Featured articles:
Collaborating Across Disciplines. Open Source Business Resource. July 2009
Come on in, the water's fine ... right?, We asked Joseph Wilson to take the plunge at Toronto's beaches. His advice: Swim at the Islands, avoid Scarborough. The Globe and Mail, Aug 09, 2008
Great ideas from minds that don't think alike. The Toronto Idea Exchange culls innovation from the meeting of people with very little in common. The Globe and Mail, Mar 29, 2008
Blinding Them With Science Creationism's curious blend of cherry-picked facts and biblical literalism comes to Canadian churches. The Toronto Star. October 13, 2007
The Creationist Spin on our Origins What the creationists says are the scientific facts. The Toronto Star. October 13, 2007
Cyborg Sensation An Interview with Steve Mann, the "world's first cyborg," during Digifest 2004. NOW Magazine. May 13 - 19, 2004
Joseph Wilson's Top 10 Tech Events A run down of the most influential events in technology during 2004. NOW Magazine. Dec 29 - Jan 5, 2005
Life Lessons from Dawson An analysis of the role technology played, for better or worse, in the tragic shooting at Dawson College. NOW Magazine. Oct 5 - 11, 2006
Big City, Bright Lights The black-out of 2004 revealed to Torontonians the true extent of the light pollution in our skies. Spacing. Fall 2005.
Street Smarts A description of the practice of teaching math and science in public spaces rather than in schools. Spacing. Spring/Summer 2006.
News and Musings
Winter 2009/2010
MaRS
I'm off to MaRS! In February I started working at MaRS along with the fine folks at Social Innovation Generation working on some education files. I'm also going to be working with the new MaRS Education Initiative setting up school programs and events. Look for more events hosted by both The Treehouse Group and MaRS in the upcoming months. Our first planned series is going to be Treehouse Talks, a series of eclectic talks held on the first Friday of every month. The rules: 15 minutes, no PowerPoint, no boundaries. The first one is on March 5: check out Treehouse Talks for details.
Rock Mars
Last summer I was involved with more Mars work (but notice the lowercase "r" and "s"). I wrote some curriculum links for a new project by Wero Creative that uses graphic novels to get kids into science and technology. The Rock Mars project is a story about Alex and Zazi, two friends who help astronauts with their trip to colonize Mars in the year 2030. The graphic novel is entirely deliverable on-line, and has a number of web-based challenges the kids must complete in order to move forward in their mission. The project is currently being field tested by teachers in the York Region District School Board; preliminary results look good!
Darwin vs. Darwin
2009 was both the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (200th) and his release of On the Origin of Species (150th). I recently stumbled across a documentary entitled The Voyage that Shook the World, an aptly named film that purports to "examine the ideas of Darwin in light of today's knowledge." The documentary was of high production quality: soothing British narration, period re-enactments, travels to the Galapagos Islands etc. There was something not quite right about the documentary, though, as they kept quoting "facts" that clearly weren't factual. The film was almost over before they drop the bombshell: evolution is a lie and creationism is the only valid explanation for the natural world. The film is a propaganda piece produced by Creation Ministries International [www.creation.com] a young-Earth creationist sect seeking to expose the bias and evil of the "evolutionists."
Contrast this with the secular-themed film Creation starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelley. It's a biopic of Darwin and his struggles with faith and science. I haven't seen it, but it received luke-warm reviews here and in the UK, and it hasn't even found a distributor in the US yet because of fears of offending the American bible-belt. And take a look at that poster. Combined with the name of the film (take another look at the creationists' URL above), it appears the producers are trying their darndest to appeal to a religious crowd. In tandem, The Voyage That Shook the World did everything in its power to suck in people who would normally not be interested in creationist-themed propaganda. The marketing campaigns of these two films speak volumes about our collective insecurities surrounding Darwin's "big idea" and our society's discomfort with evolution in general (still! 150 years later!).
Fall 2009
Collaborating Across Disciplines.
This summer I was pleased to contribute an article for the July 2009 edition of the Open Source Business Resource. I wrote about the practice of collaborating across disciplines. Businesses that want to survive need to borrow ideas from other fields of study, or they'll get swamped by group-think.
