I straddle a number of very different work environments every day all of which give me a very different perspective on many things. Some readers find this refreshing, others find it annoying or threatening.

As a writer hanging out with many different types of writers, discussions often crop up about getting paid for services rendered. Of concern to many writers is that more and more writers are willing to write for free, which drives down the value of writing – which in turn, drives down the already low living standard for most writers.

Harlan Ellison, well-known for his rants on . . . [more]

Only a few short years ago we all received a deluge of holiday cards by snail mail this time of year from clients, lawyers, and others we work with. The thought of sending a card digitally was thought to be tacky by many. Those of us who wanted to send a card digitally had to either get the original digital file from the creator of the card, or scan it in ourselves (and depending on the situation turn a blind eye to possible copyright issues).

Fast forward to 2012 and the number of cards we get by snail mail has . . . [more]

First, I congratulate Treasurer Thomas Conway for opening up Convocation to the public via the internet – this has been a long time coming and has permanently shredded the mystique that has surrounded Convocation for far too long. Hopefully this opening up will inspire a new, fresher slate of benchers to be elected in 2015.

But there is still work to be done.

It was said at the last Convocation, and in various other forums, that democracy is messy but it’s better than the alternative. Cue the dramatic music.

That kind of cold war rhetoric is quaint and interesting, even . . . [more]

Don’t get us wrong, we dislike Rob Ford as much as the next guy. Maybe more. And we were delighted with Justice Hackland’s decision on Monday ordering the Mayor be removed from office for violating Toronto’s Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

We’re ecstatic about him being booted, but we’re also disappointed with how people continue to flippantly ridicule the Mayor about his weight. His physical appearance is irrelevant, and the more his weight gets brought into this, the further we get from legitimately critiquing his horrible record as a member of City Council, not to mention the further we get . . . [more]

The decision in the Rob Ford conflict of interest case is available here; as soon as the CanLII version becomes available I’ll update this post.

Notable excerpts, on a first skimming:

Section 5 of the MCIA clearly and broadly states that where a member, “has any pecuniary interest … in any matter,” and is present at a meeting of council, he or she is to disclose his or her interest and must neither take part in the discussion of nor vote on the matter. There is no basis on which the court can restrict or read down the meaning

I have a question that I’m hoping I can crowd-source here at Slaw, or perhaps Slaw-source. I have asked several friends and acquaintances and have yet to get a satisfactory answer. Charity as a legal concept dates back to 1601 and the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601 (aka. Statute of Elizabeth) wherein the preamble to the act contained the first statutory definition of charitable uses. Since that time the nature and scope of charities has changed dramatically; to the point where some have become leery of large charities that are run more like a business than a charity. This leads . . . [more]

Well, the styles seem to be, at least: gaze into one genre and listen to it split into dozens of others; rinse, repeat.

I stumbled across the term “shoegaze” used to describe a style of music. (Wonderful term, inventive linguistically far more than the music it labels, I think.) It served yet again to remind me how wide the world of music is and how narrow my own tastes. I imagine that once past a certain age — 25? 32? — everyone loses their grip on what’s current in the music scene. For one thing, styles pop into and out . . . [more]

One of the things I dislike about getting older is how much harder it becomes to learn languages. Children absorb them like meat and drink, becoming them. And I, when young, was a quick study indeed if I had a foreign girlfriend. But now, though I still hanker after the feel of exotic words in my mouth, I mumble and forget them. I’ve thrown myself at some Punjabi and always peck away at Mandarin. Arabic seduces me, as I think I’ve said before, with the beauty of its script . . . . And oddly the only thing I can . . . [more]

I spent today at London’s 5th annual DIG (Digital Interactive & Gaming) Conference along with about 1500 others. The conference is divided into 3 tracks. One for game developers, another for web developers, and another for students interested in game development.

Here are some random things from the conference.

The concept of an independent device lab, which is a place where various devices are available, such as iPhones, iPads iPad minis, android phones, android tablets, windows 8 phones, surface tablets, xboxs, etc. The idea is to provide hardware for independent developers to test their apps and web pages on. Larger . . . [more]

Because law is a matter of words and because multicultural, multilingual Canada has a bilingual legal system for the most part, I think you might want to take ten minutes to watch a particular video from Microsoft. It shows Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid on a stage in China demonstrating their latest voice recognition, machine translation, and machine speech technologies, all working in concert.

Simply put, Rashid, speaking moderately slowly, has his talk perfectly accurately transcribed as he talks in English; then towards the end of the video the written English is translated as he speaks into proper written . . . [more]

Chances are really good that a few of you among the thousands (yes, thousands) reading this are celebrating a birthday today. It can’t be a dead cert, of course, because there’s no law of nature that requires that anyone in our readership be born on a ninth of November. There is, though, a law (or maybe a regulation) of nature that seems to dictate that approximately the same number of people get born every day. And that being the case, I should be able to estimate the chances that some of you will indeed be blowing out candles today.

Trouble . . . [more]

This is the last post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. Plans are well underway for a redesign for Slaw that will, among other things, see the end of this series after nearly a year of entries. More on the redesign later in the month.