It’s Wendy again and I am pretty lucky as Jordon does all of the Christmas shopping in our family and over the years he has created some incredible gift guides for his website which have generated a loyal following. I traditionally write the Gift Guide husbands/boyfriends/fathers and this year I get to kick off the [...]
ideas
Award winner coming through…
It not me but F.S. Michaels, author of the book Monoculture which I have mentioned around here before. Here are the details. FIRST-TIME CANADIAN AUTHOR WINS AMERICA’S GEORGE ORWELL AWARD NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language Canadian author F.S. Michaels has won America’s prestigious 2011 George Orwell [...]
10 Things That Make Your Home a Target for Thieves
From Consumer Reports A home is robbed every 14.6 seconds and the average dollar loss per burglary is $2,119, according to statistics just released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And that’s the good news because burglaries were down slightly in 2010 compared to 2009. Sure you lock your doors and windows when you’re not [...]
Another way to get a bridge built
In Saskatoon bridges cost hundreds of millions of dollars, deeply divide the city, and then tend to fall down because they haven’t been properly maintained. The locals of Nongriat in Meghalaya, India have a different approach to infrastructure, they grow it. They have been doing this for the past 500 years. Some of [...]
Architecture as a force to deal with poverty?
As Paris is finding, it may be overestimating the power of architecture Balzac has now been emptied, though, and a spidery mechanical arm tears away at it each day. The towering wall of stained concrete and tile, once 600 feet long and 16 stories high, is to be replaced by a cluster of smaller units, [...]
“Because the first place most of us want to experiment with looser building codes is 320 kilometres out to sea.”
Tabatha Southey has this fantastic column in today’s Globe & Mail on a new libertarian society 320 kilometres out in the ocean. Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal and Facebook financier, has also embarked on a plan for a new society, for which the location has already been decided and money may not be [...]
The Swoosh Turns 40
Here is how it all came together. The origin of the mark goes like this: Knight wanted to differentiate BRS‘s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: "…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier." One day in 1969, the student, [...]
Poor Urban Design in Saskatoon & How to Do It Better
Sean Shaw has a great post on the new Holiday Inn in Saskatoon. How can this type of development be avoided? It will take a conscious effort by City Council to mandate more stringent and enforceable development guidelines, not just for the Warehouse District but all new developments within the city – this hotel would [...]
A look back at the Stanford Prison Experiment
It’s been 40 years since the infamous psychological experiment The study began on Sunday, August 17, 1971. But no one knew what, exactly, they were getting into. Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study’s participants endured [...]
Column: Energy Prices Will Force Changes
My latest column in The StarPhoenix In the past two weeks I have written about energy and the coming oil shortage that is driving oil and gas prices higher. When you are talking about peak oil, many authors see this as the end of mechanized civilization and suggest we will head back to a pre-industrial [...]
The failure of poverty programs
David Brooks in the New York Times. Let’s say you want to reduce poverty. We have two traditional understandings of poverty. The first presumes people are rational. They are pursuing their goals effectively and don’t need much help in changing their behavior. The second presumes that the poor are afflicted by cultural or psychological dysfunctions [...]
What’s Wrong with Television Journalism
Wow, what a post by Kai Nagata Aside from feeling sexually attracted to the people on screen, the target viewer, according to consultants, is also supposed to like easy stories that reinforce beliefs they already hold. This is where the public broadcaster is caught in a tough spot. CBC Television, post-Stursberg, is failing in two [...]
