For those of us who live and pay taxes here in Victoria BC, I really recommend Ross Crockford’s blog post to our Johnson Street Bridge site, also posted yesterday: City of Victoria updates timeline on Johnson Street Bridge. The opening paragraph should get your attention:

At its next Council meeting, on Thursday, August 27th, the City of Victoria will introduce a bylaw to borrow $63-million to finance the replacement of the Johnson Street Bridge.

The Council meetings, incidentally, are the evening ones that start at 7:30 (be there by 7:00pm though to grab a good seat) and where the public can speak.

In completely unrelated matters, I’ve felt lackluster about blogging here because I feel adrift on several non-public matters, and then on top of it all, I injured my right shoulder this week. Just woke up on Tuesday with this awful pain – a classic sleep injury, I supposed, but it’s not going away. And it’s the second time in about 10 days that this happened – the first time it went away after a day (or so I thought, but it seems to have lurked instead). It hurts a lot to inhale – what a drag. Went to acupuncture yesterday, which helped; saw the doctor today (she had no specific diagnosis); got three  x-rays, too (they look fine); and am going to try a chiropractor this afternoon. Meh.

That’s the “yay” part — but I also just got an email telling me that my January article (which has been set to go since Dec.1) got bumped to the February issue because of space constraints. That’s the “not-so-yay” part.

On birthdays, one hopes that one gets old enough to trample augury underfoot, or at least turn it into a direction. It seems it’s never a straight line.

The Times on the other hand quoted an assistant professor of communications at BU, who worries that Pandora

“runs counter to the democratizing trend of the Internet.” Instead of using “collaborative filtering” software pioneered by Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes (”customers who bought this album also bought these albums”), Pandora “puts the power of the recommendation in the hands of an expert system,” McQuivey says. “Pandora will succeed only if its centralized system proves superior to the wisdom of the crowd.” [More...]

Aside from the notion that peer-to-peer systems or the wisdom-of-the-crowds is truly — or shall we say: inevitably — democratic, I find the implied idea that expert systems are somehow inherently undemocratic absolutely baffling, if not troubling.

I happened to like the sense of engagement I got from “guiding” Pandora, and it helped focus my attention. When its “experts” offered me song, I could inquire, “why did you suggest this,” particularly when I was offered a song I didn’t like. I could then gather my own attention as I was asked to give the thumbs up or down to the song I was offered. Although I was guided by the “expert suggestions,” I in turn was guiding Pandora through my choices.

In a peer-to-peer or wisdom-of-the-crowds universe, my attention is scattered, sometimes pleasurably, but often to the point of pain: there’s so much to keep up with, so many choices to confront and evaluate, and thanks, but no thanks, I really don’t want to be carried away by the supposed wisdom of the crowd. It takes me a long time to decide — to choose — that someone, anyone at all, is my peer, and having all those alleged, if friendly, peers telling me at every turn that I might like this or that, and that I really should try this and go with that ends up making me crazy stressed and nuts.

My suspicion, then, to get back to my point of departure, is that (1) the digitally distributed peer-to-peer universe is the perfect expression of our attention-deficit plagued age, and (2) the digitially distributed peer-to-peer universe contributes to further exacerbations of attention deficit, stress, to the continued sense of never having enough time. Further to that, my suspicion leads to a conclusion that some may call anti-social, but that to my (dialectical) mind is an epitome of social commitment: it’s fine to hang with the crowd for a while, but to get anything meaningful done, you better be prepared to leave your peers behind and become your own expert.

SURREY, B.C. (CP) — Officers at the busy Peace Arch and Pacific Highway Canada-U.S. border crossings south of Vancouver walked off the job Friday over reports of an armed U.S. fugitive headed their way.
(…)
Paula Shore said the unarmed officers exercised their contractual right to refuse to work after their U.S. colleagues issued a warning to be on the lookout for an armed and dangerous person.

Under the border agents’ collective agreement, they have the right to walk away if they believe their safety was jeopardized.
(…)
It’s the third incident in a month when a Canadian border point closed as unarmed officers fled over the threat of armed Americans approaching. [emph.added]
(…)
Those incidents renewed demands from the officers’ union that they be given guns.

New Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews said the party will stand behind its promise to give them guns.

The current policy calls for the unarmed border guards to allow anyone suspected of being armed and dangerous into Canada and then call police. [The Toronto Star, Feb.10/06 (register to view)]

See also the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

I’m no fan of guns, and Canada doesn’t need a Swiss- or US-style Second Amendment or anything, but aren’t these people our border guards? What might be their chief weapons against unwelcome intruders?

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I’ll come in again.

David Weinberger has expanded his resumé with an acting gig in a great little 3-minute movie called Get Human (the video). This is for everyone who has climbed the walls while groping up (or down) a phone tree. Great film — very wickedly funny, too.

That part of the video with the phone tree options reminded me of a fiendish mathematical logics course the kids and I worked part of the way through a few years back. It was all about mastering the kind of convolutions offered by some especially non-human-userinterface-designed phone tree options: “if yes, press 1 and say no, if no press 2 and say yes,” except expressed in symbols.

Modus ponens, remember?:
1. If Statement A, then Statement B.
2. But Statement A.
3. Therefore, Statement B.

Looks like this:
1. [P –> Q]
2. P
3. Therefore, Q.

If you’re really stuck, use the contrapositive, which allows you to reverse the direction of the conditional (that’s the “if A, then B” formulation):
[P –> Q] and [[~Q] –> [~P]] are equivalent formulas: If P then Q, and If not-Q, then not-P. It’s a double negative, but it’s logical.

Well, logical as hell, maybe: the kind of logical used by automated systems, i.e., designed to drive us humans up a (phone) tree!

Note:
Definition of WFF (”well formed formula”) here. Woof-woof!