Ten Grand

I recently attended a Monster Concert in Nathan Phillips Square. This production was in part the fruit of Boyanna Toyich, a motivational speaker, and RCM graduate. One of my best friends found out from her fellow pianists about a group they had joined last year, which would tour around, putting on Monster Concerts.
What is a Monster Concert? Well, in my friend’s case, their slogan was “10 pianos, 20 musicians, 200 fingers.” The phenomenon began in 1860 with a piece called “Triumphal Hymn” written by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In 1867, it was preformed by an orchestra of 650 musicians, including 80 trumpets (hopefully they didn’t blare!). Much of Gottschalk’s music had a multi-cultural aspect that was way ahead of its time. You can read more about
Gottschalk’s life and work, if you wish.
Back to the concert, here was their repertoire:
Night in the Tropics, by Gottschalk
Overture to Semiramide, Rossini
Faust (Valse), by Gounod
Symphony No 40 (1st movement), by Mozart
Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, by F. Liszt
Overture to The Barber of Seville, by Rossini
Danse Macabre, by Saint-Saens
William Tell Overture, by Rossini
My friend, that evening, was absolutely beautiful, and she played beautifully too! I was honoured to watch her concert, along with a couple other of our friends from highschool. We saw a suprising number of former classmates from highschool there, actually, and Nathan Phillips Square was completely full.

FAB

Long time ago when we was FAB is now back. I first read about it in the May 2nd issue of Business Week. FAB Labs, which is a group of personal manufacturing software and hardware, is like a 3D printer. You can program anything into it’s system, and it will produce the piece by carving cross-sections out of plastic, and fusing those pieces together to create the piece as a functional whole. Today these stations cost $20,000, but hopefully in the future they will drop to $10,000, then possibly even $1000.
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Movies with Dad

Well, congratulations to me, I've posted my first picture! Now I need to write a post about it! So here goes.
I have watched so many movies with my Dad over the years. The first one I remember clearly was the Langoliers, a "B" movie made from one of Stephen King's books. Another one I watched with him was Pitch Black; just this summer, and then The Chronicles of Riddick just after that. Those were my introductions to the cutie in the picture below. We are now in the middle of watching Kevin Smith movies; the best one of those was Dogma.
We've also watched many theatre movies together, like the Village. I think these movies are a big part of our time to touch base with one another just to have fun, and I really enjoy these times. Sometimes we eat and drink, sometimes we laugh together during the movies, sometimes we sit together on opposite sides of the couch, and sometimes I snuggle up to him.
It's wonderful to be able to have a good relationship with my Dad. He's going through some tough projects and times at work right now, and so I just want to let him know that I really love him, and all the time he makes for us, his family, in various ways.
Thank you Dad, and I love you.
(And what better way to celebrate than with my first posted pic, of Vin Diesel! ooops*)

Drug racism?

I just read an article, published a couple months ago, about drug research, and the fact that researchers are ignoring the differences that might come up because of race.

I find these researchers and their attitudes to make absolutely no sense. If one culture eats predominantly more of whatever vitamin in their diets than others, lets just say vitamin B, then they won’t suffer from any conditions that result from lacking that vitamin. However, if another race eats a lot of iron in their diet, if they are given a drug that also has a very high dose of iron, that could result in adverse health effects.

News flash; different cultures don’t all eat the same, we don’t all exercise the same amount, and we don’t all have the same lifestyles. Some different eating habits ARE based on culture. Some different lifestyle habits ARE based on environment, and tradition. So to ignore the fact that differences in culture are important when studying drugs is to ignore the fact that humans are different. For example, you wouldn’t NOT take into consideration the fact that some people are allergic to some drugs if they have the medic bracelet. You wouldn’t ignore their bracelet and administer the drugs to them regardless. Why then would it make sense for the drug researchers to discount the possibility that people of different cultures would be, as a group, allergic to some sort of drug on the market, or at least, it would have no effect on them – meaning not treat their disease?

