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Hi Leeanne
This letter is attempt to shed a little light on the rationale behind how a robotics course, (TDR3) can be a necessary course for an arts and culture SHSM. It’s a good summary of various things, hence why I’m forwarding it to a few people, because I’d like them to know the rationale as well.
Robotics is core to the ADVANCE SHSM concept. It is not the only foci, but it is incredibly important.
ADVANCE is about expanding the definition of the visual arts at the high school level to include interactive artwork and artwork in motion. Robotics provides an important inlet to creating visual art that interacts, since robotics is tied to the creation of interactive devices as per it’s curriculum. The addition of robotics to the visual art lexicon is like the addition of a new paintbrush to the palette. They are all tools for creation.
But it’s probably better that I show, rather than tell.
ADVANCE was inspired in many ways by the Creator’s Project, an innovation initiative started by Intel.
In particular, it was inspired by James Powderly’s work in the United States.
Interactive and animated artwork is becoming ubiquitous; spread both by accessibility and popularization of digital creation tools. It finds propulsion from the propagation of portable digital devices and interactive (gaming). Visual art is expression, but it can also be an outlet of innovation. Education should be preparing students for this world.
We’re not alone in this concept, as within the last few years there has been an explosion of different initatives by a few familiar faces:
OCAD has it’s Digital Futures Initiative
University of Toronto has their ThingTank Idea lab.
Ryerson’s School of Image Arts New Media Option encompasses the same ideals as we do.
Related is Ryerson’s EdgeLab
York has it’s Augmented Reality Lab
MIT has it’s Media Lab
Many of these options have either been created, or have evolved significantly to involve art with material interactivity in the last 5 to 10 years.
In addition to educational institutions, Toronto itself has many innovation spaces and organizations that match our ideal of art + robotics. These include places such as
Interaccess
Interactive Art
Site3 Colaboratory
By it’s nature, ADVANCE’s combination of art+ robotics is in many ways strongly synergistic with the Toronto District School Board’s STEAM (Science Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) initiatives.
If we can ensure that Robotics becomes an approved part of our Arts and Culture SHSM, it would be in line with much.
Cheers
Using fMRI, they’ve managed to come close to capturing visual data, from the brain.
https://sites.google.com/site/gallantlabucb/publications/nishimoto-et-al-2011
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900937-7
This sort of reminds me in a way of distillation… that is if you take an image and distill it down to it’s essence, it’s sort of fleeting impression, what would you get? Why impressionism of course. Impressionist digital manipulation.
Fall has come to Haliburton
“Who is your neighbor? Your neighbor is who you choose” -Ivan Illych in a radio interview with David Cayley
“Who is my mother, or my bretheren?” – Jesus
Your neighbors, are who you choose.
I’ve walked a long time. A very long time in search of people with open hands.
These people are very few and far between. I feel like I’ve done my share. Yes that’s me greeting the person no-one talks to. I’ve done it again and again, didn’t see me? Missed it again. Or perhaps they do and people say… awww isn’t that cute, the ethnic boy is talking to the strangers. I had a chuckle about it with an old friend of mine, who also had attended. Had also attended. “You know” I told him after years of being there for a while, “you’re the first person in ten years who’s asked me to move from the back row to rows further up. You’re the first person who’s asked me to sit with them.”
I’ve always made a point of sitting at the back, never wanting to be the greatest, and always wanting to be the least. Ten years!
Mind you also because, unlike the heady innocence of university and post university, I’ve often not arrived on time. Undisciplined and uncommitted perhaps, but wasn’t Sabbath made for the man?
Ultimately speaking, I am a spiritual creature and I maintain that. I provided an explanation in Proving God. I don’t have a problem with the idea of higher powers, I have a problem with people.
My frustration with the just about all I have been with, including my one is simple; It couldn’t handle two problems. Damned simple problem: -Loneliness and equality.
So people would say… isn’t it a two way street?
They’re right. but I’m putting out, and you’re not, you’re blaming the me right now, so what does this make you? So if I seem noncommital its because I’m not part of your lives, just a person whom you can wave at and avoid asking any tough questions.
I’ve always been in front of you… and I did choose to be your neighbor. 10 years of that, being friendly, but did we ever really become friends? Do you ever wonder…. what’s really going on? Did you ever ask?
Is it time for me, to take another bow, and follow this river out?
Arctic water, cold and salty rolls down the north shore of the St Lawrence in a subaquarian current, rolling deep underneath the surface in the darkness where it gouges out gentle tonnes of dead organic matter and silt; Nutrition for microorganisms. The nutrient bearing current, then sweeps up the shallow mouth of the St. Lawrence where it fountains to the surface. Microorganisms proliferate, bacteria, eukaryotes and phytoplankton, which are fed on in turn by zooplankton, which are fed on in turn by krill. The whales soon follow.
