A painting of me
  • US newspaper to charge website commenters. 

    The paper plans to charge a one-time 99 cents fee to post a comment. You pay via credit-card, and the name on the card is the name that will appear when you comment. I hope other papers follow this lead. I think it would get rid of the vast majority of stupidness that litters most newspaper comment sections. People probably won’t be so straight-up racist/homophobic/bigoted if their name sits right next to their screed.

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  • It's Faster Because It's C. 

    Spoiler: probably not. (The last time I profiled one of our programs at work, it spent something like 90% of it’s time reading and writing to UDP sockets—tasks you really couldn’t make any faster.)

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  • Oscar Grant, A Victim Of American Fear. 

    Even decades after the civil-rights era, a cop shooting an unarmed black man is barely a crime — a 2007 ColorLines investigation of police shootings in New York City found that in 12 instances when the victim was unarmed, only one officer was found criminally liable. There hasn’t been a murder conviction on a police shooting in Oakland since 1983.

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The Dirty Gut Derby

   14 July 2010, early morning

Casey's Cottage

Casey invited me up to his cottage for a weekend long fishing derby. Being an organized young man, invitations went out almost a year ago. I guess that’s how you make sure people keep their schedules clear.

I started talking shit about my fishing prowess more or less a year ago as well:

My family is from a peninsula on a fucking Island. It almost seems unfair to compete. This is pretty much how I spend my weekends.

Of course, none of my family can swim. Apparently Jaffna Tamils are too busy trying to get their children to become doctors to bother going swimming in the ocean. Last month I confirmed I was going to make it up to the cottage with the following quip:

I actually broke my leg on purpose to give myself a handicap.

Sadly, my trash talking didn’t actually help with my fishing. My first outing out on the rocks of the Ottawa river resulted in one broken bobber, and one lost at sea. During my second round of fishing, on the dock at Casey’s cottage, I managed to tangle the line of my rod and then proceed to tangle the line of Tyler’s rod. My third attempt at fishing in the evening resulted my fishing line getting tangled up in a tree. (I did manage to untangle myself from the tree, which felt like a real accomplishment.) Unfortunately, I tangled up my line the next time I tried to cast off. I’m not entirely sure how.

I was all set to retire from the competition when Matt decided to try and untangle my line. He decided that his new mission was to make sure I catch at least one fish. My line was so tied up he quickly moved on from trying to untangle it to cutting the line and getting me set up again. It was dusk so he quickly ended up covered in mosquito bites, but my fishing rod was ready for action. I cast off one last time, and moments later I saw my bobber dip in the water. I had apparently caught something. I reeled in the fish for what felt like a long time: it was a battle. At this point I realized that I don’t actually know what to do after you’ve caught the fish. Sean, who was currently building our camp fire, came over to see what was up. It turns out the tension on my fishing line was super low; he adjusted that and the reeling in process went a lot quicker. Sean was also there to actually pick my fish up out of the water, hang on to it while I snapped a picture, get the hook out, and throw it back in the water. I caught a cat fish. It was a team effort.

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  • Undercover Karaoke with Jewel. 

    This is awesome. Funny or Die dressed Jewel up as a business woman out on town after a frozen food convention and had her perform her own songs at a Karaoke bar. The crowd goes mental for this “Karen” lady.

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  • Even Female Lawyers Suffer Wage Disparities. 

    Even female attorneys within the highest-ranks of elite law firms are paid, on average, roughly $66,000 less than their male counterparts, according to a new study done by the Project for Attorney Retention and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association.

    Systemic discrimination in corporate law? This is my shocked face: :o.

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  • Tuna's End. 

    Adapted from the book “Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food” for the New York Times. A pretty bleak look at the state of world wide tuna fishing. It sounds like the fishing industry is good at fishing fish to extinction.

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  • The Toronto 18. 

    The [Toronto] Star was the first to break the news, just over four years ago, that an al-Qaeda inspired homegrown terror cell had been busted in Toronto. … Numerous publication bans have kept the full story from the public. Now, with the case over, we can present the complete narrative of the Toronto 18: Who they are, how they met, what they did.

    This is a great example of how to present long-form journalism online. The presentation is excellent. I would have never expected something so impressive from the Star.

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  • TTC resurrects plan to wire subways for cellphone service. 

    This is already the case in Tokyo. In Tokyo is worked really well. The thing is, in Tokyo, no one actually spoke on their phones when on the train. There were signs everywhere telling you not to. There was also a button on your phone that would turn it to ‘subway’ mode, where it would be silent. People would text one another, while commuting in silence. Somehow I doubt it will work out quite as well in Toronto. “Riders who opposed it feared being sandwiched in next to someone yakking on a cellphone, Mr. Giambrone said.”

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