Robert Paterson's Weblog

Christmas at the Commons | Queen Street Commons

Friday,
December 09 from 5-9

Come celebrate the
holidays with us and get some great gift ideas, purchase something special for someone important, order your Christmas turkey and support local artisans and food producers.

Confirmed exhibitors include:

a winery, a weaver, 3 local artists, 2 jewellers, an author, a potter,
a soapmaker, a cider maker, an organic farmer and a turkey grower.

Light refreshments, local cider and wine samples.  $5 admission. Free with Commons membership.

For tickets and event
or membership information, contact karenmurch@gmail.com

Queen Street Commons 224 Queen Street

via queenstreetcommons.org

Care about Local Food on PEI - Then please attend MEAL Dec 8th

On Thursday, December 8^th at 6.30 pm, the public is invited to enjoy a second serving of MEAL at the Farm Centre, 420 University Avenue. MEAL, an acronym for Meet, Eat and Learn, is a celebratory event intended to bring eaters and food producers together to share stories, learn from each other, and encourage a dialogue about the future direction of the Island’s food systems.

Supporting our local communities and economies is becoming an increasingly important issue, and is now becoming the central focus of many efforts to move towards sustainability and reduce inequalities. Food is the lynchpin of any community’s movement towards becoming resilient and ensuring a healthy future for its people, its culture, and the environment. Many of us have questions about how we can best support our local food suppliers and we are largely unaware of the issues facing them. These issues can, and will, affect the food that reaches our table and shape our abilities to make food decisions.

The MEAL Team is hopeful that its second serving, An Island MEAL, will attract returnees from the first MEAL as well as new faces.  Everyone is welcome to come to this free event, which promises to be educational, inspiring, and delicious!

Please check out the Facebook event page! 

via meeteatandlearn.wordpress.com

MEAL is doing its best to bring ALL the strands that will make up a viable local food system on PEIU together. Momentum is building.

We are close to the Tipping Point. We only need about 12% of Islanders to commit and that will be enough to start the inexorable change in the system. 12% is about $30 million a year of our food budget allocated to the local system - that will be enough to give it the edge.

If you come and if you choose to commit and you help your family to join you - we can do this now. For there is enough supply and enough places to buy to make this viable now. You can do your bit to offer PEI a secure future.

Hate Klout? Love it? The principles behind where it may go

In the old economy that still lingers you could buy “Attention”. A large advertising budget could force you into the minds of others. But we are becoming numb to this assault. Increasingly we only trust people that we know. “Attention” is shifting from the Institution with the budget to the “Person” with personal reputation or “Clout”.

This transition from the Institution to the Personal is surely one of the most paradigm shifting aspects of the time we live in?

Here is the “Godfather” of the idea of the Attention Economy – Michael Goldhaber back in 1997 explaining this shift from Attention that you could buy to Attention that you could only Earn!

“.. money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.

With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today’s rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.

But now let me point out that the other way round doesn’t work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn’t even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.

Someone who wants your attention just can’t rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them — which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.”

Attention that people will trust – about an idea, a product, a service, a politician, will come from “Trusted” people in your life and in your network.

Defining and measuring Personal Clout will therefore be very important in the future.

That is why I wanted to speak to the CEO of Klout, Joe Fernandez who very kindly spent time with me on the phone yesterday talking about “Attention” what it is now – how it builds from Robin Dunbar’s research. We also touched on how today’s kids may be having their brains rewired to be able to use a much larger network than was possible face to face.

