On coming home

It is always interesting to realize how much you have changed. Sometimes this only happens when you visit with old friends, you haven't seen for a while, or when you return home for the holidays for the first time in a few years.

As I prepare to become a homeowner, I've been reflecting a bit about the meaning of home. They say home is where the heart is, andin some respects it's true, but for me having a home of my (well really "our") own, is the culmination of a process that started long ago.

I haven't lived at home at all since 2002, where I spent the summer after my second year of university so it's been a while, and I haven't spent a Christmas here for several years.

It's funny though how some things don't change, my brothers are still mostly the same though I can't get over how much the youngest one has grown. Since I'm the only one that's fully left home and in another city, I can see how the remaining members of my family have adapted and gotten used to each other, and adapted.

I often find it a bit weird coming back home, as any of the established patterns I remember, are broken or changed, or adapted or ignored, while others have taken their place. This is especially true since my dad died. He seemed to impose a certain kind of order on the household and it has been interesting to see how everyone adapted to the vacuum he left. For me, my routines were established somewhere else, and I didn't see him all that often, though we talked fairly regularly until the last few years.

Anyways it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years as I establish my own home, and make memories in it.

Scroogenomics

I was thinking today about a book that's getting some attention, about how Christmas is the most wasteful time of the year. It reflects in some ways what is interesting about economists and how they think. They talk about efficiency, and allocations, and equity as if these were black and white comments. They claim to be objetive and then use the get out of free card "other things being equal" which usually means if my assumptions are correct.

However sometimes (many times) their assumptions are implausible or required to make the math in their elegantly complicated models work. Anyone who knows me, should know I'm not a big fan of economists. But sometimes as in this article they do provoke thought and provide a different perspective on things.

One of the interesting things about the book Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler is their description of the problem I just identified above. Early in the book, they talk about the difference betweens the "Econs" who represent the ideal of economist and basically work as cost benefit analysis machines, and the "Humans" who are sometimes able to make rational decisions but need help and are driven by emotions.

The key point that they highlight is that there are systemic cognitive biases inherent in our humanness. We make systemic mistakes in the same direction. Given this you cannot assume that humans are "rational". It will take some time for this to filter down to all economists but it seems interesting and may point the way for economists to get closer to real world predicitions. Their key assumption of course is that humans are "rational" and so it does represent a challenge to their discipline.

Video Games

It's been interesting to have another crack at Simicyt 4 recently. I'm amazed that the game is 6 years old, having been released in 2003. I've essentially had one set of cities going for year, and every time I have a look at it, it feels different.

Simcity is one of those games with no end point, which essentially continues until you're sick of playing. I've stopped playing for long periods of time and always been able to come back and rethink things and do something different.

One thing that's struck me though recently is how little the game reflects some of the latest urban thinking in terms of an ability to create walkable / sustinable / livable spaces. This is not that surprising, but I do think it's interesting how difficult it is to really have super dense spaces. (This may just be my experience however).

The other thing is that i recently went through my video games box. This is the box that has all the boxes of software that I've purchasd over the years. Man are there a lot! It's been interesting to see how my interests have changed, and also how many games I have that I will likely never play again. I also realized how the sports titles that are released every year encourage you to buy more than you normally would. Small changes is rosters in the NHL do not deserve an entire update, you only get a good update every 3 year,s problem is it's never clear which years will be good, and which ones not.

I've been surprised to a certain extent how the video game market has seemed to move beyond the PC. I guess with all the HD TVs and increased capabilities of the gaming systems it's not that surprising, but a lot of the hottest games don't seem to be released for PC anymore. It's a shame, as I don't really want to buy a PS3 or a Wii particularly.

Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at noon

That's the title of a book I bought, just on a whim recently.

It's an interesting book and I first heard about a few months while ago on an On Point podcast.

The idea is simple, it's a book on the best time to do things.

From the best time of day to see your dentist to the best day of the year to make an offer on a house(which surprisingly is Christmas day), the book provides all sorts of weird and wacky advice.

It doesn't claim to be authoritative and it's very American focused but I've found it interesting nonetheless.

