Paul Natsuo Kishimoto - 2008

Dulce et decorum est

2008-11-11T00:00:00+01:00

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
  In Flanders fields.

—from In Flanders Fields (1915), John McCrae

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If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

—from Dulce et Decorum est (1917), Wilfrid Owen

The English slogan for Remembrance Day is "Lest We Forget," but I prefer the more active French je me souviens. The day is to remember the sacrifices (life, limb or otherwise) of those who have fought in wars past. Consider, though—why remember, why rehearse old pain? What is the use?

The observance dates to the Great War, and the two World Wars are foremost in the minds of many; but there are many other conflicts in which Canadians have done yeoman's work. My uncle retired from the Maritime Command as a Commander; my cousin was seriously wounded in the Balkans when his APC drove over a land mine. One major conflict is ongoing. As an ex-Air Cadet, I have teenage friends who went on to serve in the Canadian Forces—at least one in Afghanistan, and others possibly there depending on how long the mission lasts.

The Toronto Star has a striking video of a soldier reflecting—his "a hundred lives" refers to the 97 Canadian deaths since 2003. We are exhorted to "support the troops," often with the unspoken demand to also "support this war so the deaths were not in vain." Our own most noted WWI poet telegraphs that the dead wish us to take up their quarrel. What then are we to make of Wilfrid Owen's bitter invective against Horace's Old Lie, "It is sweet and noble to die for one's country"?

To me, Owen's words reflect the undeniable truth that it is young (wo)men who fight the wars of the old; it is they who make the sacrifices. But the horror of war is well-known—surely Canadians would not, time and again, leave their homes and families, cross oceans, and throw themselves into the breach in strange lands, merely because they had been well lied-to. Nor do I think this is ever the case. If the third World War were—God forbid—to break out and somehow not descend into nuclear holocaust, I might go to fight, but never with a heart full of sweet and noble feelings.

Instead, soldiers seem to go to war with their jaws set. For some few there may be a sense of adventure; but that is the esprit de corps created by good leaders. The remainder go out of duty, because they value service and their own freedom, because they remember how hard-won that freedom was, and because they feel others should also be free from tyranny and oppression.

Because I cannot fault this, I can only praise the many peacekeeping missions to which we have sent contributions. To me, peacekeeping is untainted by the Old Lie, because the peacekeeper consciously plants him- or herself in a place of danger and says to the opposing sides, "No. We will not let you do this, because our mothers and fathers have done it and we are haunted yet by their suffering. Live instead."

In the cynical political arena it is easy to justify a war of aggression fought for some material gain, but difficult to explain why our troops are making themselves targets—with bright blue helmets and white jeeps—for the benefit of strangely-dressed foreigners living in mud huts. This selfish calculus should not govern us in the slightest. We can reconcile McCrae and Owen by realizing that the former's foe is not the Hun or the Islamists but human suffering, writ large. One's country is little more than a flag and some lines on a map, but one's fellow man is perhaps worth dying for, even if he lives within a different set of lines.

I will not say that lives lost in Afghanistan—or anywhere else—are wasted, that other casualties are needless. That is very rarely the case. But in the Middle East, once Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, conflict is perpetual because some people remember only the count of the dead, as a grim yardstick for vengeance. If we bypass the official histories and read instead the letters sent home by lost servicemen and -women, we will remember that they simply wanted peace, for themselves and for others.

Having not found an opportunity to buy a poppy (and too lazy to find one), I instead offer these reflections on Remembrance Day.

…and under no circumstances are you to associate with that Machiavelli boy!

2008-10-27T00:00:00+01:00

The third of three short items for today concerns Niccolò Machiavelli and The Prince. I read the work for an excellent Modern Western Civilization course in high school, but hadn't seen the text again until an excerpt in Lapham's Quarterly prompted these remarks.

Everyone realizes how praiseworthy it is for a prince to honor his word and to be straightforward rather than crafty in his dealings; nonetheless, contemporary experience shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles.

