Here are some of the hilariously sarcastic comments posted in response to today's Vancouver Sun article on the arrests at the first day of the 2010 Olympics.

I hope they make you laugh as much as I did!

"I saw the protesters burn Celine Dion in effigy. It was very sad, it made a nearby group of children cry."

This is an conversation that I had with film-maker Velcrow Ripper. Our conversation started with an overview of his current and forthcoming films and ranged though contemporary ecoactivism, the anarchoprimitivism of Derrick Jensen and the forthcoming film END:CIV, the Integral movement, his spiritual practice, transhumanism and the singularity, and the numbers 11 and 9.

Recorded at the Dharmalab on September 23, 2009.

Last week I got to be part of OpenEd09 - a conference hosted (for the first time) here in Vancouver all about openness in information technology and the education system. I had been invited to be on an parallel panel about copyright and creative commons but when I checked out the schedule I wanted in!

Fortunately the organizers were pretty cool and let me sneak in for free so I ended catching some amazing presentations and discussions, all now available on UStream. In particular I recommend Gardner Campbell on "No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences", Jim Groom on "The Design of Openness", and John Maxwell on "Wiki as CMS/LMS".

All the recent controversy and media coverage of Critical Mass, and the subsequent launch of Critical Manners Vancouver, got me thinking about whether I would bother showing up to ride on August 14th.

I quickly came to  the conclusion "yes, of course". Now one may fairly ask how I can justify supporting two seemingly-at-odds events. The answer is quite simple - both promote safe cycling as a lifestyle choice, albeit in different ways.

On Friday I presented a talk at the 2009 OpenWeb Vancouver conference entitled Collapsenomics 101: Finding (Open) Opportunities Amidst the Chaos. You can view the slides from my OpenOffice presentation as a Shockwave animation by clicking here (click to advance to the next slide).

I began by talking about the economic downturn and the first slides show what's been happening with various economic indicators over the past year as compared to the Great Depression of 1929. As you can see most indicators show steeper decline. I emphasized that Europe and Asia have been affected more strongly than the US which has resulted in a flood of investment into the US dollar and has really helped prop up the US stock market especially since January. This will not last.

I finally watched the Google Wave presentation (below) the other day. I've been doing a lot a fair bit of reading about it and have decided to develop expertise in it with the goal of adding it to my consulting practice. Developers have already started working with the open standards of its XMPP-based protocol and the speculation is that there will be Wave plugins for OpenFire (which is what I currently run) before very long.

I think that pretty much only Google could have developed this - Andy Ihnakto summed it up nicely when he noted: