Stopping the Big Giveaway, by John Kerry.

Wyden to Block Telecom Bill Without Net Neutrality

Ads promote pollution, article by David Suzuki in Common Ground. (By the way, Suzuki is pronounced "SU-zu-ki" not "su-ZU-ki".)

This article is about ads promoting carbon dioxide and how it's not a pollutant.. yeah right. It's also about WHY they are present and the effects this propaganda could have. I read in National Geographic that higher temperatures and higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide cause ragweed to grow faster and more potent. That causes some pretty bad allergies for people sensitive to it. The other thing is (and this is not surprising, really), people in developed/industrialized nations are more likely to have allergies than in non-industrialized nations, and those becoming more industrialized are finding this problem to be increasing. Suzuki quotes one of the ads, "There's something in these pictures you can't see. It's essential to life... The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a world of backbreaking labour. Now, some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed. What would our lives be like then?" What would our lives be like? Well maybe there would be less children on inhalers, for one.

Consider the record-breaking and near record-breaking temperatures sweeping across North America right now. Is that not an indication that something's wrong? Stop denying it, people. Why doesn't it make sense? Why do we destroy without considering the long-term consequences? (Clear-cutting/mass logging, dumping waste, excavation, burning, controlling natural forest fires so they're now beyond our control, etc.)

And FINALLY...
If any of you are musicians or aspiring musicians playing guitar, bass, or drums, or just like to dabble at it every so often, you may have made use of free online tablature. I have just learned that due to copyright infringement, my favourite guitar tab websites have been shut down or crippled. I understand to some extent where the MPA is coming from, but what are young musicians to do? What if there's some underground band whose official sheet music doesn't exist or is impossible to find? What will happen to budding talent? This is all about money in the end, isn't it, not about people.

I played piano for over a decade and never ONCE bought sheet music myself. It was always gifts because I couldn't afford it. I also didn't usually like the arrangements, especially for pop songs and ones with vocals. Sheet music for piano is IMPOSSIBLE to find online, and chances are what you're looking for in paper isn't even there or doesn't exist. I still won't buy it; I'll just go without. I'll just figure it out myself. If I can't get guitar tabs for free, I'll try by ear. The tabs are the INTERPRETATIONS of listeners, where if one doesn't want to tune down to sharps or doesn't own a capo, one can often find an INTERPRETATION that suits one's preference. That's unlikely to happen in official books. (Sometimes those aren't even published in the correct key, period, just to make it easier for players.)

If it's really such an issue, if it's not money but ethics, why has this taken so long?

Thanks to my mom for sending me this interesting post about the importance of human engagement between businesses and customers/potential customers.

It reminded me of the "death of the internet" article I read (see my original post about this), and how companies would be paying to be first in line, essentially. Well the article linked above seems to suggest to me that the real deal is in engaging with your audience, and having people interested enough to write about you in their blogs. What happens if blogging is shut up by the slow lane of people who can't pay to have their site given priority bandwidth? Companies lose a good deal of their network, their word of mouth promotion.

So I ask you, governments, companies, internet service providers... what good would you be doing yourselves?

From The Vancouver Sun on Canada.com

Bell's move to monitor us an ominous portent
Fears of corporate information fishing arise as Internet providers take steps to monitor users' online activity

Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, July 10, 2006

We should be concerned about the erosion of our civil liberties in the post-9/11 world and the very real Big Brother-style monitoring of our Internet activities.

The Canadian Bar Association has long argued lawmakers went too far in the wake of the World Trade Centre strikes and did not build in enough checks when they gave law-enforcement agencies greater powers ostensibly to combat terrorism.

Still, when Canada's largest Internet service provider, Bell Sympatico, amends its service agreement with customers to create an environment of institutionalized cyberspying on behalf of the government, we're entering a whole other realm.

Bell three weeks ago told its customers it's reserving the right to monitor, collect and on request provide to police a list of every site you visit and every keystroke you type while connected.

Other ISPs have or are expected to follow suit.

Please read the rest. It will only take you a few minutes.

Neil Young's Living with War Today website has an interesting article titled Living With War In Canada, comparing today's involvement of Canadian troops in Afghanistan to the involvement and losses of other countries in the last 160 or so years there. The author voices his concern about the impact of having Canadian involvement in a war activity as opposed to peace-keeping, whether it puts a target on Canada. I'm not comfortable with that, either.

In the winter of 1842, the British army began a retreat from Kabul, Afghanistan with some 16,000 troops and citizens running for the safety of the garrison 90 miles away. A week later one horseman stumbled into camp - he was the lone survivor.

In 1979 the Soviet army poured across the Afghanistan border. Ten years later 14,500 Soviets and a million Afghans were dead and not much was settled.

Please also check out some protest/war topic songs by my "Macjammer" friends Alimar (Is There Any Real Peace Anymore?), Peter Greenstone (Justify This), and Snowdragon (God Didn't Tell You).

I didn't have a chance to do multiple self-portraits for the Self-portrait Marathon, but here is my last-minute contribution. Some things apparently need fixing, but oh well... two eyes staring into a mirror give three different points of view...