For example, if one drug has no effect on Italians, then upping the dose would still have no effect in curing the disease, and soon your Italian patient would be dead because of some reason like the wine they drink combined with the ravioli they eat blocks the active ingredient in the medicine your giving them. But you as a drug researcher pretend this doesn’t exist. You’re still looking at a dead patient! The drug researchers seem to not want to broach the topic because it could be considered politically incorrect; “this can fuel social conceptions that there are meaningful genetic differences between races”, says one Jonathan D. Kahn. Well, so what if there are! And, “scientists are struggling to understand why many drugs don’t work alike in all races”. *sigh*. Please read this blog.

Math is Girls' Play

Margo Varadi covers an interesting camp run by IBM, on volunteer power.
Mmmm, okay, so this is corporate sponsored, but that doesn't really matter in the context that so many schools have partnerships with IBM. We're not singling out only two schools per country, or something like that. According to IBM's press release, more than 1500 girls will be attending these camps from May to October.

Varadi writes on this one girl's group of 36, in Markham. Listen to this golden nugget; "after just a day and a half, Courtney and her fellow classmates are wondering why school can't be like this. If classrooms were this cool, Courtney says, she wouldn't have struggled so hard to get through her last year. My first two semesters of science I got a 50. she says. I just didn't want to do [science]... it was kinda boring ... This camp has made science more fun. The entire article is full of these kind of insights, most of them coming from the interviews with girls.

This is perfectly juxtaposed to the Miss G article (young women advocating a change in awareness of female role models through women's studies), and works so well with this article because it interviews the students themselves, and finds out their viewpoints on what needs to change in the education system in order to make learning more ... well, memorable. (Now, that's what my university program is spending four years teaching us; make things memorable, that's how your message will stick.)

See my next blog, below this one. I hadn't even analyzed this article yet when I wrote it, but those are my points. Get students into the real world as well as in the class-room, if it takes a community to raise a child, a few teachers can't raise 200 kids in their school alone. Get the community involved! Take learning outside the classroom. Teach children, and, in the case of this article girls, to keep an open mind, and learn how to learn in the real world. Learn how to think and be creative. A student supports my point; "it is best when students can relate to what they're learning; the roller coaster makes all these terms like kinetic energy and potential energy mean something because you have a visual [concrete, real-world] representation. A lot of people can't learn by just listening. This reinforces things you need to learn, like terminology and definitions."

But wait, it gets even better! "The point of EXCITE for IBM is to get girls more interested in technology . The program pairs them up with mentors, women on staff who keep in touch in the year after camp and encourage the students to consider careers in science and IT ..." Good point. Let's give the girls real role models, and people who can take them out of the malls.

The thing I don't like about this location is a couple of the girls seeming obsession with the "stuff" they can get afterwards. They want to make a m$ll$on a year to live their dream life, and IT can take them there. O God. So rich women helping rich girls learn tech, eh? THAT is corporatism.

Now, let's relocate to "inner-city-ness". Give those girls the same chance in the same programs. Get them out of the malls and the gangs, etc, and show them that there is a whole different world out there, and give them more caring and supportive role models (yes, I am suggesting that there may be a few employees in that bunch who are snoodocrats out for tax breaks!) who will be willing to take them on "Big Sister of Canada" style and mentor them into a higher level of self-confidence. That would differentiate the program from others, so that it makes a difference in the world, not just supports some Markham/Brazilian/Thailand rich girls. Hopefully there are many more examples like the latter. Can you imagine living in Habitat for Housing, your parents having not much money, and you being able to go off to camp, and coming home with a mentor that will guide you through your education next year, like a tutor, who will spend time talking with you about how you can make more of yourself, and really getting into your life with you? Wow. I would love that.

NEway, here's another site about technology and girls, enjoy!
http://www.girlsgotech.org/

Miss G Girls II

On to part II. Quotes.
"... four enthusiastic thinkers on a mission. And it is this: to get women's studies onto the high school curriculum ... we're thinking big. we're thinking long-term. This is no summer project for us." After one of the four brings a "Baby Girl, or Sex Toy tube top from her bag, the question arises "Where are the countervailing influences for girls and young women moving through the school system? Why does the prevailing role model in celebrity culture appear to be the (dumb-chick, shopping-mall) Paris Hilton?"

These girls notice the "lack of self-esteem among young women, the rivalry that too often seems to mark their relationships (versus camaraderie among boys), the [scarcity] of women in the existing curriculum, the missed opportunity for intellectual engagement." Yes. I know this. You know what I find most conducive for this camaraderie? Anger outlets, believe it or not. Through sports, mostly. When I was involved in karate, or hockey, I was able to channel my need to exert. When I was doing this, I found that I was able to be much calmer in my relationships with other girls. Catty? Comes from not having anywhere to let out your anger in a productive, fun, camaraderie kind of way.

"Young girls are no different from boys in their need for physical exertion. I find women's fainting spells a direct result from women being indoors all day bent over their needlework confined in restrictive corsets." This is a quote from Little Women with Susan Sarandon.

This is interesting: "the fantastic four have launched their mission with fearsome precision: Miss G. chapters have been launched at the University of Windsor, and Wilfred Laurier and Waterloo; sequential meetings have been had with various representatives of the ministry of education, including a get-together last week with a member of the ministry's curriculum assessment policy division. Not surprisingly, ... the group [does not] believe that pushing for locally developed course options is the answer. We want the Ministry of Education to make a statement that gender equity and women's issues are a priority within the Ontario government."

Yes. That's a statement that needs to be made. I am just concerned that it might turn out to be a "now you have your program, we are politically correct, and don't ask for anything else that would take any work" statement from the government.

One of the girls, Shkordoff makes the point "you're an active citizen. Call your MPP. A side effect of this is to encourage active citizenship." That's another good thing.

And the point Mohan makes is also quite true from the point of the psychology of learning and what behavioural traits are developed in girls by a certain age: "If you're waiting until university, it's too late. It has to be done at an earlier point in time." Exactly.

So, for us adults and young women to be politically active; that's excellent, that's what's supposed to happen with us, that's what we are supposed to do.

But not everyone is political, and there are so many avenues to approach this with. Girl Guides, through to Pathfinders. New Moon magazine. Hockey, or any SPORTS for girls. Girl's clubs in the school system. An IBM tech camp.

Things to get girls out and moving about; things to make them sweat and think.
Things to develop problem solving skills, and the awareness of the power they have to become active in their world.
If girls have these countervailing influences to those of the media, we may just have less anorexic fashion fluff-brains prancing around our city.

Miss G____

Jennifer Wells goes on in the July 23rd Star about Miss G. Long and short of the first page of her article is about a woman in 1873 who dies of whatever diseases, or is "killed" slowly by this male doctor, Edward Clarke, who feels that women cannot possibly make anything of a brain, and simultaneously maintain their feminine role, or feminine reproductive system. Okay. So the guy is brain-dead. I could rant and rave about him, but that's not the point.

With this theme to unite them, four young university women from the University of Western, Ontario are on a mission. Not to promote science or medicine in the classroom, but to promote women's studies. Bare with me while I play devil's advocate. Why women's studies? I wouldn't be interested in women's studies. Kack! Bo-oring. What I would be much more interested in is things like a Girl's Club (this taken from the Girl's Club that my Mom ran out of her elementary school for years. This was a chance for these girls to meet role models who are currently alive and at work in their communities, a place for girls to talk about business, science, sexuality, religion, abortion (one girl had one ... ) anything.

I am all for promoting girl's groups, clubs, education, and especially role models. But I am not sure that I would want to do it in the form of women's studies. I hope those girl's don't think it will be some wonderful thing that rocks the school world. The girls will be sitting there dutifully in the classroom, listening to some teacher who's only interested in the paycheck dictate from some textbook about some Emily Stowe. Great.

What about bringing the girls to the ice rink, and teaching them hockey? Get Z, AJ (Angela James) or Cassie Campbell out on the ice with them? Those are the women we got to interact with. They were kick-ass role models, and they've won gold in the Olympics for years! What about inviting the girls to an Aeros game, and letting them interview the players, or organize a dinner with those hockey players if teaching the students to play is too much? They'll learn interviewing skills, and be able to find out that these role models are real, not some diseased Dr. Chick from 1867 who died. I don't think most highschool girls can really understand the concept of Martyr.

