Paul Natsuo Kishimoto

The May issue of The Walrus contained this article by Daniel Stoffman.

I have been involved in a number of small organizations in which I held either explicit or de facto roles as a director of communications or webmaster.

Public policy is a growing personal interest, building on my background in engineering, my morbid fixation with local, provincial and federal politics, and a view for leadership.

The scabbard wants its negative; Grip and pommel scarce can guard The jagged tang, for on it thicker Clots the knight than foe on blade.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.

The third of three short items for today concerns Niccolò Machiavelli and The Prince.

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).

Manufacturing jobs in Ontario, the prophesy goes, are disappearing and will soon be extinct.

Over the past few months, I have moved almost entirely to LaTeX for word processing.

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.

A Toronto Star article about the TTC potentially axing the free parking benefit for Metropass holders caught my attention this morning.

https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/ is a useful tool.

In response to Bob's post on unintuitive interfaces, consider, in Python: >>>bool('False') True >>>bool(str(False)) True Huh?

Reuters has a story today about the current Canadian government's resistance to agriculture proposals in the Doha round of WTO talks.

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.

There is general agreement that a world food crisis is occurring.

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.

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

—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 battl…

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

As part of the excellent course APS501 Leadership & Leading for Groups & Organizations, we were offered leading (ha) questions and guidelines for writing a personal mission statement.

Carrying on from the previous post… Though we can't simply dismiss Carl Sagan's universe-architects in Contact by saying 'a π is a π is a π,' it's still true that the task of creating a universe is inconceivable, given that we hardly understand what our u…

I was trolling (in the conventional sense) through Wikipedia today, reading about the Oort cloud, cosmology, and various superstructures and -voids in the Universe.

I missed Nuit Blanche last year, so I had a great time this Saturday and Sunday wandering around with some teammates from the Iron Dragons.

"Either way, it takes up too much space in your mind.

I'm reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (Goodreads, Penguin, Wikipedia) and really enjoying it.

Contrary to popular advice, I often sweat the small stuff.

After reading this, I've installed several Drupal modules: Comment Info Captcha and Form Store Spam Now anyone should be able to comment without logging in by answering a simple math question.

After another long hiatus—five months—I now have a list of topics on which I have concrete ideas, which might be enough to start regular writing.

The Earth Challenge (Wikipedia) was announced, an occasion for some hand-waving math.

Weather in Toronto has recently taken a cold turn.

For the LazyWeb: After wasting over half an hour searching for a free, simple Windows utility to clone a CD for my mother, I gave up and used Ubuntu.

I subscribe to Harper's Magazine, which comes monthly and is always a good read.

Each month and year, I become a more rabid cheerleader for public transit.

The ball is 3 cm in diameter, held either magnetically so all but a small polar area is exposed.

William Gibson's fiction is full of unique, near-future predictions about how society and culture respond to technology.

I'd initially planned to delay publishing anything new until I'd imported all my old blog posts, updated the code behind my books page, got some work done for skule.ca, and so on.

This is my new website.

This will be the first in a number of articles meant to express my opinion on common topics.

A few ideas have crystallized for me as I've read about the ongoing furor over the Danish and other European newspapers publishing offensive cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

I make frequent attempts at humour.

That's right.

Computers make us more productive.

Well, well.

I'm so emo - I've been listening to a lot of music by Stars.

This is why I love the Canada Research Chair program, the Ontario postsecondary education system, and Michael Geist.

Woo!

I'm 21!

Instead of going off on extensive tangents the way I usually do, I'm just going to quote a lot of really good or striking lyrics and let you make what you will of them.

The above photo is of a test of the LG-118A Peacekeeper ICBM, which carries up to ten 300 KT MIRV warheads.