Going west

Air travel is really quite astounding. In the wee hours of the morning of Friday, I hopped on a plane bound for Vancouver and arrived at my destination before the start of the business day. Some people have jitters about flying but not I. Get on ((No hop ons, though)) and, after zipping through the air in a flying Pringles can, step into an new airport that is at once familiar and foreign.
Continue reading “Going west”

It's not your limits that define you

“Peter Rabbit is this stupid book about this stupid rabbit who steals vegetables from other peoples’ gardens. 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82…” — Lucy, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown

It’s not your limits that define you but your attitudes towards them. While I could be writing about physical or mental limitations, my blog post this week is about one that almost everyone growing up in North America has faced: word limits.
Continue reading “It's not your limits that define you”

Who wants to buy tonight's test?

“Who wants to buy tonight’s test?” And what would you do if you heard someone say this? Oh, and if your answer is, “Raise my hand and say ‘I'”, please stop reading and go lick a lamppost. I was faced with precisely this dilemma three to four weeks ago. When I heard that uttered, I was at one of the University of Toronto’s suburban campuses that I shall not name, but only state that my high school, the University of Toronto Schools, is often mistaken for said campus.
Continue reading “Who wants to buy tonight's test?”

Schmidt's on in China (and Hollywood)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt opposes new US copyright laws that requires ISPs to remove offending URLs from the Internet on the grounds that this is censorship. Would he say the same thing if someone leaked Google’s search algorithm(s) onto the Internet? Maybe not, considering Google’s support of censorship in China — at least until they were the target of cyber attacks had a change of heart.

In an ironic twist, he also supports the rights of Hollywood to fight against pirates saying, “Their business models are threatened by theft”. Why ironic? Last time I checked, large swathes of Google are powered by copyright violations. Hello, YouTube! Or even some of its digitization projects.

Edit: This post is short, but tangentially related to a long paper I’m writing that I hope will be interesting. Fingers crossed!

Life on a shoestring: Part III — Food

No, this is not a post about eating peanut butter and bread or becoming a vegan or freegan to save money. This was supposed to be a longer piece, but… well…

Canada, as a whole, is awash in food. Not only are we facing an obesity epidemic, but we have the luxury of eating more food just so that we can or ought to go burn it off at the gym. Yes, many of us are quite sedentary, but for those of us that aren’t, if you had to limit your daily physical energy expenditure to 500 “leisure” calories, what would you use them for? Taking a walk? Playing an instrument?

Trick or Treat, Mayor Ford!

I wish a large number of people would dress up as Marg Delahunty ((Would that make her Marg Delahaunty?)), Princess Warrior, and go trick or treating at the Mayor’s house. Those not wanting to go the whole nine yards could grab a video camera and film the ordeal or drive a black SUV carrying the faux camera crews and Princess Warriors.

I love pranks.

Life on a shoestring: Part II — Pedal for your Power

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles. — Thomas Edison

I recall going to a science centre as a child and seeing a stationary bike hooked up to a generator and lightbulb. Museum patrons could do a bit of cycling and watch as the light burned brightly. Nowadays, cycling powers exercise bikes’ onboard computers and “regular” bikes can be hooked up to generators at the cost of a few hundred dollars. Now, before I continue, I must stress that the thought experiment proposed should remain as such — a thought experiment — and no more. It would likely fail on both an economic and environmental basis in the context discussed.

Continue reading “Life on a shoestring: Part II — Pedal for your Power”

Life on a shoestring: Part I — "Friends"

Dunbar’s number is the name given to a theoretical limit on the number of people one can maintain long-term stable relationships. This number has previously been pegged at values around one or two hundred. In this era of social networking, given that the number of on-line “friends” we have can run into several hundred if not thousands, it’s easy to believe that technology, through external cognition, has helped us overcome cognitive limits imposed by the zombie food sloshing around our skulls. Except it probably hasn’t.

Continue reading “Life on a shoestring: Part I — "Friends"”

Brain on autopilot or in "the zone"?

The notion of “flow”, also known colloquially as being “in the zone”, is a state where one just breezes through the task at hand and one is fully focused on the task as subjective time distorts. Part of  sports psychology deals with training athletes to get into the zone. One thing that athletes are told to do is ignore the manual details of the sport and focus on their goals. For example, professional golfers perform better when they focus on putting that little white ball in the cup and ignore their swing.

Continue reading “Brain on autopilot or in "the zone"?”