Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else

Exploding Star Orchestra
We Are All From Somewhere Else[Thrill Jockey, 2007]

I was quite thrilled – and indeed a little surprised – by the appearance of cornetist Rob Mazurek’s new outfit Exploding Star Orchestra at Pepper Jack’s Café (now, with the demise of The Underground, Hamilton’s best music venue). Mazurek, a long-time player in the influential Chicago scene, has surrounded himself with an all-star cast of players including Nicole Mitchell, Mike Reed, and the seemingly omnipresent John McEntire. After numerous live performances throughout 2005-6, the band retreated to McEntire’s studio for recordings which resulted in this year’s release of We Are All From Somewhere Else on the venerable Thrill Jockey imprint.

Unlike Mazurek’s previous outfits such as Chicago Underground Duo, Exploding Star Orchestra is more rooted in trad jazz. “Sting Ray and the Beginning of Time”, the opening suite of the album, would hardly sound out of place within Charlie Mingus’s output of the late ‘50s to the mid-‘60s. The first part of the suite invokes a highly propulsive energy, as McEntire’s rock-solid marimba is flanked by two drummers playing complex polyrhythmic patterns while the wind instruments stage tastefully improvised solos over several shifts in tempo and mood.

One should not expect tradition to overbear Mazurek’s orchestrations, as throughout his career he has been known more for his avant-garde analog and digital manipulations than for his bop and big band references. Furthermore, the digital manipulations of Mazurek’s processed and layered of sounds – notably the use of processed sounds of electric eels in the album’s opening suite – betrays the affections of jazz purists. As such, the album’s concluding suite "Cosmic Tones for Sleep Walking Lovers" owes more to Steve Reich and Sun Ra’s more adventurous excursions than to the swing era. That being said, the third part of the suite has quite a swing to it, and leads nicely to a downtempo, breathy, and “floating” conclusion that leaves the listener pondering whichever infinitudes are of intrigue.

As always, the integrity of jazz is maintained in the manner of Janus: an eye to the past balanced by an eye to the future. While not a groundbreaking release by any means, We Are All From Somewhere Else provides a thoroughly enjoyable listen.

MP3: Exploding Star Orchestra - Sting Ray and the Beginning of Time, part 1

slightly open letter to John Baird, Canada's apparent Minister to the Environment

Hey kids! Here's a fun activity! Click the photograph below to send your thoughts to John Baird, who is supposed to be Minister of the Environment. Of course, there are several meanings to the word "minister":

min·is·ter /ˈmɪnəstər/ Pronunciation[min-uh-ster]
–noun
1. a person authorized to conduct religious worship; member of the clergy; pastor.
2. a person authorized to administer sacraments, as at Mass.
3. a person appointed by or under the authority of a sovereign or head of a government to some high office of state, esp. to that of head of an administrative department: the minister of finance.
4. a diplomatic representative accredited by one government to another and ranking next below an ambassador. Compare envoy1 (def. 1).
5. a person acting as the agent or instrument of another.
–verb (used with object)
6. to administer or apply: to minister the last rites.
7. Archaic. to furnish; supply.
–verb (used without object)
8. to perform the functions of a religious minister.
9. to give service, care, or aid; attend, as to wants or necessities.: to minister to the needs of the hungry.
10. to contribute, as to comfort or happiness.

—Synonyms: answer, tend, oblige.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Of course none of these definitions -- with the possible exception of a loose interpretation of numbers 3. and 6. -- apply to John Baird in relation to the environment.


bairdj@parl.gc.ca>

Honourable John Baird
Minister of the Environment


Dear Minister Baird,

Despite your continued denial of the legal realities behind Canada's participation in the Kyoto protocol, the Canadian public will see that our legal obligations be met. Either this process involves your Conservative government, or your party will be held accountable at the next election.

