There have been a lot of plans announced and decisions made by city council in the last year that I haven’t agreed with, but the repeated deferral of the Green Bins programme is simply embarassing for a Canadian city in 2011. I think it is all in aid of the sacred 0% tax increase promised by Joe Fontana, and I am sick of good decisions being held hostage by a foolish election promise.

I have sent this letter to Joe and the whole city council, and I urge you to write your councillor as well.

Dear Mayor and Councillors,

I hope that you will read and consider my thoughts on this issue, and I would ask that this letter be included with the agenda for the August 29th meeting.

The decision not to fund a Green Bin program speaks volumes. Shelving the program sends lots of messages, and they are all negative.

To the students and young people that we should be encouraging to stay in London, this decision says “London doesn’t care about the future. London doesn’t value the things that you care about, like sustainability.”

To the rest of Ontario and Canada, this decision says “Here in London we can’t be bothered to clean our own messes. We’ll use up our landfills as fast as we want.”

To the average family, who may grumble at first but ultimately wants to do the right thing, this decision says “Don’t pay any attention to what you waste or throw away. What difference does it make?”

To the children that we should be teaching about responsibility and consequences, this descision says “It’s OK to just keep putting off a tough decision or pretending a problem doesn’t exist”

To me, a voter and taxpayer here in London, this decision says “City Council believes that honouring a rash and reckless election promise of 0% tax increases is more important than any other considerations.”

Like it or not, I think that’s what you’re saying if you vote against the Green Bin  program.

I hope that instead, you’ll do the right and responsible thing. I hope you will choose to say: “We’ve got to look after this place. We’re going to stop dumping our problems on future councils and future generations.”

Chris McInnis
299 Cheapside Street
London, ON

The Big Molice Pan and the Bertie Dumb

Once a big molice pan
Met a Bertie Dumb,
Sitting on a wide sock
Booing gubble chum.




“Hey,”  said the molice pan,
“Gum and simmy come.”
“Sot your rotten kicking pox!”
Cried the Bertie Dumb.




Then the big molice pan
Rank Jamaica drum,
Wide at dunce, but grows with runts.
(Kate to strinkum. DUM.)

Yeesh.

This post has been percolating with me since I saw the video below. If you don’t have 5 minutes to watch, it’s essentially a series of very smart people pointing out that traditional western classroom schooling is no longer sufficient to prepare kids for the information and tech-dense world we live in.

I agree with and get excited by just about everything in it.

Although the vision and enthusiasm of the speakers is infectious, as I watch there’s a conservative voice in the back of my head that feels scared – provoked even. No bricks-and-mortar classroom?

That voice spoke up again when I followed the lead of a few friends and (although I normally avoid them like the plague) took a quiz. In my defense, it had a very important-sounding name: The Pew Research Center “How Millennial Are You” Quiz. I was entertained to see how poorly I scored (32), but what I remembered was the question “have you read a physical newspaper in the last 24 hours”. Skimming a paper in the lunchroom is a very different kind of reading than surfing and sharing links. I’m happy to include both in my day.

Lest it sound like I’m getting defensive, let me move on to the third thing that inspired this blog.

Apparently, some schools are starting to discourage teachers from posting hand-written signs – saying that they should be printing everything from computer – even in a kindergarten class.  This boggled my mind. Learning is all about rich and varied experiences. Do we want our kids to learn how to read English, or Times New Roman?

People type a lot now, I get it. Does that mean we should stop teaching kids to print?  We don’t question why an athlete in training does sit-ups,  even if their sport never involves competitively sitting up.

I once saw a great interview with a successful computer animator who was talking to students in Sheridan College’s animation program. He was exhorting them to absorb all kinds of 2-D art and to learn how to draw, because in his experience the students whose background was limited to video games, TV and film went nowhere . They couldn’t compete.

I’m not opposed to change. Society and education need changing. I’m just afraid of recklessly discarding things of value to make room for shiny new tools. New media literacy should be viewed as an important facet of education, not a complete replacement for other forms of reading and doing.  By keeping some old stand-bys in the mix, we’re not handicapping kids, we’re giving them a deeper toolkit for processing and synthesizing everything that is yet to come.

“In with the new” is great fun at a party, but when his loutish brother “Out with the old” shows up, things can get ugly.

