Just Differently Intelligent...

Free Trips to Toronto

Got this from Rannie on the GTA BloggersList:

Jetsgo - Online Booking is giving free seats to Toronto each weekend, from Ottawa, New York, and Montreal.

Blogging Presentation

May 9th I'm presenting on Blogs and Conceptual Firewalls at the Nexus Conference at UofT. If anyone's signed up for that conference, drop by to say hi!

Blogs and Weblogs: opportunities and conceptual firewalls
The tools that we create to communicate limit what can be said as well as offer new opportunities for expression. Information technology developers who seek create multilingual tools suffer under the often unconscious burden of the inherent cultural and language bias inherent in the Internet. As a result, many of the technologies we create to facilitate communication reproduce cultural norms, rather than challenge them. Considering the example of the newly emerging technologies surrounding weblogs (blogs) this presentation will outline the scope of the problem, and conceptual frameworks for challenging the hidden barriers to developing learning tools.

Sars Update

In case you've not heard. Toronto's SARS ban was lifted by the WHO yesterday. This is because a bunch of government types when to Geneva and complained. You can imagine how problematic this is. On all sides.

Barry Wellman's Sars Report (UPDATED)

[Barry said that I could post this. If you don't know Barry Wellman, for shame. Barry's the ranking d00d on Internet sociology, publisher of the major studies, editor of the major works (like Internet in Everyday Life), consultant to the sultans, yada yada. And an all around learning experience all packed into a single office at the corner of Spadina and College streets. He originally wrote this for the AoIR exec, because we're holding the AoIR conference here in the fall. Thought you might like a sober view of the situation.]

The SARS Situation in Toronto [Updated and Edited]

Barry Wellman, Tuesday, April 29, 2003

PREFACE

In the past few days, Bev Wellman and I have dined out in some lovely
restaurants, walked the streets in a nice spring day, and went shopping in
some normally crowded areas. In short: life as usual. We would not know
that there is a SARS epidemic in Toronto except if

(a) we tune in to the news media,
(b) didn't get concerned messages from friends, or
(c) passed by hospitals whose employees are masked.

(a) and (b) are instances of poor news reporting -- what is often called a
"media panic" -- although (c) is a real, but marginal concern.

In the beginning, we too were concerned. Now, as the facts and experience
accumulate, we are confident that SARS is both limited and contained.
Right now, I take SARS seriously but as a watching brief, not as a panic
or action item.

I am more concerned about the concerns of my friends and colleagues
elsewhere than about getting SARS myself. They've listened to CNN and
heard about the World Health Organization advisory, and they have
questions. (I address the now-rescinded WHO advisory at the end.)

To address the concerns of friends and colleagues, I've put together what
is known about SARS in Toronto, based on my observations, responsible
reporting (the Toronto Globe and Mail is the best
[http://www.globeandmail.com/]), and discussions with a friend at the
(quite professional) City of Toronto Department of Health. I think I got
things right, but of course, our information is developing (right now, for
the better). I take responsibility for what I say, but do want to
acknowledge the advice of Helena Fil, Emmanuel Koku, Monica Prijatelj, and
Beverly Wellman.

THE DISEASE

SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The U.S. Center for
Disease Control calls it an "atypical pneumonia". It's a disease of the
breathing system, and not of the nose, stomach, etc. When coupled with
fever (38C; 100.4F), the key indicators are dry coughing and shortness of
breath. Sneezing, stomach aches, etc. are more symptomatic of routine
colds or allergies.

SARS is probably a coronavirus, similar to a cold virus, although
obviously more serious. There has been some debate about this, as not all
cases seem to have the coronavirus.

It starts in the upper respiratory tract and then migrates to the lungs.

SARS may weaken in its impact as it passes through a population. This is
what Hong Kong experts report, and what Toronto may be experiencing. Thus
the first-hit in Toronto were hit hard, and died. Moreover, these two
initial cases each infected about 30 others. In social network analysis
terms, they were "hubs".

Only a small minority of cases are fatal. For a while, it looked like 4%.
I am sad to say, it is a bit higher in Toronto, about 8%. I caution that
these numbers are changing daily and subject to definitional issues as to
what cases are SARS or other forms of influenza, pneumonia, etc.

I believe that the majority of those who have died are health care
workers, from physicians to room cleaners, or their family members.

Given their risk, long hours and difficult working conditions (masked,
gowned and goggled), health care workers in Toronto are heroes.

Although I grieve for the people who died (and am distressed that good
protective and quarantining measures were not used early enough), I want
to emphasize that for the great majority of people who actually have SARS,
they experience an unpleasant pneumonia, get better, and recover fully.

