it's too cold and i'm too burned out from work to do any deep blogging tonight, so instead, i will unleash some personality quiz crap that i've been saving up over the past weeks. stay warm, friends!

33%

69%

50%

- g

song of the day for being too tired to do stuff: lazy, X-press 2 (featuring david byrne)

day after day, people ask me, "hey, you're a successful internet architect-type of guy - what do YOU do to relax and unwind after wrangling the wills of men and computers alike day after day, making the world safe from unhandled exceptions and enabling business processes and celebrity gossip via the internet?" well, let me tell you, i like to sit down with a tall glass of water and draw skinny blonde california chicks who sing and strut!!! ok. not really. but these girls, corporate-pop-constructs though they may be, have the rock-star flair down pat. this sketch is TERRIBLE (i think aly or aj (i'm not sure who is who) looks a tad constipated - but that could be ROCK AND ROLL FEVER), but it was fun to get caught up in their thrill and energy and try and get it down in larger-than-life HB. i'm still trying to get caught up on all the art projects that i want to do, but it's hard with all of the real life that i've got to deal with as well. i'm aiming for 52 sketches in my sketchbook category by the end of the year... let's see if i have better luck with that than with the 52 adventures in 2007.

- g

lately, i’m feeling that blogging is becoming more and more acceptable behaviour, like allowing thong underwear to peek out over your jeans.  i have very old and dear friends, one who i never would have imagined would open her private life to anonymous scrutiny, turning to blogs to communicate with distant friends and family.  important corporate guys i know are also interested in blogging as a way of raising their corporate visibility and broadening their communications network.  and of course, there are the activists and the inspired who persistently try and contribute meaningfulness to the cacophonous avalanche of information that is the internet. all of this has happened contrary to my belief that (social) blogging was only suitable for single men, or boys who lived at home in their parents’ basements – in other words people with nothing to lose and no connections to exploit.  as a blogger for some time, i’m happy to see that it’s overcoming the stigma that it has suffered in the past.

however, recent blog experiences have caused me to rethink my own perspective on sharing every detail of my life on the internet.  last year i joined facebook, and i was fairly dubious about it.  the odd thing about that in hindsight is that i was/am far more exposed by my blog than by anything that i could put on facebook and realizing that has started to cloud my whole point of view of what i put on my blog.

here’s an excellent example.  recently i was poked by a stranger on facebook.  there were a couple of possible vectors from which i could have known this person, and since she was a gorgeous, young woman, i didn’t see the harm in trying to find out what the poke was all about [1].  the story went that she had done a google search on “top gun centrifuge” to randomly research a whimsical topic that popped into her head – i think to compare these two rides at Canada’s Wonderland.  as fate would have it, i wrote about both rides last year from my trip to that amusement park, which according to google, makes me the world's fourth leading authority on "top gun centrifuge" (an honour of which i am most proud).  rather unbelievably and contrary to any good sense at all, she kept browsing the site, found my post on facebook, then found me and poked me there. 

so on the one hand, it was a pleasant surprise to have my blog result in meeting new and interesting people who are interested in things that are interesting to us both.  ok great when it’s charming young ladies.  but what if instead of charming young ladies, some pathological neo-fascist war criminal had found my blog doing a search for “top gun centrifuge”, read through to something like … let’s say… the pride parade post, and decided that i was guilty of crimes against humanity and marked me for death?  that’s kind of the worst case scenario… but let’s say… what if i decide to run for public office in 10 years or so, and some muck-raking scumbag reporter finds a cached copy of my post regarding something compromising?  i can’t possibly see all the myriad possible ways that this information could be used against me in the future, although i do see a few ways that it benefits me in the present.

it’s ironic that making a nice new friend on facebook would cause me to rethink the decision to import some of the more personal blog entries from the last year to the new blog.  it’s ironic to me also that this would become such a difficult topic for me to work through in my head and that i would then decide to write about it on my blog anyway.  i dunno.  other bloggers out there?  any thoughts?  don’t you feel at risk by putting it all out there?  i mean, at very least i’m reading your blogs and i might snap one day and hunt you all down myself?  ok –  disregard that last line – i might want to run for public office one day.