Granite falls into the ocean from here, where a sudden dropoff, a chasm that drops 300 meters below the surface enables the cetaceans to come within meters of my shelter. Unsurprisingly I am kept awake by the spouting of les petit rorqual, the friendly puffing of marsouin commun, the distant arches of beluga pods, or the annoyed wheezing of the resident harbour seal.
A drive, Quebec to Tadoussac, 5 days of camping by the St Lawrence; On the return the long way home was taken in a single day drive up through the Saguenay Fjord, across to La Mauricie Wilderness, bouncing off the 40 into the Laurentians to St. Donat, the backroads Tremblant where I got lost, before coming back through the Gatineau in the dark to Ottawa. Stunning.
It’s been fun, unforgettable, and a great introduction to camping for my neice and nephew. Uncle was there to show them how to light fires, much to the chagrin of their parents. Now back after nine days and 1000+ pictures later, finds me plotting to return. Compared to many I feel that I haven’t really ‘travelled’… but what I lack in breadth I make up for in depth.
How to square a log badly.
1) Forget to bring a carpenters square
2) Forget to bring a chalk line.
3) Notch log across length, defining the flat face hidden under the wood.
4) Knock notched sections off
5) Turn log over to next side
6) Wash, rinse, repeat.
Next time just use the axe to knock the blocks off and use a chainsaw to cut the notches.
Will everything turn out fine? You tell me.
You buy on credit, and still you want your entitlements?
You mock the educated then send your kids to Yale?
You say you’re opinionated so you can say whatever you want?
Complain about a lack of fiscal responsibility then ignore fiscal irresponsibility?
You vote in the old boys club then complain about old boys club problems?
You vote in strong leaders then wonder why they ignore you?
You complain about the price of gas then vote in their buddies?
The cops beat your kids when they stand up for you, and you side with the cops?
Pursue your dreams at the cost of your family?
Claim to be proud of your redneck heritage then complain that people are getting worse?
Hobble the next generation then wonder why they vote to reduce your pensions?
Demand liberty and freedom, ignore responsibility?
Ignore the news and everything is fine?
Stupidity is violence.
Stupidity is luxury
We can ill afford it. Each of these statements is based on something real; They’re a snapshot of us, if you will. They’re not necessarily attached to one generation or another. It’s been provoked by talking to a friend from Haliburton this weekend. “We’re all hillbillies around here” he said, sporting a stem glass of wine and a tan in front of his custom cottage (very common in dockside Haliburton). We’re all caught up in systems we can scarcely recognize. To a certain extent, there’s some invisible and visible pride attached to this.
But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want to attract world class prices, and world class people, you’ve got to be world class.
I find all of this hilarious in a sobering way.
The local Haliburtonian looked into the distance, eyes glazing over in thought.
“The people here are changing, there are new people moving in and they’re different, they’ve got a different culture.”
In this case he was talking about some recent vandalism: Mature Red Pines cut down on Norah’s Island, Lake Kennisis. Some thoughtless brutality carried out by snowmobiling visitors. But he could have been any number of loud obnoxious problems. More intensive power boating, for instance.
A conservation triumph, Norah’s Island was preserved recently, over the last year or so, by the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust. No island lots for Norah’s Island, no development. The vandalism casts a dark cloud over the preservation, and has delivered a dank, unpleasant statement about people in general. The carefree abandon with which it was done is symptomatic with ‘green fatigue’. Boys will play with their toys, even if the toys are chainsaws.
Yes we do like to foul our own nests, and be proud of it too. We’re loud and obnoxious. We’ll do anything because we damn well please, and no-one is going to stop us because we’ve got guns and money. We’re proud of our redneck heritage, and this is the way that things have always been. But far from being some loud, obnoxious, and pride-filled statement of identity, it’s mundane hubris. Don’t understand hubris? Google it.
Fat North American lifestyles intrude: Where we hold our Canadian values as being paramount as some fiction of wilderness; we’ve motorized everything recreational, from snowmobiles in the winter, to atvs and enduro bikes in the summer. We populate our cleanest lakes with noisy wakeboard boats, and 4 strokes. We develop them into our twisted version of suburbia, each custom sheetrock hole strung out in 300ft lots along every inch of lakeshore. Then we wonder why we’re all getting lardy and self-righteous. Because it’s hard to change, we’d rather give up trying. Can we snowshoe? Swim any distance? Cycle? Paddle? Can we recognize that rest and relaxation work in balance with physical activity?