Here are some of the ideas that we batted around:

• It’s all about how you are as a person - Many newbies still think of Social Media as a big megaphone – they still shout out to the crowd – “look at me” aren’t I great!!!!” – But they most important aspect of the new world is what “Others say about you” and who those others are and how large your and their network is. To get their attention demands that you have something good to say and that you have also won their trust. This then is not easy environment. There can be no instant success.
• It’s all about how you are related in network terms – This is why Klout have set up their algorithms to measure True Reach or the value of your content -  Amplification Probability or how we you are related to the people in your network – how large and diverse is your network – do they find you interesting, safe, or a bore  - and Network Influence or do you influence people with influence. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think that Klout is trying to get a handle on the playing field. I also liked it that Joe kept reminding me that they are at the start of a voyage of discovery. That they may be ahead of others but know that there is so much to discover.
• The online world is likely larger than the personal world - Klout will fond out how much larger. The Dunbar numbers still operate in the personal world and for adults my age I think. But Joe made a case based on observation that he is seeing online Trusted Networks maxing out at about 500 (144 is the max Dunbar number) His own floats between 150 – 350 but he still relies on about 150. The really interesting point he made is that he is seeing a new world emerge with kids.
• Kids have a new social reality – they never lose a friend! – When I was a boy, we moved a lot. So at every move to a new place, a new school etc, I lost touch with 98% of the then friends. Over time they faded from memory. But now, a kid moves or changes school and stays in touch with most of  her friends. Even now as an adult, I am regaining touch with old friends long lost. Joe and I thought that decades of staying connected must have an effect on the wiring of the brain. After all print had that effect by making the left hand side more powerful. The brain is very plastic and can change very quickly as we see with say stroke victims. It is very likely that a child of 5 today who is a keen user of social media, will have a very different brain than I do when they are 25.

This new world is literally unfolding before us. Joe thinks that Klout now is about where Google was in 1997 – the key algorithms are in their infancy but are already able to tell us interesting things. Much more will be possible over time – especially when there is more data to observe.

But 2 things are clear to me – understanding how Clout works is core to the new economy. And that measuring Clout as Klout is doing is going to be very important.

Your reputation is your capital. You and not the institution will have the power.

via fastforwardblog.com

I interviewed joe Fernandez back in April 2011 - I tend to be early - My aim was to get behind the idea of Influence and attention and see where Klout was going.

I think that Klout and every tool like this can be and is being gamed.

But the point remains true to Michael Goldhaber Money will flow along with attention. Money cannot buy it. This then makes you and I as likely to have attention as the major organizations that could and did buy it in the old way.

Sp Klout may be imperfect. But the idea of attention and influence will not go away - nor will how you really get it - by being authentic and really knowing your stuff in your field. How people always had influence!

Any discussion of the future of education has to include this

The Khan Academy website allows pupils to follow a structured course through a subject, with banks of videos and questions to answer, in a growing number of languages.

It's not a replacement for school or teachers, says Mr Sinha. And in fact the academy is setting up its own real-world summer school and is working with schools in the San Francisco area in California.

But it does raise some big questions about the future functions of schools and universities - not least when US colleges are charging students $50,000 per year.

The other striking aspect of the Khan Academy equation is the reach of such a small team of people. There are volunteers, but as of November 2011, there are only 20 full-time staff. Millions of students, scattered around the world, are being served by a staff the size of a primary school.

The idea of institutions making highly-prized lectures available more or less for free has been trailblazed by iTunes U, the tweedy cousin of Apple's iTunes music and video download service.

At the ripe old age of four, iTunes U is a granddaddy of such online teaching resources.

It's such a spectacular resource that it's almost overlooked. Almost a million lectures and sets of course materials are being downloaded every day from 1,000 universities around the world, including many of the most illustrious institutions.

via bbc.co.uk

20 staff at the Khan Academy serve millions of students! Keep this number in your head. 20 staff at Craigslist took out 20,000 jobs in the personals in newspapers and killed the newspaper.

It's not just Kahn but all the elite schools are putting their best profs online as well.

So school boards have to include this new reality into their planning. The kids and the parents are moving there. So what will be your response?

It's the same for universities. Free and brilliant but without a credential versus your mass production expensive system with a credential.

But with fewer and fewer jobs and more and more people having to be free lancers, the credential carrot is losing its appeal.

So what are you going to do?

You can close your eyes and hope that this will go away - but that did not save the newspapers.

Start school at 2, study urges

Every Canadian child should have access to publicly funded early childhood education starting at age 2 in their local school, says a new report based on an “avalanche of evidence” that shows how such programming can transform kids' lives.