The majority of the Toronto cases who have had SARS have been discharged
from the hospital and gone home as cured.

TRANSMISSION

Transmission apparently needs intimate contact. My reading of the
incidence accounts suggests that this means that two persons have to
breathe together in close contact. In practice, family members have given
SARS to each other, patients have given it to health care workers and to
other patients, and members of a closely-knit religious sect have passed
it around (one of them was a health care worker). You don't get SARS from
walking the streets, shopping or eating in restaurants. However, I have
stopped riding one densely packed streetcar (tram) line for a while. Now
that the scare is subsiding, I may resume soon. Fortunately, it is nice
weather for walking and bicycling.

SARS is spread through droplets from coughing. It is not a fine aerosol,
and it is not "in the air". It is direct transmission only.

It does last for 24 hours on handles, banisters, etc., but reportedly is
not actively infectious in that state. Nevertheless, we try to use gloves
and paper towels in public places, and we wash our hands a lot.

It seems that you have to be visibly ill to transmit it. Although SARS can
have a prolonged incubation period of up to ten days, the only
transmissions have happened when someone who already was coughing, etc.
transmitted it. This means that potential cases (and transmissions) are
easily identifiable. There are no "sleepers" wandering around who are
spreading SARS inadvertently.

All Toronto cases are traceable to the original woman who came back from
Hong Kong with it. She gave it to family members; she and they gave it to
health care workers and fellow patients, who passed it on in some cases.
Mistakes were made at the beginning: not enough isolation of those already
sick; not enough quarantining of those potentially infected. These
mistakes are not being made now.

These transmission details are important because they mean that SARS has
not gotten out to the general public. There is no SARS "in the community"
(to use the term of quite reliable Dr. Sheela Basrur, Toronto's Medical
Officer of Health). No new ones are springing up from unknown sources.
Anyone who might have been infected from the traceable cases is now under
strict quarantine.

NUMBERS

The cumulative number of "probable and suspected cases" is 265 on Friday,
April 25 2003. Of course, this number almost has to be increasing because
it is cumulative. However, it did go down by 10 between Thursday and
Friday because some cases were found not to be SARS, but other forms of
pneumonia, etc.

It is important to note that the actual number of cases is undoubtedly
lower than 265 because the medical authorities are quite properly being
overly cautious in defining all suspected cases as SARS. On Friday, April
25, there were 107 active cases in the greater Toronto area.

Indeed, the number of active cases is now decreasing, as quarantining has
worked and the spread has stopped.

The rate of new active cases of SARS is zero, or close to it.

I understand that more than half of those hospitalized have been
discharged.

A few more deaths are anticipated than the current number of 20 (as of
Sunday, April 27). The total might hit 25. These are people who already
are known, critically-ill cases. They are not new cases.

As in many medical situations, all but one of those who have died are
frail, elderly, or have had serious pre-existing medical conditions. The
others got sick, and then got better.

The greater Toronto area has a population of about 5 million.
265/5Million = 0.0053% of the population
107/5Million = 0.0021% of the population
25/5 Million = 0.0005% of the population.
This is Not the Black Death or the Plague, despite the alarmist reporting
of CNN, etc.

Think of it this way:
About 3 people per Week have been dying from SARS in Toronto.
Another one person per Week is murdered in Toronto.
Contrast this with a large American city, such as New York, Los Angeles or
Chicago, where at least 3 people per Day are murdered. As of yet, these
have not had SARS deaths. Do the math:
In Toronto, the death rate from SARS and murder are 4/Week
In Chicago, the death rate from SARS and murder are 21/Week, more
than Five times greater.
Yet people travel to these American cities all of the time, even though
their lives are at greater risk.

Moreover, SARS is not randomly distributed in the Toronto population. It
originally was confined to people (and their families) who had been in
Hong Kong. As they lived in one suburb (Scarborough), they went to
hospitals there, and that's where patients and health care workers got the
disease.

This means that SARS is generated through social networks and not through
random contact among strangers.

We do not know about any cases in the centre of Toronto -- where we live
and work, and where all the tourist and convention activities are. Yet,
this is the most crowded area of the city.

No one we know has SARS. Nor have we hard of anyone who knows someone who
has SARS. This is very epidemiologically clustered.

QUARANTINING

The best form of prevention has been quarantining. As a precaution, entire
schools, offices have been told to stay home because one person is
suspected of having contact. We are taking this seriously, and our
municipal health departments are reporting straight news. (Fortunately,
the health departments, and not the politicians, have been in charge.)

As of Friday, April 25, there were 663 people quarantined in the province
of Ontario, almost all in the greater Toronto area.

There have been even larger numbers quarantined in the past few weeks, for
example an entire elementary school and an entire high school. However,
when no one at these places got SARS during the potential incubation
period, the quarantine was lifted. Thus the number of people quarantined
is much larger than the number of people who will get SARS.

Quarantining is hard, because there is a symptom-free incubation period of
up to 10 days. Hence, people wonder why they are being told to stay home.

As Canadians are more collectively minded and less individualistic than
Americans, quarantining has been largely effective. (Where the Preamble to
the American Constitution has "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
as the national goals, the Canadian constitutional equivalent is "peace,
order and good government.")

Because quarantining cuts off livelihood of some people, compliance is
difficult, especially for people at the economic margins. Even a few
normally obedient Torontonians have broken quarantine, gone to work or
school. The province has just announced financial aid for the quarantined
needy; this should alleviate the temptation to sneak out to earn some
money.

Quarantining is principally enforced by making random phone calls to
people's homes.

A few Torontonians have been charged with violating quarantine and are
under more coercive control.

Toronto may -- and I think should -- go to "house arrest" bracelets.
Singapore has put webcams in quarantined homes and may use bracelets.

I go about my life as normal, except for more frequent hand washing and
using a paper towel to grab handles in washrooms.

Outside of the hospitals, I see only one person a day wearing a mask (out
of the 1,000 or more I encounter on the street, on public transit, at
work, and in restaurants).

Hospitals are a different story. All workers in them are masked and
gowned, with those in SARS areas being doubly protected.

Contact between the hospitals and the outside world is minimized. Routine
visits to doctors, non-emergency surgery, and visiting hospitalized
friends have all been severely curtailed. My medical researcher friends
now have their meetings in Starbucks.

Indeed, for the general public, the most serious current impact is that it
is harder to get medical treatment for anything else, because of these
preventative measures and because the system is concentrating on SARS. For
example, transplant operations have been postponed, and I have a routine
medical checkup postponed because my doctor's office is in a hospital.
This is more of a concern for residents than for visitors. However, with
the improving situation, hospital access should go back to normal soon.

THE OUTSIDE WORLD

The World Health Organization travel advisory of April 22 understandably
caused widespread concern. Paradoxically, it came just as the situation in
Toronto was coming under control. Having just heard (April 27) WHO head
Gro Brundtland interviewed, I understand where the WHO came from.
They are mandated to be concerned about epidemiological spread. They are
not really worried about people from developing countries, but are
concerned about a spread from Toronto to developing countries that do not
have good treatment and quarantine facilities. (Toronto, as a highly
multicultural city, has many links with many countries.)

However, the spread of disease is a worldwide concern about all illnesses,
and I think Toronto was unfairly singled out. Some WHO statements suggest
that they may have acted on out-of-date information, but I understand why
they were overly cautious to contain the spread of SARS. The WHO's
advisory was originally announced for 3 weeks. The good news is that it
was cancelled much sooner (April 29) as Toronto's evidence of containing
SARS was digested.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control is not nearly as alarmed (see
http://www.cdc.gov/travel/other/sars_can.htm). My analysis and the CDC's
are quite similar. (I developed mine independently.) On April 23, after
the WHO alert, they pointed out that there are no cases in the general
population, and that people should avoid hospitals or contact with
quarantined individuals. "SARS transmission in Toronto has been limited to
a small number of hospitals, households, and specific community settings."
CDC also recommends washing your hands frequently, which is just plain
good advice. Most importantly, CDC DOES NOT recommend avoiding Toronto or
that travellers from Toronto be shunned.

And then there is CNN cable news network. They spread the alarm on April
24, just as things were getting under control in Toronto. They don't
report news in perspective; they report events. They have pocket
calculators, Google and brains. They just don't appear to have ever used
them.

Many friends have asked me about our mayor, Mel Lastman, who embarrassed
us during a CNN interview on April 24. Mel has been embarrassing before.
He formerly headed a chain of discount appliance stores. He is retiring
soon, has a chronic illness, has been spending most of his time in
Florida, and has been on the job too long. Fortunately, he doesn't have
anything to do with dealing with SARS.

To sum up, SARS is real. Yet, it is contained. Residents and visitors are
extremely unlikely to get it. If they do, almost all will recover fully.
There are many other, more likely ways to die in big cities around the
world. I do have continuing concerns that SARS may continue to travel from
developing countries, but that is a problem that all cities would have to
worry about. New York, L.A. and London are as likely to be hit as Toronto.
Thanks to the Toronto experience (and expertise from other countries such
as Singapore), we all have a better understanding about how to deal with
it quickly, firmly and competently.

Anyone want a scanner? Trade for Beer

I just noticed that I have a scanner in the closet. It is a Microtek Slimscan C3. USB scanner. Not often used. Will trade for beer. It does NOT work with OSX, but works with many/most other operating systems. Check out their web site for a list of compatabilties. And I won't ship it. So, if you're not local, or wanting to pay shipping, no go. It is in original packaging.

I'm just busy ripping my apartment apart looking for stuff. And finding more than I knew was there, but not what I'm looking for.

"Dark" poetry

I edit poetry for The Harrow, a zine with neat design graphics. The goal is to provide extensive feedback and support for new authors, beyond the mere rejections. The content is sometimes uneven, but it is good practice for all invovled. Have a look and increase our hits. Or submit! The process is a blind review, so I won't know it is you until after a decision is made.

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane

Some folks don't have enough sense to read Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane on a minute by minute basis, so I'm driven to remind people to read it. Particularly don't forget to watch her No Adsl flash video.

She's not inevitably insane, by the way, she took a course.

A(o)IR: It never rains.

I heard about my conference proposal for AOIR Toronto this fall. My proposed paper "The Hegemony of ASCII: Rethinging Research into Online Communities in Light of the Deep Structures of the Internet." was ACCEPTED! And I'm also presenting on a blogging panel. I'm also doing the tech for the conference, and I was a conference reviewer. BUT the review process was blind, so I don't feel too bad. The bit that makes me happy is that I'm the only one at the conference giving a paper and doing a panel. Someone else is doing two panels. Apparently I wasn't suposed to put in two proposals. There are 367 out of 560 proposals accepted. I just wish I could remember what the panel was about... (Jason runs off to dig through his outgoing email. Found it. It is called "Broadening the Blog" chaired by Alexander Halavais, SUNY Buffalo)

Higher Educational Vampires

Just got a polite and tentative request from someone at the Times Higher Education Supplement for an article on my medieval vampires research. Though it seems everyone's getting them... well Elizabeth is as well. Could be fun. Never thought vampires were so smart, did you?

Dru's first online paid publication...

Professor Dru, founder and fiction editor of The Harrow (I'm poetry editor) just had her first paid publication at Strange Horizons: Pan de los Muertos.

Great work Dru!!!

A strange thought just came to mind...

Yuka and I are having our double mondo lattes, while persuing websites on Romania. Lots of pictures of sheep. Reminding Yuka that we needed to go back to Scotland. When we were there in 2001 (a b) we couldn't pet the sheep because of Hoof'n Mouth disease. Now it will be SARS. Everywhere Yuka goes, disease thwarts her ability to pet the local fauna. It is a plot!

Lobsters don't feel pain when boiled.

The Canadian government is proposing to remove octopus, squid, lobster and crab from the legal list of animals, and the Sentate is questioning if animals are able to feel pain according to this story in The Globe and Mail.

Of course it is the unversities and chicken farmers, according to the article, that oppose the bill that could tighten restrictions on cruelty to animals.

To me, it is sick to try and hide from what you do as a human. Killing anything causes trauma to the think killed. Even trees' "pain" has been measured. You just have to live with that, and be as responsible as you can, under the circumstances of being alive. Somehow the government wants some sort of legislation that makes it ok to kill things because they don't feel anything. Ugh.

Hmmm...

I've been marking papers. And the less said about that the better. But all is not dross. Luckily. I've been repairing a couple if iBooks, trying to get two working computers out of three non-working ones. Two of them belonged to my little sisters, Cats and Emily. Cats' is a total mess, keyboard broken, case cracked and apparent salt water damage. Emily's just had a broken keyboard and damaged battery. The third, I broke. Spilling wine onto it a couple of years ago and frying the mother board. It was up for sale cheap then, so it wasn't that much of a loss.

The best working computer is going as a gift to a teenager in a single parent family who can't afford a computer. Don't know who, friends of my dad's. Putting as much spit and polish into that one as I can, because there's no use getting something second hand that falls apart too quickly. Putting in a brand new battery, and all the ram, so that it will have a fighting chance. I was going to put in a larger harddrive, but I've taken iBooks apart before, and they're about the harddest things to take apart, and only slightly harder to put back in one piece. I think there are 33 screws required to get to the harddrive. Better if I don't.

The other computer is going into my resurrected mini audio studio, along with all my other derelect audio odds and ends. Poor yuka's ears.

Sars Cat

Don't miss the Sars Cat. And this is not on yuka's blog.

