Thanks to Andrea Loewen and Xua Xua Productions, I have two tickets to give away for FALLING OUT: hard feelings in mixed mediums. A description of the event from the invite:
A live performance experience on the theme of departures. Letters, poems and monologues set against an evolving backdrop of film, music and dance. Contributions from the audience via text messaging. A unique and spontaneous theatre event over two nights.
FALLING OUT: hard feelings in mixed mediums takes place on April 3rd and 4th, at 9pm, at The Beaumont Studios, 316 West 5th. The opening night party features DJ Revise, with 0riginal artwork by Jeff Denomme of Haunted Zoo. Tickets are $6 advance, $8 door and you can purchase tickets in advance here.
Directed and conceived by Josh McNorton, co-directed by Dani Bryant, music by persono trio (Shawn Cole, Michelle Faehrmann, Josh McNorton), choreography by Andrea Loewen, production design by Noel Planet.
The event will feature performances by Veronica Campbell, Andrea Loewen, Katie Miller, Nick Poisson, Nevada Yates Robart, Jason Yau.
I’ll be drawing the winner of these tickets on Friday April 2nd at 2:30pm. You can enter to win by retweeting this post, or dropping a comment. I will re-draw the winner if he/she doesn’t contact me within 24 hours of me announcing the winner.
I rarely hang out on Granville Street after say, 10pm. Not that I think it’s a bad place to hang out, but I’m not 20 anymore and the last time I set foot at The Roxy was 2 years ago for a concert that my friends from Mojave were playing. The last time I went to a club on Granville Street was, if I’m not mistaken, The Stone Temple (which is now defunct, I think). So, really, there’s nothing for me there, almost.
EXCEPT… The Commodore Lanes.
Last night, after the Global Agents of Change gala, I was ready to go home. I had had a fantastic time hanging out with Chris, Lauren and Shawn, but I really wanted to have an early night.
Before I headed out, I checked my Twitter stream and noticed Minna and Jay and Paul were still at the office at The Network Hub, so I stopped by to say hi on my way home, and they convinced me to join them for a couple of games of pool.
Now, in the photos, I look like I know what I’m doing. But truthfully, I don’t. I’ve never been a good pool player.
I really had a good time, we didn’t even stay out for that long and it was a very relaxing activity. Now, if only I was really good at pool! More about The Commodore Lanes from their About Us page:
Commodore Recreations Centre opened on September 8, 1930 as a place where “Pleasant Days May Be Spent”. Created to promote quality bowling and billiards in the heart of the city, It has prospered at its Granville Street location ever since. In 79 years, much had changed, but the original motto remains the same.
As Canada’s oldest surviving recreation centre, Commodore Lanes & Billiards is proud to be at the forefront of the new age of Vancouver. Indeed, our business suitability represents our bustling, culturally diverse and progressive city. Inside our doors, you will find a delightful Canadian atmosphere. Our heritage wall paintings resound with a nostalgia, that will enhance your gaming experience.
March 28th, 2010 in
friends |
4 Comments
My loyal readers and followers on Twitter may be intrigued as to why everyone has tweeted or blogged about Earth Hour 2010 and given that I have a PhD in Environmental Studies, I write about sustainability and I teach environmental politics, why haven’t I written about it until now (Earth Hour is tonight). I have one specific reason: I find Earth Hour very symbolic but with very little actual real impact.
If you turn off your lights tonight from 8:30-9:30pm, but your day-to-day activities are still having a negative impact on the environment, how sustainable are you then? I just don’t see it. I would like people to make longer-term, long-lasting positive impacts on the environment. So, while I do encourage you to turn off your lights tonight from 8:30pm to 9:30pm, tonight March 27th, 2010, I strongly suggest as well that you take that one hour to reflect on your own behaviours and habits, and think about ways in which you can reduce your ecological footprint, your impact on our shared planet.
You can read related posts (I’ve written about Earth Hour in 2008 and 2009 as well) and follow the fun on Twitter, Facebook and on a variety of blogs. I will be attending the Global Agents for Change gala, but I may not stay too late, so it is quite likely that I’ll be spending Earth Hour either walking around my neighbourhood or commuting!
