The latest version of Alice In Wonderland is an enjoyable but not nearly fantastical enough movie to really capture the essence of “Alice In Wonderland”. Tim Burton does a really great job of creating a visually rich environment filled with colour and textures. The 3D version adds to the effects for example of the caterpillar blowing smoke in Alice’s face or when Cheshire disappears into thin air. Johnny Depp does a great job as the Mad Hatter in the same way that he does in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; strange, quirky and ultimately original in his own small ways.
That said, the story line tries best to follow the original plot while making it more suitable for the arc of Hollywood movies. Ultimately it feels less fantastical and more motivational than the original story. Feel good confidence building messages for women become more the story and less the wild and weird imagery of Lewis Carroll’s imagination. The worst however is reserved for the dialogue which is a real let down and lacks any of the whimsical, mathematically riddled or just plain fantastical tones of the book. Ultimately, this is the great letdown for me and really takes away from the sense of “falling down the rabbit hole”. WIth a good amount of investment in the dialogue, the movie could have respected the original plot much more authentically while adding a lot. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and the final product falls short of what it could have been given the creative and rich imagination of its director.
The Canadian women’s Olympic hockey team beat the United states in the gold medal game recently in Vancouver. They always seem to do this and according to the IOC, this is a problem. So much so that, unless there is a balance of competition in the next few years, the IOC will possibly pull the women’s version of the sport from the Olympics.
That would be unfortunate.
There are lots of sports which are dominated by a particular country or region. Men’s hockey was a play toy of the USSR until the NHLers started to participate. The austrians are always at the top of the ski rankings. In the summer games, Table tennis hasn’t been competitive in years. Outside of the Olympics, the Tour de France saw Lance Armstrong win year after year without batting an eye. Schumacher couldn’t lose an F1 title if he tried during his time and yet the fans kept coming out.
So what’s the worry?
If indeed the olympics are about encouraging sport and its wide ranging benefits around the world, I could think of nothing worse than to pull a women’s event. Women need sport, arguably more than guys do. It provides an opportunity for women to develop life skills that they otherwise may not have a chance to work on. Sports inject confidence, a hard work ethic and co-operative attributes in all its participants. The world can only gain by having more confident women.
Despite this, women’s sports are always underfunded. It’s a real shame. Pulling women’s hockey from the Olympics will remove one more incentive of countries to fund women’s sports. If anything, the lack of competition shows that we have a lack of funding that needs to be addressed. Spending more should be the call; not pulling the plug. The IOC should be looking to increase the number of female sports at the sacrifice of the men’s. I’d rather remove the men’s hockey tournament – where the NHL and other elite leagues provide more than enough incentive for young boys to play hockey – than the women’s where there is little visible examples for young girls to follow.
If the IOC wants to be a guiding light, it will re-affirm its commitment to women’s sports with investments rather than threats of termination. Women need sports and the world needs more women to play sports.
As a last option, should the IOC continue to press, I would suggest that the US and Canadian teams agree to not compete at the Olympics. If that’s what it takes to ensure that the sport continues to receive attention and money, then we should be happy to make the sacrifice. It would be a shame but ultimately a worthwhile sacrifice.
I’ve been going through the Hitler rants lately (if you haven’t done so, go look them up). Just came across this one. Had to share it with all you software developers out there.
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive. Leacock, Stephen
3 months ago, I moved our java team off of CruiseControl to Hudson CI. It wasn’t hard to convince the team to move; no one was really passionate about CruiseControl. But with little training (ok, actually zero training), the team was quick to setup their own projects on the new Hudson build system and after 3 months of use, we’ve had some great progress.
Here’s what I’ve found and liked about Hudson CI.
First off, Hudson is active. Looking at the CruiseControl bug tracking system, it looks like a year passed between 2.8.2 and 2.8.3. An entire year for a minor update. In comparison, Hudson is pushing out updates if not weekly, then very close to it. Active development of plugins is obvious on Hudson and getting them into your system is a snap. Making it easy for developers to help contribute plugins to the build system an providing such a simple integration of plugins was a stroke of genius. The same can be said of the Apple iPhone App Store. This ease of deployment seems to be crucial to getting third party buy in to your platform. Hudson has totally nailed it.
Next, Hudson is fun. In CC, you can only get so interested in configuring xml files. By providing a simple web interface, Hudson makes managing, upgrading and generally taking ownership of the build machine a lot more fun. I haven’t yet put in the Chuck Norris plugin, but fun little nuggets like that are sprinkled through out Hudson. This is not a trivial point and making your open source product fun to use has a compelling argument. Hudson would be a good proof of that.
Lastly, Hudson is simple. Setting up a build system should be simple. It can get a lot more complicated the more you use it, but a simple build system should be simple. Maven makes this even easier but even without Maven, a simple build system should be just that; simple. Hudson is simple and leads you easily through an initial setup. CC favours simple design over simple use. XML files are easy to understand but are not obvious to configure. Hudson is simple.
I’m actually surprised at how far the classic CC build system has fallen from the pace. Maybe ThoughtWorks has been a lot more interested in the CC.rb version. Maybe they just don’t invest a lot in their projects and are comfortable with where CC is today. Either way, CC seems to be stale and dying.
There are so many build systems that I’d be foolish to say something like ‘Hudson is the best CI system around’. But Hudson CI is certainly worth trying and if you’re still using CC, consider moving to Hudson. I think you’ll be pleasantly be surprised.
Admittedly, it’s hard to follow the show put on by the Chinese two years ago but last night’s opening Olympic ceremonies were disappointing in a distinctly Canadian way.
