Just Differently Intelligent...

BlogSpam will die... and other stories...

Just about to install anti-blogspam scode to see how it works.

But on a better note, it has be a culinary feast over the past few days... starting with dinner this week at KAT!'s pad, after we saw LotR: RotK. Fresh fried calamari and shrimp, and veggies steamed in paper. And of course Mota, the cat who left us to live with KAT! and Muddy, was there and still appreciated us. Pictures to follow.

Next night it was dinner at Le Select bistro. We let J-J who 'pretends' to own the place, but apparently really just plays in the wine cellar, choose an amazing wine that we could afford. The wine's unavailable in Toronto, but when it comes in next J-J said he'd email me. And that's tough since they are reputed to have the best cellar in Toronto with wines up to $2500 a bottle. Dinner was compliments of my sister Kelly as a christmas present.

And last night Arun was in town so we could price out a computer for him. We were just going to have leftovers at home, but since I'd defrosted some of the dough I made up last week, I thought we'd have a small pizza along side the odds and sods. It was amazing! Dumb luck, but the dough worked perfectly, transfirred from the wooden tray to the hot tile in the oven... covered with tomato sauce, tomatos, green onions, greek olives, ground beef, black pepper, orange peppers, goat cheddar and goat feta. Drooool.

Preparing for kmd2003 tomorrow night. Looking forward to it.

Happy Winter Solstice

And a cool Yule.

Not being someone who practices any of the major world religions, even the newest one of crass commercialism, I don't really go for celebrating christmas. I didn't like it much as a kid either. Too many potentials for letdown and despair.December 25 is usually just a wonderfully quiet day for Yuka and me. We usually walk about downtown, find the odd restaurant open, see a movie, just spend time quietly together. Nice, quiet and peaceful. Well, I guess we're celebrating it the way Christians should, which would be great if it were. That said, we both love presents. Giving them more than getting. I'll meet sMom Cheryl my little sisters Cats and Emmers when they're back from christmas in Florida with my dad. And I usually celebrate my mom's birthday in February with her, rather than anything this month.

But today is Winter Solistice... which is the day I chose for me, to celebrate the season. It is the only day that really makes any sense to me. Always has. But it has the added importance now of being my nephew's birthday. Going to go and pester him with presents. Luckily he's too young to read this blog, or he'd know that I got him a wooden sword, among other things. And we'll take up all our holiday gifts to big sister and family, and get her to take some off to mom and sDad Larz.

So, to recount: buying presents is fun. Giving them whenever you have them is great. And today is the only day I celebrate. Best wishes to all.

Soviet+Canuckistan

Michel the Fox posted this on ProjectAchieve: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soviet+Canuckistan

KAT! and the Deebster on the big screen...

Eaten missionary's family get apology

It is just a special day for news. A touching story about a tribe who have experienced 136 years of bad luck for eating a missionary.

Flailing in the Burka

The Clever Girl has a new blog image that rocks as much as her posts do.

My most popular post...

Exactly a year ago today, October 22, 2002, I posted an entry about shii's song on my blog. I've had comments on it ever since, as late as 4 days ago. I just want to commemorate that busy topic...

Globe Ranking UofT

Globe article on university education says that UofT undergrad sucks and UofT grad rulz. Notice that I only really ever teach Gradschool. Yay me.

Beat Massive...

One of my old KMDI students, Henry Moller, is performing with BeatMassive at Reverb on Queen tomorrow, if anyone's interested. I can't go,unfortunately.

Instant Messages to the Rescue.

Mainichi Interactive - Abducted school girl uses cell phone to lead police to attacker

After she entered the vehicle, he sped off, but the quick-thinking high school girl called her mother on her mobile phone and sent an e-mail. Her father then conveyed the daughter's information to police, and officers spotted the car at about 9:20 p.m., some 30 kilometers from the station.

[The English article has less info than the Japanese one. The girl sent all the communications by instant text messages from her cell phone. Yuka notes that this is done by japanese girls, without having to look. A handy skill.]