(Italics mine) Consider that "contemporary" means "16th century Florentine" and that the intended audience was Lorenzo de' Medici. The book has great value, certainly, but it lies in discerning the motivations of such people and some rulers who have since attempted to emulate them. It worries me to see friends and colleagues admire it as a work of personal philosophy or modern politics, purposes for which it is ill-used.

Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.

Amid today's economic turbulence, espousing such views puts one in the poor company of predatory lenders who made a tidy profit trapping homeowners into bad loans. A mercenary approach to public institutions weakens them; the tarnish the Bush administration has left on the apparatus of government being a clear example. As citizens, if we undermine aspects of society when they are of personal inconvenience, we risk obsoleting functioning structures which must then be replaced or bolstered by more, more complex and more costly ones. This is in no-one's self-interest.

Men in general judge by their eyes rather than by their hands; because everyone is in a position to watch, few are in a position to come in close touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

In our private lives, few are entirely free from scrutiny, and we rarely—if ever—can manage to hold ourselves in princely remove from those around us. The discrepancies between our words and actions are plain, detracting both from our integrity and the cooperation it earns us from others.

I say nothing against pragmatism or even against the pursuit of self-interest. However, if you are seeking applicable lessons, there are far better sources than one which assumes you are the law, can exercise physical force with impunity, and are fully insulated from the consequences of your deliberate dishonesty.

Manufacturing in Ontario

2008-10-26T00:00:00+02:00

Manufacturing jobs in Ontario, the prophesy goes, are disappearing and will soon be extinct. I think this is unnecessarily dire. I recently read a report that Multibrid was weighing manufacturing the turbines for a large wind project in Lake Ontario.

Read the attached brochure from REpower, another Germany company making 5 MW turbines, and note the thirty-two endorsements from presidents of subcontractors and associated companies. Some of those companies do work exclusively in support of wind power manufacturing, which—if the world's third-largest GDP were not enough—should convince you that Germany knows what it is doing in terms of both sustainability and economic growth. If the provincial government could connect its left and right hands, I suspect the Ontario Power Authority would be quickly convinced to drop its weak claim that offshore wind projects are too expensive for the Ontario grid.

Tax Freedom Day

2008-10-26T00:00:00+02:00

The first of three short pieces for today deals with the concept of Tax Freedom Day, which divides the working calendar year in the same proportion as the income tax paid by the average taxpayer (around 40%, in Ontario). Promoted in Canada by the conservative Fraser Institute, it is also highlighted by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) with words such as:

Another, albeit more depressing, way to view our tax burden is through the lens of a typical day…after working all morning for Paul Martin, Ernie Eves and Mel Lastman (or substitute your own mayor), it’s time for a quick sandwich and then back to work to make money to pay the bills. This scenario represents the daily grind for the average Ontario taxpayer.

The CTF has at its core the vaguely insulting reduction of 'citizen' to 'taxpayer', which both ignores civic duty and elides the crucial fact that the set of citizens and set of taxpayers are not the same. From the CTF's standpoint, children—not being, for the most part, taxpayers—are only of value to the extent that they earn tax breaks for their parents, and certainly their education (paid for by taxes) is assigned no objective value that might distinguish it from other "waste".

Regarding Tax Freedom Day itself, the key fault is evident in the quotation above, which supposes the money is solely lining the pockets of elected officials. While those do earn salaries—about which I will express no opinion—a more honest report would acknowledge that a taxpaying citizen's days until mid-June are spent:

paving the road he drives to work on,
caring for her infirm parents or grandparents,
policing and carrying out justice in his community,
educating her children,
defending his country from any enemies,
aiding the poor abroad, etc.

Of course, the hope is that you will imagine yourself to be a serf working for a greedy landlord who allows you but a fraction of your meagre income. When this is successful, the citizen comes to believe he is only a taxpayer, becomes blind to the benefits of government and therefore howls for it to be demolished.

