New Media

Five dollars might not make a big difference these days. But five hundred people donating five dollars each? Hmmmm.

Vancouver is already well known for being the birthplace of Web 2.0 photo-file sharing company, Flickr. But the next big Web 2.0 venture out of Vancouver is all about sharing our resources with the people who need it.

Givemeaning.com is a website that helps people donate to worthy causes online without having to worry about getting your passwords stolen or your email account inundated with spam. It’s a nice, practical application for helping make the world a better place.

Full disclosure: I have absolutely no connection to this website or its founder. But I am proud to have this kind of startup launching out of Vancouver, just a few blocks away from where I go to work.

Givemeaning.com gets a good plug from CTV here. Here’s hoping they get all the press they can handle.

The rain is back.

Summer is definitely over. From my window, I can see the wet rooftops under the gray sky that shrouds Vancouver. This is what we have to look forward to for the next six months or so.

When the weather gets gloomy like this, non-amphibian Vancouverites like myself tend to stay indoors more and go back to that old standby of home entertainment: television.

This weekend, I caught the first couple of episodes of the third season of Arrested Development on DVD. I’m a little sad that I only have a few more episodes to go before it all ends.

On a whim, I rented the first season of AD last year and became instantly hooked. The characters are at once cringingly awkward yet endearingly unaware; the result is comedy gold.

For those who haven’t seen the show, I’ve posted a clip from the third season above. Don’t let the title of the clip scare you off – it’s not what you think. Enjoy.

Someone at work stinks.

This is not a metaphorical description of their character or the quality of their efforts. No, no. He actually stinks.

The B.O. wafts about him like a noxious invisible cloud that lingers long after he has gone. I’ve routinely smelled him coming a good ten second-stretch before he walks into my line of vision. This is not the personal opinion of an overly-sensitive soul, either. This walking stink bomb can clear a packed computer lab or a conference room inside of half a minute.

Even on the street, the offensive odor is not diminished. Vancouver’s endless supply of homeless meander by begging for change. One realizes immediately that this particular person gives off a worse smell than those who defecate in back alleys without the benefit of toilet paper.

The obvious solution is to tell smelly man what’s up. But for a week, the entire staff and our clientele have suffered in silence. Politeness has trumped our need to not want to vomit.

Now that the unlucky delegate has been chosen to relay our feelings on this matter, B.O. boy will no doubt wonder why we have let this go on so long.

Will it be a relief, or a further humiliation, to discover that his inability to fit in is not because of a defective personality, but out of control sweat glands?

In a sense, this is not such a light topic. The recent incident in Montreal showed us the extreme consequences of ignoring a misfit. Of course, I’m not implying in any way that Smelly Man will resort to violence. But little incidents like this that seem stupid and funny to most people have a way of seeming far more consequential in retrospect.

Hopefully, the truth will set us free and we will all soon breath a little easier.

At the risk of leading my readers to assume that jnarvey.COM has changed from a more general, current affairs commentary from Vancouver kind of web page into a war-mongering, reveling-in-violence blog, I’m publishing here a copy of my letter to the editor published this week in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight. The original article I was responding to can be viewed here.

By the way, I didn’t write the title for the piece. I’m kind of ambivalent about it.

War is tolerable when it takes out tyrants

Publish Date: 14-Sep-2006

Re: “War—what is it good for?” [Sept. 7-14]. Verne McDonald’s contention that war solves nothing is somewhat accurate, though some of the examples he uses actually seem to refute his thesis. He notes that the First World War was supposed to check German imperialism and give self-determination to smaller European nations; his only comment is “Oops.” Readers might be confused by that. The Allies did prevent Germany from becoming the centre of a European empire, and the death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire actually did bring autonomy to some new nations—at least until round two.

The Allied nations destroyed the German and Japanese empires in the Second World War; unquestionably a good thing for the hundreds of millions of people who hoped they would be liberated.

As for McDonald’s little footnote about Israel, he seems intent on perpetuating the perverse myth that Israel’s strategy for survival is “continuous warfare with the Arab world”. Like many before him, McDonald confuses the conditions (terrorism, war, endless hate-filled propaganda, and economic sanctions) imposed on Israel by the Arab world with the extreme actions that Israel must take to defend its people from a second Holocaust.

War is a terrible thing. But letting tyrants enslave or eradicate entire nations is worse.

> Jonathon Narvey / Vancouver

Tags: Georgia Straight, Verne Macdonald, war pig, flower power, cry freedom

It will be a cold day in Darfur before that particular dimension of Hell gets help from the outside world.

As reported in MetroBlogging Vancouver, my city will be joining New York, London, Paris and a host of others in staging the Global Day for Darfur. The local version of the event will take place outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Sunday between 2 and 5 pm, publicizing the need for a UN peacekeeping force to stop the genocide happening in Sudan.

Meanwhile, Sudan has been saying for months that it would fight any UN force actually capable of stopping the violence (The latest reminder can be read here). The implication is that the blue helmets would be facing not only the Sudanese military (probably not all that terrifying a challenge to a professional NATO force) but attacks from guerilla fighters drawn from across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, very likely including the concerted efforts of Al Queda and affiliated jihadists.

Western nations are already waist-deep in blood and scorpions in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are not going to risk more coffins coming home from war zones where the enemy is hardly distinguishable from the ones they are supposed to be protecting.

So which blue helmets will go to Sudan? The Russians? The Chinese? The Brasilians? It’s not going to happen.

It is good that the tragedy of Sudan will be front and center in the public eye again. It is sad that it will not make a difference.

Tags: Darfur genocide, blue helmets, global day for Darfur, Sudanese intransigence