Friday, July 22, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
Flying on Fumes: the plan to bring Hamilton into the 1950s
There have been some interesting recent developments in Hamilton's urban development strategy. The city expects a 20% swell in Hamilton’s population by 2030, with most of the new development envisioned to use the land around the airport. In a nod to B-grade sci-fi movies of the early 1950s, the umbrella term for this development is the Aerotropolis. This business technocrat’s nostalgic wet dream will apparently house 150,000 while employing 50,000. Hamilton airport will be the locus for this project, and will serve as the centre of a network of highways that will increase traffic flows between the Buffalo-Niagara region and the GTA.
The impetus for development seems to be the more family-friendly nature of real estate in Hamilton, as well as the city’s central location relative to nearby urban centres. City planners believe that new residents will flock to Hamilton in order to avoid the high cost of living in Toronto and its neighbouring suburbs. This belief is preceded by two other acts of faith: 1. that Hamilton real estate prices will stay low, and 2. that the price of transportation will also stay low.
So what is this about our low real estate costs in Hamilton? It is true that you can purchase a home in Hamilton for about 2/3 what it would cost in Toronto and maybe 4/5 of its cost in Oakville or Mississauga. Yet, these lower costs have everything to do with the fact that Hamilton skilfully avoided the economic boom of the mid to late 1990s that fuelled the real estate markets of those municipalities. Smart development has begun to reverse that trend to some degree. Many analysts have stated that due to extensive condo development, Toronto, for example, has cooled off as a real estate market, and prices for homes in several areas have actually dropped since 2002.
If Hamilton were indeed to become a hotspot for development, doesn’t it follow that housing prices will increase to match the extra money flowing into the city? Furthermore, we should question what increased property values would mean to Hamilton’s many lower-income families. The increase in property values associated with a booming suburban development would likely mean the continued marginalization of the downtown core.
The development requirements associated with sprawl include more infrastructure than just highways – roads and sidewalks, water and sewage, electricity, garbage collection, education, health and law enforcement services, etc. Currently, property taxes remain high downtown despite the relative weakness of the local economy in relation to suburban shopping centres such as the Meadowlands. Subsidies have been maintained to encourage business development in outlying regions of Hamilton. At the same time, the city must realize its operating budget from somewhere, and consequently core residents currently bear a majority of the tax burden.
The second and perhaps more prescient issue to consider in the aerotropolis debate is of course energy consumption. As has been pointed out in much of the local press, the city’s plan for development requires a high degree of cheap and accessible individual transportation. Increasing dependence on automobiles in order to link car corridors to distant jobs while living and shopping in suburban areas, and ultimately make the aerotropolis plan feasible, requires a cheap and increasing supply of fossil fuels. Additionally, the economic locus of the project – the expansion of the airport itself – requires a boom in the airline industry. As for being cheap, anyone can tell you that oil prices are going in only one direction.
What about all this oil talk? Sure, it’s almost de rigour to belittle oil these days, with opinions on oil’s links to war, terror, and economic subservience finding much ink in the press. Many people quickly tire of the discussion. But one thing both sides should be able to agree on is that as a collective, modern countries are exceedingly good at using oil. Better than we have ever been, in fact. We have made the process of extracting and consuming oil so efficient that nearly every human in industrialized countries has access to a decent supply of it whenever they need it (and perhaps more tellingly, even when they don’t). Consequently, we started taking it for granted on the consumer side of things, thus allowing a great deal of waste. Oil producers get rich no matter how much oil is used, and consumers, well, they get to have a socially acceptable substance addiction.
Everyone was winning until that very famous oil crisis of the 1970s, when prices reached a point that rendered cars inaccessible to many North Americans. What was that about anyway? That’s where the concept of peak oil comes into play.