LaTeX tools

2008-10-01T00:00:00+02:00

Over the past few months, I have moved almost entirely to LaTeX for word processing. The transition started at the end of AER407 Space Systems Design, when OpenOffice (or my five-year-old desktop) choked on a 200-page document with over 120 figures. While it was too late to transfer that entire report to LaTeX, I now use it even for one- or two-page documents. Why?

I am accustomed to editing HTML and other source code files and so habitually abstract content from its appearance—exactly the purpose of LaTeX.
Gedit (a text editor) is much faster to start and even more responsive than OpenOffice. I can also have documents I am referring to (e.g. other LaTeX documents included in a master document, source code files) open in other tabs.
BibTeX. 'Nuff said.
The results are beautiful PDF files.
It's free!

Some tips and tricks to streamline LaTeX authoring:

Use the LaTeX plugin for gedit. This adds a handy toolbar for common commands, and the document can be compiled with a simple Ctrl+Alt+1. The plugin requires Emmanuel Beffara's excellent rubber compiler, which obviates the need to run pdflatex or other programs repeatedly (install).
Charter BT (PDF sample) a slightly chunky but still elegant serif font. This is in the texlive-fonts-recommended package (install).
Add a right-click menu item to folders in Nautilus using the nautilus-actions package (install). This item removes all the extra files (.aux, .bbl, .out, .blg) created as intermediate stages of compiling a LaTeX document.
- System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions Configuration, click Add.
- Label: Remove LaTeX byproducts
- Tooltip: Remove temporary files created when rubber compiles *.tex documents.
- Icon: gtk-clear
- Path: find
- Parameters: %M -name *.tex -execdir rubber --clean '{}' \;
- Conditions: Appears if selection contains only folders.
Use \input{…} at the top of documents to include a header file like article-general.tex containing shortcuts and some common package includes.
texdoc _packagename_, which is like "man", only for LaTeX packages.

I also collect links at http://delicious.com/khaeru/latex.

Leadership & the 2008 Canadian election

2008-09-21T00:00:00+02:00

A friend posted the following today:

I'm not going to say much on the upcoming election, mainly out of concern that this post will turn into an undirected, irate rant. Still, the above ad prompted me to scratch a weeks-old itch.

One of the parties in this election is casting its prime ministerial candidate as a strong leader, and attacking his chief competitor as "not a leader." The portrayal includes an effort to conflate demonstrating leadership with exercising authority. This elides the core question regarding positional leadership: are you a leader because of where you sit and the power you wield, or because of what you accomplish and how you accomplish it?

Most people who have encountered both strong authority figures and inspiring leaders will tell you the two sets overlap only in the rarest of cases. My Air Cadet career taught me extensively about positional leadership in a quasi-military organization. However, experiences of the past year have convinced me of the greater potential, difficulty and value of non-positional leadership. I have learned that it is especially useful in situations of great complexity and ambiguity—for example, national government.

The NDP ad covers my point: the Prime Minister has certainly thrown his weight around in the past 2.5 years, but hasn't demonstrated much in the way of actual leadership.

That's just my opinion—but consider the following statements distinguishing leaders from those who merely exercise authority.

Leaders inspire others and gain support from everyone by expressing a vision of the future. Authority figures exclude or marginalize those who disagree with them.
Leaders take the time to have open, honest discussions about their vision and plans. Authoritarians don't disclose or discuss points that would lead to opposition.
Leaders are open to questions from those who don't understand their motivations. Authoritarians see no use in fielding such questions.
Leaders show integrity in their actions. Authority figures act on the principle that "the end justifies the means."
Authority figures view winning as getting what they want, fastest and first. Leaders view winning as bringing as many people as possible with them to the finish.
Authority figures can bully. Bullying is anathema to a leader.
Leaders cannot afford to walk away from their mistakes or their followers. Authority figures view themselves as above and distinct from their subjects.

