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The Terrazza Bicycle Park at 372 Harbord Street is associated with the restaurant of the same name but is apparently free for all to use.
Feb. 5th, 2013
Writing for the Library of Congress' blog The Search, concerned with history and archives, Trevor Owens has an interview with one Henry Lowood, curator of Stanford University's very extensive collection of vintage computer games, produced over a period of two decades.
Trevor: First, could you tell us a bit about the Cabrinety Collection? What’s the backstory? What is its scale in terms of numbers of items, date ranges, types of items, etc?
Henry: The Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing was a gift to Stanford University. Stephen Cabrinety was a collector who began a very systematic effort to document the history of videogames while a teenager. Documents in the collection tell the story of his remarkably prescient vision of a historical collection or museum of the history of microcomputing. He attended Stanford briefly, stopped out and unfortunately passed away at a much too early age. His family then was faced with the decision about what to do with his collection. His sister contacted Stanford based on her discovery of our Silicon Valley Archives while searching on the web, and we negotiated the terms of the transfer by gift in 1998.
Note that this is a history of microcomputing collection, not a game collection per se, though probably more than 80 percent of the collection is console and computer games or related forms of interactive entertainment or education. The collection covers the period from the Magnavox Odyssey (1972) to just before DOOM (1993); it includes a substantial portion of the microcomputer (including console) software produced in this period. We do not have an exact count for various reasons, but the number of software titles is in the neighborhood of 12-15,000, plus more than 70 platforms, other hardware, books, magazines, ephemera, and archival documentation.
Trevor: Could you tell us about a few of the items in the collection that you think are particularly special, exciting and unique?
Henry: I can answer this question from several different perspectives. From a personal perspective, nearly every box I open from the collection catches my eye with an interesting strategy title or historical simulation — Avalon-Hill games like Nukewar or Chris Crawford’s early games or the amazing run of games from SSI during the 1980s. Another criterion might be rarity, and we find that games like Ultima – Escape from Mt. Drash or hardware like a Magnavox Odyssey in the original (unopened) box are in the collection. Then of course there are the many classics in pristine condition from Atari, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, and so on, including versions of software such as VisiCalc (even a dealer demo) and Wordstar.
Trevor: Could you tell us about the partnership with NIST? What is the plan? What is Stanford doing and getting out of the relationship and what is NIST getting?
Henry: The plan is to image as much of the software collection as possible and add the images and hashes to the NSRL database. In a nutshell, we will move through the collection beginning with the items on relatively familiar, more recent formats first (e.g., CD-ROM, 3.5” floppy diskettes, etc.) and ending with now unfamiliar formats from the 1970s, such as data on audio-cassettes. NSRL will capture disk images from original media, along with photographic images of media, boxes and box inserts (manuals, registration cards, etc.); Stanford will provide the software, manage metadata, carry out quality control, and archive the images in our digital repository. We will be able to compile success rates for data capture from the various media formats, and finally, we will contact rights-owners to request permission to provide access to items in the collection for which they hold copyright.
A week ago, Canadian map blogger Patrick Cain linked to an interesting analysis of census data on same-sex couples in Canada.
The data is from 2006, as Cain notes.
I'd like to see more recent data. I would ask if there are enough same-sex couples to confidently draw out actual trends as opposed to statistical hiccups, but I don't think that's a serious concern. Why would Québec be different on this front, I wonder?
Lesbian and gay couples segregate from each other by neighbourhood in Quebec much more than in the rest of Canada, census data shows.
In Canada overall, of 399 census tracts with a high number of gay male couples, defined as more than 20 gay couples per 1,000 of population, 179 had no lesbian couples. Of these, 101, or 56%, were in Quebec - 81 in Montreal, 12 in Quebec City, and the rest in smaller centres.
That's a pattern it's hard to see elsewhere in the country. In other Canadian cities, lesbians and gay men show much more of a tendency to share the same geography.
Canada's highest census tract for gay male couples, a dozen or so blocks on the west side of Church St. centred on Wellesley St. W. in Toronto, has 255 gay couples and 30 lesbian couples. Montreal's top census tract for gay couples (west of Boul. Rene-Levesque and Papineau Ave.), on the other hand, has no lesbian couples.
Of Montreal's 20 highest census tracts for gay couples, 14 have no lesbian couples. The equivalent number in Toronto is seven, and in Vancouver, six.
The data is from 2006, as Cain notes.
