test blog #10

This was a magical season, and the most exciting postseason I've seen in a very long time. David Ortiz - the only man to play on the 2004, 2007, and 2013 Red Sox teams - will be a hero to the city of Boston and to every Red Sox fan forever and ever, amen. A big man with a huge bat, an enormous heart, and more brains than he gets credit for. In the world of my personal fandom, sometime during the middle of the summer, between the foot and the flood and the move and the new job, I lost touch with the season. Or, more accurately, I began following the season the way most people do, rather than as an obsessive fan who never misses a game. Suddenly, in mid-August, I saw the writing on the wall: this team was going all the way. Rarely do you see a baseball team with  no  weaknesses, and the 2013 Red Sox had it all. After the shock of the 2011 collapse and the abysmal 2012 season, the 2013 team was headed to its third World Series win in ten years. It was time to climb back onboard a...

Sometime late on Thursday night into Friday morning, our internet went down. This is the worst possible time for such an event, as internet is our lifeline to baseball, and the Boston Red Sox are on their way (I hope) (I believe) to winning the World Series. From the sound of things, there were problems at some major internet hubs in the area, with massive outages affecting parts of Mississauga, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, and so on. What was the problem? When could we expect service to resume? TekSavvy wasn't able to tell me... because Rogers wouldn't tell them. I have been Rogers-free since March of 2012 , and I have been extremely pleased with TekSavvy. TekSavvy's customer service is excellent, their tech support is excellent and local , and they deliver more internet for less money. I pay about 30% less for unlimited service at a higher speed; that is, I paid Rogers 30% more for capped usage at a slower speed. The only sticking point is that TekSavvy is a re-...

Lou Reed, 1942-2013 Songwriter, Musician, New Yorker "One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz." - Lou Reed "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought it started a band." - possibly Brian Eno I was shocked and very saddened to learn of the death of Lou Reed at the not-old age of 71. Lou Reed made a lot of really worthwhile music, much of it after VU. I'm grateful that I saw him perform a few times, for his music, and for his politics. I'm really sorry he's gone.

Yes!  A few years back, I blogged about discovering that many of the plastics I had been putting in my recycling bin were not, in fact, recyclable. A few months after that, I unpacked a typical environmental dilemma: organic lettuce . Organic lettuce is the perfect example of a green paradox. It's unquestionably better for the local water supply, and for the health of the people who pick it and who eat it. On the other hand, it requires a huge amount of energy to stay fresh, and is often packed in non-recyclable plastic. We can ask, "Which is better?" but the answer is another question: "Better for what?" Now, after considerable consumer pressure, Peel Region will accept clear plastics for recycling . Of course, it's always better to avoid buying produce that is packed in plastic, but if you shop at a supermarket, that is difficult or impossible to do. I hope this change marks the beginning of more recycling province-wide and nationally.

I would like to draw your attention to an excellent article by Susan Faludi in The Baffler : Facebook Feminism: Like It or Not . Faludi contrasts the corporatist, individualistic, me-first, privileged, self-centered, pseudo-feminism of "Lean In" with the collective, cross-class activism of some of the original feminists: the "Mill Girls" of Lowell, Massachusetts, who fought for human rights and labour rights for all women. Describing the links between feminism, class struggle, the labour movement, and even the abolitionist movement, Faludi demonstrates how all oppression is interconnected, and how only collective solutions can affect change. She shows how an effective women's movement most be anti-capitalist and anti-corporatist, too. Faludi dissects and deconstructs the Facebook-based "Lean In" and its corporate partners, peeling back the cheery, self-help facade to reveal the status quo underneath. It isn't pretty. Lean In Platform Partner Wells...

Last night we watched " Dirty Wars ," investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill's documentary film exposing the United States' covert, lethal, extra-governmental operations around the globe. It's an important film. Depending on your level of knowledge of the US, it may be eye-opening, or it may be shocking. If you have not yet seen this film, I urge you to. It's available on US Netflix and from many public library catalogs. (The website has a link to agitate for cinema screenings in your area.) Please note I have called this film "important" and I have urged you all to see it. I have tremendous respect and admiration for Jeremy Scahill. This post, however, is a criticism of one aspect of "Dirty Wars" that disturbed me, and undermined the film's effectiveness in my eyes. But please read this criticism in context of a documentary that is well written, well made, and incontrovertibly accurate. We can't investigate what doesn't exist...

