Millenium Park Crown Fountain

Picture a video wall, kids and a water park: you have madness and fun all in one. A public art spectacle, the Crown Fountain shows off the diversity of Chicagoland residents while cooling off the young and old!

Any way the wind blows...

In addition to be a walking tivo machine, my girlfriend is the queen of lyrics. I on the other hand get a lotof names mixed up and it makes for very comical and embarrassing gaffs. The solution: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/ Check it out!

My lyrics for today: Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

Is this the real life-
Is this just fantasy-
Caught in a landslide-
No escape from reality-
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see-
I’m just a poor boy,i need no sympathy-
Because I’m easy come,easy go,
A little high,little low,
Anyway the wind blows,doesn’t really matter to me,
To me

Mama,just killed a man,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger,now he’s dead,
Mama,life had just begun,
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away-
Mama ooo,
Didn’t mean to make you cry-
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow-
Carry on,carry on,as if nothing really matters-

Too late,my time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine-
Body’s aching all the time,
Goodbye everybody-I’ve got to go-
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth-
Mama ooo- (any way the wind blows)
I don’t want to die,
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all-

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango-
Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me-
Galileo,galileo,
Galileo galileo
Galileo figaro-magnifico-
But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me-
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family-
Spare him his life from this monstrosity-
Easy come easy go-,will you let me go-
Bismillah! no-,we will not let you go-let him go-
Bismillah! we will not let you go-let him go
Bismillah! we will not let you go-let me go
Will not let you go-let me go
Will not let you go let me go
No,no,no,no,no,no,no-
Mama mia,mama mia,mama mia let me go-
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,for me,for me-

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye-
So you think you can love me and leave me to die-
Oh baby-can’t do this to me baby-
Just gotta get out-just gotta get right outta here-

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters-,nothing really matters to me,

Any way the wind blows....

Airlines Gone Mad

I have a love-hate relationship with The Airline. In one of the sad ironies in life I find myself more often curled up in an airplane than at home. I am diseased to a certain extent to find a thrill when I can screw over The Airline...yet it is rather pathetic because The Airline is so big it doesn't care about wee me.

The Airline did a number on me recently. My laptop (don't buy Toshiba) had a pre-existing condition of a poorly constructed screen. Add gregarious Air Canada Jazz flight attendant to the mix (bam BAM BAAAM!!! Why won't this luggage compartment shut! BAM!!!!) and I have a laptop with a cracked screen.

I was feeling down and out about this until I heard about Sam Sullivan. His worship is a quadraplegic and did my city proud by accepting the Olympic Flag this past week. He showed the world that you can be disabled but still make it somewhere in life. Yet mysteriously enough, The Airline gave the mayor a choice:

"Sorry sir but if you take the flag home with you, you are going to be over your weight limit. So you can take your wheelchair or the flag, but not both."

Sam chose the flag. It now flies at City Hall. Good on you Sam: you chose well....but I wonder how he got off the plane!!!

Maybe I should offer to write The Letter to The Airline.....

The Spectre of Surveillance Cameras

Yonge Street near Gould (Dec 2005)

Canada is again faced with the prospect of closed-circuit television cameras on public streets. This, after the boxing day shootings on Yonge Street in Toronto that killed a girl and injured a half-dozen other bystanders. Although I am not unfamiliar with the violent past of that stretch of Yonge (periodically a shooting death occurs there), it surprises me even more as I shopped along there just a couple of weeks ago!!! (See attached panoramic of the very same site).

The public policy rationale is clear. Just days after the subway bombings in London in July 2005, photographs of the perpetrators were plastered all over the news. The bad guys were found, all was well and the State was in control. There is indeed a public benefit because as a forensic tool, CCTV is extremely powerful in deconstructing an event. Relying upon human memory (conflicting info: blue jacket/black jacket, height and build, etc.) is simply not as effective.

But what is the price? The average Londoner is captured on CCTV some 300 times a day. The average Canadian...probably much less -- but the number is not zero. Chances are, everytime a Canadian uses an ATM, visits the local 7/11, or dines at a favourite restaurant - individuals are stored on tape/DVD somewhere! If Canadians walk around major intersections, chances are a traffic camera is filming.