- g

song of the day for enhancing self-containment: no more i love yous, by my darling, lovely, enchanting, mesmerizing annie lennox

[1] as an extended aside, i’m not sure i get the whole notion of “poking” in the first place.  it is such an unpredictable gesture that seems designed to confound explanation.  i have been poked by close friends who i’ve not yet befriended on facebook; i’ve been poked by their sisters; i’ve been poked by friends i have already befriended on facebook; and now, i’ve been poked by complete strangers. people randomly poke members of the opposite sex on facebook to see if they are interested in dating; awkward friends poke old friends to see if they think it’s worthwhile resparking communication; i can see using poking as a means of discouraging someone from ever going on facebook again… there’s too many uses for poking.

a friend at work told me last week that scientists had cloned a heart.  i scoffed in disbelief.  i know fully well that if you want to grow a heart, you need to grow a whole other organism in order to coordiante all of the developmental triggers and events that are necessary for the proper formation of an organ.

today, i looked up the reference, and it appears that researchers have "generated" a new heart from an old one.  the key to this process is "decellularization" which i managed to get through three years of honours molecular biology without hearing about.  apparently, it is possible to remove all of the cells that constitute and organ, while keeping the "extracellular matrix" of the organ intact.  that's a little like... um... what's a good analogy...  taking all the cans out of one of those plastic-seagull-murdering-plastic-six-pack holders and being left with the holder.  the holder can then be used as a 3-dimensional template to guide the deposition and development of nascent tissues.

this sounds really promising and it's incredibly important research.  for decades, biologists have been wrestling with the questions of how, from an egg and a sperm, two cells can so perfectly, predictably and precisely divide millions and millions of times with just the right degree of differentiation to form something as impossibly complicated and miraculous as a cat... or even a human.  it was long believed (by me) that the only way that you would ever be able to "grow" a replacement part like a heart or a brain or a liver would be to grow an entire person... but this research seems to indicate that there might be alternatives. 

there are still huge obstacles to overcome.  the heart is a pretty simple thing (rather poetically) - it's essentially a giant mass of cardiac tissue that has to have a certain shape and potential for nerve conduction.  its cellular composition is contractile by design, so that it beats is no big deal to me.  compared to say, a kidney that has incredibly complex structure, chemical, ionic and hydrological gradients that have to be perfectly maintained, you can't just assemble a mass of kidney cells, even in the right shape, and expect it to work.  it's too intricately designed. in situ, developing organs are extremely-precisely exposed to very specific metabolic factors that guide the developing organism to activate and deactivate particular metabolic processes which allow it to take the required specialized form of skin, or blood vessel, or neuron, or glandular tissue, or bone.  tasks like growing limbs with different kinds of tissues are going to be much much harder to do even with some form of matrix. 

i owe my friend an apology for my disbelief, although i'm certainly not convinced that what these scientists have done is create a viable substitute heart, so much as made heart-cell slurry and then shaped it into a heart that then gels and reacts similarly to a real heart.  but if i had heart disease, that would still be music to my ears.

this decellularization technology is fascinating and makes for great dinner conversation, and believe me, this is an incredible medical milestone for mankind.  spare parts for humans?  can you see where this is going???