At some point in the near future the Conservative party will begin to understand what many leading economists have said for years: the environment is the economy. Please come to the realization that short-term capital gains will be irrevocably lost as the expenses associated with climate change and environmental degradation mount to precipitous levels. For the sake of your own future accountability, start listening to what climate scientists such as James E. Hansen and economists such as Sir Nicholas Sterne are saying.

Mr. Baird, if you do nothing to address this problem in the short term, the legacy of your term as Environment Minister will consist solely of a tax file recording the income you received from your brief tenure. Your name will be forgotten along with that of every other martyr to the introversions of blind business interests. I am appealing now to your vanity: do you not wish to be thought of more highly than as a smiling business lackey who has repeatedly proved inept at and ignorant to the understanding of the science associated with the environment.

I am writing to provide you with my comments on your department's recently published "Climate Change Plan for the Purposes of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act 2007".

I must remind you of your obligation to obey the laws of Canada. The Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act requires you to produce a plan to honour Canada's obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 6% below the 1990 emission levels between 2008 and 2012.

Although the "Climate Change Plan" lists numerous small steps to curb the growth in Canada's emissions, your plan foresees Canada missing the 2008-2012 Kyoto target by a wide margin, and in fact not reaching the target level until sometime after 2020. Under your approach, regulations on heavy industry - the source of almost half of Canada's greenhouse gas pollution - will not come into effect until 2010, and even then they fail to set a binding cap on industrial emissions.

Minister, you have promised to make your "best efforts" toward Kyoto. No one could read your plan and call this the best that Canada can do. Your plan fails the test that the law sets out, which is to honour Canada's Kyoto commitment.

I realize this is a difficult and demanding task, but it is the law, and it is your responsibility to uphold the law. The climate crisis is too grave to allow any more time to be wasted. We need you to take real action now.

Sincerely,

Quintin Hewlett

Spectrum @ Virgin Festival

While most of the Virgin festival was mediocre at best (with the exception of a fine showing by Bjork), what I found to be the biggest letdown was a rare Canadian performance by Spectrum. One-time Spacemen 3 member Sonic Boom is an indisputable treasure of the 80s and 90s rock scene.

It seems, however, that a "contract dispute" caused a delay in the performance by over half an hour, and left several members of Spectrum absent from the stage. After 15 minutes of decent, if not wholly remarkable, spoken-word soundscapes, the set was terminated.









all photographs captured with an Olympus point-and-shoot digital

kerosene daydream

MP3: Kerosene Daydream @ PJC, 24.7.07

the sweet(corn) little lie, part one: oil

MP3: The Last Poets - White Man's Got A God Complex

Ever since September of 2001, the North American mediasphere has been continually repeating a mantra about reducing our collective dependence on oil imported from the Middle East. There are a variety of reasons for this desire. First and foremost, there is a security concern regarding Persian Gulf oil. Due to a complex web of colonialism, resource exploitation, and a
religious/cultural reaction to modernity, the Middle East is a violent and dangerous place to do business. Furthermore, there is the issue of sustainability. Logic dictates three courses of action: either North Americans get used to consuming about 70% of the oil that they currently enjoy using, or instead find new local sources of combustible fuel. The third option is that which the Bush White House refers to as apocalyptic, namely the termination of the American way of life.

The first option is perhaps more logically sound. By investing hundreds of billions of dollars into mass transportation infrastructure and currently-available high-efficiency technologies, per capita oil consumption will decrease. Further reductions in consumption can be realized by regulatory changes made possible by effective governance, such as a mandatory improvement of vehicular gas mileage (as a better first step, the production of non-hybrid consumer vehicles could be banned) and the termination of taxation subsidies to unsustainable residential development (suburbia, urban sprawl). Basically, the age of the single-occupant, low-efficiency vehicle must end. Traffic sprawl leading to road rage and long commutes spent away from families, as well as the fact that automobiles amount to about 30% of carbon emissions leading to climate change, should signal to most logical people that this most inefficient and unsustainable use of oil is the result of myopic and short-sighted planning and development rather than “the way things just are”.

