Chuck Norris for President

...geologist, economist, American patriot. 'Nuff said.

Doors Open Toronto

Here's a map of the various locations I plan to (attempt to) hit this weekend during this year's Doors Open Toronto:


View Larger Map

This year, the City has put together a very useful, searchable database of participating buildings.

ITS PEANUT BUTTER WASHINGTON!

ITS PEANUT BUTTER WASHINGTON!
Originally uploaded by Joe D!

Great, thanks Cory, now that song will be stuck in my head all day.

See also John Waters Jackson, Teenage Mutant Ninja Lincoln, 300 Jackson.

More great currency refacings here, also in slideshow form.

Un. Be. Leavable.

All the way through these latest tortured negotiations, I managed to find a way to empathize with the plight of the TTC's unionized workforce. I've been pro-union all my life, I'm in a public sector union myself, I rely on the TTC every single day of the week, and I know that most of the TTC's foibles cannot rationally be laid at the (supposedly vastly overpaid) union's feet.

Strikes suck, sure, but they're a last resort to which freely associated workers have a legal right in the event that structured negotiations break down. So, my wife got her hands on a servicable bicycle, and I psyched myself up for an hour-and-a-half walk to work if necessary. If my colleagues and I can use the threat of withdrawing our labour to win better wages and working conditions, so can the ATU. Fair's fair, solidarity forever, etc., etc...

I wanted to sing hosannas to the good and helpful angels on high when, as of last Sunday evening, it seemed as though Kinnear et al. managed to bring home the bacon for their members while avoiding both egregious concessions and unconscionable demands from the employer. Things seemed well-settled, especially with the controversial GTA clause in place to keep our transit workers the (marginally) best-paid bunch in the region. The contract was still 'tentative', sure, but at least we've got that genuinely helpful 48-hour good-faith notice period in case the membership rejects the new deal.

But no. As Steve Munro deftly put it:

[ATU] Local 113 has blown its relationship with the most pro-labour Commission and Council they could hope to have across the bargaining table. From here on, who can trust their signature on a contract?

With virtually no notice and well after most reasonable people stop monitoring the news on a Friday evening, it was announced that 65% of voting ATU members torpedoed the contact and that a strike had been called for the next morning. Supposedly the maintenance workers -- a minority of members -- were unhappy with the deal, and apparently enough others voted in sympathy to tip the balance over to rejection.

Yes, it's better for most (non-TTC) workers for this to go down on a Saturday rather than a Monday; and, yes, there's a good chance that Queen's Park can force this to arbitration before the start of the standard work week so long as the pro-union party sees fit to refrain from availing itself of the various applicable procedural delays Still, it absolutely did not have to be this way and I see no one else to blame but ATU 113's leadership.

It now seems that essential service designation and permanent binding arbitration is the only option. On balance this will probably benefit the ATU 113 membership (as such arrangements usually do) but this was a ridiculously self-destructive path to arrive at that result. It's been an awfully long time since the TTC's workers had any sympathy from the wider population of the City, but it now seems that all but the most militantly radical unionists will have to distance themselves from this kind of behaviour in order to salvage whatever credibility the movement might retain going forward. Clumsy, purely self-interested shenanigans such as these are exactly the opposite of what we need with so dire an economic outlook on the horizon.

Photo credit: "Midnight TTC Strike..." by Flickr user Jason Michael.

Surveillance Society™, you say?

CCTV Smart Car, London, UK 3.JPG
Originally uploaded by gruntzooki

Caught this via Cory Doctorow's Flickr stream.

The tailgate of this Smart car in Islington municipal livery reads: "CCTV Mobile Enforcement Vehicle".

I would think a better balance could have been struck between euphemistic effect and the acronym-friendliness in naming. Telescreen Mobile Enforcement Vehicle, more like... all it lacks is a 52" plasma screen mounted to the rear windshield.

By the time the Olympics comes around, London may well end up just as prepared as Bejing apparently aims to be.

Urban crime, suburban crime

Police warn woman of sexual predator in downtown area [680 News] :

Investigators said a man, who identified himself as "Steve," approached a woman in the Bloor Street and Spadina Road area last week, claiming to be [...] working on a photo collage.

Police said he asked the woman to pose for a picture and then led her into an alleyway, where she was sexually assaulted.

Although the incident in the story linked above took place immediately adjacent to the University of Toronto (it's described as having happened around Bloor & Spadina) the headline refers to the nebulous "downtown" and the University of Toronto doesn't rate a mention in article itself. It strikes me that, had a similar assault occurred at Keele & Steeles, the headline would refer specifically to York University.

When we lived in North York, it wasn't uncommon to hear reports of sexual assaults in and around York at least twice a month. I presumed that the high concentration of women in the area accounted for this in combination with the relative lack of street life in the surrounding neighbourhood (hence fewer "eyes on the street"). Still, I wondered why the higher student population and potentially emboldening anonymity of downtown crowds didn't seem to produce a corresponding number of assaults around the U of T's St. George Campus. It stands to reason that a great many assaults must take place there, too, but few seem to get high-profile coverage.

