Alex Reid

The interview above is between CBC news correspondent Portia Clark and British scientist Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D. who is with the department of Genetics at Cambridge University, after a lecture at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).

Here’s an interesting story.

Jan Pronk, a Dutch politician and the United Nations special representative for Sudan (where a massive genocide is taking place), wrote a post on his blog critical of the Sudanese government which prompted the Sudanese government to kick him out of the country.

The latest blog entry said Darfur rebels had beaten the army in two major battles in the last two months. He said generals had been sacked, morale was low and soldiers were refusing to fight in North Darfur. This wasn’t the first critical statement Pronk made on his blog. He’s received condemnations from the Sudanese government as well as death threats in response to his blog posts.

It’s not so much what he said or who he upset, but it is intriguing, if not outright amazing that such a high-level diplomat contending with a delicate job of conflict resolution in a harsh land would have a blog and discuss his thoughts on the contention at hand on a regular basis.

I don’t know the politics of Sudan, but I applaud Mr. Pronk for his honesty and communication with the world. Few of us really know what is going on in Sudan and its refreshing to hear from the top guy, an open and honest opinion.

Creative Commons has a nice cartoon to describe the spectrum of rights for your work.

HBO’s The Wire is really an excellent show; illustrating institutional dysfunction on all levels.

I got my hands on the fourth season and it’s just amazing, especially the ending episodes. It’s given the long-standing minor characters with some well-deserved character development and doled out a fair amount of karma for everyone else still alive.

If you’ve ever seen Homicide: Life on the Streets, this is it without the urgency and the OZ-style camera shots. The Wire is more philosophical.

In fact, Homicide was written by David Simon, who also brings us The Wire. David Simon was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He and Ed Burns, a former Baltimore police detective and Baltimore city public school teacher, come share their frustration at the bureaucracy through this series very well. They lead you through the many components of a city; the law (police), the ports (working class), the street (drugs), the hall (city hall) and most recently, the schools. This probably is the biggest reason I really admire this series; how it connects everyone to the ills and the barred solutions.

It points out the ironies of our organized society, if not the unravelling of it all.

HBO is giving it one more season next year, and Simon (the producer) has pitched to HBO that the last season focus on the role of the media, which I think would sum it up nicely.

It’s really one of the best shows on television for its brute honesty of showing how our institutions of society work, or rather how they don’t work so well most of time.

.. with concrete, that is.

Skatepark West will be the latest skatepark to be built in St. James (Winnipeg), funded in part by the $43 million Recreation and Leisure Facility Enhancement Program – the provincial and city funding intended originally for the Rapid Transit concept.

The residents in the area who founded and supported their own “Skatewest Park Committee” deserve the due credit, especially for raising about $53,000 themselves for the park.

It will be completed in the spring of 2007.