The current generation of technology is perfectly adequate to handle this challenge. Any politician who delays current legislative action to promote a more sustainable energy infrastructure, and instead promotes the research and development of future clean-technologies over the application of current clean-technologies, is being entirely disingenuous to their electorate. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that such politicians are spineless bastards who are in the back pocket of corporate interests and can't see the future beyond their own pointless careers.

Let us turn to the second method of reducing North American dependency on Middle Eastern oil. To this end, a little history of the business of oil is required. When Americans first began to utilize oil, America itself was the gold-standard for oil production in the world. No other nation on Earth had either the oil resources or the technological infrastructure to realize the amount of oil which America brought to world markets. The U.S. became exceptionally rich, as the cheapest oil on the planet fuelled most of the economic progress of the 20th century.

Then came 1970. Although the debate certainly did not happen in the 1970s, at this point America came to understand the reality of peak oil by experiencing an energy crisis. American oil production has been in drastic decline ever since, with only the discovery of a few small oilfields to offset the monumental loss in production capacity in the existing ones.

As a quick primer, peak oil refers to oil production models. Unlike other natural resources such as metals or timber, substances, such as oil, which are confined under high pressure under the Earth’s crust typically follow a bell curve of resource extraction: after an initial high investment, oil flows ever more cheaply until production peaks. At the point of peaking, oil production is at its highest and oil prices (under the whims of market capitalism) are at their lowest. However, the remaining half of the oil reserves that remain underground require an increasing amount of energy to extract, which results in an irreversible and exponential increase in cost. There comes a point before the depletion of oil reserves where it takes more energy to extract the oil than you actually get from burning it. Perhaps this last fact explains why oil companies are on sound footing when they claim that we will never run out of oil.

Of course, as anyone who lived through the 1970s can attest, along with high costs come resource scarcity and social unrest. North America witnessed gas stations which closed due to the unavailability of oil, a major spike in the price of domestic goods, and the first major economic recession since the end of the Second World War. (On a progressive tangent, the 1970s also saw the rise of higher-efficiency vehicles and the environmental movement.) Suddenly the Middle East, which contained the world’s only other large source of cheaply-recoverable oil, entered into American consciousness. For the sake of simplicity, let us ignore the geopolical problems, and the resultant rise in terrorism, which have plagued the Middle East since the late 1970s. Focussing on what North Americans actually care about, oil prices fell to “normal” levels over the 1980s and 90s, bottoming out around $12 per barrel just before 2000.

Fast forward to 2007. The Middle East is increasingly shrouded in flames and misery, gas prices are the highest they have ever been, and America is in the fourth year of its military occupation of Iraq. While we will have to wait about a decade or so to state conclusively, many experts have calculated that global oil production will peak sometime between 2002 and 2010; the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, for example, believes that the peak happened in 2004. And yet, it seems that ex-President Bush Sr’s 1992 prognostication that “the American way of life is non-negotiable” has come to pass. Vehicular fuel-efficiency standards have bottomed out, suburban sprawl continues unabated, and the energy-dependent North American lifestyle is increasingly under attack from all corners, including Europe, while it is simultaneously increasing its energy footprint. Most North Americans are blissfully living their lives as though there are no limits to resource consumption, and that there should be no plan for our future other than “business as usual”.

Apparently, North Americans will not alter their oil-dependent lifestyles; the freedom to drive 300 kms back and forth from work everyday supercedes any rational distribution of what is an increasingly scarce resource. So where is North America looking for its oil if not from the Persian Gulf? It should come as no surprise that the Alberta oilsands figure most prominently in the discussion. These oil deposits, discovered many decades ago, are only now coming into use. To answer the question as to why Canada was not the oil powerhouse of the 20th century that it will be for the 21st, we must understand the nature of this resource. To be brief, the oilsands require a certain oil price to be reached before they can economically be brought to market. When America invaded Iraq in 2003 and oil jumped to $35-40 dollars per barrel, oil prices reached the point at which development in the oilsands was economically feasible.