In high school we were told the stats for acquiring jobs; how little help the newspaper gives and how important networking is. So I'm turning to networking in addition to online ads to see if I can find myself some more work.

Here's a little rundown of what I do.

I design websites from the ground up, working with clients and responding to feedback. I also know my way around cPanel site management in which I set up and configure email addresses, newsletters, and databases for things like phpBB forums and Movable Type (which I am also learning); plus the usual things like site statistics and subdomains.

I have been designing and building websites for 7 and a half years and am extremely skilled in XHTML and CSS. Now that I have learned what XHTML 1.0 Strict standards entail, I plan to fix in future designs the minor things that keep me in Transitional. Designing for cross-platform considerations is something I've become quite adept with. I've also learned to be quite sensitive to my audience's potential visual needs: good contrast for reading and navigating especially for those with compromised vision, larger type OR the ability to increase type (hopefully without damaging the design) for the same reason, and relationships between foreground (text) and background (image) to optimize readability.

The ability for users to navigate easily and always know where they are is a priority, in addition to the role of a website's consistency in ensuring users know they're still at the same site.

I also do graphic design for print. My past formats have been posters, brochures, cards, gallery invitations, booklets, books, and CD covers.

For any project I can: design, photograph, draw, illustrate, write, and re-design.

In addition to basic Flash sites, I have done some animation projects in Flash, where I enjoy illustrating. Video is not one of my strongest skills but it can be done.

The programs I am experienced with are:
- Adobe CS (2): Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, ImageReady. I have used GoLive only as an editing tool for Perl scripts.
- Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX. No, I do not use Fireworks. Yes, I have used Flash 8.
- GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto. Pretty easy.
- Transmit FTP but anything's easy to learn.
- Any word processing, web browsing, and emailing program.

The languages in which I am fluent are:
- XHTML
- CSS
- English (no spelling, grammatical, or typographical errors, please!)
- Music

The languages which I know quite well are:
- JavaScript
- ActionScript
- French

The languages I have some (read: minimal) understanding of are:
- PHP
- German

I am a Mac whiz with quick hands and quick fingers.

I'm available immediately for anything as long as it's not illegal, pornographic, or within an unreasonable distance or time difference. That said, I don't have a laptop (yet) and do work from home, but I can work at your design studio (*ahem* wishful thinking?) provided I can get there in a reasonable commute and all necessary programs are provided, on a MAC. I can work on PC, but I'd rather not.

Please do take a look at my portfolio and send me a comment via the email form or a regular ol' email. My resume is there, too.

While you're here, I might as well link you directly to some of the sites I've done (links open in new window):
O: organic produce (school project)
Society for Community Development
Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver
Shamble
Pieces (high school project)

Thanks!

I miss eating pears.

Performing today on Parliament Hill then a few dates across the country is Inuit artist and throat singer Tanya Tagaq. I came upon her delicately designed website from the CBC's page about a collection of Canadian and Canada-related songs for the summer. She did a collaboration with Bjork on the song "Ancestors" which some of you may have heard.

I've never heard her music, though perhaps I'll be fortunate enough to see her at the Folk Fest in Vancouver in a couple of weeks. I missed her on TV as the performances at Parliament Hill were in the early afternoon. Do look at her artwork on her website though (under pictures); her paintings are absolutely fabulous and breathtaking.

Throat singing was one of the unique methods we briefly "learned" in Choir 8 many years ago. Her bio says that her way, which is solo (the technique is traditionally done in pairs), is different and emotional, making an eclectic contribution to today's experimental music. I hope you like it.

This afternoon whilst confined to lying on the floor with my feet up so my swollen toes don't fall off (if you didn't catch my post about my bee sting), I turned on the TV and started flipping channels. There's rarely anything good on at noon on a Saturday, but today is CANADA DAY (where's my temporary tattoo???) and CBC Newsworld had a special documentary on called The Canadian Guitar.

The one-hour documentary includes interviews with various Canadians — stories of our heritage, our First Nations and our immigrants, and our families. The final masterpiece, debuted today for celebrations in Ottawa, features pieces of Canada's story: the Golden Spruce of Haida Gwaii, Wayne Gretzky's hockey stick, an old seat from Toronto's Massey Hall, Trudeau's canoe paddle, Winnipeg's St. Boniface Museum, and Pier 21, among others. The luthier is Hungarian-Canadian George Rizsanyi, whose own history, too, contributed to the beautiful guitar.

The documentary airs again at 7 & 11pm ET today on CBC Newsworld. That's 4 and 8pm PT on cable 26 for those in Greater Vancouver. I suggest you watch it — tape it, PVR it if you're out celebrating tonight — and have a Happy Canada Day!

Here's one more for ya, Canadian Mysteries. Old or ancient mysteries always seem more exciting than current ones, and people seemed to be more strange, like the man climbing mountains to the Yukon in 1931. Yes, indeed, folks... the Holy Grail is buried in CANADA.