Oct 10
Perhaps it is pure folly to think otherwise, but its somewhat pathetic that mankind – with our ability to reach for the stars, chart the turbulent seas and imagine worlds unending – can be reduced to the basest form of being when encountering a network of free-standing waist-high structures connected by flimsy strips of cloth. Behold us, we who held our heads high, now shuffling like sheep to the slaughterhouse.
Or perhaps in the spirit of this day of thanks – like turkeys to the chopping block.
The queue (yes, we are being British today) is a stunningly simple tool to control the herd through the concept of group-think. Forced to follow through a one-way procession, our high ideal of individuality sublimates to docility. Wait your turn, no cutting ahead, approach the next available counter when told to; like infants we humbly obey.
Of course, this isn’t always the case – The New York Times delved into the cultural and psychological implications of lines in their September 18th edition – mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland displayed uncouth line etiquette, while Hong Kong natives stood patiently. The article is definitely worth an examination and I would offer the link here, but alas, the publication feels that old news is not fit to print – at least without some proper compensation. In 2004, Clive Thompson and some of his readers launched into the greater implications newspapers face with online archiving – which brings us to the “joke” that Thompson cites – “If you’re not in Google, you don’t exist.”
Oh, the many metaphysical debates that could ensue deserve another post at another time.
But as my associate astutely alluded, chaos is the name of the game – or rather orderly chaos. That’s the paradigm Google is trying to enforce for those of us riding the information superhighway. Whether ranking sites by popularity, bringing the beauty of geography to our screens, or cataloguing literally every written word known to man, the former search engine is quickly embodying the phrase scientia est potentia. And since a day in uncluttered wouldn’t be complete without uncovering some left-field zaniness: voila.
We can only speculate what fills the blank: Google = ________
Oct 05
“Sand will cover this place…Sand will cover you.”
- Paul Atreides from Frank Herbert’s Dune
So I was a month into graduate school and already the above sentiment seemed to accurately describe the prevailing scenario. Apart from the academic obligations of trying to glean new ideas from the writings of dead economists, there has been a surfeit of logistical ennui to deal with. For one, it appears that the gifted luminaries who comprise the faculty of this university still haven’t figured out how to connect a laptop to an overhead projector. Such highly specialized tasks are apparently the responsibility of qualified IT personnel at McGill. To make matters yet more appalling, said individuals then spend the first half hour of a lecture subjecting the room’s occupants to a display of unprecedented technological ineptitude.
Needless to say, I walked out.
Now, Nick is likely to criticize me for dwelling extensively on such seeming trivialities when the human race is, as he would put it, in the advanced stages of a countdown to extinction. But, bear with me, as all these presumably disparate ideas will soon fall neatly into perspective.
My first introduction to fractals came a few years ago when my then roommate, Andrew Ringler was creating some absolutely tripped out images on his computer screen using an innocuous set of mathematical formulae. Fractals, for those unfamiliar with the subject are mathematical patterns that exist on the so-called ‘edge of chaos’. Their other remarkable property is that they scale infinitely. In other words, no matter what distance you observe a fractal from, it looks just as fucked up. Take a look at a few good samples here.
So essentially, fractal dynamics applied to the social realm would tell us that the explosion of violent crime in Toronto and my aforementioned projector episode really belong to the same ‘fractal tree’ of human folly, albeit at different levels. In short, Nick and I are ranting about the same thing at different levels of magnification.
While on the topic of chaos, my roommate Ari and I (and you?) are about to create some next weekend. The inaugurating shindig at our loft-style apartment on the main promises to be, as a friend once put it, ‘ridicu-tarded’. The good Dr. Yeo will be on hand to provide outbursts of revolutionary zeal. Sethaniel D will attempt to preserve the moral fabric. Be there:
3507 St. Laurent Apt. 3
Oct. 14, 11pm
Bring your own drugs and sample some of ours
Oct 02
Prashant is right (words so infrequently used that my fingers struggle to finish the phrase) – Megadeth is nary a whisper in the wind – unless you count the idiotic legal duet Mustaine and Ellefson are performing – but as they say, any publicity is good publicity. Let loose the PR machine driven by buzz and watch it raze our senses silly.
Incidentally, I stumbled upon the most curious of webpages: Buzztracker. As its name implies, the site graphically depicts which cities are occupying copy space in the world’s newspapers, as determined by Google News. So what’s on the menu for today? The usual Gaza, Washington and Baghdad are to be expected, but evidently not Bali… not even a day has passed since that picturesque tourist locale again experienced explosive violence and its newsworthiness has relegated it to second-tier status. The only saving grace of this debacle is that Jakarta is still in the mix, at least reminding the reading public of world geography.
Does this just illustrate how fickle the media can be, oxymoronically shifting its focus from one corner of the globe to another? The current incarnation of Buzztracker certainly puts a new spin on how we see the world – I would like to see it mutate into a multimedia spectacle, through the medium of motion. When presented as a movie, we can see how quickly a major story can break and dominate the world’s headlines. We will also witness its precipitous decline as younger, stronger tidbits wrestle their way to the front pages.
Soon enough (October 5 to be exact), a new story will grip this nation’s eyes, ears and souls – the return of hockey, also known as Rebranding 101. Only time will tell if the on-ice product will withstand semi-enthused American indifference. Up here however, the only thing left to say is “DROP THE PUCK ALREADY.”
I’ll see you at the bar.
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