If the point of women's studies is to inspire and educate MORE young women, and get them more interested in what women should be like, and not the media stereotype, then don't just "blow into the newsroom"; get out on a community level and get groups of girls going!

Beginnings

Kabuki: those who hear not the music think the dancer's mad. Emi is lost in motion ... when we find her. Slowly dancing with the ghost of music past.

Small Gods: Now consider the tortoise and the eagle. The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it ...

The Buddha of Suburbia: My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. I am often considered to be a funny kind of Englishman, a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories.

I am trying to write a book.
I haven't written anything but school essays, class notes, and doodling in my diary for years.
Now, I want to write a (short) graphic novel.
I have to do it in less than 2 months.
Let me re-phrase that: my goal is to create a short story that has wit, uses illustrations extensively to highlight and augment the story-telling process, and is applicable to an audience largely comprised of young adults (18-24). This will be a story of self-discovery, well, for the main character anyway.

Haha. Very funny. But I need to have faith that this is actually possible. Well, some sort of book better be possible, because I am taking book design this year and I am there4ore required to come up with SOMETHING. I have been interested in this kind of thing for a while; my Dad and my friend keep feeding me comic books and graphic novels, etc, my best friend of 9 years is almost over her head in anime, RPG, she's an author, etcetc, and these interests are things that she's shared with me ....
So it would seem to be a logical choice. That, and I'm not really interested in a book about cats, bicycles, politics, or the extinction of dinosaurs. I've been to so many art shows with my Dad, seen different arts magazines, spent a year in Art Fundamentals at Sheridan; a blessed year doing NOTHING but doodling (with marks attached at the other end), and I want to produce a book from all of it.

Oi. So to start, I want to study a few books, find out their themes, their character development, the language, pacing and plotline. And somehow use all that information to try to sculpt a story. Then maybe, after the course is over, get it published.

But I'm beginning to think the extinction of dinosaurs might be an easier topic; one that I could handle almost without thinking.

Charlie falls down

The newest Charlie and the Chocolate factory was a flop. I read the book in grade three, and I saw the 1971 Gene Wilder film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". So I have a tainted view of it. However, my sister and I both agreed that the first movie did a much better job at story telling. So what's missing? I don't just mean scenes that are not there, I mean in the story telling experience. I much prefered the Charlie of the first movie, and how he interacted with his grandfather. They were more real. For example, Charlie wasn't some naive little angel who wouldn't dream of ever doing anything bad. He had a human side; the one that got into trouble with Grampa Joe. Willy Wonka was also more real. He played a character who was a little off his rocker, but then at the end of the movie Wonka dropped the facade and spoke seriously to Charlie from an adult's perspective, and that was a huge part of the reward, I felt. To have an adult treat the child as an equal. Here, Wonka is played as some deranged adult with psychological problems who can't get over the experiences from his equally messed up and very controlling father.

I think Burton's film dumbs down the plot, plays to the director's style, and to Johnny Depp as a character, and focuses entirely too much on scenery and Burton's slightly eerie edges. As a child, this film would be in my face and brain numbing. I don't think I would really be able to relate to anything in it; I would just get a feeling of gloss.

Sorry guys, but I just found that movie disappointing, especially at the end, becuase I was expecting Wonka to drop his facade and grow up, but when he didn't at the end of the factory tour, it just went downhill from there. The scenery, however, was quite like the original movie, and quite good.

Finally! Now, where do I get mine?

Tupperware Flat Out Containers
Credit: Tupperware Corp., Worldwide
Tupperware’s FlatOut! storage containers were designed for the consumer who needs flexibility in storage and for busy people on the go—students, working professionals and campers. Its accordion design allows FlatOut! to be adjusted to the appropriate capacity for the food to be stored or for space-saving stackable storage. When the container is closed the seals are completely watertight. For cleaning, they can be stacked like plates into a dishwasher and washed flat. In December 2004, the product was awarded a Good Buy Award by the Good Housekeeping Institute and was named by Fortune magazine as one of the best 25 products of the year in their December 2004 issue. It was also recently awarded a "Product of the Year 2005" award by the German Consumer Plastics Institute.