"In our current economic quagmire, it has become a truism to appeal to innovation and “outside-the-box” thinking to allow companies to survive. But organizations that are not practised at this will struggle. They will hire the same consultants and read the same industry analyses and demographic studies without ever bumping up against the sides of their boxes, let alone break through."
The full article Collaborating Across Disciplines is in this site's archives and you can join the conversation at the Open Source Business Resource website.
"Inhabited space transcends geometrical space." - Gaston Bachelard
My partner and I are smug in our new house in Hillcrest.
It's been a good opportunity to explore the book Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.
He introduces the reader to the world of "topoanalysis," by which he means a "psychological
study of the sites of our intimate lives." He explores those hazy memories we have our our
childhood homes, and how they change as we grow up. He presents the house as a site for
day-dreaming, a safe refuge from an often hostile world, and examines this image with other
comparisons: nests, shells, boxes, wardrobes (think Narnia), attics, vestibules, and any hidden
space you used as a child to create a safe, imaginary world. This reminded me of the magical
"tree caves" that have been hollowed out in the trunks of old redwoods in Northern California
This summer, we travelled to Thunder Bay and enjoyed the view of the city from the top of
Mount McKay at the city's South End. The view of lake Superior and the city itself is magnificent,
but what really caught my eye was a sculpture honouring First Nations ancestry. Two wooden carved
First Nations women, painted yellow, gaze out to the East towards the sleeping giant, over the
Fort William First Nation Reserve.
In Ojibway, Mount McKay is called Animiki wadjiw, meaning
"Mountain Abode of Thunder," which sounds pretty impressive.
Spring 2009
Second Annual Grown-Up Science Fair.
The Treehouse Group's Grown-Up Science Fair was such a success last year we've relocated to a bigger venue. This year we'll be at the
Rivoli on May 9, as part of the city-wide
Science Rendezvous festivities. Doors
open at 8 pm. With generous support from innovative law firm
Gilbert's LLP, the philosophy is to explore science in a decidedly non-scientific way, with music, arts & crafts, drama and games. Other highlights:
- Meet Steve Mann, U of T's resident cyborg;
- Play periodic table twister;
- Can you pass an 8th grade science test?;
- Compete for a meeting with a patent lawyer from Gilbert's LLP to examine your invention ideas;
- Learn the "science of pool" with Rivoli's resident pool expert Cape Breton Red and volunteers from
Let's Talk Science from 6 pm - 8 pm upstairs;
- Join us for the Grown-Up Science Fair after-party in the Rivoli back room with live DJs from 11:30 pm - close;
Get Involved! The Treehouse Group is looking for “scientists at heart” to contribute by making a project for the Grown-Up Science Fair. Have an idea? Want to help out? Email sciencefair@treehousegroup.org.
To check out pictures, videos and podcasts from last year’s Grown-Up Science Fair, or if you’re looking for science project ideas, check out
http://treehousegroup.org/?page_id=26
Inside your brain...
"Knit Brain" from the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art
Lately I've been reading a lot of work exploring cognitive science. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks and This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin are both excellent books exploring the responses of our brain to music. Levitin focuses on healthy brains, while Sacks explores the pathological; how people with autism or synesthesia experience music. Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, describes how reading developed throughout history and the effect it had on our neural circiutry. iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan) takes this idea of neural plasticity and raises it to a new height of sensationalism, equating neural rewiring with evolution and claiming the current generation of "Digital Natives" have profoundly different brain structures than older people. Today's youth are apparently growing up in digital world with underdeveloped frontal lobes and weak interpersonal skills. A bit much if you ask me. If kids' brains can adapt to new technologies so quickly, then they can easily accommodate other forms of media and skills of social interaction. Norman Doidge's genre-defining book The Brain That Changes Itself suggests as much: our brain is much more malleable and flexible in how it processes phenomena than previously thought. My Stroke of Insight is another gem by Jill Bolte Taylor. The author experienced a stroke in her left hemisphere, and describes the process from within, a process she was acutely aware of due to her job as a neuroscientist. Read my review here
Chicago
The Wrigley building and the Chicago Tribune building at Michigan & Fuller.