Perhaps crimes there are attributed to the well-known risks of "downtown" life, whereas assaults in a quasi-suburban setting like York seem unusual and get coverage as shocking "campus" crime?

Feature request

Apple should change the iTunes interface so that the iPod Capacity visualization can optionally distinguish between music, audiobooks, and podcasts rather than lumping them all together as 'audio' like this:


I want to ration across these three types of audio, but this doesn't provide sufficiently granular information and it feels like a hassle to actually dig into my library to assess their relative storage burden.

I suppose that if I had much video on my iPod I'd applicate the simplicity, as this might clutter up the lovely gradients...

Winter-pounded pavement

Pothole season 'worst ever' - "Mending the city's battered streets amid the fickle cycle of freeze-and-thaw that always accompanies our annual pre-spring tease – snow, sun, rain, more snow – has always been a battle. This year, it's war..." [Toronto Star]

I can't speak for other parts of the city, but the season has not been at all kind to my narrow side street. Evidence?

Thankfully, the sidewalks are pristine (and besides, I generally travel underground).

Oh, craigslist...

...will you ever cease to amaze and amuse?

Hitting pay dirt with posts like this really does make all those hours of fruitless boredom-surfing worthwhile.

In case it gets pulled down, I'll reproduce the post below:

toronto craigslist > city of toronto > etcetera jobs

Diploma maker WANTED

---

Reply to: job-615319462@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-03-22, 8:51PM EDT


If you have the ability to make diploma/degrees - please contact with samples.

Gigabytes of gigs

Today I discovered that Last.fm will let you use RSS or, better still, a dynamically updated Google Calendar file to pull down a list of concerts your friends say they are attending. From your dashboard page, just pick the events tab and look for the drop-downs on to the right.

I already use Last.fm to find interesting new music based on the listening habits of my more musicologically gifted acquaintances (you may or may not know who you are). Now I will have perfect awareness of all the cool shows I won't seeing.

Recommended events selected based on your music preferences, as well as events you yourself will be attending, are also available in this way.

Of storms and subways

Why do so many occasional transit riders hate the TTC so much? Because they bring the system to it's knees, clogging up the subway by riding en masse on bad-weather days like this past Wednesday rather than dig out their outdoor-parked cars to face a slippery drive to work. The foul-weather ridership bump leads to serious crush conditions, and the resulting experience sucks for everyone. These people assume that rush-hour conditions on the TTC are always so horrendous, which further validates their normal preference for driving.

By way of anecdotal evidence, on the morning after Tuesday's snow storm my usual 15-30 minute morning trip took about 85 minutes-- a full 60 of which were spent twiddling my thumbs on Chester station's Westbound platform as least 10 fully loaded trains passed before I managed to shoehorn myself into one. Once I did, though, it was smooth (if cramped and awkward) sailing. Normally half an hour early, I ended up being more than half an hour late.

On most days, living in Riverdale near Chester is great for someone who works downtown; however, since it's one of the last few stations before the massive offload at Bloor/Yonge, the more riders there are coming in from points East, the more difficult it is to actually get moving in the first place.

If only there were more ridership, some say, the added buy-in from voters would make it easier for politicians to push for system expansion. Unforntunately, extending the existing subway further into Scarborough, Vaughan, Etobicoke or Mississauga (or continuing to add buses to suburban surface routes) might only make things worse, for, as a wise man recently wrote in the Toronto Star, "When more people get on the subways at Kipling and Kennedy, there will be longer waits for subways at every station in between."

Too true. I guess what we need is to compliment higher ridership with more capacity on trunk routes, but a new East/West (or North/South) subway line is probably not in the cards.

Photo credit: "Subway" (with permission) by Flickr user Jeff Wyonch

Lines sure to win any argument

Marry Him! - "...if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous." [Atlantic Monthly]

The above being, here, in support of the following thesis:

In practice, my married friends with kids don’t spend that much time with their husbands anyway (between work and child care), and in many cases, their biggest complaint seems to be that they never see each other. So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?

Photo credit: "Mirror" (with permission) by Flickr user TheGiantVermin

Fluxx: not teh Suxx

I am generally very, very suspicious of gimmicky card games. In the past, these suspicions have generally proven well-founded; however, Fluxx -- "the card game of ever-changing rules" -- is really, really great.

Having slept on it, I have decided that I enjoyed the game for at least one of the following two reasons.

1. At the outset, the rules are extremely simple: draw 1 card, play 1 card. As the game progresses, new rules (e.g. draw 4, play 3, play all, hand limit 2) are added by players until the game becomes exceedingly complex.

2. I won all but one of the games I played against Amy, which is awfully unusual.

Also, there is a variation available called Zombie Fluxx. As you know, everything good is better with zombies.

Photo credit: "Fluxx" (Creative Commons) by Flickr user Plutor.

Eee Gads! I'm back...

The lack of recent substantive post-age here is due mostly to a PC access rationing plan instituted in my household after the untimely death of our 2nd desktop computer last year. As a result -- and, for the first time since age 14 or so -- I've had to 'share' our lone remaining desktop.