So what is the hangup? 2002 was the last time that Canadians dealt with this issue. This was when Toronto City Council was trying to look at installing cameras in the (very same) Yonge/Dundas area. At the same time on the west coast, an ill-fated experiment was conducted in Kelowna by the RCMP. Both were flawed in their arguments related to public safety. In Toronto, this was portrayed as spending some $600,000 to have officers sit and watch live CCTV cameras - both a high expense and analogous to watching paint dry. Resource-wise this was an inefficient proposal relative to dealing with shortfalls in regular police duties. In Kelowna, Canada's Privacy Commissioner poo-poo'ed on CCTV's as an invasion of privacy; moreover the RCMP was unable to cough up any evidence that CCTV's reduced street crime.

Both are examples of the ill positioning and lack of understanding of CCTV cameras and their most useful purpose. CCTV actually does not reduce crime - but rather augments investigative capabilities. Furthermore, police forces that try to set up CCTV but dismiss outright privacy concerns tend to conjure up Orwellian visions of "big brother"watching us.

Can there be systems set up that provide sufficient protections for privacy, while providing police forces with greater tools to combat crime? I'm optimistic that models set up in London with strict controls on use/checks and balances on abuse have a place in Canada...but that a lot of work is needed to foster strong understanding of what these technologies really mean.

Separated at Birth: University of Toronto's Graduate House 

Separated at birth: Morphosis' Caltrans "Imperial Death Star" in LA 

The Getty Center overlooks Santa Monica and is but a $1 billion private art museum that provides the public free access!!! In the name of J. Paul Getty, the Center is a major gem of a place to visit just north of UCLA.....even if you are not into art! 

Don't try this at home, kids

(above) Things look five times brighter (right) than usual (left)
when you get smacked in the head!

I've been repeating my story multiple times; in part because the story is written on my face. On Saturday, a CRV suddenly cut off my bike path. From 30-40 kmph I flew over my handle bars, and broke my fall on Cambie with my face. Although I drive past Cambie a lot in my car, surprisingly asphalt is not all that smooth when you rub your face against it at that speed!

Joking aside, I count myself as lucky.

Lucky in that I have not suffered broken bones, just bruising and cuts. They look serious, but all in all I am unscathed from what could have been a more tragic incident.

Besides the novelty of dripping skin and other grotesque facts of how our body is covered by this epidermal layer, I am most touched, intrigued, thankful and surprised by:

• Generosity of strangers...these shadows of individuals who tended to me on the sidewalk and looked after my belongings. I had thought that we had lost those people in Vancouver to the anonymity and apathy of urbanity. A woman who called 911, a male physiotherapist who told me everything was ok. These are people who remain as blurry faces with voices than ring in my head. In fact, in the moments after the fall, everything looked 5x brighter than normal: the buildings were all there, but the sky was this blinding white colour! Tripping...

• Callousness of the driver...the person in the blue CRV who did not shoulder check before cutting me off left. No, it was not a hit and run, but the guy or gal just disappeared. You would think that if a bicycle suddenly went up, and its rider went flying less than 10 feet away from you that it would KINDOF catch your attention. Nope: up and on with their day.

• The bike helmet...initially I had forgotten to wear a helmet while rushing out that morning; returned after changing my mind to wear it. Hence no brains on Cambie.

• My girlfriend, her best friend and my mom...all came to see me in the halls-of-walking-wounded Emergency room where I got checked out. I was originally not particularly of sound mind when I declined the ambulance driver's query about taking me to Emerg - changed my mind after thinking it through. "You're not completely with it," I told myself. "What would my safety conscious girlfriend say?", I asked myself. It was then that "yes" to go to hospital came out of my mouth...

Sunday was the first opportunity I had to scare my niece and nephew with my new look. My niece is probably a little young to understand fully what causes such large wounds on faces and hands . . . but she was quite honest when I asked her if she liked uncle's new face. A terse "No." was the answer I got....."It's just an early Halloween costume", I told her. I just forgot to tell her and her little brother not to try my experience at home!

So Happy to Have Moved from Richmond

Seeing recent devastation in New Orleans when their levees broke, I could not help but to feel lucky. Including feeling for the plight of those masses of people now homeless, I also think about the people in Richmond exposed to two potential calamities:
A) Fraser River flooding: occurring cyclically over the years and now long overdue
B) **The** earthquake, also long overdue

It takes one breach in the Richmond dyke system (dyke, as in earth walls) - the whole place is under water....not to mention the solufluction (quicksand) effect.

p.s. A friend just told me the least expensive protection for Richmond residents for emergency preparedness is to issue each house a rubber dingy. Macabre, but true.