RIM Layoffs in Waterloo? Deafening Silence

If you go to Google News and type RIM layoffs and sort by date, you'll see a whole bunch of articles about the recent layoffs in Halifax: exact number (95), how it was done (employees were called to a meeting and told by video conference), how employees feel about how it was done (some are angry), and more.

Last week many hundreds of employees were laid off in Waterloo, a smaller town where layoffs have a larger impact, yet there is not one iota of news about it. Zilch. Zippo. I have heard through the grapevine that whole teams were let go. I have heard that some teams were replaced with low-priced contractors. I have heard that the cuts went very, very deep, but I have no idea of overall numbers.

Waterloo is a town of 100,000 where RIM recently employed over 10,000 people. Layoffs affect commercial real estate, residential real estate, the tax base, the health of most local businesses, the economic optimism of the community, and more. In an earlier post (RIM and Waterloo), I quoted someone as saying that every job at RIM creates seven other local jobs. As a city, we need to know numbers. As a community, we need to know what's happening to our neighbours and acquaintances.

RIM is notoriously careful about publicity. There have been persuasive arguments that, for its own good, RIM should be more transparent in this process (Lessons learned from layoffs in Yahoo Finance).

However, RIM seems to be more opaque than ever about the Waterloo layoffs. There is nary a mention of Waterloo layoffs on forums.crackberry.com or bgr.com/tag/blackberry. I talked to some local media who said they are trying to find out what happened but are still in the dark.

If RIM won't step up, then maybe people who know what's going on should consider speaking up. They could call or email The Record, The Chronicle, CTV or 570 News Radio.

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The Bizarre, Surreal Persecution of Julian Assange

Earlier today, Britain said it might revoke Ecuador's diplomatic status and stage an assault on the embassy to get Julian Assange out. (link)

This is over an extradition request by Sweden on a charge that even if true would not be a crime in Britain... and there is much evidence that it is not true.

How far will Britain and Sweden go to help the US get their hands on Assange? So far:

• A dozen US financial institutions, including MasterCard and Visa, blocked transfers of money to WikiLeaks.
  
• Sweden is pursuing obviously false trumped up rape charges with a vigor that is never seen even for real, serious rape charges.
  
• Sweden refused to interview Assange about the charges over video phone or in the UK, and insisted he return to Swedish soil.
  
• Interpol issued an arrest warrant - unheard of for someone wanted for questioning in a case like this.
  
• Sweden demanded extradition, and spent over a year in court
  
• Britain puts Assange under house arrest for over a year, and eventually decides to extradite him.
  
• When Assange takes refuge in an embassy, Britain threatens to revoke Ecuador's diplomatic status and storm the embassy!
  
• Britain has 50 police outside the Ecuadorian embassy, making sure Assange doesn't escape.

All because Assange embarrassed the US. This is the most outrageous anti-democratic event of the century. We the people need to stand up for Julian Assange. The US has made a massive effort to discredit him, but his work stands for itself, and the world will be a poorer place if he is stopped from persuing his work of exposing the secrets of big corrupt organizations. Even I have to wonder: What will the US do to me for writing this? Where is free speech now? ###

Dylan, Asshole

In January 1974 I saw Bob Dylan perform at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. It was Dylan's first tour in eight years - the first since I was eight - and Dylan was an uber-icon. I was a pro at scoring good seats, but even though there were two shows the best I could do was on the side and high up.

The concert started late and the crowd was restless, by which I mean drunk, stoned, loud and obnoxious. Finally The Band came on and did a couple of songs. Then this guy came out with a big hat pulled down over his face and started singing Lay Lady Lay. I leaned over to my friend sitting next to me and asked, "Who the hell is that?" The guy behind us leaned in and shouted at me, "It's Dylan, asshole!"

I was expressing incredulity more than asking a question. Dylan wasn't singing the same melody he had sung on New Morning, and he was screaching out the lyrics instead of the rounded tones of his recorded versions. Dylan's singing has never been particularly musical, but his performance that night was six steps worse. He was unrecognizable.

In the previous couple of years I had been to a lot of concerts. Stadium concerts were a pretty tight show back then and I had never been disappointed by one.

This Dylan concert was something else. Only part of it was that Dylan sucked: he sang badly, stripped all the melodies from his songs, never looked up, never said a word to the crowd - and he was on stage only intermittently. The format of the concert didn't work: The Band was too different and too distinct to interspere their music with Dylan's. Also, there was a really bad vibe in Maple Leaf Gardens that night. A few drunken louts kept screaming during the songs.