Dalton's blog

Thanks to JasonW, I now know about Dalton's blog. I wonder if the conservatives and NDPers have one up.

Johnny Cash dead at 71

Johnny Cash dead at 71. I tried going to www.johnnycash.com, but the site is unreachable. I thought he was going to make it, hearing that he'd been released from hospital just yesterday. There aren't too many people who I'll think about in passing, but for some reason, he's on the list.

A Resurrected Apple I :)

Wired News: Woz OK's Apple I Resurrection

Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak has given his blessing to the production of a replica of the Apple I -- the legendary machine that launched Apple. As previously reported, Briel has been planning for some months to sell replicas of the epoch-making machine, but was unable to get permission from Apple to reproduce it. Apple likely holds copyrights on the machine's design. And although Briel redesigned the motherboard because some of the original chips are hard to find, he may still need to license the ROM -- the set of hard-wired instructions necessary to run original Apple I software. Unable to get a response from Apple, Briel did the next best thing. He wrote to Woz asking his permission to use the Apple I ROM.

Blaster worm linked to severity of blackout

Blaster worm linked to severity of blackout - Computerworld "Exposure of communications flaws heightens concerns about security of the U.S. power grid." Well, Duh! Any virus degrades the system it infects. Human or digital. Of course email itself is often a virus, even if you don't have a code virus attached.

One more reason to use a Mac. At least stop using HTML aware amail programs, especially anything by Microsoft that allows one of your programs to talk to another without your express intervention. Check out Eudora.com if you need a proper email program... one that doesn't automatically do whatever a virus tells it to.

Regretting Giving People a Voice

I ran into Bill "the scream" Kennedy at the UofT bookstore today, amid the computer books. He told me about two articles, reffed below, from Wired and TheRegister on how Blogs are wrecking the algorithms that run Google.

This is interesting to me in that it shows, once again, how the internet is biased against individuals expressing themselves, communicating, or sharing something about themselves on mass. There seems to be something intrinsically distasteful to the broadcast media, writers, academics and those who control technology about millions of people just sharing the stories of their lives. Though some of us find it delightful.

The Register: Blog noise is 'life or death' for Google

Wired News: Search Results Clogged by Blogs

Of course the fact that according to _The Register_ Most bloggers 'are teenage girls' - survey suggests that there is a modicum of ageism and gender bias involved.

Eves under fire for scrapping energy directorship

From the The Globe and Mail:

"On a day when Premier Ernie Eves and other public officials pleaded with Ontarians to use less electricity to prevent blackouts, the government was scrapping its newly created position of energy conservation director."

If the Ontario voter is so thick that they vote in the conservative government again, the government that brought us Walkterton water, the SARS medical system and a crippled energy grid... then at least we'll know who to blame... and it would not be the government.

Call the number on your screen...

Tomorrow, between 1 and 3pm call Alexis at 647-220-4857 or Elizabeth at 647-224-4857. And tell them that Ken told you... by proxy. I don't know them at all, and I sincerely hope that Ken's given me the right numbers.

I was down in the Distillery District today with Yuka and Masako, and her baby, for coffee and to check out some outdoor art show/sale. Yuka got her finger caught in a ring, and we had to buy it. :)

Just as I was leaving to go over to St Lawrence Market to do some shopping, I saw a woman, out of the corner of my eye. Answering a cell phone, and throwing it to the ground, and grabbing another. I ignored her, as I'm wont to ignore people making a spectical of themselves, but kept her in the periphery of my vision, I like art at the periphery of vision, until I left.

After getting home, and putting away groceries, and having some lunch, I'm reading some stuff from this new cool book I bought "New Media: 1740-1915" when Ken calls from Ottawa. He told me to go to the Distillery District cause there were two friends of his doing performance art with cell phones. I said, "Ya, saw them already. Figured that they would be friends of yours." (Ask ken to tell you about some of his old Cell phone performance bits some day.

So, I'll call Alexis and Elizabeth tomorrow. Will you?