Balance was temporarily restored to the force by bringing my old skeezy laptop out of retirement, but it reverted to its overheating-and-crashing routine once the temperature dropped outside (and the furnace began blasting inside).

But fret not, ye (seven) loyal readers! An ultra-cheap laptop subnotebook, in the form of Asus' Eee PC, has arrived to save the day. Twice the computers means... well, i'm not sure what it means. Anyway, I'm going to try to blog more in the coming weeks.

Photo credit: "mason likes the eeepc" (Creatve Commons) by Flickr user Matt Westervelt

Lately listening | last.fm

Top 10 last week: Radiohead, Saul Williams, The Mountain Goats, The Tragically Hip, Dropkick Murphys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Xavier Rudd, The Fiery Furnaces, Hayden, Ronald Jenkees [...]

Lately listening | last.fm

Top 10 last week: The Tragically Hip, The Mountain Goats, Radiohead, Daft Punk, C'mon, Regina Spektor, Mogwai, The White Stripes, Neil Young, Amy Winehouse [...]

Enumerate this!

I think I'm fated to never, ever be on the voters list for a provincial election.

Last time, I had to add myself to the voters list at the returning office because I was a student living away from home. The election prior to that one was the first since I had turned 18, so I had to add myself to the voters list at the returning office.

This time I thought I was finally set. Sure, we just moved to a new apartment in a new riding last month; however, just before we moved, a pair of revising agents from Elections Ontario knocked on our door and took down our new address information.

That was handy, we thought.

In mid-September, when Notice of Registration cards were sent out, we got one -- for our old address, forwarded to our new address by Canada Post.

Well, whatever, it takes time to update databases and so forth, right? I'm sure we'll be on the list at the polling station. Without a registration card, we'll just need two pieces of ID instead of one.

Today, I voted in advance at the returning office. I wasn't on the list. I explained that I had expected to be, as my wife and I had been "revised" weeks ago. Aghast, the poll worker insisted that I must have been scammed, because "we don't do that any more".

So, once again, I had to twiddle my thumbs while a kindly older gentleman filled out a form and had me sign a declaration saying that I am indeed who I indeed am. Again.

I was pissed when they stopped ennumerating the whole province to focus on high turnover areas like new subdivisions and high-rise apartment blocks. But I suppose that if the fractional revision that's still undertaken is this useless, they might as well not bother at all.

del.icio.us

Something I should have done long ago is migrate my miscellaneous link memos from this blog to a purpose-built bookmarking web application such as delicious.

Today, I did.

From now on, I'll stick to original commentary and blah blah blah posts here; delicious, on the other hand, will be the repository for news articles and websites that have caught my eye but which have not inspired me to belt out any particular missive.

It's getting hot in here

Just as a cool snap hits, this story about extreme heat came to my attention:

Air-conditioning fees probed [London Free Press]

Suzanne Young, 49, who couldn't afford a $50 monthly fee to run an air-conditioner was found dead earlier this month in her sweltering apartment. Another Sarnia resident, Stanley Scott, 58, was found dead in his basement apartment three days later.

Bradley had asked [Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, John] Gerretsen to protect tenants from being gouged by landlords for extra air conditioning fees.

In a reply, Gerretsen said he has asked ministry staff to consider changes to legislation to help residents remain cool in their rental housing during the summer. [read more]

Our current building has the same fee (a generic $50/month fee for 'large applicances'), but I know for a fact that it's not levied on everyone. It would be nice if the law acknowledged the necessity of climate control - or at least the depravity of denying it to those at risk.

Pet saver defends his actions - "Tre Smith, an animal cruelty investigator for the Toronto Humane Society and former mall security guard, is not allowed to investigate animal cruelty complaints pending an investigation in which he handcuffed the owner of the dog to a car." [Toronto Star]

Ow, my breathing!

Office printers 'are health risk' - "Almost one-third were found to emit ultra-tiny particles of toner-like material, so small that they can infiltrate the lungs and cause a range of health problems from respiratory irritation to more chronic illnesses." [BBC via Gizmodo]

Now it's all coming together: four straight years of 15+ hours per week spent working in a small and poorly ventilated room full of laser printers that chugged away non-stop the whole time, and the periodic 7-to-10 week cases of bronchitis that just wouldn't go away and which disappeared completely when I left university. It certainly makes a fella' think.

Great jorb, Toronto council

Best one-liner on this week's land transfer tax fiasco: "The same business groups who wanted Queen’s Park to give Toronto more taxing powers screamed like the well-fattened pigs they are when Toronto actually tried to exercise them." [Steve Munro]

Spy Package

"A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system." [Artist via BoingBoing]

Canadian ZENN's electric car

Toronto Company Has Electric Car But Our Government Won't Let Them Sell It - "Although the car is now available for sale in 48 US States, no Canadian government has approved it for sale in Canada. In fact, Queens Park refused to even entertain the idea until Al Gore cornered Dalton McGuinty earlier this year and insisted that he make it happen." [BlogTO]