After it was over and we were walking out my friend realized he'd left his mittens at his seat, so we went back into the now brightly lit, empty arena. All around our seats there was vomit and smashed liquor bottles, drug paraphenalia, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. It hit me like a fist to the gut that this wasn't about music or even entertainment; this was just a place for druggies to hang out. The sixties ended in lots of different ways, but that's how they ended for me.

Just a couple of months before that January concert, folk singer Phil Ochs, depressed by a flatlining career and taking self-destructive risks, got mugged and strangled in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I didn't know at that point if he'd even survived the attack, and rumors were circulating that he'd permanently lost his voice (which turned out to be true).

While Dylan was too smug, Ochs was too needy. Ochs was too upfront about wanting more success; it was uncool. Other than that one characteristic, I think he could have had all the success he craved. On the other hand, Dylan's success always had a lot to do with his creation of himself as an icon - his lies about his childhood and early career, his manipulation of people.

I saw Dylan again in 1979, during his born-again Christian phase when his fan base fled, and finally saw a great Dylan show. It was at The Aud in Kitchener, with a tenth the number of seats of Maple Leaf Gardens. I wouldn't have even gone but a friend talked me into it, and boy was I glad.

Bruce Springsteen once said that the first time he heard Like a Rolling Stone it was like someone kicked open the door to his mind. Dylan's music was like that for me too.

I got to thinking about all this when I recently rewatched D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, which provides a snapshot of a few days Dylan spent in London during a 1965 tour. Dylan seems impossibly young in the film, nasty and bombastic, and also isolated and lonely. The film is popular with Dylan fans, and I have never heard anyone say that Pennebaker meant to be critical of Dylan: I have to think that the maker and the fans of the movie held Dylan in such high regard that they didn't see anything unattractive in the scenes where he yells at people, makes snide comments about a fellow folk singer, and even - right at the end - calmly picks his nose.

###

* * * New Blog * * *

I'm not giving up on Yappa Ding Ding (which I have been writing for going on seven years) but I have started a work blog, Focus on Readers. It's a work in progress and as with many of my ventures, I have no idea where it will lead...

###

Priorities

In the US, the FBI monitors orders of grow lights over the internet so they can arrest poor schmucks who have a couple of pot plants in their dorm room, but they don't pay any attention to a guy whose profile screams "Unibomber" who orders a veritable arsenal of weapons and ammunition.

More than you want to know about.... mustard. Part 2

So here we have Canada with its waving fields of yellow, just screaming out for a homegrown condiment industry. "What kind of mustard do you want?" waitresses should ask all over the world, and patrons should reply, "Canadian!"

But we don't want to stick our brand on a tired old product. Not American mustard (turmeric) or Dijon (wine vinegar) or German (whole seed) or British (pure heat). We need something new. I myself feel it would be cliche to flavor our mustard with maple syrup, not to mention disgusting. I don't like sweet mustard much, so for me Saskatoon Berries and so on are out. You might be thinking Rye, but American bourbon has already cornered that idea.

So here's a proposition: smoked mustard. Has anyone done this? Sounds yummy. We can call it smustard. Or to be extra fancy, smoutarde. I offer my idea freely to anyone who will produce Smoutarde in Canada. Go for it!

(Oops. Seems that Alaska has a brand of smoked mustard called Moosetard, but I consider it an inconsequential novelty brand, unlike the serious culinary product Smoutarde.)

Quite unexpectedly

I was reading about Syria today, how it's teetering at the abyss of becoming a failed state - failed like Somalia, a place with no government, a chaos of pirates and warlords - but a failed state with massive caches of chemical weapons that will almost certainly fall into the hands of terrorists and could end up killing untold numbers of people. It's WMD again but for real this time. It's almost too much to comprehend. What keeps going through my head is The End of the World by Archibald MacLeish, which describes a circus performance and ends,

Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

More than you want to know about... mustard

Canada is the world's largest producer of mustard seed, and grows about one-third of total world production. The only other major producer is Nepal (who knew!), but Nepal's production seems to be used mostly for mustard oil, dried seeds and greens.

