Remember.

I don’t have any family members that have ever served in any kind of military force. I don’t know anyone that fought or died in any of the major World Wars.

I do, however, remember the sacrifices that millions of people made and continue to make in order to protect our safety, our rights, our freedoms, and most importantly, our responsibilities towards our fellow man.

No matter what you may think of your current political administration or their stance on warfare and international conflict, it is impossible to deny the value of the young men and women that have put their lives on the line to make sure we can have the life we currently live.

Today, while I remember the sacrifices of those that fought in the past, I also pray for the safety for the men and women who are on the front lines right now.

I pray for the safety for my friend the pilot in Afghanistan who delivers medical supplies to coalition forces bases across the country. I pray for the safety for my friend the engineer who works in the Persian Gulf on an aircraft carrier fixing vital military equipment. I pray for the safety for my friend the medic in Sudan who takes care of UN Peacekeepers that are injured during their duties. And I pray for the safety for all of the people, my friends or not, who continue to put their lives on the line, each and every day.

I pray. I remember.

(Photo of poppy by Hobvias Sudoneighm.)

Where I come clean and admit that I’m a sucker for a good love story.

Was walking in front of the Eaton Centre the other day when a nutjob on the street called out to me and asked:

“Hey brother, are you married?”

I replied that I wasn’t, at which point he started screaming that I was “a sinner and that I was going to hell.”

I’m not sure when being a single 26-year-old became a sin and grounds for eternal damnation, but I sure didn’t get the memo on that one.

Over the past summer, three of my really close friends got married. In the next three weeks, another two people who have been significant in my life are about to tie the knot. There are wedding bells ringing everywhere. Which reminded me of a great post on marriage that I found on Anil’s blog the other day.

In his post, Anil speaks about how marriage continues to get a bad rap in popular culture:

I feel like I got hoodwinked as a single guy because I heard marriage described so often as some cross between a prison, being grounded as a misbehaving teen, and being castrated. I don’t doubt that lots of people make mistakes in who they marry, and I am not trying to be a pollyanna about the very real fact that a successful marriage takes a lot of dedicated effort, or that some people just can’t make it work even with their best efforts. But most marriages work, even if the people who don’t get it quite right end up being a lot louder about it.

He goes on to talk about Proposition 8 and why voting no on the proposition was the right thing to do:

It is now a historical inevitability that our country will legalize marriage for all couples. Though the fight is particularly polarized right now, and we will naturally face serious setbacks on the way to civil rights for all, I believe the time is close. As we saw in the fight against interracial marriages, the forces against progress are most extreme and invested right when they realize that history is against them.

Which got me thinking: as an umarried straight man in Canada, why was I so upset that people voted yes on Proposition 8 in California?

I came up with two basic reasons. The first is intrinsically tied to basic human rights. However you feel about homosexuality or marriage in general, it is fundamentally wrong to deny a civil liberty to only one group of people without any compelling and substantial reason. Denying the right to marriage for gay couples and allowing it for other couples makes about as much sense as denying the right to sit on park benches to people who have blue eyes. (Yeah, I’m not sure where that analogy came from either, but it works.)

The second reason — and here’s where you’re allowed to be surprised — is that I think that marriage is one of the most beautiful social institutions that exists in our culture.

I’ll allow you to catch your breath. Yes, I’m the same guy that goes around saying that marriage isn’t for me and that in its anthropological essence, marriage is nothing but an economic contract. I still believe that, to an extent.

But in all honesty, it’s impossible not to be completely enamored with the whole concept of marriage: that two people can feel so strongly drawn to each other that they are willing to devote themselves to each other for life — or at least try to do just that. There’s so much beauty in that whole idea that I’m tearing up just writing about it now.

Plus, I’m a sucker for a good love story.

Denying someone the right to engage in one of the most beautiful acts of devotion just because their sexual orientation is different than yours is not only wrong, but cruel and heartless. People that voted yes to Proposition 8 may think that they’re exercising their political opinion, but instead, they’re just demonstrating that the world is still capable of immense callousness and lack of compassion. And that’s just sad.

One more quote by Anil before I sign off:

Denying the right of marriage to any of us attacks and disrespects the institution of marriage for all of us. As it turns out, marriage is worth defending, no matter what you might see on TV.