Think what you will about the platforms of the various parties, but please don't accept arbitrary claims about leadership without considering the grounds those claims are made on. If you're a fan of Machiavelli, I've probably failed to convince you of anything; I will say only that we live in a democracy and not a feudal city-state, and remind you that a self-styled Prince can be relied on only to say to you whatever is necessary in order to keep his throne.

Why the TTC needs capital & policy support

2008-08-26T00:00:00+02:00

A Toronto Star article about the TTC potentially axing the free parking benefit for Metropass holders caught my attention this morning. While the Star's online comment system doesn't encourage nuanced viewpoints (more on that later), the general outrage is understandable. This isn't a good idea, and it wouldn't be a good choice. Unfortunately the Star fails to point out the real reason why: lack of vision and support.

Note the info box at the side of the page:

BALANCE SHEET Impact of ending free parking at TTC lots for Metropass holders: Parking revenues (after increase): $5.5M to $7.5M Reduced fare revenues as a result: $2.5M to $3.5M Increased operating costs: $100,000 Net: $2.9M to $3.9M Source: TTC staff report

What has happened here?

One, the environmental cost is wrongly excluded from the balance sheet. I acknowledge that the TTC has no mandate to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, and no authority to spend money to reduce such. Without free parking, a Metropass holder from the 905 might elect to drive into the downtown core instead of parking at Kipling, Downsview, Finch or Kennedy and taking the subway. Under a reasonable scheme for taxing pollution, the extra cost of gas or toll roads would outweigh the ~$6 for TTC parking. Mass transit would remain the more attractive option. Absent this incentive, observe that the TTC expects to lose up to $3.5M annually (almost 3000 full-year Metropass subscriptions) from the change; i.e. it is a net disincentive to ridership.

Second, I refer to the Hong Kong model again:

MTR Corporation has always been reliant on developing properties next to railway stations for its profits (although the rail lines are profitable themselves); many recently built stations are incorporated into large housing estates or shopping complexes.

Far from reliance, the TTC does no property development whatsoever; even hints at repurposing its lands involve their sale to developers who would retain any revenue. Consider the three Tridel Nuvo/Essex condominiums on the north side of St. Albans Road at Kipling Station. These >25-story buildings are nearly sold out; 1 bedroom + den units are already being resold for over $230,000. A fourth building is planned, and you can be certain this is not because Tridel is losing money on the first three.

An identical building, owned by the TTC, could fit in the South Lot at Kipling. A fraction of the revenue from rent or residents' fees could fund the simultaneous building of a 3+-layer parking garage (above or below grade) on the North Lot; with a net increase in parking spaces. Further, a majority of the residents/tenants would certainly be Metropass holders who would not use parking spaces — because they could walk directly into the station — so free parking could be maintained for Etobicoke and Mississauga commuters.

However this sort of win-win-win-win-etc. proposition is only feasible if someone will fund the capital cost of the new building on the South Lot. The province of Ontario provides little money for this sort of project, and the federal government offers none. This is what I consider when voting in provincial and federal elections: who is likely to make this sort of positive change possible?

Password strength

2008-07-08T00:00:00+02:00

https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/ is a useful tool. Many people use weak passwords, and further use the same password for many sites online. Knowing this was a bad idea, for a long time I used a system that involved choosing an obscure word with several vowels and applying a simple cypher to make it more secure: aeiost 431057 …so that, for example, 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' became 5up3rc4l1fr4g1l1571c3xp14l1d0c10u5'. Occasionally I would also capitalize a non-leading letter. This is what is referred to as "leet speak", and the substitutions quickly feel natural, even if you use them for nothing but passwords.

However, these passwords are just as weak as the dictionary words they are based on, because it is as easy for a password-cracking program to perform these substitutions as it is for a human. If we use Firefox, we can do better with the help of smart keywords and the password storage feature. We can use a different password for each website, and rely on a master password (or a locked screen on our workstation) to prevent their use by someone with physical access to a machine.

