Toronto, Ontario
Muzda Bakery: “What kind of bread is that?” “Just bread”. Shop touting Gujarati specialities and Indian biscuits offers fresh western style wheat loaves in a flat boule shape. Toronto east side scene of Chinese bicyclist in shorts asking for 3 loaves, a South Asian visitor dressed in white robes suggesting to buy 4, so I acquiesced to take home 4 loaves. (Muzda Bakery, Danforth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170607Vicky Keith Point: Long route to Toronto Harbour Lighthouse, southmost tip of Tommy Thompson Park via the endikement road on the lakeward side of headland by bicycle, since the bridge on the more direct path is out. Loop road is ringed by rubble. some stacked in artistic ways by other visitors. CN Tower and bank towers of downtown Toronto across the water. (Toronto Harbour Lighthouse, Vicky Keith Point, Tommy Thompson Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20170608Fabian’s Cafe: Tidy German pastry shop serving wiener schnitzel and crepes for lunch, an out-of-the-way meeting place with friends further out on the east end. European style in a strip plaza with many South Asian varieties nearby, on the major suburban street. (Fabian’s Cafe, Markham Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20170613Leaside Park: A few children climbing on brightly coloured playground equipment at the end of a long, empty sports field. City park just northeast after crossing the Constitution Bridge over the Don River ravine, (Leaside Park, Millwood Road at Overlea Boulevard, East York, Ontario) 20170614Taylor Creek Park: Paved bike path, view from above on Woodbine Bridge west, shows density of trees within the urban forest. Span over Taylor Massey Creek, a tributary of the Don River system flowing westward. Apartment towers in the distance are in the Flemingdon Park neighbourhood. (Taylor Creek Park from the Woodbine Bridge, O’Connor Drive, East York, Ontario) 20170615St. Joseph Street: Five lines of text in stainless steel, Eldon Garnet (2015) “Artifacts of Memory” 10 metres high. Installation comes into view just west of Yonge Street, unveiled in March 2016. Street art that is durable even in snows of Canadian winters. (St. Joseph Street, downtown Toronto, Ontario) 20170617Congee Queen: Father’s Day isn’t so important to me, so sons made it Grandfather’s Day by organizing lunch. Bustling Sunday crowds in popular Chinese family eatery. Succeeded in eating less meat and more vegetables this time, but the taste of salt still fills the mouth a few hours later. (Congee Queen, Agincourt Mall, Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough, Ontario) 20170618Laneway demolition: Just up our street, one of the houses is having its garage demolished. The backhoe excavator was small, and the dump truck to remove the detritus was practically the full width of our laneway. We have construction at the top of our street, the middle of our street, and major plans coming for the bottom of our street. (Booth Avenue, Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170620York University Convocation Big Screen: Noah Ing, Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Information Technology, minor in Environmental Studies, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University Convocation, June 20, 2017. Album of the day’s proceedings at flickr.com/photos/daviding/albums/72157682445003523 . Full name of Noah Peter Jin Ying Yee Ing has never been correct in the university registration. (York University Aviva Centre, Toronto, Ontario) 20170620York University Convocation: Cap and gown on our third son’s graduation day. Limit of three tickets meant only parents and grandfather were invited. (York University Aviva Centre, Toronto, Ontario) 20170620
Rees Street Waterfront: Massive stone inukshuk, Muskoka Chairs and picnic table facing Inner Harbour, with sailboats in the distance. Grassy knoll just beyond the Harbourfront canoe rentals, if you don’t own your own watercraft. Toronto Police Marine docks just to the east, HTO Park just to the west. (Rees Street Waterfront, Harbourfront, Toronto, Ontario) 20170622Yorkville Park: Words Quartet @AmandaTosoff @TorontoJazzFest staged between 700 ton Muskoka granite outcrop and rain curtain. This project led by pianist who usually performs instrumentals, female voice enriches show with harmonic counterpoint. Compact venue is a welcome change from sprawling public plaza downtown. (Village of Yorkville Park, Cumberland Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20170624Rorschach Brewing: Stainless steel tanks at back of craft brewery cofounded by chemical engineers extending the knowledge gained in university. Friendly east end venue for meetup on Cognitive, AI and Data Science. Group included many young people relatively new to the field. (Rorschach Brewing Co., Eastern Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170626156 Booth Ave.: Across our street, two alarm fire at 3:30 a.m. called out 12 trucks and 45 firefighters. This morning, the exit out the front of our house was blocked as a crime scene. One neighbour has an exterior video camera capturing intruders on the scene in the night. Fire trucks are now gone, yellow police tape is around that property. Houses to the north and south both damaged. (156 Booth Avenue, Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170627Yorkville: Hazelton stage @TorontoJazzFest @crymmusic Chelsea and the Cityscape, the more pop-oriented group of bandleader McBride. She says that she would rather play radio songs than singing about her old boyfriends. (Toronto Jazz Festival, Hazelton Avenue, Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario) 20170627Heliconian Club: Intimate stage @TorontoJazzFest @phronesismusic trio playing for first time in town. Attentive, appreciative audience, venue full for early evening gig. Band reported short sleep and stressful journey on travel today, but performance was energetic and precise. (Heliconian Hall, Hazelton Avenue, Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario) 20170627
156-158 Booth Avenue demolition: The day after a two-alarm fire, an excavator is clearing the house on the property. Both 156 and 158 semi-detached structures are unsafe, so there will be reconstruction ahead. This view is from our front yard, technically inside the yellow taped zone with workers and investigators. (156-158 Booth Avenue, Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170628
Hazelton Stage: Moody @TorontoJazzFest @mtwstevens trio musicianship extended sometimes by programmed loops and electronic effects. Live performance with band members attentive to each other on original compositions. Noted that the guitarist bandleader chooses to play from stage right, not the center. (Toronto Jazz Festival, Hazelton Avenue Stage, Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario) 20170629
The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program. As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]
The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988. In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”. Proceedings normally are published in the year following. In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General […]
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
