative merits of technology in the classroom.

One side posits that an over saturation of "new media" has occurred, with phones, music players, games, computers, email and social networking, so ubiquitous that learning has become nearly impossible to focus on. Notice I used little quotes around new media, since technically social networking is not a new media, but... it just might be the next evolution. As Mark Cuban succinctly put it in his infamous tweet; "the medium is no longer the message. the network is."

The other argument of course, is that all this technology is a boon to education. It is easier to learn with computers, and programs, and podcasts and ways to connect, interact, visualize, conceptualize and analyze. All the reasons we love technology in the first place. It makes life easer, and makes what might otherwise have been impossible, very simple.

The callers were of varying usefulness, particularly one girl who said she was 25 years old, and that when she was in high school she "barely had any computers," and "used overhead projectors mostly." Also, she claimed technology was making kids today dumber, according to her completely scientific opinion. Nevermind the fact that I am 26, and distinctly recall programming in a huge computer lab in high school that also included a Mac lab. Oh, and we had a graphing/CAD lab too, which naturally used computers. Slide rules can be so cumbersome, you see. But I digress.

One question that was not discussed however is the only one I have been mulling over still on and off for a few days. Undoubtedly, today's younger generation are tech savvy. But are they technologically literate? These might be defined as different things.

Sure, kids can put up myspace or blogger websites, but whatever happened to Free Hosting? With no GeoCities or Tripod like service, very few kids are forced to look at a blank page and learn to code in HTML, CSS or Flash in order to get their creation on the net. All the steps have been simplified to one-click, and thus they never have to learn the fundamental building blocks.

Isn't this the equivalent of reading to a child his whole life, but never actually teaching that child to read? Can someone be conversationally intelligent but illiterate? I don't see why not, and to a limited extent I almost feel like that's what's happening with a lot of students these days.

They understand the end product, but are sheltered from the process.

If anything, I think that's the real issue with technology in the classroom -- it's too dated. You can't be teaching stuff like "this is a mouse" to kids. There needs to be some sort of plan to actually advance them knowledge that won't be irrelevant within a year's time. Education not only needs to embrace technology, it needs to essentially become it's main driver if both are to achieve something continually useful for students of all ages.

Now I feel like I should register for some continuing education classes or something.

Perez Hilton thinks Miss California is... uncool

It's disappointing that in something as innocuous as a beauty pageant, an issue like this had to come up.

In this interview, Hilton states that the contestant isn't a politician, and as such shouldn't have answered according to her political beliefs. This confuses me. Did the dude ask a question (in competition) fully expecting her to lie, even if she didn't agree? In front of the nation? On television?

It's his own fault for asking a loaded question, and to be honest I kind of feel sorry for this chick. I mean, she's clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer (although she might be the hottest. damn.)

But if you listen to her answer, she actually does agrees. She implies that GLB's should have the right to marry (since she thinks they have that choice already, apparently). She simply doesn't believe that those unions fit her personal definition of marriage.

If you believe in equal rights regardless, what's wrong with having an opinion on a topic that is still so openly debated and controversial in today's society?

This topic is not analogous to racism in my book. It's not even close. It's a rights issue, not a hate issue. And although those two are often intertwined, they can also be examined impartially if you take a step back.

It's unfortunate that not everyone agrees.

Really, my entire thought process on the issue can be summed up pretty tidily I suppose:

Leave the hot girl alone, angry gay man.

The 4:44am news update.

• Stratford Festival puts 30 performances 'on hold'. That kind of sucks. Does anybody want to go? I'm sad they cancelled West Side Story though, that's the one I'd most like to see. Yea, I said it -- I like West Side Story. What? What?
• Obama unveils presidential pooch. For some reason, at first I didn't feel this was newsworthy. Apparently, the BBC, the Guardian, The CBC, The Star, The Globe and the Times all did. Clearly I missed something.
• 'Twitter revolution' Moldovan activist goes into hiding after using tweets and text messages to organize a 20,000 strong government protest that eventually over ran the Moldovan Parliament building.
• Taliban execute eloping young lovers in Afghanistan. Well this is just depressing. Terrorists might bomb our buildings, and behead our journalists. But capping folks for being in love, well, you gotta be one coldheartedmuthfuckaifyaknowhwatimsayin.
• Education Standards Likely to See Toughening. You know, this might be the first Obama policy I fundamentally disagree with. Essentially he's just throwing more money at the problem, but personally I'm not a big proponent of standardized testing. It just doesn't seem to provide any inherent learning skills, if that makes any sense. Then again, I don't remember anything I learned in university, so maybe it's just me.
• Pirates attack second US vessel. Does nobody else find it kind of awesome that pirates are suddenly relevant news items again? Sure, they've upgraded from cannons and swords to RPG's and AK's, and instead of "Blue Beard", dudes is probably named !Xobli and all. But still. Also, why has nobody thought of sending in ninjas to free these ships and crews yet? It's so natural. Like, if I was fighting Cowboy Pirates, I'd send in a elite team of Native Indians. Easy. You just have to know your opponents weakness, y'know?
• Home births 'as safe as hospital'. This one's interesting. Apparently a huge study in the UK reveals low-risk mothers are essentially just as safe giving birth at home with a trained mid-wife as at a hospital. The reason it's kind of neat to me is because I didn't even realize being a midwife was still a proper and viable career choice. I mean, I noticed it when browsing McMaster's undergraduate programs, but I had to webcrawler (pre-google-era!) it just to figure out what the hell a midwife was. For some reason, it doesn't seem like a very happy job. I'd imagine it's a lot of yelling, crying and I guess some baby delivering. But, really, if you're the husband, do you ever want to sleep in that bed again after seeing child birth? I wouldn't. Ew.