Go to the password generator, click all the checkboxes, choose 50 from the Quantity drop-down, and finally click Generate Password(s). Presto! Pick one of the passwords and use it. Note that since the site was accessed via HTTPS, no one else is likely to have snooped the list you received. Even if the site is maliciously remembering passwords (which I doubt), it does not know which of the 50 you have chosen, or where you used it.

Finally, examine the URL: https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/?length=8&phonetic=on&alpha=on&mixedcase=on&numeric=on&punctuation=on&nosimilar=on&quantity=50&generate=true

Replace the length with a wildcard: https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/?length=%s&phonetic=on&alpha=on&mixedcase=on&numeric=on&punctuation=on&nosimilar=on&quantity=50&generate=true

Save this as a bookmark with the keyword pw, and you can generate passwords quickly by typing F6 (select the Address Bar), "pw 10", Alt+Enter (open in new tab). For important passwords, you can even write the phoenetics on a card and keep it in your wallet, relying on your own memory to associate the password with the place you use it; or send the phoenetics (never the actual password) over e-mail or (preferably) instant messaging.

Unintuitive type conversions in Python

2008-07-04T00:00:00+02:00

In response to Bob's post on unintuitive interfaces, consider, in Python:

>>>bool('False')
True
>>>bool(str(False))
True

Huh?

>>>bool(eval('False'))
False
>>>bool(eval(str(False)))
False

Ah, that's better. Apparently I'm not the only person to get bitten by this.

Old arguments that won't die

2008-05-29T00:00:00+02:00

Reuters has a story today about the current Canadian government's resistance to agriculture proposals in the Doha round of WTO talks. Some domestic farm produce (dairy, poultry) is apparently protected by import tariffs of over 200 percent (!).

At the same time a report from CIBC World Markets indicates that even if the current USD 130+ price of oil is merely a spike (wanna bet?), higher energy costs will act to counteract globalization in many fields. Also, in a TED talk I have been spamming people with recently (but delivered in 2004) James Howard Kunstler repeatedly emphasizes that integrating farming with urbanized pockets is by far the most sensible format for continued development in North America.

It is unfortunate that so much effort and grief is expended on the issue of protectionism, and so little on encouraging local buying. Worse is the isolation of these issues into unrelated 'topics', a disservice done to readers by media outlets. A well-designed carbon tax or cap-and-trade system would almost automatically reward people for eating locally, and push the price of what Kunstler calls the "3000-mile Caesar salad" towards a corresponding $3000. Because import=distance=emissions=cost, domestic farmers would be supported. The average citizen would probably save on groceries, and certainly the government could divert resources from protracted trade negotiations to more pressing work.

Instead, I worry these issues—tariffs, energy and local eating—will be tackled separately, and despite the best intentions of many the end result will be as unworkable as the current situation.

Spanning sets

2008-05-18T00:00:00+02:00

I want to introduce a concept to some who won't be familiar with it, and then use it to illustrate a constructive way of thinking. For those who have had a course in linear algebra, please skip to the second part while ignoring my clumsy mathematical explanation in the first.

Spans and Bases

Points on a two-dimensional plane can be expressed by ordered pairs such as (4,5), where the first number is an x-coordinate and the second a y-coordinate. In three-dimensional space, we can use (4,5,2). This extends up to any number of dimensions (although once we get past three, it becomes hard to think about).

In a plane, we can take two vectors like A (0,1) and B (1,0) and use them to express any point in the plane:

(4,5) = 5 × (0,1) + 4 × (1,0) In fact, there are many different pairs of A and B we can do this with. Consider: (4,5) = 5 × (0,1) + 2 × (2,0) or even: (4,5) = 4.5 × (1,1) - 0.5 × (1,-1)

A and B are called a basis because they can give you any point in the plane, just by multiplying them by some numbers. We could also add C (10,11), but we find it doesn't help much:

(4,5) = 5 × (0,1) + 4 × (1,0) + 0 × (10,11) …because C is not independent; it can be made up of A and B: (10,11) = 11 × (0,1) + 10 × (1,0)

A, B and C together are called a spanning set, because they can also give you every point in the plane. A basis is actually a spanning set with the fewest possible vectors — that is, with no extra vectors (C) that can be made from other vectors in the set (A and B).

