Spring has Sprung

Ah, Spring. What surer signs of springtime in Toronto than an industrious bee gathering pollen from the blooming cherry trees in High Park, or the industrious squirrel feeding on its traditional food, the muffin wrapper?

Getting an autograph from 500 km away

A few days ago I attended a speech by the computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil, where he talked at length about his optimistic view of the future of humans and technology and how they'll merge within the next 30 years or so. Afterwards I bought a copy of his book The Singularity Is Near and got it autographed by him while having a brief chat. What was most amazing about all of that was the fact that he was in Indiana while I was in Toronto. Being able to give a speech (and take questions) remotely was not a big technological jump, but the book-signing was. It was done by the Long Pen, a device which lets an author (or anyone else) sign his/her name or any other written text at a remote terminal using a haptic pen, and it gets transmitted to another haptic pen at the receiving end which then copies the signature onto paper, or in this case a book. Very cool. There was also a two-way video connection so I could have a brief chat with him.

Kurzweil's parting words at the speech were that we try to hang on and stay alive another 15 years since after that point medical technology might allow us to live as long as we want. As I plan to do so I hope the future me, with mind expanded by machines and nanotech, gets a kick out of reading this.

Death of a Podcast

The death of one podcast is a crime, the death of millions a statistic, as Stalin once said. Thus the demise of one of my favorite and entertaining podcasts, the A-Bomb City Podcast, must be a grand tragedy. As the two podcasters involved described it, "Two Brits in Hiroshima laugh at history, literature, politics, music and life in Japan." which was a great range of topics. It was often (always?) crude, but also often witty and insightful, so it was in that great British comedy tradition a la Monty Python of being highbrow and lowbrow at the same time.

I'd like to think that I'm a better person after listening to their podcast and learning that the kestrel used to be referred to as "windfucker" in olden tymes, and how can anyone not feel expanded by knowledge like that? RIP.

Crow take-out

While I was driving yesterday and stopped at a red light, I happened to look up and see a crow fly overhead, carrying a huge, thick, french fry in its beak. Such examples of how humans and animals live in coexistence are very heartwarming, and it's good to see that crows really are such intelligent birds, feeding junk food to their young just like humans do.

Zero sum games and nationalism

I was listening to The Economist podcast today and really liked a point taken from one of the editorials in the print edition. Referring to the growing economy of China and the possibility that it'll one day replace the US as #1 in a number of economic categories, the point was being made that there is nothing wrong with being number 2, or 3, or 10, especially when economies are growing. Economics is not a zero sum game. One country's economic growth does not come at the expense of another's - in fact it's more likely that when one economy is growing, another will too as is the case of Japan's economy getting a boost from trade with China.

So I guess at the end of the day, whoever is #1 or any other number is more of an issue to chest-beating nationalists than to anyone else, so long as the cash keeps flowing and economies keep growing.

Bad Cover Version of Love



I recently came across this video of my favorite song by one of my favorite bands, Bad Cover Version by Pulp. What a great concept for a video and how obvious it is in hindsight.

Plus kudos to them for making a video of their song in which their song is not actually heard.


Filthy Lucre and Firepower

Earlier this week I was in Ottawa and spent an hour being wined and dined by a company I contract. Considering the tens of thousands of dollars I've thrown their way, two pints of Stella Artois and some overpriced appetizers ($6 for two shrimp, yummy!) was the least that they could do for me. I've never been too comfortable with the shmoozing side of doing business, but at least in this instance the people I was meeting were pretty reasonable and kept business talk out of the conversation.

Unrelated was a visit I made to Canada's annual defence and security exhibition, where much more higher staked shmoozing was going on. Admirals and Generals and biz people from several countries (plus myself) were checking out all the lovely displays of firearms, vehicles, models of aircraft and weapons systems, electronic systems, more firearms, night vision equipment, etc.

The social liberal in me was slightly aghast at such wanton displays of devices meant to kill and destroy, however that whinging pinko was beaten into silence by the combined forces of the gadget-freak in me (impressed by all the awesome videos of things blowin' up real good), and the realist in me, who knows that such weapons and systems are a necessity in this world, even without Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.