[PHOTO] No photos today

I'm sorry. I haven't uploaded any more photos today, there's some interesting photos I need to process, and it's possible--though unhoped for--that my camera might be broken somehow. Watch this space for more.

In the meantime, I'd like to introduce you to the two Flickr groups where I'm not active, blogTO and Torontoist. (Yes, those groups are associated with the two high-profile Toronto-centric group blogs.) With each having more than three thousand members, there's any number of great photos there.

[DM] "A Polynesian passport?"

I've a post up at Demography Matters taking a look at how calls for a pan-Polynesian passport regime, while hugely unlikely, reflect a dynamic Polynesian labour market and identity. Go, read.

[LINK] Four Livejournal links

Never let it be said that we Livejournalers don't produce anything worthy of reading.

• angel80 reports on the political nature of climate change in Australia, how emissions trading is seen as suspect and how controls on water use--saying, using precious water to grow rice for little net benefit--are politicized. Myself, I can say that similar things are this in this anti-antipodean dominion, one notable local variation being the idea that climate change would open up large areas of Canada to exploitation, even settlement. Note, please, that the Canadian Shield is pretty infertile, agricultural settlement is so passé, and the wholesale collapse of the boreal and arctic ecologies isn't a good thing.


• james_nicoll lets us know that some idiot decided to transmit the genetic code for RuBisCo, the molecule responsible for carbon fixation, to three nearby stars. Admittedly two of the stars are exceedingly dim red dwarfs, one so dim that it wasn't discovered at twelve light-years until recently, and the third is a bright star that would have been Sun-like but for its tendency to flood its system and hypothetical planets with stellar plasma, but still. Shouldn't we at least have some idea as to whether anyone's out there before we start transmitting "Hi we're here!" signals? At least, as James says, it isn't an obvious "lamp post error."i


• mawombat, too long absent, comes up with a great two-part analysis (1, 2) of Géricault's famous 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa.


• Finally, ptownnyc enunciates my anger about those people who talk about the "innocent victims of AIDS," in implicit contrast to the guilty victims (recipients?) of AIDS, like, say, queer men. He's not at all wrong when he talks about how many of the people, evangelical Christians but others, who fight against AIDS were absent from the fight against the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developed world, which affected guess-who. I laughed cynically once when I read a passage wherein an evangelical's wife picked up a magazine in 2001, read an article about AIDS, and realized that people with AIDS suffered. Really?

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On Macs and PCs

The National Post has said, perhaps better than I would, what I find so offputting about Macintosh's "Get a Mac" ad campaign.

"You can't help but get sick of any ad campaign that's this ubiquitous -- it's on all the time," says Simon DuMenco, media columnist for Advertising Age. "Even Seinfeld ran out of steam."

What seems to be gaining speed on its hip American counterpart is a campaign for A&W shot in Vancouver with two Canadian actors. Like Apple, the A&W commercials feature two men -- a schlubby, heavy-set older gentleman and a younger, Gen-Y slacker designed to give the brand youth cachet.

"The last time I looked up one of those Apple spots on YouTube, I found more parodies than ads," says Bob Simpson, associate creative director of Rethink Communications, the advertising company that earned a silver award for their A&W ads. "Our humour is based on small human truths -- I don't think we've quite mined that into that ground yet."

Since both A&W characters are likable, the hamburger chain has dodged the problem that has plagued Apple since the start of their series: that John Hodgman's PC character is more popular than Long's Mac guy.

"I don't like PCs, but I like ‘PC' because Hodgman is so lovable," says DuMenco. "Lots of people think Macs are for idiots willing to overpay because people can actively dislike Justin Long."

(A&W, for the interested, is a global fast food chain that I love for its admittedly caloric root beer and even more caloric root beer/ice cream floats.)

"510 Spadina, south from Spadina Station to Front Street" (Watch on YouTube)

I agree with Dumenco: John Hodgman is so much more lovable than Justin Long.

All that said, I want to emphasize that none of my friends have, in person or online, haven't been obnoxious. Macs are a lifestyle choice, PCs are a lifestyle choice, and that's that, we respect each other's choices. It's kind of like handedness, really. My Mac-using friends do care very much about their platforms and their aesthetics, but I really didn't get it until I read this Business Week article about how Macintosh computers are crafted.