If you think a bit, you will also realize that in three-dimensional space, a basis must have three vectors in it, and so on.

Everyday applications

The foregoing will be extremely intuitive to anyone with a math or science background, and should make good sense to anyone who has taken high school math. Next, consider how the concept extends to non-mathematical situations.

Every task one attempts requires certain capabilities. In many cases you need a certain level of aptitude or proficiency, or skilled capability in order to accomplish a task. For example, I can skate, but only very poorly, so I can't play hockey… or if I did, it would definitely be laughable.

Sometimes the innate skill you need is very basic, but you can use a tool to magnify its effect. If I were building a house, for example, I could use a hammer and nails; but it requires almost no additional skill to use a nail gun, and the house would get build much faster. In other cases, tools aren't very helpful; better skates will not make me a better skater.

For any task, each of the required capabilities may be affected by your skill and/or the tools at hand. Sometimes one tool may help you achieve more than one requirement. This analogy (capabilities are dimensions; skills and tools provide vectors) allow one to reflect, upon beginning a task:

What am I trying to achieve? What task must be accomplished?
What capabilities are required to accomplish the task?
Do I have the necessary skills? Can I develop them?
Are there tools I can use to magnify my capability?

Most people do this unconsciously. The benefit of doing it consciously is that you can begin to ask yourself more nuanced questions. For me, the most important of these is: am I relying on too many tools?

Minimalism and marketing

In responding to this question, two key influences need acknowledgment.

One is consumer culture. The function of marketing is to convince you that the product marketed addresses some need or is a tool to help you obtain some capability you require. The obvious downside of relying on advertising to define your requirements is that it will always — indeed, it exists solely to — convince you that the product is necessary. On the other hand, a frank appraisal of your actual needs will lead one to seek out the products which are actually needed, and may save money.

Consider the automobile and the iPod. For too many people, car ownership is the perceived price of entry into society. This is an artifact of marketing — question it and it becomes unclear if or when you will actually require a car of your own. Apple MP3 players are very, very well marketed as the best, indeed the only alternative for portable listening, when in fact myriad options are available.

The other influence is minimalism. Many people refer to themselves proudly as neo-Luddites, as if rejection of technology is preferable to its informed use. No hermit has ever accomplished anything world-changing, and in my experience judicious and careful application of small amounts of technology often yields enormous benefits.

Most people recognize the necessity of constantly building their skillset; this is gospel for career counselors. I don't advocate using only a set of tools that forms a basis for the required capability; but it's always best to consider how large the spanning set must be, and which tools are providing little added benefit while causing needless confusion. The results is a streamlined workflow, more efficient behaviour and less extraneous stuff… points I hope to address in further writing.

Seven for one

2008-05-05T00:00:00+02:00

There is general agreement that a world food crisis is occurring. Biofuel (especially ethanol made from corn) has borne a large part of the blame. I'm not convinced that it overshadows other factors — speculation, water scarcity and the effect of the price of oil — but it certainly allows for the most vivid imagery.

Once again I am reminded of a passage from Dune. The titular planet is mostly desert, dry to the point where water is currency and windtraps are constructed to harvest airborne moisture. Two characters talk about trees planted brazenly outside the mansion of the ruling Duke:

The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate…even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression. … "Those minds," he said. "They look at those trees and they think: 'There are one hundred of us.' That's what they think." She turned a puzzled frown on him. "Why?" "Those are date palms," he said. "One date palm requires forty litres of water a day. A man requires but eight litres. A palm, then, equals five men. There are twenty palms out there—one hundred men."