We all know the iconic cartoon the title of this post refers to. Boing Boing has republished a story about it, originally run in The Magazine , an ad-free, reader-supported magazine that looks really interesting. It's a wonderful little piece: the story behind the story, a glimpse into the life of people who try to earn a living from their own considerable talents, and a look back at the early days of the internet, and how things have changed, before tinfoil-hat predictions were proven to be not paranoia, but prescience. Go here to read the story (really, it's fun), and here to see the rest of this cartoon . Please click through. The talented people at Joy of Tech get paid by clicks. Then... And now...

The 2013 Boston Red Sox have won the American League Pennant, and the right to play the St. Louis Cardinals in the 110th 109th* Major League Baseball World Series. This makes me incredibly happy. 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007... 2013? Seven wins down, four to go. That is all. ----- * Oops, forgot about the strike year.

It's been a while since I wrote about Freecycle - once as we were getting ready to move to Canada in 2005, then again when we moved from our first place in Port Credit to the Cooksville section of Mississauga. On this last move (Cooksville to Square One), I had no time to go through things and pare down. I hired some folks to pack us up, and now I've been combing through everything as I unpack. I thought that was completely backwards, but it's turned out to be efficient and logical. Once you're moved in, you have a better idea of what works and what doesn't, and also more time, since there's no looming deadline. To those ends, I've been giving away lots of things on Freecycle, and I've discovered yet again that many people haven't heard of it. Freecycle is a network of local groups, run entirely by volunteers, through which people give and get things for free. You find a Freecycle group in your own community , post items that you want to give away...

It's strange to be so completely focused on something and not post about it here at all. So... OMG RED SOX That's better! The 2013 Red Sox continue to thrill and amaze us. Last night they pulled off one of the most improbable comebacks in postseason history. (Allan has a  nice look at how it happened .) I expect to be watching baseball deep into October. Or listening to, as the case may be. We're not supposed to see these games at all, because telecom companies rule the world, and postseason baseball is only available via cable TV. And as you are undoubtedly sick of reading about by now, we dumped cable in favour of streaming. We have a workaround, and have been watching games on a computer... but it doesn't always work. Friday and Saturday nights, I watched playoff games online, with perfect streaming that was as good as watching TV. Last night, it didn't work at all, and I only had the radio broadcast. Fortunately I love listening to baseball on the radio, and I c...

Since the day I decided to go to graduate school and change my career(s), my mind has reeled with questions about the future. When will I be able to quit my horrible law-firm job? When will I get a professional position at the library? When I get it, will I succeed, and will I enjoy my new work? What place will writing still have in my life? Will my health suffer? Will I have enough energy for these new demands? And on and on. It didn't feel worried or anxious, but I was incredibly impatient for my new future to arrive. Sometimes I could think of nothing else. One after the next, these questions have been answered, and all in the affirmative - a source of unending delight. Now only one question remains, and it's a big one. My current position is part-time and temporary. Whenever the next full-time librarian position posts, I will apply for it. (If I don't get a full-time position before this contract ends, I will return to a part-time position at a lower level of pay and re...

Over the summer, I wrote about The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, a children's book with a suspenseful, convoluted story, lavishly illustrated with Selznick's beautiful pencil drawings. (I scanned several of those images into my earlier post .) I've just finished Selznick's most recent book, Wonderstruck . Wonderstruck is filled with drawings in the same distinctive pencil style, but it is even better than Hugo Cabret . The central story of Wonderstruck is more linear, so it's easier to follow. But Selznick employs a brilliant device that adds mystery and suspense to a straightforward story. The reader follows the story of Ben, a boy from Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, who dreams of wolves, and misses his mother, and travels by himself to New York City. Interrupting Ben's story at intervals is another story, told in wordless pictures, of a girl from a different time and place - a girl who also travels to New York City on her own. The two stories, one...

