SOME PERSONAL NEWS

Alright. It’s been a wild and crazy past week. Here’s the update in a non-sequential order:

* I lost my job with the software company I worked at Monday of last week.
* My grandfather (my mom’s dad) passed away on Thursday of last week.
* We had the visitation on Monday, funeral itself yesterday and a move-out of my grandfather’s apartment today.
* I will be away at a friend’s cottage for the Labour Day weekend.
* I’m thinking of going back for re-training in a new field.

They say it’s always the darkest before the dawn. Well, today’s really the first day where I feel like suddenly, I’m not angry and sad like I was after losing my job or overwhelmed with things like when we all found out about my grandfather’s death last week (he was 90 years old and it was peaceful, which is really all one can ask for in this life).

I’m hoping now, with summer finally ending, this is the start of a new era. It’s easy to say how shitty 2007 and much of 2008 have turned out. Not saying they haven’t been bad years. But I’m not going to let all this bad stuff destroy me. I came incredibly close last year to letting it all consume me, but not this time. Fuck that.

Oh, and the Beijing Olympics are over. I barely saw the Closing Ceremonies in the midst of the chaos last week, but it was quite good I heard and definitely builds up anticipation for London in 2012.

MORE CHALLENGES

I got some unfortunate news yesterday. I won’t go into major details about it, but needless to say it’s going to involve some major personal changes for me. It’s not life-threatening, just something I need to deal with for now.

If you want to know what’s up, email me or IM me. I’d just prefer not to broadcast it over the blog.

OLYMPICS: Hey, so I was wrong. I thought Canada’s performance at the Beijing Games was, um, sub-par at the very least in the first week. Well, here it is, the Games are more than half-over, and now Canada’s got 13 – a very lucky 13 – medals to its name. Good on Canada!

LEGO PHOTOS

- Mike Stimpson, Wired.com

Here’s an interesting link to a photo set by a Lego fan named Mike Stimpson. He’s done a re-creation of some of the most incredibly photos even taken (at least, from a photojournalism perspective) with Lego characters! Some of the photos are still disturbing as hell and the Lego images only remind you of that fact. Definitely worth checking out.

TUMBLR: Also, I’ve decided to take the plunge – I’m on Tumblr now. It’s a sorta blog without the editorial comment – my Tumblr’s going to be a collection of my favourite things on the Web. Check out my site – it’s very new, so there’s not a tonne of stuff there, I admit. Yet.

OLYMPICS: So after a week of real concern Canada might get hosed at this year’s Olympics in terms of medals, we now have nine medals. Karen Cockburn managed to land the silver today in the women’s trampoline, while the men’s team competition in equestrian also won a silver. All I’m going to say is I’m just glad we’re ahead of North Korea now in the medal standings.

THE DARKER SIDE OF MAD MEN?

- AMC Stills

With the second season of Mad Men now in full swing, this year’s season is already demonstrating a fascinating and considerably darker shift in the show’s tone. It’s undeniable that so far this season, the characters in Mad Men have gone a shade into the shadows – most notably, Don Draper himself.

Never mind that Don looked at his most corporate, cruel and menacing when firing Lois, his sweet but admittedly dim secretary. Last night’s most shocking and surprising moment happens just moments after above’s photo is taken: Draper aggressively and violently pulls Bobbi Barrett’s hair and then shoves his hand up into her crotch, whispering in a quiet, raging manner, “I will ruin him.”

It’s a decidedly dark moment in the show – perhaps the darkest so far. It’s alarming to see Don – a moody, quietly desperate man – doing something so decidedly violent. While Don is capable of anger, rage and violence – remember last year with him shaking Betty’s arms after Roger came over for dinner? – as all people are, last night represented a turning point for me when it comes to the show. The show’s tone is getting darker, which is only making a brilliant show even better.

One thing Season Two has been notable for thus far is how Matt Weiner is really getting in deep on the character’s interior and family lives. While Don and Betty – talk about keeping up appearances – continue to struggle, we’re also seeing Peter and Trudy battle over a baby, a frustrated Harry and his wife (watch for Harry’s role to likely get larger and larger over the next few seasons, now that he’s in charge of television at Sterling Cooper), and Joan. Oh Joan. Not sure what to think about you these days.

OLYMPICS: So, China’s already got 14 medals, leads the medal standings and is winning events with almost-robotic like efficiency. We’re not even half-way through the first week and the Beijing Games already look like a whitewash between China and the U.S. battling it out for the top spot in medals.

