Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

January 10, 2007 01:58 +0000 | Why I'm Here 0

I'm on the streetcar coming home from the second TPSC cameras meeting. In short, I still have a great deal to learn about this sort of thing. Lesson #1: you can't hold a meeting without an agenda to follow. For most people, this is obvious, but for some reason, it hadn't occurred to me. Those of you who know me know that while I'm passionate and informed, I'm not too skilled at the organisational aspects of this sort of thing. There were a lot of well meaning people in the room looking for leadership and I was less than forthcoming with it. A big thank you goes to Stephen who, having much more experience with organising people, saved the day by bringing everyone back on track.

We now have a position to take to the General Meeting tomorrow. If adopted, a new campaign will be formed and we'll be able to get down to the fun and interesting stuff like deputing at the Police Services Board and fielding media enquiries regarding our reasons our positions.

So what did we come up with? We agreed, that as is defined in our philosophy, the TPSC cannot support the use of cameras as a means to making our public spaces better. We want safe and enjoyable public spaces and given all the research that's been done, cameras are the least effective way of achieving this. Instead, we want to spend that money (this last 3week project cost $2million) on things like public libraries, community centres and most importantly community policing.

As difficult as the meeting was, I'm still very excited at the possibilities. We had a former city councillor from the UK there talking about the abysmal failure of cameras in his part of the world, and there was even someone from the media there, the editor of ReNew Canada, a trade magazine specialising in urban infrastructure. This campaign is going to be exciting and high-profile and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. With the right help, I'm sure we'll do great.

December 31, 2006 23:16 +0000 | Melanie Primus Riptown Rydium The Toronto Public Space Committee Toronto Why I'm Here 2

Note that some of these links lead to private posts.

2006 was a big year for the planet. Americans woke up and realised that their leader was insane (well enough of them to kill the Republican dominance in the House and Senate), Europe and China gained momentum on the world stage and the "War on Terrorism" did little more than make more terrorists.

Canada ousted one leading party and invited in a new one that promised to be much the same and our reputation as an environmental leader is now in the toilet. The air is dirtier, the water murkier and we're all trapped in this handbasket of our own weaving.

But contrary to what some might think upon first reading this blog, this site is not about the world, it's just about me and what I'm doing in it. ...and on my own front, a lot of good things happened this year.

On the personal front, some wonderful ladies made their way into my life. Most notably of course would be Melanie who I've been with for over 6months now. We've had our ups and downs, but I'm quite happy with her and I'm glad she's here for the New Year.

I also made a good many new friends through my activist work, not the least of which is Stephen, who I've come to hang out with outside of my responsibilities to the TPSC.

On the professional level, I hopped around a lot this year. February saw me start my career in network administration at Rydium. I loved working there, but couldn't stay for my own moral reasons so I moved onto Primus who treated me so poorly that I chose to leave after only 3months, where after a couple months of job hunting, I found Bodog, a place in which I'm currently quite content with my working arrangements.

I'm proud to say though that the biggest changes for me this year rest in the Why I'm Here section. I joined the Toronto Public Space Committee, a "within the lines of legality" political action group devoted to making this city a place for people not cars or corporations. It's been a great place to get into politics from the bottom up. I've come to learn how City Hall works, talked with councillors directly, given deputations (albeit badly) and most importantly come to understand what needs to be done, and where the power to make those changes rests.

I've worked on campaigns opposing the selling off of street furniture to companies like CBS, helped write the philosophy document for the group, wrote the code for the TPSC website that made headlines during the municipal election and now I'm heading up a very high-profile campaign to fight police cameras on the streets of the city. It's exciting work and its exactly why I came here.

So while we're all still trapped in this handbasket heading straight to hell, I suppose I can still be an optimist. I'm doing what I can to get us out of there, and I suppose that's all I can really hope for. I'm looking forward to 2007.

December 14, 2006 19:49 +0000 | Society & Culture Why I'm Here 3

From the Toronto Star:

In response to local concerns about crime on the shopping and tourism strip north of the Eaton Centre, the Toronto police announced today they will install three closed-circuit television cameras along the busy street.

The CCTV cameras - which will be placed at the intersections of Yonge and Dundas Sts., Yonge and Gould Sts. and Yonge and Gerrard Sts. - will go up Monday and will remain on the roads until Jan. 7.