Peak oil refers to the fact that oil production doesn’t "gush" the way that it does in Looney Tunes. Instead, it follows a bell curve, with production starting slowly, quickly accelerating, levelling off, decelerating slowly, then rapidly declining. Naturally, oil is most expensive when you begin or end the process. Peak oil has already occurred in America’s domestic supply: the U.S. was the gold standard for oil production until it peaked at 11 million barrels a day in 1970, and the country has been in rapid decline since, hence its dependence on foreign sources.
Outside of the US Department of Energy, most industry insiders have calculated that the world will reach peak oil production sometime between 2003 (coincidentally enough, that year was the start of the Iraq war) and 2015. From that point onward, there is no way to avoid a vast increase in oil costs.
As a consequence, any process which relies on oil as an energy source is doomed to becoming increasingly and prohibitively expensive. Being the least fuel-efficient form of transportation available to consumers, aeroplanes are simply not the answer to future development. Air travel will likely return to its roots as a hobby for the rich. This is not to suggest that masses of humans will never fly again, just that until we can make flying vehicles using alternative energy sources, reliance on the industry seems to my eyes a logistical nightmare given the world’s declining stocks of oil.
Maybe just for a second I’ll play the devil’s advocate. It is possible to incorporate mass transit into the proposed development plan. Principally, it is now a perfect time for Canada invest in a high-speed rail network in this country. A corridor in southern Ontario would allow commuters to live in Hamilton and work in Windsor, Toronto, or Ottawa without sacrificing the environment to the blight of highways and their resulting air pollution. Canadian companies such as Bombardier could construct the trains and the infrastructure with steel from Hamilton, thus providing some of those proposed 50,000 aerotropolis jobs. Furthermore, to decrease transportation requirements as a whole, it is time to reintegrate work spaces with domestic spaces, which ironically enough is traditionally what city cores have always done. High-density zoning is the key here, so that we do not have to sacrifice our rich local farmlands to treeless suburban driveways and parking lots as suggested by the current aerotropolis plan.
Maybe Aerotropolis really is a nostalgic dream, back to the highway expansions of the 1950s. Let me complete the metaphor. All those little toy spaceships and cars that signify 1950s Americana, well they were made of American metal back then. Their modern counterparts are plastic, manufactured in China, and engineered to be disposable: three characteristics which signal the increased load we have placed upon our oil supplies, and the increased hubris with which urban planners render economic development as a monolithic and unidirectional entity.
Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas
Guardian Unlimited published an interesting article in May which you can find here .
Launch a local awareness campaign by screening the film End of Suburbia .
Even old guard oil producers like Chevron are getting serious about peak oil.
The impetus for development seems to be the more family-friendly nature of real estate in Hamilton, as well as the city’s central location relative to nearby urban centres. City planners believe that new residents will flock to Hamilton in order to avoid the high cost of living in Toronto and its neighbouring suburbs. This belief is preceded by two other acts of faith: 1. that Hamilton real estate prices will stay low, and 2. that the price of transportation will also stay low.
So what is this about our low real estate costs in Hamilton? It is true that you can purchase a home in Hamilton for about 2/3 what it would cost in Toronto and maybe 4/5 of its cost in Oakville or Mississauga. Yet, these lower costs have everything to do with the fact that Hamilton skilfully avoided the economic boom of the mid to late 1990s that fuelled the real estate markets of those municipalities. Smart development has begun to reverse that trend to some degree. Many analysts have stated that due to extensive condo development, Toronto, for example, has cooled off as a real estate market, and prices for homes in several areas have actually dropped since 2002.
If Hamilton were indeed to become a hotspot for development, doesn’t it follow that housing prices will increase to match the extra money flowing into the city? Furthermore, we should question what increased property values would mean to Hamilton’s many lower-income families. The increase in property values associated with a booming suburban development would likely mean the continued marginalization of the downtown core.
The development requirements associated with sprawl include more infrastructure than just highways – roads and sidewalks, water and sewage, electricity, garbage collection, education, health and law enforcement services, etc. Currently, property taxes remain high downtown despite the relative weakness of the local economy in relation to suburban shopping centres such as the Meadowlands. Subsidies have been maintained to encourage business development in outlying regions of Hamilton. At the same time, the city must realize its operating budget from somewhere, and consequently core residents currently bear a majority of the tax burden.