Call me crazy, but even in a field as deep as the Beijing Games, shouldn’t Canada already have some piece of the medal action? How does North Korea have four medals already?

I-PATRIOT ACT

In today’s climate of fear and defensive posturing that governments around the world seem locked into, there’s nothing more potentially unnerving than an unpredictable, far-reaching conduit in which ordinary citizens are tapped into. That, my friends, is of course the Internet.

In case anyone remembers the aftermath of 9/11 and all the legal, political and military pivots that effectively turned America into The United States of Paranoia (albeit before Iraq, Katrina, the Recession-Depression that’s starting, extraordinary rendition, CIA-approved torture tactics… does it ever end?), there were two little bills that changed America forever: The now-infamous Patriot Act and Patriot Act II.

Well, consider the nature of government when it comes to encroachment of powers. Governments will sometimes use events (read: 9/11) as catalysts to enact legislation that would be inconceivable under normal conditions. Of course, no one would ever assume a government would conduct a false flag operation to justify certain actions in government, right?

Of course, smart men like Lawrence Lessig know better. Lessig – a man far more capable of formulating reasoned, sensible government policy than government mandarins – spoke at this year’s Brainstorm Tech conference about “an i-9/11 event” that could enable the U.S. government to completely change how the Internet works in America (and really, how the world accesses the Internet too).

We’re talking the whole hog of totalitarianism here, folks: Internet ID cards to govern where, when and who goes online; massive, overarching social tracking technology; blocking and filtering of web sites in public forums like libraries (!) that mysteriously don’t fall in with mainstream-approved readings; vast spy databases – the list goes on and on and on.

Don’t think for a moment this isn’t possible. Nobody saw 9/11 coming and look what happened there. What if a huge cyberterrorist attack – we’re talking a monumental, Denial-of-Service-Attacking, data eliminating, shit hits the fan bad – happens in a major American city or the entire East Coast? It doesn’t even have to be al-Qaeda-led, either. Hell, when you consider all the unsettling, questionable aspects of 9/11, you don’t have to look too far to wonder exactly who benefits from this kind of cyber law.

So let’s say it happens and this “Cyber Act” is brought into law: if you buy into this system of having ISPs reporting back data on your online habits to the government, you get access to the upcoming Internet2 – a sweet, super-fast replacement to the current architecture of the Web currently in development. Sort of like you’re the horse, Internet2 is the carrot.

You refuse to buy in, you’re a target for government surveillance (at least, now it’s U.S. government spying on Americans that’s suddenly legal and lawful, as opposed to the “extra-legal” spying happening now).

Even if you think this is all fear-mongering, just read the note, it’s informative at least.

OLYMPICS: There’s just two days left before the Games of the Chinese Olympiad (hey, not as if the IOC has any control over these Games anymore) commence. The New York Times has a really cool interactive Flash-based graphic that measures medal counts by country since the first Summer Olympics in 1896.

SOME RANDOM MONDAY MUSINGS

Greetings – hope everyone had a nice weekend.

So I have an iPhone. And yes, I love it. I love it in a kind of way that must be organized into “Pre-iPhone” and the “iPhone” Era. It’s positively life-changing. It’s gorgeous and easy-to-use. I’m officially Apple-For-Life now. And I got it for $40. I had an hardware upgrade credit and a manufacturer’s rebate. Ironically, having an iPhone will cost less under my new plan than when I was using a Razr phone. Weird, no?

BEIJING OLYMPICS: Do you ever wonder how much words matter as opposed to action? Of course actions always speak louder. And for this reason, it’s funny how the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee, which promised back in 2001 to “significantly” clean up its human rights record and terrible environmental impact before the Games started. Well, it’s seven years later, and not a damn thing has happened when it comes to press freedom in China or the country’s abysmal human rights record. Seriously, does anything matter to the International Olympic Committee other than dollars? Wasn’t the whole point of giving the Games to China about opening up the country to new, proto-democratic reforms?

HYPE WILLIAMS: You may find this funny, but I’m a big fan of Hype Williams’ videos. Hype Williams is a genius in every sense of the word when it comes to his visionary approach to directing hip-hop videos. He’s got a new video out by Lloyd featuring Lil Wayne that honestly could have been made in the 22nd century. It’s stunning to look at. Check it out.

Lloyd Featuring Lil Wayne – All Around The World