Their purpose, police say, is to help deter would-be criminals, and also to provide visual evidence of any crimes are committed in the area.
"The cameras are there to protect public safety," said acting Chief Kim Derry in a press release Thursday. "The have two clear purposes: deter those who may be considering committing crime, and provide evidence to identify, arrest and charge those who choose to commit crime."

Nick Kyonka, The Toronto Star

Does anyone honestly believe that they'll be removed on the 7th? I love how they routinely throw around lines like "The cameras are there to protect public safety" when there is absolutely no evidence that they do anything of the sort. Criminals simply victimise people down the street where there aren't any cameras... yet.

If anyone has any background or research on this issue, please send me what you have, sources included.

December 06, 2006 15:48 +0000 | Why I'm Here 1

I had a very long day yesterday.

After a full day at work starting at 9am, I hopped the train to downtown and walked over to 215 Spadina for one of the biggest and most raucous Toronto Public Space Committee meetings ever. The room was packed and as we paced ourselves through the agenda, one thing became clear early on: the philosophy document produced by the committee charged with it's creation was going to be a tough issue.

Let me just break in in here with a question/complaint: Why is it that people who choose not to have a hand in the creation of something often insist on wasting the time of those who did bother to do the work by nitpicking and suggesting blatantly bone-headed ideas to a room of 42 people? It's no secret that discussing something as delicate and difficult as a philosophy document is impossible to manage with such a large group and yet, despite being given ample opportunity to contribute in a more sensible fashion, these people choose the most inappropriate venue to voice their opinion and ask for "discussion"... It's insane, and might I say disrespectful to the people who did show up to do the legwork in the first place.

Getting back to the recap, about six different motions were proposed directed at this document, most of them focusing on the definition of "public space". Originally a short definition of "Public space is any space created with the expectation that it would be used by the public", suggestions ranged from changing it to "Public space is a personal definition...", to "Public space has been defined as 'x' by person 'y', as 'a' by person 'b' etc.", to striking the definition completely. It was about at this point that I yelled out over the din of "discussion": "Why didn't any of you people come to the meeting instead of wasting our time here?"

The only motions that passed were one to change "created" to "exists", and one to move the definition to the middle of the document, without a header, as part of "what makes a good public space" -- which is a fucking ass-backward thing to do... This is what you get when democracy is taken to the illogical extreme. People who know what they're talking about should make these decisions, not ill-informed, unqualified people who didn't even bother to come out to the initial work meetings.

Sigh. I guess I'll chalk this one up to experience in diplomacy or something.

November 10, 2006 07:58 +0000 | Why I'm Here 0

I did something exciting (or stupid, I can't yet decide) tonight at the Public Space Committee's General Meeting... I volunteered for the position of campaign coordinator for a new campaign we might be starting: one to remove/discourage the use of cameras in public space.

You know what I'm talking about, there's the benign, common ones for red lights, and the more invasive ones that are positioned over public squares set to record images and scan them with biometrics for "bad guys". I don't really have a (big) problem with the prior but the latter is completely unacceptable, and so I put up my hand before I understood what I was doing.

I've never run a committee of any kid. I've managed small teams of technical people, but I've never talked to the press, doled out work to volunteers or served in any capacity like this for a political organisation. It's exciting, but scary as hell.

October 20, 2006 09:02 +0000 | Why I'm Here 2

Praise be to the one who discovered caffeine, it's finally up. The media will be checking it out over the next few days and sometime between now and next week I have to add in the bits of feature creep Stephen's been pestering me about, but for now... it's done.

Of course, by "it" I'm referring to the TPSC's elections site, a.k.a. the thing that's been consuming almost as much of my time as Melanie lately. It's almost 5am now and I've just put it live.

It looks pretty slick though, and the scalability is awesome. We'll be adding in cool stuff like candidate questionnaire results and incumbent voting records very soon. I hope this is all worth it though. It's now up to our media people to drive eyeballs to the site. For now though, I'm going to bed.

If you have a few minutes, please check out the site and tell me what you think (please be kind). If you're living in Toronto, you should definitely check out your ward to see what your voting options are next month.

Lastly, a big thanks must go to Stephen Young for running this whole thing and to David Lewis for doing all the fabulous design work (and Google Maps.. very cool). I'd also like to commend all the researchers who poured themselves into the project, I do believe Stephen has some sort of thankyou in mind.