Red Whine

Last week, Yuka and I got all the way out to the far end of queen street last week, and came home with 22 liters of grape juice. Well, Friday we dumped it in a bucket, with some yeast. And after two days fermentation is making wonderful smells in the kitchen.

I'll keep you posted. This is the first time making wine with unconcentrated juice. It is twice the price, costing about $4 a liter, so it will be good to know if it is worth it.

The UGLY OCAD

As part of the design process, OCAD has chosen to move the CN-Tower, the worlds largest free standing structure, into its new atrium. It will be directly across the road from me. The picture below shows a crane moving the CN-Tower to its new home.

YURISAI (Lily Festival)

Director Sachi Hamano is coming to Toronto! with her movie YURISAI (Lily Festival) at the 13th Annual Toronto Lesbian + Gay Film + Video Festival (May 15-25, 2003)

You might find this film interesting. The director is a friend of Yuka's (my partner) though they've never met. Sachi actually decided to come to the toronto festival on the hopes of meeting Yuka, but that's the time we'll be in Romania. Sad. But if you have a chance to check out the movie, or tell others, please do. I saw her last movie, and it was wonderful.

Media understands what?

Interesting reminder of how big media can only think of media in terms of itself on boingboing.net. Nothing shocking. Culture reproducing itself, rather than trying to see what new opportunities technology have to offer.

More of the ugliest building in Toronto

My Dr. J Cam is set up on my balcony looking at OCAD while they put up the tower crane to build the most ugly chopstick and spaceship extenstion. Click on it for uptdating image.

How could a school of art and design be so tastelessly ugly? Well, it is Toronto.

Nice non-day

Was suposed to spend the day editing some text. But found out that that day was tomorrow. Today I was suposed to met Diana and Colin to talk about Colin's coming to UofT.

So, I ran and ran, first showering and running, and got up there moderately late. Colin seems like just one more thing to trouble ol conservative UofT. Hope he gets in. And hope he reads "Snowcrash" before he does. Pollen's only a distant hope.

Then met two of my students from KMD1000, going off with Stuart (one of them) for lunch at a Thai place off baldwin, and then to Moonbeam for strange tea and an interesting discussion regarding his paper... on privacy and some stranger notions of data.

Tonight, Yuka and I are planning the Vienna and Budapest sections of our trip. Elizabeth Miller's taken care of the other bits.

Tomorrow I edit.

April's E2K is online...

Rhonna the Peach just put up this months edition of E2K: a journal for the new literary paradigm, that she edits, and I sometimes am editor-at-large for. We've got a FlashFiction contest going on starting this month. $100 USD first prize! No entry charge. So check it out, if you can tell a story in 1000 words or less. And yes, I'm a judge. So don't tell me if you're sending something in.

Triangle and Project Achieve

I've got my web cam up, showing the iMac lab at OISE where the students of the Triangle program are working on their virtual spaces. Just click on the image, and you may have to reload the page to get it to update. It has no auto update mechanism at the moment. A new image is uploaded anytime people move.

Harvard Panics over SARS

In a Globe and Mail article on Sars there's the following line:

"News of the mass exposure emerged yesterday as Harvard University advised its faculty, staff and students not to travel to Toronto, or even Ontario, unless absolutely necessary."

Geee wizzzz. Does that mean I can't go outside because I live around Chinatown?

Sigh... how paranoid are people? It's not the bubonic plague!

The Strangest of Days

This was one of the strangest experiences. I went to my friend's house to tape pictures of his Egyptian Cat. It is an authentic Bastet cat from the 600 BCs, or so I'm told.

Just to hold it. To see the hieroglyphics on the sides and the scarab on the top. I have never touched anything that old.

Planning for Romania with Elizabeth Miller

Today Yuka and I went up to visit Elizabeth Miller (the coolest vampire scholar on the planet, if you didn't already know), to plan for the trip we three are planning next month to the Third World Congress on Dracula to be held in Dracula's home town of Sighisoara.

Elizabeth's giving the keynote speach, and I'm giving the second draft of my work on Walter Map and William of Newburgh called "Unearthing Medieval Vampire Stories in England: Fragments from De Nugis Curialium and Historia Rerum Anglicarum". I've found a number of new facts, found a couple of more books that reference Map and Newburgh, and have had a couple of errors politely corrected.

Yuka's checking out Romania on Japanese web pages, so she'll be able to fill us in on all the details. But I can't wait to just get over to Europe again, and run around like a tourist. In between presentations, of course. Elizabeth and I are also presenting in Budapest towards the end of the month at another conference, more info to follow.

Za night in Toronto...

This year has seen a paucity of parties at our house. But last night we had the chance to change all that. Julia D, Salmon, Simsim, EvaB, Billibus and Aideen graced our table for some Pizza. Kat! and Muddy sent their regrets. And I must have gotten Valdo's email addy wrong. Usually we go for strange stuff, like wild boar pizza. This time it was meat and fish free, focusing on goat cheese, pesto, sundried tomato/olive paste, peppers and asparagus Za. Sumputous desserts and wines were brought. And someone left a nice mustard coloured cartigan with roses on it. I think it was billibus' but he isn't telling.

Celebrating a life

Today is the anniversary of the passing of Yuka's beloved cat, cat-chan. Also known as Neko, or Debu-neko. And at 7:38 this morning, four small red birds flew onto our balcony, and spent 5 minutes in a mad cacaphony of churping, before running off for the rest of their day.

Cat-chan's favourite summer hobby was watching these little birds and making stupid cat sounds in their general direction.

more...

Shinchan

Some of you. Alright. All of you, with few exceptions, have no idea who crayon shinchan is. Unless you've been stuck in a salt mine with me, for long periods of time. Anyway, aside from various and sundry degrees and awards and publications, I claim to have the first Shinchan website on the internet. Put it up back in 1995 or 1996.
The key is the music. And one of my faves is Damme (Damme = hush hush, no, no way, don't even think about it, stop it, stupid).

I have more shinchan 'goods' than anyone in their right mind can reasonably expect to have. Do you want some?

FLASH FICTION

[I'm on the board of directors of Net Author, and will be one of the final judges this year, I think. I've also made up the contest submission form... so submit!!! And those are USD prizes.]

Net Author's Annual Flash Fiction Contest: 2003

Introducing Net Author's Third Annual Flash Fiction Contest! Regardless of whether flash fiction is your area of specialty, your secret passion, or you've never even tried your hand at the genre, now is the time to polish it up and send it in. We're accepting submissions through June 15; winners will be published in the July, August, September, and October issues of Net Author's *E2K*. Interested? Read on!

Title: Net Author's Annual Flash Fiction Contest
Contact: editor@netauthor.org (do not send your submissions to this address!)

The contest begins April 15, 2002 and runs through June 15, 2003.

1st Prize: $100
2nd Prize: $50
3rd and 4th Prizes: $25

Contest Rules:
* Stories must be 1,000 words or less.
* One entry per person.
* Every entry must have a title.
* Entry must have a word count.
* Entry must include a short, third-person bio.
* Entry must include the necessary contact information: writer's name, postal address, and email address.
* You'll find the link for the submission form on the index page of the April and May issues of *E2K*.
* Deadline: June 15, 2003

Winners will be announced in the July 15, 2003 issue of *E2K*.

Not sure what flash fiction is all about? You may want to check out Pam Casto's excellent article in the January 2002 issue of *E2K*: Flash Fiction: The Short-Short To Ultra-Short Story

Net Author is a non-profit, publicly-supported on-line community for writers. Net Author's *E2K* are paying markets. See our guidelines for details: http://www.netauthor.org/e2k (and follow the link for "Submission Guide").
******

Just outside the window...

We've been waking up to strange views out the window... and this one was worth sharing:

They're building the ugliest building on the planet across the road, as part of the OCAD's program of making fools of themselves. Here's the hole.

If you want to see the final product, here it is. I'll be gone by the time that monstrosity comes to fruition.

Two Towers... the flash movie(s)

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane is hosting her four part mini-flash-series: The Two Towers. If you have lots of time on your hands, don't miss it. The auteur has put her own particular touches on them, and they are true Catsy art.

It is unAmerican to provide web services to nonAmerican media sources. Oh, and technology is apolitical... right :)

Julia D sent this to me a couple of days ago. Akamai Cancels a Contract for Arabic Network's Site (registration required). I rant on enough about the cultural hegemony inherent in the actual structure, utilities, encoding and code of the internet. I sometimes forget to look at what's going on on the surface. In this case, it is unAmerican to provide web services to nonAmerican media sources.

[Full text of the article is below, in case you're worried about the registration fro NYT getting you dumped on an unAmerican government list]

Akamai Cancels a Contract for Arabic Network's Site

April 4, 2003
By WARREN ST. JOHN

In a move sure to complicate the efforts of Al Jazeera, the
Arabic news network, to get its English-language Web site
running, Akamai Technologies abruptly canceled a contract
on Wednesday to provide Web services for the site.

Employees at Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said
they were frustrated by the decision, though not entirely
surprised. "It has nothing to do with technical issues,"
said Joanne Tucker, the managing editor of the
English-language site. "It's nonstop political pressure on
these companies not to deal with us."

