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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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There is Neutrino news (thanks JM) in the Nobel Intent journal at Ars Technica. Posted by Chris Lee. Quote:
A consequence of the known neutrino types having mass is that there must be a fourth type of neutrino, one that has even weaker interactions with ordinary matter and has been dubbed the sterile neutrino."4 flavours of neutrino! One of them "sterile." And it might have mass which would mean a lot of matter we couldn't account for before. Plus a lot of other trippy stuff about the early universe. Cosmology hurts my head. There's more here at New Scientist Space dot com. Quote:
[Alexander Kusenko] says the fact that sterile neutrinos could account for such a wide variety of astrophysical puzzles is a "highly non-trivial coincidence" and a "strong indication this may be right".
Peggy Gale, Governor General's Award winner
Photo: Martin Lipman
I normally don't pay much attention to the Governor General's Awards for art, except to count up the ration of men to women and wonder if I'm being political or petty. But I just realised that Peggy Gale, who I wrote about here, won this year for "outstanding contribution." This is great news! Gale's writing about video art provides essential context, exploring both the conceptual implications and the experimental physical experiences of the technology. She has stayed with the medium intellectually, charting its trajectory from the transgressive, performative beginnings of TV-in-the-hands-of-artists, to the present diffusion into a plethora of moving images online, in the gallery, at the theatre, on DVD, and cell phones. Here is what Sarah Milroy at the Globe had to say:
Gale is being honoured for her pioneering work as a curator and writer. Her exhibition Videoscapes, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1974, was one of the first in the world to isolate and examine the new phenomenon of video art and was a first step in establishing a canon of Canadian video art. In addition, Gale has served as director of the artist-run centre A Space and, later, of Art Metropole (an important early centre for video distribution in Toronto). Since 1981, she has worked as a freelance curator, editor and writer.
Birds seen from train window between Toronto and London, morning of March 23rd, overcast.
Identified
killdeer: 1
cardinal: 1
blue jay: 1
kestrel: 2
bufflehead: 3
robin: 4
mallard: 4
blackbird: 5
red tailed hawk: 5
red-winged blackbird: 53
morning dove: 21
grackle: 6
seagull: 12
swan: 4 + 1 flock
crow: 47
Canada goose: 16 + 2 flocks
pigeon: 47 + 1 flock
starling: 72 + 3 flocks
Somewhat Identified
some kind of duck: 2
some kind of hawk: 5
blackbird or grackle: 3 + 1 flock
warbler or finch or sparrow: 25
blackbird or red-winged blackbird: 42
blackbird or starling: 86
Not Identified At All
some kind of bird: 23 + 1 flock
Recent low blog activity on my part due to South Western Ontario train trip with stops in Windsor and London, and a side jaunt (by car) to Aylmer. More detail soon. 
Napoleon's tooth. Discuss.
I'm just hijacking Sally's front page to point out an English language blog on the current riots in Paris.
Couldn't help but notice that during their autumn suburb riots there were a lot of reports of the police not responding with a large presence in those neighbourhoods ...but if you start screwing around in their 5 and 6 arrdt. things change.
farmers feed cities
"...what is important about science is not its authority, but the existence of a community of people more or less committed to such an ethic. To communicate this we have to present ourselves as people and tell stories. Moreover, we have to make some effort to tell true stories, not just the ones that put us in the best light." - Lee Smolin in conversation with Julian Barbour
Holy toy-hack batman! Toronto artist Veronica Verkley created the animated puppet for Rhinocerous Eyes. The film looks like it's going to be great. The website has a page of reviews by neuroscientists! For example Antonio Damasio, Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa, says, “Our mind is made of props — body parts in action, parts of objects, parts of places — all joined in narrative animation. Of course, so are the movies, those creative imitators of the human mind. Rhinoceros Eyes plays with this natural metaphor and blurs the line that divides reality from dream. A most disquieting game."
Verkley's puppets are on display in the window at Pages bookstore until March 31st. Broken dolls, mangled plastic airplanes and many other bits and bobs, conglomerated in a lifesized puppet monster! The creature reminds me of Body Worlds. Can't wait to see the film.
image from here
Rob at Endless Parade of Excellence posted a link to this great profile of Ivor Cutler who died recently. I've posted about Cutler before. He defied conformity in every sense of the word, a strange old Jewish Scot, an oblique story teller, as funny as he was dour, and utterly brilliant.
This from today's Globe and Mail:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has imposed central control over all information and comments to the public issued by government officials and even cabinet ministers, directing them to have everything cleared by the Prime Minister's Office, according to an internal e-mail and government sources....those five points being " Federal Accountability Act, a GST cut, a child-care allowance, tougher criminal sentences, and a patient waiting-times guarantee." I guess the PM wants to be the only person to talk about Afghanistan:
The orders, described in an e-mail to bureaucrats, indicate that ministers have been told to avoid talking about the direction of the government, and that the government wants them to be less accessible to the news media. And all government officials are instructed to avoid speaking about anything other than the five priorities outlined in the Conservative campaign.
Before its liberation, under the Taliban regime, Afghanistan often served as an incubator for Al Qaeda and other terror organizations....yike...Baby Bush alert!
This reality hit home with brutal force on 9-11, when two dozen Canadians lost their lives suddenly and senselessly in the destruction of the World Trade Centre.
Those were ordinary Canadians. People with families, partners, children and dreams for a better future. Just like all of our citizens, people who died suddenly and for no reason at the hands of fanatics.
Since that time, Al Qaeda has singled out Canada as one of the countries targeted for terror.
And beyond the threat of terror there’s the threat of drugs.
NOTE: There is an informative thread at rabble.ca about our troops in Afghanistan, our relationship with USA in this matter, and international law.
A friend of mine recently posed the question: are Canadian soldiers handing Afghani prisoners over to US military? And if yes, is the US military adhering to the Geneva Convention? And if no, or even maybe not, then how can we demand for the protections of Geneva for our soldiers? To my mind, this gets to the heart of the phrase "support our troops." I am looking for discussion of this question on blogs or in the media. Any links would be appreciated.
Jennifer McMackon has posted a considered, critical (in two senses of the word) review of Quantal Strife at Simpleposie. Her review and my response are here. I have also posted a brief response to Peter Goddard's Toronto Star review here (scroll down).
I'm definitely getting on the bus tomorrow (March 16th) to Doris McCarthy Gallery for the opening of Return, Afghanistan, a show of work by Zalmaï, an Afghani photographer. I've seen some of these pictures in a book and they are gorgeous. It's timely. And the opening is going to be really fun, with good food and music too. As always, the bus is FREE!
Zalmaï: Return, Afghanistan
March 16 - May 12, 2006
Opening: March 16, 2006, 6-9 pm
With traditional Afghan dance, food and music
Official Remarks by Ambassador Omar Samad, Afghanistan Ambassador to Canada at 7 pm
Rubab and tabla performance by Yasser Karimzad, James Kippen and Atiq Nikzad
Free bus departs 401 Richmond Street West at 6:30 pm and returns from UTSC at 9 pm
Uh-oh. That killer whale named Luna living in the harbour at Gold River died this morning. Apparently a tugboat was involved. [earlier post]
Jim Munroe posted a very nice Q&A with me about Quantal Strife on No Media Kings.
Excerpt from Naomi Klein's article in Harpers (2004), describing in specific terms the US failure to transform Iraq into an unregulated utopia for international corporations.
In one dark corner of the [soap] plant, we came across an old man hunched over a sack filled with white plastic caps. With a thin metal blade lodged in a wedge of wax, he carefully whittled down the edges of each cap, leaving a pile of shavings at his feet. “We don’t have the spare part for the proper mold, so we have to cut them by hand,” his supervisor explained apologetically. “We haven’t received any parts from Germany since the sanctions began.” I noticed that even on the assembly lines that were nominally working there was almost no mechanization: bottles were held under spouts by hand because conveyor belts don’t convey, lids once snapped on by machines were being hammered in place with wooden mallets. Even the water for the factory was drawn from an outdoor well, hoisted by hand, and carried inside.
There is an interesting, critical, conversation-style review of Quantal Strife in the Toronto Star today. I kind of wish "the kid" critic was named (I can only assume the "boomer" is Peter Goddard), but being a blogger I'm getting used to anonymous critiques.
Last night I went to the Spacing film screening. It was really great. I forgot to bring the dang nabbed program home with me. There was a really great film by a guy who lives in Parkdale who's uncle lived and died in Parkdale. He talked about development in the area from a refreshing (historically invested) point of view. But I forget the guy's name. I'll find it soon and post it. Also, as I mentioned in a recent comment thread, Tino's Rick Goes to Crticial Mass totally rocked. Very inspiring and made me laugh all the way through. Granted, Rick is a natural film star, but Tino is a master: great pacing, great tone, great composition, and joie de vivre. It's tight, and it's beautiful. And you can see a tiny quicktime version online!
My little birdmap movie (below) was screened too. That went okay, except I realise that things that are designed to be almost postage-stamp size on a computer screen carry a different weight when imposed large on a bunch of people sitting in a dark room. It was bit heavy-handed at that scale. Oh well. At least it's short!