The second and perhaps more prescient issue to consider in the aerotropolis debate is of course energy consumption. As has been pointed out in much of the local press, the city’s plan for development requires a high degree of cheap and accessible individual transportation. Increasing dependence on automobiles in order to link car corridors to distant jobs while living and shopping in suburban areas, and ultimately make the aerotropolis plan feasible, requires a cheap and increasing supply of fossil fuels. Additionally, the economic locus of the project – the expansion of the airport itself – requires a boom in the airline industry. As for being cheap, anyone can tell you that oil prices are going in only one direction.
What about all this oil talk? Sure, it’s almost de rigour to belittle oil these days, with opinions on oil’s links to war, terror, and economic subservience finding much ink in the press. Many people quickly tire of the discussion. But one thing both sides should be able to agree on is that as a collective, modern countries are exceedingly good at using oil. Better than we have ever been, in fact. We have made the process of extracting and consuming oil so efficient that nearly every human in industrialized countries has access to a decent supply of it whenever they need it (and perhaps more tellingly, even when they don’t). Consequently, we started taking it for granted on the consumer side of things, thus allowing a great deal of waste. Oil producers get rich no matter how much oil is used, and consumers, well, they get to have a socially acceptable substance addiction.
Everyone was winning until that very famous oil crisis of the 1970s, when prices reached a point that rendered cars inaccessible to many North Americans. What was that about anyway? That’s where the concept of peak oil comes into play.
Peak oil refers to the fact that oil production doesn’t "gush" the way that it does in Looney Tunes. Instead, it follows a bell curve, with production starting slowly, quickly accelerating, levelling off, decelerating slowly, then rapidly declining. Naturally, oil is most expensive when you begin or end the process. Peak oil has already occurred in America’s domestic supply: the U.S. was the gold standard for oil production until it peaked at 11 million barrels a day in 1970, and the country has been in rapid decline since, hence its dependence on foreign sources.
Outside of the US Department of Energy, most industry insiders have calculated that the world will reach peak oil production sometime between 2003 (coincidentally enough, that year was the start of the Iraq war) and 2015. From that point onward, there is no way to avoid a vast increase in oil costs.
As a consequence, any process which relies on oil as an energy source is doomed to becoming increasingly and prohibitively expensive. Being the least fuel-efficient form of transportation available to consumers, aeroplanes are simply not the answer to future development. Air travel will likely return to its roots as a hobby for the rich. This is not to suggest that masses of humans will never fly again, just that until we can make flying vehicles using alternative energy sources, reliance on the industry seems to my eyes a logistical nightmare given the world’s declining stocks of oil.
Maybe just for a second I’ll play the devil’s advocate. It is possible to incorporate mass transit into the proposed development plan. Principally, it is now a perfect time for Canada invest in a high-speed rail network in this country. A corridor in southern Ontario would allow commuters to live in Hamilton and work in Windsor, Toronto, or Ottawa without sacrificing the environment to the blight of highways and their resulting air pollution. Canadian companies such as Bombardier could construct the trains and the infrastructure with steel from Hamilton, thus providing some of those proposed 50,000 aerotropolis jobs. Furthermore, to decrease transportation requirements as a whole, it is time to reintegrate work spaces with domestic spaces, which ironically enough is traditionally what city cores have always done. High-density zoning is the key here, so that we do not have to sacrifice our rich local farmlands to treeless suburban driveways and parking lots as suggested by the current aerotropolis plan.
Maybe Aerotropolis really is a nostalgic dream, back to the highway expansions of the 1950s. Let me complete the metaphor. All those little toy spaceships and cars that signify 1950s Americana, well they were made of American metal back then. Their modern counterparts are plastic, manufactured in China, and engineered to be disposable: three characteristics which signal the increased load we have placed upon our oil supplies, and the increased hubris with which urban planners render economic development as a monolithic and unidirectional entity.
Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas
Guardian Unlimited published an interesting article in May which you can find here .
Launch a local awareness campaign by screening the film End of Suburbia .
Even old guard oil producers like Chevron are getting serious about peak oil.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Thursday, July 07, 2005
she writes in blank spaces
the walk was surreptitious and silent
and I remembered how it was made:
we had always swept past each other
going to work, or in play resting
intangible and ever volatile
we met looking sideways
once in walking we passed a year
our bigness dwarfed the whole street
i realized then that the way you move
gives title to moments of pleasure
i took your hand and pressed it to my days
marking the calendar on my wall in bald faces
on this Monday we were going to your place
it was a tea that had filled a week, promised
and poured with my cup handed
when i smiled you stopped, then
burning drops went over my hand caressing
i sentenced you to life for that transgression
and I remembered how it was made:
we had always swept past each other
going to work, or in play resting
intangible and ever volatile
we met looking sideways
once in walking we passed a year
our bigness dwarfed the whole street
i realized then that the way you move
gives title to moments of pleasure
i took your hand and pressed it to my days
marking the calendar on my wall in bald faces
on this Monday we were going to your place
it was a tea that had filled a week, promised
and poured with my cup handed
when i smiled you stopped, then
burning drops went over my hand caressing
i sentenced you to life for that transgression
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Multiples
Keith Fullerton Whitman
Multiples
(Kranky, 2005)
Sometimes nothing makes one feel more absolutely modern than a nod to an obscure antiquity. Best known for the post-drum&bass digital cut-ups of his Hrvatski moniker, KFW has saved much of his more challenging work for his namesake releases. Multiples follows some of the drone-based themes of 2002's Playthroughs, and accordingly requires a bit of patience to be properly digested. Track titles such as ‘Stereo Music for Serge Modular Prototype’ belie Whitman’s dogmatically intellectual approach that appeals to the history of electronic music as a thoroughly academic enterprise. By focussing on the compositional particularities of each instrument afforded by digital editing and processing, Whitman brings the textural beauty of his sounds to the fore. Hypnotic and highly evocative.
MP3: Keith Fullerton Whitman - Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar and Computer
Four Tet - Everything Ecstatic
Four Tet
Everything Ecstatic
(Domino, 2005)
With turns both electronic and acoustic, Kieran Hebden’s music has garnered the laptop beatmaker an ever-increasing following. His new release Everything Ecstatic does little to disprove to listeners the human touch Hebden brings to electronic music. Singable melodies coming from precious sounding instrumentation is the hallmark of Four Tet’s oeuvre, best evidenced on ‘Smile Around the Face’ by a soul vocal sample sped up to Chipmunk levels. And yet, this album marks a development favouring rhythmic devices over melodic sentiment. Opener ‘Joy’ steals a bassline and kick pattern from 90s-era big beat, while ‘Sun Drums and Soil’ wouldn’t sound out of place on a modern Boredoms record. Bring this one with you to the cottage this summer, and play it during a BBQ so you can distract your friends from the fact that you have surreptitiously and exclusively purchased vegetarian burgers.
MP3: Four Tet - Sun Drums and Soil
Jamie Lidell - Multiply
Jamie Lidell
Multiply
(Warp, 2005)
For a half-decade now, Mr. Lidell has been all over the European genre map, with notable stops in the UK post-rave crooner revival, Berlin techno, and Spanish electro-funk scenes. His beats are usually in line with the roboto-funk digital-crunk common to the Warp Records stable, but past excursions into Soul and Funk gave a hint as to where Lidell planned to take us in 2005.