And in a CBC article today, a statistic from the Sierra Club which I hadn't previously heard:

…it takes five hectares of cornfields to produce enough ethanol to run a car for a year. The same land could feed seven people for a year.

Reality being naturally less dramatic, the hungry people are on other continents, and we are spared being "raked with a fixity of expression" as we climb in our sedans and SUVs for the morning commute. If we experienced those glares directly, I don't doubt our behaviour would change much faster.

$150 oil

2008-04-24T00:00:00+02:00

Agitating to lower "unfair" gas prices isn't something I would ever be caught doing; I like the idea of expensive gas forcing the stiff-necked to actually use public transit. Regardless, I'm attentive spectator on the way to peak oil, so I came up with a little game:

When will crude oil cost USD 150 per barrel?

So far we've got:

1 July 2008 — Konrad P
15 August 2008 — Matt M
1 November 2008 — Greg T
1 January 2009 — Paul K
14 February 2009 — Amy J
Never — ??

Feel free to leave a guess in the comments, or to revise your initial guess (only once the date passes). I'll get a prize of some sort for the "winner."

Spring

2008-04-16T00:00:00+02:00

Chirruping brightly (through dusty, long-closed windows) Spring comes, insistent

Wars and a man I sing…

2008-04-12T00:00:00+02:00

—an exile driven on by Fate, he was the first to flee the coast of Troy, destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil, yet many blows he took on land and sea from the god above— thanks to cruel Juno's relentless rage—and many losses he bore in battle, too, before he could found a city, bring his gods to Latium, source of the Latin race, the Alban lords and the high walls of Rome.

At the University of Toronto Bookstore yesterday, I discovered I had been too hasty in buying the David West prose translation of Virgil's Aeneid last year. Penguin has just released a new verse translation by Robert Fagles, whose verse editions of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey I have enjoyed and own. If the new work is anything like the previous two, it will be eminently readable.

You may have been turned off, as I once was, by the tendency of translators of Greek and Latin works to use archaic English grammar ("thee/thou/thy") and diction to emphasize the age of the originals. The best feature of Fagles' translations is modern English with excellent diction and vivid imagery. "Fresh" is a common descriptor in the broad critical praise his works have earned, and for good reason. The accessibility of the language makes it easier for casual readers to immerse themselves in the stories, which become as compelling as they must have been to contemporaries of the authors.

What's next?

2008-04-11T00:00:00+02:00

The prepared text of a speech given at the Engineering Science Alumni Dinner, Friday 04 April 2008.

Good evening. I have been asked to speak briefly about my personal experience, and about student development and leadership in the Division of Engineering Science. This is an extraordinarily difficult assignment. Not only do I follow Prof. Cheng and others of intellect and stature, but you, my audience, are a variety of Engineering Science undergraduates and alumni. If the Registrar's office is correct, at least three quarters of you are smarter than me. So though I resolve to avoid truisms about the Division, I am all but guaranteed to put my foot in my mouth. Please forgive me.

Yet perhaps that is a good place to start. I once had a proclivity for offering wholly fabricated technical explanations for things I knew next to nothing about. It didn't help that these explanations were plausible and often accepted, or that only my mother regularly saw through my 'BS'. In fact, not until I arrived at UofT and encountered some uncommonly brilliant classmates did I learn to shut my mouth and truly think before I spoke.

And this is what EngSci does; it changes you. It transforms you from the big fish in the small pond to a very self-conscious tadpole in a startlingly wide ocean. It makes you aware, through duress, of precisely where your limits lie, and how grossly you had underestimated them. It alters your perspective on learning — from a classroom activity to the first step in solving any worthy problem.

