[PHOTO] Looking east into the subway tunnel, Bloor and Yonge station

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[LINK] "Canadian science writers given freedom of speech award - in Canada"

One of the Andrews I know on Facebook linked to Canadian science journalist Bob McDonald's post describing why the Canadian and Québec science writers' organizations received a press freedom award. He's right to note that we really shouldn't be proud of the reasons why.

Posted in its entirety, due to its importance.

This past week, the Canadian Science Writers Association, and its Quebec equivalent, received the Press Freedom Award from the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom and Canadian Commission for UNESCO for their efforts to stop the muzzling of Canadian federal scientists. The award was given on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.

The award is given to a Canadian person or group who has defended or advanced the cause of freedom of expression. The science writers collectively wrote an open letter to the prime minister last February, asking to free federal scientists from restrictions imposed on them when speaking to the press about their own work, especially those in environmental science.

This type of award is usually given to reporters working in countries where oppressive governments or dictatorships attempt to control the press and threaten the lives of journalists pursuing the truth. It's not the type of issue we normally associate with Canada.

Every year, another organization, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, honours journalists, usually from a war-torn or oppressed country, who have risked their lives just doing their job - seeking the truth and informing the public. The huge gala evening, which I have had the privilege to witness, is attended by hundreds of journalists in all media from across the country who support our international colleagues.

The event is a highly emotional one, as we listen to the tragic and heroic stories of journalists who have had their families threatened, been shot at or even killed by governments that do not want the media's message to be heard.

Hearing about the difficulties journalists in other countries face underlines how privileged we are in Canada to uphold the principles of journalistic integrity.

But this award to the Canadian Science Writers Association is a sign that the tip of that oppressive iceberg is showing here.

Of course, no science writers are being threatened, but there have been numerous incidents where journalists, including us at Quirks & Quarks, have requested interviews with federal scientists about their own work and have either been refused or delayed access until after our deadlines by government media relations.

The scientific perspective on the world is an important one because science is the pursuit of truth. Most of the universe is still unknown to us, whether it be the dynamics of our atmosphere and how it interacts with the oceans, land and life, or the dark matter hidden between the stars.

We know that human activity has had a negative impact on our planet and we need to make some hard decisions about ways to reduce that impact without destroying the economy or our way of life. Those decisions need the scientific point of view. Science is the voice of reason that is often overshadowed by political, social or economic priorities.

This is not to say that science has all the answers, nor should decisions be made for purely scientific reasons. But that perspective needs to be part of the mix, and for that reason, the scientists need to be heard.

So, congratulations to the Canadian Science Writers Association for the award - but it's really a bit of a sad day for Canada.

[LINK] "Superheroes and Gods Just Ain't All That"

What Andrew Barton said at Acts of Minor Treason. Building fiction universes which make sense, and which--when they diverge from the world we know--do so in ways that are readily comprehensible, is something that's not only important for science fiction, either. Plausible characters and settings and plots count everywhere.

Sometimes it's difficult to really wrap one's head about why this is important. Recently I came across an article on Gizmodo regarding the Pentagon's withdrawal of support from the movie The Avengers. As author Spencer Ackerman put it, their reason was that "the Defense Department didn't think a movie about superheroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy." Presumably, the implied conclusion we're supposed to draw is that this is ridiculous, hair-splitting stuff, and that the Pentagon is just being a bunch of jerks who want to cramp the movie's style.

You know what, though? The military is right. According to the Defense Department, their main problem is that they couldn't figure out where the US military stood in relation to S.H.I.E.L.D., which Wikipedia describes as an "espionage and secret military law-enforcement agency," which really narrows it down - and, hell, I imagine it's easy as hell to maintain secrecy over something like a giant flying aircraft carrier. S.H.I.E.L.D. has, from what I understand, been the subject of fan debates over just what it is for a good chunk of the last fifty years.

Answering questions like this is important. They define what you can and cannot do in a story, and as such reduce the unmanageability of everything being possible into more restricted channels that can guide the flow of a narrative. Something that is shadowy, nebulous, and ill-defined even to the people writing it does not lend itself well to the best writing. Creators need to know how their creations work, even if that information never filters down to the audience.

[URBAN NOTE] "How the Eglinton LRT will transform neighbourhoods"

Tess Kalinowski's Toronto Star article seems--to my mind--to gush overmuch about the new light rail scheduled to be constructed along Toronto's midtown/west-to-east Eglinton Avenue. It is interesting to be in town to see the process start, but the sheer geographic scope of the process could potentially allow for plenty of flaws to be manifested.

When MPP Mike Colle takes a mental stroll down Eglinton Ave., he sees pokey one- and two-storey buildings, gas stations, parking lots. In his mind it boils down to a whole lot of potential.

Now, after decades of neglect, the Liberal MPP for Eglinton-Lawrence says the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, still eight years from completion, is already transforming the neighbourhood he loves to boost.

“We need more people living on Eglinton. It’s the forgotten middle of Toronto. For decades nobody ever paid attention to it. Now this gives us a chance to pay attention. This is a chance to give it some light and some investment. The transportation is really the catalyst. And it’s already happening,” said Colle, who cites the redevelopment of the 50-year-old China House restaurant at Bathurst St. into a condo that sold out in a couple of weeks.

How Eglinton looks once the Crosstown is running will depend on a two-year city planning exercise called an avenue study that begins community consultations Thursday at the Fairbank Memorial Community Centre on Dufferin St.

The $1.3 million study, which will eventually go before city council, is the first step in envisioning what Eglinton will look like after the Crosstown is built, how it will be zoned, what kind of buildings and public spaces will be encouraged.

Avenue studies typically focus on one or two kilometers of a street. But this one, like the ambitious 26-kilometre, $6 billion Crosstown line itself, will be unprecedented. It will traverse 14 wards through the tunnelled west and central portions starting at Black Creek Dr. and at street level from Laird Rd. to Kennedy Station in the east, said Toronto director of Transportation Planning Rod McPhail.

It will look at all kinds of potential development — from retail and residential to public realm issues such as what to do with the bus lanes that will no longer be required in the Dufferin-Keele area.

[LINK] "Insider tells why Anonymous ‘might well be the most powerful organization on Earth’"

adayinthelife linked to journalist Catherine Solyom's interview in the National Post with fugitive hacker Christopher Doyon. Doyon, allegedly one of the coordinators of the Anonymous movement of cyber-hackers, here in this article claims to have global reach and access to everything.

Q: Anonymous started out as online pranksters but has gotten a whole lot more serious in the last two years. What happened?
A: I believe Egypt was really a turning point for us emotionally in Anonymous. Obviously there was always that sort of prankster edge to us. But people often ask me, “Why are you so mean nowadays?” It started in Egypt – when you work for days to set up live video feeds and the first thing you watch through those feeds is people killing your friends with machine guns – that becomes personal. And then it’s not just Egypt, it’s Libya, Tunisia, over and over again these Freedom Ops are really what gave us a sort of take-no prisoners attitude. We get to know these people. It may not be the same as you and I sitting here, but when you Skype with people and spend hours and hours talking with them on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and they share their hopes and their dreams with you for their country, their future, when they tell you how they’re risking their lives so their children can have a better future in some far-off land, you bond with those people and they become your friends and family.

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?
A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.

Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.

Is this last sentence really true? Or is this just bragging?