Akamai, based in Cambridge, Mass., would not comment on the
reason for the cancellation. But Jeff Young, a company
spokesman, issued a statement confirming that Akamai would
no longer do business with Al Jazeera.

"Akamai worked briefly this week with Al Jazeera to
understand the issues they are having distributing their
Web sites," he said. "We ultimately decided not to continue
a customer relationship with Al Jazeera, and we are not
going to be providing them our services."

The English version of Al Jazeera's Web site was shut by
hackers roughly 12 hours after it went online on March 25.
For a time, Web users trying to gain access were directed
to a Web page bearing an American flag. Akamai, whose
clients include MSNBC and CNN, maintains a broad network of
servers that provide protection from hacking attempts. It
was for that reason, Ms. Tucker said, that Al Jazeera hired
the company.

"Basically this was our answer to the hacking that has been
nonstop and pretty aggressive," she said. "We had a
done-and-dusted deal on March 28. Then yesterday, we get a
letter from them terminating the contract."

Akamai's decision is one in a series of headaches for Al
Jazeera since the start of the war. Defense Department
officials criticized the network for showing images of dead
and captured American soldiers. After that episode, the
network's American financial correspondents were banned
from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the
Nasdaq. On Wednesday, Iraqi officials expelled one Jazeera
correspondent from Baghdad and barred another from
reporting there. American officials have also accused the
network of unduly emphasizing civilian casualties in Iraq.

Al Jazeera contends that much of the traffic that shut
down its site was from Web users simply curious about its
coverage. The search engine Lycos reported yesterday that
"Al Jazeera" was its most-searched-for term last week.

Ms. Tucker said that Al Jazeera hoped to have its English
site up within 24 hours, but that without Akamai's many
servers, the site would be more vulnerable to hacking
attempts.

The site went live just after 7 p.m. last night.

"It
doesn't derail us," she said. "We can withstand the hacking
up to a point, but if they focus it all on one server it
would put a lot of pressure on that server.

"We hope that won't be the case," she added. "We're working
on it all the time."

Ms. Tucker called the hacking attempts "pathetic." "It's a
narrow, pro-censorship attempt to silence a news site," she
said.

This is not the first time that Akamai has had to deal
first-hand with tensions between the Arab world and the
United States. The company's co-founder and chief
technology officer, Daniel Lewin, 31, was on American
Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001, when the plane
crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/technology/04WEB.html?ex=1050593603&ei=1&en=9e9846594854ea35

HOW TO ADVERTISE

Accepted!

Just got the word that my paper "Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices to Challenge Surveillance" (with Steve Mann and Barry Wellman)(PDF) as been accepted by Surveillance & Society! With some minor modifications. And with some great reviewer comments. It is worth it when you finally find a forum that is interested in what you're doing.

Urbane Legends

Another strange story passed on by Rannie from The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century: "What happened to me and the new girl (or, "The girl who cried Webmaster")"

Why is everything we read on line believed so uncritically? I'm sympathetic, but just plain not shocked. What shocks me is how people may be turned off something like blogging because it mirrors real life.

Good Morning Dr Snow!

How does the hyper-educated male deal with stress? Meditation? Conspicuous consumption? Acute Alcoholism? Peeler bars? No. None of those tried and true methods. We get "Upper Peridontal Appliances" also known as teeth guards. The goal is to ensure that we don't grind our teeth when we sleep. Thus we are not stressed out by having stumps for molars. And stress is reduced.

And our health plan covers it 100%. And that's so special that somehow the fact that 100% coverage means that we still have to pay $5.32 of the total cost. What kind of math is that? It doesn't matter? Cause I'm so low stress now.

New Draft of Vampire Paper

I just uploaded a draft of Unearthing Medieval Vampire Stories in England: Fragments from De Nugis Curialium and Historia Rerum Anglicarum as an RTF file if anyone's interested in reading it and giving me any feedback. There are some bits that I have to add... like about Varma's library and McNally's book A Clutch of Vampires that I've not been able to track down yet. And I want to make it sound a bit less stuffy. Anyway, all comments appreciated.

penetrating moral certitude

Richard Bennett's Omphalos: notes: abc new's article Another human shield bites it in Israel. I like his wit: "ABCNEWS.com reports that another human shield was killed by the Israeli military after jumping in front of some Palestinian terrorists, and fellow shields are shocked that the soldiers fired even though the shield was well-marked. Apparently, the Israelis use Kryptonite bullets capable of penetrating moral certitude."

what is it good for...

I was reading a post on Joi's blog about blogs and googlewashing and whatnot, and had a thought...