Multiply is absolutely dripping with the Stax funk sound of the mid to late 1970s. Album opener “You Got Me Up” should easily kick-start your summer party with its rolling, ass-shaking groove. “A Little Bit More” sounds as though Marvin Gaye had dropped by for a session of sexual healing. Motown balladeers will find further engagement with “What Is It This Time”, a track sensual enough even for the most demanding backseat car-grope experience.
Is Jamie Lidell the new Prince? Only the doctor at his VD clinic can tell us for sure...
MP3: Jamie Lidell - Music Will Not Last
Thursday, June 30, 2005
regime change
It seems that the new president elect of Iran may have taken part in the 1979 US hostage situation. That is if we are to believe some of the captives who are making the claims. According to the Associated Press, four ex-captives are claiming that upon seeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly-elected president of Iran, on television, they are now convinced of his association with their detainment in 1979.
As a side note, check out how the various news networks are quoting the AP, found in its original form here .
CNN's take
Fox "News"
One such hostage, William Dougherty, said: "You know how [President Bush] said, 'You're either for us or you're for the terrorists.' Well, now the leader of Iran is a terrorist."
Funny. I would have thought that 25 years would dilute the memory a little. More importantly, how could these captives know unless they met Ahmadinejad in a more personable manner than on CNN?
Then there's a statement from one of the other hostages: "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser." So now Ahmadinejad was there in the background, maybe making some popcorn for the boys or something.
Next we'll hear that Ahmadinejad caused the World Trade Centre attacks, and was a key participant in the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Yes, our man Ahmadinejad is a veritable Where's Waldo through recent American history.
I'd like to think that the US is not going to seek regime change everywhere it wishes to impose colonial rule. Calling a foreign leader "evil" and then using his "evilness" to justify an invasion and occupation of the country? Priceless, and a true component of civil democracies.
Then again maybe the whole "we're doing the same thing each time" strategy would have the intended effect of confusing the masses into thinking that such absurd logic as "hey, there's another evil leader" is indeed representative of how international politics is played.
Not only does such simplistic logic undermine any concerted effort at geo-political analysis on the part of the media, but it also ignores any debate about the taking of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
We're learning from the current White House that debate is for pussies. Men of greatness require action. Let hellfire fall from the sky, they say. Evil will be corrected.
So what about those of us who have expanded our notions of good and evil since grade two?
As a side note, check out how the various news networks are quoting the AP, found in its original form here .
CNN's take
Fox "News"
One such hostage, William Dougherty, said: "You know how [President Bush] said, 'You're either for us or you're for the terrorists.' Well, now the leader of Iran is a terrorist."
Funny. I would have thought that 25 years would dilute the memory a little. More importantly, how could these captives know unless they met Ahmadinejad in a more personable manner than on CNN?
Then there's a statement from one of the other hostages: "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser." So now Ahmadinejad was there in the background, maybe making some popcorn for the boys or something.
Next we'll hear that Ahmadinejad caused the World Trade Centre attacks, and was a key participant in the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Yes, our man Ahmadinejad is a veritable Where's Waldo through recent American history.
I'd like to think that the US is not going to seek regime change everywhere it wishes to impose colonial rule. Calling a foreign leader "evil" and then using his "evilness" to justify an invasion and occupation of the country? Priceless, and a true component of civil democracies.
Then again maybe the whole "we're doing the same thing each time" strategy would have the intended effect of confusing the masses into thinking that such absurd logic as "hey, there's another evil leader" is indeed representative of how international politics is played.
Not only does such simplistic logic undermine any concerted effort at geo-political analysis on the part of the media, but it also ignores any debate about the taking of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
We're learning from the current White House that debate is for pussies. Men of greatness require action. Let hellfire fall from the sky, they say. Evil will be corrected.
So what about those of us who have expanded our notions of good and evil since grade two?
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Toronto Pride 2005
Today was the annual Pride celebration in Toronto. This year was a hell of a lot less hedonistic than in years prior (maybe the 34 degree heat killed off any excess energy that people may have had. One thing that has gone down quite drastically is the extent to which nudity takes over the celebration. In years past, you couldn't look in any direction without seeing a breast or a penis. These days, even in extreme heat, people are keeping their tackle together.
