I watched Maya Lin’s “Unchopping a Tree” today and it is incredible to think about an issue like deforestation this way.
Maya Lin – Unchopping a Tree from What is Missing? Foundation on Vimeo.
I do find it odd that Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia was left out of the video as it is ten percent larger than central park and contains a significant number of extremely ancient, tall trees.
Hat tip kottke.org
Tags: 1 Comment
I have blogged since before I knew what it was. Even before that I started keeping journals (something I do to this day). Somewhere between a great upheaval in my personal life in 2005 and advances in my career that sapped my time and energy, I lost the love of blogging, and even writing.
I have been pondering retiring my blog for now, and just leaving a placeholder with how to contact me, and some relevant personal information. Before I do so, I’d really like to give it one last attempt. One of my major problems is that I continually self-censor thinking it won’t interest people, or they will dislike my opinion. Also, I feel inept at writing in the humorous, and witty style I desire. These blocks are personal, and most likely stem from self-esteem issues in general and as such I should not submit, but fight the urge to just quit.
In essence, I would like to try a seven day experiment wherein I blog whatever I want as it comes to me. I will blog every day from noon Sunday, January 10, 2009 to noon on Sunday, January 17, 2010.
How can you help? I would love it if, during this time, you could comment with your impressions, feedback, questions, thoughts, criticisms, suggestions and the like whenever possible. Even if you don’t normally comment on blogs (like myself), it would mean a lot if you could this week. This will allow me to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t and will also help me overcome the feeling that it doesn’t matter if I write or not and that people care. Even if you drop me a note to say I completely missed the mark, or that you disagree with what I said, etc. All of it will be helpful and much appreciated. Do so anonymously if you feel better, but please do.
I’ll report on Sunday and decide where to go from there. Thank you so much. A special thanks to the dwindling group of readers from Poeticgeek who’ve stuck around all these years to see if I’d really ever get back on the horse properly. I really appreciate it.
Tags: 7 Comments
As you no doubt could guess, I love movies. Emphatically. So, in the interest of talking about movies without reviewing them (as I can’t seem to do that), here is a list of the 10 movies I anticipate the most in 2010:
More on why to come.
Tags: No Comments.
I grew up in a small town and have always thought of buildings and construction as mankind making purposeful changes to their structures, be they houses, barns, irrigation systems or roads. The concept of change in this manner, as I took it, was very methedological and systematic: controlled and orchestrated by man.
Now, as a young man, I live in one of the world’s most international cities, flush with development. Buildings are being built and destroyed daily. Large scale transit projects are moving forward at a scale that I can see on my walk to work. While the concept of human-initiated methedological and systematic change sits in the back of my mind as the obvious and necessary initiator for this revolutionary progress, I can’t help but ponder certain questions.
On the level of the individual project, yes, the methodology is the same: human initiated construction or destruction. The same simple processes I had observed growing up, just on a grander scale. But, what if, each individual action while consciously made was tied into a larger emergent unconscious system?
Sitting quietly by the ocean and viewing the city as a whole, the changes seem natural, or at the very least organic, in their cycling. The births, lives, and deaths of these parts of our city: the residential megaplexes, the commercial towers thrusting above the clouds, all the way down to the ground level, it ebbs and flows in a very natural way, with areas spurring into a furor of activity and then reaching a point of stability before parts begin to decay; some systems in place divert resources to maintain stability until eventually the decay overcomes the rate of repair and the system collapses. Shortly thereafter, a new set of buildings and infrastructure will combine to form a subsystem which will replace the old. Areas of the city surge with life and construction at one point only to be dead and forgotten the next. Socio-economic factors, along with human changes in need, taste and population modify the parameters of the larger system.
Imagine an ant, going about its daily toil; pick up a small rock and return it to the colony. This action is the single task of the individual ant and can, in fact, be observed independently of other colony activities. The great beauty comes when you see the actions of the ant in context of the colony as a whole. Each individual toiling ant carries a single rock, but through their individual contributions, an entire colony is built and sustained.