Indentifying the Bast

Couple of months ago I took pictures of my friend's Egyptian Cat statue... they're called Basts. Well my friend has one, and I took pictures of it so that it could be identified. Well... it turns out that it is a unique piece, made for Emperor Hadrian, probably for his friends to put in their temples in Rome. And the ROM is going to be using my photos for lecturing... Neat.

Back from Bala

Just back from Bala and Midland. Visited dad, and we stayed in the guest house on a beach on Georgan Bay. One of the best views in the world. The guest house has a tiny loft with a bed upstairs. Downstairs is a single room with a bar, pinball machine, kitchen counter, dishwasher, toaster oven, fridge, and a bathroom. Oh, and a large pool table taking up almost all the space. There are no chairs. Just a couple of bar stools.

Yuka learned how to play 8ball, and beat me twice. Wish I'd been able to do that when I started playing.

McLuhan Party Saturday

[I sort of help out with the byDesign eLab, and got this in the email. I can't make it, but some of you might. If so, say hi to everyone for me.]

Saturday July 26: Come to a McLuhan BBQ. The McLuhan Program and the McLuhan global research network invite you to the third annual Coach House Renaissance festival, and a BBQ to celebrate McLuhan's birthday ( born July 21, 1911). Among the events planned are a web launch of the oral history project by Museum Studies grad student Dave Harkness, and the re launch for www.mcluhan.ca . Join us on Saturday July 26, 6 - 9 PM at the McLuhan Coach House 39a Queen's Park Crescent East. Call 416-596-9533 x 280 (the McLuhan global research network, byDesign eLab and eCommons/agora project) for more information, or write to fraser@mcluhan.org.

AoiR 2003. Mark your calendars: The Association of Internet Researchers (AoiR) conference comes to Toronto October 16 - 19, 2003 at the Hilton Hotel. Preconferences and local lab and arts tours happen on October 15th. Check the web site for details www.ecommons.net/aoir on registration, membership in the Association of Internet Researchers, the program, keynotes and more. KMDI is the official local host and the conference has been organized by members of the not for profit AoiR Toronto 2003. We have plans to collaborate on networking of local and pan Canadian Internet researchers (including notably Francophone researchers), and this event will help kick off these efforts. Contact us if you can help. aoir@ecommons.net

You are welcome to contact us for further information, or to share news that you may have for the McLuhan global research network and the Friends of McLuhan and Coach House Renaissance. Contact us at admin@mcluhan.org

'Foucault and Panopticism Revisited'

Surveillance & Society Foucault Issue is up! It is the one with the article that I did with Barry Wellman and Steve Mann, that I've mentioned here a billion times.

Anti-War Playing Cards

Operation: Hidden Agenda

Recycling tech...

Amy's the diva of old-school. So very retro. The music is all vinyl. Analog synthesizers everywhere. And an old PPC 601 computer missing a foot. Just the home for all my old scsi hardware that doesn't work for me any more:

32 + 8 meg sims
2megs of vram
2gig scsi harddrive
microtec E6 scsi scanner

I've never had much luck with anything scsi. Once my scsi printer blew, and erased both my harddrives, holding 2 copies of a $170k education project. Something was always going wrong with scsi, even when I learned all about everything scsi, as far as jumper settings on circuit boards and all that.

Amy, on the other hand, is a retro diva, keeping the old ways alive. Every cable fit. Every connection happy. Computer > 2gig drive > scanner > zip all in one happy chain. And it worked! All at once. Purring like a third kitten (the other two were lounging on various bits of hardware).

There are all kinds of people on the planet, and I'm never going to be successful with anything retro. I'm just glad someone is... who can give a good home to my old scsi stuff....

Gender and Programming...

I was editing a contribution for the International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments and I sent the following along at the end of my comments.

Rather than trying to get girls interested in what may in fact be a male-privileging programming language, why not consider developing a programming language that is gender neutral or a female-privileging programming language.