More on the history of Earth Hour:
Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the, Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.
SIDE NOTE – I think that the Earth Hour movement has grown so much online, and social media has helped enormously. Last year, I was contacted by the WWF Canada to help spread the word, while this year I wasn’t, but the online buzz about Earth Hour has been unprecedented, so I think this year they didn’t think they needed to do a blogger relations campaign to get the word out. Twitter, you amaze me sometimes.
I have always been a big supporter of local charities, and I’m always thrilled that my good friends are too. While I’m slightly late to writing about the Union Gospel Mission‘s Orange Day campaign, I noticed that my friends Rebecca and Gus have already posted some information about it. As a side note, Rebecca has Blogathoned 2 years in a row for the Union Gospel Mission, and I know that John Chow donates a sizable chunk of money to their activities too.
Kevan, Leah and the UGM Crew sent me some information about Orange Day:
Orange Day started because we’ve always given out oranges at our annual Easter dinner. Yeah, we’d serve over 3,000 scrumptious ham dinners to our hungry, hurting, homeless guests, and at the end of it, everybody gets an orange. It’s like saying: take hope home with you. You can start over. You can get off the street. You can reconnect with your family. You can peel back your addictions and discover a fresh life awaiting through recovery. We have programs that can help you achieve all of these things.
The Orange Day Campaign is about experiencing all the free fun our city has to offer, and donating whatever you would have spent on a day/night out to UGM to help make the lives of people living in need in our city better.
Here’s a breakdown:
Go out and have fun (- don’t spend any $) + share your experience online (+ donate what you would’ve spent to UGM) = Help transform our city into a fun place for everyone!
You can follow along on Twitter (#OrangeDay). This is such a wonderful initiative, I thought I couldn’t let it pass unnoticed.
I was involved in theatre even before I became a stage actor (in high school). My parents were determined to expose me and my brothers to arts since we were very young. Mom had been an opera singer for many years and Dad had always played the piano and guitar at concert level, so they wanted their five boys to be educated in the arts. We attended many shows at the Teatro Juarez, in Guanajuato.
The photo above is of the main stage of the Teatro Juarez. While I was doing my undergraduate in chemical engineering, I had a chance to participate in a few shows that were staged there too. For most of my high school and undergraduate years, I acted in plays. My life always has and always will be inextricably linked to theatre.
So, it’s only fitting that I celebrate World Theatre Day, by highlighting the fantastic work that the Greater Vancouver Theatre Association has been doing to celebrate it. While I’ve been overwhelmed with work and have missed most of the events, I think you can still celebrate by attending a performance and supporting one of the many fantastic local theatre companies (established and emerging, independent, etc.) that we have in Vancouver.
On March 28, tomorrow, you can attend the World Theatre Day Wrap Party at the WISE Hall. Program includes reading the International WTD message, encore performances and videos of WTD flash mob events, and video conferencing with other WTD parties world-wide. Admission is by donation. You can follow @WTD10 on Twitter (the hashtag is #WTD10)
I have been lucky in that the Vancouver theatre scene has treated me incredibly well. I have had access to so many fantastic shows, been lucky enough to give away hundreds of tickets for my readers, and establish many friendships with local actors, publicists and artists (just read my theatre posts). To all of you, my theatre-associated friends, thanks for continuing to work so hard despite the cuts from the BC government to the arts budget. Despite all the difficulties, you all continue to bring excellent art to the citizens of the Greater Vancouver area. I bow and salute to you.
Last night, I (and hundreds of other folks) attended Vancouver Twestival 2010, the third in a series of Twestivals that my good friend Rebecca Bollwitt has organized. The photo that accompanies this paragraph is of Rebecca and myself at Twestival (as I was leaving, because I was exhausted). I sponsored two silent auction items – a workshop on strategy alignment (from my consulting practice) and an evening out with me for dinner at Regional Tasting Lounge (r.tl) and a theatre show at the Arts Club. It was great for me to have a chance to be part of such worthy event, and more importantly, to contribute to the fundraising process.