The funny thing about blogs is their lack of historicity in the minds of so many people. Blogs are just the confluence of a bunch of odds and ends with about as much great earth shattering newness as, say, DOS or the html/www was. Sure, they turned the world on its collective head, not because it was doing something special, but because it wasn't. DOS was lobotomized Unix. Html lobotomized SGML. Blogs just plain lobotomized *.

As with all killer apps like this, the deal is that they don't stretch anyone's paradigms, or challenge anyone's cosmologies, so they can become ubiquitous... be adopted by the treadmill of the pundits who make up the rolling wave of the A-lists, and in the end, not cause much change to the way things are at all.

It doesn't mean that they're not useful, valuable or fun. Just that they're not much more than that.

I am always suspicious of anyone who gets the notion into their head that they've come up with a solution to a problem. Not that I don't want to hang out with them, or be their friend, but unless you realize that solutions create problems, not solve them, I gotta wonder what you're smoking.

Arun and the market

Arun Blake, my buddy from Undergrad residence days (1982-1984) came to town today for a short visit. He was in India for the month that I was in Japan, and is heading back to Montreal soon. He's a photographer with an upcoming show in Montreal next month, and a show in Bombay this november. And he wants me to come and help. So, the deal is to start looking for funding. Something I'm good at.

The show is including pictures that were taken when Arun and I went to Jamacia back in '84 or 5. I went down with his family, and stayed with his grandmother. She was, at the time, the oldest woman in the villiage, and it was great to sort of have that umbrella of staying with them. I rented a motorbike one day, and drove arun and I around half the country, up into the mountains and through the hills. I got some amazing photos then, but nothing that I've ever used. I'm looking forward to seeing arun's.

With Yuka, we went down to St Lawrence Market this morning to stock up on sausages and salmon and 7 grain breads and all that. Which is what I'm turning my attention to now, after having had a joyful afternoon fighting with the tax gods. I seem to be praying to the wrong one.

WarBlogs... And Hopefully Peace Blogs

TIME.com: Best Of The War Blogs -- Apr. 07, 2003 is a neat article. Caught it thanks to "robert m. tynes" on the aoir.org list.

I've had four separate CBC producers contact me about warblogging, but it doesn't seem I'll make it to the radio this time. There's a lot of interest in students who are warblogging. I mentioned JuliaD to them as well. Julia told me that Salam Pax's dear_raed.blogspot.com is no longer being updates. No doubt because of the lack of electricity in Bagdad.

Blogs will never be the same again.

Driving Miss Salmon

This is a picture that I took about 5am somewhere outside of Texas, when Katherine and I were driving to Austin last month. It is the only picture of us together the entire trip, I think. Driving at night is such a beautiful thing.

Painting with Bob

Here's a small couple of pages I made up for our new friend bob. Bob paints. Bob paints well. See Bob's paintings. Buy Bob's painting. See Bob buy Jason a beer or two for helping him sell paintings.

Your morning smile...

Yes, yuka found a place selling nice lids for cats.

Success... the Triangle Project workshop will go on!

For the last three years, I've had the opportunity to run a month long workshop on gender and identity using our Project Achieve CVE for the Triangle project. Triangle is Canada's only queer secondary school program. I've had wonderful help over the years from a variety of people, including Katherine Parish (salmon) and Rochelle Mazar (hildegarde), but this year I'm doing it alone. Well, not quite, for the past 6 weeks Kat and Muddy have been visiting the Triangle classroom to prep the students. Thanks Kat and Muddy!

This year we had a problem accessing lab space on campus, and we're planning to start next week. Panic time. But at the last minute Tony G at OISE offered us space for half the workshop period that we were having trouble getting space for. Thanks Tony!!! And Professor Suzanne Hidi who is our faculty host there. For the rest of the period we're using the Unversity College labs, thanks to Professor Hilary Cuningham who's our faculty host for Undergrad. Since I'm only teaching graduate courses, I don't count in this context, and I'd have to rent lab space. Isn't collaboration wonderful!!!

iClone!!!! This is the greatest!

Iclone

ENGLISH
iClone is able to brings a new Mac computer on your desktop.
When you use it, it analyzes your Mac and duplicates it in a few seconds !

It is an exclusive process and a new way of manufacturing computers.

If you do not have a rather powerful computer,
go in your neighbor or friend for cloner his more powerful computer.
iClone does not make a copy of the content of the hard disk.
It clone only the hardware of your computer.

Ideal for all Mac users, iClone will make it possible for Apple
to increase his market shares !

The retailers of hardware will be able to finally devote themselves
to sell service.

Just download the application and follow the indications !