With prices currently between $60-70 per barrel, North American oil companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars from the 175 billion barrels of oil available in the oilsands. As prices climb towards $100 per barrel, suddenly another 150 billion barrels are “economically recoverable”. As the price of oil continues to increase, the majority of Alberta’s 2.5 trillion barrels of hydrocarbon deposits will come to market. All of a sudden, America will have the world's largest forseeable energy reserve within reach of an easily defendable pipepline.

This reality seems to provide a degree of logic to American foreign policy: destabilizing oil-producing regions increases the price of oil, which allows the oil in Alberta’s oilsands to suddenly be “economically recoverable”. To this end, it is my fear that for the sake of economic development Canada will increasingly ignore certain geopolitical realities as America continues the hostile practise of oil market inflation. In fact, in regards to the 21st century’s most important energy resource, the oilsands have the potential to allow the United States to finally realize its latent philosophical dream of manifest destiny, as Canadian resources become the principle concern in maintaining the American way of life.

fuck it. photographs.

sometimes words are fickle poneys lost in wide fields, with almost two months of frantic pursuit providing little but nostalgia and inclination. in such times, my forehead is likely to be bruised red by frustration and anxiety about a degree of impotence realized through worry. with small trickles of blood clouding my vision, it can be dificult to view the world properly. i stop trusting my capacity for judgement (or more appropriately, the legitimacy of my capacity for judgment), and i consequently allow technological mediation.

this last statement is only true if we consider language (words) to be an ancient technology. if such is the case, then i might need to rediscover fire in order to progress beyond painting on cave walls. oh well...

fuck it. photographs.


Nora Hutchinson, 2005


Water Only, 2006


Indeterminacy, 2004


lonely_fixed, 2005


inside is outside, 2005


under the weight of judgement, 2004


in case there's extra, 2006


untitled but female, 2005


untitled, 2004


butterfly wings can change the Earth's
climate, 2004


butterfly wings can change the Earth's climate (easily understood remix), 2004

[note: click image for larger resolution version]

forward to the future

One day soon, computer AIs are going to datamine things like email, and discover interesting patterns of "structural" anxieties manifesting through email forwards.

I received the first copy of this email in December of 2000, shortly after the first Bush election. I then received a whole bunch of emails with slight variations on this text shortly after the 2004 election. Suddenly, in early 2007, this forward returns to my Inbox.

you can tell that this text is a response to an election by the date given for "Come-Uppance Day", which is November 2. The presidential elections are always in the first week of November, and the 2004 election was nov. 2. Weirdly enough, this latest round of circulation doesn't follow any American election, save last november's midterms which saw the Democrats take back the House and Senate -- a move slightly antithetical to this email's call for "Revocation".

The attribution of this letter to John Cleese is what I find most interesting. This little addition opens the door to all kinds of theories. The reader is granted an authoritarian vindication for the sense of enjoyment they gain by reading the email, thanks to a more credible satirist. A desire for Empire, represented not only by the British history invoked in the email, but also by the legal framework and interpellative process by which the forward is structured (the reader is interpellated as an Imperial subject), suggests an unconscious and reflexive application of guilt on the part of Americans who are against Bush's policies, and yet do no further political action than send dispirited emails to each other at work. Furthermore, by invoking Cleese, a "friendly" subversive (Cleese was the most conservative member of Monty Python), the email is an impotently nostalgic return to the radical culture of the sixties -- a culture which was instrumental in realizing the most important anti-war measures of the late twentieth century.

That last point begs reflection: can a degree of political agency be realized by the citizenry? The most America seems to be able to do is send email and get its wishes vetoed by the President.

