Toronto, Ontario; Orillia, Ontario
Ontario Place Cinesphere: Exited IMAX theatre at dusk, after enjoying Top Gun Maverick in a sold-out show. This cinema was the first permanent 70mm projector in 1971 when I saw “North of Superior”, compared to seeing my first commercial film here, tonight. We left home early to drive to the venue, not anticipating the crowd at the east gate going to see Young Money and Drake, as we crossed over to the west gate. (Ontario Place Cinesphere, Lake Shore Boulevard West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220806Chef 88 Oriental Cuisine: Full table of 10, with family dinner coordinated with arrivals from the south. Previous day travel from Woodstock NY by sister and husband via automobile, and son #4 via airplane. Catching up on news, maybe another opportunity later in the week. (Chef 88 Oriental Cuisine, Kennedy Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20220807Dim Sum King: Summer Systems Conferences Debriefings planned outdoors for Grange Park were driven inside due to rain. Round table was a good configuration for comments and questions, but food arriving and active acoustics were distracting. Inclined to return to online meeting for next month. (Dim Sum King, Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220808Port of Orillia: Tourism stop #LawrenceBoyer (2016) Weirs Story Pole depicts indigenous fisherman above, with fish getting tangled up in the threads below. Sister who actually lived in this city, early in her career, remarked how much the waterfront had changed. We gather in Toronto every few years, so trips north have a frequency approaching decades (Port of Orillia, Centennial Drive, Orillia, Ontario) 20220810Pizzeria Via Mercanti: Wood-fired Napoletana pizzas in a relaxed Kensington Market vibe a nice change from a week of Cantonese cuisine. Downtown evening with sister and brother-in-law, who moved away from downtown Toronto (and uptown Richmond Hill), and haven’t seen how much the city has changed. After-dark stroll across College Street and down Spadina Avenue, alongside viewing new condo apartments of sons now residing on the west side of town. (Pizzeria Via Mercanti, Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220810Centre for Social Innovation Spadina: Laneway BBQ of burgers south of @csiTO coworking space, combined with Salad Club providing greens while invitees contribute toppings and dressings. Brief pause for speeches to recognize the sponsors, who were also manning the grills. A mix of members from the Spadina building + Bathurst Annex + virtual members with online privileges, enjoying mocktails and cocktails under perfect weather conditions. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220811Bentway Studio: Street furniture #MichaelLeePoy (2022) Moko Jumbie design has a mandoria of two intersecting congruent circles, representing eyeballs. Practice of balancing on stilts for the West African masquerade (mas) tradition in Afro-Caribbean communities calls for stepped tiers that afford seating, mounting and training. Further west are apartment towers of the CityPlace planned neighbourhood, filling over over the past 10 years. (Bentway Studio, Fort York Boulevard, CityPlace, Toronto, Ontario) 20220813Canoe Landing Park: Four times normal life size @DougCoupland (2009) Tom Thomson’s Canoe is at southwest corner of park, elevated above the height of the elevated Gardiner Expressway to the south. The bright red sculpture outer structure rests on concrete, made of steel and resin sufficiently durable for children to climb on top. A wall of condominium towers partitions the city from Toronto Harbour beyond. (Canoe Landing Park, Gardiner Expressway, CityPlace, Toronto, Ontario) 20220813Union Station: Outdoor stage @kazdouramusic Sunday evening @smallworldnotes series. Modern western electric guitar, keyboard synth and drum kit, yet vocals in Arabic understood by only a fraction of the audience. Lady at the next table was animated in recognition of songs, eventually sufficiently moved to stand up with belly dancing thrusts. (Union Station, Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220814Centre for Social Innovation Annex: Panel discussion after @csiTO Cinema #FoodForTheRestOfUs @CarolineCoxFilm presented by @FoodSecureCAN @TYFPC . Documentary about leaders in 4 marginalized communities returning to the land, hands-on. Post-movie commentary relating programs in the region that provide opportunities and education for youth otherwise disadvantaged. (Centre for Social Innovation Annex, Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20220816Ontario Place West Channel: Bike riding westbound at dusk, the daylight is getting shorter past mid-summer. The Toronto Windshare turbine was turning slowly, generating