Information at the Speed of Light

It’s rather unsettling to think of yourself as a crotchety tech basher, when you’re usually very pro-tech.

Yesterday, I had a stressful time trying to get enough interviews completed for my story during regular business hours, and I found myself cursing my lack of a smartphone so that I could check my e-mail every 30 seconds.

I had to keep dashing into random computer labs, logging onto a free computer, and then into my e-mail account to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. In between dashing off to offices hoping to ambush sources, that is! (Having a laptop is no better, wi-fi on campus still needs to be logged into; and that thing is bulky!)

This should have been the perfect excuse to justify a smartphone purchase finally, but today after having a chance to reflect on it I found I don’t want one (for now).

How much more stress would I have been under if I was constantly finding out that no one was contacting me back? How much less attention would I be paying to everything  around me if I could surf the net everywhere I am? I would become one of those people who constantly checks their Crackberry, and I hate when people do that!

I’ve actually thought: “Bloody newfangled devices! They’re one of the reasons the news/world is so insane! Get off my lawn!”

Ok, maybe not in those exact words, but I was bemoaning the fact that they are making people around me even more obsessed with the minute (and often mundane) details of everything. Whatever happened to looking at the bigger picture?

Do I really need to be constantly seeking out bite-sized pieces of information?

Does anyone?

Probably not.

Mis-Tech

Road trips are timeless, and so is "Are we there yet?"

Apparently the newest trend in parenting is to encourage kids to sit in the back seat and shut up.

How else to explain the recent series in the Globe and Mail’s Drive section about keeping your children entertained during long drives?

Endless games of I-Spy irritating you? Save your sanity by encouraging your kids to tune out from the world around them by watching endless DVDs and playing video games that they would already be playing at home.

Never mind that children’s programming unleashes its own brand of severe irritation, especially in a small enclosed vehicle.

But why attempt to engage your kids in what is supposed to be a family event when you can take the easy way out?

Sure, sibling fights are hardly a better alternative to whining and high-pitched singing, but actual interaction is the stuff that family trip memories are made of. Both the bad and the good.

Why not suggest something that the entire family can engage in, beyond I-Spy or the license plate game? Maybe an audiobook the entire family could enjoy, or an actual physical book that could keep the kids quiet for a bit but then provide a point of discussion? Perhaps something related to the trip itself or the geography you’re traveling through.

Or is that too low-tech?

Not every problem needs to be solved by the newest gadget, and none of those suggestions are even new or interesting.

Is a little creative thinking too much to ask from Canada’s oldest national paper?

On Interviewing

I’ve unintentionally put this blog on hiatus since the big run up to Christmas break, but I’m going to attempt to give this equal priority with all the other projects I have this semester.

In that light, this first post back is related to interviews I’ve just conducted for a magazine article I’m writing…

Mind if I ask you a few questions?

Reading about interviewing is one thing; conducting them is another beast entirely.

Dear God is interviewing a hit-or-miss proposition. For the hour-long interviews I had today, I think there were some mixed results. Both started off about the same topic, but ended up going in separate directions. Both were with science journalists. Both were seeking information on a topic I knew little to nothing about.

Of course that’s the reason anyone conducts interviews: to seek out the information you don’t know about from someone who is an expert on the subject.

Even in setting up the interviews, I ended up with different results. I definitely confirmed that e-mail is a medium where tone is everything, and was attempting to be very polite and formal as I did so only to run into a gamut tones from prospective interviewees (not just the two who graciously agreed to be interviewed).

The first interview subject came across as terse in the e-mail but was completely amiable and congenial during the interview. I was nervous about it, but it ran smoothly and I don’t think I came across as completely incompetent (as is my greatest fear). I’d done some research on the topic and thought about the kind of questions I’d wanted to ask which definitely helped shape the interview, so I thought I had a handle on what to ask for the second one.

Riding high off that success, I took a bit of a mental break before the second one. Perhaps that was a mistake, even though this subject same across as more approachable in their e-mails.

This one went much differently than the first. I’m not sure if it was my generalized questions, or if I was expecting to cover some of the same ground as the first, but this one netted a very different set of responses than I was prepared for. In fact, I was a bit lost as to where I was going by the end. Part of that was the sheer volume of the replies, but some of it had to be an uncertainty as to where this was all going to fit into my article.

Maybe I should have spaced the interviews out further – taken more time to think about how the information applied to my topic, maybe I should have taken different approaches to the interviews themselves, or it may have been the fact that I was conducting them over the phone.

Interviewing is so much more than just asking questions and listening to the replies. And it looks like the only way to be comfortable with it is to conduct more of them.

Practice makes perfect as they say; I only wish that analyzing the result could be done by more than the interviewer and the subject. Things can seem both better and worse in hindsight.

Olympic Protest?

Look, Ma! No hand!

Over at Ossington station yesterday, somebody ripped off the hand on a poster celebrating the Olympic games.

It’s rather bizarre, and really cleanly cut. Who would want the red glove? Who is this mysterious assailant?

There have been some rumblings about it being a rather offensive statement, but I think people are reading too much into what seems to be some harmless vandalism.

There’s no hateful screed accompanying it; no scribbling all over the rest of the poster, no fake blood dripping from the stump. Although the last one would be proof that some immature vandals had torn down the piece for a laugh.

I think some Torontonians are getting worked up for no reason. It’s not even that big of a deal, the piece may have ripped while the poster was being put up and simply been peeled off because it was already falling off the wall.