Anne of the Undead

Just sent off a conference proposal to the next Lucy Maud Montgomery shindig in PEI next June called From the Virtual to the Real: The Construction of Landscape in Anne of Green Gables and Dracula. Sometimes you just have to tell things like they are. But the proposal is here for your delectation >

It is not difficult to see L.M. Montgomery and Bram Stoker as contemporaries, writing Victorian fiction at the dawn of the 20th century. These two writers also share a common bond that is rarely matched by other writers in any period. What they wrote about was imaginative fiction that would become created in the real world long after they had written their works. Both authors constructed fictional topologies based on real places: Montgomery created Green Gables and the community of Avonlea, and Stoker created Dracula's Castle in Romania's Borgo Pass.

Several recent critics (Janice Fiamengo, James De Jonge, Patsy Aspasia Kotsopoulos, et al.) have discussed the process that led to Montgomery's selective reproduction of late-19th-century Prince Edward Island landscape for her fiction. In a forthcoming book chapter about virtual spaces, Benjamin Lefebvre argues that this reinvented landscape becomes a sort of simulacrum (to use Baudrillard's term), free of temporal restraints and therefore suitable for national and international consumption; it is in this way, Lefebvre suggests, that Montgomery's imagined community has proven so easily malleable in adaptations by the Disney Corporation that international tourists have been known to find Sullivan's recreated Avonlea (in Uxbridge, Ontario) more "authentic" than the "real" geographic space of Prince Edward Island. This thinking also extends to Anne's World, constructed in Hokkaido, Japan in the late 1990s. Stoker's work has yet to receive this kind of scholarly inquiry, but this may change with the interest in the proposed Dracula Theme Park, recently slated for Sighisoara, Romania.

Espen Aarseth notes in his discussion of the labyrinth that virtual space predates the development of computers and the Internet by centuries. Both Montgomery and Stoker's works have grown into worlds unto themselves that have expanded beyond the confines of the linear narrative text and that have morphed into labyrinthine worlds that are explored as much as read. And the exploration of these worlds has resulted in pressure from readers for the creation of physical spaces that they can experience firsthand. Despite drawing heavily from her personal experience, Montgomery's work is primarily one of her own imagination. As result of this imaginative text, however, governmental and tourist organizations have had to scramble to (re)create Green Gables and impose Montgomery's vision on already existing topographical features of the area. Stoker, on the other hand, drew from his own imagination and the gothic literary tradition, and worked from published accounts of Transylvannia, such as Emily Gerard's "Transylvanian Superstitions" (1885), in the creation of Dracula's castle in the Borgo Pass (Borgo Prund in Romanian), and the Golden Crone hotel at Bistritza (Bistrita). He went so far as to invent foods such as robber steak, all of which are ficticious constructions. The hotel now exists in downtown Bistrita, as does robber steak. And what was the dirt forest track through the Borgo Prund has been transformed over the past 25 years into a major highway leading up to the Castle Dracula Hotel. Furthermore, this forested area is now a blossoming community of farmers and cottagers, complete with church and nunnery. In both cases, the author's imagination has returned to haunt, cryptically as Derrida conceptualizes it, the landscapes what were in themselves the inspiration for the fiction.

This paper will explore how these two authors' adapted existing landscapes into imaginary fictional constructs, and how the popularity of these fictions, in turn, resulted in real places being transformed to conform with the fiction.

References

Aarseth, Espen. (1997) Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins.

Baudrillard, Jean (1988) "Simulacra and Simulations." In Selected Writings. Mark Poster, ed. Stanford: Stanford. Pp. 166-184.

Castricano, Jodey (2001) Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida's Ghost Writing. Montreal: McGill

De Jonge, James (2002 )"Through the Eyes of Memory: L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish." Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture. Ed. Irene Gammel. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Pp. 252-67.

Fiamengo, Janice (2002) "Toward a Theory of the Popular Landscape in Anne of Green Gables." Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture. Ed. Irene Gammel. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Pp. 225-37.

Foucault, Michel. (1980) "Questions on Geography." In Power/Knowledge. Colin Gordon, ed. New York: Pantheon. Pp. 63-77

Gerard, Emily. (1885) "Transylvanian Superstitions"

Kotsopoulos, Patsy Aspasia (2002) "Avonlea as Main Street USA? Genre, Adaptation, and the Making of a Borderless Romance." Essays on Canadian Writing 76:170-94.

