I’ve been mildly interested in the book Wikinomics recently, because it’s one of the sexy recent non-fictions to appear on my radar, and I’m obsessed with Wikipedia (well, who isn’t). But mildly interested means I haven’t really yet bothered to find out what it’s about.

But this morning I saw an interview with the author, and he basically explained that the book is about how the web will not only promote information exchange, but also collaboration (yawn). What really caught my attention, however, was a very compelling real-life example he used (details very approximate):

His neighbor owned a gold mining company, that didn’t really have a good way of finding the gold on its territories, and he was about to fold it. He decided as a last-ditch effort to share all the geological information he had about his lands on the net, and hold a contest to see if geologists around the world could use the data to find where the gold was. The prize for finding the gold was 500,000$. The contest entrants, using all sorts of methods he was unaware of, found 34 billion dollars worth of gold on his lands. Not a bad return on investment.

The bottom line is, outsourcing to the masses out there may be a very good way of creating value (Wikipedia and Linux are obvious examples). And there’s nothing yawnworthy about that.

I went to work happily thinking about the possibilities of harnessing this and how I could participate in it. Then, a few hours later, a complete stranger wrote to tell me she was writing a story about how San Francisco was banning grocery bags, and could she use one of my photos in her story. Guess she thought of a way for me.

I’ve been helping the Scotsmontonian to learn French for the past little while, and diligent as we are in our lessons, I’m constantly confronted to the fact that I speak Québécois. I’m always finding myself telling him “Yes, that’s correct, but we don’t really say that here, only in France”. In the French course we’re doing, they talk about Pressing and Pastis, instead of nettoyeur and vinier. I was concerned he’d learn the European French and not understand people here.

Then yesterday, Comet was begging for some leftover eggs and I heard him say to her, “You cheeky buggerr. Didn’t you get your fill with that mère-guys?” and I burst out laughing. There’s nothing cuter than a Scotsman inadvertently saying Merguez with a Québec accent.

 

Tomorrow will mark the 5th birthday of this blog.

Things have changed a lot since I started. It’s now routine for people, any people, to Google each other. I now work in a smaller industry, one where people know each other by name even without having met. Clients, partners, employers might any day find this site, and have. I always get a pang of paranoia when someone from the Montreal games industry recognizes me as lightspeedchick. This not-quite-conscious self-consciousness kept me relatively quiet for a few months.

Then, as my fifth blogiversary drew nearer, I started thinking about this state of affairs. Was this paralysis, which kept me from writing anything remotely personal or meaningful, the death of my blog, or just a phase we all have to go through before we take a new leap of faith, like the one I took five years ago?

I decided I wasn’t ready to stop yet; I took the plunge and wrote something real. Let everyone, clients, employers, employees, read it and react. I can at least say I was honest if the sky falls.

But it didn’t fall. You all reacted honestly and passionately, and despite a few well-deserved bitchslaps (allo moman!), it’s been a very engaging discussion. You made me think, look things up and learn. Most of all, you encouraged me to continue.

Thanks for supporting these chronicles, for showing up and participating.

I have seen people start life out with many strikes against them, and succeed, and I’ve seen the reverse. I believe that in Canada, individuals are to a good extent in control of their ultimate condition in life. I feel that as a member of the middle class, I am overtaxed without having need (and especially access) to most of the social programs financed by said taxes. I do not believe any one lifestyle choice (like being childless and taking a high paying job, or staying home and having lots of kids) should be penalized by the state.

I strongly believe in the separation of Church and State, but I think some recent blanket bans on religious iconology in schools are excessive and xenophobic.

I believe governments should establish and maintain serious, long- and short-term measures to reduce global warming.

I believe in the right to abortion, in gay rights to marriage and adoption.

I think it’s important to protect French in Quebec. I believe the province has been given adequate power to do so, and has done so efficiently. I believe the language is well-protected and no longer threatened. C’est assez. 

I believe that basic medical care should be accessible to everyone, but I think it would be best overall if people who can afford it could pay for faster treatment. 

I abhor unions. I believe in the defense of basic workers’ rights, of course, but I also believe that companies should compete for the best qualified resources by offering attractive working conditions. I don’t believe in a system that is based on an adversarial relationship between employers and employees. Meritocracy has its flaws, but it’s more productive, and I believe conducive to happiness than the blind hatred of The Man I’ve seen in unionized industries.

Some of my values contradict each other, some of them contradict yours I’m sure. But they reflect what I think we should be talking about and working on. As much as I would like my values to decide what I do in three weeks, they won’t. What’s most important to me is to make sure Quebec doesn’t spend any more time, energy and money on such an out-dated and low-priority diversion as separation, but rather on the issues here. Therefore, I will vote for the party most likely to keep the PQ out of power, whoever that is. Doesn’t that suck?

My mother taught me to read when I was three years old, giving me a head start on my studies. I became a complete bookworm, practically incapable of eating without reading at the same time, and in college, I was a huge fan of Canadiana and worked my way through Atwood and the complete works of Robertson Davies, despite a huge amount of required reading for school. And that’s all before I picked up Tolkien and Austen.

After college ended, I could hardly get myself to finish a book, to enjoy the activity, not for want of trying. I had years when I read one, sometimes no books at all. Had I read everything that was ever susceptible of pleasing me? Were videogames rotting my brain? Whatever the reason, I realized this and owned it. I thought of myself as someone who didn’t read; despite having the most avid readers as my good friends, I accepted being left out of all literary conversations. I just don’t read, I thought.

Then early last year over the holiday, I happened to pick up Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and nearly everything changed. Something about reading events that had really happened was so much more compelling than a novel. I gobbled it up and ravenously looked for more. I picked up and inhaled the biography of Elizabeth I, then friends lent me Bill Bryson’s Australia travelogue In a Sunburned Country. Hooked on non-fiction, I followed up exhilaratingly with Blink, Guns, Germs and Steel, A Short History of Progress, Freakonomics, Maus and Heroes of History. I was unstoppable!

It’s not the fact that I’m learning about the world that does it for me; it’s not the promise of more success at trivia, nor even the added compellingness of true stories. It’s the way non-fiction is written, to deliver information as directly and clearly as possible, that really turns me on. Call me impatient, call me producerly efficient, but when I pick up a novel now I feel the author knows where he’s going and is delaying getting to the point, the better to weave the tale. Non-fiction in comparison delivers the goods straight. I feel less… manipulated.

I’ll hopefully go back to fiction eventually, but for now, I’m going to ride this positive addiction as far as it takes me (which right now happens to be France, where Mary Queen of Scots is growing up).

 

This evening, I was sitting at my computer and Comet was eating, when all of a sudden she starting making a very laboured breathing noise, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Then all noise stopped as I saw her trying to vomit without success. She was choking!

I wonder if this works on dogs, I thought, and lifted her onto her hind legs, put my arms around her and jerked my joined hands upwards into her thoracic cavity, feeling a little stupid. A few attempts later though, the morsel jumped out of her throat and she swallowed it instantly, looking at me as if to wonder what the big deal was.

Then I thought, okay, that was lucky, but what was I really supposed to do? Well, it turns out that doggie Heimlich actually does exist and is exactly what you’re supposed to do when your dog is choking.

Lucky guess!