We just got back from a trip through America's second city, Chicago. It's a city very much like Toronto (that is, if Toronto had the civic pride and courage to invest in infrastructure). Three tips for travelling to Chicago: 1. Look for the federal prison, an orange skyscraper located in the Loop nestled between the office towers; 2. Go and see Jennifer and the rest of the band play "dueling pianos" at the Howl at the Moon on Fuller; 3. Deep-dish pizza is greasier than you think;
Winter 2009
Welcome to the Treehouse
It's been a busy couple of months for the
Treehouse Group,
including the launch party for the International Year of Astronomy
at the Gladstone Hotel.
Check out the highlights
here and our
Flickr feed here.
(We also just wrapped up the second Toronto ideaXchange at the Design
Exchange in conjunction with
ArchiTEXT, where attendees
brainstormed around the ideas of
architecture and poverty.
We also made 3D models of utopian
Toronto communities and witnessed Minister of Children and Youth Services
MPP Deb Matthews learning
how to DJ.
Coming up is our first overseas event: The Bangalore ideaXchange: Envisioning Bangalore 2020. More info at the Treehouse Group site or on this little known website called facebook.
The "evils" of technology
The media was very busy this season warning parents about video games and social networking sites, claiming they would make your kids dumber or even turn them into sociopaths. It was a breath of fresh air, then, to receive a copy of a media release from the MacArthur Foundation announcing the results of a massive four year study of the effects of technology on teenagers. The Berkley authors conclude that engaging with a wide range of technology, including web content, social networking sites, cell phones, and video games, is of crucial importance in healthy teenage development. Teens who use more technology than their counterparts faired better in the job market and in social circles.
The tendency to blame new media for corrupting the youth is as old as the printing press. Neil Postman's anti-technology books Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Technopoly seem quaint in comparison to Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur". I'm reminded of the lyrics to the Dylan song Ballad of a Thin Man: "... something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Keen?". Read more of my commentary in NOW Magazine or go to the articles page on this site "Browse and Get Smarter"
Fall 2008
Kris Nahrgang
I recently interviewed aboriginal archaeologist Kris Nahrgang, also the Chief of the Kawartha Nishnawbe First Nations, for a forthcoming article for Spacing Magazine . He is a fierce advocate for protecting the archaeological record of Ontario's past and has been working closely with Archaeological Service Inc. to map out the archaeological hot spots in Toronto. Turns out there are hundreds dotted along the Humber and Rouge Rivers, as well as along the shores of Lake Ontario. He also carves fantastic soapstone sculptures. Check him out at Spirit of the Stone.
Obama Nation
I couldn't exactly write copy for my website this month without revealing my relief that the U.S. citizenry finally made a move that excites the rest of the world. I was particularly interested in the debate between Obama and McCain on science policy, which the New Scientist summarizes. Lawrence Krauss, from Arizona State University, was unable to lure the candidates into a full debate just on their policies on science, but he did receive answers from both Senators on 14 science-related questions. Check out Obama's answers. (you can skip Mr. McCain's, for obvious reasons). Time will tell if Obama can inject some badly-needed integrity into American science after the shameful anti-science years of the Bush administration.
New England
So apparently Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry chef in Boston. Seriously. The Parker House is the same restaurant that hired Malcolm X as a busboy and hosted JFK's bachelor party. Not all at the same time, of course. Boston is full of weird history like this; it's one of the rare places in North America where the weight of history sits everywhere just below the surface. We visited recently and stayed just outside the city in Concord, where Thoreau meditated on the shores of Walden Pond and then sat in jail because he refused to pay tax.
July/August/September
Swimming in Lake Ontario
I spent the first part of the summer swimming at every one of the 11 beaches in Toronto. Some of them are glorious (Ward's Island, Hanlan's Point) and some of them cold and full of goose feces (Marie Curtis). But all of them are clean enough to swim in (most of the time...). Read about it in my August article in the Globe and Mail, "Come on in, the water's fine ... right?".
