Mike versus the Good People of Shizuoka

Quoth Immoral Riches:

osaka is weird, especially the keyboard‚“@the space bar is tiny i keep hittinf the language keyBthis city i‚“ large. ill post on my blog as soon as i get to Shizuoka

mike

• "REALLY BIG NEWS" from the TTC: the metropass is now transferrable, meaning you can borrow mine if you ask nicely. There will also be a new, transferrable weekly pass.


• York's Keele Campus has 40 places to eat, but are any of them affordable? According to Eye, Absinthe Coffee Shop & Pub is tops (though its site is wildly anacrhonistic).


• "People who lie for a living should not be the voice of an academic institution devoted to the truth." [Prof. David Noble, quoted in Excalibur]

Black Creek 1, Finch Ave W 0,
originally uploaded by onshi.

• Check out time-laspe photos of the remarkable road collapse, just slightly West of my building on Finch Avenue West in North York, over at Spacing.


• AutoShare Toronto versus BikeShare Community Bicycle Network: fight!
  
  Unfortunately, AutoShare forfeits the bout by reason of its minimum age: 25! Bastards! I know, I know, it's the insurance companies' fault...


• Newspaper boxes, yea or nay? [Eye via Spacing Wire]


• Have I mentioned that Spacing (magazine, blog, photoblog, abcdxyz) is swank?


• For roughly $830 CDN, "a chicken chauffeur will bring your chickens, set up the eglu and show you how it works." [via MetaEfficient]

Introducing

69 Stations (cue fanfare)!

• TTC subway rider efficiency guide prints on one double-sided 8.5"x11" sheet and becomes a tiny, convenient reference to which cars line up with the escalators and elevators at each station. [Spacing Wire]


• Transit Toronto is also pretty damn cool.


• "[I]n 2001, the most common collective bargaining provisions, or those appearing in over 80% of settlements, were occupational health and safety, and job security [while] cost-of-living clauses were least common, appearing in only 43% of settlements." [Statistics Canada]

And, apropos of nothing:

There is only one correction which history has made in Marx's concept of alienation; Marx believed that the working class was the most alienated class, hence that the emancipation from alienation would necessarily start with the liberation of the working class. Marx did not foresee the extent to which alienation was to become the fate of the vast majority of people, especially of the ever-increasing segment of the population which manipulate symbols and men, rather than machines. If anything, the clerk, the salesman, the executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker. The latter's functioning still depends on the expression of certain personal qualities like skill, reliability, etc., and he is not forced to sell his "personality," his smile, his opinions in the bargain; the symbol manipulators are hired not only for their skill, but for all those personality qualities which make them "attractive personality packages," easy to handle and manipulate. They are the true "organization men" -- more so than the skilled laborer -- their idol being the corporation. But as far as consumption is concerned, there is no difference between manual workers and the members of the bureaucracy. They all crave for things, new things, to have and to use. They are the passive recipients, the consumers, chained and weakened by the very things which satisfy their synthetic needs. They are not related to the world productively, grasping it in its full reality and in this process becoming one with it; they worship things, the machines which produce the things -- and in this alienated world they feel as strangers and quite alone.

Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man (1961).

• Bush calls for rock revolution in weekly pirate-radio address [The Onion]

FSM vs. GOD: Fight!

fsm2,
originally uploaded by dsgran.

Move over Andre the Giant! I can't even begin to explain this meme, so instead of trying I'll just encourage you to read all about it at wikipedia before they delete the entry (unencyclopedic?!?!).

Foro social Mundial 2005: Marcha,
originally uploaded by Gabby De Cicco.

Groucho or Harpo?

• flickrTagFight [via Kottke]

• "If the thing starts dragging on and we believe that the advertisers are going to lose dramatic value [then] we're going to take the actions that we need to take to protect our advertisers' interests" [Globe and Mail via LabourStart]


• Plastic from oil is old news, but what about Plastic from hemp (err, plus recycled plastic)? [via MetaEfficient]


• Curious about The Threat of Global Pandemics? [Council on Foreign Relations]


• "At the time, the close proximity of the court's decision and the Roberts nomination suggested no appearance of impropriety.... as it turns out, however, the timing was not so simple."

• Hearing aids for the unimpaired could be “the key to a new era in personal audio technology, designers say -- if only they can make them as fashionable as spectacles.” [Wired News via LifeHacker]


• 2nd Bush, 5th year, no vetoes: "It's a streak unmatched in modern American history, one that throws into question traditional notions of checks and balances." [Christian Science Monitor, via Sploid]


• Blogger for Word? Fo' shizzle?  Word, though it forces you to title your posts.

• From the OMFG! files: cyborg kitty battlebot [via bOINGbOING]


• Can you spot the real scientist? [SlashDot, also via bOINGbOING]


• Someday I'll walk the PATH - which constitutes the world's "largest underground shopping complex" - in its entirety.

• Give flickReplacer a try [via Flickr Services]


• Some noteworthy detail on the now seemingly inevitable CBC/Canadian Media Guild lockout showdown:

  CBC staffers have every reason to fear the network is on a payroll purge. In June, three dozen CBC publicists -- some with close to 30 years experience at the network -- were canned. The entire promotional operation was outsourced to a Toronto-based ["Liberal-friendly"] PR firm, in what was trumpeted at the time as a cost-saving move...
  
  Middle managers (and CBC has an army of them) have been training for weeks both behind and in front of the camera. Regional managers have been flown in from across the country and put up in pricey downtown Toronto hotel rooms. The plan is to run the entire network from the corporation's T.O. headquarters for the duration of the job action...
  
  In short, no expense has been spared in preparing for this new era of "efficiency".

  [Read more at Canoe.ca or CMG]


• Ever wonder how CBC workers in Tuktuyuktuk (or wherever) can earn their strike pay? Me neither, but there you go.

I swore I wouldn't

Maxin' and/or relaxin'

... but Pigou is an unstoppable force.

Just look at her! You know she's all like, "externalities? Yeah, whatever. Tax that shiz until the private cost reflects the public cost." Aww yeah. Preach it, sister.

I haven't an iPod, but...

• The Toronto Star has podcasts. Podcasts? Yes, podcasts.


• The CBC has a few podcasts, too, but I'll only tell you where to find them if you promise not to listen during the impending CBC-wide lockout [more].


• This has nothing to do with podcasts (sorry, late-summer ADHD in full effect) but I can't wait to see the Aristocrats.

• "Eric the Blue," eh? Let's just say that the Leafs had better find buddy a very, very well-padded helmet.


• A purr-detecting cat collar could be more useful than Engadget thinks, especially (ahem) for semi-deaf people.


• Ann Telnaes' political cartoons are right on the money, see?

Transit-a-go-go

• Brainwash your wee ones into digging public transit [via Spacing Wire]


• iPod Subway Maps are a good idea, but of course there's no TTC love yet (Edit: now there is) [via Kottke]