Currents

Anyone else incredulous at the story about the BC Human Rights Tribunal is going after a comedian after he rhetorically slapped down a couple of obnoxious hecklers at a Vancouver comedy show (See comedian Guy Earle’s description of the incident below)?

Political correctness is clearly out of control in Canada.

Ezra Levant, facing his own Human Rights Commission witch hunt, has pointed out that Earle’s case isn’t an isolated incident on his blog (Did You Hear The One About The Joke Police?). He notes that Heather MacNaughton, who wrote the ruling sending this matter to trial, is the same tribunal member who chaired Mark Steyn’s trial:

In that trial, too, the funny-ness of jokes became an issue. The Canadian Islamic Congress said that some of Mark Steyn’s jokes weren’t funny, but they also insisted that the CBC’s awful “sitcom”, Little Mosque on the Prairies, was indeed funny, and if Steyn didn’t think so, he was a racist.

So MacNaughton feels comfortable in her self-appointed role as government joke-tester.

It’s a joke, all right. I just don’t see the humor in it.

It appears that the heckler’s own behavior at the incident in question is under fire. One commenter with the tag Eyes_R-Listening writing on the official social network site of the L Word TV show (where the heckler apparently worked as an extra) says:

You make out with your girlfriend like some 15 year old in front of an adult audience. You then behave like some drunken heterosexual male at a strip joint and whine when you get a taste of your own medicine. This will never leave you. A bit of advice sweetheart: stay away from booze cuz you can’t control your big fat mouth. Oh, and say goodbye to your career.

Hmmm. This joke keeps getting worse by the day.

What the heck is this video about? If something isn’t working, change tactics? Sound and fury signifying nothing? Making sure the door goes in, not out, before doing something embarrassing? I’m not sure. But I like it.

This next video clip is one of my favorites from the Orson Welles classic, The Trial. I suppose these two videos together are a bit depressing. They’re still awfully cool, though.

The BC technology industry, like most other industries in our booming province, seems to be immune to the economic slump hitting the USA and parts of Canada dependent on American branch-plant manufacturing (read: Ontario). The tech sector is looking to fill 10,000 jobs this year, on top of the 75,000 people already employed in the industry (PR Web), including yours truly. The participants at tonight’s Third Tuesday social media marketing extravaganza like superstar SM consultant Joe Solomon, super marketer Tanya Davis and SM evangelist Monica Hamburg are perfect examples of professionals who have found opportunities in the tech sector and are using tools for work that simply weren’t around just a few years ago. (My apologies to my friends at the event. Not feeling too well. I PROMISE to attend the next one. In the meantime, I’m sure Raul’s excellent liveblog of the Third Tuesday event will have to tide me over.

But the other side of the tech jobs story is that there don’t seem to be enough people to actually fill the jobs. Odd, since a lot of these jobs seem to have exactly the sorts of things people like in a job: good pay, opportunities, a creative environment and the “cool” factor of being able to say “I work in tech”. Is the dotcom bust buzzkill from 2000 still keeping people away from a burgeoning industry?

If so, all the parents who are still steering their kids away from tech and into the trades might start feeling awfully foolish when all those jobs dry up when the 2010 Olympics projects are done and the housing market slows down (Oh, wait, the second part has already come true).

For more on this issue, check out my post on Techvibes, Who Wants an Interesting, Well-Paid Job in IT? Anyone? Hello?

In the meantime, I discovered this excellent video about some interesting people who have managed to find some really cool tech jobs: Tetris block pilots.

Traffic jams for hours on end. Freeways cutting an ugly concrete gouge through the city centre. An epidemic of road rage. Pedestrians treated like second-class citizens.

Not our problem, thanks. Vancouver actually seems to have done pretty well on the transportation planning front.

Except for Montreal, Vancouver has more than twice as many people walking to work and shops as in any other North American city. Every day, 50,000 cyclists take to our streets. About half of all commuters still take cars to work, but our numbers are still far lower than in places like Edmonton and Calgary, where over 70 per cent drive to their jobs.

