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This was a magical season, and the most exciting postseason I've seen in a very long time. David Ortiz - the only man to play on the 2004, 2007, and 2013 Red Sox teams - will be a hero to the city of Boston and to every Red Sox fan forever and ever, amen. A big man with a huge bat, an enormous heart, and more brains than he gets credit for. In the world of my personal fandom, sometime during the middle of the summer, between the foot and the flood and the move and the new job, I lost touch with the season. Or, more accurately, I began following the season the way most people do, rather than as an obsessive fan who never misses a game. Suddenly, in mid-August, I saw the writing on the wall: this team was going all the way. Rarely do you see a baseball team with  no  weaknesses, and the 2013 Red Sox had it all. After the shock of the 2011 collapse and the abysmal 2012 season, the 2013 team was headed to its third World Series win in ten years. It was time to climb back onboard a...

Sometime late on Thursday night into Friday morning, our internet went down. This is the worst possible time for such an event, as internet is our lifeline to baseball, and the Boston Red Sox are on their way (I hope) (I believe) to winning the World Series. From the sound of things, there were problems at some major internet hubs in the area, with massive outages affecting parts of Mississauga, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, and so on. What was the problem? When could we expect service to resume? TekSavvy wasn't able to tell me... because Rogers wouldn't tell them. I have been Rogers-free since March of 2012 , and I have been extremely pleased with TekSavvy. TekSavvy's customer service is excellent, their tech support is excellent and local , and they deliver more internet for less money. I pay about 30% less for unlimited service at a higher speed; that is, I paid Rogers 30% more for capped usage at a slower speed. The only sticking point is that TekSavvy is a re-...

Lou Reed, 1942-2013 Songwriter, Musician, New Yorker "One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz." - Lou Reed "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought it started a band." - possibly Brian Eno I was shocked and very saddened to learn of the death of Lou Reed at the not-old age of 71. Lou Reed made a lot of really worthwhile music, much of it after VU. I'm grateful that I saw him perform a few times, for his music, and for his politics. I'm really sorry he's gone.

Yes!  A few years back, I blogged about discovering that many of the plastics I had been putting in my recycling bin were not, in fact, recyclable. A few months after that, I unpacked a typical environmental dilemma: organic lettuce . Organic lettuce is the perfect example of a green paradox. It's unquestionably better for the local water supply, and for the health of the people who pick it and who eat it. On the other hand, it requires a huge amount of energy to stay fresh, and is often packed in non-recyclable plastic. We can ask, "Which is better?" but the answer is another question: "Better for what?" Now, after considerable consumer pressure, Peel Region will accept clear plastics for recycling . Of course, it's always better to avoid buying produce that is packed in plastic, but if you shop at a supermarket, that is difficult or impossible to do. I hope this change marks the beginning of more recycling province-wide and nationally.

I would like to draw your attention to an excellent article by Susan Faludi in The Baffler : Facebook Feminism: Like It or Not . Faludi contrasts the corporatist, individualistic, me-first, privileged, self-centered, pseudo-feminism of "Lean In" with the collective, cross-class activism of some of the original feminists: the "Mill Girls" of Lowell, Massachusetts, who fought for human rights and labour rights for all women. Describing the links between feminism, class struggle, the labour movement, and even the abolitionist movement, Faludi demonstrates how all oppression is interconnected, and how only collective solutions can affect change. She shows how an effective women's movement most be anti-capitalist and anti-corporatist, too. Faludi dissects and deconstructs the Facebook-based "Lean In" and its corporate partners, peeling back the cheery, self-help facade to reveal the status quo underneath. It isn't pretty. Lean In Platform Partner Wells...

Last night we watched " Dirty Wars ," investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill's documentary film exposing the United States' covert, lethal, extra-governmental operations around the globe. It's an important film. Depending on your level of knowledge of the US, it may be eye-opening, or it may be shocking. If you have not yet seen this film, I urge you to. It's available on US Netflix and from many public library catalogs. (The website has a link to agitate for cinema screenings in your area.) Please note I have called this film "important" and I have urged you all to see it. I have tremendous respect and admiration for Jeremy Scahill. This post, however, is a criticism of one aspect of "Dirty Wars" that disturbed me, and undermined the film's effectiveness in my eyes. But please read this criticism in context of a documentary that is well written, well made, and incontrovertibly accurate. We can't investigate what doesn't exist...

We all know the iconic cartoon the title of this post refers to. Boing Boing has republished a story about it, originally run in The Magazine , an ad-free, reader-supported magazine that looks really interesting. It's a wonderful little piece: the story behind the story, a glimpse into the life of people who try to earn a living from their own considerable talents, and a look back at the early days of the internet, and how things have changed, before tinfoil-hat predictions were proven to be not paranoia, but prescience. Go here to read the story (really, it's fun), and here to see the rest of this cartoon . Please click through. The talented people at Joy of Tech get paid by clicks. Then... And now...