Maybe, just maybe that's a good thing for Toronto Tourism...
this is what happens when men gather without consequence to female aesthetics...
impressed
not impressed
so what do the elderly think about the liberal changes of late???
You can find the full set of photographs here.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
m.a.p.s.
white = water inbibed, North America
pink = soft drinks consumed, as a percentage with water,
North America
purple = sugar in pop turned into fat, as a percentage of pop
America, in going after the heart of terrorism, you are so 2005
plumes and breaks, widgets at the cellular level
we pack tightly, you and i
a father unfurles his wisdom only slowly, and that makes him angry
vulnerability is part of Empire
if it weren't me, it would be wallpaper
Sunday, June 19, 2005
frank zappa on CNN
In the 1980s, musician and activist Frank Zappa twice appeared on CNN's Crossfire (thank you Jon Stewart for helping get rid of that abomination) to discuss music censorship. I need say nothing, as these conversations speak for themselves.
Check out the first interview from 1986 here. The best part: ten minutes into the show Zappa suggests that the biggest threat to the country is not Communism but a move toward a fascist theocracy. It's a shame he didn't get to see the world poor little Dweezil, Moon Unit, Diva, and Ahmet Rodan have inherited.
He also made an appearance a year later.
Sometimes, it's important to have authentic voices on the television who do not wish to engage in the conversational rules the medium tends to impose.
In light of the American telecommunications industry being plagued by conservative punditry, clearly the debate is far from over.
Check out the first interview from 1986 here. The best part: ten minutes into the show Zappa suggests that the biggest threat to the country is not Communism but a move toward a fascist theocracy. It's a shame he didn't get to see the world poor little Dweezil, Moon Unit, Diva, and Ahmet Rodan have inherited.
He also made an appearance a year later.
Sometimes, it's important to have authentic voices on the television who do not wish to engage in the conversational rules the medium tends to impose.
In light of the American telecommunications industry being plagued by conservative punditry, clearly the debate is far from over.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
and now a word from our sponsors...
Obviously I don't have a single sponsor. It is important to support companies that are doing good work, and performing their function in a manner that doesn't cause a greater harm than good.
Fashion is the first step. It's something that most people take for granted, as in: "that shirt looks nice, it's cheap enough, i'll buy it". There is a larger framework for the manufacturing and distribution of that item of clothing that needs to be considered. Did the workers who made it get paid a fair wage? Are chemicals, such as bleach, used in the production of the fabric and/or item that do environmental harm? Will it really look cool?
Thinking about purchases is the start of an ethical life. Don't just buy whatever is most convenient.
This is becoming an even bigger issue for drinks than clothes. Coke has a history of violently intimidating its non-union production staff, most notably its bottlers in South and Central America who are trying to unionize. Every time you buy a Coke product, and they are legion, you are supporting that particular manufacturing practise, ie: violently oppressing an impoverished workforce.
That being said, when you go to a corner store or restaurant these days, it becomes apparent that Coke has a virtual monopoly on drink distribution. Many convenience stores stock only Coke products, presumably because they then get to use the drink fridge for free.
So what is a good citizen to do? Well, try moving on and finding a drink that doesn't have such attrocious political baggage. Water is free in most public places (although that will change over time I'm sure), so why not give that a try?
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Advent For Love
sitting sideways we
stare into each other
unblinking
like props looking
de la soul
and you preen my wrongdoing
yet i know this is a tarnished forever
imminent and glowing
how it should
be
with a respect
for the speech that lies
ever after
it's tough not to wonder at the size of it all
stare into each other
unblinking
like props looking
de la soul
and you preen my wrongdoing
yet i know this is a tarnished forever
imminent and glowing
how it should
be
with a respect
for the speech that lies
ever after
it's tough not to wonder at the size of it all
Friday, June 10, 2005
Lemmings: a follow up on drug use in america
There's word from down south (a topic which seems so dear to me right now; I view that country as a societal harbinger for what the rest of us in North America will come to accept) that the White House wants to drastically expand the mandate of the Texas Medication Algorithm Program. TMAP seeks to standardize psychological disorder under a treatment lexicon of pharmaceutical applications. Much has been made of the links between this initiative and the pharmaceutical lobby.