Cottage culture bewilders me. Ask a few people why they pack their cars, brave highway 400 traffic, endless lines at any number of fast food outlets in Barrie, and flybitten, frantically try to light smokey fires in the rain and you will get a variety of answers. But common themes run along the lines of escape, quietness, and finding solace in environmental purity. Yet as it is, once we get out here we do our best to destroy it. Yes things have always been like this; a common refrain, but if that is so and it doesn’t make sense, why do we keep on going? There is a grand disconnect in the Canadian psyche that somehow separates the deep core reasons for cottaging with actual practices.
Sometimes Haliburtonians bewilder me, too. If you want to attract world class people, with world class prices, you have to preserve your world class wilderness. This may mean putting a few rednecks back out to the woodshed where you got them, while you’re at it, toss those party people from the city. There’s only a short term future in contractor culture, before everybody has to move on to the next frontier for development.
Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash, satirized our culture, saying that we would pull our winnebagos north to find unspoiled wilderness, despoil it, then continue moving north until we would find ourselves at the North Pole, where the latent heat of our bago’s would melt the polar icecap. Then all the Winnebagos would be sucked to the bottom of the arctic ocean and the human biomass with it. Would that it not be true, but the more I look at it, it appears to be.
Haliburton is simply the next step from Muskoka.
And lo, they proceeded forthwith to the poles, and there a mighty battle did ensue between left and the right. The right in it’s rage and ignorance held steadfast, but the left was dumb as usual and split the vote, failing to rally allies from the outer suburbs. Thus came the downfall of many an election. For the right will always be ignorant, but the left will never understand the first past the post voting system and that betters must communicate with the proles.
So, just like their forefathers, they cried for kings, and unto them, a king was delivered. So God said to them “You prayed for this, so I gave it to you. You don’t need this because you have me, but you really, really want it, so here you go.”
So King Harper ascended the throne, and like many other kings before him, bought expensive military toys, built monuments to his greatness, and installed more portraits in his palaces. Only when the boomers were stricken with the eld, and public services privatized from their frail hands, did they not even then realize their mistake, for oil money pays for great public relations people, and plenty of bloggers. Their own children turned away from them, having found unemployment, semi-employment, and libertarian self-recrimination due to trickle down economics. They choose instead to distract themselves from their pain by watching Snooki, UFC, and the Lingerie Bowl.
Scientific and cultural progress stalled in favor of ideology. So the dumb got dumber, and the plaintive cries of those who could remember what they had lost did fill the air, as did the voices of those who idly believed in him, but they were duly ignored by their new patriarch, lord, and master as was his habit.
The oil oligarchs rubbed their dirty hands with glee and continued their economic brinkmanship. Profits were mortgaged on the privatization of social programs and massive deficits.
But don’t worry… how much damage can he actually do in 4 years?
Welcome to the Common Sense Revolution III, strong leadership for the masses.
The earth is like a body. When you cut trees down their stumps still pump water for a short time before they die. It’s unfair.
Re: British Peoples League.
My family has been involved with Canada for 5 generations, with my great great grandfather buried in Winnipeg after having helped to build the railroad. It’s been a legacy of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. I’ve arrived in Haliburton at the end of this legacy, to seize an opportunity to build something for my family and myself; To make good on a few dreams, and create a few new ones.
As a relatively new resident to Haliburton, (one year) and of Chinese-Canadian extraction, I have to say that almost without exception Haliburtonians have been some of the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered, especially Haliburton full time residents. It doesn’t matter where or when since I’ve had no trouble holding conversations with people from every walk of life, whether it’s a set of lumberjacks sitting in Timmies in Minden, or some of the cottagers on West Short Road of Kennisis. I sincerely hope that people stay that way, and I believe that they will.
I have struggled to parse the BPL article in the County Voice, knowing full well that the content of the article and my own observations of Haliburtonians do not match. In the light of this article, I am trying very hard to not start a microscopic examination of the people I know. Why was it that this neighbor did this? Why did they do that? What does it all mean? Many of my neighbors around Kennisis are those retirees who might “know the score” as the article indicates. I have on occasion encountered people who have spoken about ‘those people,’ people who have stated blithely from their dock that they’re glad to be where they are… unlike the dirty nasty city full of immigrants -which ironically these people at the end of the weekend, returned to. These people were few and far between, but they certainly can make a lasting impression.
Aren’t we lucky, that we’re all individual humans, and that the actions of one do not speak for those of others.
It hurts to hear these things told to me, knowing my toolkit. But I go on, I continue, I try to take the things people say at positive face value. I continue my solitary quest in Haliburton, adding to the story of my family, and adding to their blood sweat and tears.
In this society we’ve come so far. Enlightenment doesn’t come from complacency however, and racism is perhaps surprising to some, a two way street. I promise to see you as individuals, as long as you see me as an individual.
Fair trade?
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