Toronto, Ontario (including Panamania Arts and Culture Celebration, PanAm and ParaPan Games)
Basketball court mural: Solo player shoots hoops in front of @JamiiEsplanade mural led by Elisa (Shalak Attack) Monreal and Julian Periquet, supported by StreetARToronto. Project was unveiled last month before PanAmGames, colours enduring even on a rainy day. Jamii is Swahili for “community”; the Esplanade was a product of the urban reform movement of the early 1970s, with influences by Jane Jacobs. (David Crombie Park, St. Lawrence neighbourhood, Toronto) 20150804Astro Stage: Greek dancing by @LevendiaX Hellenic Folklore Assoc @Taste_Danforth, near Jones Ave. Pedestrian traffic seems denser at the east end of the street festival, with kiddie rides and more community tents. Since we live within biking distance, the neighbourhood, we can visit when the crowds aren’t there. (Taste of the Danforth, Greektown, Toronto) 20150808Landlocked green space: Discovered Cairns Avenue Parkette, a filled-in ravine where Cairns Creek used to flow south into Small’s Pond before 1935. Surrounded by back yards of houses, it’s a ditch with higher grassy areas enjoyed by dogs and their walkers. Entrance on the west side, no exit any other direction. Historical research explains the strange routing of roads in east end Toronto. (Highcroft Road, Upper Beaches, East Toronto) 20150809. “A brief history of Small’s Pond, used then abused” | Chris Bateman | April 21, 2014 | BlogTO at http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/04/a_brief_history_of_smalls_pond_used_then_abused/Summer at 10pm: Thousands hear @jannarden claim @allisoncornell playing with her favourite musician @npstoronto on stage at #panamania. Relaxing songs and good humour have audience enjoying the time together on a cool August evening. Big screen on main stage has fans across the pond spacing out the crowd. (Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) 20150811Electronic music: Synthpop @AustraTalks@npsToronto@to2015 #panamania pumping bass feels like inside a club, yet the band started on the plaza before the sunset. Haven’t heard so much sequencing live since my university days. Entertaining to watch for times when none of three keyboards had hands on keys. Even most drums were electronic. My greying hair was not representative of the audience. Austra is Ryan Wonsiak (keyboards), Maya Potestski (drums), Katie Stelmanis (vocals and keys), Dorian Wolf (bass and keys). (Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) 20150812Escorted transport: Ontario Provincial Police motorcycle brigade clears way for buses with ParaPan athletes. Must be on their way to closing ceremonies. Uniformed police at Front Street intersections holding back pedestrians. Buses looked empty, so spectators probably went downtown early to get good seats. (Front Street, east of Jarvis Avenue, Toronto). 20150815
Carnival and vendors alley: Sunday late afternoon sees Waterfront Night Market already in action, from the supermarket directly south. Biked through heavy traffic in Portlands for supermarket shopping, finding lots of pedestrians looking for entertainment. Free sample booths inside store were fully manned. When the parking lot gets taken over for an event, where does T&T expect their customers to load their groceries into cars? (T&T Supermarket, Cherry Street, Toronto Portlands) 20150816 MOCCA Courtyard: Dean Baldwin (2015) “Queen Street Memorial Fountain”, one of three parts of the “Queen West Yacht Club” installation. Running water trickles, steps away from Queen Street West and the streetcar. Picnic tables outside give the opportunity to hang out in a convivial scenario, in the final weekend before the MOCCA closes doors at this location, and moves farther west. (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto) 20150822 Edward Gardens: Annual visit to renew vows for the 30th time, with three sons still in town. Cool summer day encouraged more leisurely walk. We watched the ducks in the stream, and had a woodchuck cross our path, that our city-raised sons hadn’t seen live, before. Fewer visitors to the park on a Monday afternoon. (Edward Gardens, Don Mills, Toronto) 20150824Island airport ferry: A new path not taken, as the tunnel to the Island Airport is an option for pedestrians. Drivers who want to park on the Island can still wait for the ferry. The ship sailed just as we approached the water. (Toronto Island Ferry) 20150825HarbourfrontCentre TaiwanFest: Neo-psychedelic indie rock @EchoBand Echo announced songs in Mandarin, and had audience dancing in their seats. Detailed instructions of directions for hands, up, down, left, right. Much of the audience wouldn’t understand the lyrics, but music plus demonstrations are a universal language. Taiwan Fest also had The Art of Seating, Pan-Asian Culinary Competition, and the Holy Sheep from LunarFest. (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto) 20150829Harbourfront Centre: As part of Taiwan Fest, the Holy Sheep exhibit encouraged visitors to take their photos as a celebration of the Year of the Sheep. The plastic white sheep (and one black sheep) last appeared at the Vancouver Art Gallery in February for Lunar New Year. (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto) 20150829
TheRex: Last night of @RexHotelToronto @TaraKannangara @Colin_Story @MackLongpre #ChrisPruden #JulianAB Sundays residency of August. Two sets, new CD on sneak preview in advance of official release. Tara Kannangara (vocals, trumpet), Colin Story (guitar), Chris Pruden (piano), Julian Anderson-Bowes (bass), Mackenzie Longpre (drums) (Rex Hotel, Toronto) 20150830
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates.
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences: There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify. (1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done. (2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done. For […]
The final publication of the October 2016 Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium workshop "Some Future Paths for Design Professionals: DesignX and Systemic Design" was published as “Systemic Design Agendas in Education and Design Research” in FormAkademisk, following 2 years of rewrites, reviews and revisions.
Federated wiki is deployed on a node.js server, an environment which has become available on some cPanel shared hosting providers. Here are some instructions written while restoring a wiki site originally installed in 2014-2015 on a cloud provider.
Reading The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis, reminded me of a PhD course at UBC with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, before they were recognized as Nobel prize candidates.
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Talk at @gtalug on Let’s Learn Tech Online @torontolibrary with @p2pu @CiscoNetAcad @TorontoESS. Linux Unhatched online course conducted in groups of 8 to 12, meetings twice per week in person. Non-technical facilitator encourages peers to work out understanding together. Found…Read more ›
The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›
Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
Meeting effectiveness is reduced after 7 people are involved, say @BainInsights consultants #Blenko, #Mankins, #Rogers. Follow the Rule of Seven for meetings. Who should come to a meeting is always a sensitive issue, and the basic precept is often “The more the merrier.” But more is rarely better when it comes to making decisions. Our […]