Lefebvre, Benjamin. (Forthcoming) "Virtual Avonlea." In The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments. Joel Weiss, Jason Nolan, Peter Trifonas eds. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Montgomery, Lucy Maud (1992) Anne of Green Gables . Toronto: McClelland. Orig. Boston: Page, 1908.

Miller, Elizabeth (2000) Dracula: Sense and Nonsense. Wescliff-on-sea: Desert Island Books.

Nolan, J., Lawrence, J. & Kajihara, Y. (1999). ìMontgomeryís Island in the Net: Metaphor and Community on the Kindred Spirits E-mail List." Canadian Children's Literature. 91, 24:3-4.

Nolan, J. (2002). ìText as Horror: Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derridaís Ghost Writing.î Journal of Dracula Studies. No. 4.

Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. (1985) The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: Volume I: 1889-1910 . Toronto: Oxford.

Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. (1987) The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: Volume II: 1910-1921 . Toronto: Oxford.

Stoker, Bram. (1998) Dracula Unearthed. Annotated and Edited by Clive Leatherdale. Wescliff-on-sea: Desert Island Books.

Zizek, Slavoj (1997) The Plauge of Fantasies. London: Verso.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

FINALLY...

You know I've been bitching about the hegemony of ascii... I think my paper's linked here somewhere. And now icann's catching up:

Yahoo! News - Internet Body to OK Non-English Domains

Where's Raed?

Yuka told me about Where is Raed ? that she noticed on Joi Ito's site. Proported to be a blog from Bagdad. I've been offline for so much of the past 6 weeks that I have lots of catching up to do.

Google == big brother?

Google as Big Brother is a web site that chronicles the hegemonic impact of Google on the internet. Gone is the days when it was considered to be the great non-corporate alternative. Long gone. I read this a while ago, but forgot to blog it. It is a scary read, as per usual.

Thank you Heath. SXSW panel transcript.

Heath Row's Media Diet has a transcript of our panel on Conceptual Firewalls at SXSW last Sunday. It is so wonderful to be able to hear/read what you've said at a conference, especially if it is just one person's fast typing. Must appreaciated.

Gomi-Sensei in China

[I got the following email from Gomi-Sensei (aka Professor Garbage), an old housemate from when I lived in Tokyo in the mid-80s. He's a permenent resident in Japan, and I'd hoped to meet him on this trip. Unfortunately he's spending the year teaching in China. And for the first time in his life, he's teaching his native language, German, rather than English and Psychology. Just had to share, as he has a taste for the truly interesting things in life.]

Here in the depth of central China (Hunan Province) I was looking for a Western-style restaurant a few days ago.

After passing up one in fear, since it called itself "GRILLED RESTAURANT",
I chanced upon the one and only.....

THE VENUS FAST FOOD RESTAURANT OF GOLDEN SUN

Among other offerings, this was on the menu:

MAIN DISHES:

Steak for Two Eithers
Fried Ice Cream
Served with Suice or Coffee
Super Intestine
Double Boiled Soup
Bullfrog Cook Rice
Bacon Pam and Egg
Baked Frog Rice in Bamboo Tube
Sweat Corn Congee
Spiced Corned Goose Sole
Burned Red Pepper with Preserved
Lung for Two

DESSERT:
Sweat Heart Plum
Watermelon Wet

DRINKS:
Carbon Burn Coffee
Holy Venus Drink
Bosnia Purified (BEER)

Everything was served at once, so the sizzling hot "Steak for Two Eithers" came at the same time as the "Fried Ice Cream". This ice cream actually seemed quite cold at first, but since it started to melt, I had to eat spoonfuls of it while cutting up and chewing the sizzling steak. I had to instruct my Chinese friend in the use of these surgical instruments, since she had never used them at a dining table...

Please concoct your favourit menu from the above and I shall try to have it
sent to you by CARRYOUT a.k.a. TAKEAWAY...

