Naru Shiode from the University at Buffalo gave a spellbinding presentation on spatial-temporal analysis at the Centre for Spatial Analysis (CSpA) on Friday. Shiode is trained as architect and urban planner and finds himself in the Geography department at Buffalo.…
Geoffrey Reaume from York and University of Toronto gave a fascinating talk in the History of Health and Medicine Lunchtime Seminar Series today. “From Activists to Archivists: Documenting Mad People’s History Since the 1970s,” explored both the formation of psychiatric…
When is a tool, not a tool? Apparently when it is a quasi-tool or a proto-tool. A tool provides functionless functionality. These were a couple of the epigramatics Barry Allen shared during a talk on technology, culture and civilization. ((Quasi-tools…
What a treat! I had had the honour of meeting and spending the last two days chatting with Fernanda Viégas from the Visual Communications Lab. Her work has been and continues to be inspirational for me personally and to the…
Avi Goldfarb presented a fast, concise, and effective discussion of what conclusions could be drawn about the multi-institutional collaboration between US universities during the era of BitNET adoption, 1981 – 1990. A bit of internet history, my ears perked up…
Despite technical difficulties (presenter’s worst nightmare – LCD projector bulb burnout), Steve Easterbrook demonstrated the usefulness of comparing software structures to social networks of developers to measure operational effectiveness. His well-argued and logical presentation ‘Increasing Shared Understanding in Software Teams…
Social Network/ing Week at the University of Toronto kicked off tonight with a fascinating keynote by Cornell’s Jon Kleinberg. ‘The Geography of Social and Information Networks,’ was one of the most fascinating applied mathematical lectures I can say to having…
Information Aesthetics, a consistently clickable and notable blog, has Fernanda Viégas reporting back from the InfoVis Conference in Sacramento this week. She has posted a great summary of the keynote address by Matthew Ericson. Brent Fitzgerald blogged yesterday about the…
The Wilson Centre for Canadian History was privileged to have John H Thompson speak today on “Managing in the Bush Leagues: The Canada-US Relationship since 2001.” Thompson’s lively talk was marked by his personal reflections on what it’s like to…
The History of Health and Medicine Seminar series continued today with a rather provocative paper by Dr. Ann Herring and Stacey Lockerbie. “The Coming Plague: Global panic, local repercussions and avian influenza,” contends that globalization and spread of information has…
The History of Health and Medicine Seminar series welcomed Luz Maria Hernández-Sáenz today, who presented the lively story of Dona Maria Tiburcia Reynantes. Her paper “Between Medicine and Magic: the Story of an 18th century Mexican healer,” explored the rather…
The 2007-2008 Wilson series of lectures in Canadian History kicked off at McMaster University today. John Weaver, the acting Wilson Chair in Canadian History, has attracted an exciting list of speakers for the coming year. Lou Pauly spoke on ’Globalization,…