Worth Reading – October 17, 2013

A few minutes ago I arrived back in Fort Smith from a brief trip to Yellowknife, the territory’s capital. I was there on a schedule so I did not get to do a lot of exploring, not to mention I was without a car so I traveled to most of my destinations by foot. Yellowknife is a city of about 20,000 people, which means roughly half of the people in NWT live there. The first thing that is apparent is that Yellowknife has a standard of living and quality of life very similar to cities in the south. The hotel I stayed at was beside a Tim Horton’s, a Mark’s Work Warehouse and a Wal-Mart. All the comforts of southern consumerism at my fingertips! I could have been in any small city in Ontario in the winter. It was -2 when I got off the plane. I also ate at a Vietnamese restaurant last night, which is not something I’m sure most readers from south of 60 think they can do here.

Here is a somewhat truncated list of what I thought was cool that I read this week.

I have been working on my own fiction this week, and it helps me to hear what other creative people are doing. Listening to a podcast someone mentioned this blog post. In it the author speculates what sort of minimum population you need to sustain modern life with all the amenities and services. It’s not at all scientific, but it is fascinating to think about the complexity and interconnectness of modern life.

In Tuesday’s post I referenced mega-projects and how the public is much more hesitant of ambitious government plans. The Atlantic Cities defends mega-projects here. 

Kady O’Malley, legendary Canadian politics tweeter/reporter, writes on some of the... issues with the Conservative response to a judge’s ruling on robocalls. 

This isn’t exactly timely, but it definitely is interesting. It is fascinating how different the political cultures of Quebec and English Canada are. The Charter of Values is a perfect encapsulation of this. Here is an explanation for how the Charter makes sense in Quebec. 

I’m not sure of the long-term impact of this, but on the face of it, I am very excited about the federal Tory’s plan to let Canadians pick and pay for individual channels. Let the revolution begin!

Jonathan Kay looks at the chaos in Washington D.C. and argues that perhaps it is a good thing so many backbenchers are spineless worms. Ok, that was strong... can’t say I want to edit it though...

In the crazy-Northern-story file, a man in the Yukon may have shot the largest moose EVER. 

This came to me courtesy of a friend on Facebook, ironically enough. It is about annoying Facebook statuses. Normally I wouldn’t post something like this, but increasingly I think a conversation will develop around social media/digital etiquette. Frankly, I cannot wait.