Canada does not produce mustard-the-condiment*. The US has at least ten manufacturers of mustard-the-condiment. US mustard seed production is a tenth of Canada's, so not much of the seed is coming from there. The packaging doesn't seem to ever source the origin of the seeds, but I wrote Zatarain's (I'm a fan of their Creole mustard brand) and they said the mustard is produced in the US with seeds from Canada.

Most Dijon mustard is made in France, and 90% of Dijon mustard is made from Canadian seeds. Canada is a big importer of French mustard made with Canadian seeds.

I will not write a conclusion to this sad little litany of mustard data.

---
*Apologies to Kozlik's!

What for do ya carry the hose?

Eric Davis FTW

The upcoming (as yet undated) by-election in Kitchener-Waterloo could change our minority provincial government into a Liberal majority. As a Liberal and an ardent supporter of Premier McGuinty, I think that would be a pretty great thing.

I will continue to monitor all the candidates, but at this point I am so impressed with Eric Davis that I want to give him my endorsement.

I got a personal call from Eric Davis. I have never met him but we had a great chat: this is a candidate who knows how to speak substantively to voters.

I also got a persusasive email from him with the subject line "Why I'm Running." What he wrote resonates very strongly with me. Here's an excerpt:

"I knew I was a Liberal because I do not believe that the answers to today's problems lie at either end of the political spectrum; that you need to be able look at issues from a variety of different perspectives to find the appropriate solutions. I also believe that compassion, balance and compromise are important in politics. I see all those values reflected in the Liberal Party."

Eric Davis has been an active member of the Liberal party for 16 years, including serving as President of the KW Young Liberals, President of the KW Provincial Liberal Association, an Executive member of the KW Federal Liberal Association, and a volunteer on countless Liberal campaigns, including Election Day Chair for Andrew Telegdi.

Then of course he ran against Elizabeth Witmer in the last provincial election. Witmer was such a powerhouse that noone thought he could make a dent in her support, but he did - garnering 2,000 more votes than our candidate got in the previous election.

Eric Davis could win this thing. He's smart, committed, has the right vision, and is an incredibly effective politician. He would be a wonderful representative for our community. Here's his web site: ericdavis.ca. It has a link for people who want to join the provincial Liberal party so they can vote at the nomination meeting.

###

Make room for aaaAAAaaa...

There's no way this could be as drawn out as the Hail to the Chief episode, and it could never get as annoying as the Pennsylvania Polka episode, and in fact some would say that having O Fortuna from Carmina Burana stuck in your head is not the worst thing in the world, but for two things: (1) it has been stuck for two weeks now; and (2) the lyrics that I'm singing in my head are from a "lyrics misheard" video and they go like this:

Gopher tuna!
Bring more tuna!
Statue of big dog with fleas

Some men like cheese
Green chalk can taste like hippies

You caught two rocks?
Pet two cool rats.
You don't like cheese or chicken.
Play chess all day
Hold his sock tip
She sold me good, hot chicken.

Saucy hot peas
Get me cod, please
Rock talks to boy who believes
Suck juice from moose
Fun, handsome goose
Cement pizza? Noobie please!

Open bra top
Got him locked up
Leaky aquariatares

Look there! Fruitloop!
Don't sue YouTube
They wrote teh dictionary

Salsa cookies!
Windmill cookies!
They gave you gonorrhea

This octopus
Let's give him boots
Send him to North Korea

Ow, paper cut
Sandpaper, ahh
Potato soup and chicken
Go taste the dip!
Made with Cool Whip!

Make room for aaaAAAaaa
Piece of lovely cake

References:
Beware Oktoberfest
Music Fails: Opera lyrics misheard

###

Rant: Mount Everest

I recently read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and then spent a couple of days on the internet looking up information about Mount Everest and the people who attempt to reach its summit. To my mind, the most important aspect of the Mount Everest tourism industry, and the thing that is virtually never discussed, is the barbarity of the people involved in it.

I had heard about the mountains of garbage left by the "climbers" (they're not really climbers; Krakauer says few of them have any climbing experience at all, and you can read accounts of people reaching the summit who are blind, legless, elderly, or have severe rheumatoid arthritis - better to call them tourists). Apparently someone started a fund to pay Sherpas to haul down discarded oxygen tanks and other junk, so that's supposedly getting better, although recent photos still show lots of garbage.

I had heard about nearby valleys being clear-cut for firewood for the base camp. That's bad enough.