electricity. To the south, I could the Toronto Summer Live Muisc Festival playing in Trillium Park, while bright lights of the Canadian National Exhibition were to the north. (Ontario Place West Channel, Martin Goodman Trail, Toronto, Ontario) 20220819Spadina Avenue at Dundas Street: Slow martial arts performance bearing staffs, on north stage of Chinatown Festival, while singing on south stage. Audience maybe half non-Asian, the other half Asian but not exclusively Chinese. Southbound Spadina Avenue closed to traffic for two blocks, while northbound traffic seems notably unimpeded. (Dundas Street at Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220821Roncesvallles Avenue: Thankful to an honest anonymous Torontonian who turned in my lost wallet at a bank branch, cross town. I only noticed the missing item on Sunday night, after biking back from Spadina Chinatown, home. Teller phoned me after tracing a credit card. I have already requested replacements, and gotten temporary ID issued. (RBC Royal Bank, Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220824Edward Gardens: Annual tradition of revisiting the fountain and renewing our vows, with a rare occasion to have all four sons in town at the same time, with grandfather. Reversed order to have dinner earlier, and then stroll around the gardens before dusk. Noted that we will lose our photographer from the past few years, as an official marriage means she should be included in future years. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20220824
Centenary Hospital: Half dome mirror shows waiting in corridor outside CT Scan room in Diagnostic Imaging departrment. Urgent case prioritized appointment early in morning, waiting room filled up, and gurneys were staged in the hallway. Time in machine is only 5 minutes, but total includes drinking liquid, changing into gown, and inserting IV, for about 2 hours. (Scarborough Health Network, Centenary Hospital, Ellesmere Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20220830
Digging into philosophies underlying the systems sciences, pragmatism seems to have been a strong historical foundation for some research streams. In ongoing discussions, Gary Metcalf and I have been approaching pragmatism from two directions. Gary has been tracking from mid-1800s forward, listening to the audiobook The Metaphysical Club, with a history of figures living through […]
The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing. Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr. A concise […]
A luminary in the systems movement, C. West Churchman, showed some respect for Chinese philosophy, with the I Ching (Yi Jing) in particular. Deborah Hammond was encouraged by West Churchman into joining and becoming a historian of the systems movement. In her 2003 book, Hammond wrote of her conversations with Churchman, back into his days […]
The 1969 publication of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by Fred E. Emery as a Penguin Modern Management paperback, can be regarded as a milestone. The articles date from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the first wave of systems thinking was on the rise. For the June session of Systems Thinking Ontario, we stepped […]
Within the Systems Thinking Ontario community, we were fortunate to have Nenad Rava step up to explain how the Sustainable Development Goals came to be, and relate them to systems change. This May session of Systems Thinking Ontario was a quick follow-on for the March edition on Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs. […]
The book Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals, published in 2002 by Routledge, was released as open access in 2023 by Taylor-Francis for readers who don’t have access to a university library. For the March edition of Systems Thinking Ontario, we were honoured to celebrate the release with editor-coauthors Kaitlin Kish […]
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 ›
For the @ArchFoundation, #TimIngold distinguishes outcome-oriented making from process-oriented growing, revisiting #MartinHeidegger “Building Dwelling Thinking”. Organisms are made; artefacts grow. The distinction seems obvious, until you stop to ask what assumptions it contains, about the inside and outside of things…Read more ›
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 […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
After 90 minutes on phone and online chat with WesternUnion, the existence of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland is denied, so I can’t send money from Canada. TicinoTurismo should be unhappy. The IT developers at Western Union should be dissatisfied that customer support agents aren’t sending them legitimate bug reports I initially tried the […]