- g

song of the day for gaining eternal life: who wants to live forever, queen (watch this - it's breathtaking! freddie forever!!)

this evening, after work, i was trolling around youtube and i came across a curious number of featured links to a subject entitled “the davos question”.  the davos question refers to a challenged issued by the world economic forum to answer the question, “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?”  now, asking this question is a little like asking “what one thing would you do that would solve all the world’s problems and fulfil all of your wildest dreams and desires” – it’s an impossible challenge that has no reasonable answer that could possibly be satisfactory.  however, it does challenge one to think of the possible responses, and the myriad range of answers could all eventually go to a combined policy that could result in some real and effective change in the world.

being the megalomaniacal ego that i am, i spent the rest of the evening pondering the question, “if i were the supreme ruler of the planet, what changes would i make to the way things currently are, to try and fix the problems that i see out of my window, while maximizing freedoms and potential for development for all the nations of the world.”  not the original question, i realize, but a way of addressing the challenge that makes sense to me (and a way out of having to choose just ONE thing to get the world back on track).  here’s what i’ve come up with:

• make oil companies not municipalities responsible for infrastructure maintenance costs:  in toronto over the weekend, we had a hundred cars involved in multiple crashes due to inadequately managed infrastructure.  to prevent loss of property and life, someone has to ensure that these systems are maintained and upgraded.  it seems to me that the oil companies, more than anyone else, prosper in direct proportion to the number of vehicles on the road, and therefore, it should be their fiscal responsibility, to ensure that those thoroughfares are safe and well-maintained;
  
• cap personal net worths at $100 million: this will never fly in a million years.  but it seems to me that about $100 million should be enough money to satisfy the most ambitious of entrepreneurs, and anything else should be gravy that can be redistributed to those on the planet who are still in need;
  
• allow the trading of stocks and commodities to happen monthly rather than daily: our global economy is volatile only because it is so highly speculative and reactionary.  can you imagine what would happen if companies and industries could plan their development and act on foreseeable impacts rather than worrying on a day-to-day basis how every single decision would impact the next day’s trading volumes and prices?  again – this will never happen, but i think it’s a fantastic idea;
  
• ban motorized personal conveyances: this one pretty much speaks for itself.  i long for a day when the only motorized vehicles i see on the roads are public transportation and emergency vehicles;
  
• license children/parenting: a fundamental human right – the choice to have offspring.  but with the population of the planet escalating out of control, with modern medicine keeping everything with a pulse unnaturally animated, one has to ask how the planet can sustain a perpetually doubling population;
  
• mandate materials reclamations centres in industrialized centres:   i would love it if all the scrap heaps and junkyards of the world could be converted into useable, available sources of raw materials for future use.  or for star destroyers.  we will totally need star destroyers once the colonization of space begins in earnest;
  
• convert municipal infrastructure amenities (eg. steeetlights, traffic signals) to solar power: the skies of every urban centre that i’ve ever been to are star-less due to the profusion of streetlights and lamps that turn night into day.  we have the technology to relieve that drain of energy from our consumption of non-renewable energy sources.  let’s just do it;
  
• invest in research for alternate forms of combustible fuels (eg.  methane, ethane): natural gas is a great way to cook and heat.  it can be manufactured, collected and stored and employing it has a positive impact on the reduction of greenhouse gases.  we need to get on this, so that i can get a wok and stir-fry more effectively than i can with an electrical stove-top element;
  
• provide tax incentives for personal expenditures in renewable energy including solar, wind and geothermal energy: if you must live on an acreage and have all that available land and sky, you should at very least be self-sufficient now that technologies exist for you to do so.  i will come and hook you up myself, for a modest fee;
  
• invest in solar or fuel cell technology on a home-sized scale: if these can be used to drive a car, then they should be good to run a house;
  
• mandate minimum area living spaces in condominium dwellings; these urban structures can be efficient and viable solutions to pressures to urbanize, but they must be humane alternatives to urban sprawl
  
• tax deleterious products that are non-renewable: we already do this, but the levies on such products could help to offset the costs of starting up many of these other initiatives.

i’ve supplied all of these suggestions from the hip and with virtually no deeper research than my university training and a few google searches.  i wonder what smarter, more educated, more insightful people than i have come up with?  i guess we’ll find out shortly when the WEF releases its responses to the davos challenge.

- g

song of the day for ruling the world: everybody wants to rule the world, tears for fears