Soupstock!

This sounds like fun.

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Sent from my BlackBerry

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From: David Suzuki Foundation <subscribers@davidsuzuki.org>

Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2012 03:26:47 -0700

To: Don McMurtry<donmcmurtry@gmail.com>

ReplyTo: David Suzuki Foundation <subscribers@davidsuzuki.org>

Subject: Raise a bowl with us at Soupstock!

Celebrate with over 160 chefs on Sunday October 21st The Canadian Chefs' Congress and David Suzuki Foundation invite you to join us for Soupstock in Toronto's Woodbine Park on October 21st. Soupstock is a sequel to last year's Foodstock event, where dozens of chefs, farmers and musical acts attracted 28,000 supporters of local food and farms to a forest in Melancthon Township, adjacent to the proposed Highland Companies Mega-Quarry. This year the event is coming to the city, and it is going to be huge. There will be more than 160 chefs, dozens of local farmers and a great homegrown musical lineup. We hope you and your family will join us to celebrate local food and support protecting prized Ontario farmland and our precious headwaters. Admission is free, and three bowls of gourmet soup will cost only $10! Beat the lineup by purchasing your soup tickets in advance. Please spread the word. We'll see you at Soupstock! Truly, Dr. Faisal Moola, director, David Suzuki Foundation and Chef Michael Stadtlander, Canadian Chefs' Congress P.S. To make our event as sustainable as possible, please bring your own bowl, spoon and reusable napkin. Parking is limited, so come by foot, bike or transit. All funds raised will go toward stopping the controversial Mega-Quarry, and other environmental and food-related issues.

David Suzuki Foundation - 219 - 2211 4 Ave W - Vancouver BC V6K 4S2 Canada To review our Privacy Policy. The email address for you is donmcmurtry@gmail.com If you no longer wish to receive email communication from David Suzuki Foundation you may unsubscribe

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Double Aeroplan points today

If you donate some of your Aeroplan points today the donation will be matched by Aeroplan. I donated a little over 5% of my points to Engineers Without Borders. Because one of their major costs is getting people to Africa, you would be making a very high value contribution to the organization. EWB was one of the first non-profits involved with Aeroplan's donation matching program.

Ashuapmushuan

Last week we finished an excellent 175 km trip paddling down the Ashuapmushuan River that flows into Lac St. Jean in Quebec. Three canoes for nine days with lots of long rapids -- some were simple and over a kilometer long, some were more complex and required careful scouting before we ran them and some required portage or lining.

The river was running at about 200 cubic meters per second which is low for the Ash; Michel Lessard, the guy who lead the trip, has paddled it at 400 and 800. We were told that the river has been low for three summers now and at 200 we only had a couple spots where we were forced to get out and haul the canoes through short shallow sections.

With the river pushing us along quickly we made camp by noon several days and that gave us some time to play without a fully loaded canoe. Here is a video clip showing Jean and I attempting, unsuccessfully, to surf a little wave and another as we thread our way through some ledges.

More malware

While I would like RIM to ship some new products -- on time -- I am not willing to move to an Android device where I will have the constant worry about viruses and trojan horse software. Note that I wrote a similar post a few months ago.

Smartphone viruses & trojan horses

A friend spammed me yesterday because "his account was hacked". I doubt that someone spent a bunch of time manually guessing his password. If he is lucky it is an email-initiating virus, but I would not be surprised if his PC has a trojan horse quietly logging his keystrokes every time it detects an SSL connection being established. It bundles the information up and sends it somewhere to be automatically analyzed and then another computer attempts to access the site. If success happens, then someone starts to see what can be accessed. What else may he have lost and how long before the same folks find a way into his bank account?

Today I also read an LA Times article about smartphone hacking which makes me happy the problem would seem to be for Android and Apple users not my BlackBerry.

The Social Animal

TVO's great series Big Ideas has an excellent talk this week by journalist David Brooks entitled How Success Happens. The talk is based upon the research he did for his book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. One of the things he mentions in the talk is Karl Popper's continuum of predictability ranging from clouds to clocks. One of the topics that EWB devote a lot of time is the same notion of being able to distinguish between complex and complicated things. Clouds are very complex and hard to predict; clocks can be very complicated, but ultimately they are extremely predictable.

Santa's Carbon Footprint

Sadly, it seems Santa is just another net contributor to our cultural conundrum.

Brain stimulation research

There is a four minute video on the NSF site that explains some research called decoded neurofeedback that essentially can insert data into a subject's brain. It is extremely primitive, but so was ENIAC. Someday, perhaps, some aspects of movies like The Matrix or Brainstorm will be possible.

The American Thanksgiving

For anyone who has visited or lived in the USA during November, you probably understand that Thanksgiving is a truly great tradition. While Independence Day may be more significant, American Thanksgiving is when the best of American character is demonstrated. Speak with someone who has visited or lived in the U.S. during this time of November and you will likely hear a story of being invited to spend the day with someone's family. In my time at RPI, every year someone made certain that I wasn't spending the day alone. Few people will disagree with your desire to ignore Easter or spend a New Years quietly at home, but if you even hint that on Thanksgiving Day you plan to just watch football alone in your apartment, you are going to be dragged over to a colleague's place for a huge turkey dinner.

In contrast, Canadian Thanksgiving just doesn't have the same cultural roots for some reason. Both cultures like to eat turkey, perhaps because settlers in both countries extirpated the tasty bird throughout many parts of the continent. Many Canadians feel the day is nothing more than a welcome day off work in October, a time to close the cottage or have one last canoe trip for the year. Certainly there are plenty of family dinners, but in my experience, Americans really nail the thanks in Thanksgiving by being so quick and insistent about welcoming people into their families. Way to go Yanks ! And thanks to all the people who have made me ... homesick for the my time spent south of the border.

The Grand River survey

Lots of people come to our area to enjoy the Grand River; here I am on the Nith with friends from the local canoe club.

Please spend a few minutes to take this survey and provide your perspective on the Grand River watershed.