What I didn't know is that the hiking route on Everest is littered with dead human bodies. The tourists sometimes have to step over bodies on the trail. There have been dead bodies lying near the tents where they camp - lying there for years. The tourists give the bodies jovial nicknames; apparently one there right now is dubbed Green Boots. While watching videos about Everest I saw tourists pass several dead bodies, and nobody even winced.

It's not just the tourists who die. The Sherpas, who are paid a pittance compared to the western tour guides, also are regularly killed or injured. So many of their deaths, like those of the tourists, seem to be wholly preventable. People get outraged at sweatshops but the plight of Sherpas seems to me to be much more serious.

The tourists who walk up the slope don't just tolerate the bodies; in some cases they contribute to the headcount with their single-minded drive to get their money's worth and reach the summit.

At the time of Krakauer's book there was very little done to rescue people. A guide or Sherpa would refuse to help someone if they were a client of a rival tour company. In Into Thin Air, two living people were left outside, unprotected, overnight in -40 weather only 200 feet from camp - on the flat - because they couldn't walk. Basic alpine rescue equipment, like a toboggan to drag the injured, was not available.

The tourists often don't help other tourists, and even refuse to turn back to allow others to rescue someone. In just about every description of someone dying, other tourists walk past and don't help. They manage to find the time to take photos though. In this picture, note the ropes. The tourists hang on to the ropes as they walk up the mountain, so these bodies are right there.

Compare this behavior to boating, another sport that is both dangerous and held in an isolated location. It's a rule of the high seas that you can't abandon a sailor in distress. If you're in a regatta and another boat gets in trouble you are obligated to stop and help, even if it costs you the race. You'll be disqualified if you don't, and probably charged with a criminal offence.

Another issue is whether the tour companies provide adequate supplies. Oxygen could be brought up in advance and cached, but despite charging as much as $110,000 a head for the bragging rights of "climbing" Everest, the tour companies seem to operate on a shoestring. At times 300 tourists are jammed together on the trail, and tourists complain that they can't pass the slow people so everyone is slowed down and everyone's oxygen runs out. Wouldn't that indicate, at the least, that they have insufficient oxygen? This happens all the time, and just happened again in spring 2012 when a bunch of people died (link).

There seem to be lax standards, little coordination, no regulations, and precious little human decency about the Everest tourism industry.

The inhumane treatment of the injured and dead can only be happening because there's no enforcement of civilized rules of conduct. There are no police at 26,000 feet. Nepal is dirt poor and the Everest racket brings the country over $10,000 a head, so presumably there's not much incentive in Kathmandu to find a solution.

You would think that the countries that register the tourist companies (the US, New Zealand, Switzerland, etc) would create and enforce some regulations. Or that responsible tourist companies would form an organization.

I know there is at least one responsible tourist company because at the beginning of this spring's climbing season, one company decided that the conditions were too unsafe, and cancelled all its climbs. The rest carried on, and as a result several people died. But for next year, that event sets up the same sort of tragic scenario that Krakauer documents for the 1996 season: the most responsible tourist leader had turned people back the year before, and so in '96 was under heavy pressure to get everyone to the top. As a direct consequence, he and some of his crew and clients died.

Meanwhile, tragedies (like the one in 1996 that Krakauer writes about so critically) only serve to make Everest tourism more popular. Everest is the Brangelina of mountains: no publicity is bad publicity.

The bottom line appears to be this: the tourists are so determined to reach the summit that they will not pause to save a human life, and the tour companies are so greedy for cash that they do not provide the supplies that could save lives. The entire industry is beyond barbaric. The idea that these tourists are presented as courageous heroes is mind boggling.

###

RIM and Waterloo

I don't have any argument today, just a report of some things I've read. I have been trying to find information on Waterloo's vulnerability to the problems at RIM.

The Economic Times of India (link) says that nearly one third of the city of Waterloo's office/plant space is owned or leased by RIM. That seems like a lot, but the Waterloo Record supports the figure; it says that RIM occupies 2M SF of office/plant space (mostly in the city of Waterloo) in a total market across Waterloo Region of 12-13M SF.

The Record also says that the local layoff announcements will hit about 3,000 locally. Since our local RIM employee base pre-layoff was about 9,000, that would suggest that around 10% of our office space will become vacant due to this initial contraction of RIM.