In a move sure to provoke Aldous Huxley scholars everywhere, the proposal for a national program equivalent to TMAP involves the mandatory screening of the entire population for mental illness.
While reading things like this article from the British Medical Journal , you have to wonder how massive an effect grade 9 english class had on the White House staff. They seem to view a hybrid Orwell-Huxley literary society as a biblical inevitability.
Looks to me like an attempt to make a shitload of cash for pharmaceuticals while simultaneously initiating a form of social control through psychotropics. Like Coke and General Motors, TMAP seeks to capture people as life-long consumers of pharmaceutical products by targetting the youth. In terms of been constituted with a captive, highly impressionable collection of individuals, schools are obviously the most vulnerable public institution in terms of corporate initiatives.
Maybe if this happens before the next election, the American population will have a pharmaceutical excuse for passively accepting yet another Republican governmental coup (they've come so far since Kennedy, there's no way they can stop now!).
Good old population control. May the American Citizen rest in peace, draped in the innocence of their complicity.
As a totally related non-sequitur, isn't that old computer game Lemmings really fucking good. Boy, wish I could play that game RIGHT NOW.
In a move sure to provoke Aldous Huxley scholars everywhere, the proposal for a national program equivalent to TMAP involves the mandatory screening of the entire population for mental illness.
While reading things like this article from the British Medical Journal , you have to wonder how massive an effect grade 9 english class had on the White House staff. They seem to view a hybrid Orwell-Huxley literary society as a biblical inevitability.
Looks to me like an attempt to make a shitload of cash for pharmaceuticals while simultaneously initiating a form of social control through psychotropics. Like Coke and General Motors, TMAP seeks to capture people as life-long consumers of pharmaceutical products by targetting the youth. In terms of been constituted with a captive, highly impressionable collection of individuals, schools are obviously the most vulnerable public institution in terms of corporate initiatives.
Maybe if this happens before the next election, the American population will have a pharmaceutical excuse for passively accepting yet another Republican governmental coup (they've come so far since Kennedy, there's no way they can stop now!).
Good old population control. May the American Citizen rest in peace, draped in the innocence of their complicity.
As a totally related non-sequitur, isn't that old computer game Lemmings really fucking good. Boy, wish I could play that game RIGHT NOW.
Monday, June 06, 2005
american pot laws
Another bizarre turn for patients requiring medical marijuana in the United States.
The White House had stepped in to successfully appeal a 2003 California Supreme Court finding which stated that federal laws prohibiting marijuana use for disease, chronic pain, or eating disorders to be unconstitutional. Judge John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, and in a logical paradox declared that the real harm in doctor-prescribed pot is over-prescription of the drug: "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who over-prescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so".
Wait a minute here. Aren't we hearing a number of reports (check out warnings from Britain and Canada) indicating that doctors are routinely over-prescribing drugs of all sorts?? This is especially true for newer pharmaceuticals which have high profit margins attached to their distribution and use. Are we to seriously believe that doctors aren't benefiting from kickbacks and incentive plans from pharmaceutical sales reps for these drugs? Furthermore, by what leap of logic does this judge deem profit to be a factor in marijuana prescription? I mean, marijuana is after all a plant that can be freely grown by anyone with adequate sunlight and a couple of seeds.
Maybe that's the key to this dilemma. If we are to believe scientific reports as to the medically beneficial nature of marijuana, and more to the point that such benefits from THC have yet to be replicated in a pharmaceutical setting, it seems likely that once again the american judicial system is capitulating to the drug company lobby groups.