Alright, that's it. I'm going to bed.

September 26, 2006 17:21 +0000 | Personal Life Why I'm Here 4

I've been thinking a lot about my time here. Not just in Toronto, but in Ottawa as well.

I left home with a simple premise in mind: The world needs fixing and I can't honestly say that I know how to do it unless I've left my corner of the country to see what's out there. The thinking was that I needed to learn about "how the world works" before I could fix it and so I came out East to find out.

Unfortunately though, since having moved out this way, I have become more pessimistic, more realistic, and sadly, more pragmatic -- traits that do not necessarily embody the visionary I wanted to become. My faith in humanity has all be disappeared and my cynicism surrounding our future grows thicker with every community event I attend. The problems of the world are two fold: On one side you have smart people exploiting the planet and it's inhabitants, and on the other, you have hordes upon hordes of apathetic or just plain stupid people who either don't know what they're doing or just like to hear themselves talk. Sometimes, I am even afraid that I am part of this latter group -- I suppose that there is hope for my ego yet.

The problem appears to be my fading Faith in humanity. Sure, some people care, but not enough of them and even those who do care often can't Do Right because of factors like costs and that painful urge to eat. What's more, I've found that the problems of the world are much broader than I had initially assumed. While not surprising, the idea that anyone can "fix the world" is beginning to sound so foolish that even someone as idealistic as myself is having trouble with the concept. Indeed, I often wonder if I can even make a dent in the various issues I've run into here -- even with the hordes of like-minded people around me.

I've also recently come to realise that not only is this Path an embittering one, but that it's also full of distractions like having a life of my own. Striking a balance between having a social life, ie. the Why We Fight line of thinking, and getting work done is a continuous problem. On the one hand I have people I care about and personal joys that I've put on hold, and on the other, I have, what Al Gore so elegantly articulated in his movie: The Whole Planet. How can I be a Good and responsible citizen and still go to choir practise when more work needs to be done?

Maybe this is what I needed to learn more than anything else out here. Maybe I needed to develop a healthy disdain for people and the democratic process... but I don't want to believe that. I came here to understand the world better, and I'm afraid that I've learned the wrong lessons.

September 22, 2006 19:03 +0000 | Society & Culture Why I'm Here 2

I'm sitting in my cubicle, slowly coming to realise how very screwed we all are.

Not more than 10' from me, a bunch of my coworkers are engaged in yet another conversation about cars. This makes no less than 5 car worshipping sessions in one day. As much as those of us who despise cars might fight against them, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of people outside of downtown areas not only love their cars, but they've made them a permanent fixture in their culture. Even if gas climbs above $2, these people will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of those thrice-damned machines.

On a happier note though, Spacing Wire has mentioned a nifty bike ride happening in Toronto tonight in light of the festive occasion. I can't attend it myself, but if you're so inclined, I suggest you check it out.

September 09, 2006 16:47 +0000 | Nifty Links Why I'm Here 1

Tyler Hamilton has a great story in the Star (yes, I'm aware that I'm a few days behind on this) covering the new partnership between an Irish wind energy company (Tapbury) and a Vancouver-based flow battery company (VRB) to produce a whole bunch of power together.

Wind power really has one big problem: it's intermittent. If the wind isn't blowing, we're not getting any juice. One solution is to build a wider infrastructure and shunt power between sources (the wind is always blowing somewhere) but a better solution really is to store the power at the source until it's needed. That's where flow batteries come in.

In this situation, you'd have enough wind to power more resources than you need, so on a windy day, you'd actually be accumulating power in these batteries. On days with no wind though, that excess power can be drained at the same rate at which it was produced, providing a clean, sustainable base load power.

This isn't just another demonstration or pilot project done on a small scale to showcase a technology's market potential. This is a commercial deal, representing one of the largest in terms of coupling an energy storage technology with a wind farm.

How large are we talking? VRB is supplying a storage system that will be able to supply 12 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 1.5 megawatts over eight hours. That's a big battery system — enough to power 300 to 400 homes during a typical workday.

Tyler Hamilton, The Toronto Star

The technology is really neat, and the implications far-reaching. It's just so nice to see a Canadian company reaching out to the world market like this.

September 07, 2006 05:34 +0000 | Why I'm Here 2

Only now am I coming to realise how very stubborn I am.

I'm just not sure that it's a bad thing...