I was watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and along with the constant stream of mocking commentary that accompanies any such viewing in our household, I felt a curious welling up of… what?!? National pride?

Yes, the VANOC managed to pull off a show that overcame the intense grinchiness I ususally maintain for that type of production, and actually had me reflecting on what a great place we live in.

Now before any Olympic grinches jump down my throat (I know, I know… I’m also getting a bit tired of hearing about them and we’ve got almost a week left to go) let me explain the real reason for this post. Today in the car, the good old CBC gave me two more reasons to be proud to be Canadian.

First: We’re rolling back libel laws to allow journalists (that includes bloggers, btw) greater freedom and protection when reporting on anything in the public interest.

This actually happened in December (see some details here) but I heard very little about it in the media. Considering how rarely we hear anything positive about state of the media, free speech and democracy, I think this is fantastic news. Basically, anyone reporting on an issue “of public interest” no longer has to meet the near impossible standards of court-endorsed truthiness that they had to under previous interpretations of the law in Canada.

Now, as long as you can prove you did your homework and made an informed assesment that something is true, you can say it in public without threat of prosecution. Here’s hoping this leads to more and better stories about our politicians, police, rich folk… anyone of a class that has been used to hiding from journalists behind the threat of libel suits.

Second: Our track record in foreign affairs isn’t perfect, but at least when we screw up, we do something about it. Ahmad El Maati El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was arrested in 2001 while in Damascus to attend his wedding. He was later transferred to Egypt, where he spent 26 months in prison. Today I heard this guy describe his experience being tortured. (See video link off this article.)

Am I dismayed that CSIS was playing sleazy with their foreign counterparts? Of course, but that’s what spy agencies do. The more important angle for me in this is that we live in a country where a) this kind of thing actually gets investigated; and b) we actually get to hear the results of the investigation in public.

So for all the crap we may get wrong (inaction on climate change, failing to fund education properly…) this country is still a fan-frickin-tastic place to live. I wonder if anyone at that Iacobucci press conference had their face painted?

I ended up dropping $12.62 in the store.*  On my way out of the store, I saw sandwich board-dude again. And thought, “that poor schmuck probably doesn’t make $12 an hour.”

I mentally retracted my snicker.

*For those of you who must know, a new litterbox scoop, a treat  for my at-home-sick better half, and a board game version of Banzai!).

Today at lunch I was gobsmacked by a picture in the freeps of a massive “clay pie” factory in Haiti. What completely floored me was that this extreme diet was not brought on by the devastation of the recent quake.  Apparently so many Haitians are so poor, and the island so under-resourced, that eating dirt (for all intents and purposes) has become a necessity, and even common. I couldn’t find the pic on lfpress.com so I googled it and the article I found was from 2008.

Wow.  We can spend millions on olympics and “saving” banks, but as a race we can’t be bothered to even keep ourselves fed.  I guess what really makes me mad is that the relative cost of “saving the world” is trivial. This commercial does a great job of illustrating the disparity of spending.

Even if we combined the costs of providing clean water, education, and medical care to the cost of feeding the world, it would still be a small fraction of what gets spent on war or hoarded by the rich.

About the only way to combat knowledge of that kind of injustice is to put it in perspective. Thanks to Nik & Melissa for pointing this one out to me. It’s not exactly a feelgood piece, but it beats the hell out of the feeling Sean Penn left me with.

Sleep well, fellow apes.

I had never known that, beyond the cool over-sized Lego people,  the box contained some great old catalogues.

Bam – nostalgia hit!

First, there was the coolness of seeing ads for Lego kits with single-digit catalog numbers (new sets are approaching the 10,000 mark in numbering).

Even funnier was seeing what I can actually remember being the aspirational technology of the Lego world back when I was 7 or 8.

That’s right, never mind your fancy-pants, newfangled, bluetooth-enabled programmable Lego Mindstorm Robots. Back in those days, I was drooling over the prospect of a 3-way motorized engine for my Lego… complete with a wireless wired remote control! (about 8 inches of wire, from the look of the picture).