The 2006 data is the most recent available. In 2011, Statistics Canada asked a question designed to count same-sex households, but the question was poorly designed and didn’t distinguish clearly between same-sex couples and two people of the same sex sharing accomodation. At the last minute (actually the morning of the census release), StatsCan decided not to release the data. My efforts to pry it loose with an access-to-information request were unsuccessful, in the end.
I'd like to see more recent data. I would ask if there are enough same-sex couples to confidently draw out actual trends as opposed to statistical hiccups, but I don't think that's a serious concern. Why would Québec be different on this front, I wonder?
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Toronto city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, who has gone on the record as wanting to create a red-light district on the Toronto Islands, trying to defund Pride Toronto for allowing the presence of even the individual members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (not the group itself), warning of an extensive Communist presence on Toronto City Council, favouring the creation of casinos in the city of Toronto so as to give single mothers employment (and childcare opportunities?), and supporting the transfer of the few city-run daycares over to the province, in addition to being until recently one of mayor Rob Ford's few strong allies on city council, last appeared here in connection with a finding that he overspent. As reported by NOW Toronto's Ben Spurr, Toronto city council has voted to take action against him.
See also this Toronto Star editorial suggesting that this could be a problem for Mayor Ford's alliances, and a Torontoist article by Steve Kupferman pointing out that the mayor himself faces this problem.
The city’s compliance audit committee has decided to take legal action against Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti for allegedly breaking election spending laws during his 2010 campaign.
The three-person committee made the decision at a meeting Monday after considering an audit, released last month, that found Mammoliti exceeded the $27,464 campaign spending limit by $12,065, or 44 per cent.
In doing so they rejected a request from Mammoliti’s lawyer Jack Siegel, who had asked for an eight-month adjournment in order to seek an outside review of the audit. Siegel told the committee Monday that “there is no suggestion of subterfuge” and any errors in his client’s campaign filings were honest mistakes.
“It’s Mr. Mammoliti’s position, and has been throughout, that he’s done everything possible to comply with the requirements of a very complicated piece of legislation,” Siegel told reporters after the meeting.
But in presenting his report to the committee, auditor Bruce Armstrong painted a picture of an extraordinarily sloppy campaign whose financial filings were riddled with errors. Armstrong said that a normally straightforward record-keeping process was complicated by Mammoliti’s decision in the summer of 2010 to abort a run for mayor and seek a councillor’s seat instead. A lack of in-house accounting expertise also did the councillor no favours.
According to Armstrong, bills for Mammoliti’s councillor bid were sometimes paid out of the bank account designated for his mayoral run, not all of his expenses were reported, and a concerted attempt to organize the campaign records wasn’t made until Mammoliti called in an expert shortly before the filing deadline, causing a “mad rush” to reconcile the books.
“Until the deadline period for filing financial statements, I maintain the campaign had no idea what the true revenues or expenses of the campaigns were,” Armstrong told the committee.
See also this Toronto Star editorial suggesting that this could be a problem for Mayor Ford's alliances, and a Torontoist article by Steve Kupferman pointing out that the mayor himself faces this problem.
Prince Edward Island-born journalist and current Conservative Party PEI senator Mike Duffy is currently in trouble for allegedly falsely claiming an Island residence as his primary residence. This could have significant consequences for him, as senators have to reside in the province they represent. Writing in the The Guardian of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Teresa White determined that the province considers Duffy a non-resident.
Records obtained by The Guardian Tuesday from the provincial taxation and property division office show Duffy and his wife Heather are identified as non-resident owners of their Cavendish cottage and thus pay higher property taxes.
Prince Edward Island charges 50 per cent more in property taxes to owners who are not permanent residents of the Island.
In order to get the lower tax rate, one must reside in the province for 183 days consecutively.
The P.E.I. government does not currently offer Duffy the lower permanent resident rate and identifies him as a non-resident.
Malpeque MP Wayne Easter says this raises serious concerns about whether Duffy is meeting the Senate’s rules regarding senators' primary homes.
“If he’s paying the additional taxation, then it’s unlikely he’s meeting the residency requirements for senators,” Easter said.
“If you’re a resident of P.E.I., why would you pay double taxation? That needs to be checked out and hopefully the senate is checking that stuff out.”
Here's a few links to demographics-related news stories I thought readers might be interested in.
Eurasianet, via Inter Press Service, features an article describing how many children in Kyrgyzstan have been left effective orphans by the migration of their parents, for work purposes, to Russia and Kazakhstan. I've read of similar phenomena elsewhere in the world, for instance in other post-Soviet republics like Armenia and Moldova.