Daara J

I will be doing more blogging over these next couplr of weeks I hope, and this one is long overdue. This is all about a friday trip to Harbourfront a few weeks ago, and the Senegal group; Daara J. They were captivating! What a stage presence! They got the whole audience up and jumping and dancing, (well, some people stayed sitting, but whatevea) and they were jumping around the stage like they had fire ants in their pants! They had the aisles full, and the rows full there were so many people there.

Not only that, but their music is something everyone can be happy dancing to; they sing about religion, human well-being, "Esperanza", Exodus, and just havin' fun!

Here's a bit more about them, and their concert was GREAT!

"Goree, an island just off the coast of Senegal, was the last bit of the motherland seen by the millions of Africans caught in the slave trade en route to America. What the proprietors of this grossly profitable injustice could never have imagined was the tremendous socio-political impact those slaves would have on the country they were forced to call home. Ancient rhythms, rebellion, and the ability to express pain, suffering, and triumph through art would later manifest in what we have come to know as hip hop.

During Senegal’s 2000 presidential election, Daara J was hired to edit speeches and promote the anti-corruption political campaigns. Successfully bringing new voters to the polls, they were able to share in the defeat of a corrupt regime."

Are the Desert People Winning?

It's the ultimate culture clash.
The desert mentality, against the rain forest mentality. If it were up to me, I'd go with the rain forest view. This is a blog about a Discover magazine article. In it, Robert Sapolsky compares two different kinds of cultures as equals; the desert, and the rain forest.

I have no idea why the desert culture seems to be winning, but I can guess. The desert cultures had to fight for survival in every aspect of their lives. It was a constant battle between the people and their surroundings for possesion of the precious little resources available. Everyone had to hoard as much as they could find, and it really was a survival of the fittest. Later on, these behaviours translated to a fear their way of life will not survive, so they faced everything as a war in order to be the conquerors, and force their ideas on others as right.

On the other hand, their tropic-dwelling counterparts are much more assured of their survival, so they were able to more naturally adopt a laid back lifestyle, still based on survival, but more comfortable and confident with the way things were.

Obviously if you go back to a time where everyone was just trying to survive against the elements, everyone had their set of problems, but according to this cross-cultural study, those who lived in more lush climates have built up very different cultures; ones that were much more open to all opinions, and naturally comfortable with a variety. With differences. Other more typically dry (desert or ice) cultures were more the kill and conquer ones, and these two different approaches are very much alive in the world today. They were carried through religion and other traditional behaviours.

I would like to think that in Toronto culture there are no more constraints that religion or tradition used to have regarding rights and freedoms, but unfortunately that is not so. I am afraid I cannot quote directly, but I once read in another piece of literature that even though religion has lost much of its power and ability to govern peoples' behaviour in larger urban cultures, people are still fishing around, holding onto the same beliefssimply out of stubbornness. You know, the old constricting, "this is the way it was always done". Long after the reason is gone, the wherefore keeps hold.

This article is fascinating for me, and this book; A Cross-Cultural Summary by Robert Textor, would also be interesting to browse through. It would be interesting to see the patterns between cultures and draw my own conclusions. I am becoming more interested in cultures as I seek to define myself, and look for more liberal lifestyle approaches.

Sapolsky remarks that these cross-cultural examinations are often marked by people crying "racist!" at European cultures (ie the "conquerors") using these studies simply for their own proof "that northern European ecosystems produced superior cultures, more advanced morals, technologies, and intellects, and better schnitzel."

Well, they aren't superior. They are just different. That is probably why the subject of culture and differences are being subdued and censored, but that's another post. One difference: desert dwellers are often monotheistic, those who live in the tropics, polytheistic. Millions think monotheistic is better, and would gladly kill or convert (all throughout the centuries, not just current events) to prove they were right. These different climates explain family behaviours, belief systems, sexual patterns, militarism, hunting, what people eat, on and on and on. The main message: your culture is a product of your ecosystems. People need to do that to survive.

When you get to the section "Which kind of culture would you prefer to get traded to?" Sapolsky's writing takes off. It's a brilliant and powerful article. It's also short and sweet, and worth the cover price of $6.50 Cdn. Well, that and Discover is usually a good magazine.