Fossils + Boughner @ Loose Cannon

Wednesday, March 28 was supposed to be one of the landmark nights for the Hamilton noise scene. Local acts were to be joined by genre stalwarts Prurient and Burning Star Core. Thanks to the whims of the border agencies which kept the headliners from entering Canada (obscenity laws!!!), only the local acts were able to perform. Despite the logistical chaos of a wholly improvised show, the evening's performance proved solid enough. Fossils (David Payne, Scott Johnson, and Jeremy Buchan) & Matthew Boughner were able to invoke a variety of harsh soundscapes throughout their short but inspired set.





Sadly, my attempt to preserve an aural record of the evening was foiled by the incapacity of my $2 microphone to not be overdriven simply by the volume of the performance. The MP3 file below requires explanation, as the recording process did indeed alter the sound. First off, I was using a Creative Zen, which records and compresses data to MP3 in real time. To dampen the sound and keep the crappy vocal mic from distorting, I placed the recorder inside a cloth bag, which I then covered with my jacket and some random pieces of clothing that I found on the floor. Furthermore, I used my arm to cover this whole mound of crap for the duration of the recording. Despite my hand and at least five centimetres of cloth in the way, the volume level produced during the performance was enough to overdrive my microphone to the point of distortion. Since I was actually at the show, this new "filter" on the sound is an interesting addition to what was heard that night, and serves as a nice reminder of the aesthetic divergence of performance and the process of archiving. For those of you who were not there, consider this audio file to be tangental to the live performance, and in no way indicative of how the musicians wanted themselves to be heard.

You have been warned / invited to listen.

MP3: - Fossils, live @ Loose Cannon (compressed and contained through a voice recorder direct to MP3)

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
[Kill Rock Stars, 2007]

‘The Perfect Me’ opens the record at a riotous pace, and listeners will quickly understand that the Deerhoof of 2007 is a more precise animal than evidenced by the noisier songs of their early output. This time the San Francisco trio wants to rock in a slightly more conventional manner. Of course, for this arty band convention is a slippery concept. Think of how David Bowie returned to the fold by releasing his famed Berlin records after Station to Station and you might get a sense of how Deerhoof views convention. Some of the band's ideas are a bit retro: the slinky riff at the heart of ‘Believe E.S.P.’ comes straight from 1973, vintage Orange tone intact. Others are a little more inspired by modern electronic cacophony.

Throughout the album, drummer Greg Saunier provides a loose, busy, and muscular rhythmic foundation that sounds like how drums were played before metal made precision famous. The chorus of ‘Matchbox Seeks Maniac’ would not have sounded too out of place in one of Pete Townsend’s operas. Of course, the band’s fractured, video-game-like compositional aesthetic keeps things far more interesting than simple rock nostalgia suggests. And Satomi Matsuzaki’s twee vocal performance of fairytale-epic lyrics is as childishly saccharine as ever. All this cacophony might be expected by longtime fans, but it is this album’s melodic cohesion that ranks Friend Opportunity among the best of this prolific band’s career.

MP3: Deerhoof - The Perfect Me

Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow

Rainbow
Boris with Michio Kurihara
[Inoxia, 2007]

Longtime Boris fans have come to expect a different approach to hard rock composition with each new release. Originally famous because of their extended, fuzzed-out drone records and extended Sabbath odes, the band has also been known to engage in several detours into more traditional songwriting. For their new album, Boris have teamed with current Ghost player Michio Kurihara, who is one of Japan’s more fiery guitarists. Naturally, there are solos aplenty scattered throughout this album’s nine tracks. The album opens with the slow burner “Rafflesia” before moving to the late-60s lounge-inspired “Rainbow”. If you are into the band's more psychedelic side, you might want to focus your attention on the strong middle and end sections of this release. The lengthy feedback-and-tom interplay of "Fuzzy Reactor", for example, will extend many a horizon.

Many of the songs on this album sound entirely in line with the emo-cum-shoegaze compositions found on 2006's Pink. This tendency is perhaps best exemplified by “Starship Narrator”, the third track on the album, which is notable for Kurihara’s tasteful harmonic phrases. While in many respects Rainbow is the most accessible release in the extended Boris discography, some might prefer the more restrained chaos of this record to the epic bombast which brought the group to the attention of heavy music fans around the world.

