Short bike rides around town, in variable spring weather under pandemic stay-at-home orders,
Toronto, Ontario
Wilson Rail Yard: Looking west into developing Keating Channel Precinct, with a sliver of land between the Don River shunted towards the city centre to the south, and the GO Transit Don Yard to the north. Metrolinx has plans for adding 5 new tracks and reconfiguring 3 tracks, to accommodate train movements for future Regional Express Rail. Land has been owned by the Toronto Port Authority for a long while, infrastructure takes time. (Wilson Rail Yard, Lakeshore Boulevard East, Toronto, Ontario) 20200401Coffee And Clothing: Paid more attention to “Free Food” #CommunityFridge and pantry, outside of shop just west of @GerrardSquare. Sign says “Take what you need. Leave what you can”. “Do leave: Fresh produce, dairy, bread, protein, pantry items, grab and go foods, personal care items, PPE”. A network of volunteers in mutual aid for those struggling with food security. (Coffee and Clothing, Pape Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20210402Strada Lane: Tracks originally leading to Toronto Container Port are covered over by pavement, southbound curving to the west. On the other side of the fence is a yard of aggregate, amongst many other piles of earth and gravel around the Port Lands. Turning basin to the west, Tommy Thompson Park to the south, Leslie Street Allotment Gardens to the east. (Strada Lane, Port Lands, Toronto, Ontario) 20200407House of Parashos: Painted white house in Hellenistic theme turns heads of cyclists and drivers, northbound on the one-way residential street, in contrast with the duller-hued Victorian buildings. Patriarch immigrated to Canada in the 1980s, and freshens the paint annually. Surprised to see this style on the west side of town, Greektown is conventionally along the Danforth on the east side. (House of Parashos, Shaw Street, Christie Pits neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20210410Massey Hall: Shuter Street at Yonge Street shut down, as a crane lowered a large ladder cage from the theatre vertically to the ground. Easing the steel structure to horizontal, then crews reattached cables to swing the it over to the flatbed truck. Construction work would seem counter to the new pandemic lockdown additions announced by the province, yesterday. (Massey Hall, Shuter Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20210417R. Fraser Elliott Building: Kosso Eloul (1978) Innercity Gate sculpture welds three black stainless steel rectangular boxes in a precarious balance. Straight lines show influences of artist’s studies with Frank Lloyd Wright. Outside a wing of Toronto General Hospital, not on a medical visit, just bicycle tourism. (R. Fraser Elliott Building, Elizabeth Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20210425
Spadina Quay Wetlands: Anne Roberts (1999) Bird House Sculpture is a set of buildings doll-sized, raised on stilts over the natural habitat, a dry bed at the end of winter. Harkens back to the early 20th century, when industrial businesses were alongside recreational spaces by the harbour. No apparent signs of birds interested in nesting in the structure. (Spadina Quay Wetlands, Queen’s Quay West, Harbourfront, Toronto, Ontario) 20210426
The soy ice cream at King’s Cafe and shwarma at Ghazale remind us that Toronto operates nearly 24 hours per day — in some neighbourhoods.
I first starting living in downtown Toronto in 1976, so I sometimes forget that other people haven’t been around the city as much as I have. After a long day of work on Friday — when I hadn’t left the house — I suggested that we might go out for dessert. Diana, Ryan and Eric were home, and Terra was visiting.
Upon getting stuck in the traffic congestion on Queen Street West, I decided that we would try King’s Cafe in Kensington Market. A major feature of King’s is that they’re vegan. Non-dairy desserts are notoriously difficult to find. We arrived while they were closing up, and they let us in just for dessert.
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 […]
On my May trip through the UK, I accepted an offer to lead an Expert-Led Session at the University of Hull. I had previously been a Research Fellow of the Centre for Systems Studies, but haven’t travelled to the Hull for some years. As we worked out the arrangements, I found out that the seminar […]
I’ve been checking on the breadth of some personal research on systems thinkers. (The list is incomplete, and may orient more towards systems scientists). Searching on Scopus gives an h-Index that counts scholarly references (with a boost, for the first person on the list who received a Nobel prize in chemistry). The list below is […]
Reading a theorist who espouses the dao (tao) in their systems work? Here’s a challenge: is the writer referring to daojia, or daojiao? Daojiao 道教 is religious daoism, gaining legitimacy only with the Tang dynasty (712-758 CE), after many centuries with the religion of Confucianism as dominant. Classical Chinese philosophy is hard to interpret even […]
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 ›
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 […]
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) […]
