Urban Vancouver

http://www.putplace.com/pullaface

It's a contest from PutPlace. I entered.

From the St. Louis Blues, this:

St. Louis Blues President John Davidson announced today that the club has signed Group II free agent forward Steve Bernier to an offer sheet worth $2.5 million for next season. The Canucks will have seven days to match the offer or receive St. Louis’ 2nd round draft choice in 2009.

“Steve is a good young player who would play a big part in our youth movement,” said Davidson. “Our coaches and scouting staff are extremely positive about him.”

No doubt Davidson is simply doing the best thing for his club, but it still smells like payback.

Bet on Mike Gillis to match the offer, but regardless, I’d say the #$*!@ is about to hit the fan, no matter what.

Update 3:56pm PT: Canucks have matched the offer. Not a surprise. [TSN]

Update 4:25pm PT: Mike sent me a link to this story from July 5th, right after Bernier was traded from the Sabres.  Here’s the money quote (gotta love agents!) --

There were rumours Bernier would sign an offer sheet, but Lupien said that was never in the plans.

“I don’t work like that,” said Lupien, who also represents Roberto Luongo and could have gone the offer-sheet route after Luongo accepted his qualifying offer from the Canucks. “I’ve always asked teams to be honest with my client and I’m sure he (Gillis) is going to be honest with players after being a former player himself.”

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/08/spat_with_rogers_leaves_canadian_apple_stores_without_iphones.html

Is this: a) Apple punishing Rogers, b) part of some deal with Rogers, c) an unsubstantiated rumor?

http://blog.radioactiveyak.com/2007/03/when-offshoring-your-development-team.html

Funny writing. Worst job ever.

via TSN:

...Pavol Demitra confirmed that the Canucks are his preferred destination and expects to sign with the team.

“I think there is a good chance,” Demitra said."[Current Canucks GM Mike Gillis] used to be my agent for a long time. We are very good friends. I am very interested in playing for [the Canucks].”

Or perhaps he already is…

Continue reading "Has Demitra Signed with the Canucks?"

“Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” Orson Wells

You can be stylish and eco-friendly, as long as you know your style.

At our local Thrift shop on Pender Island, I have found fabulous pieces of costume jewelery, several paintings from local artists and groovy furniture - much of which you would find in a chic boho boutique in New York. In order to do this, you need to actually enjoy the adventure of treasure hunting, and have enough self-knowledge to recognize a recycled treasure when you find it.

Some people just aren’t comfortable wearing some old lady’s tweed skirt even after it’s been dry cleaned, but I like finding something unique that’s well-suited to my own style. In a world of so much homogeneous design (that invariably ends up in land fills) it is refreshing to find something that’s already been made, and isn’t costing the earth in anyway.

Some of my most stylish friends collect recycled treasures. My architect friend, Howard, buys old history books to fill his cottage library. My friends, Ben & Ingrid, furnished their contemporary house with look-alike Noguchi lamps that they found for two dollars. They know what inspires them, therefore they know when to spend and when to walk away. Treasures don’t come with price tags, they come with a feeling.

There is value in giving things away. Wearing something that has its own history makes me feel connected to the period of the piece, and very much in my own unique style. (By the way, my Style Statement is Refined Treasure.)

I recently found a painting that cost $8.00, including the frame. I offered them $5 for the painting so they could keep the frame and recycle. It was good for them, and good for me! Thrift shopping can be all the more special because profits often go to community-building. Last year my local tiny shop raised $100,000 that went towards building the school, creating art shows, and funding children’s sports. I need to know where my money goes at the end of the transaction. I won’t shop at the ubiquitous Value Village anymore because it’s now owned by Walmart!

I am ruthless about what I bring into my home and therefore I am ruthless when I am shopping. No plastic, no crocheted owls (although I have sneaking suspicion they will be popular again). The litmus test is: do I love it? When I look at my cherished possessions, I see that many of the things I hold dear are from the Sally Ann, church bazaars, and my family.

Using my own style, I am a selective shopper, with a relatively small green imprint who contributes to the community.

COMMENTARY: Our Flat Earth
A Call for Environmental Sanity

By Dale Stephens

Always there have been hot days, so I can’t vouch for global warming but I’d lay money on the fact the world is getting flat. It takes a few times passing through my Ripon, Wisconsin neighborhood but eventually I see it; something has changed, the sky is closer, things are opened up to heat and glare. It is astonishing how adept we are at taking away from our natural environment. New homes and businesses are a subtraction, cement flattens, power lines expose with belligerence what is green and living, garbage spreads ugliness, trees are cut down for no other reason than that a land owner is tired of raking up leaves and acorns, or a half-a-hundred of them are lost at once when a road is improved, areas are shorn of tall grass and flowers on a cutting schedule.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4282

For those following the to and fro on the carbon tax and emmissions issues locally and for Cascadia this might be of interest.

Lester Brown unveils plan for 80 percent cuts by 2020:
Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute and author, most recently, of Plan B, Version 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, released a new study today called "Time for Plan B: Cutting carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2020."http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/2/111857/0690

The Perils of Playing Nice
By David Spratt and Philip Sutton http://www.newmatilda.com/2008/07/04/perils-playing-nice

In shooting for the political mainstream, the climate movement has shot itself in the foot, argue David Spratt and Philip Sutton
Global warming is an emergency, and "for emergency situations we need emergency action," UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon told the world in November 2007.
Why, then, has climate policy moved in such a painfully slow manner? How can the impasse be resolved between what needs doing quickly, based on the science, and what seems a "reasonable" thing to do in the current political environment?
It seems as if there are two great tectonic plates - scientific necessity and political pragmatism - that meet very uneasily at a fault line.

High oil prices put the brakes on a future of endless progress
Climbing fuel costs threaten to affect how we'll proceed as a region in B.C.
Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, July 03, 2008

Remember when the future was hurtling toward us at breakneck speed?

It's arrived.

[snip]

Take the Gateway project. The premier's vision to streamline truck and auto traffic with new perimeter roads, the construction of a tolled bridge over the Fraser and the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge exists on the premise that traffic will increase to the point of gridlock in the near future.

That the provincial government is spending billions to promote more vehicular traffic while introducing a carbon tax seems a little illogical, but forget that for the moment. There's a greater, unintended logic within it.

It's this. The carbon tax was introduced to change our driving habits, to force us to drive less, and with less environmental impact. That is good.

And which is why I believe the carbon tax is a good thing.

But this, high fuel prices have already done, and will continue to do so. Car buyers are abandoning SUVs and minivans, and using mass transit in growing numbers.

But a greater impact may be just down the road. A recent CIBC study I mentioned in Saturday's column predicted there would be 10 million fewer cars on the road in the U.S. within five years, and 700,000 fewer in Canada.

If that prediction becomes reality, and if gas prices go even higher and have a greater impact on traffic growth, then the need for Gateway is not only in doubt, so is its economic viability. Those tolls it will depend upon to pay for its construction will be slower in coming.

[snip]

"First of all," Falcon said, "if that happens, and traffic decreases, that's great news.

"If we hve less cars on the road, fantastic. But even if that scenario should arrive, I still believe we have [to go ahead with Gateway]."

Falcon believes Gateway must go ahead just to accommodate population growth projected for the Fraser Valley, that high gas prices or not, that growth will strain the existing traffic grid.

But Falcon also believes in the future of the car, in some form.

"My opinion is, as the price of fuel goes up, it will change the technology of what we're driving, whether it's hydrogen or solar-powered or electrical-powered vehicles, which I think is most likely. That's the weakness of the Peak Oil projections.

"I think the bottom line is, we'll all be driving something. So you just can't ignore the infrastructure."

Falcon may be right, he may also be very, very wrong. He is straying from the territory of projection -- which is what an economist or urban planner does -- and into wishful conjecture -- which is what an optimist or gambler does. . .

Full story at http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=71970077-d210-40a0-9fbe-a01f127f31a0&p=1

Freeways Jam up Climate Plan
'Gateway' will wipe out Libs' green goals: expert.

By Tom Barrett
Published: July 3, 2008

TheTyee.ca

The Gateway Program is at odds with the B.C. government's new Climate Action Plan -- and one or the other will have to give . . .

[snip]

Doherty said he thinks the government will eventually shift the Gateway budget to greener projects but will continue to call it Gateway.

For example, the movement of goods could be shifted from trucks to rail and barge, Doherty said.

"Business would have complained about that two years ago. But with the high price of diesel fuel, I think they would be happy to see some high-efficiency goods movement in the region."

Similarly, the government could put money into building transit rather than roads, especially in the outer suburbs.

Transit is a motherhood issue, he said.

"If they were to say 'The new green Gateway program is the transit Gateway,'" I wouldn't complain and I don't think anybody would complain."

How Washington State cut vehicle miles

Doherty said B.C. should follow the lead of Washington State, which recently passed a law that calls upon the government to make substantial cuts in vehicle miles travelled.

Bill 2815 sets the following goals for per capita vehicle miles travelled:

* an 18 per cent reduction by 2020;
* a 30 per cent reduction by 2035; and
* a 50 per cent reduction by 2050.