To stretch the metaphor further, imagine that our city is that colony and the individual construction projects are the single toiling ants. We have something that ants don’t: self-awareness and free-will. What could we achieve if city planners, real-estate agents, developers, banks and even citizens became aware of the urban ecosphere and made their individual decisions with forethought as to how their decisions would affect the entire system? With everyone working to maintain the health of this system, the resources we see shifting constantly to and fro could be utilised more effectively. We could see the organic city I’ve described flourish and with it, sustainability, profit (from reduced reallocation of resources) and most of all, stronger, longer living neighbourhoods, which in turn breed stronger communities. Coming from a small town, that is my wish for this city, stronger, longer lasting communities in homes they can afford in the city they love.
Tags: city · organic · urbanNo Comments.
In 1993 Bill Clinton passed legislation known as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) with the intent of allowing gay and lesbian citizens to join the military provided they didn’t “demonstratea propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.” This meant that homosexuals could now join the military proviided they didn’t let it be known. At the time this was a move forward from the prevailing law which disallowed homosexuals from engaging in military service at all.
This year, under Obama, there are moves being made to undo DADT. To decide how to proceed, it is important that the administration understand the damaging aspects of DADT. The best way to do this is to talk with homosexual members of the military. Unfortunately, testimony by these individuals would violate DADT. The first rule about DADT is don’t let anyone know it applies to you.
Don’t worry, moves are being made to protect the men and women who serve in the military. Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) introduced legislation to allow gay members of the armed forces to testify at Congressional hearings. The bill, the “Honest and Open Testimony Act,” has 27 co-sponsors. If it becomes law, it will allow gay troops to testify openly without risk of discharge or other punishment. Because the DADT policy requires the discharge of service members who acknowledge that they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the bill would serve as the first relaxation of the military ban in sixteen years.
Next step: equal rights and equal treatment for all members of the American armed forces.
Tags: glbtq · legislation · military · PoliticsNo Comments.
I think I need change. There is this building urge to see the world, to experience new sensations. I want a change of pace, a change of scenery, and a change of priorities. My life feels stagnant, like it’s slowly ebbing away all of my joie de vivre. I need new relationships with new people. I need new passions to stir my blood. I am not where I want to be for the rest of my life. I haven’t done anything yet, and that scares me. I don’t want to turn 30 not having done anything worthwhile with my youth.
This was posted on my old website on on 2004-06-15 at 1857h and is as true (if not moreso) today as it was then. I will do something about this, and document it on the way. Any ideas?
Tags: 1 Comment
I “redesigned” gordonbonnar.com this morning. Oh, and by redesigned, I clicked on a different template and then spent an hour shifting things around. Coding is HARD, I think I’ll take a break.
While on said break, I’m going to really hunker down and decide what I want to do with this website and how to get myself posting more often. In other website related news, I have recovered my backup of 2001-2007 and plan on integrating it as soon as I can.
Finally, I want a cute little favicon and a matching logo for the left of my header. I wish I could draw, but as anyone who has ever been injured by my drawings will tell you, this is not the case.
OK, so I’ve gone a little YouTube crazy and love making videos. So far it doesn’t even bother me that I really really suck at taking video and that I can’t seem to find any editing software that will run on my computer. It’s just fun and it’s a great outlet for me.
You can check out my channel on Youtube. Let me know what you think. Don’t forget to subscribe!
Tags: No Comments.
I finally received an invite to Google Wave and am very impressed on how far they have stretched HTML and JavaScript. There are two factors which are affecting my ability to fully get a feel for the service.
A third and more minor issue is the issue of notifications. I feel people don’t necessarily check Google Wave yet as often as e-mail, IM, SMS, etc and therefore Waves go unattended. Again, I feel this will change when more people are on Wave, more clients exist, and there is perhaps GMail integration.
Some great things I see coming from the relative openness development of some great clients, an ncurses based client for GNU/Linux, a native Windows and Mac client, and the afformentioned mobile clients. I also see extensibility with XMPP and e-mail notification systems so that you can receive Pings and Wave Updates via these services.
I expect in six months to be able to review it in much more detail. I do like the self-organising that I already see going on, such as directories, lists, etc. I’m excited to see where it goes.
Tags: Google Wave · Wave · xmppNo Comments.