I think the best advice is on times to buy things, from paint, to video games, to lawnmower and even wedding and prom dresses. The book provides some good advice on buying things, mostly it's when its out of season, towards the end of the season when retailers are trying to make room for different products and also just before the new products come out.

That's all for today

Remembrance Day

One of the things I continually find a bit stranger here in Ottawa is how little people seem to pay attention to Remembrance day. The kids don't get off school, almost all stores are open (though apparently they have to open at 12:30, as this store found out)

People seem to go to the ceremonies on Parliament Hill, then proceed to go shopping at the Rideau centre.

In Saskatchewan we always had the day off in elementary and high school(though it appears not at university).

I'm quite surprised that it's not a holiday here, that the kids go to school on the day. It's one of those things that still surprises me here, and reminds me of those small differences between Saskatchewan and here. The other big one is dalight savings time, but that's a whole other story.

Some of the other things include:
The use of salt in the winter (They use sand back home.. much less pant damage!)
All the snow in the winter (I love how people complain about it here, it's so much colder at home!)
I'm sure there are other things, but I can't seem to think of them this morning.

I also don't understand why the western Canadian windchill factor was replace with the crappy one used here. I.e How cold it "feels" . 1800 windchiil factor anyone?

Some old stories

So I was inspired by XUP's post this past week. It reminded me of some of the hilarious tourist stories that i experience during the 16 months I worked at the NCC's info-centre across from Parliament Hill. It was a lot of fun, got to brush up on my spoken French which has really served me well, and I got to deal with tourists, which is fun until that effect wears off.

So here is a small sampling of stories.

The time I was called a racist

So this guy comes in and i greet him. He asks about tours of Parliament. Well, it turns out they are done for the day (it is like 6pm on a weekend). I give him the times for the next day, provide one or two options, and then send him to the counter where he can get a map and more details. He's quite upset because he's leaving tomorrow and now won't have a chance to see Parliament. (My thought... well uh should've planned better)

Anyways he walks to the counter and I proceed to talk to some other tourists. I'm showing one woman where she can go on our map model, and pointing out a few things. The man comes up to me and says "Is it because she's blond?" I stare at him in disbelief for a few seconds. After I recover I say "excuse me?" and he proceeds to gets really upset, claims I didn't help him at all, etc. I tell him he can write comments in our comment box if he wants, and then he ask for my supervisor who comes out, and has to deal with him.

After a brief conversation with my supervisor the guy storms off, starts yelling at his kids and leaves. Turns out he accused me of being racist while speaking to my supervisors. I thought it was kind of ironic as I was the only non-white person on our entire team that summer.

Is that building across the street a church?

This was a very common question. But one woman was so frustrating to deal with. I explained to her that no, those were the parliament buildings. She didn't know what that meant. Anwyays, after 3 or 4 tries, she leaves saying, what a nice church.

How do I get to Toronto?

This happened so many times, it was hilarious. I never figured out how people could drive from Toronto, and never know how they got there.

When ask about concealed weapons..

So another time, I was working late one night, and this guys comes in from New Zealand. Nice guy, asking away and then he says, so I have a concealed weapon, what documents do I need within Canada? My colleague and I looked at each other and then as we were about to look into, it he laughed and said he was joking.

Anyways that's a small sampling. I actually have some notes about the funny stories. I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Orange Pants!?!?

Well first of all here's the question I should've asked on Tuesday night:

What have you learned about the form of biography in writing your books? I have found it fascinating as a reader to see how each of the authors in the series has interpreted not only their subject, but also the form of biography, so I'd be curious on what you have learned as an author.

Now that that's out of the way, it's funny because that question was floating around in my head before, and only crystallized after. Wish I would've had the chance to ask it.

Other than attending one event at the writer's festival this week, nothing much is going on. Work is going ok, though I'm not sure what I'll be working on for the next few months.

On Fire alarms

How annoying fire alarms can be!

We were woken up last night by a fire alarm at 5:00 a.m. For the first time in a while my wife and I debated whether to go downstairs. We had a rash of them a while back, and they were always in the morning.

I always remember University too, where particularly at the end of my second year in residence there was a whole whack of then, and one time we ended up outside in the fresh snow in April because of a fire alarm.

