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Montreal so far…

Not that I’ve done much – I’ve realised I probably can’t get any more cash out for a few days while a bank transfer goes through, so it’s places that take credit card or very cheap things only for me! I’m uploading photos to Flickr from my phone as I go so check there for stuff too.
From my phone yesterday: “First impressions of Montreal – I thought the airport was a construction zone, with loads of sand heaps, but it was old snow.
Not the most glam people so far, but earthy and good humoured. Not sure where I got earthy from after only five minutes, to be honest. Maybe the [arrivals area] reunions and slight roughness of aspect?”
I managed a quick dinner last night before passing out – every time I fly, I hate it a little bit more. I had to leave home five hours before my flight to get to the airport on time – ridiculous! Give me a train anyday.

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Swapping language skills and making friends for travel…

From the Guardian (with bonus traditional Gruaniad typos, I’ve corrected the URLs below and emailed the editor): Going local in Colombia, a story with some really good links to sites where you can swap language skills, as well as great reason to try it:

I met Luz Marina in London through Gumtree.com, a classified ads site most commonly used for job adverts and house lets, but with less well-known branches for making travel contacts and swapping skills (namely languages). [The direct link for London is http://www.gumtree.com/london/language-tuition_546_1.html] It was the latter that brought Luz Marina and me together.
She became my temporary Spanish teacher and we had a month of conversation practice across numerous London bars and cafes until she went back to Colombia.
Now, one year on, we’re driving around Bogotá together, having lunch in the bohemian Usaquén district and sipping coffee around stylish Parque 93.
It’s not a scenario I would have predicted, but I imagine language lessons have produced many more long-distance friendships. It’s certainly become an increasingly popular thread, with Thai, Russian and Turkish just some of the languages currently offered in exchange for conversation with native English speakers. (See also friendsabroad.com and www.voxswap.com.)
Next week, I hope to take the same concept on the road and use www.mylanguageexchange.com to combine Spanish lessons with seeing Cartagena, Colombia’s colonial gem on the Caribbean coast. Cristobal’s profile says if I meet him he’ll be my “best friend in the whole world”. I’m slightly scared by this level of enthusiasm, but my curiosity about the man behind such a statement is too great to resist.

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UK ISPs and ‘Phorm’ issue goes on… is it illegal?

BBC: ‘Illegal’ ad system scrutinised

Technical analysis of the Phorm online advertising system has reinforced an expert’s view that it is “illegal”.
The analysis was done by Dr Richard Clayton, a computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge.
What Dr Clayton learned while quizzing Phorm about its system only convinced him that it breaks laws designed to limit unwarranted interception of data.

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Is Australia racist?

Interesting. Based on my experience as an Australian in Europe, Tampa changed how Australia was viewed – I’m not sure how that perception can be repaired, and while it’s heartening to read that ‘Australia generally is one of the least racist countries in the world’, even one ‘pocket of racism’ is too many.
The Age: We’re not racist, but …

There seems to be agreement among the experts that Australia generally is one of the least racist countries in the world. Instead, they point to “pockets of racism” across the country.
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But Kevin Rudd’s apology might be the stimulus for changing attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Waleed Aly says it tapped into a sense of unease that perhaps Australians weren’t doing all they could on race. That, he says, suggests that we are aware of the criticism that Australia has problems with racism and that we want to shed that image.
“I would argue that Australia is among the least racist societies on earth,” he says. But he has no doubt that Australia is perceived poorly by other countries on matters of race. He believes past policies on refugees, Tampa, the stolen generations, the White Australia policy, Hansonism and Cronulla have damaged Australia’s reputation — somewhat unfairly.
“The reality of Australian society is complex, but the international vision of Australian society is usually simple.” And superficial.
One leading multiculturalism researcher, the Australian National University’s James Jupp, argues it is the outdated images — of Anzac, of battlers and of the outback — that should be a starting point for change. “Lots of countries have myths that are out of date, in fact most countries do, but it makes people who weren’t born here feel that the country doesn’t belong to them,” he says.

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Go Kevin! Australia to regain political conscience?

Australia to speak up in the world: PM

The Prime Minister has declared that Australia will adopt an ambitious new “activist” stance on international issues where it believes it can make a difference.
Before leaving today on a round-the-world trip, which starts in the US and ends in China, Kevin Rudd said last night that Australia’s voice had been “too quiet for too long across the various councils of the world”.
He said the Government was committed to “creative, middle-power diplomacy as the best means of enhancing Australia’s national interests”.

Admittedly I’ve been busy with deadlines over here (because of course the end of the financial year is April 5 or whatever) but I haven’t seen Kevin really stuff up so far. This is so much more than I hoped for… to be very mature about it, Johnny Howard can go suck eggs.

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The visible effect of trawling

The difference a photo makes is interesting.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Loving Our Oceans to Death has a Landsat satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico

The cloudy water that you see is the direct result of commercial bottom trawlers dragging large, heavy nets across the seafloor, denuding it of all life in their quest for a few marketable fish and shrimps. Unfortunately, most bottom trawlers destroy as much as 20 pounds of “bycatch” — unmarketable corals, sponges, fishes and other animals — for every pound of commerically valuable “seafood” that they retrieve, while they leave behind huge, choking clouds of mud and sediment that take weeks or longer to settle.
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“Until recently, the impact was basically hidden from view,” he continued. “But new tools — especially Internet-based image sites, like Google Earth — allow everyone to see for themselves what’s happening. In shallow waters with muddy bottoms, trawlers leave long, persistent trails of sediment in their wake.”
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What can you do to reduce this enviromental destruction? Until the industrial fishing industry proves that they are acting in a more environmentally responsible manner, you can boycott eating orange roughy, Chilean sea bass (Patagonian toothfish), and all shrimps. (Keep in mind that those shrimp species that are not caught by trawling are usually farmed in shallow coastal mangroves, which also leads to tremendous, and possibly irreversible, environmental damages).

But don’t just stop buying trawler-caught seafood – tell your supermarket or fishmonger why you’ve stopped buying it. Your consumer action can make a huge difference.

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Tim Berners-Lee on tracking and privacy on the internet

From the BCS, Berners-Lee ‘wary’ of all web tracking:

Mr Berners-Lee explained that this type of targeting could lead to information about a user’s habits getting into the hands of unwanted parties and that instead, ISPs should have to comply with the same rules and regulations that any other utility company would.
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Mr Berners-Lee said a user’s internet activity information was akin to a person’s private property, however.
“It’s mine – you can’t have it. If you want to use [that data] for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return,” he said.