Camping with Kenny.

I've been going camping with Kenny for almost 20 years. Most always to Algonquin Park, sometimes to my mom and larz' place at Eagle Lakes. Sometimes even with our partners, though Yuka and Angela have supreme good taste and usually prefer that we go off on our own.

Well, it has gone too far. We're sitting in my apartment in Hokkaido, Japan. And we realized it was back to our old camping lifestyle. Which means sitting around, making coffee by the fire. Hanging the bear bags. Foraging for firewood. Making stupid comments to one another from our sleeping bags in the dark. This morning, we're drinking 'Blendy Coffee' from bowls, eating Hokkaido camembert with baguette, and oranges. Ken looks supremely relaxed. Or asleep.

Last night we went out to an isakaya (Japanese pub/eating place) and had this strange stuff in a pot. I forget what it was called. But chicken, leeks, fish, shellfish, cabbage, mushrooms. Plus a big plate of yakitori and other yakiStuff (yaki == BBQ). (see previous entry for picture.)

Yesterday we went up to the university, and Larry gave Ken the tour while I played (skip to next paragraph if you don't want compspeak) with the bits of Redhat/Linux 8.0 that are totally wacked. It has changed a lot since system 7.2, and some of the tools I'm used to using aren't there, like linuxconf. And some don't work, like the firewall setting tools!!! So, the frigging firewall's up, and I can't use the tools I'm used to to reset it. Can't even find tripwire!!!!

Luckily, Hillel brought professor Nakauye to visit. He's from Mukogawa Women's University's Department of English. And we talked about MOOs, Blogs, and Slashdotty things. It turns out that he's teaching unix tools to students as tools of learning and reflection. Teaching text editors (not word processors), grep functions and FTP. To English majors. So very cool. Anyway, he wants to get involved with some of our projects, and was helpful when Hillel went off to a meeting with the system admins about getting them to support some of our projects.

Kenny had brought some of his strange distractors. Like his "Listen to the Paper" activity. You'd know about it if the doof would get a web site up. That an some of his other acoustic ecology projects. Larry and Hillel are interested in adopting the ideas for some of their projects. I was expecting them to find kenny's stuff interesting.

Today's a national holiday... though about what, I don't know. It's 9:45am, and kenny and I will soon head downtown, probably walking the 6k, if bus service is too slow. Not wanting to pay 2000 yen for a cab. I am so cheap. Then we'll hook up with larry this afternoon, and perhaps go out for a bite.

Who knows. I may even find an internationally able phone, and give yuka a call!!! If it wasn't for instant messaging on the computer, I'd have had no contact with her at all. Sad. But the trip's 40% over, and a lot has been accomplished. Enough to consider the trip both a success and worthwhile.

Microsoft Virii-Terrorism

Computer virus infects networks around world

Why when Saddam wants to control his oil and piss off some people in the neibourhood do we want to destroy him, but when Microsoft wants to bring the internet to its knees with software that's a threat to the world, we don't care?

Hmmm... more than likely, this Microsoft SQL Slammer virus that's shutting down the internet IS a form of terrorism. Well it is. It causes terror in people. Threatens people's banking, sharing of family photos, blogging, and no doubt accessing online porn. Hmmm... sounds like something I'd do IF I wanted to strike a blow against, say, american values?

And it started where? Probably in South Korea. And who put it there? Your guess is as good as mine...

Anyway, I don't worry much. Having the Internet down once and a while is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. It is like Ramadan, Lent, Passover, periodic fasting, or not drinking every day to give your liver a rest. Being off line is a goooood thing. I'll be off a lot over the next four months, and I can't wait.

But the point is, as always, if someone in the west does it, it is OK, or just an accident. But if a corporation in the east does it, it is terrorism. And here's the neat bit. The virus/worm may have started in asia. Perhaps as a north korean wakeup call. But it is really Microsoft SQL's fault.

