All my progressive friends are up in arms because the Conservative government is shutting down the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. This is a Crown corporation that commissions research on sustainable development and reports to the Minister of Environment.

Obviously the Conservative Minister of the Environment doesn’t care to read reports on sustainable development, so the corporation serves no purpose. To keep operating it would be a greater dishonesty, just as it would have been to pretend Canada was going to make its Kyoto commitments. Progressive outrage is misdirected: it’s no surprise that the Conservatives don’t care about the environment.

The government funds universities, NGOs (through tax-deductible donations) and Ministry policy analysts. There are two models for how policy can be generated:

• Impartial Ministry policy analysts summarize impartial academic research and deliver it to Ministers who swallows it whole
• NGO and corporate lobbyists battle it out in biased reports and the Minister’s office, Ministerial aids help the Minister decide who to listen to

The first model was predominant in the past, but New Public Management theory said that policy analysts, as rational economic agents, could not be trusted to deliver impartial advice. Governments concluded that at least with lobbyists the biases were out in the open. Antagonistic processes are considered the least-worst solutions in many parts of our society, such as resource allocation and the justice system. The National Round Table is a relic from an earlier era.

The lobbyist model puts a lot of power in the hands of Ministerial aids (who whisper in the Minister’s ear) and is skewed because corporate lobbyists have more resources than NGO lobbyists. As a public servant, I’d love to see the functions of lobbyists all brought inside the government, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

My family’s been keeping my older brother secret from me for three decades. I found out just now when I was used in an exchange of weaponized information between my parents.

I just googled “cubernorms gourp” instead of “cybernorms group” because I knew Google would just figure it out… which it does. Nerf design is making me a retarded.

I would be surprised if Dark Shadows didn’t contain this song off the new Manson album…

… which features Depp on bass. Normally Manson’s covers are better than the originals, to me, but this album is kinda blah. Maybe it’ll grow.

Code from our new game engine, for the lulz:

//TODO: powerhack below. will replace with working factory
// http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/50smh.gif

Here’s a track from a previous Watkin Tudor Jones — recently of Die Antwoord — project called The Constructus Corporation. It’s about vegetarianism, revolution, and Star Trek:

I dig Waddy’s message big time, especially in his conscious tracks like that one and Love Is from his MaxNormal.TV project (and Constructus, but I like this version more):

Saw this on the way home. You’ll have to invert your device…

Click through for an intriguing video (including what is almost certainly barely legal cephalopod action):

When I got out of my contract trial period here at the studio I was promoted to Engineering HR Lead. It’s a nothing title — I’m the only person on the Engineering HR team. However, it did come with real power: I am now able to pick my coworkers, I’m working on revising the hiring test, and I’ve started an internal coder training program (which I’m trying to expand to the art department).

And I’ve just now been invited to sit on Humber College’s industry advisory board. When I was a student I thought industry involvement in post-secondary education was pretty evil, because academic institutions really should not be outsourced technical training programs. However, the Computer Science community in Toronto is, frankly, in crisis. Large corporations (no names) have pillaged the “industry advisory” process completely, leaving it almost-impossible for startups and small companies to find people trained in open, or defacto, standards.

The local institutions seem to be teaching XNA/C# and Java almost exclusively now, even U of T. When you sit grads from these programs down with a memory bug they are utterly helpless: “what’s a memory? I forget.”

Anyway, I can’t take credit for pushing open standards, which is the approach I’m going to take. The nature of those systems, combined with Apple’s (and to a lesser extent Google’s, Sony’s, and Nintendo’s) support makes them extremely useful and flexible.

The phrasing we’ve been using around the office is: “if you learn XNA, you might get a job. If you learn C++ you will have a career.”

Via Billium: