The PenOpticon

Now that the moving vans have arrived to plunder the Dunlap Observatory, I’m reprising my original letter sent to U of T’s Governing Council.  Recall, that U of T never once allowed anyone opposed to the sale to address the governing council. Remember that the university never once consulted with area residents over their plans. I briefly met a U of T librarian on the property this morning, but apart from her, the only official U of T representative I have seen in Richmond Hill since Oct 30, 2007 was a Cassels Brock lawyer at a Town Council meeting.

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Culture, Environment astronomy, Dunlap Observatory, public space, University of Toronto

YouTube is famous for prank videos and bone-crushing skateboard mishaps, but video clip culture also allows the world to sample pockets of beauty and skill that would never have seen the light of day a few years ago. These days anyone can "make it" — all you have to do is make it.  That's what Andy McKee did. Check out this gorgeous piece of music that blends complex tapping, harmonics and guitar percussion techniques to create a rich, mesmerizing sound.  Clearly,  Andy McKee has listened to and learned much from the likes of Michael Hedges, Don Ross and other players who have redefined the acoustic guitar for the digital age. Thanks for sharing this Andy:

Culture, Music

Between work and the weather it’s been hard to find a spare minute to post this past week, but I did manage to listen to Richard Dawkins’ intriguing lecture on the Strangeness of Science on CBC’s Ideas. I haven’t read Dawkin’s The God Delusion, yet,  but it’s definitely on the list.  Now that you are thinking about the Supreme Being, have a gander at Mr. Deity’s hilarious and clever take on the problem of God and evil:

From the looks of it, Mr.Deity, deserves to become an ongoing series, though so far there are just four episodes on YouTube. Between The Daily Show’s "This Week" in God and our collective memory of  Dana Carve’s Church Lady, I don’t know  if the world of Godless Secular Humanist comedy can find room for Mr. Deity’s cosmic humour. But it should.

Culture, Satire

I was prepared to happily ignore Apple’s new iPhone, but waking up this morning I was assaulted by the voice of CBC’s Metro Morning host, Andy Barrie, on the subject of Apple’s latest gadget.  Barrie and his guest, technology analyst Jesse Hirsh gushed endlessly over both Apple and the iPhone.  Even for Barrie, who never misses an opportunity to praise his collection Mac toys, this morning’s segment was bloody awful.  Have a listen, but it’ll make your teeth hurt.  To be fair, Hirsh subsequently blogged a more balanced assessment of the iPhone. Therein, he points out they will actually cost about $4000 after Rogers and the rest collect their monthly fees for two or three years.   In other words, cellular providers may profit more from this innovation than Apple will.

No doubt Apple’s new toy will quickly find its way into the meaty hands of every CEO in North America (Andy Barrie will probably snag one also).  But many others will balk at the cost — both the monthly service fees and the cost of breaking an existing contract in order to share in Apple’s chic.  On the otherhand, the iPhone may spark more innovation from Nokia and Motorola and may even force cell providers to slash bandwidth costs over time. If the planet survives another five years, the cellular phone landscape will look much different than it does today. If it comes about, Apple can certainly take some credit.

But for the moment, Cisco is suing Apple for trademark infringement. That may slow things down a little, but most likely Apple will prevail on this one. Someone on Slashdot suggested Apple rename it the iConn.  In response, I suggested any of following: iSpend, iJob, iSue, iHype, iTod, iSore, iBore, iScream.  I don’t think it will ever become the i Formerly Known as Phone, however. And if you consider yourself a "Mac person", it will always be an iPhone.

For the record — I don’t own a Mac or an iPod and will probably never own an iPhone. But the device is impressive. A boatload of elegant software embedded in a slick piece of hardware.  But I don’t need it, can’t afford it and would probably break or lose it if I had one.  It won’t cure cancer or diabetes or stop global warming, but that iPhone thingy is still a thing of beauty.  And it has a nice ring to it as well.

Culture, Technology

I stuck toothpicks in my eyes to stay awake for Stewart and Colbert last night, hoping for some good humour and insight — some fake insight at least.  Not much to be found there these days, though Jason Jones’ report on two lunatics (one trying to give guns to teachers and one trying to give students Kevlar textbooks) was funny and smart.  Meanwhile, in what passes for reality, we still don’t know what caused the Big Stink in the Big Apple yesterday, but the media’s great bloodshot orb has moved on to cover the U.S. air strike against al Qaeda in Somalia and the oil dispute between Russia and Belarus. 

So why am I thinking about Easter Island?  Today’s NY Times has an interesting piece by Larry Rohter on the issue of whether to restore the giant stone moai on Easter Island. Although about 50 of these large familiar gods have been restored over the years, hundreds more remain scattered around the island. The trouble is that it costs upwards of $500,000 to restore each one and many Easter Islanders feel that enough have been restored to sustain a healthy tourist industry. In fact, it seems that 45,000 visitors a year is already straining the island’s resources.

Rohter’s article describes the conundrum nicely, but fails to explain why there are hundreds of broken moai scattered around the island in the first place. For this information, we can turn to Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse: by deforesting the island in order to build these things while struggling to grow food for up to 30,000 people, the islanders essentially depleted the soil and used up their primary source of fuel. Competing tribes built the moai to appease the gods in order to "improve" food production. As resources grew scarce, it became easier to destroy your neighbor’s moai and harder to build new ones. Diamond provides a wealth of evidence on the island’s population growth, deforestation and subsequent food production problems.

Fearing for the sustainability of their island (and probably wanting to use the land for other purposes), modern Easter Islanders have no desire to restore all of the old gods so that  foreigners can gawk at "old stuff".  There is a good deal of irony and powerful metaphor here, ya think? Diamond thinks to so, also, and views Easter Island as a microcosm of humanity’s struggle on this planet.  The fact that some of us want to waste more resources to raise up hundreds of pieces of rock on a remote island (while others tear down "gods" like the giant statue of Saddam and the Bhuddas in Afghanistan) shows shows just how far we haven’t come.

The fact is, hundreds of old broken moai will teach us more about Easter Island — and ourselves — if we just leave ‘em alone.

Culture, Environment