By now I hope you all know about Line 9, Enbridge's plan to transport the dirtiest, most spillable oil on the planet through the most heavily populated areas of Canada and some of the most environmentally sensitive areas of New England. Line 9 is the third stage of Enbridge's plans to get their resource-draining, health-destroying, earth-killing tarsands oil from Alberta to the rest of the world, putting the drinking water, health, and lives of millions of people at risk in order to squeeze more private profit out of our earth. On October 19, concerned Canadians will demonstrate outside the National Energy Board hearings in the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. The rally caps a two-week calendar of events educating the public about this insanely dangerous plan. For more immediate and excellent education, see the Oil Sands Reality Check website , which gives you the basics in a few important clicks. The Line 9 plan would reverse the flow in two existing pipelines, causing oil to...

Al Jazeera Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty. Al Jazeera  has a fascinating infographic  about the use of the death penalty worldwide, as far as can be known from on available evidence. It is my fervent hope that the more people learn about the unjust, political, and often arbitrary use of the death penalty, the more they will question its use, and that, in time, such questioning will lead them to understand the inherent immorality of state-sanctioned murder. For those agnostic but unconvinced, I recommend reading Dead Man Walking , by Sister Helen Prejean. This book had a powerful effect on me, ultimately changing my conditional opposition to the death penalty to absolute. Al Jazeera   global capital punishment infographic here  (interactive). National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (US) Abolish the Death Penalty (Amnesty International) International Commission against the Death Penalty The Innocence Project

The heroic Edward Snowden, in his own words, via Jesselyn Radack, at the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee in Brussels. I thank the European Parliament and the LIBE Committee for taking up the challenge of mass surveillance. The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue, we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy. A culture of secrecy has denied our societies the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the human right of privacy and the governmental interest in investigation. These are not decisions that should be made for a people, but only by the people after full, informed, and fearless debate. Yet public debate is not possible without public knowledge, and in my country, the cost fo...

The children's library where I work services a huge age-range of young people and their caregivers, from birth up to around age 12. I enjoy the full range - helping parents understand the importance of reading to their children, helping kids find fun books to read, finding material for school projects and reports - all of it. But what I love best is connecting avid young readers - of the age group known as "tweens" - with books they enjoy. Wikipedia defines the tween demographic as ages 10-12, but tweens may be 9-13, or may even be as young as 7 or 8, depending on the person. Tweens are definitely not little kids, but neither are they teens, not only in age, but also in sensibility. I love being around tweens. They are often actively exploring new likes and dislikes, trying on different selves to see what might fit. They are usually independent-minded, and although they may be socially self-conscious, they are seldom jaded. Tweens are usually more open to adults - and to...

There's a subgenre of youth books in which young people are cast into an alien and dangerous world, where they must struggle to understand their purpose, struggle to survive. If you remember your own adolescence, the metaphor should be obvious. These books are often characterized as nihilistic or depressing, but I find that's generally the thoughts of people who haven't read the book. While a survival book may be frightening and sometimes violent, it usually offers positive messages about what it takes to survive. Young heroes find inner reserves of strength and courage, and learn how to cope with harsh realities. There is usually a series of tests - tests of moral courage, tests of confidence - and there is often loss, and there is often the discovery of joy in unexpected places. The world may be alien, but the themes are real-life. In many youth survival books, one element is key to survival: cooperation. A familiar message is that humans must work together in order to th...

This post on the design blog Core77 brought back so many wonderful memories of our recent trip to Spain, especially my total infatuation with the city of Barcelona, and the wildly beautiful architecture of Antoni Gaudí. Click here to see a wonderful animation of the projected completion of La Sagrada Familia in 2026. Thanks, James!

There are two current trends that I seriously dislike, and wish we would all organize to change: retail self-checkout and the use of gift cards as thank-yous and gifts. Neither practice will go away any time soon; indeed, I'm sure they only will become more ubiquitous. But both trends are in our power to stop, and I wish we would stop them. A cashier is not a luxury Buried in an earlier post about unpaid internships , I mentioned a few other forms of unpaid labour that have become commonplace. These days, most retail chain stores enjoy the benefits of an unpaid, uncomplaining labour supply that never demands overtime pay and never takes a holiday. They're called customers. Us. Almost every major chain store now has a self-checkout lane, where customers scan, bag, and pay for their own purchases, with varying degrees of frustration and success. Typically, one worker - that is, one paid worker - oversees and troubleshoots four or six self-checkout bays. I believe that, all thing...