For his 30th birthday, Lucas Jatoba, a Brazilian living in Australia, had the brilliant idea to give back to the country he’d grown to love so much. The film below documents Lucas and friends creating and distributing “30 gifts to 30 strangers”. The result is absolutely heart-warming.

30 gifts to 30 strangers in Sydney from Lucas Jatoba on Vimeo.

Make sure to check out the Making Of… video as well for some fun behind-the-scenes footage.

I certainly know what I’m doing when I hit the big 3-0.

It wasn’t what I expected to hear as I stepped out onto the deck, blinking back the blinding Alberta sun.

“Jack Layton is dead.”

Maria and I spent the last week, from Friday until this past Saturday, out in Alberta seeing family. I spent the weekend that Jack died whipping around a lake on a Seadoo, sitting around the fire, and enjoying the company of Maria’s Albertan relations. A world away from our place here in Cambridge, from work (for Maria), and, in the way that only a good vacation can make you feel, from reality.

In that context—the context of being away from everything—news of Jack Layton’s dead was even more of a shock.

We were starved for information. On Monday afternoon we got on the road again, on our way to Maria’s grandparent’s bed and breakfast in Three Hills, Alberta, and we searched in frustration for the local CBC station. When we finally found it we listened, and listened. It became clear, quickly, that it was all too real. That the cancer must’ve been far worse than it appeared to be even at Jack’s last press conference, even when he stepped back from the helm, temporarily. But it had come so quickly, without warning, and it seemed to be impossible that Jack was really gone. Like that.

Jack Layton, who had led the New Democrats to mind-bogglingly incredible new heights. Who had taken Quebec by storm. Who had achieve what would have been nearly unthinkable even a year ago.

The thing that amazes me most about all the tributes that have been pouring in for Jack over the past week is the amount of people saying the same thing. Jack Layton was the reason why I first voted. Jack Layton was the reason I became interested in politics.

And the funny thing is, it’s true for me too.

It was in January 2003 and I must’ve been home one weekend from university; the start of the second semester of my first year. I remember clearly watching the NDP Leadership Convention on TV. It was the first political thing I ever did.

Jack Layton’s leaves behind a pretty substantial legacy. He led his party to historic highs, he inspired Canadians—especially, I think, young people and the marginalized—to become  interested in politics, and he was a genuine and kind person in the midst of politics.

But if the gossip out of yesterday’s Liberal caucus meetings have any substance behind them (and these things normally do) then Jack’s legacy may about to be, in the near future, even more incredible. A weakened Liberal Party merging with the NDP would not see the Liberals coming out on top, the New Democrats would lead. Canada’s “natural governing party” forced to merge with the left to survive, because of Jack. Now, imagine that legacy.

Maria and I are crazy for British period dramas, particularly anything adapted from Charles Dickens.

We recently watched a BBC mini-series called Little Dorrit, adapted from the Dickens serial novel of the same name. It was an incredibly well-done adaptation and if you love 19th century Britain I highly recommend it. This isn’t a television review though.

One feature of Little Dorrit was something that I hadn’t been familiar with before: a debtor’s prison.

Marshalsea debtor’s prison is one of the main focal points for much of the novel and it’s where we find Amy Dorrit, one of the main protagonists. Her father, a disgraced gentleman, has spent the better part of his life imprisoned in Marshalsea for undisclosed debts that he owes. Although we never find out who the father owes money to, we know that he can’t be released until he pays it back. That is, he’s in jail until he can pay off his debts.

Do you already see the fallacy here?

Little Dorrit was originally written as a satire on British society. Also featured in the novel is the famous Circumlocution Office, Dickens’ ingenious name for the local branch of the British government. Of course, both the debtor’s prison and the highly bureaucratized British government are easy targets for satire.

In fact, the debtor’s prison is nearly satirical by its very nature. Imagine, being put in prison until you can pay off your debts but having no way to work or make money—because you’re in prison!

It seems senseless.

So I was surprised when I stumbled across this story which seems to indicate that, at least in principle, the debtor’s prison is still in existence.

