Omega Point

I thought this was kind of interesting: “RCMP Spied on Tommy Douglas“. I don’t just mean the culture of J. Edgar Hoover-esque agency creepiness that would ultimately lead to the downfall of the RCMP Security Service and the subsequent creation of CSIS, Canada’s modern intelligence agency. (For those of you outside Canada, CSIS is known for such classy operations as helping to form the white nationalist Heritage Front and participating in the USAUK ECHELON program. Nicely done, guys.)

No, what I actually found interesting was that I’d never made the connection that Donald Sutherland was Tommy Douglas‘ son-in-law. I knew who they both were individually, and I knew Donald was father of Kiefer, but I never actually associated the two.

When I mentioned this bit of trivia to a friend, he didn’t seem to understand why I was telling him this. Why was this fact important? At first, I couldn’t tell whether he meant its importance in the article or in our conversation, but that got me thinking — did it actually matter which he actually meant? Why would someone consider that sort of trivia important? Moreover, if it’s not, why did the CBC see fit to include it?

Upon a little consideration, this is easy. To be fair, nobody knows who Tommy Douglas was. However, several million people watch 24. By associating “Tommy Douglas”, a relatively unpopular brand, however important a figure he may have been, with a highly popular, well-known brand like “Kiefer Sutherland”, the article’s details are reframed for a broader audience.

The audience, seeing the man’s grandson hacksaw off terrorists’ heads every week, have formed an emotional familiarity with him. Seeing the vast number of people: A) who try to kill him, B) who he kills, and C) who he chooses not to kill — in a single day — causes us to become interested in his day. For those of us who choose let him into our homes, he’s very much a part of our lives.

So, when we see this story — police pursue popular populist — placed in pop-cultural context for us, what do we come away with? “Hey, the Mounties spied on Jack Bauer’s grandpa! What the hell?“

Predictably, Ze Frank already spent time thinking about this stuff… presumably so I didn’t have to.

(Original link via Rob Cottingham)

This is really fascinating. Design studio Pentagram has developed the look and feel of the UI for the One Laptop Per Child project. (”Pfft, poor people… right?“)

They’ve abandoned the “desktop” metaphor, in favour of the “zoom metaphor“. This echoes OLPC’s overall design goals in sticking to the basic Children can quickly switch between different views to connect with other users, or collaborate on a single task.

Other cool features include the complete lack of text labels for icons and UI elements, meaning there’s no need for them to be translated for each localized version. Only truly necessary text must be translated to produce a localized version for a given language. This completely avoids problems phrases like “la homepage” may pose for non-English speakers.

(Via kottke.org)

This may be the least effective use of an interactive map infographic ever. It attempts to present information on an important subject, but it’s very difficult to take in due to poor UI and ineffective use of the map itself.

Why on earth does this tool use the same icon for identifying a target country as the button you click on to determine information about the top 10 countries with female political leadership and so on?

If I click on a country name, shouldn’t I be able to see it highlighted? Doesn’t it make sense to see how regions are ranked? I realize this isn’t a university mapping textbook, but honestly now.

When comparing regions, static maps can be far, far more compelling and contain much more relevant information. Cases in point. Bad CBC!

The CBC is running a story on enterprising young hooligans making good entertaining use of readily-available giant capacitors. Oh no, homemade tasers! Well, no, not exactly. They sure hurt and make you pee yourself though!

This actually reminded me of things I did in high school, so maybe this is something we want to encourage! (”Hi, Catherine? About dinner next week? Yeah, I’m not sure we’re totally comfortable with you having any opportunity to tell our kids anything at all, actually…”)

Look, part of living in a technologically sophisticated society is understanding that there are things people will do with technology that doesn’t mesh up with what its designers intended. Further, we can’t stop that from happening, except through further education. (”…and that’s why we don’t lick electrical sockets, class.” “Ohhhhh!”)

The problem is that people all too often want a quick fix for runaway knowledge, and that usually takes the form of legislation, or of ceasing the distribution of documents containing Iraqi nuclear “secrets”.

So in this case, what’s the legislation we’re supposed to support? Internet hackers must be stopped from threatening children? Cameras must be licensed to prohibit the extraction of their internal components? Cameras should not contain flashes? No energy weapons at school? Oh wait. That last one is actually pretty smart.

Upon reading the CBC article, one notes that there’s definitely a “oh no, internet!” vibe to it, but nobody quoted in it is actually suggesting that the current “leave your knives and things at home, please” laws and school policies aren’t enough. Truly a refreshing change.

So I guess it’s probably about time I updated the look of this blog. It’s come to my attention that I may be the only published blogger not to have plugged their book on their site in every possible way. Maybe I should do something about that…

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This is fascinating. Matt Haughey writes about his thoughts on the disappearance of CNet editor James Kim and his family:

If each recording is say 30 minutes long for a road, split it into 10 equal parts, 3 minutes long, and upload all of them to youtube. Ask viewers to leave comments pointing out when they see anything strange. The Kims were in a silver Saab wagon, so it’s probably something that can be seen from above. In total, there’d be 50 or 60 short clips and in a matter of hours you could have millions of people closely scan then and start pointing out the things worth looking into on the ground.

In his incredibly good (yet incomplete!) webcomic Spiders, Patrick Farley describes a world in which President Gore enacts a similar project in the aftermath of the 9/12 attacks on the World Trade Center and US Capitol Building. A million tiny robot spiders are deployed to Afghanistan in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In one chapter, an unseen figure describes how surely this is some sort of psy-ops gimmick; the Americans would need a million operators to monitor the video of every spider. A second figure agrees, and is suddenly revealed to be Osama bin Laden himself, as seen through the camera eye of a tiny robot.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, a small girl is sitting at her computer. “Mommy? Daddy?” she says. “I think my spider just found that bad man.”

(Via kottke.org)