The Economic Times also says of Waterloo, "The company has nourished virtually every family here; for, each job at RIM has created seven jobs." I haven't seen this anywhere else; I suppose it could be a general statistic? That figure suggests that the ripple effect of 3,000 layoffs could affect 20,000 other jobs. However, again according to The Record, there are currently 1,300 vacancies at local high-tech companies, which suggests an unemployed pool of more like 1,700, which times 7 is more like 12,000. Our area has some big hitters (Open Text, Sybase, Google, Desire2Learn, etc) as well as about 500 high-tech startups - and great infrastructure for promoting startups. No doubt, some talented RIM employees will not just find other jobs but will also start companies, reducing the ripple effect even further. So the total impact on area employment is unknown.

If anyone has any other info or thoughts, please leave a comment or send me an email.

Meanwhile, a video spoof has Steve Jobs doing a drive-by shooting of a BlackBerry in Uptown Waterloo (link).

Update:
RIM dominates the Waterloo real estate market
Life after RIM: Waterloo Region real estate and RIM
KW Real Estate discussion on Canadian Money Forum

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Waterloo's Reputation Takes a Beating

Waterloo could use a boost from a good PR firm. RIM is being discussed in major media outlets around the world, and nobody seems to have anything good to say about our town.

Last week, on a day that topped 35 Celsius, one analyst site posted a photo of Waterloo in the winter, with a miserable-looking man walking in front of a RIM sign in driving snow (link).

Among the many arguments for Why RIM Failed, a prevalent one is that it is based in a podunk town with no technical talent. You read comments like: the marketing staff are all high school dropouts from rural towns around Waterloo; RIM management failed because nobody with talent would live in Waterloo; RIM would have survived if it had relocated to Kanata or Silicon Valley.

Some commenters on online Globe & Mail articles seem to think that Waterloo got an unfair advantage in having RIM here, as if the government had somehow chosen Waterloo as the recipient of the high tech company. One commenter was angry that RIM wasn't relocated to BC; another that it wasn't in Ottawa.

Nobody seems to remember the University of Waterloo or Communitech or the flourishing high tech sector in Waterloo Region other than RIM. Some even disparage the record of UW, list better schools (one commenter mentions UMass Amherst, UMich Ann Arbor and Indiana Bloomington as all being superior).

But the main thread I'm seeing is that Waterloo is not a good place to live: it's "in the middle of nowhere" and unattractive. Quite a turnaround from just a few years ago when RIM was riding high and we were "the world's most intelligent community." This is my home town so I'm biased, but I don't want to see our reputation permanently tarnished.

##

Henry V (review)

A pivotal moment in Shakespeare's Henry V is when Henry tells his army to kill their prisoners.

Shakespeare has taken Henry through a long epic of personal change. In Henry IV Part I, Prince Hal is a dissipate, fun-loving, rich man's son, feeling guilty about the bad deeds his father performed to get the crown. Over the three plays Hal changes a lot. As he assumes the responsibility of becoming king his transformation is so great that he initiates a war to obtain French land. But the chillingest thing he does is during the battle of Agincourt when Henry decides to kill the French prisoners - a gross violation of any rules of war or morality.

Many productions of Henry V leave out the killing of the prisoners. Branagh and Olivier both left it out, and you have to assume that they didn't want their regal portrayals of Henry to be tarnished by such brutality. It's a pity. It changes everything to leave it out.

Des McAnuff's current Stratford production of Henry V leaves in the killing of the prisoners but makes no sense of it. The production is enjoyable fluff, but it makes little sense of anything. The biggest problem is the casting of Aaron Krohn as Henry; Krohn may be a decent actor, but he's more a matinee idol than a Shakespearian: he doesn't have the gravitas or the technique for Henry.

The second biggest problem is what McAnuff has told Krohn to do. It's like Krohn is just creating scenes without any context. After Henry's ruthlessness with the prisoners, McAnuff has Henry become a lighthearted lover who inexplicably falls in love with the French princess - there's no hint that the alliance solidifies his hold on France - that Henry's transformation is now so complete that even love is for him nothing but politics.

Henry V is full of stirring moments and great lines, but this production lets them all slip away. Henry's stirring pep talk to his troops becomes a conversation with a few of his generals. "Once more into the breach... the game's afoot!" is lost in monotone. Henry has no character and the play ultimately has no meaning.

Stratford doesn't fail the way it used to. Even in this remarkably vapid production, there is much that is good and the play overall is enjoyable, with great staging, music, sets - and a huge talented cast.