[snip]

Full story at http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/07/03/FreewayJam/

1. Reserve a seat as close to front of plane as possible, the air is better there.
2. A bright colored sticker on the bottom of your suitcase beats a flashy pom pom for identifying your suitcase.
3. Take a hot water bottle for aches and coziness.
4. Sucking on lollipops unblocks your ears - remember to can get the natural ones.
5. i-Pod tunes drown out plane noise, people talking, kids crying.
6. Carry a light change of clothes in case of lost luggage (saved me in Vienna!)
7. Hand cream and lip balm.
8. As soon as you board, set your watch for your destination time zone, and begin changing your sleep and meal times to match.
9. For road trips: top up your tire air (helps with fuel efficiency) and get auto club membership.
10. For ferry trips: pack a picnic basket (ferry food is mediocre at best,) wine (use the ferry’s paper cups,) and cozy up in a corner to watch for whales! (If you’re on the west coast, that is.)

1. When in doubt, pack it! Unless I’m going to multiple destinations or I’m camping, I’m not a fan of traveling light. If I’m doing business I travel with one mother of a suitcase so I never have to skimp on outfit options or my pleasure comforts. (See Tip#9.)
2. Always carry on your toiletries and make-up. If your luggage is delayed, at least you can shop for a new outfit or make your morning meeting with your mascara on.
3. I always travel with a honey beeswax candle and light it as soon as I get into my hotel room. Beeswax purifies the air. (Philoxia candles are THE best you can buy.)
4. Flip flops. A must for chemical-laden carpets and pools.
5. Check your out-of-state/country cellphone rates. I once came home from a week in New York with $700 cell bill. Ooopsie.
6. Bring something sacred to put by your bed. A stone from your yard, a picture of your sweetie…
7. Ear plugs. Get ‘em. Even the swanky hotels have late night partiers, and early-rising vacuums.
8. And bring your own ear phones for the plane’s audio/video. All airplane head phones are tossed after use!
9. Bring your own pillow. It’s worth the space it takes up in your luggage. (Why are most hotel pillows two feet high?)
10. Meditate on the plane. Tuning in at 30,000 feet always seems to have an extra shimmer.

Check out more answers from our Daily Q&A this coming Tuesday: What’s Your Best Travel Tip?

Apparently trying to steal the thunder of customer ire from Rogers Wireless’ ill-considered iPhone launch, Bell and Telus are trying to slip out the back door with an announcement that they’re going to be charging users extra for text messaging.

SMS costs in Canada are already disproportionately high versus the unrealistically high costs for SMS across the entire wireless industry. This article suggests that SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined.

The quote from the Telus spokesperson is hilarious:

“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” wrote Telus spokeswoman Anne-Julie Gratton in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, “This volume places tremendous demands on our network and we can’t afford to provide this service for free any more.”

The same article refers to the latest statistics from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association that pegs the number of text messages sent in Canada at more than 45.3 million per day. According to recent reports from IEMR the number of wireless subscribers in Canada was 20.4 million in 2007, and wireless subscribers in the UK (which has roughly double the population of Canada) for the same year numbered 71.7 million. Sweden, with a third of the population of Canada’s has better than half as many subscribers. Canada is trending remarkably behind nearly every comparable western nation.

These stats are great, in that they illustrate the problem with subscriber growth that shareholders and analysts are presently appreciating. There’s clearly something wrong with the wireless business in Canada, and it’s not something that the recent spectrum auctions are likely to quickly address.

Allow me to translate Ms. Gratton’s TelecomSpeak in a way that more accurately reflects what went down in the boardroom:

“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Telus’ Business Development Manager, “This is an unprecedented opportunity to exact greater revenue from the customer base without spending a penny on service development!”

The Canadian wireless market has been infantilised by the greed and short-sightedness of our wireless carriers and the mismanagement of our asleep-at-the-wheel regulators. Whereas (according to Wikipedia) the average user in the Philippines sends 10-12 text messages a day, doing some quick math from the stats above reveals that the average Canadian use of text messaging is far lower at 2-3 messages per day.

Still, this 45.3 million SMS messages per month business must be creating a stress on the Telus service network, you’d think. Right?

Well, if you send 45.3 million SMS messages all at the maximum size of 140 characters, you’ll get almost 6 Gigabytes in total storage volume - or, roughly the size of the hard drive I had on my IBM Thinkpad in 1999. That’s a lot of data to store (in 1972, that is). At the end of the day, this means that the entire Canadian SMS relay network has to be able to sustain about 453MB/s of data transfer (someone check my math here, I think this might actually be on the high side). My Mac Mini has a 1GB/s ethernet interface but since it’s ultimately connected to a (for Canada anyway) smokin’ 30MB/s internet pipe, I guess this means that 11 or 12 Mac Minis connected to Novus broadband in Yaletown could handle relay for all of Canada’s SMS traffic.

SMS uses the signaling overlay path of wireless carrier networks, and from the wireless perspective SMS messages ride in the carrier byte packet. As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred. The networks themselves need to invest in this infrastructure anyway, so there is perhaps an added provisioning and data processing impact created by SMS for wireless carrier network planners, but it is not substantial.