With that, I’m wishing both Julia & Adam and Ami & Rohan congratulations on their upcoming weddings. Thanks for continuing to fill my life with the hope that love and selflessness still exist.

Need Your Help. Please.

I need a tiny little favor.

I’m in the process of applying for a small work gig and they’ve come back with a few questions for me. I was wondering if any of you had any insight that you can share on the following questions:

• What do you foresee the most “socially-successful” institutions will be doing with their users/web presence in 5/10 years?
• What could be done in the space of 1-2 years to see overwhelmingly positive results from a social media strategy? What could backfire?
• How would you go about convincing an overworked researcher that using social media is a good idea?

Can’t really share too much context right now, but if you have some thoughts please email me or leave me a comment on this post. I’ll email you back and give you more information personally.

Thank you so much for your help. Looking forward to your insights!

Paris, je t’aime

I arrived in Paris this past Friday morning tired, cold, and rained on.

I had just gotten off the bus and was walking towards my hotel, luggage in tow, when I witnesses an accident between a small car and a man on a bicycle. In there, the dilemma: the man on the bicycle only spoke Spanish, while the man in the small car only spoke English. The local police officer who stopped to help didn’t speak a word of any language other than French.

So there I was — with my tired and cold English, my rusty French, and my broken Spanish — standing in the middle of the intersection, luggage in tow, surrounded by three men who could only speak to one another through me.

In the end, the police officer walked away satisfied that the situation was under control, the Englishman drove away after receiving a harsh warning, and the Spaniard rode away with just a small bruise on his left arm.

Leaving me alone to walk to my hotel, luggage in tow.

Welcome to Paris.

Back to school

Heading in to work this morning, I saw yellow buses filled with students heading back to school for the fall. Which got me thinking about homework.

Homework, as I knew it in middle school and high school, was a completely backwards concept. Class time was always spent in solitary activities like reading textbooks and listening to the teacher drone on about a particular subject; homework, on the other hand, was usually collaborative or required some kind of interaction and exploration.

Here’s what I’m thinking I’d do if I ever became a high school teacher:

I’d record my lectures in short bits (12-15 minutes each session) with accompanying visuals and let my students download them as video clips that they can put on their iPods. Class time would then be used for question & answer sessions, engaging discussions on the content they had already consumed, and group projects where collaboration and face-to-face contact was important.

In that model, homework would cease becoming a chore that got graded and scared students. Instead, it would be a form of preparation for students who would then come to a classroom environment that focused on their interaction with the content rather than simply the content itself.

Maybe I’m just being an idealist here. Do you think my model for instruction is feasible? Have you heard of any other similar teaching techniques?

Doughboy.

It isn’t easy being ticklish.

In fact, being tickled too much is often akin to torture. The only problem is that the person tickling you doesn’t realize how much pain and agony you’re in because instead of screaming and wincing, you’re laughing and rolling around on the floor in the fetal position.

I am and always have been ticklish. Very ticklish.

I often start clenching my muscles and giggling just at the thought of being tickled. People don’t think twice about tickling me; if they want to tickle me, they will, no matter what I say.

I found a quote by Demetri Martin that explains this phenomenon perfectly:

If somebody asks you the question, “are you ticklish?” it doesn’t matter what you say. They are going to touch you. If they say “are you ticklish?” and you don’t want to be touched, you have to say something like “I have diarrhea. And yes….I’m ticklish.”

Tickling is cruel and unusual torture. Most of the time. (I’ll admit that there are, ahem, moments when a good tickle is appreciated.)

Is there some kind of support group for extremely ticklish people who live their life in fear of errant fingers?

Cleaning house

For the few of you that may be wondering why I’ve been relatively quiet everywhere on the web over the past few weeks, the answer is simple: I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with my offline life. That, and I need some change in my online environment to stimulate my thought and interaction again.

Changes are afoot.

In order to break my blogging slump, I’m re-evaluating the platforms that I’m using to communicate. I’m also working with Long Nguyen to re-jig some of these platforms and make them work for me instead of me adapting to use them.

The changes are not going to be immediate, so you won’t see anything drastically new around here (or anywhere else in my life) for the next few weeks. Just keep in mind that I’m still plugging away here in the background. A mid-summer house-cleaning, let’s say.

I’ll be around, but probably won’t be entertaining until the house is in order. Thanks for your patience.