I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. I think it started with an oncoming birthday and the realization that getting older means gaining an ever-larger pool of nostalgia to dip into.  Every day, the interwebs are making easier to dip into that pool. Chances are, you can look up a video, scan, or some kind of media to satisfy whatever memory you are trying to indulge. That instant access is undeniably satisfying.

I can’t help wondering, however, if that kind of universal access to is also somehow cheapening our experiences. I do worry that (both individually and culturally) as we gain bandwidth, we are losing storage capacity. Because, assuming there is no catastrophic global loss of digital information, we are really filling in all the nooks and crannies of that universally accessible universal library.  We’re not just talking about ubiquity of information, we’re talking about persistent ubiquity. How much care do we take to savour something that takes no effort to find?

Most of us have experienced the letdown of digging up a treasured memento (whether something as personal as a love letter or as common as Welcome Back Kotter) and finding that it doesn’t come close to measuring up to our memories of it. So what does this mean in an era where we may conceivably never lose access to all this ephemera in the first place?  How about the generation whose treasured memories and experiences are either posted online immediately, or are taking place online in the first place? How much are we outsourcing our memories to digital media? How many of the last 100 photos you took have you had printed in hardcopy? Any? How much is nostalgia (and memory in general) reliant on tactile, sensory or experiential elements?

I’m not saying this is simply negative, but it does feel a bit like we’re putting putting all our eggs in one basket. I’m pretty sure it’s one aspect of a fundamental change in the way we think and interact, and I’m not sure is a net positive for the human experience.

Of course, fretting about change and what the younger generation is nothing new.  I seem to remember reading something about it on the Onion one time…

On a scale of 1 to 100, say.

If you said “zero,” sorry, I don’t believe you.

Why would I say that? Because after years of questioning and challenging my own prejudices and attitudes, I’ve come to realize that I’m not likely ever going to be able to honestly answer that question with “zero.”

So what’s with that last couple of percentage points? Does that mean I’m a bigot?  Nope.  It means although even I’m very accepting of diversity in all its forms, even though I’m completely comfortable with my own sexuality, and even though I’m proud to know lots of wonderful people in the GLBT community, (including some good friends) I still have this deeply ingrained survival instinct that make me want be sure to include the standard disclaimer – “By the way, I’m straight!”

It’s sad, really. Our culture has so ingrained in me that being gay is bad, that even though about 98% of me is enlightened, getting rid of those last vestiges of fear and discomfort – that last one or two percent – is probably impossible.

What about you? Imagine you’re at work (or school) and someone says to you, “Did you hear that (NAME) is gay?” 

Play out the conversation in your head.

Did you put “the disclaimer” in your reply? Common examples might be:

• That’s ok, as long as he keeps it to himself.
• So what? She’s still our friend, whatever she does at home.
• It doesn’t matter to me. You wouldn’t even know.

It’s too bad how often people need to put that asterisk on their own statements, because if you have to end your statement with a “but” then you are sending the signal ”ignore the first part of what I said if it would cause us to argue.” Even if you are still a little bit uncomfortable about “the whole gay thing,” you shouldn’t need to apologize for being (mostly) OK with it.

My point is that in our culture and in our personal lives, it’s easier to get rid of the big, obvious signs of discrimination and hatred than it is to get rid of the little, insidious reminders of it. Even unintentionally, with those little language cues, we’re telling each other “it’s OK to keep saying it’s wrong to be gay.”

This brings me to my own quest to get to 0%.  A lot of my friends still use the phrase “That’s so Gay!” as a term of ridicule or disgust. Think it’s harmless? They are essentially saying “Gay is bad.” Imagine replacing the saying with “That’s so black” or “That’s so Female”.  Why do we let it slide? 

My challenge to myself, in honor of London Pride weekend, is to finally put my buddies on the spot. Several of these guys are dads, and I wonder, do they consider that phrase swearing? If not, I wonder if they have considered that their kids are listening to them say “Being gay is bad. Being gay is wrong. I don’t like gay.” 

On the off chance (probably higher than many parents ever want to think about) that one of their own kids could be gay, I wonder if they ever considered what it will be like for their child to have grown up hearing their own dad say “What you are is wrong.”

Well, that’s me off my high horse. Here’s hoping I’ve prompted some head-scratching, maybe a little debate, and not provoked fisticuffs.

Happy Pride, true believers!