And as for the fact that it’s an Olympic poster? Most likely of little consequence, it’s not like anyone in Toronto has a reason to get worked up over the Games.

Wait until 2015, then people will have something to work themselves into a frenzy over here. I can’t wait to see the state of the TTC ads then…

TGIFriday Video!

As it is a Friday, and I had an 8 a.m. class to get up for, today’s post is a video!

Ah-ha’s Take on Me – the LITERAL version! Hilarious and catchy!

Enjoy!

The peril of Tasering

No matter how many times it gets said, it’ll never get old.

It’s not weapons that kill people, it’s people who kill people.

The stun gun was supposed to be a tool used by law enforcement officers to subdue unruly offenders without the use of deadly force, and also to stay out of potential weapon range.

Clearly, it is not being used in this manner at all. The “justified use of force” on a 10 year-old Colorado boy who was brandishing a stick is a horrifying thought.

Police officers actually go through training to learn how to subdue threatening attackers effectively.

A child in the midst of a temper tantrum does not count as a threat; and I have yet to meet an intimidating 10 year old. What makes it worse is that the boy was in the foster care system, so there may not be anyone to speak out for him.

What sort of damage does that much electricity do to an undersized body? I really doubt Taser International has done any calculations on this and they would never have the opportunity to test it out.

I hope the boy doesn’t have any lasting injuries from this incident, and that in Canada we won’t have our own version of “Unruly 10 year old Tasered by police”.

Hi, can you drive?

You have one in your car, we all do. Learn to use it!

As a commuter, I am exposed to the worst offenses of driving etiquette on a regular basis.

Today’s most under used tactic: the turning signal

Dear incompetent driver,

Honestly, how hard is it in rush hour traffic to turn on your bloody indicator? Just because cars are moving at a slow pace doesn’t mean that you can cut them off, especially when there is nowhere for a driver to go if they need to avoid you.

And they will need to avoid you as you seem to cut off people who have left a car length of space so that they have room to smoothly come to a stop. Just because you like to slam on the brakes to come to a halt, doesn’t mean that others do.

Also, indicating that you intend to enter the lane means that that person behind you won’t accelerate sharply to catch up to the car in front of them. Thus avoiding the chance that they will rear end you.

This is especially true in the winter, when there will be snow and black ice on the road.

No one wants to deal with that in the winter, especially since you seem to be in such a hurry to get to where you need to go.

So do I.

Fee for Carriage or Cable Tax?

TV will save us!

If you’ve watched Canadian television at all lately, you’ll have seen the ongoing “debate” ads between television channels and telecommunication companies.

Debate, my arse – they are more like propaganda from both sides. The big television companies are sending out heart-string tugging ads about saving your local station and cable companies are appealing to the fiscal conservative inside all consumers and misrepresenting this as a “tax”.

Neither party’s ad serves to get across the salient points of the issue, and the cable companies’ attempts to get streeter reaction is actually teeth grittingly painful.

Both websites also spin the same basic points in a way that suits their purpose, proving that the issue is muddier than it appears at first glance.

True local stations aren’t getting any money from the cable companies, but the satellite/cable companies are mandated by law to carry those same signals as part of their services.

So which side can any rational person take?

I want local television; but I’m not paying $10 a month for the privilege either, that seems too high for the size of my local market.

Where’s the middle ground?

And why would I trust the CRTC to figure the solution out?

Switzerland – not so much with the neutrality

Minarets!

It turns out that Switzerland is going to lose some of its respect as a neutral country.

On Sunday the population passed (via referendum) a law banning the construction of  minarets on any new mosque in the country. This marks the public exposure of religious intolerance; which surprised its politicians and the media.

That is ridiculous, and such a senseless piece of legislation that really serves no purpose but to polarize the country on the topic of Islam. The politicians claim that they were unaware of the populace’s concern about Islamic integration and potential extremism.

I find that rather hard to believe.  Just how out of touch are they with the general poulace? Even the supporters of the bill didn’t expect it to pass.

To be fair, Switzerland is a country with a direct democratic process. Any member of the country can propose a bill and the entire country will vote on the issue. (Although how much does this cost to run, even if the country’s population is small?)  This is just a topic that exposes a potential flaw in the process.

It is very unfortunate that  Switzerland will be seen as a narrow-minded people on a global scale, no matter if they eventually overturn this law. And if any extremism exists, this will only serve to fuel their rhetoric.

Minarets aren’t even that ugly, I’ve seen worse crimes against architecture…

Science News

Space. The final frontier...

I was going to kick off the week with some honest-to-goodness, legitimate science news, but I couldn’t resist mentioning Latchezar Filipov, the Bulgarian scientist who thinks that aliens are among us.

Yep, an true-blue, standing member of the International Astronomical Union, worked on the MIR space-station, astrophysicist thinks that we’ve made contact with extra-terrestrial life forms.

And, the media is reporting it as such.

I don’t even know what to think about the first point, let alone the second. The poor man has to be having some sort of mid-life crisis, and he’s being subjected to media scrutiny.

The Star went out of their way to interview him for this article, and having had a chance to tour it recently I’m actually kind of surprised they published this at all.

Thankfully, Filipov has left himself an out: “I don’t yet believe that this is absolutely true information,” he told the Star.

It’s good to see that his scientific skepticism is still there in some form.

But, I do wonder sometimes just how many astronomers and astrophysicists do have a tiny desire to believe in aliens.

It must be there somewhere buried under all the years of learning and reasoning, that quiet remnant of when they were children who looked up at the stars and wondered just what was out there…