I explored these trends and more in the latest issue of Granville Magazine in my city view column, “We Like To Move It, Move It”.

Vancouver has made a lot of progress compared to other municipalities in terms of promoting more sustainable transportation. But are we moving in the right direction? What do you think are Vancouver’s transportation priorities?

Politics can be nasty, brutish and quicker than anyone suspected. Vancouver Sam Sullivan is on his way out after an upset at Sunday’s nomination process (Who knew about this thing?). Newly-crowned Non-Partisan Association head honcho Peter Ladner now has the chance to grasp the brass ring that is the Mayor’s office (CBC). First, he’ll have an election to fight, though.

Will Sullivan’s supporters go over to Ladner in solidarity with the NPA cause? It doesn’t look like Sullivan is going to fight it. “I’m really honoured to continue to finish off my term and I will go on and do something else,” he says with far speedier poise than Hillary Clinton was able to pull off when her own campaign finally hit a brick wall.

The city has real issues that the next mayor, whoever it is, will have to deal with promptly. Our city is still swarming with homeless. The drug trade is going gangbusters, and gangsta violence is hurting innocents. Parts of Vancouver look like a war zone. We need results… last year.

Of course, whoever does take the reigns at Vancouver City Hall will also be leading a city that has one of the best environmental records in North America, a working multi-ethnic society and an economy that seems to have real staying power even in an economic downturn. And then there’s the Olympics.

Whoever will be mayor, it will be one of the most exciting municipal politics positions anywhere in the world. As for Citizen Sam, you’ve been criticized by your opponents as a politician who is big on ideas but not as effective in getting results. May you use the rest of your tenure as mayor to bring some of your policies to fruition and leave the city in better condition than you found it. Good luck.

As our soldiers in Afghanistan fight fascists and terrorists, today we remember those Canadians who fought the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

While writing an article for Business In Vancouver Magazine about the evolution of the Internet in China, I was asked to define, in a word, exactly what Web 2.0 meant. At first, I was a little taken aback. After all, entire books could be written on the subject. How was I supposed to define such an ubiquitous yet nebulous catch-phrase of the technorati era?

Fortunately, copious amounts of caffeine and a looming deadline were the spark of inspiration. Web 2.0 in a word? Freedom.

Web 2.0 is an Internet filled with websites and platforms that are community-based, promoting communication through new media (blogs/forums/video and audio sharing platforms) and sharing of ideas and technology.

If the old Internet was a city filled with brilliant but unresponsive giant billboards built by individuals with 100 per cent control of their message, Web 2.0 is a collection of giant town hall meetings involving hundreds of millions of people, where the message is what most people say it is.

Web 2.0 basically means free (as in “democratic”) Internet. That’s what makes the current situation in China so compelling, as technology and web development businesses ultimately have to adapt the free model of the Internet we’re used to in North America to the needs and rules that exist in that country.

Vancouver’s own tech community is involved in China’s burgeoning new media scene that may ultimately have an effect on the larger political culture of a country that many people think will be the dominant power in the 21st century. My article in BIV, Internet Technology To Grapple With The Great Firewall of China, just scratches the surface of a much larger story that’s evolving very fast.

The Canadian is finally embracing Web 2.0 tools with gusto, announcing the coming development of social networks, blogs and wikis to help bring 250,000 federal employees in 58 government departments into the next phase of the Information Age (ITbusiness.ca). The move bodes well for showing off the growing link between a democratic political system and an open source Internet.

Traditionally, governments of any political stripe, even in countries with well-established principles of free speech, have strived to control the discussion whenever possible. Web 2.0 makes that control more difficult to consolidate. Clearly, it’s a better long-term move for democratic governments like Canada’s to try to use tools like blogs and wikis rather than trying to control the beast that is Web 2.0.

For those Canadians concerned about poor communication skills from our current government in Ottawa, this news is definitely good news.

Read more about the link between Web 2.0 and democracy in my latest article on Techvibes, Canada’s Crazy Big Web 2.0 Project Starts Now.