Actually come to think of it, my very last day in residence ever, we had a fire alarm at 7 a.m. That brings up a related funny story, at the end of the year, there's always a rush to get everything packed up and get yourself checked out. My roommate that year waited until the very last minute, and was scared about being kicked out. He lost a lot of time that morning because of the fire alarm, but being who he is, he went back to bed instead of finishing packing! he ended up having to store his stuff with someone and figure out the details later...

Anyways it's always annoying! I guess when I move to a house it will be the end of those problems, at least then, it's either your own fault, or a real fire!

Thinking about cities

This is a bit of a disjointed post. I just finisehd reading teh very dense book Concrete Reveries by Mark Kingwell.

He's also the author chosen to write the Glenn Gould biography in the Extraordinary Canadians series. This is definitely a more accesible work, but still a challenging one. POrobably the least accessible of the series I have read so far. This may not be surprising given a) it's written by a philosopher and b) the subject, Gould who seems to be a difficult and inaccessible subject.

The book Concrete reveries got me thinking again about the nature of the "City" and urbanism more generally. It follows my reading of Jeb Brugmann's book Urban Revolution.

I also listened to an impressive mayor, Cory Booker on the podcast of On Point. I don't think I have heard such a positive elected official before. He was smart, (he's a Rhodes Scholar) and committed and charismatic, and relentlessly positive.

It was refreshing, and a reminder of what can be done by being positive regardless of the situation.

I wonder sometimes what could be done in Ottawa with some inspired leadership. Instead we get stupid "zero means zero" campaigns and a council dominated by developers and anti-transit suburban councilors.

It seems like any move to actually do something is whittled down and dimished, and ultimately becomes less ambitious through the debate at city hall.

I think it comes back to not having people who believe in government in power, and also not having a mayor who had any idea why he wanted to be there at all.

I was astonished recently to hear Stephen Harper's remarks about being against all taxes. What a crackpot statement. This goes back to something I really don't understand about a lot of modern conservatives and I think is at heart a contradiction. You have people funded by taxpayers decrying government. WHo do they think pays their bills?

Some interesting discussions

So I went on Monday night to an event put on by the Information Commissioner, for Right to Know Week.

It was really interesting, particularly to see the journalist's perspective on these issues. They talked mostly process, which was disappointing. David Akin, tried talk about his issues with DFAIT regarding some kind of fee for his ATIP request. This was very much about being annoyed about process and less about the broader question, but was quite interesting in seeing how journalists use ATIP.

One of the more interesting characters, was a journalist from the UK whose access to information request led (after 4 years) to the UK expense scandal. What was interesting was that the reason for this being possible was their Freedom of Information Act applies to Parliament. In the federal parliament expenses are controlled by a small cabal in the Board of internal economy. They won't even let the auditor general have a look at their expenses. Can't say I blame them, if spending a few dollars on items the public doesn't like, causes careers to end.

Apparently something like 50 MPs are going down because of this, and not all of it justified.

The other interesting was by an unassuming young woman name Jennifer Bell who works for an NGO called Visible Government. They are using some interesting tools to get information out there. I really saw the possibilities of what you can do with searchable tools and some information. It was really interesting and I think some of this could be used even within government to shed light on things. It was clear to me why this kind of available and searchable information databases have so much potential. She also pointed out what the Obama administration has been able to do in the U.S.

There were also two interesting chats and debates this week. Macleans and CPAC, held a roundtable discussion between a whole cast of characters, that included Ed Broadbent and Eddie Goldenberg as well as Paul Wells, Andrew COyne and John Ralston Saul.

They discussed our 'broken' democracy. You really do get the sense that Andrew Coyne hates politics and politicians, which is why I find it kind of ironic that he comments on them, though perhaps that is why he is a journalist, and not that involved in te actual day to day business of government.

Overall i thought there was some good discussion, more and more I find myself agreeing with Paul Wells on a lot of things, I'm becoming a bigger fan, and have seen him 2 or 3 times on Sparks street in the past 10 days. Maybe next time I'll go say hello.

