November 2011
Cycling deaths in the city
Dear Mayor Ford,Another cyclist has been killed in Toronto, this time a block from my house. I think it’s time to reverse your attacks on cycling infrastructure. Surely you don’t want your legacy to be a collection of cyclist deaths, do you? Sincerely, Isaac Quinn DuPont Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Nov 8th
July 2011
Review of Lasko 42" Oscillating Tower Fan (2554C)...
The fan has decent build quality, and is not bad looking, but it’s actually quite large (where am I going to put this thing in the winter now!?). It has a nice array of settings, but they are deeply marred by the confirmation sound every time a key is depressed (a screeching buzz); this is especially problematic with the “sleep” function. The fan offers you the option of 30...
Jul 21st
scintillating scin⋅til⋅lat⋅ing /’sɪntɪleɪtɪŋ/ adjective 1. brilliantly clever • scintillating wit • a play full of scintillating dialogue 2. marked by high spirits or excitement • scintillating personality *syn: *bubbling, effervescent, frothy, sparkly 3. having brief brilliant points or flashes of light • the scintillating stars *syn: *aglitter, coruscant,...
Jul 10th
Don't use Tao Effect's Espionage (OS X) encryption...
After looking for an encryption tool to properly secure Dropbox and Evernote I decided to take Tao Effect’s Espionage encryption tool for a spin. After about 30 seconds of use, I can strongly suggest that you do not use it. I had read on their blog that it was problematic to use Evernote and/or Dropbox with Espionage, which I thought a shame, since that’s my main goal. Nonetheless,...
Jul 4th
April 2011
I was totally going to make the website:...
And it would be blank. There is no tech angle. Seriously. Don’t try. Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Apr 29th
If programming languages were religions:...
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Apr 28th
Stanley Fish takes a hit of ecology, and comes out...
Stanley Fish’s recent NY Times post suggests that our limited epistemic net prohibits us from sharing ethics with things that can’t communicate their agency, e.g., a tree’s desire to keep its fruit. Suspicious as it is with respect to a conception of ethics, it’s also an old concern. The Judicium Jovis, written around 1495, tackles this ecological question as well, but...
Apr 26th
Determining Rdio's streaming music bitrate: a...
Rdio is my current (de jour) music streaming service . I was using Slacker Radio, but I’ve switched to Rdio and I vastly prefer it. Being located in Canada, the options for streaming music services are pretty limited, but generally speaking I’m quite happy with Rdio (although I get pretty annoyed with the number of albums not available in Canada… probably about 1/4-1/3 of the...
Apr 6th
March 2011
Jobs for PhD (are there any?) Two articles
They’re Mad as hell <— That’s PhD students. The article gives sage advice, which mostly sounds like re-adjusting your own sense of worth, under a patina of blaming those encouraging professors. Viz, “When I got a good job, it felt less like an achievement than an improbable success in the lottery” And the follow-up, noting that PhD students may be bright, but they...
Mar 24th
Well well, it looks like Google is copying me...
Seriously guys, this Posterous blog has been running intermittently for well over a year now,  and you think it is wise to name your new Quarterly (oohh la la, we post slowly) the same as my excellent blog? Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Mar 24th
12 notes
Easy ways to get around the New York Times paywall
The New York Times paywall has arrived for us Canadians, and it will be arriving stateside shortly. There is already considerable discussion on the Internet about it, and how it is generally fairly easy to evade. For example, of the total 20 free articles/month, any links from social networking sites don’t count, and any links from Google are counted seperately to a total of five. ...
Mar 19th
I don't think the posters add much
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Mar 10th
Article: Into the Friar [great punchline]
Into the Friar | Our Town | Chicago Reader http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/franciscan-friar-profile-cliff-doerksen/Content?oid=2935899 “Actually, I can tell you a funnier story than that,” Welle went on. “I used to volunteer at a place called the Port Ministries in Back of the Yards—they run a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, a wide range of social services stuff. One day I was walking in...
Mar 6th
Adorno and false consciousness, or, freedom for...
In Negative Dialectics, Adorno gives the weakest hint that some people may experience occasional glimpses of real freedom: If a stroke of undeserved luck has kept the mental composition of some individuals not quite adjusted to the prevailing norms - a stroke of luck they have often enough to pay for in their relations with their environment - it is up to these individuals to make the moral...
Mar 6th
Article: The Gravity of Pure Forces [on Heidegger]...
The Gravity of Pure Forces | Jenkins | continent. http://www.continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/viewArticle/17 Heidegger writes, rather beautifully, This speaking names the snow that soundlessly strikes the window late in the waning day, while the vesper bell rings. In such a snowfall, everything lasts longer. Therefore the vesper bell, which daily rings for a strictly fixed time,...
Mar 5th
February 2011
"The violent fringes of the 1968 movement...
n+1: A Moral Baseball Bat http://nplusonemag.com/a-moral-baseball-bat The violent fringes of the 1968 movement eventually even invoked the name of Auschwitz to justify lethal attacks on Jews Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Feb 28th
Trust me, it's all plaid and horizontal stripes
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Feb 18th
Please send me links to good journalism/stats...
A recent Hacker News discussion made me realize that many people (ahem, Americans… and far too many Canadians) don’t understand poverty. In fact, what became obvious in the discussion is that many people don’t even believe that poverty exists (a galling belief). In an effort to bring some reality to the discussion I attempted to locate some links of good journalism and good...