“Education is well-established and a well-valued system within our country, and it's a place we feel it should be attached to, to build on,” said Margaret Norrie McCain, who co-authored the report with the late Dr. Fraser Mustard and Kerry McCuaig.

“We need to think of building education downward, but at the same time not ‘schoolifying' kids but stimulating kids” through optional, play-based programs.

While the federal government ended the national child care plan in 2007, that hasn't stopped the provinces from making progress “by stealth,” says McCuaig.

The Early Years Study 3 was obtained by the Star in advance of its Tuesday release. In an exclusive interview in October, Mustard, who died last week, said the recommendations should be easy for Ontario, which is already implementing full-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year-olds.

“I would come down to 3-year-olds, then 2-year-olds and 1-year-olds,” he said.

“I'd move right down, and I'd pay (early childhood educators) well, and if you are telling me we don't have the money, I'd make the point that the risk for physical and mental health problems is actually set in early development.”

Rather than starting a whole new program from scratch, the report argues that schools should also “become the centre of the community for families with supports and programs from pregnancy on.”

Early Years 3 is the second update of Mustard and McCain's groundbreaking 1999 Early Years Study. The first update was in 2007.

via thestar.com

Stated clearly is that such a move does not mean an extension of the mind numbing control system back into the 2 year old. He is clear. School has t be engaging.

Fraser is also talking about the school as a true community resource - the centre of community life. Not a refuge for fossils!

Shareable: Are Maker Spaces the Future of Public Libraries?

When was the last time you went to the library looking for a book? How about a 3D printer? The Fayetteville Free Library, a public library in upstate New York, plans to offer its community both options: A traditional, book-filled library, and a Fab Lab to learn new technologies and build new projects.

In recent years, the FFL’s Executive Director Susan Considine has been pushing for a reinterpretation of libraries’ role. 

“Libraries exist to provide access to opportunities for people to come together to learn, discuss, discover, test, create. Transformation happens when people have free access to powerful information, and new and advanced technology."

This forward-thinking attitude has helped the FFL continue to grow, adding an AV-enabled meeting room, tutoring spaces and even a coffee shop. In 2003, the FFL moved its expanding facilities into a disused furniture factory. Soon, the east wing of that building will become one of America’s first free, public-access maker spaces.

Fayetteville Free Library

This brilliant idea, a.k.a. the FFL Fab Lab, is the brainchild of Lauren Britton Smedley, FFL's director of Transliteracy Development. I spoke with Lauren about the Fab Lab, the future of libraries and what exactly "transliteracy" means.

What was the inspiration to build the Fab Lab?

When I was working on my Master’s in Library and Information Science at Syracuse University, I took a course called “Innovation in Public Libraries.” In that class we were introduced to 3D printers, and the idea was posed: Does this belong in a public library? 

I couldn’t really shake the idea, so for my final project I developed a proposal to build a “fabulous laboratory” in a public library. At that time I was working as a clerk here at the Fayetteville Free Library. So I brought the proposal to Sue Considine and said, “I think we should do this.” She agreed, and so she brought me on right after I graduated to execute this project.

So it’s short for “Fabulous Laboratory,” not “Fabrication Laboratory”?

Yes. You know, MIT really runs the Fabrication Labs, and we don’t have the exact same equipment that they have. We are going to have CNC machines, and you know, the things that are at the heart of a Fabrication Lab — but we really want to leave it open to what the community wants, instead of designing it directly after the MIT specifications. 

Lauren Britton Smedley and the Fayetteville Fab Lab's MakerBot.

Aside from the MIT Fab Labs, is there anything else you’re going by as a model?

I’m working and communicating with a lot of maker spaces across the country. Also some hacker spaces. For example, Bre Pettis from NYCResistor and an inventor of the MakerBot — he and I have had a number of conversations about what belongs in a maker space like this. And some other people from maker spaces in Detroit, and I’ve done a lot of reading on it… It’s a combination of responding to a community need, as well as reaching out to people who have done this before.

