theMediaman.com

I’m not sure why I tend to get worked up more by the NDP than any other party. Perhaps it’s because I expect more of them, while never having high expectations of the Conservatives nor the Liberals. It could also have to do with the fact that the NDP tend to call during dinner hour with a pre-recorded message (following a 10 second span of silence).

Simone’s got her own stresses to deal with involving the wedding, so she’s taken to tuning me out when I go on a tirade about politics.  Rather than let it simmer, I wrote to my candidate, Peter Ferreira, and the party leader, Jack Layton. 

I also want to note that this is the second time I’ve had to send the NDP such a message.

Do you support the “Do Not Call List”?

“A Prime Minister who puts families first” should not be calling me while I’m having dinner with my family, posting nothing but a pre-recorded message.

Someone for whom “leadership is all about teamwork” should not be obliterating an innovative party’s chance to adequate exposure by blackballing them (in league with Harper) from public debates.  I am not fully in support of the Green Party’s platform. My values are rooted more in Socialism than Conservativism but I can tell you that the Green Party has a hell of a better chance of getting my vote in this election than does the NDP following this action.

If you’re going to put your efforts into excluding a party that doesn’t deserve to be in national debates, get rid of the Bloc.  They have candidates in fewer than one-quarter of the ridings the Green Party does. The Bloc Quebecois have never represented Canadian interests, nor would they even claim to.

If you do win this election, I hope you will enforce a Canadian “Do Not Call List”.  I would like to eat my dinner in peace.

A bad pun I had to create a posting for just to use it.

The company Syl’s working for, Dynacon, is putting a Micro-satellite into orbit with help from the CSA. Very cool. I’ve never worked for a company Slashdot-worthy.

I kind of pictured a “Micro-satellite” as something that looks like the Hubble Space Telescope but about the size of my thumbnail… like a scale model or something that got caught in a shrink ray.

Instead, ‘NEOSSat will be the size of a large suitcase‘. Com’on! This thing tracks killer asteroids! Get more imaginative! At least put some bumper stickers on it.

Either way, it’s pretty cool whenever something you’ve worked on gets applied to the real world space.

Edit July 2, 2008: Updated to correct nomenclature and past/future tense.

Not that I’ve ever considered the Toronto Sun to be anything more than a cartoon version of a daily newspaper, but the last three days they’ve been running front-page articles on saving reindeer at the Toronto Zoo.

Canada lost another soldier to the war in Afghanistan, the Democratic nomination is coming down to the final stretch, and the Toronto Blue Jays had two players go on the disabled list last night. The Toronto Sun continues to play the holier-than-thou card and insist that the Toronto Zoo not euthanize overpopulated species in the budget-locked zoo.

It’s not a surprise that they could get the public behind this cause. Each day the cover page says “Rudolph” instead of “reindeer”, adding a childhood emotional personification of the young animals.

If they held a charity drive to save the animals, people would donate. If they insisted that people go visit the Toronto Zoo more, they would promise but I don’t think you’d see the turnout necessary once Summer hits. If they insist that the city raise taxes by 10 cents per-person and generating $300,000 so they could afford to keep them, there would be an outrage.

Of course killing reindeer isn’t a good thing, I’m not heartless. However I also have faith that the people who work at the Toronto Zoo are ‘animal-people’. They wouldn’t euthanize an animal unless it was essential… and it is. Reindeer, in spite of their cute, cartoon selves, are highly territorial. Too many males in a group and things get violent as well as dangerous for the animals and staff.

In a similar way, I pulled myself out of the CBC Radio2 protests when the organizers refused to listen to reason and hold protests outside 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Face it, the kind of person who listens to symphony music tends to have an office job. I wouldn’t generalize, it’s not everyone. However, I’d be willing to bet serious money that the vast majority of listeners do work those hours.

The response from the Facebook branch organizing the cross-country event was that there would be enough “musicians, students and mothers(?)” out to support the group.

It seems that even the sophisticated protest-hippies don’t want anything to do with us ’suits’ who work day jobs. I had first considered switching my stance after reading the point that an in-house orchestra was once a necessity when recording equipment was heavy and expensive. Now a recording studio can be set up wherever a performance is held. The illogical actions of the protest organizers secured my position on the other side of the fence.

This was another situation where the masses want it all, but are not willing to accept that there are real costs involved… often tax-funded costs.