Live with your parents. Seriously.

An internet-friend (I can call you a friend, right Jessica?) is turning 22 years old in a month, and she’s asking for some advice.

What advice would you give your 22-year-old self?

I’m going to take this opportunity to share some advice I’ve been giving all my friends for years: live with your parents and pay off your debt.

It doesn’t sound all too glamorous (after all, only losers live with their parents at the age of 22, right?) but it’s one of the smartest things you can do. Allow me to share with you a quick story.

A friend of mine graduated with his accounting degree and got a job at one of the Big Four straight out of school. Needless to say, an accountant at a Big Four makes some good money. Instead of moving downtown and living the good life, he instead stayed with his parents in the suburbs until the age of 26 and commuted to work. In his four years living with his parents and not paying rent, he managed to not only pay off his student debt, but also to save enough money to buy a luxury condo by the lake — and pay off over 50% of the purchase price.

He’s now 26 years old and owns a lakefront condo with a mortgage that will be paid off in five years. In his early thirties, he’ll be mortgage-free with a six-figure disposable income and really living the life.

Now tell me, does that sound like a loser to you? Not quite.

Save your money. Pay off your debt. Living with your parents in your early 20s isn’t bad for your image: it’s a smart move.

That’s my advice Jessica. I know there may be other factors that will influence your residence options, but that’s just my two cents.

Do you have any advice to give your 22-year-old self?

On preganancy pacts.

It seems to be a bit of old news now, but I was thinking about the pregnancy pact story in Gloucester, MA, and something hit me when I read the statement that the principal “found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy.”

This story isn’t about pregnancy. It’s not about contraceptives or sex education or Catholic sensibilities. It’s about self-worth.

I asked a few friends whether they had ever considered going out and getting pregnant just for the sake of having a child. Some of them said yes. What’s telling is that those thoughts entered their minds at the times in their lives where they felt the most alone and the most marginalized and unconnected.

The pregnancy pact problem in Gloucester is really an issue of teenage girls not having a place in their culture where they feel as though they are valuable. For them, their value now comes from being part of a group that is going through a shared experience: having a baby.

I’m not saying teenage pregnancy is wrong all the time, but I am saying that if these girls were given options, activities, and communities where they felt like they were important, their self-worth may have been at a point where joining (or even thinking of) a pregnancy pact would not be appealing.

How do we create those communities and environments?

I’m too tired to go out tonight

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and I’m staring at a computer screen.

Now, some of you may be thinking that this behavior is unhealthy. Those of you that are thinking that, of course, are night owls. See, it’s 6:30am and I’ve already showered, shaved, made and eaten breakfast, and chatted on the phone with a friend of mine across the ocean in London.

I’m an early riser.

A night owl in a world of morning people

I wasn’t always an early riser. One of my most vivid memories from high school is heading back to my dorm room as the sun rises and sleeping in until noon. College was no better. It wasn’t until I left school and started working that I realized that the most productive hours of my day were the hours before lunch.

My shift from night owl to early riser wasn’t some laborious task like Deepa Ranganathan believes it can be. Instead, I went to bed early one night having made the conscious decision to wake up early the next morning. I woke up at 6am the next day and haven’t looked back.

These days, I’m up at 5:30am and in the office by 7am. My secret for going from night owl to morning person has nothing to do with fancy alarm clocks or caffeine intakes or melatonin pills or exercise regimes. It has everything to do with intent.

The only way to really wake up early in the morning is to truly believe in your conviction to become a morning person. If you can convince yourself that you really want to wake up before the light of dawn, you will. The body is remarkable in that way.

Oh, and start going to bed earlier.

A morning person in a world of night owls

And therein lies the problem.

Waking up early and staying healthy is almost impossible when you live in a world where all the fun stuff starts at 11pm at the earliest.

I need to be in bed by 11:30pm at the latest in order to make sure I get my optimal amount of sleep. When you ask me to go dancing at midnight or go catch the late screening of a movie, please don’t be offended when I say no.

Unlike you, I’ve been up for 18 hours. I’m too tired to go out tonight.

So for those of you who are considering making the jump from night owl to morning person, heed my warning: your productivity may go up, but your social life will suffer.

Until, of course, 8pm becomes the new midnight. Then we’re golden.

For now, I’m heading out to work. After all, it is just before 7am.