Now don’t get me wrong. People who, for financial reasons, are unable to afford to pay fees and fines issued against them shouldn’t be let off scotch-free. The law needs to be upheld, but surely there’s a better way. Off the top of my head I’d say it makes sense to waive the fee in lieu of, say, community service but to keep them in prison with no way to actually repay? I can’t understand.

In this day and age, is there any sense to the notion of locking someone up behind bars because they can’t pay a fine?

Back in 1988 a man named Jack Rebney and a crew of amateur filmmakers were under contract with Winnebago Industries to make an industrial promo film for Winnebago salesman to use across the country. The infomercial was filmed over the course of a dozen days, in the heat of the summer, in the middle of Iowa. Rebney, being a seasoned broadcaster whose career included two stints with CBS, quickly lost patience battling the scorching heat, the vexatious fly population, and his bumbling production crew. The result of Jack’s lost patience? The famous Winnebago Man outtakes reel. Outtakes peppered with so much swearing and so many breakdowns and brilliant catch phrases that it earned Rebney the title “The World’s Angriest Man” and became, arguably, the first viral video (originally passes around on VHS tapes).

Winnebago Man, the 2009 documentary, is the quest of one filmmaker, Ben Steinbauer, to track Rebney down and find out exactly what made him so angry. The resulting film is brilliant.

Steinbauer, while annoying and vexatious himself at times, hires a private detective to find Rebney and from there we begin an emotional, mysterious, and humorous adventure into the foothills of Northern California. Without spoiling too much I can tell you that this film packs a wonderful story, has a very good pace, and if you like human interest dramas about truly interesting people than you’ll enjoy this film. In fact, after watching it I thought how interesting it would be to see more of these “Where Are They Now” videos about former YouTube stars—those, of course, who didn’t intend to achieve stardom.

All in all, if you like documentaries, or even if you can mildly tolerate them, this is a great summer film to spend an afternoon or evening with. Oh, and it has a lot of swears.

While cleaning out the basement today, I listened through a three-part series on CBC Radio’s Ideas called Dogs Themselves.

It tackles the way we’ve perceived dogs in the past and how we perceive them today; myths and confusions about dogs; and all kinds of anecdotal as well as scientific advice on training and getting along with dogs.

The series is very interesting and I’d recommend it to anyone who owns a dog or is looking at adopting one into their family.

Link: Dogs Themselves

In 1982, the brilliantly-named Institute for the Future, an agency under America’s National Science Foundation, published a study that was written about in the New York Times. The aim of the study was to predict what the North American household might look like in the future. Like most attempts to see the future, the predictions run the gamut from hilarious to naive to, in one particular case, down-right accurate.

For the most part, the article deals with some technologies that never really made it out of the starting gate back in the 1980′s: Teletext and Videotex. From what I can understand, this technology allowed a television screen to act as a kind of web browser, retrieving different “pages” that were broadcast by cable companies. In some cases, these pages could be stored and read later, in other cases it was up to the provider to decide what to show and when. It sounds like one of many precursors to the Internet. It also sounds an awful lot like 1984.

But, it’s the predictions that we’re concerned with, not necessarily the technology.

What the Institute for the Future predicted a society using Teletext and Videotex would look like is, in the end, a lot like what our society looks like today.

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One of the things I was most excited about when we decided to move back to the Region—aside from home ownership vs. renting, having a back yard, moving from 500sqft. to 1400sqft., having a deck and a BBQ, no coin laundry, etc., etc.—was the prospect of being able to bike to work.

In my excitement, I looked up the route on Google Maps and when I realized that it was a mere 9.79km, I was thrilled. After some experimenting in Toronto, riding down to the C.N.E. grounds and back to our apartment, I concluded that 10km would be an easy 30 minute bike ride, maximum. I was even more thrilled, taking a closer look, to see just what my route would look like. It looked beautiful. Winding, for the most part, along a nature preserve from Cambridge and into the Doon area of Kitchener. There were even some sections with bike lanes, a bonus!

So, instead of my normal 1-hour, gas-guzzling, car commute from Toronto to Kitchener I traded in for a 30-minute, completely carbon neutral, enjoyable bike ride.

And then sprained my knee.

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