However, in the end, “Rudolph” was saved. This time. So my question is simply this:

For those of us who wish to be logical and reasonable in our efforts to better the world, does aligning ourselves with front-page grabbing, strategy-free neanderthals hurt or help?

Filling up valuable relax-time on the weekend, Simone and I watched Minority Report - a movie that has, over time, floated up near the top of my list of Favourite Spielberg Flicks. The Phillip K. Dick short story is really quite difficult to follow, and I’m impressed they were able to simplify the plot while extending it out to a feature length film. Look to “Paycheck” to see an excellent example of failing to extend a short story to feature-length.

Five years after the movie (and six years following 9/11), there are some near-futuristic elements that seem right around the corner. 

The transit system of cars driving themselves got a boost last week when the DARPA  Awards held the first Urban Competition.  The first few years of the DARPA awards required that cars, trucks, and even a motorbike try to drive themselves through a desert course. The first few years, no vehicle was able to make it, but eventually one did.

This year, the competition involved driving 60 miles in under 6 hours, avoiding collisions with other robotic drivers as well as human drivers, through an urban setting.  No less than three teams managed to complete the challenge in under 6 hours, and a total of eight were able to complete the course. Self-driving cars likely won’t be in the 2009 lineup at your local GM dealer, but it will certainly arrive before 2055 (when the events in the movie take place).

Driving up to, and parking in a garage on the same floor as your condo is already something being built into some ultra-rich apartments in Manhatten. Right now, it’s for the ultra-rich, but once upon a time, cars were for the ultra-rich. By 2055 it may become a common feature.

RFID tags have started being implanted in some employees, depending on where you work. The state of California has ruled it unconstitutional to force someone to have an RFID tag implanted, and I believe there’s something similar in Canada (although I can’t find reference to it). RFID tags can be read from a distance. While this is more low-tech than the cornea scans used in Minority Report, it still works the same.

Access to secure areas, police identification, and even targeted advertising by billboards can all be accomplished with RFID implants. There are conveniences allowed to those who give up a piece of their privacy. The “Powers That Be” can really get this done by getting parents to have one inserted into their kids. Growing up with the convenience that comes with an RFID tag solves the Convenience vs. Privacy issue in no more than one generation.

There’s already a cell phone out there that lets parents track their kids online using the embedded GPS. I’m sure that a 12 year old would be happy to have the leash extended for the value of being one of the first kids in your grade to get a cell phone. They will grow up comfortable with a perpetual watching eye.

Don’t believe me?  Why do you use credit/debit cards? It’s more convenient then cash. But you can’t think that the credit card companies and banks never take advantage and sell your buying habits, do you? You’ve just given up a small piece of your privacy for convenience. It doesn’t feel like much, but it’s still been done.

How about security? A lot of the “suspect your neighbour” rhetoric had died down in Canada and mainstream media since the initial reaction after 9/11, but I was still surprised by the shear quantity of “Report Anyone Suspicious” posters littering New York City six years later. I have to admit I was a little saddened by the fact they’re still not in a state of mind where they can trust.

Even now, they’re looking at installing cameras on all busses and streetcars in Toronto. It improves security for the drivers and the riders, but again you’ve given up a small part of your privacy for security.

I’m sorry if this is turning a little “Big Brother”, but that’s really a major thematic element of Minority Report. The difference between 1949 and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” may have seemed drastic, so naturally we would never let any government invoke “Thought Police”.  However, if it came as a pilot project, then was implemented on a test area, then was voted by the public to go national after resounding success, then such a transition is feasible and frightfully real.

So much of Minority Report was near-future, but still “Futuristic” in 2002. In just five years since the movie came out, a lot has happened to bring 2055 towards the present. The movie feels even more chilling now than it did then.

At least we can hope for a Spielberg Happy Ending^©.

An open letter to the Ontario NDP:

At 8:48 pm on October 9, 2007, I received a call from an answering machine representing the NDP asking me to vote for Howard Hampton because the Liberals “broke their promises”.

On July 22, 2003, Howard Hampton put forward a proposal cleverly nicknamed the “Eating Supper In Peace” act, which would create a Do Not Call list and allow people like myself to avoid annoying and unwanted impersonal phone calls.I will not vote NDP tomorrow.

I assume that the NDP maintains a Do Not Call list? How do I get myself on that list?

-Stephen Clark
Davenport Riding