The other event was hosted by CBC's Michael Enright. They had Jane Taber. She is annoying, though had some interesting things to say. This discussion got sidetracked a lot and was not that interesting. They had some guy from Democracy watch who kept saying politicians are liars and that we need a truth in politics law to keep them honest. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! For two reasons, the public won't stand a politcian who actually tells the truth in many situations. Imagine what would happen to the party right now who said, we need higher taxes and lower spending. Second, circumstances change but we still want out politicians to act tough and strong and as if they know all the answers.

I though that both events brought up interesting issues, but they are always difficult ones. I really think that there are some changes to the institutions of government that are possible. However being in a minority, particularly with a federal government led by a party with no natural allies make these kinds of changes difficult or imposisble. I wonder if there will be this clamour for change, when we have a majority government.

Speaking of which there may be a conservative one soon.

Not sure if it's worth reading...

The Ottawa writer's festival is coming up this month, so I thought I'd write a little bit about books. I've started reading another of the extraordinary Canadians series, this time on Glenn Gould. It's been interesting to read the whole series, not as much because it gives a good overview of some important Canadians, though it does, but more as a meditation on the biography as a form. There is much in the Gould biography that speaks to the more philosophical and intellectual challenges the biography produces. This is not perhaps particularly surprising as the author is Mark Kingwell a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto.

The biographies themselves are relatively short, but interesting and the series is really about giving you a quick, taste of this particular cast of characters.

The other book that I guess has made quite a splash in some circles is Fearful Symmetry by Brian Crowley.The premise seems interesting if misguided. It's all Quebec's fault because Canada started engaging in trying to buy Quebec nationalists in the 1960s, and so we moved from a nation of 'makers' to a nation of 'takers', and the various regions of Canada now engage is trying to capture their fair share of national wealth.

This kind of claim, and book could only be written by an economist. Fittingly Crowley is President on the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) [think Fraser institute for Atlantic Canada].

The reason I say that it could only be written by an economist, is because of its lack of historical understanding and nuance. Now to be fair I haven't read the book. I was seriously thinking about it, but having read the review in the LRC, I'm not sure I want to.

The premise is based on the idea that we had strong work Anglo protestant values before the 1960s and now we don't. Or some variant of this idea.

According to the review he refuses to engage in a debate about how society has changed since the 1960s. He doesn't engage with the fact that the development the welfare state is actually a Western phenomenon. He doesn't talk about multiculturalism and how this has impacted our ability to have a 'cohesive' national 'character'. These are important factors!

Canada in 2009 cannot go back to the old boy's club that it was earlier in the 20th century.

That being said I think that he may be on to something interesting in terms of the idea of buying off the nationalists. But to ignore the cultural impacts of the quiet revolution, to ignore the international context in which these things occur, to pretend that the huge amounts of immigration from outside Europe we have experienced have not changed our ability to have a 'national character' seem to me to be pretty serious omissions.

Not sure if it's worth my time reading the book, but we'll see.

I've got quite a few other books on my shelf for the moment.

What I'm reading

I just ordered another three books from the Great Canadian series. They are great biographies because they give you a taste, but are short enough to read in a day or two if you want. It's also almost a project that feels like a meditation on the idea of a biography as you get a sense of what the biography can offer as your run through the many authors with their different styles and ideas.

I'm currently reading concrete reveries by Mark Kingwell, who I read quite a bit a few years back but haven't paid as much attention to since.

I just finished two books, one from the aforementioned Extraordinary Canadians series on Mordecai Richler, and though an interesting one, it wasn't one of my favourites. I guess it seemed to go more into his soul, than the others. His supposed arrogance and rudeness disappeared in this telling. Though it might have made it more human you felt like something was missing, that some things were glossed over. Interesting to learn about his story though, for example though attached and known as being all about Montreal, I was surprised to learn that he spent much of his life overseas.

The other book I read was by Tyler Cowen who's site marginal revolution has made it's way into my RSS reader. It's an interesting thesis, that the internet and modern technology now privileges those who can be more like autistics. In that they order information different and have other characteristics that so called 'normal' people should pay attention to.