As Monsanto learned a while ago, there's no money to be made from plants which reproduce themselves ad nauseam, hence their quest to terminate the procreative process in their plants.
Money, it seems, is currently the prima objectum of the health system in those wacky states. In fact, the routine overcharging of prescription drugs has caused many Americans to travel or purchase their meds online from Canada in order to get around the draconian system in place in their country. Perhaps their health system as a whole will be outsourced to Canada. Apparently, some drugs cost 4-5 times as much down there as they do here.
Holy fuck what a nightmare for the majority of the American population who cannot afford good heath care, which has turned into a luxury item in that country.
House of Lords Report on Cannabis for Medical Purposes
CBC discussion archive
Peer Reviewed Results of New York State-sponsored Cancer/Marijuana Studies
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Friday, June 03, 2005
Parrie Sound, about 10:12 pm
Isn't it pretty? Quiet, serene, and only an hour and a half north of Toronto.
This was the opening night of what has since been a pretty decent heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Psychonauts
Psychonauts
Majestico (PC, XBOX, PS2)
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to enter into someone’s psychological space and ferret out any problems they might be having by battling their mental demons? If someone is violently trying to live up to their macho instincts, for example, then all it would take is the defeat of a certain “mental bull” to restore them to sanity. Oh the domestic bliss that would ensue...
Psychonauts was designed by Tim Schafer, the genius behind PC classics like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango (which is perhaps the closest a game has come to being a complete artistic expression along "cinematic" narrative lines). Shafer’s usual off-kilter humour, wacky characters, and brilliant art design are in full effect this time out. Like always, a Tim Shafer script needs to be played, not read. And so you play Raz, a young psychic who breaks into a summer camp training socially-deviant kids with psychic powers to be super soldiers (think X-Men without the self-confidence). One of the evil minds behind the camp is surreptitiously stealing the brains of these kids to power battle tanks. After discovering this secret plot, it’s up to Raz to enter a bunch of people’s heads to fight their mental demons and stop the madman before his plan destroys the entire world. And that’s where things take a decided twist for the wacky.
Psychonauts is a 3D platformer, and the vast majority of levels are constructed in the mental space of the other people at the summer camp. These conceptual triumphs of level design include Waterloo World, where you help someone defeat their Napoleon complex; a disco-party level where you uncover the disturbing secrets of the mind in question behind all the happy fun-fun times; a theatre level where kids enact a series of surreal tableaux, leading up to a boss fight with an art critic who attacks with ink droplet words like “Trite!”; a level that looks like one of those sofa-sized paintings sold for $29.95 by, er, 'starving artists'; and a level performed in the mind of a bully fish who is so scared of Raz that the latter is realized as a Godzilla-sized figure trashing the gigantic Lungfishopolis, heart of all that is sacred.
Gameplay consists of the usual platforming conventions, including powerup collection, combat, and jumping/swinging/climbing etc. You beat levels by collecting or manipulating certain objects, clearing mental cobwebs and emotional baggage, defeating enemies, and solving some fairly devious puzzles. This nets you the reward of watching a Viewmaster presentation of their memories and emotional needs; Baudrillard's trip to Vegas was never so surreal. As you progress through the game, you gain psychic powers that you can use at your leisure, such as telekinesis, levitation, and (my fave) pyrokinesis.
While the gameplay is solid, it’s the script, art direction, and sound design that will truly captivate. The game is both creepy and laugh-out-loud funny -- usually simultaneously so. While certainly not the replay value on adventure games remains circumscribed by nostalgia, Psychonauts is long enough to will keep a typical gamer occupied for several hours. Tim Shafer will one day be inscribed as a major figure who elevated games from mere electronic interactions to full-blown aesthetic experiences. Psychonauts has been released for all major platforms, and is equally good wherever you play it. If you have a decent gaming PC (with a gamepad, son) however, then skip the consoles and aim for the graphical splendour made possible by a more high-power system.
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