And we know that everytime a virus takes over the net, it is Microsoft's products. When's the last time it was a Mac? Or even a standard Unix box. Yes, I know they happen, and how the first internet virii were propigated, but Microsoft just makes it so so SOOOOOO easy. Microsoft products are a breeding ground for virii.

And people have the gall to call me a Mac fanatic? I just prefer to work in environments that are not plague vectors. Especially ones that don't charge you for the privledge. Give me Unix... breakfast of champions!

The Common Sky: Canadian Writers against the War

Just got an email from Darren @ alienated.net. Perhaps I can remember how to write poetry... properly.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Common Sky: Canadian Writers against the War

As the rhetoric of war in Iraq grows louder, there is an urgent need for reflective, responsive, and resistant voices in the Canadian public sphere.
Published by Three Squares Press, and edited by Mark Higgins, Stephen Pender, and Darren Wershler-Henry, The Common Sky: Canadian Writers against the War will assemble a diversity of Canadian writers expressing their opposition to another (potential) war in the Middle East.

Writers are invited to submit poetry (1-3 pages, max. 3 submissions) and short fiction (max. 1500 words) occasioned by the threat of war in Iraq.

Electronic submissions strongly encouraged.

threesquares@sympatico.ca

OR

Three Squares Press
16 Ashdale Ave.
Toronto, ON
M4L 2Y7

*Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you need your submission returned.

Contributors will receive 2 copies of the anthology.

Proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Canadian Peace Alliance
www.acp-cpa.ca

Submission deadline: Tuesday February 11, 2003
Publication date: March, 2003

**PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY **

Who gets a voice around here anyway?

I ran across Start-up marries blogs and camera phones on Eszter's Blog Entry: "Mobile blogging.. any blogging?" (01/13/2003) and ended up at Slashdot | Blogging With Camera Phones. I think that Eszter's comments were great. Mostly that the Slashers are complaining about bloggers, but really do the same thing, except that they do it in a famous place, and therefore are more cooler. But I thought that this thought was strange, "Yes, there may be lots of blogs out there that are truly about nothing more than what someone had for breakfast or what the weather was like in their town today, but if that's all some people see in blogs then they are really missing out."

If we're sociologists, aren't we more interested in what people do, rather than deciding what it of value and what isn't? I rant a lot about finding it much more interesting to read about the daily events in the life of a healthcare worker than a list of what papers Jason's published, or who some star had lunch with.

Back to the roots of the internet, and we're back to a bunch of people chatting with each other about things that interest them. I think it is the fact that most people complaining about how the net is used or not used now came onto the net after 1994 that leads them to think that it is about glitz and hype of interesting people doing interesting things with their lives and careers. Or zany d00ds who can titilate us with their antics.

Go back and have a look at Ed Krol's "The whole internet" 1992 edition, to see what was really there, and what people were doing. They were just chatting with eachother. Sharing bits of their day. Perhaps sharing some info that they had access to that might be of interest to others. I think that the net was closer to blogs in terms of how they were used, than they've been to much else since the advent of the first graphical web browser.

That said, I'll stop ranting except to say that Blogs seem to be about the individual, and most other online portals/slashydottythings/Usenet/edTech/CMC technologies are more about the collective. The latter focus on the location and topic of communication, and less on the reflective individual exploring issues and topics. And this exploration of diversity is interesting to me.

Steve Mann announces Glogs

Cyborglogs ("glogs") is what Steve's using to describe what he and Joi Ito, and others, are doing in the blogging world... He's always got something new up his sleeve... collecting intel.

And he'll be doing, I think, his first public lecture on Glogging in my KMD1000 class this week. Don't miss it...

As Steve puts it: Cyborg Logs (also known as cyborglogs, or "glogs" for short) are timestamped stream-of-deconsciousness personal diaries often made public in realtime on the World Wide Web. Unlike Web Logs (weblogs, blogs) that are done from a desktop, glogs invite the public inside the life of the glogger, and allow others to communicate with the cyborg by modifying his or her visual perception of reality in realtime.

Count Virtula and the Simulacrum of Doom.