From the Twestival website:
“On Thursday 25 March 2010, people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness. Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects. If you would like to get involved, please Register your City, Register your School, or Volunteer and we will get in touch. Organizers will be given a handbook and invitation to our collaboration workspace. Follow @twestival for updates.”
As someone who has advised a number of non-profit organizations in their social media strategies, I’ve been puzzled by the success of Twestival at the global level, when other campaigns are able to accomplish very little even if lots of retweeting happens. What makes the Twestival fundraising campaign so successful, what lessons can we draw from this fundraiser and implement them when we do another fundraiser, and is this model of fundraising sustainable?
I ask these questions because, as always, I’m always puzzled by the success of some fundraisers and the lack of success of others. We organize fundraising tweetups, meetups and the like, with certain regularity, but consistently, Twestival seems to be the most successful. Lots of people in the social media for non-profits world have written about the social media philanthropist fatigue phenomenon: when people are out-fundraised on the web. Yet, people seem to have embraced Twestival worldwide. So, what made Twestival such a great success and how can we apply that to our own fundraisers?
I only have the question, I don’t have the answer. As for Vancouver Twestival 2010, I want to commend Rebecca and her organizing team for a fantastic event. Thank you, sincerely!
[Arieanna and Ianiv Schweber, Alex Lee-Behan and myself]
I have officially become a Vancouverite. I was walking down the street with my friend Scott Leslie, who was in town for a series of work meetings, and I realized that I didn’t use an umbrella at all, despite it being cold and drizzly. I guess I’ve officially acclimatized. I still wear two layers and one of them tends to be a heavy coat but I think I handle cold much better, and rain I’ve definitely gotten used to it.
March 26th, 2010 in
Uncategorized |
1 Comment
When I decided that I needed to get back in shape, I went back to the training program I used to do before (the Body-For-Life, by Bill Phillips). I did this program in 2002, after I already had passed my PhD comprehensive exams, but before I had completed my PhD. When I did it, of course, I tracked my caloric intake, I followed the rules to-the-T, and I quickly realized that I was consuming less carbohydrates than I needed. I actually felt stupid.
I’m not kidding! I have known for a while that, in order to perform our brain function, we need carbohydrates. I realized that since I wanted to work in academia, I was probably going to have to sacrifice and trade ‘looks’ for ‘brains’. But then I also realized that I didn’t need to follow the directions quite as closely. So, now what I do is I eat smaller portions, I balance my diet and I run 6 times a week, and swim 3 times. I also do some weight training.
So, here’s the breakdown of what I have spent in cardio training.
Flexipass for all Vancouver City Parks Board – $208.50 (6 months)
Towel, stainless steel water bottle and running gear I already had (water bottles make the best swag, just FYI)
So, per month, I’m spending about $35 in gym membership. Adding that to about $60 per month for the swim gear, etc and you’re already reaching $100 per month to get back in shape. OUCH. And that is without adding any special diet or anything. I better be in the best shape ever by summer!
March 25th, 2010 in
My 2010 |
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I decided that it was worth volunteering my time and doing the liveblog. Please bear in mind that while I will try to do it verbatim, some notes can escape me. Tag your tweets #3tyvr so they can be imported into the liveblog.
March 23rd, 2010 in
Uncategorized |
2 Comments
My friend Chris Walts informed me that the Global Agents of Change Gala is this upcoming Saturday March 27th (tickets are only $25) at the VanCity Theatre, and in a cocktail format! I am certainly a fan of cocktail parties! I will be there, and I am teaming up with the Global Agents of Change as well.
They have kindly agreed to sponsor a pair of tickets for a lucky winner to attend the gala. Both Chris and I will be at the cocktail party, as will my dear friend Shawn Smith who is just arriving from Oxford! So how can you win, you ask? Easy. You can drop a comment here.