As a not-for-profit maker space, will you be able to provide services to entrepreneurs, or will it be more for educational use?

This is actually going to be combined. The east wing, which we’re going to renovate and turn into this Fabulous Laboratory — part of it will also be a business center. So the goal is to be able to provide local entrepreneurs with the ability to use the technology and, while we’re not quite sure of the financial model we’re going to use, we plan to make it as free and accessible as possible.

via shareable.net

We are blessed with a great library system on PEI - How about this gys?

The Benefits of High Cholesterol

In any case, the diet-heart idea, with its demonizing of high cholesterol, is obviously in conflict with the idea that high cholesterol protects against infections. Both ideas cannot be true. Let me summarize the many facts that conflict with the idea that high cholesterol is bad.

If high cholesterol were the most important cause of atherosclerosis, people with high cholesterol should be more atherosclerotic than people with low cholesterol. But as you know by now this is very far from the truth.

If high cholesterol were the most important cause of atherosclerosis, lowering of cholesterol should influence the atherosclerotic process in proportion to the degree of its lowering.

But as you know by now, this does not happen.

If high cholesterol were the most important cause of cardiovascular disease, it should be a risk factor in all populations, in both sexes, at all ages, in all disease categories, and for both heart disease and stroke. But as you know by now, this is not the case

I have only two arguments for the idea that high cholesterol is good for the blood vessels, but in contrast to the arguments claiming the opposite they are very strong. The first one stems from the statin trials. If high cholesterol were the most important cause of cardiovascular disease, the greatest effect of statin treatment should have been seen in patients with the highest cholesterol, and in patients whose cholesterol was lowered the most. Lack of dose-response cannot be attributed to the knowledge that the statins have other effects on plaque stabilization, as this would not have masked the effect of cholesterol-lowering considering the pronounced lowering that was achieved. On the contrary, if a drug that effectively lowers the concentration of a molecule assumed to be harmful to the cardiovascular system and at the same time exerts several beneficial effects on the same system, a pronounced dose-response should be seen.

On the other hand, if high cholesterol has a protective function, as suggested, its lowering would counterbalance the beneficial effects of the statins and thus work against a dose-response, which would be more in accord with the results from the various trials.

I have already mentioned my second argument, but it can’t be said too often: High cholesterol is associated with longevity in old people. It is difficult to explain away the fact that during the period of life in which most cardiovascular disease occurs and from which most people die (and most of us die from cardiovascular disease), high cholesterol occurs most often in people with the lowest mortality. How is it possible that high cholesterol is harmful to the artery walls and causes fatal coronary heart disease, the commonest cause of death, if those whose cholesterol is the highest, live longer than those whose cholesterol is low?

To the public and the scientific community I say, "Wake up!"

via westonaprice.org

At the "heart" of the current medical approach to heart disease is the idea that high cholesterol is bad for your heart. Statin drugs that lower cholesterol are 23 billion dollar a year market.

But is this true? Is Pizza a vegetable? same question and same answer.

We are being duped - wake up and do your homework.

Pizza is a Vegetable? Congress Defies Logic, Betrays Our Children

If there were any lingering doubts as to whom our elected representatives really work for, they were put to rest Tuesday when Congress announced that frozen pizza was a vegetable. The United States Congress voted to rebuke new USDA guidelines for school lunches that would have increased the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias and instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable.

For this we can thank large food companies -- in this case ConAgra and Schwan -- which pressured Congress to comply with their financial interests. It simply doesn't suit the makers of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for schools to offer real food in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Many conservative lawmakers are also insisting that the federal government shouldn't tell people what to eat. This is the same argument Sarah Palin used against Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to the rallying cry, "nanny-state."

But the government clearly does not control the food Americans eat. Corporations do. In this case ConAgra and Schwan are quite literally determining what the vast majority of our school children will be fed in school cafeterias: A veritable chemical concoction made to look like pizza. These are the ingredients for the "traditional 4x6 school pizza" made by ConAgra:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).

SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

It's not even pizza, much less a vegetable. (And if you think that's bad take a look at the ingredients for the "Pepperoni, Reduced Fat Pizza").

This vote by Congress makes it abundantly clear who calls the shots when it comes to feeding our nation's children. According to The New York Times food companies have spent $5.6 million lobbying against these new rules.

via huffingtonpost.com

Are you surprised?

Food is the battle ground where we can take back our power and our health.

My Fraser Mustard

I will let others do the formal work of telling you about Fraser Mustard who died yesterday. I can only tell "My Fraser Story". 

"My Fraser Story" began with a phone call in about 1992. It was the Chairman of CIBC's secretary. She told me that someone who was a bit mad was coming to see the chairman that day but the chairman had had to be pulled out to some crisis. As I was the maddest senior VP in the bank, could I see him instead?

Fraser of course had brought Dorothy to the meeting.

He told me all about the CIFAR and its work and how CIBC should become a major contributor to it. One of the areas that the then CIAR was working on then were the Determinants of Health. Or why we get ill or stay healthy. A topic that has become central to my own life as my regular readers may know.

I promised to help him make this happen and over time I was successful.

But this was more than a business meeting for me. It was one of those life changing moments. I was blown away by him. I fell in love. Sounds extreme but I did. I promised myself that I would find a way of working for him.

And it was also at that moment that I knew that I could not remain a banker. I wanted to make a real difference in the world and Isaw that this was possible. He embodied how this was possible for me.

Over the next few years I got to know him well. I was then SVP HR at CIBC and my job was compensation and benefits. The chairman had asked me to find ways of delivering more in our benefits but also to cut the dramatic drop in costs. This task seemed impossible. It was for me on my own. So I went to ask Fraser's advice and he became my advisor. He took me back to the core issue of why people get ill. He was so generous.

CIBC stands alone in developing a model for healthcare that could work to take Canada out of the health costs crisis. It was the best work I ever did. And Fraser was the key.

But he was never "nice" or polite. He pushed me. In his youth Fraser was known as "Moose Mustard". All who know him know why. He was very intimidating. He was a big man in every way. Big in stature and HUGE in presence. He was a bit like Kingsfield in the Paper Chase. So when you "passed" the test, you knew that you had not passed a trivial test. Proof of passing was often to be made the butt of his humour. You knew you were "IN" the magic circle when he was rude to you  - especially in public!.

But underneath this imposing presence was a very warm and loving man. His love was felt in his deeds. He gave me my first job after CIBC. Years later he helped my daughter Hope as she too started her work.

Love with Fraser was tough but it was based on true love. He wanted you to reach your potential.

Not only did he help me see that I did not have to be a an overseer on the plantation and that I could work instead to free the slaves, but he also helped me break my own chains.

For years I had been trapped in a terrible cycle of trying to please my father. My natural father was dead but I found a series of senior people and became their magic son. The son who could and did perform magic. I was the perfect courtier who was the personal staffer of Presidents - who performed magic on their behalf. But of course these were deeply unhealthy and childish relationships.

Fraser broke this habit of mine. When after working for him for 2 years, I suggested that my role be permanent he told me to grow up. That I must not look to him. That I had to look to myself. That I must bury my father and move on. Except he used much stronger language than this.

Tough love. True love.

Over the next 15 years he helped me and mainly Ann Robertson build the best working example of his work on the Early Years here on PEI. CHANCES is a memorial to him.  Ann is another of his kids and his equal in drive and commitment. 

Being a true pioneer, many of his ideas have not been accepted. or worse have been given lip service or worse co-opted. But he kept on going until the end. He worked on and on.

I am sure that I am not alone of all the FOF's in committing back to him to work to ensure that in time, his ideas are made manifest. And when they are, the world will be a better place.

Oh how fortunate we are to have known him. My love to the real family and to Dorothy who "managed" Fraser since 1985.

The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

 

Dr. Fraser Mustard, world renowned for work in early childhood development

Canada's early years guru, Dr. Fraser Mustard, died Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011. He was photographed in his office with his cat Betsy last month.

via thestar.com

My other father.