Now it's an intriguing thesis and he sort of pulls it off, but aside from exploring some aspects of autism and labelling certain of their characteristics, the links he is able to make with them I find difficult to follow and not that useful. For example in a chapter about diplomacy, he suggests that we can learn from autistics to be more objective. I'm not sure how useful a lesson that is. Overall it was a disappointment, but it doesn't mean it wasn't interesting

Confronting difficult situations is never easy

There have been few occasions where I have felt so mad at myself for biting my tongue as two separate occasions where comments I would deem racist have been uttered and I remained silent.

These events occurred over the past year or so and I think they are always a bit of a difficult issue. Even more so in a country, which proclaims its colour-blindness and refuses to acknowledge race as an issue, or when it does simply claims " Things are better here than in the United States" rather than dealing with the substance of the issue. I think the best description of this is in the book Black Berry Sweet Juice by Lawrence Hill. Though there were some parts I couldn't relate to, the experience he tells, of being a mixed-race person, half-black half white, like I am in Canada resonates with me.

In each situation, I was the only non-white person in the room, and the person's comments clearly made me feel uncomfortable. How do you reproach someone for such comments though? It isn't easy, especially in a social situation, where there are others around, and raising your voice and yelling and screaming at someone clearly isn't appropriate. How do you even broach the topic without making everyone involved feel uncomfortable.

Now there are those who claim that making the person uncomfortable is the point, and that such comments need to be held up to scrutiny and shouldn't be allowed to pass unchallenged, and while that's easy in theory in practice it's much more difficult.

I will try to be more assertive in the future. After the second of these situations, and how angry it made me, I hope I can rise to the challenge, of confronting these kind of racist statements.

What would Harper actually do?

So I started a conversation with a friend this week, if you take the premise that Harper won a majority in the next election, what exactly would his platform be?

It's a hard question, given that he's been so focused on keeping his minorities alive. He seemingly hasn't had enough time to think through what he would do if given time and license.

The other difficulty is that he like many conservatives, is "against government". Now I've always had a problem understanding why someone who dislikes 'government' would want to run one, but that's another issue. The point being that he seems to be mroe interested in dismantling (destroying?) programs and also not all that interested in doing things that would involve more government.

So in the end there isn't much left. As far as I can see, there are a few things they feel strongly about. The big two are:

A national securities regulator
Dismantling the wheat board

Other than that, I'm not too sure what they really want to do, lower taxes of course. They seem to want to lower spending, but haven't to date.

I'm kind of curious to see what a Harper majority would do. One thing I think that would happen is is some kind of machinery of government changes. It's been a long time since there were any MOG changes, so it's a possibility. The last major changes were in 1993 and things have certainly changed since then.

Update

I forgot, they also want to get rid of the gun registry and stop financing poltiical parties and maybe stack the senate with more partisans to then "reform" it...

Maybe they should run on those 5 priorities and see what happens

Ah, the Senate

Well it's an interesting week in terms of the senate.

One of the most interesting appointments, at least in Quebec, is the appointment of Jacques Demers to the senate. Famous now for admiting his illiteracy there's been a fair amount of commentary on this choice. (Which I think was the point)

What also piqued my interest this week was the following comment by Matthew Yglesias


— It’s also important to have in place systems for effective monitoring of elected officials. A Canadian voter elects one federal official—a Member of Parliament. An American elects four—a President, two Senators, and one Representative. Americans don’t have four times as much time as Canadians to pay attention to what politicians are doing or to learn the issues; our politicians are just being monitored less. When you consider the proliferation of things like independently elected school boards, district attorneys, sherrifs, etc. keep in mind that this diffusion of responsibility is a good way for the egomaniacal to evade
responsibility.


This is actually one of the best arguments against Senate reform. I've never really understood who the Senators would represent. It would complicate Federal-provincial relations. Ultimately I kind of like the idea of undercutting the provinces by having an elected Senate that can represent regional (or provincial) interests in federal legislation. However the possibility of gridlock is there. Also of course on paper is one thing, but in reality I can imagine elected senators trying to expand their power.

One of the reasons the Senate actually works is because of its illegitimacy. It has a high amount of power, but it is checked by the fact that they are not elected.

Generally, I think it works ok, and I think there are a lot of problems with having elected senators.

What to write about?

