Category: Uncategorized
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The unbearable lightness of being… Snowden
I read the news today (well, on the weekend, actually), oh boy. It seems that the Internet is coming under attack in the East. It made me wonder about the poster child for Internet utopianism: Mr. Snowden, in his lavish or maybe squalid Moscow apartment. China has, of course, been a strong “administrator” of Chinese…
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Pants full of turtles… the jokes write themselves
The National Post carried this headline today, “Canadian man found with 51 live turtles stuffed in his pants.” Nuff said.
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I will NOT stop whining about the $25 baggage fee
Domini Clark’s (@tgamtravel) piece in the G+M today feels a little like mom or a schoolmarm’s finger wagging. Don’t whine about the new checked bag fee with Air Canada, Westjet, and Porter; there are plenty of other places where you spend much more than that and could save is the advice. Spot on. As a regular…
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Innovation Fads, Fashions, and Trends
So much ink; so much paper! So many pixels! So many task forces! Thank God for the bottomless pit to mine for answers to Canadian innovation challenges. The proposals are as many as there are lobbies and hobbies. And every one of them has merit. But every one of them is doomed by narrowness and…
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I use “F-Words”
I use “f-words” in mixed company. Well-bred professional, management, and executive types recoil in disgust. One might think that they would be inured to f-words. But they seem to hold themselves above all that. Of course, the most troubling f-word is not the one on the tip of your tongue now. This one sounds “eff”…
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IT Security and the rise of the Data Chemists
The days of perimeter protection for online security and privacy are dwindling. Those tried-and-true approaches for safeguarding data and ensuring organizational and individual data security are destined to the quaintness of punch cards. Relying on them as the paradigm of security for extensive or elaborate IT implementations that have a future is not wise. There…
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“User Experience” is nonsense
God damn Steve Jobs! It’s hard to dredge from memory or history another huckster who left behind such a legacy of dreck. Jobs was a tireless promoter who innovated relentlessly and—as legend would have it—single-handedly changed the face of the consumer world from personal computing to animated movies to music consumption and mobile telephony/computing. Love…
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Nutbars and Islamism
Telos is a Greek word that means “end,” as in the goal or finish. Telos is a fundamental element of practically everything. Think about what you do. There is a good chance that everything you put your energy toward: your art, your business, your studies, your… has a goal toward which you direct intent. Organizations exist with…
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Snakes on a plane (redux)
I fly fairly consistently though by no means am I row 13 troll racking up 100,000 miles a year or more. That said, I’m on enough to know that airlines squeeze people into too small a space for actual comfort. More than that, people flying on business tend toward pulling out laptops to make productive…
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The Safety Dance: one step forward; three steps back
Today’s politically correct vogue is to wring one’s hands and fulminate about how dangerous the world is and how dire the need to protect one and all from its perils. Mental health disabilities and concussions are, among other human traumas, serious stuff. But it all seems a little overdone. While the incidents of mental health…
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CUPW protests lack of irony in the news
Most news outlets are carrying a story today similar to this one (CBC) that covers the Parliament Hill protests by CUPW, directed toward the Prime Minister, against the Canada Post changes to service–most specifically to the end of door-to-door delivery. CUPW’s interest: membership will decline. And, to the organization, it doesn’t matter whether that’s because…
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Sympathy and its limits
As a parent, you have to feel sympathy for the Calgary mother who found out that her son was killed in Syria. Perhaps the sympathy wanes just a little bit when you find out that the son had converted to Islam and had gone to Syria to fight the jihad and ended up dead at the…