Apple is in every sense a mass marketer, but it has the soul and the strategy of a luxury-goods maker. You can see this in the design of its products, right down to the packaging. The appeal is visceral: To see the product is to want it.

I'm writing these words on a 27-inch iMac that is the most gorgeous desktop I've ever touched. In a world where the design esthetic is industrial blah, the new iMac ($1,999 for the 27-in. model, from $1,199 for the 21.5-in.) is a spare, elegant fusion of aluminum and glass that features everything you need and nothing you don't. The accompanying Magic Mouse is a curved sliver of plastic with a touch-sensitive top that lets you scroll with the flick of a finger. The wireless keyboard looks like something from the Bang & Olufsen store.

Luxury-goods makers are quirky, and Apple is no exception. It has a long-standing antipathy to multibutton mice, so the Magic Mouse comes with its right-click function disabled until you change a preference to turn it on. And the keyboard pointlessly embraces all the limitations of a laptop keyboard—no number pad, no keys for paging up and down. Fortunately, if you want to trade beauty for functionality, standard Microsoft (MSFT) and Logitech International (LOGI) keyboards and mice work just fine with Macs.

Apple also disdains the mass marketers' credo that there should be a product tailored to every taste. HP's U.S. online store offers 35 different laptop models, from a $300 netbook to $1,300-plus monster with an 18.4-in. display, each of which is available in multiple configurations. Apple offers just five laptops, and the options for configuring them are limited to disk size, amount of memory, and sometimes processor speed. Every computer Apple makes, from the $599 Mac mini to the 8-Core Mac Pro desktop, which approaches $12,000 when it's fully loaded, comes with the same version of the OS X operating system and the same set of preloaded applications.

Apple's approach causes it to neglect huge swaths of the market. For example, the company serenely ignored analysts' advice that it "had to" break into the hot netbook market. It has avoided the fast-growing segment of low-cost, lightweight consumer notebooks. Entering those markets could boost Apple's share even further. But the move would take a toll on profit margins and fight the company's commitment to choose what types of products it believes best serve its customers' needs. CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed the low end of the market, saying: "We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."

I remain fond of PCs, their quirkiness and all, and quite honestly I can think of better uses for money than to buy new computers with capabilities I likely will never use. Netbooks are widely used for a reason. Still, as someone who has looked upon the iPod and the iPhone with no smalll degree of admiration and even a little bit of fear (how did Jobs strike that technology deal with the Zeta Reticulans?), that experience and those of my friends and the above news article make me appreciate the Macintosh aesthetic that much more. If only Jobs lost his attitude and his company lost that ad series, my admiration would be complete.

[LINK] "All Afghan detainees likely tortured: diplomat"

Posted without comment, taken from the CBC.

All detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured by Afghan officials and many of the prisoners were innocent, says a former senior diplomat with Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Appearing before a House of Commons committee Wednesday, Richard Colvin blasted the detainees policies of Canada and compared them with the policies of the British and the Netherlands.

The detainees were captured by Canadian soldiers then handed over to the Afghan intelligence service, called the NDS.

Colvin said Canada was taking six times as many detainees as British troops and 20 times as many as the Dutch.

He said unlike the British and Dutch, Canada did not monitor their conditions; took days, weeks or months to notify the Red Cross; kept poor records; and to prevent scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed this behind "walls of secrecy."

[. . .]

According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure," Colvin said.

He said the most common forms of torture were beatings, whipping with power cables, the use of electricity, knives, open flames and rape.

[. . .]

Colvin told the committee that the detainees were not "high-value targets" such as IED bomb makers, al-Qaeda terrorists or Taliban commanders.

"According to a very authoritative source, many of the Afghans we detained had no connection to insurgency whatsoever," he said. "From an intelligence point of view, they had little or no value."

Colvin said some may have been foot soldiers or day fighters but many were just local people at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"In other words, we detained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people."

[. . .]

Colvin said when a new ambassador arrived in May, the paper trail on detainees was reduced and reports on detainees were at times "censored" with crucial information removed.

