Pie Palace

Even though Canada lost the race to join the UN Security Council, the government was able to break one notable record. They succeeded in making a statement so bizarre and self-serving, it actually parodied itself. According to Harper’s communications director:

A big deciding factor was the fact that Canada’s bid did not have unity because we had Mr. Ignatieff questioning and opposing Canada’s bid.

And according to our Foreign Minister, Lawrence Cannon:

Not being able to speak with one voice as a country had a negative impact on Canada’s bid.

The Conservatives are actually saying that Canada lost its bid to sit on the Security Council because of the Liberals. They apparently think Canadians are stupid enough to believe that a guy less popular than Stephen Harper was able to convince fifty-some governments to vote for Portugal.

I accidentally let my New Scientist subscription lapse. They helpfully spammed saying that they’re having a subscription sale until October 10. The price for a year’s subscription? $75. Last time I checked it was over $300. I guess they’re feeling by the intertubes.

It’s too bad that our new Governor General’s coat of arms features an apparently meaningless string of binary. Considering that every other device in coat of arms has some degree of symbolism, I’m surprised none of the folks at the Canadian Heraldic Authority bothered to find something nifty to encode in there.

In entirely unrelated news, Bobby Scrawls, Assistant to the Deputy Herald Chancellor of the Canadian Heraldic Authority, recently got his first tattoo! He wanted to get “out of the box” of his day job, so he got some really awesome Chinese Japanese Korean Asian characters inked on his back. Because of his incredible artistic ability, he got “Writes like a ninja” tattooed over his spine:

Of course, opinions on the meaning of those characters differ.

(Images from Hanzi Smatter used without permission, see Mental Floss for more tattoo fun)

I asked a Muslim coworker what he thought about the new Islamic community centre proposed for downtown New York. His response: “I don’t see what the big deal is. Nobody is complaining that the Americans built an embassy in downtown Baghdad.” Zing.

I’d like to welcome a bunch of new bloggers to Blogawa! In chronological order:

First among equals is GJ Hagenaars‘ now ex-campaign blog. He’s no longer in the Bay Ward municipal race for all the right reasons. It sounds like he intends to keep his blog updated with his thoughts on the future of our city.

Keeping in the electoral vein is Municipalities Out Of Control – sort of a Girls Gone Wild for city politics, but with finances instead of sex and city councillors instead of drunk/stoned/payed teenagers. (Mr. O’Malley, I apologize if you don’t like the simile, but the name of the blog was too good to pass up)¹

Blogawa also welcomes its first online magazine, in the form of UnFolding. The whole thing looks pretty snazzy, particularly the previews section.

iKEN is an excellent photoblog by a Korean exchange student visiting Ottawa. The photos of Korea are particularly cool.

We also get to welcome ThumbShift a cycling blog. Fellow cyclists are always welcome, especially those who post pictures of street art.

1. Mr. Francis, you really don’t deserve this simile. Best of luck on your legal battles. I encourage you to consider joining a religion. Like Scientology. (back)

If you think Dr. Who was bad, stop and consider World War II.

The Web 2.0 dream is to be able to give something away while still making a living on it. That may work for Cory Doctorow, but for most of us, it’s untenable. The only mechanism I’ve seen for paying open source peeps for consumer-grade projects is donations. Paypal and Amazon both provide an ability to donate to a project, as does Pledgie, but I haven’t seen anything that makes donating easy.

Then I found Flattr. It allows donors to give micropayment-style donations to anyone with a web page (and a Flattr account). It makes life easier for donors because they choose how much they will give a month, and that amount is divided amongst their donees.

It isn’t perfect. The Flattr community is pretty sparse, and there’s no way to set a recurring Flattr, but they’re 90% of the way there. It’d be great if Canonical, vim, Parcellite, Google Chrome, kdenlive, and Guake accepted Flattrs.

If you’re looking for an invitation, hit me up with the contact form and I’ll hook you up.

(h/t Raphaël Hertzog)

Why you shouldn’t ask your graphic design friends to do stuff for free: Missing Missy. (Via mj3clark)

So far, I’ve gotten two comments saying that I’ve missed the point of GJ Hagenaars library policy. On the off chance there are other readers who feel that I’ve missed the boat, here’s my response:

Mr. Hagenaars made an unexpected proposal for the city’s libraries. He proposed replacing the existing OPL staff with 33 librarians (one at each branch) and a staff of volunteers:

In my opinion, what we truly need are small, local libraries, with one librarian [...] and volunteer staff from the community to keep them going. Let people vote with their feet if they want library services. If there are no volunteers [...], one full-time librarian is already too much.

His proposal didn’t explain who would maintain the OPL’s physical assets (lending materials, buildings, computer networks, website, bookmobile, and archives), nor did it explain the effect of cutting over 8,000 classes that have an annual enrollment of roughly 190,000. Perhaps worst of all, he proposes cuts without an indication of the savings they would provide.

This suggests that Mr. Hagenaars either:

1. knows about these services and didn’t bother to mention them in his proposal; or
   
2. made a policy proposal without understanding the issue.

My concern is that Mr. Hagenaars didn’t know what he was suggesting. My fear is supported by a question in his original letter “Where are the volunteers at the libraries, if people think they are that important?” Obvious answers aside: Ottawa has 555 library volunteers. It’s worrisome when a blogger with a couple of hours on his hands digs up more information about an election issue than a candidate.

Proposing a solution is easy. Proposing a useful solution is much harder.

In his response to my original post, Mr. Hagenaars seems more focused on the proposal for a new Main Branch rather than laying off 419.46 employees¹. This is good – Mr. Hagenaars doesn’t reiterate his call for a dismantling of the existing OPL and its programs.²

I hope that his original suggestion was nothing more than an overzealous cost-cutting proposal. If that’s the case, I would much rather that he said that, rather than continuing to avoid its mention.

Update: Cleaned up wording.

1. I can only assume that the .46 of an employee refers to .46 of a full time position, rather Eric the Half a Librarian. (back)
2. Ironically, I agree that delaying the construction of a new Main Branch is a reasonable way to save money, given that the existing Main Branch is still functional. (back)

PiePalace reader Gawp offered a fantastic comment on my post about GJ Hagenaars‘ assertion that the city should have exactly one staffer in every library branch. He starts out: “I know, lets use Mr. Hagenaars’ argument for other city services. They make just as much sense!”

what we truly need are small, local SNOW REMOVAL, with one SNOW REMOVAL PERSON (making less than six figures) and volunteer staff from the community to keep SNOW REMOVAL going. Let people vote with their SHOVELS if they want SNOW REMOVAL. If there are no volunteers (i.e. not enough interest), one SNOW REMOVAL PERSON is already too much.

Not to keep harping on Mr. Hagenaars, but I thought that was funny.