The one thing it does not change, however, is natural curiosity. The typical EngSci student is a "What's next?" person. As early as primary school, she was impatient with her teachers and the curriculum. "What's next?" was what she wanted to know. As an undergraduate, he stumbles to class at the tail end of an all-nighter to submit an assignment, yet wearily asks, "What's next?" (Usually another problem set!) And I would argue, upon graduation, we still demand to know "What's next?"

Well, what is next? We are often told that "the world is getting smaller." I feel this is misleading; the Earth and the human race remain mind-bogglingly large. What is meant is that everything is now done faster…bigger, longer, and more often than a decade or century ago. Every aspect of human endeavour is amplified, and the effects are writ large on the planet, our society and ourselves.

Engineering is a key mechanism of this progress, especially the traditional engineer's happy function of devising better widgets. But it is increasingly apparent that the erstwhile reading of 'better' — that is, cheaper, more powerful, longer-lasting — was naïve. Further, the very concept of the traditional engineer has all but been thrown out the window.

As EngScis, we know this innately. We know that when the widget is part of a more durable assault rifle, or when it is a valve in a more powerful but gas-hungry automobile engine, 'better' becomes a false descriptor. Other examples are less stark, yet we know that engineers in traditional disciplines still spend a majority of their time iterating problems already solved. Meanwhile, poverty, hunger, anthropogenic climate change and armed conflict continue.

Many of us are here precisely because we have so little patience with that widget. We know what it is, and does; we want to know "what's next?" Where codes of engineering ethics urge us not to harm society through negligence, many EngScis proactively take their talents to the fields of medicine, law, governance and humanitarianism. We view today's challenges not merely as a heavy obligation attendant on our profession — though they are that — but an opportunity for sophisticated analysis, creative design and elegant solutions.

This is what I see in the Division's motto — Engineers For The World, E4TW — which always earns some eye-rolling as a "cheesy rip-off" of the older and more brash ERTW. Such eye-rolling is symptomatic of the way we sometimes ape the sterotype of the traditional engineer. The Division staff have given it serious thought, and the outcomes are exciting student development activities, some of which I have been privileged to take part in.

Several of these are curricular. Through the Praxis courses and a fourth-year, student-facilitated seminar, we discuss ethics, real intelligent design and issues like water security, technology transfer to developing countries, and nuclear power versus proliferation. After asking itself "What's next?" the Division is introducing an Energy Option this fall, because that is among the most pressing of the coming global resource issues.

Few EngScis left behind student governance, social activism, musicianship and athletic excellence when they came here. For many, it was obvious what was next, and the result is a disproportionate number of EngScis leading student groups, clubs and teams across the university. The Division thus took the laudable step of joining the Leaders of Tomorrow program, which encompasses student working groups, tailored workshops for personal development, and even a full-term course taught by former DuPont Canada CEO and Chairman — and UofT grad — David Colcleugh.

The students in these working groups, classes and workshops learn communications, motivation and goal-setting. They learn to think, to respond carefully and decisively to complex issues in complex organizations — and very often they think of their juniors in the Division and ask "How can I pass on what I've just learned?" The Division obliged by creating venues such as Online Orientation for incoming first years, and peer tutoring groups where mentorship promotes learning outside of the classroom.

It is exhilarating to be part of these changes, and see them working. Their aim is clear. The EngSci student is already driven by instinct to discover "What's next?" But when she graduates equipped with a world-class technical background plus an awareness of emerging problems and of her capacity to lead, she becomes a truly formidable force for change. No leap of the imagination is required to predict that such people will topple barriers, shift paradigms and redefine 'better'.

So, "What's next?" New realms of engineering. As undergraduates, we must believe our professors when they remind us that the true challenges lie beyond exams and problem sets.

"What is next?" Leadership. My fellow 0T7+PEYs and 0T8s, we must realize that we are equipped for more than just 'a job' or 'more school.'

"What is next?" Alumni, professors and mentors, we rely on you to help us answer this question — please, when you meet younger EngScis, graduate or no, dangle some impossible, Herculean task in front of them. The results will certainly astound you.