Today’s the day! Don’t forget to go out and vote.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new article Late Bloomers is up at the New Yorker.

Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” at twenty-five. Herman Melville wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with “Moby-Dick.” Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law.

Are you still a genius if it’s only later in life that you do anything truly brilliant?

Gladwell discusses the article in a podcast and will be answering reader questions about it later in the week.

I went to the Environment & Education Forum at the Lethbridge College yesterday evening for the “last chance to grill [my] federal election candidates”.

I was unimpressed with the fact that only three parties showed up to debate (how does the green party expect to be taken seriously, when their candidate doesn’t show up).

The NDP’s Mark Sandilands was clearly the top candidate, with his well considered responses and comprehensive knowledge of the issues.

Incumbent candidate Rick Casson on the other hand, did not fair so well. The other candidates, specifically Mark Sandilands, poignant questions had him stumbling time after time. I can’t believe the polls indicate that Casson is going to be re-elected, his campaign basically consisted of admitting that his party has made lots of mistakes and that, “that’s something we should do better at”. It’s like he’s not even trying because he knows that running in a conservative stronghold means it doesn’t matter what he says.

The Conservative Party is destroying our environment, wants to reduce funding to the arts, gives tax cuts to the rich, and they refuse to support the Kelowna Accord which was intended to improve the lives of aboriginal people.

And they don’t want to let the Canadian people know their plans, refusing to publish their platform until a week before the election. Local candidate Rick Casson told us last night, a week is plenty of time to talk about the plan, and besides, it’s basically like our previous plan anyway. He didn’t notice any changes worth mentioning. As I mentioned, tonight was THE LAST PUBLIC FORUM WITH THEM BEFORE THE ELECTION.

Why would the people of Lethbridge vote for such a callous uncaring party?

One more thing that bothers me is their desire to introduce copyright legislation that is harmful to everyday citizens making the copyright system here more like the one in the US—even though the US law is seriously out of touch. The new law would, among other things, bring into action a fine of up to $500 for copying legally purchased CD’s onto MP3 players, not to mention it would make it illegal to try and circumvent anti-copyright software, making it illegal to engage in the practise of Fair Dealing (Fair Use in the USA).

The conservatives want to remain in Afghanistan. In 2006 they made it a campaign promise to be out by 2009—I learned last night that they’re now planning to wait until at least 2012, even though the Senlis report on Canadian development in Afghanistan has stated that we are “making no headway. On the ground in Kandahar… CIDA’s efforts are non-existent.”

I could go on!

But I won’t. I’ll just hope that when Canada goes to the polls on Tuesday that we vote for the party most likely to beat out the conservatives.

Hit play or watch The Harper government: here for a good time? at YouTube.

Lethbridge artist and activist Andy Davies shows his support of local MP candidate Mark Sandilands with his modified bike.

Andy is a friend of mine and asked me to shoot a few photos for him.

If you’re confused about what caused the greatest financial crisis since the depression, let This American Life teach you in words you can understand, how the mortgage lending crisis started, with their episode—The Giant Pool of Money and follow-up with their episode Another Frightening Show About the Economy in which we learn:

1. How and why the credit markets froze?
2. What are “credit default swaps” and how do they propagate hardship to every sector of the economy?
3. Why aren’t “credit default swaps” regulated?
4. What will the bailout do and is it a good thing?

If this interests you, you might also want to check out the NPR: Planet Money Podcast.

My cousin Amie and her husband Matt got up early this morning to attend one of Barack Obama’s rallies, this one just a few miles from their house. They got some great photos of the future president!

I’m happy to hear that Adobe will be releasing their newest version of Photoshop in just a couple of weeks. The entire Creative Suite 4 (CS4), is targeting a release date for October 15, 2008.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating one of Photoshop CS4’s amazing new abilities (which was foreshadowed here)—to scale intelligently based on the content of an image.

It opens up a whole new can of worms in the ethics of editing photos department, but at the same time, it looks REALLY fun to use.

Hit play or watch Content Aware Scaling on YouTube.

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It’s a terrible time waster, but if you’re looking to kill your afternoon, try Whiteboard Tower Defense.

Since the introduction of open lectures by progressive thinking educational institutions like M.I.T., Stanford, Duke, Yale, and others, many exceptional presentations have bubbled to the top and should be watched.

Here are five must see open course video lectures as recommended by Virginia Heffernan of the NYTimes.

1. Walter H. G. Lewin, Powers of 10, M.I.T. (At about 2:40 watch Power of Ten video that is cut from the lecture)
2. Randy Pausch, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Carnegie Mellon
3. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, Duke and M.I.T. (the rest of his short clips)
4. Langdon Hammer, Modern Poetry, Yale
5. Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), Yale

I also recommend Mark Schlissel, Introduction - The Cell Theory, Bacteria, Animal Cells, Evolution (Viruses and Midochondria). (The good stuff starts at about 13:00).

I listened to about a quarter of all the lectures from this course—most of which were over my head, but the first and second (mp3) classes are fascinating and make me wish I studied biology at school.

Another wordle, this one is comprised of the words I use most when posting to this site.

I came across a youtube video this morning that shows Sarah Palin (Sarah Heath) sporting a swimsuit in the 1984 Miss Alaska Pageant. The video was pulled shortly later, but in the meantime I contacted Waxy.org’s Andy Baio and he, having more foresight than me, made a copy and is now hosting it himself.

I downloaded the transcripts of all of Obama and McCain’s speeches from their respective official websites from March 25th, 2008 to the present and then put them each into Wordle.

Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I used 51 speeches by McCain and 61 by Obama.

McCain’s site only had transcripts from March 25th to the present and I figured that was plenty of data for my purposes.

Matt Damon condemns John McCain’s choice of hockey-mom Sarah Palin for Vice President. He compares the situation to a ‘really bad Disney movie’ and says it’s crazy that this woman could become President.

Hit play or watch Damon Condemns Palin at YouTube.

It’s one of those situations that is funny because it’s true (albeit also frightening). The geniuses at CollegeHumor have taken the idea and run with it. Here is the fictional trailer to her, unbelievable, real life story:

Hit play or watch Sarah Palin Disney Trailer at CollegeHumor.

I went to the Naomi Klien speech at the U of L last Monday and was entertained and enraged (both at the same time) as she talked about the situations and events unfolding in the world right now and the influence that free market ideology has on the world at large. She also emphasized that new policy applied after a crisis has often been waiting for the opportunity, for people too shocked by the event to stand up against bad laws.

Here she is on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher (September 19):

Hit play or watch Naomi Klien on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube.

She wrote an article for the Guardian last week which contained many of the points she made in her speech. (More after the jump).

Read the rest of this entry »

A crash course on the amazing properties of super-conductors, the following video demonstrates what may be the future of transportation.

Hit play or watch MagLev Toy Train at Liveleak.

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