He said all of these steps were "extremely irregular."

At the time, the government denied there were any credible allegations of torture.

But Tories questioned the validity of Colvin's sources, saying the information he received concerning the allegations were from second-hand and third-hand reports.

Colvin's testimony "seemed dramatic, but under questioning it was revealed to be filmsy, inconsistent, unreliable," Laurie Hawn, parliamentary secretary to Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News. "[He] did not come across as credible."

While he didn't doubt Colvin's sincerity, "every time something has happened in that mission, we have taken action," Hawn said. "And that's evidenced by the improvements in the prison, the training we've done, money we've invested, the visits we've had organized with the various authorities there."

Well, two comments.

1. "Oh Canada."

2. People are dying to support this regime?

[LINK] "Seal to be served in Parliament Hill restaurant"

On to a less weighty Canadian affair, this time relating to cafeteria food.

Seal meat is about to join beef tenderloin and baked salmon on the haute-cuisine menu for MPs and senators in the parliamentary restaurant.

MPs say Parliament is taking a cue from Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean, who triggered a global controversy last May by eating seal meat while on a visit to Nunavut in a show of support for Inuit culture.

[. . .]

Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat MPs say the addition of seal meat to the menu in the exclusive parliamentary restaurant will also be a significant boost for sealers battling a European Union ban on their products.

"The sealers will be able to say, 'This is legal in Canada. We follow the legal process. Parliament Hill serves seal meat, and members of Parliament and senators eat seal meat'," said Liberal MP Marcel Proulx, a member of the powerful all-party board that oversees Commons budgets and bylaws.

The head of a lobby group in Newfoundland and Labrador welcomed the move with enthusiasm.

"I think it's a wonderful gesture," said Frank Pinhorn, executive director of the Canadian Sealers' Association.

"I commend the federal government or whoever is involved in it. I think it's a real demonstration of support for Canadian culture, and I think it's long overdue."

Am I alone in fearing that the Canadian government will fetishize seal meat, in so doing making its consumption an important component of Canadian identity, in the same way that Japan has fetishized whale meat?

[LINK] "Comrade Norman Bethune still a force in China"

Bill Schiller's Toronto Star article addresses an interesting subject, that of Canadian doctor and hero Norman Bethune, huge in China but little known in Canada.

Canada's Dr. Norman Bethune was a force of nature in his late 40s when he landed in China, then at war with Japan in 1938.

Dr. Zhang Yesheng, 88, was just 17 then. But, more than 70 years later, his memory hasn't dimmed: he can still recall, with the precision of a many-pixelled camera, the exciting scene of Bethune's arrival in his village and military headquarters. Bethune brought 16 donkeys with him that day, he says, packed with food, medicine, surgical tools, a camp bed – virtually everything he needed.

[. . .]

Seventy years ago, on Nov. 12, 1939, he died of blood poisoning from an infection contracted after cutting himself during surgery.

But his memory here lives on.

Chinese schoolchildren trek regularly to a museum that honours his memory.

A coveted Bethune Medal is awarded annually to physicians making outstanding contributions to Chinese health.

And, in the past five decades, the Bethune Medical Division of Jilin University has graduated more than 30,000 professionals into the Chinese health-care system.

"As a travelling Canadian in China, you can see peoples' eyes sparkle – you can feel the effect – when you say you're Canadian, because of Norman Bethune," says Toronto physician Dr. Nelly Ng, who'll participate in a commemorative ceremony for Bethune at Beijing's Great Hall of the People Nov. 12.

Still revered by the Chinese, Bethune might be our biggest international star ever. And yet, by comparison, his reputation in Canada seems restrained.

Dr. Zhang, Bethune's former assistant in charge of medical supplies and later his student, thinks that restraint might be because of Bethune's devotion to Communism.

"Canadians sort of react when they hear that Dr. Bethune was a Communist," he says with a smile. "Of course, we don't refer to him as a proletarian revolutionary anymore," he adds. "We call him a reformist."

But above all, Zhang stresses, "he was a humanitarian."

There may have been a mention of him in one of my schools' social studies or history courses, but I think that all I've learned of him in Canada came from my own reading either online or in print.