MP3: Boris with Michio Kurihara - Starship Narrator

Hamilton Harlots fundraiser

an open letter to Stockwell Day and the Conservative Party of Canada

Hon. Stockwell Day,

The other day, I somewhat accidentally managed to come across your blog, and while I am supportive of the need to express your feelings with your constituents, I do wish to challenge some of your assertions.

First of all, let me deal with this procedural detail: I am aware that your personal site in no way represents either the Canadian government, or even indeed your own party. I am also aware that this email address represents an official government of Canada member, and therefore you are not legally required to address non-governmental issues. At the same time however, I cannot separate the opinions expressed on this website as more or less "Official", as they will inform your decisions regarding governmental matters.

I hope it is no surprise that the environment is suddenly a Political Issue (sorry for the capital letters, but since you espouse the National Media...) I have to mention the issue that's perhaps most important for 2007 is Climate Change.

Now just to make the reference, as your writings on the subject are two months old, I would like to quote the following:

"Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights , or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming.

All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year.

And I was begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24°. Do not despair, my fellow dwellers of the Okanagan and Nicola Valleys ."

I must take your expertise in the matter of Climate Change as proof of your well-read and thoroughly scientific examination of the facts at hand.

Can I take these sets of statements as proof that you do not consider Climate Change to be an important issue? After all, the climate changes on a daily basis, especially in reference to one individual person who might only have the vantage point of one location at a specific point in time. One day in June it's warm, and then come December one looks around and experiences colder weather, at least here in southern Canada.

And so, in late November you came home to witness the accumulation of "more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year". Might I suggest that having "more snow" is consistent with the fact that as the climate warms and the glaciers melt, more water circulates around the planet as precipitation, which in the winter months in Canada falls as snow. Of course, having more precipitation in some areas means that other areas will experience the opposite. Somewhat tangentially, I wish to mention that my grandfather sold the wheat farm he had been running since the 1940s in Stavely, Alberta after nearly ten years of droughts in the 1990s.

Can I here mention that while it was cold out west in December, southern Ontario did not receive any winter until February. While some record low temperatures were set in B.C., we in southern Ontario enjoyed record highs, including one January day which was nearly 15 degrees. See how the Climate Changes as you include other perspectives?

Frankly, I do not wish to dwell on the science or consequences of Climate Change, as this area has been well-covered in the past year by the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, published by the British government, or the preliminaries of the upcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Just in case you missed them, they can be read online:

It is not my intention to provoke any name-calling, buck-passing, or any other such immature approaches to democracy. Frankly, I'll lay my cards down on the table and state that I do not believe that the Conservative party cares one iota for the well-being of the planet. Your party (although, not your party alone) represents corporate and industrial interests, which by their very nature (both legally and ideologically) place their own economic interests above any other interest, including the welfare of the public.

The problem with this approach is that it is our very capacity for industry and corporate exploitation that is at issue here. We abuse the Earth in the name of profit. Furthermore, adherence to the profit motive is not a rational decision when viewed in the context of unequal distribution of economic resources. The only way that anyone can say that "we have to keep industry going at its current pace" and speak from an ethical foundation is if this inequality is addressed. The economics, thanks to people like Sir Nicholas Stern, is clear on this issue. In sixty years, it is not likely that the average person will be able to afford the consequences of climate change; the wealthy will be immune to change in real terms, while the poor face an extinction-level event. In a world in which 2% of the human population controls 50% of the wealth, you cannot talk about the morality of contemporary business practices as the solution to Climate Change.

All that climate change is doing is giving the issue of inequality a temporal dimension: we can act now while we have the choice to either act or not, or we can be forced into change as our climate becomes increasingly inhospitable to our lifestyle. I personally will endorse leaders that espouse leadership by making the energy policy choices necessary for the benefit of all humanity, not simply the business elite. Leaders should be able to see the horizons of history and society, and act according to the interests of human civilization.

