randomosity

Makes Sense

Apparently, when the going gets tough, Canadians turn to lawyers. I have semi-arbitrarily qualified the two world wars as national crises (yes, we could argue over what other crises may well have faced the nation, but for sake of simple conjecture I will use these), and examined what occupations emerge amongst our elected representatives. During both world wars, members of the legal profession end up as the dominant non-Parliamentary career in the House of Commons. There is only one other point at which they are the dominant occupational group…
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Information Aesthetics points to a great background article on the visual representation of taste in Ratatouille (a movie I absolutely recommend - great story, superb animation). I watched these sequences and didn’t think much about them - but what a great question : how can one visually demonstrate the sensation of taste? Additionally, how do tastes sound - the animations that Michael Gagne created for the movie were used as inspiration for the accompanying soundtrack. Is this a sign of sensory convergence? That flavours will combine and produce an entirely new visualization makes absolute sense, but how do you account for synergy or for catalytic behaviour. What a wonderful challenge to be presented with and to muse about.
There is a lot more to discover at Michael Gagne’s site. His work had appeared in a string of well known productions. Moreover, Gagne is a Québecois and Sheridan graduate - so wonderfully close to home.
I wonder what smell looks like?

Greener Greenland

Intelligent Power Strips

V. Cool

In an earlier post, I pondered the occupational composition of the House of Commons and its implications on policy making. This posts casts an historical gaze on the occupations of MPs at Confederation comparing the structure with the current and hypothesizing about the evolution over the past 160 years.
As I mentioned earlier, I had a sense that lawyers were a more dominant force in earlier times and that business men and women possibly have a more decisive role in policy making today than earlier. This chart:

shows the occupational composition of the Canadian Parliament in 1867.
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A colleague and I were discussing an anecdotal perception that there has been a shift from relying on lawyers to craft policy and laws in Canada towards reliance on business. This post ponders how our elected representatives self-identify themselves and what effect their prior occupation might have on their policy making.
This tree chart shows the composition of the current House of Commons by occupational classification:

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