A comment on this post will earn you an entry into the contest. You can earn one additional entry by retweeting this post (you can do it directly using the TweetMeme button!). I will draw the winners on Friday March 26th at 4pm. More information on the gala:
Hosted by Citytv Breakfast Television’s Riaz Meghji, the evening will include a cocktail reception, silent auction, young agents awards and amazing entertainment by youth performers such as the Woman’s Drum Circle from the Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA).
Date: Saturday, March 27, 2010
Time: 6:30 Cocktail Reception, 8:00pm Young Agents Awards
Location: Vancity Theatre at the Vancouver International Film Centre; 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 3M7 (Please consider environmentally friendly transportation to the Gala. The closest skytrain station is Yaletown/Roundhouse)
While appies will be served, don’t come on an empty stomach!
Tickets $25 (A tax receipt can be issued for amounts above $50 less ticket price). For tickets, contact events@globalafc.org or 604-762-0978. They are selling out fast, so order yours today!
Please purchase tickets in advance. Ways to purchase and pickup tickets:
1) Visit Kathryn Graham at Lamplighter (92 Water Street) on Fridays and Saturdays from 11am – 4pm;
2) Call 604-762-0978 to arrange a time to purchase and pickup tickets outside of the Lamplighter times;
3) Last resort is to purchase tickets at the Gala. First come, first serve. Limited number of tickets will be available at the door.
Two methods of payment:
1) Cash (Preferred)
2) Cheque (Payable to “Agents of Change”)
I was talking to my friend Ducky Sherwood the other day about how fixated the social media community seems to be on FourSquare and Gowalla (the location-based mobile applications that tell us where you are and what you’re doing).
What I told Ducky and what I have been telling people is that the actual node (the location) is irrelevant. It is the spatial distribution of where things are that really matters. That is the subject of economic geography (the study of the location of economic activity). And since my PhD major was in Environmental Economic Geography, I figured it was important for me to explain the difference. I am using two layouts of the Greater Vancouver transit system.
From the layout above, you would think that the City of Vancouver (and in particularly downtown Vancouver) is an area very well served by transit. But if you use the ‘node-focused’ approach (e.g. if you only look at where the bus/skytrain stations are without having a sense of the spatial context) you lose perspective. In reality, as both the layout above and below show, neither Burnaby nor Vancouver are really that well served. In fact, Burnaby has a substantial amount of area that is not served by fast bus/skytrain service.
But you wouldn’t know any of this with FourSquare nor with Gowalla. You need to expand the view and focus from the node to the spatial distribution of economic activity. I hope app developers can get the hint fast.
As a former stage actor, and someone who has been trained in the arts for most of my life, I am always delighted that the Vancouver theatre community supports me and it’s a delight to offer my contribution back to them. I can’t conceive of my life without art, and in particular, without theatre. My friends at Pacific Theatre are kindly offering to sponsor a pair of tickets to opening night of REFUGE OF LIES (Friday April 9th). This promises to be a great production!
Rudi Vanderwaal (Terence Kelly) left Holland as a refugee after WWII and found faith as a Mennonite. Now quietly retired in Vancouver, Rudi’s peaceful life is disrupted when a Dutch reporter (Howard Siegel) forces him to confront his dark wartime past and revisit long-buried secrets. As his community is compelled to take sides, everyone is driven into a world where memory and fantasy collide. Is he guilty? Will he pay? What is the cost of redemption? Following its 2009 Off-Broadway premiere, this suspenseful and provocative drama forces us to consider what happens when our past stays present.
Inspired by the 1992 accusation and deportation of Jacob Luitjens (aka The Terror of Roden), a Vancouver resident and UBC professor whose Nazi collaborations tore the community apart and set precedence for Canada’s treatment of war criminals.
I will be drawing the winner of my tickets on Tuesday April 6th at 2pm. I hope to be able to make it to an early showing (probably not opening night but one of the earliest ones). Below you can find more information on how you can get tickets to REFUGE OF LIES.
REFUGE OF LIES runs from April 9 through May 1, Wed-Sat at 8pm with 2pm matinees on Sat. For tickets (in the range of $17-34 incl. GST), you can call 604.731.5518, or email tickets@pacifictheatre.org, or alternatively you can get tickets online by visiting their website.