Feb 12th
Toronto's appalling bike infrastructure (my...
Rob Ford doesn’t need to work very hard to ensure the city stays without bike lanes—-the previous (NOT-left wing) mayor Miller did a fine job.In 2001 the City of Toronto created the Toronto Bikeway Network (PDF), realizing that residents wanted safe bike routes. At the time, only 35 km of bike lanes existed. Now, a decade later, there are 117 km of bike lanes, 378 km...
Feb 11th
7 notes
Oh SNAP! Even Greenspan and Citibank recognize a...
The Rise of the New Global Elite from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-globa… Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Feb 10th
Mac Must Have: Hazel
The next little rule is to move torrent files out of my downloads folder. I don’t run bit-torrent on my MacBook Air, but I do run it on my Mac mini that is back at my house. I would never remember to send those files to that machine for download, so I enlisted Hazel to do the task for me. All this rule does is takes any ‘.torrent’ files and moves them to a specific folder in Dropbox. That folder...
Feb 8th
Perfect capitalism?
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Feb 7th
Ethics and exercise. Just a guilt complex?...
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Feb 5th
Digital Surveillance is easier as protesters turn...
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Feb 5th
3 notes
January 2011
Fluevog shoes sure are cute
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Jan 27th
Cross-eyed opossum draws Facebook following long...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011204707.html?tid=wp_featuredstories Cross-eyed opossum draws Facebook following long before her debut at German zoo Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Jan 16th
4 notes
On the politics of change, from @amuchmoreexotic
1/15, 6:47 AMamuchmoreexotic says: I don’t understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar. Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Jan 15th
Epic poetry: The Emptiness Within. The editing...
In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within. via slate.com WHAHAHAH Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Jan 14th
Beyond Silver Bullets for American Education | The...
A close look reveals a much more complicated picture. Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted, but there is no evidence that the presence of unions impedes academic success in American schools. Consider this: in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, where public schools are heavily unionized, students earn the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational...
Jan 8th
The Case of Julian Assange | The Nation
Wolf argues that the accusations against Assange demean the seriousness of rape. In fact, Swedish law does distinguish among degrees of rape, with Assange being accused on one count of the least grave kind. In a much-cited letter to the Guardian, Katrin Axelsson of Women Against Rape argued that Sweden’s low rape conviction rate proved that Assange was being set up—in 2006, she claimed,...
Jan 8th
Arduino The Documentary now online (get your geek...
From http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/01/07/arduino-the-documentary-now-online/ Arduino The Documentary now online Arduino The Documentary is finally out. We have been waiting for long, but now you can see it at Vimeo (EN, ES) and download it from Archive.org (links coming soon). The file is licensed under CC-SA 3.0 and can be redistributed. The makers are working in making a batch of DVDs that will...
Jan 8th
4 notes
What does one TRILLION dollars look like?...
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Jan 8th
9 notes
[Councillor Vaughan replies] Transit City is...
[the first intelligent reply I have seen!] From: Date: Wednesday, January 5, 2011  Subject: Re: Transit City is fiscally responsible and socially important Dear Quinn, I have always supported Transit City and continue to believe that it is the best opportunity to provide a mass transit network to the City of Toronto. It is not simply the best we can do under the circumstances; it’s the...
Jan 5th
5 notes
The Best New Cafes in Toronto, 2010...
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Jan 5th
1 note
Meet the homeless man with the perfect radio voice...
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Jan 5th
2 notes
Crotchety Old Power Users [Interesting analysis of...
http://releasecandidateone.com/236:crotchety_old_power_users Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Jan 5th
December 2010
Implications of instant version control and...
I’m about to embark on a reading course on the implications/theory/use of the Git version control theory, and this article (and self-referential example) is a good description of many of the literary aspects of versioned work and life. There are other aspects of versioning (and duplication) that still need to be explored, such as web caching (Varnish, Squid), CDNs, Google (now Apache) Wave,...
Dec 26th
Still at lucky (save me)
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Dec 24th
2 notes
At the club? (still got the twitpic)
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Dec 24th
2 notes
Blue man group?
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Dec 24th
5 notes
Trent Renzor?
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Dec 24th
4 notes
We call him Navy
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Dec 24th
2 notes
Night out!
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Dec 24th
4 notes
Native Chief says "I've got nothing to do with...
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Dec 23rd
6 notes
Downloading the shit out of this: FitFu is go!...
FitFu is go! Stay active with your iPhone | The FitFu blog http://blog.fitfu.com/2010/12/17/fitfu-is-go-stay-active-with-your-iphone/ Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Dec 17th
4 notes
Stunning! Best article in YEARS! Barely Legal...
Barely Legal Whores Get Gang-F***ed - The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2009/06/barely-legal-whores-get-gang-fed/ The (now) sixteen-year-old prostitute comes on the TV. Tyra does not ask her why she is cold or hard or distant, because she is feverish and quivering and gushing and looks essentially like a piece of confused cookie dough. Which isn’t surprising because she is a sixteen-year-old...
Dec 15th
Damn, scary! Watch your ATM cards: Why GSM-Based...
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/12/why-gsm-based-atm-skimmers-rule/?utm_sourc… Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Dec 14th
Listening to new music and drinking the finest
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Dec 14th
Oh no! Noodle Box is closed for renovations for...
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Dec 13th
Downtown Victoria is pretty this morning
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Dec 13th