The Guardian carried the news that Polish, on account of the past decade of immigration, is the second most common language by number of speakers in England, with the half-million Polish ranking just behind Welsh-speakers in total numbers.
On a related note, The Telegraph reports that not only have 3.6 million Britons emigrated in the decade 2001-2011, just under two million were people in the 25-44 age group, i.e. not retirees looking for the good life in France or Spain.
The Washington Post takes note of the fact that in Ireland, the ongoing post-boom recession is made relatively tolerable only by the resumption of large-scale emigration.
A recent OECD report points out that the German labour market hasn't been taking up large numbers of immigrant recently, tracing the problems to a regulatory system that's seen more as administering a ban on migrant workers with exceptions than one that enables migration, particularly for non-highly skilled workers, as well as the relatively small number of potential migrants fluent in Germany.
The Vancouver Observer notes that while Iran has a substantial population of talented computer engineers and software designers, by and large they can only exercise their talents outside of their country.
The South China Morning Post's Tom Holland writes, from a Hong Kong perspective, about how Singapore's total population and GDP may have surpassed Hong Kong's thanks to the former's liberal immigration policies, but notes that Hong Kong still has an advantage in GDP per capita. A Straits Times article, meanwhile, notes that the Singaporean government hopes to boost TFRs up to the 1.4-1.5 child per woman level, by a quarter.
The Hankoryeh notes that fertility in South Korea has risen somewhat in recent years, the TFR rising from an all-tie low of 1.08 in 2005 to 1.3 last year.
The Global Post has a photo essay depicting Chinese workers making their annual migration back to their home communities for the Lunar New Year festival.
On the subject of islands, growing migration from New Zealand (mainly to Australia, Bermuda (to the United States and Australia) and Puerto Rico (to the United States, increasingly to Florida) has been note in the press.
Al Monitor and Reuters both note the pronatalism of Erdogan in Turkey, who is trying to prevent Turkey's fertility rate from falling below the replacement level through a combination of financial incentives and public lectures.
(Crossposted at Demography Matters here.)
Eurasianet, via Inter Press Service, features an article describing how many children in Kyrgyzstan have been left effective orphans by the migration of their parents, for work purposes, to Russia and Kazakhstan. I've read of similar phenomena elsewhere in the world, for instance in other post-Soviet republics like Armenia and Moldova.
The Guardian carried the news that Polish, on account of the past decade of immigration, is the second most common language by number of speakers in England, with the half-million Polish ranking just behind Welsh-speakers in total numbers.
On a related note, The Telegraph reports that not only have 3.6 million Britons emigrated in the decade 2001-2011, just under two million were people in the 25-44 age group, i.e. not retirees looking for the good life in France or Spain.
The Washington Post takes note of the fact that in Ireland, the ongoing post-boom recession is made relatively tolerable only by the resumption of large-scale emigration.
A recent OECD report points out that the German labour market hasn't been taking up large numbers of immigrant recently, tracing the problems to a regulatory system that's seen more as administering a ban on migrant workers with exceptions than one that enables migration, particularly for non-highly skilled workers, as well as the relatively small number of potential migrants fluent in Germany.
The Vancouver Observer notes that while Iran has a substantial population of talented computer engineers and software designers, by and large they can only exercise their talents outside of their country.
The South China Morning Post's Tom Holland writes, from a Hong Kong perspective, about how Singapore's total population and GDP may have surpassed Hong Kong's thanks to the former's liberal immigration policies, but notes that Hong Kong still has an advantage in GDP per capita. A Straits Times article, meanwhile, notes that the Singaporean government hopes to boost TFRs up to the 1.4-1.5 child per woman level, by a quarter.
The Hankoryeh notes that fertility in South Korea has risen somewhat in recent years, the TFR rising from an all-tie low of 1.08 in 2005 to 1.3 last year.
The Global Post has a photo essay depicting Chinese workers making their annual migration back to their home communities for the Lunar New Year festival.
On the subject of islands, growing migration from New Zealand (mainly to Australia, Bermuda (to the United States and Australia) and Puerto Rico (to the United States, increasingly to Florida) has been note in the press.
Al Monitor and Reuters both note the pronatalism of Erdogan in Turkey, who is trying to prevent Turkey's fertility rate from falling below the replacement level through a combination of financial incentives and public lectures.
(Crossposted at Demography Matters here.)
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