Since I was a little kid, I have learned to spoil myself whenever I need to. Although I don’t need to spoil myself on an every day basis, I will have to admit that I’ve become addicted to the banana bread chocolate chunk muffins that are sold at The Deli at the Student Union Building (SUB) at UBC. Despite the fact that I’ve been trying really hard to keep to a healthy diet (with all the exercising, swimming and so on I’m doing). But what can I say? Banana bread and chocolate chunk muffins are my poison. And they’re also part of my broad list of items to eat when feeling overwhelmed. You can tell I’m overwhelmed when I eat muffins 🙂
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
– Anatole France
Those of you who read my blog may know that I come from a family that works really hard. My Mom and Dad, both originally lawyers but also educators, put a lot of hours every day to fit everything in: our schooling, our extra-curricular activities, our family life, etc. My brothers (all of them, but in particular the two who like me have PhDs and are academics) put in really long hours.
I won’t even begin to describe my own approach to work because I am pretty sure people know that my work ethic is solid and I am willing to go the extra mile as well. That’s how we were raised – to do our best, and to put in the hours that we needed in order to become successful at what we do.
I don’t actually think I’m a workaholic, to be quite honest. I do think that I have a fairly decent work/life balance. As indicated by Oates (1971), workaholism is perceived primarily as an addictive disorder. I really enjoyed Solapietro and Salomone’s (1994) definition of workaholism
an excessive commitment to work that is manifested by a neglect of other important aspects of life
In my case, I have never fully neglected other important aspects of my life. But I will have to admit that in the past, I’ve done too much work and stopped going to the gym. But this 2010, as indicated in my 2010 Manifesto, I’ve decided to take care of myself again, and that means that I am working really hard at not letting my work get in the way of anything else. I think I’m succeeding (I am still swimming, dancing, exercising and I’d say my social life hasn’t suffered).
But having work/life balance doesn’t mean slacking off or working much less. Being successful means putting in the (sometimes countless) hours required to master skills and knowledge. Something that made me ponder whether our society rewards us when we are “workaholics”? Because, seriously, sometimes we just need to work really hard and put in long hours. How to achieve perfect balance? And is such a thing possible?
884 million people live without access to safe drinking water. 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. Think about it (sources of data: UN Water Progress Report 2010).
When I first started working (even before I had completed my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering), I was hired as a Project Assistant in a research and development centre, in Mexico. I collaborated with a number of colleagues in various research projects, primarily associated with aerobic wastewater treatment (bench scale). I learned about a variety of processes to treat domestic (municipal/urban) wastewater. I went to the municipal sewerage systems and sampled wastewater for our chemical/biochemical analyses quite frequently and learned a number of equations from the Metcalf and Eddy handbook of wastewater.
I *love* formal modelling, and thus I wrote my honors thesis on the use of multiple regressions to test a mathematical model that allowed me to determine how long would it take for bacteria to degrade the organic waste present in the wastewater I had just sampled. I learned the chemical engineering of wastewater treatment, and I loved it. After a few years, while completing my PhD degree, I fell in love with the social science of wastewater. Having studied the engineering side, I wanted to now be able to understand why people polluted the vital liquid, and what could governments do to reduce this pollution.
I have completed a couple of research projects in the field of water governance and policy in Mexico, primarily focused on the management of wastewater in central Mexico, and the governance of groundwater in adjacent aquifers. I am also starting a couple of projects on drinking water in the Metro Vancouver area and adaptation to climate change and water in Canada.
I am passionate about protecting water resources and ensuring that we have enough clean water worldwide. Water is a HUGE part of my research agenda now. That is the reason why I am so excited about March 22nd, 2010, World Water Day, with the theme “Clean Water for a Healthy World“. In 2008, the theme for World Water Day was sanitation (a topic that I have done substantial research on), and in 2009, it was Transboundary Waters (a topic I find incredibly exciting).
International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. An international day to celebrate freshwater was recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day.
In celebration of World Water Day 2010, I will be giving a public lecture on Friday, March 26th, on my water governance research. I’ll be posting more details on my blog (on both of them, my research one and this one) shortly.
I must have written on my blog at some point that there are few things I love more than finding cute little grocery stores in residential neighbourhoods. I may or may not have written about it. Can’t recall, quite honestly. But the truth is, I do love finding those stores. Along 12th Avenue and relatively close to my house, you can find two. The first one, on Windsor and 12th Avenue, has been there for quite some time.
I was excited to see Charles Grocery re-open, not only because it is relatively close to my house, but also because I am a big supporter of small businesses. I talked to the owner recently and he mentioned that while there isn’t a lot of foot traffic, there is at least some. I really hope he can keep that store open, because it’s one of those things about my neighbourhood (Mount Pleasant) that really makes me all warm and fuzzy. The character, and the fact that we still have corner stores that are, literally, on the corner of a residential street!
Credit: Colleen Coplick on Flickr
So there’s this girl… whose blog (
Whiskey in My Sippy Cup) I started reading a while ago. I didn’t realize she was based out of Vancouver (at the time). I didn’t realize she was part of the Vancouver mommy-blog-osphere. I didn’t know she was a REALLY popular mommyblogger. All I knew was that I absolutely adored her blog. And her, of course, along with the blog. And the 3 adorable and beautiful kids she brought to life. With The Donor. Yeah, there is a Donor. Of course. LeSigh 😉 And the more I read her blog, and the more I knew about her through a few of her friends, the more I wanted to meet her in person. By mid-last year,
Shannon asked me to help her with the organization of a Pre-Blog-Her Vancouver Tweetup (I wasn’t much help, but hey I did try, and I tried hard!).
AND when I *finally* had managed to have some control over my schedule and I wanted to spend more time hanging out with her… she moved to the United States of America. Oh, yes. She did break my heart by moving there. Not only mine, the hearts of many other of her friends.
So how come I’m writing a birthday post for a friend with whom I only had the chance to hang out once in real life before she moved to the USA? Well, because Shannon and I created a friendship online, first, and then offline. That’s the one thing that I have to thank the blogosphere for: my friends. I enjoy reading Shannon’s writing, I enjoy knowing what she’s up to in the land of the Lone Star (or is it the Lone Ranger?). I love knowing that she shares many of my same values and beliefs, in particular the love for family and appreciation for friends.
I love that no matter how far she is from Vancouver right now, I’ll be visiting Texas one day very soon and we’ll get an opportunity to hang out more. And I love that she celebrated her birthday. I did miss writing about her birthday, but heck, one day late should not be considered the worst of crimes.
MrLady: You’re awesome, yo. Enjoy this new life cycle and happy belated birthday!
March 21st, 2010 in
friends |
1 Comment
I have no clue how it happened. Can somebody give me back my three first months of the year 2010? It’s insane! We have finally arrived to the Spring solstice. March 21st marks the very first day of Spring, and the weather in Vancouver hasn’t been all that bad.
How are you doing on this beautiful day?
(Note – this is not my house – it’s the photo I get when I insert the word ‘clean house’ in my PhotoDropper plugin). Last December, I announced to the world that 2010 was going to be a year “all about me”. This meant that I started getting rid of unwanted furniture and clothes, buying clothes that fitted me properly and made me look better, and hiring a house cleaner. Yes, for the first time in my life.
At least for the first time in my life in Canada, I hired someone to clean my apartment. Best. Decision. Ever. You’ll see… I love entertaining at my humble little abode. It’s small, it’s really tiny and doesn’t hold more than two people at a time (it’s REALLY that tiny).
But I do love cooking breakfast or dinner or lunch for my friends and having them over to visit. So, I figured that I would need to (a) be able to come home to a nice, clean apartment after a long day of teaching, research, consulting and social media events, and (b) should I ever decide to entertain guests at home, I want to be able to present a nice look.