I have a task. And the task is to show how Dracula is a virtual being, an consequently how the character of the Count, and the novel Dracula represents virtuality such that it is worthy of inclusion in our handbook on virtual learning environments. It is a challenge that I've been given, and accepted. But it is daunting to say the least. I KNOW I am right, but how do you get around to saying it?

The problem is to step outside of the normal notions of VR as a post-gibsonian term for a computer generated consentual hallucination. And even farther beyond the notion of VR as a simulated environment. Hmmm... Perhaps not that far from that latter notion we got there. When I think of Plato's cave, or Swift's lands that Gulliver travels through, or the gothic topologies of Beckford's Vathek, I know that I'm engaged in a psychological landscape that has less to do with dirt than it has to with the visual manifestation of a concept. Likewise, Dracula is no less a conceptual being, and much less a dude in an opera cape. He is desire, fear and all the strong emotions made apprehensible; a psychological event. Moreover he is a cultural and political manifestation of white, male, colonial european unease; the virtual embodiment of that which has been supressed in their own individual, cultural psychies, and suppressed in the colonalized.

The Virtual is a term that exists in opposition to the 'real' or the 'natural'. That which is not real/natural is variously noted as surreal, unreal, fictional, unnatural, and virtual. Virtual is opposed to actual. But it also partakes of the real. According to the Shorter Oxford, virtual is "Possessed of certain physical virtues or poewers; effective in respect of inherent qualities; capable of exerting influence by means of such qualities." And specifically "Not physically existing but made... to appear to do so from the point of view... of the [reader]." (Edited to remove computer references.)

Dracula is the arch represenation of the virtual being, both the constructed fiction and the simulacra, the 'other' who does not (being undead) and cannot (because of the logical impossibility) exist. He is the created thing, created to fill the void of signified that requires a signifier. That is, there is 'something' unknown out there. And this 'something' is the unknown and the non-human, extra-cultural, 'the other'. How can you define this unknown. How do you attribute meaning to it, how do you confront it? You create something, this simulacrum, and forge a relationship between this signifier and the 'unknowns' which are now the signified. Dracula is now the signifier. He is a construction that stands in the place of the unknown. He signifes and embodies the unknown.

Dracula is about the unseen: the other-worldly, the cryptic, the haunted.
But he's also about the world that is just now being seen under the lense of science: blood and water born pathogens, anthropology, sociology, and of course the psychology of madness. All these conceptual landscapes were then, and are now, virtual spaces, not real or physical. You could call them imaginary or fantastical, and these designations may be true, but as with imaginary and fantastical landscapes, they are not merely locations without meaning, but rather they are constructed so that they might reflect the real and precipitate a greater understanding of the real through the engagement with the virtual.

And of all the virtual characters that have found their way into English literature and culture, it is Stoker's figure of Count Dracula who has not only the greatest sway over our hearts and souls, but speaks as the representative embodiment of the virtual 'other' itself.

Thoughts? This will be on the final exam...

The Biggest Threat To Peace

TIMEeurope.com: Poll The Biggest Threat To Peace. Have a look. And guess who comes in first? You guessed it. America. Thanks to Joi Ito, as I first read it on his blog.

Ukranian dinner.

Yuka and I had dinner at Inna's
tonight. Just uploaded the pictures I could take with the short teather of a poweradapter for my camera, as the batteries had run out.

We had a wonderful Ukranian dinner, and then looked at pictures of places I would love to visit. It felt positively festive.

Gotta love institutions...

More of what happens when you make inflexible institutions that you can't or won't maintain.

From Globe and Mail A mob of residents beat to death two of three youths who tried to rob a taxi driver Thursday night in a Mexico City neighbourhood, Mexican media reported.

The Spam King

Now you know. If you open it, he'll keep sending it. If you buy from an unsolicited email, you're part of the problem.

MIKE WENDLAND: Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles

Ralsky has other ways to monitor the success of his campaigns. Buried in every e-mail he sends is a hidden code that sends back a message every time the e-mail is opened. About three-quarters of 1 percent of all the messages are opened by their recipients, he said. The rest are deleted.