###

Mechanics of Dysfunction

When I read about towns in the US that are incorporating and privatizing (such as in the New York Times this week), my first reaction is horror at this latest outbreak of libertarianism. Communities take this route in order to shirk their responsibilities to poor people who live outside the new town limits, and they outsource local jobs to huge multinational corporations.

The problem with the ideological-emotional reaction is that it demonizes without understanding motivations, and so isn't at all pragmatic. When I look into the matter further I continue to deplore it, but start to understand it.

Parts of the US have such horrendous disparity of wealth that you find small enclaves of the middle class surrounded by a sea of poverty. It's not just that the rich don't want to pay for the poor: it's that the rich want decent services (such as good policing and roads) and they're having trouble achieving that when the county government is struggling to provide even subpar services to large poor communities. Separating might seem like the only way to attain decent services.

I don't understand racial politics in the US, but places that have incorporated are called "white flight" towns, so part of the problem seems to be racist - especially in the southern states, where poverty falls disproportionately to non-white communities.

Once incorporated, many of these towns outsource almost all of their civic services. Some are left with only one public employee. Many outsource everything except for the police and fire departments (because of insurance prices). The reason for outsourcing is the cost of unionized employees. We might call this union-busting, but think of it from the perspective of the communities that are privatizing. The New York Times quotes John Donahue of Harvard as saying, "A lot of jobs in government are middle-class jobs that in the private sector are not middle-class jobs. People aren't willing to support conditions for public workers that they themselves no longer enjoy" ...like pensions and excellent health coverage.

While incorporation and privatization have been around for a while, they have picked up since the 2008 financial collapse because communities are going through crisis. When faced with imminent bankruptcy during a recession, there aren't a lot of options. Raising property taxes is a problem when people are already losing their homes in record numbers; in some cases it just isn't feasible because it could exacerbate the downward spiral and result in even lower tax revenue. Much of the cost structure is fixed because of union agreements. Reducing financial obligations to the rest of the county is egregious, but it saves towns millions that they might not be able to save otherwise.

Historically, Democrats prevent incorporation from happening, but in the current economic downturn Republicans are surging, and it only takes one term of Republican majority in state legislatures to allow a slew of incorporations.

The tragedy is even greater that the solution to the dysfunction is increasing the dysfunction. Incorporation and privatization are removing local jobs, increasing local poverty, and hurting social services and schools that could help pull the poor out of poverty. When one town in a county chooses white flight, it puts financial pressure on other towns and makes it more likely that they'll go too. Income inequality and racial tension continue to increase.

It's all just going to shit. That will continue until the US effectively addresses poverty. It might help to change the terminology; instead of calling it the war on poverty, call it the war on lack of opportunity, or the war on hopelessness.

The other issue is how to transform into the post-union world we're becoming. Unions served a useful purpose a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, maybe even twenty years ago; but now their time is done. We need a better transition than moving from unionized income for life to outsourced minimum wage jobs. (And in the US, even the low minimum wage is under attack from business lobbyists.) We need stronger employment laws and better retirement savings options for everyone.

See also:
Did Philip K Dick Dream of Palm Jumeirah?

###

Some scattered thoughts about Alan Turing

It is Alan Turing’s 100th birthday today, June 23. Earlier this week I went to a documentary about Turing at Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing and then did some reading. Here are a few things I found interesting...

Early computers were referred to by many names, including radio brains, universal Turing machines, and automatic computing engines. Turing didn’t just envision the computer; he worked on teams that built some. The public archives at alanturing.net preserve fascinating letters and memos from that work.

Turing apparently committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. Turing’s friend Alan Garner (one of my favorite authors) wrote recently that Turing had “a fascination with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, especially the transformation of the Wicked Queen into the Witch. He used to go over the scene in detail, dwelling on the ambiguity of the apple, red on one side, green on the other, one of which gave death.” (link)

After being convicted of gross indecency for being gay, Turing worried that his work would be discredited. He wrote facetiously, “Turing believes machines think, Turing lies with men, Therefore machines do not think.” But that argument may also be taken to be causal, as the turmoil of his last years meant that he never published his neural net sketches of intelligent machinery or his ideas for how to program.