So, today I had Isabella Mori, dear friend of mine and co-organizer of Mental Health Camp over for breakfast (I cooked scrambled eggs, hashbrowns and ham with a mimosa and orange juice), and I really enjoyed having a really clean apartment. How did I do that? Well, my house cleaner came in for a couple of hours on Wednesday. That way, all I need to do is maintaining it clean. Which isn’t that hard to do, realistically.
So, even though I don’t actually have the financial flexibility, just having someone clean my house every so often gives me an insane amount of peace of mind.
I have previously written how many friends (and really, really good friends) I’ve gained through social media. Reading blogs, commenting on them, following and being followed on Twitter, joining Facebook, deploying a variety of social media tools. All of the above has given me the opportunity to forge new, long-lasting friendships. There’s one problem I see, though. The notion of “friend” also seems to be eroding.
A short while ago, on a blog entry that Alex Samuel wrote about the new Facebook privacy settings, I made a comment where I wrote a sentence that I found particularly powerful (I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn, but I *do* love my own writing). I tweeted it yesterday and it seems to have touched a nerve.
Irresponsible misuse of the word “friend” in social networking sites has led to the erosion of meaning & value of real connections.
When I first joined Twitter (and particularly, when the number of people I followed and who followed me was quite small), I commented on my blog how I thought Twitter was a great place to hang out. A place where I would continue to foster my friendships. Twitter and my blog have, indeed, created opportunities for me to build new friendships. But I still find the casual use of the word “friend” in social networking sites rather disturbing.
The truth is, I find myself incredibly annoyed at the fact that many social networking sites call everyone with whom we interact, a “friend”. Certainly, the vast majority of my Facebook friends are actually friends of mine. But I haven’t friended a number of my actual offline friends on Facebook, for reasons that only *I* am and should be privy to. I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone how much of a friend do I consider them and assumptions shouldn’t be made on the extent to which friendship exists on the basis of our interconnectedness (or lack thereof) in a social networking site.
There are friends of mine, very good solid friends of mine who don’t follow me on Twitter. There are great friends of mine that I don’t follow on Twitter. But the problem with all these social networking sites is that using “friend” indiscriminately can create drama in so many ways it’s not even funny.
The meaning of the word friend seems to be eroding and social networking sites seem to be playing a key role in this. As for me, if I consider you a friend, you’ll know it, regardless of what our relationship on any social networking site is.
You Persuade People Through Logic
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You feel like facts should be enough to persuade people, and you always focus on making a reasonable argument.
You never appeal to emotion – you feel like it’s beneath you. You are much more concerned with evidence.
Once someone is convinced of the facts, you show them the logical steps to reach your conclusion.
You rather have someone totally convinced and persuaded than not, even if it is a lot of work.
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March 19th, 2010 in
blogthings |
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I blog about a variety of topics that I find relevant to myself and to my readers. Some of these topics may or may not be intellectually challenging, but they are always things that I am interested in learning about. For example, recently I wrote about the misconceptions of calling tactical deployment ‘a strategy’. The reason why I did that was because I wanted to clarify these ideas. I had them clear in my mind.
I wanted to share my thought processes and undertake writing a blog entry as a learning exercise. Same with the post where I expand on the idea of dissent in social media. So, my Blogging 201 tip is – find a topic you want to learn more about or where you want to describe an idea in more detail and then blog about it. Doing the research and putting your thoughts in black and white will help strengthen your blogging practice.
March 18th, 2010 in
Blogging 201 |
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Given my status as a scholar of urban sustainability and environmental policy, it almost seems like heresy for me to say that, given the choice between having a house or an apartment, I would, without much doubt, choose a house. I was raised in a house most of my childhood. I was used to having a huge backyard, to play in my parents’ garage as well. Having a house was a standard in my early years.
Then I went to university, and I moved from having a house to having a room in a house (shared accommodation) and then to an apartment with a roommate. For a few months, I lived alone. And I liked it. But I noticed (when I was in undergrad) how much I needed additional space. I didn’t have a proper dining room, I didn’t have a backyard, I didn’t have much of a kitchen.
Right now, I live in a very small one-bedroom ground-level basement apartment. It does what I need it to do (and I do have a backyard, and a front yard, and I’m close to Main Street).