D. J. Spooky
Travelling down Highway 1 in California this summer, we came across the Henry Miller Library in the Big Sur region of California. It turns out that internationally renowned beat-maker D. J. Spooky was playing the night we were there as a fundraiser for the library and to promote his new book, Sound Unbound. The Henry Miller Library has an impressive archive of video and audio files from the beat poets inspired by Miller's writing, and Spooky spent the first hour of the night mixing beats together with a video projection of Alan Ginsberg reciting some poems with his trademark cadence. It was an amazing experience, to hear original mash-ups under cover of the Northern Californian redwoods.
DJ Spooky mixes music behind video footage of Alan Ginsberg reading Howl:
Cape Farewell.
Upon the request of MaRS, the Treehouse Group has been asked to take a group of 30 international high school students through a 2 hour session of Treehouse activities on Sept. 3 from 5 - 7 pm. The students are part of the Cape Farewell project , a project to visualize climate change in the Arctic through art projects. We're looking forward to meeting the students and will encourage them to introduce an inter-disciplinary flavour to their projects to give their views on climate change a wider scope.
May/June 2008
The Grown-Up Science Fair
Want to see a pickle glow? Check out the video below, posted by one of the participants in the Grown-Up Science Fair, held at The Victory Café on May 10. The Treehouse Group organized the event to persuade people who don’t practice science to try their hand at a science project like they did in Grade 6. We had erupting volcanoes, demonstrations of flubber, an experiment to test the absorbency of beer mats, even a breathalyser to track the non-linear increase in the “collective inebriation” of the crowd throughout the night. The evening meshed well with the Treehouse Group’s mandate to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration. At http://treehousegroup.org/grown-up-science-fair.html you can find the flyer we gave out at the door with our favourite weird science books, more pictures, and some podcasts of inspirational conversations.
The Glowing Pickle:
Doors Open Toronto
On May 24/25, the doors of Toronto’s m
ost interesting buildings swung open so the public could peek inside. We went to the TTC Hillcrest Yards off Bathurst and at the end of the day visited
Archaeological Services Inc. (ASI), a company that has dug up some very cool things in Toronto. Just underneath the little park at Wellington and Portland lies Toronto’s oldest graveyard. According to an archaeologist at ASI, before the landscaping efforts last year, “the bones were just a few feet under the surface. It was a dog park, too, so that was a big problem…” They are hired as consultants, too, for developers wishing to build within the City limits and need to be on-site in case they dig up artefacts from the past. Naturally, this leads to some tension between the historians and the developers, which reminded me of Michael Redhill’s book Consolation that deals with such battles over who owns the history of Toronto.
March/April 2008
Toronto Idea Exchange
The Treehouse Group held its first event on March 2nd at the MaRS
Discovery District. It was a huge success, thanks mainly to the diversity and
the playfulness of the people who attended. We chatted about how insects
have sex, speed-networked for ideas, brainstormed social problems, and learned
about the craft beer industry in Ontario. I taught the attendees how to
do a drum-roll, which resulted in an inspiring cacophony of sticks on tables. John Evans, Chairman of MaRS, and Tim Brodhead, CEO of the McConnell Foundation,
were on hand to talk about social
innovation and the importance of good ideas. Check out
www.treehousegroup.org
for more pictures, to examine our collectively created book-list, or to join our
mailing list for information on upcoming events.
Be Kind Rewind
This little movie by French director
Michel Gondry came and went without too much fuss, but it was an inspiring film
that spoke volumes about our current obsession with the minutiae of intellectual
copyright. When the VHS videotapes in Jerry and Mike’s (Jack Black and Mos Def)
video store become erased, they embark on a project to recreate them with nothing
but a cheap video camera and their creativity. Naturally, this enrages the
anti-piracy lobby in Hollywood, and the battle between good guys and bad guys begins.
Although the movie purports to be a modern day story, they seem to exist in a
parallel universe where there are no DVDs, no YouTube and no internet “piracy.”