From the contents of your own website, as well as the numerous statements that have been made by members of the Conservative government, I cannot in all honesty state that we as a nation are enjoying Enlightened Leadership (see: another Big Idea!).

As a personal message to you Mr. Day, might I appeal to your Christian instincts? Due to the limitations of human nature, are we not intended to be stewards of this Earth and not masters?

2006: The Year of “You”

In the middle of December 2006, Time Magazine released its annual Person of the Year issue and stirred up a small media frenzy by proclaiming this year’s winner to be the somewhat eponymous “you”. The idea behind this proclamation is the supposed influence of the accumulated efforts of the “little people” against the might of concentrated power. Thanks, Time, for yet another sentimental ode to the “little people”. This media-constructed humunculus – “you” – has, according to this particular arm of the Time-Warner media empire, taken power away from the corporate and media elite by means of YouTube and Wikipedia, open-source software and user-produced media, and Web 2.0 and cellphone cameras. What a magical and revolutionary time in which we live, when technology is available to liberate the individual.

Well, please forgive this “little person” writer from Hamilton for questioning the wisdom of the Time-Warner empire trumpeting the technological utopia which awaits, but Pardon My Lunch Bucket.

Ok, just so the cards are on the table here: one of the largest media conglomerates in the world is telling us that through the collective will of our user-produced efforts, the power dynamic is switching from elite control to mass, democratic control of the mediasphere. Finally, after years of neglect by the media hierarchy, suddenly the voices of the mass citizen are being heard. The will of the people is now more accurately realized. Democracy 2.0, if you like. But of course, we won’t know the full story of this revolution unless money is exchanged so that a certain media conglomeration will release to the masses this knowledge in the form of a paid-subscription magazine. Which sounds suspiciously like that old democracy that we already have, and which for the vast majority of the working population amounts to Democracy 0.7 (beta).



So what? you might ask, they’re just trying to sell magazines. And here we come to the point. Time-Warner sells roughly 5 million monthly copies of Time Magazine in North America. It is not unreasonable to assume that an end-of-year special issue sold around the holiday season has the potential to double those sales figures. All told, production of this magazine amounts to roughly 200,000 tonnes of waste and consumes roughly 1,000,000 trees per year. You might assume in an era of blue-box programs that Time-Warner could use recycled paper to print, instead of cutting down virgin forests. In 1994, they did indeed move to a 10% recycled-paper mandate, but changed that stance less than a year later.

To make the issue even more obsessive, I am not so sure that the metallic foil used to create the mirror on the cover of the 2006 “You” issue of Time Magazine is the most recyclable thing. I would guess quite the opposite in fact, and thus the whole issue would end up in the trash in the face of the economic reality of recycling, namely who sorts the shit. Furthermore, we can talk about the environmental impact of the energy spent producing and distributing the magazine. Long story made brief, by purchasing this issue, “you” are indeed making waves in the world. To summarize: this corporation cuts down forests and contributes to climate change to sell us a product describing how we the “little people” are affecting positive change in the world.

2006 was for many the year of environmental awareness. After the surge in environmental “events” over the past three or four years, the media could no longer ignore the science of climate change. Leaders of the world’s nations are now almost universal in their call to address the issue. In the wake of a poll suggesting that 70% of Canadians think the environment to be one of the most important issues for the country, the notoriously anti-green Conservative government has done an about-face and reinstituted the Liberal government’s previous environmental policies that it had scrapped the year before (read: no new money, in real terms).

In light of the urgency of the matter (as of January 21, 2007, I would like to welcome most people who live in southern Ontario to the beginning of only our second week of “proper” winter temperatures) I think that Time Magazine’s rather empty gesture can be easily co-opted into something of greater significance. This indeed is the time in which “you” is a needed concept in relation to societal change, but not in the superficial manner suggested by Time .