But having just house-sat for a few days, and having had the luxury of sleeping in one floor, working in the basement, and having guests for dinner in the main floor, made me really yearn for the space that a large, spacious house would give me. Also, bear in mind I’m single and without kids, so the space is reduced once you factor in other people. Still, despite the trend for urban density, and my interest in lowering the ecological footprint of people in Vancouver, this past weekend reminded me why people seem to be reluctant to increasing density. Because they may feel that they need all these amenities in their own home.
Do you prefer a house or an apartment? The prices of real estate in Vancouver are insane, though! The houses I saw in Parksville (some photos in this entry) were HUGE and the price? $ 238,000 for a two bedroom with an alcove and two bathrooms, plus space for garage. I’m not kidding.
I’m a total brunch addict. There, I said it. I think it was the fact that I was raised by a woman who made some of the best breakfasts in the world (my Mom).
Mom used to say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. And she made sure we ate fruit, eggs, beans, coffee, juice.
So my question to you is – what is your favorite brunch spot? Bonus points if you’re in Vancouver or the Lower Mainland, as it’s highly likely that I’ll be able to visit that spot! I recently went for brunch with Ianiv and Arieanna to the Tomahawk in North Vancouver. It was awesome!
March 17th, 2010 in
brunch |
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Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.
Jacob Bronowski
I was raised in a family headed by two lawyers. My parents, both educated in the legal world, taught us the value of dissenting opinions. Not the legal notion, per se (which has its own definition), but the idea that, maybe, someone else who had the opposite opinion to us, just maybe, that person’s opinion was actually right (or it had the possibility of being right)
At the family dinner table, we would engage in profound discussions, which ranged from philosophy to science to politics, to our interpersonal relationships. We grew up immersed in a family culture that valued dissent. Nobody was *always* right, nobody was *always* wrong, but there was always room for a “middle-of-the-ground” approach. At the very least, we were able to express our contrary opinions. I would say something that one or more of my brothers might disagree with, and we *always* waited to hear the opposing view.
We waited to make our argument and try to win over (by convincing the person, not by beating it up) because we (my brothers and I) were raised seeing how arguments between lawyers were constructed: by presenting evidence and leaving it to judges to weigh on the evidence presented.
We (all my 4 brothers and I) went on to study various types of engineering and we adopted the scientific method as a rigorous template for our own work. Three of us went on to do PhDs, where the value of argumentation and presenting evidence in a rigorous manner is even more appreciated (as indicated in the quote with which I started my blog entry).
I value dissent, I really do. I appreciate my friends’ dissenting opinions and I appreciate the feedback when they think my view is not the right one. I disagree with people publicly when I don’t agree with them because I think it’s the right thing to do: to create a debate that allows us all to learn. I always offer my criticism in a respectful manner, though.
I worry, however, that social media is harming rather than enhancing our ability to dissent online for three reasons.
First, the online and public nature of dissenting opinions via online tools may lead to recipient(s) not reacting well to the feedback. I am pretty sure nobody likes to be called out publicly (particularly if they’re sensitive and the ‘calling out’ is worded in a negative way). As my parents said, you can get so much more by using honey rather than using vinegar.
Second, the quick, reflexive nature of 140-characters-long responses does not give the recipient enough time to process the message. We fire quick “FAIL” messages with the assumption that the recipient will understand what we mean by that. Which, most of the cases, is not true.
Third, the attention span of people immersed in social media has been greatly reduced, so people love to read quick, witty bits of 140 characters but nothing more. Long blog entries where an argument can be properly outlined and developed are eschewed in favor of long bursts of tweets.
This is something I’ve been reflecting on for a long, long time. As an academic, I’ve been trained to confront dissenting opinions and offer evidence to support my viewpoint. I *enjoy* it when people disagree with me (and of course, I love winning arguments). I worry, however, that the fast-paced, group-mob mentality will overtake our ability to present cogent and articulate arguments that might be dissenting with the majority’s view. And that *is* something to be worried about. Because a society can’t learn without dissent.
Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.
Natan Sharansky