However, Gondry uses their reappropriation of VHS classics (Ghostbusters, Robocop)
to hammer home a point about the inanity of anti-piracy laws. Reworked
versions of Star Wars, Jackie Chan movies, the Simpsons, even Shakespeare, have
all appeared on YouTube to great acclaim in recent years, which has only served
to increase their popularity. Similarly, pop song mash-ups reveal not only
the unstoppable creativity of the masher-uppers, but also reveal new dimensions
of the original works. Entertainment companies should embrace this if they want
to survive the age of the Internet.
San Francisco
Last week I was in the Bay area, and had a great time walking around the
hilly streets of San Francisco. We rented a car and drove down the coast to
visit the Monterey Aquarium,
a marvel of engineering and aquatic life. They have otters, jellies (née: jellyfish),
huge scary tuna that swim in schools, octopi, hammerhead sharks, and a touch pool
where you can feel a string-ray as it swims by. They also have their own research
team, including one that rides in their very own high pressure submarine to take
pictures of all those weird deep sea creatures with light bulbs hanging off their
foreheads.
February 2008
The Toronto Idea Exchange
Ideas are the new currency, and Toronto based
Treehouse Group
meets regularly to mash-up diverse ideas. After enough of this
brainstorming, really
innovative ideas for businesses or public policy often bubble to the surface.
The first
city-wide brainstorming session, the
Toronto Idea Exchange
, will be held on March 2 at the MaRS Discovery District. An eclectic
bunch of events like the Great Magazine Mash-Up, will be interspersed with
“pallet cleansers,” like Mirella Amato’s explanation of what makes an ale
an ale and a lager a lager (check her out at a
www.beerology.ca)
. If you want to find out more about the Treehouse Group or inquire
about future events like the Toronto Idea Exchange, e-mail
joe@treehousegroup.org
The Scientist as Rebel
The best book I’ve read
lately is Freeman Dyson’s The Scientist as Rebel, a collection of
his essays and book reviews. Most of these are taken from essays he
wrote for the New York Review of
Books, which is, as readers know, much more than just a pile of dusty
book reviews. It’s quite touching as he looks over his life working
with such eminent physicists as Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and the
rather caustic Manhattan Project stalwart Edward Teller. Dyson
tackles thorny moral issues such as the creation of the A-bomb itself,
but also more contemporary issues like global warming and religious
zealotry. He really sees his job, as a scientist, to be as subversive
as possible, practically daring the reader to hone their critical thinking
skills by disagreeing with him. Check out my full review for NOW Magazine
here
Psychogeography
Writer Will Self has finally published a volume of his fantastic essays for the
Independent in which he explores places by foot and examines how his own psychological
state changes from place to place. Thankfully, he has kept the services of
opitatic illustrator Ralph Steadman, which infuses every page with intensity.
Highlights include a longer format essay describing the long walk Self makes
from his home in London to his New York hotel (except for the wet bit in between).
MemoryArchive
You memories are wanted! Marshall Poe, a writer at the
Atlantic Monthly , along with a
crack team of volunteers, have created
www.memoryarchive.org
, a Wikimedia site that is in the process of compiling people’s stories of memorable
people, places or events. Spend some time searching the topics – you never know
what you’ll discover. The
Toronto section
is a great place to start. This is a great tool for History students to do
some research away the confines of their history books. The Wikimedia
commons has tons of room for multi-media files, so feel free to upload pix,
videos, MP3s etc. to give your memories a multi-dimensional quality. For more information email
memoryarchivecanada@gmail.com
Louis Theroux’ Weird Weekends
I’m obsessed with Louis Theroux and his quasi-anthropological study of American sub-cultures. At the behest of the BBC, Theroux (son of travel writer Paul Theroux), spends weekends with everybody from white supremacist Tom Metzger, to a family working with religious nut Tom Phelps (who just released a press release claiming that Heath Ledger is ”now in hell” because of his role in Brokeback Mountain). Theroux manages to examine these people with a mix of perplexity and outrage. It helps that most of the episodes are on YouTube, just in case you don’t have enough to distract you at work already. Click here.