I don't find his famous question, Can machines think?, at all interesting. It seems ridiculous: if the Turing Test determines whether machines think, and machines fail the test until something is added to them that makes it possible for them to pass the test, then it follows that machines thought after they passed the test but did not think before they passed the test - even though they did substantially the same thing. Obviously I'm wrong: the Turing Test kicked off the study of artificial intelligence and was enormously significant. Turing's thinking about the similarities of machines and human brains seems also to be based in his understanding that human thinking, including intuition and originality, are computable processes that can be replicated by machines. And of course it's increasingly possible; we could program computers to have emotional responses, lizard brain responses, a collective unconscious, and fallibility (along with things like heuristics and fuzzy logic).

So much of the writing about Turing dwells on the salacious and pathetic. It's his birthday and it seems a day to celebrate the man's accomplishments rather than swap gossip about him.

Liberal Leaders: Guaranteed Support?

Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure. We Liberals have blown through four leaders in recent years (I count Bob Rae among the four because he has been much more than a caretaker). Our leaders have all failed - because we have not supported them. When the Harper attack ads started, we let ourselves be affected. When a new leader had some missteps out of the gate, we called for his head. When the first election the leader presided over didn't go well, we dumped his sorry ass.

It's obvious that what we need to do is give our next leader the time to learn the job. Historically, new party leaders falter in the beginning. Most Prime Ministers didn't get there on their first try. Many didn't look too sharp for the first term or two.

In particular, when we know the leader we've chosen is inexperienced (like Ignatieff), we have to not only give him some slack but be supportive. Any of our last four leaders could have led us to victory, given time and support. What failed is us, the party, not them.

Why does this happen? We have the recent memory of being called Canada's natural ruling party, and there is an impatience to regain our former stature. We blame the leader for not doing it - even though we should all know that it is going to take time for a leader to not just learn, but develop the right team, develop policies, build support in the electorate, make allies, and on and on. I suspect we also have a party loaded up with formerly powerful politicians who are now invested in finding controversial topics to please editors.

We may have to face a situation where our choices for leader are all at the bottom of the barrel. Gerard Kennedy's name is being bandied about - he with a three year college degree, little French, a trumped-up CV and unable to even keep his seat: the definition of an empty pretty boy. He may be what we get. Whoever we get, it is our responsibility to make the most of him: not to whine and complain and demand a replacement.

Why don't we guarantee our next leader that he or she gets the time needed to succeed? Why not say from the outset that they have a two-election term - and we don't expect that they will significantly increase seats in the first of those elections? What about making a pledge (with specifics) to support and help our next leader?

Why would ANYONE agree to take the position without something along those lines? Why would Justin Trudeau want to follow his four predecessors into the pit of humiliating failure?

I have been supporting Bob Rae for leader since he first threw his hat in the ring six years ago. Most of the party divided their support between the four front-runners (in order of support at the convention): Ignatieff, Rae, Dion, Kennedy. Supporters of the first three men have watched the party choose and then pick to death their candidate. It hasn't been a happy experience for any of us. It definitely hasn't helped the party. And it shouldn't happen again.

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A Sad Regret that Rae Said No

Of all our options for permanent leader, Bob Rae is the most competent, experienced, principled, classy, witty, formidable, erudite and knowledgeable. We would have been very lucky to have him as permanent leader.

I was amazed he was willing to continue to stand for the job. It is six years since he first announced he would run for leader. In that time, two other candidates were chosen over him and then the party executive effectively boxed him out. His continuing interest in being permanent leader was a selfless act; the job ahead is to slowly rebuild a crumbling party, or destroy it in a merger with a stronger party, or watch it die. I believe he wanted to stand because he knew he was the best person to save the party.

Unfortunately, the party, or at least some influential parts, made that impossible. For Rae, personally, this has to be the best choice. As for the party, it is definitely a sad day. And let's remember this: it was Harper's attack ads that took down Dion and Ignatieff, but it was the Liberal party itself that brought down Rae.

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Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury had a profound effect on me: my interests, sensibilities, sense of awe, dreams, desires, ideal writing style, values, phobias. When I was a kid I devoured his books: especially Something Wicked This Way Comes, The October Country, and the like; but I loved all of them. There's one story about a boy who has had to wear stiff leather shoes all winter, but now summer is here and he's saved up his money to buy a pair of sneakers that are in the window of a shoe shop on his main street. The long, detailed description of how those shoes feel as he bounces up and down in them is my touchstone for shoe shopping to do this day. And so much more.