For TELUS to suggest that this traffic is in any way meaningfully impactful to their operating costs suggests that either they’re lying, or perhaps they should go back to operating mechanical switches.

This is a cash grab. Pure and simple. But then, you knew that…

There’s something about dance video commercials that totally capture my interest. If saw Drench in a story, I’d think of this guy. It would make me happy. I would have good associations. Check it out.

Source: Thanks Dan!

Listen, I’m just as pissed as anyone about Barack Obama’s cave in on FISA. I also don’t like his shifting positions on gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA. I’ve been somewhat humbled by Obama’s so-called “move to the center”, which, of course, is actually an obvious, shameless, pandering move to the right. I was as swept up by Obama as many millions of people have been, and it’s no wonder, given how bleak things are in this country and elsewhere because of this country, that I’d latch on to a glimpse of hope and become susceptible to major disappointment at the first signs of human imperfection.

That said, nothing Obama has done so far worries me nearly as much as this (emphasis in bold is mine):

In poll of pet owners, McCain tops Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — If the presidential election were up to pet owners, John McCain could have a blue ribbon in his future.

From George Washington’s foxhounds Drunkard and Tipsy to George W. Bush’s terriers Barney and Miss Beazley, pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t have a pet, though he has promised his daughters a dog after the election, win or lose.

You just know that he promised his daughters a dog purely for political expediency. Where will he draw the line? Is there nothing that he will stand his ground on? Is this the guy you want answering the phone at 3am?!!!

ddrucker posted a video:

BOOK LIST FOR CUST 601 (September 2008)

(Ordered from UBC Bookstore)

Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd Ed.). New York: Routledge.

Aoki, T. T., Pinar, W., & Irwin, R. L. (2005). Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki. Studies in curriculum theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cary, L. J. (2006). Curriculum spaces: Discourse, postmodern theory and educational research. New York: Peter Lang.

Cole, M. (2008). Marxism and educational theory: Origins and issues. London: Routledge.

Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage.

Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Fay, B. (1996). Contemporary philosophy of social science. London: Blackwell.

Gabbard, D., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Education under the security state: Defending public schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

McCutcheon, G. (1995). Developing the curriculum: Solo and group deliberation. Troy, NY: Educators International Press.

Pinar, W. (2006). The synoptic text today and other essays: Curriculum development after the reconceptualization. New York: Peter Lang.

Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (Eds.). (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Critical education and ethics. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Slattery, P. (2006). Curriculum development in the postmodern era (2nd Ed). New York: Routledge.

Tyler, R. (1948). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

ddrucker posted a video:

Hey everybody! I have a really cool incentive offer that will make you money, get you free products and help my Top Affiliate Challenge Team XY7.COM win the competition.

I will send you a $25 Visa gift card if you buy the Online Handbook ($9.99) and Google SEO Supervisor ($4.95 shipping). Your out of pocket cost is $14.94 so you will make a net profit of $10.06 and you’ll get the two products completely free!

I only have 20 gift cards so the first 20 people who take advantage of this offer will make the money and get the products for free. Order them both, then email me (johnchow @ johnchow.com) your receipt as well as the address to ship the Visa gift card too. There is no catch. You spend $14.94 to get two great products and net a profit $10.06 from the $25 gift card I will send you.

Once the 20 cards are gone, it’s gone, so act now and don’t miss out!

This Post Was Brought To You By

Still Selling SiteWide Links? That Means You Are Losing LOTS OF MONEY! Replace your sitewide links by TNX.net code and generate 10x times more income by selling different links from every single page of your website or blog!

Have a Blog? Offer $20 BidVertiser Coupon of Free Clicks to your Readers - Simply signup as our referral and you will get a unique link which will give your visitors $20 in free clicks! And you will also get paid for it! Isn’t that a WOW?

John Cook of the SeattlePI Venture Blog reported today that Bellevue-based Alerts.com has rasied $1.2 Million from Monster Venture Partners and other angel investors. As a result of the financing, former Goldman Sachs executive John Frankel has joined the board.

Alerts.com and it’s investors believe that the alerts market is fragmented and no one provides a comprehensive alert service. Google News Alerts and Topix are an alternative but Alerts.com aims to cover every imaginable type of alert. Users of Alerts.com can sign up to receive news releases alongside birthday reminders and shopping and weather alerts to their email address or mobile device. Alerts.com plans to make money through targeted advertising where users see advertisements after signing up for a specific alert.

In the case of Alerts.com, Monsters Venture Partners continues to focus their investment dollars on  businesses with brandable one-word domains - their current portfolio includes gems like Patents.com, Healthcare.com, Podcast.com, and Wifi.com.