Unfortunately I had a great idea for this post, and even started writing it out in my head, but then went to sleep and promptly forgot not only the wonderful lines I had written, but also the topic.

So, I guess this one will be short.

I'm having trouble finding dress pants. I think partly it's because I dont' really enjoy shopping, but I'm surprised how difficult it is to find pants. I have a really nice lightweight pair of summer dress pants that need to be replaced but I can't find out where to go.

Partly this is because Ottawa, despite having so many bureaucrats is not a very good place to shop for men's clothes. Montreal would be much easier (and probably cheaper). It's surprisingly difficult here.

Oh well...I guess that's it for this week.

Information overload!

One of my recent discoveries was the google reader. This allows you to gather RSS feeds from different websites.

I used to check out probably 10-15 websites daily, sometimes a few times a day. Using RSS feeds I've been able to increase the number of sites I follow, as I don't waste time surfing sites which haven't been updated. It also allows me to keep track of sites that aren't updated very often, and I might overlook.

However it really changes the nature of the process. You can see how many unread articles there are. I think that's a big part of the feeling of information overload.

For me it's the same with itunes. I haven't had my number of un listened to podcasts dip below 20 for quite some time! I end up deleting interesting material simply because I don't think I'll have time to get for it. It's actually not too bad during the summer because some of the podcasts don't get updated.

I guess this is the problem of the internet age, too much information.

Urban Revolution

I just finished an interesting book called the Urban Revolution, it's an interesting book that focuses on what the author Jeb Brugmann calls urbanisms, which are urban capacities and style and way of doing things unique to a given city.

What was interesting was how he put Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver in the category of opportunity cities. These are cities which have a hard time getting everyone organized to take advantage of their strategic advantages, to create a really amazing urbanism. Part of this is due to way our cities are organized politically, they are seen are the poor cousin of provinces and lack revenue raising tools that would allow them to be more flexible and create in their development policies.

One of the most interesting parts of the book for me, was related to his description of Chicago, and the importance of community organizers and community organizations in revitalizing and create the civic space, which has helped reclaim neighbourhoods in that city. It made me want to go and visit Chicago, and also reminded me of the few times I'd been there, only to the downtown core. I'm always struck by how important a city it is, and how little I know about it's importance and not only because a Chicagoan is now in the White House.

It has one of the busiest airports in the U.S, Chicago is a big city as well. It has an important University and a well known Symphony Orchestra. There is such a thing as Chicago style Jazz, and also Chicago style Pizza, which speak to a sort of cultural influence as well.

I haven't been there in quite a while but after the description in the book, of the renaissance of Chicago it makes me want to explore it again.

Web 2.0

I've been starting to read a few blogs about Public Service Renewal. I guess because these are new and relatively young public servants they have tended to focus on the emergence of new technologies.

I also participated in a conference about this issue as well and so I've started exploring these technologies a bit more. I will never be a technofile, and I'm usually a bit conservative about trying new things, though I would say I'm open to at least trying things.

I started using google reader and it's been interesting. I think overall it's a positive way to organize all the blogs you follow. I miss the surfing and checking out pages, without knowing that it's been updated, and looking at articles through the reader isn't quite the same experience.

I think overall it'll allow me to follow more blogs, and also to track more issues and follow them more easily. Especially if there are blogs that aren't updated all the time, you can keep track through the RSS feed, and make sure you don't miss a new article.

I also tried two other social media, and I don't think they work nearly as well for me. One was Digg, which links up with facebook, and lets you highlight an interesting site or article. I don't really get much out of participating, but I suppose collectively it gives you a sense of what people are reading.

The other interesting possibility was yahoo! pipes. Lets you throw feeds and filter them to try and limit how many articles actually get through. Interesting idea, but I'm not a programmer and it gets pretty complicated. Interesting idea, but I'm not too sure how to use it yet.

I enjoy reading all my feeds, and so to a certain extent I don't need that kind of throttling system.

Intuition

I've been thinking this week quite a a bit about intuition. More and more I've come to realize that I'm an intuitive person. I've know this for some time, being identified as an "N" as part of the Myyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

I think I've always known though, that I have a knack for figuring things out, relatively easily without thinking about them much. I also really enjoy puzzles, particularly word puzzles.