The whole Olympic movement has been heavily based around the Native Canadians. This, in it’s own right, feels artificial in its sincerity. Whenever Canada wants to put forward an international face, they fall back on the image of Canada as a wild and free land full of fur traders and Natives. For whatever reason, we feel that our modern image as a true multicultural, just society should take a back seat to Totem poles and pictures of distant mountains.
This is unfortunate.
With all of the modern problems that Canada has effectively addressed – health care, education, gay rights to name a few – it’s a real shame that we can’t present our true modern face. Our heritage should not be forgotten. I agree. But we should strive to look forward, not backwards.
For example, the Cirque du Soleil is a fantastic Canadian success story. They are wonderfully creative and distinctly Canadian artists. Had a resource such as the Cirque been used for last night’s show, they could have hit a real home run. It would have been modern, entertaining and forward looking. Sure, there would certainly have been a nod to our heritage but not the kind of naval gazing that went on.
Canada has a fantastic modern urban society that was totally ignored last night. My personal story – likely shared by at least a few hundred thousand kids my age – is one of a diverse ethnic schooling (most of my closest friends in Toronto were not white for example) filled with late night hockey in a modern city. I just couldn’t connect with fiddling, the prairies or “Welcome Poles” with their extended arms. Looking at the people chosen to light the flame, I imagine they would be of the same opinion. Simply put, i didn’t see myself at all in last night’s ceremonies.
The Olympics are the largest stage in the world on which to put your best foot forward; to show the world how far you’ve come and how much you’ve improved. Not just in sports but in all aspects of life. It’s a real shame that Canada didn’t take the opportunity to heart. Instead of showing our modern success stories, we chose to project an image of Canada that, while accurate, is not as valuable as the one most Canadians would recognize as their own.
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.”– Alan Greenspan
New Orleans and Haiti share an obvious connection; they are both relatively poor regions that have been recently wiped out by a natural disaster. What’s yet to be found out is if they share the same future. Let’s hope not.
The rebuilding of New Orleans has been a mess due to a number of problems. It’s population is half that of pre-flood levels. Jobs evaporated like the water that flooded its streets. Fighting between rich and poor citizens prevented a clear plan from taking hold. Even with the best of intentions, significant resources and goodwill at the outset, rebuilding New Orleans has been a failure. Given all of this, what optimism is there for Haiti? Not much.
But there is hope.
Haiti has some advantages that New Orleans didn’t. Ironically, Haiti’s poverty is now its strength. Where New Orleans may have been a problem left to the United States, Haiti is clearly a global challenge. This should help to shine a bright, global light on the challenges of Haiti and hopefully ensure that a diverse and deep range of funding is directed squarely at the small nation. Further, for all that was lost in the quake, much more can be gained with even the most modest efforts. Modern infrastructure can replace the patchwork of resources that existed before. Schools, hospitals and other critical institutions can be built much stronger – both physically and culturally – than before.
Secondly, a great opportunity exists now to radically redefine the culture of Haiti. In all such events there is a very real chance to clean house; to forget the past and mov in a whole new direction. The financial mess was a similar opportunity for the United States (a wasted one, it now appears) and the quake is just such an opportunity. Strong leadership and reaching out to their neighbors could move Haiti towards prosperity. Previously, such opportunities were unthinkable.
The chance of failure is of course massive. The situation could easily – if it hasn’t already – totally self destruct into uncontrolled street violence. Gang mentality could take over forcing whatever businesses and opportunities may still be in Haiti to flee. Population contraction like that seen in New Orleans would be devastating to the country.To prevent this, international support needs to be swift and aggressive. Respect for the people of Haiti needs to be shown but not much for its governments and system of organization. In fact, international support should be intrusive and insist on preventing old divisions of class and power from affecting the rebuilding of the city and country. A long term focus of all effort must be in building a new society – not rebuilding the old one.
The quake has taken the lives of countless people. It has kicked in the teeth of those that have few teeth left to kick. Here it would seem that when it rains, it pours. It has, however, made Haiti an international priority. Ensuring that this opportunity isn’t wasted, may well prove to be one of life’s cruelest blessings.
There’s been a lot of concern in Canada about the recent prorogation of parliament by the Conservative government and there’s been no lack of attention in the Canadian media. Almost exclusively – with the exception of a few lost souls – has it been negative. The government shouldn’t just shut down the operations of government and run into a fox hole at the slightest sign of trouble.
True.
But there’s also been a bunch of writing that would lead you to believe that the Canadian Constitution is in jeopardy and the sky is falling – that Harper has essentially declared himself the state and shut the doors to democracy. He’s violated a sacred oath of some kind in the halls of Canadian Politics (as if that hasn’t been done enough, before). Heck, even the philosophy professors are getting in on the action. Something serious must be afoot.
This is too much.
Sure, Harper has shut down the government. Sure, it looks cowardly and foolish. No one believes the stated reasons for shutting it down and what’s worse, they’re increasingly believing their worse suspicions and fears; that the Conservatives are nasty beasts and that were likely aware of the torture being done on their detainees.
For this, it appears, Harper will pay dearly. Where once he looked strong and in control -images his opponents could only dream of projecting in the past few years -he now appears weak and cowardly. A shaking, shell shocked man, hiding from his own shadow.
I admit, the Canadian system could go for a lot of improvements. The Senate clearly needs reform. Independent councils need more funding and independence.
But Stephen Harper is not a direct threat to our constitution. He is not stealing our democracy. The Canadian people will someday soon have a vote and when they do, they will do so knowing that when push came to shove, Harper turned tail and ran. That’s not the kind of person they’ll want to vote for. And in that vote, Canadians will affirm their democracy and put to rest all the hand wringing and chicken littles for whom the Canadian Democracy sky is falling.
Relax. The system isn’t great. It’s broken in some parts. But it’s working in its own way and i’ll take our democracy over the dysfunctional mess they call the United States of America any day.