Conceptually speaking, Time’s notion of the power and influence of “you” is misguided at best, and self-serving and delusional at worst. If Time Magazine were serious about its conception of this all-important “you”, then it would have printed a magazine containing user-produced content of the type it is glamourizing. A whole issue created by the readers. Or it might have put a different image on its cover, such as what I have here produced in five seconds.



An even more interesting discussion would be about the true power of this “you” in relation to social change. Along the lines of, say, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine a few years ago. Remember that little “you” event, when millions of Ukrainians participated in daily protests and general strikes until the leaders who stole power gave up control of the government to properly elected officials?

Such efforts might prove useful in dealing with the fact that 70% of the American population wants the Iraq war to end at the same time that the White House is requesting the commitment of additional troops. Follow that example of “you” from eastern Europe: stop going to work, stop going to school, stop going to the mall, stop everything until the war stops. Then when the war stops, put an “American” spin on the event by going back to work and fighting for health-care. Surely, Time could mobilize its wide readership to act for change by talking about this revolutionary “you” power in a more legitimate sense than they have. But then again, in the process Time-Warner would probably lose a great deal of ad revenue, among other things.

And yet the Time article was not wholly wrong. The technologies to which it refers in judging the importance of “you” are indeed progressive technologies. But the important thing about YouTube is not that more and more people are making videos about politics using Lego parts. It’s that people are realizing that they would rather spend hours and hours making said Lego masterpieces than sit and watch network television or otherwise participate in the traditional mediasphere.

I am well aware as to the reasons why a legitimate debate concerning the true impact of “you” on human civilization and the Earth as a whole will not happen in a publication such as Time Magazine. That discussion might begin by investigating the degree to which journalism has fallen from its once important function as arbiter for the public good.

Don’t listen to the media elites as to why this change occurred toward the end of the last century; they’ll tell you that they are simply providing that which “you” are demanding. After all, it was “you” that brought to television American Idol and to the internet the execution of Saddam Hussein. So it will be “you” that programs the next revolution: a people with revolutionary potential are reduced to staring into the cover of a magazine in a supermarket, trying to find themselves.

FWCI no more...

Normally I don't put too many personal details on this site, but today I found out from Paul Schaffer that my old high school has closed. It was a great school, and I credit several of the faculty there for setting me in a decent direction in those rather turbulent times of my youth.

Apparently this is not new information, but the fact that I learned nothing of this event until now reflects the fact that everybody I know from Thunder Bay has long since left that town. There is always a sense of sadness in a small town as it ages...

no snow = me cry now

It's January 4, and I am outside wearing just a t-shirt and pants. As I was biking home from work today, I passed several groups of kids who were outside playing. Not a single one of them was wearing a jacket. In Hamilton, it's currently 8.4 degrees Celsius, and from the picture you can see quite obviously that there is no snow on the ground. Statistically average temperatures for our region tend to hover around -4.5 degrees Celsius. This time last year, January was exceptionally warm and was followed by a cold February. When I was a child (we're talking the 1980s, so not really that long ago), winter was a season lasting many months, usually from early November through to late March. From the look of things currently, it seems as though southern Ontario will once again experience a drastically shortened winter season, perhaps only a little more than one month.

For those of you outside North America, now is traditionally the time in which the whole of Canada is stuck in a deep-freeze. The winter is a major component of our national cultures and identity. Furthermore, the season is a source of revenue for some and an ecological necessity for others. I myself am a big fan of snow, and its rather conspicuous absence so far this year suggests to me something exceptionally alarming. More alarming however is the fact that other than a major breakup of ice in the Canadian arctic, the weather is not really being discussed in the general media.

There was a bit of an awareness campaign that was sparked by the release of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change by the British government. Frankly, this little bit of bedtime reading should be mandatory in schools and boardrooms.

Oh yeah, that same British government is expecting 2007 to be the hottest year in recorded history. So far, we're off to a tragic start.

Happy Holidays

From all of us from who knows where, Happy Holidays!