One of the moments that's burned in my memory of seemingly pure intuition on my part happened when I was 13 years old. I was sleeping and woke up suddenly after hearing a sound I couldn't immediately identify. After about 3 seconds, the thought popped in my brain battery acid!. It was was one of those moments of intuition where everything all of a sudden makes sense.

So I jumped out of bed, realizing that the batteries in the back of my stereo on my nightside table had busted. I grabbed some towels and started cleaning it up.

For me it was incredible how quickly I was able to identify the problem, simply by the sound. I must have been able to sort through the possible causes of that in a flash.

Since then I've always had a keen sense that I am a highly intuitive person. It sounds arrogant but I that's a misunderstanding of what that means. For me, it means I like to try and figure things out by reasoning myself, and that my thinking is not linear. Often flashes of insight, which have been built up through acquired knowledge appear to me.

It means I also enjoy puzzles and figuring out what acronyms are without needing them explained.I would guess that many intelligent people would have this ability to see shapes and patterns where others simply see data.

In fact, John Ralston Saul in his book On Equilibrium speaks about Intuition as one of the key qualities that makes us human. The others include, Common Sense, Ethics, Imagination, Memory and Reason.

Currently Reading:


Filthy Lucre by Joseph Heath
Welcome to the Urban Revolution by Jeb Brugmann
Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Book of Negroes

I just finished reading the Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.

I was an intersting one, and really makes one think about the historical legacy of slavery. I was thinking as well about the actual globalization that this involved. It was really about the movement of people physically across oceans.

It also made me think about the role of education in emancipating people. That seems to be the subtext to the book, as the protagonist, is able to escape from her situation in part because of her education and her ability to read.

It reminded me of an recent article on another blog about the importance of the Public Broadcasting in terms of education here . It was a really interesting one and made me think even more about how the CBC has made me feel Canadian. I think it's been one secret ingredient in the successful integration of immigrants as well. This important function of public broadcasting, particularly in my experience CBC is underrated.

Ottawa International Writer's Festival

So I've been volunteering and enjoying the Ottawa International Writer's Festival over the past few weeks.

It's been a blast and it ends today, so I thought I'd post about some of my highlights. (I have a feeling that the two sessions I'm going to today, will be fantastic as well.)

One of my favorite sessions actually came unexpectedly, it was a session on "Our Urban Future" with Alan Broadbent and Jeb Brugmann.

Now I read Alan Broadbent's recent book and wasn't too impressed and I found the same thing about his presentation. It made me think about the importance of presentation skills. It wasn't that his ideas weren't good (though everything he said was extremely Toronto centric) , it was that he wasn't a very good speaker.

It was even more evident because the first presentation was so good. I'd never heard of Jeb Brugmann before, but I will keep an eye on him in the future. He was fantatsic, read from his new book. Being a writer's festival of course the authors are there to sell their book, and he really sold me on his. He has a conception of "ubranisms" and the global city which were new to me and seem quite exciting.

I'm not all that interested in urban theory and having recently bought the "Canadian" edition of Richard Florida's new book Who's Your City, and that has just about filled up my desire for urban books, but this one is a welcome exception.

Another session that i enjoyed was with Andrew Cohen and Nino Ricci about leadership. It was a bit disappointing to hear how dismal they thought our current political leadership is. It was interesting because they are both authors of biographies in the current Extraordinary Canadian series. ANdrew Cohen wrote a biography of Lester B. Pearson, while Ricci did a biography on Pierre Trudeau. Both were great.

Finally I was lucky enough to get the last question to Michael Ignatieff after his presentation about his new book. I asked about how he feels about the fact that his call for national unity goes over better in some parts of the country than others. While I disagreed with his answer I was surprised that he wouldn't repeat his comment about I think "it's ok for "Quebecois" to be Quebecers first and Canadians second, or Canadians first and Quebecers second" in English, and only said it in French.

I enjoyed the festival and I'm hoping that there's some good sessions left. Joseph Heath is presenting today on his nwe book Filthy Lucre, and a former professor of mine Heather Menzies is promoting her new book, about dealing with her mother's dementia.