Adam's Ideas

The Toronto Women’s Bookstore has run into some problems due to the economy and a recent internal shakeup; now it is on the brink of shutting its doors for good.

It’s a great bookstore that I have visited many times and has been a great resource for a lot of my readings for school.

A Facebook group has been created to spread the word and Torontoist has a post on the current situation and a bit on their history:

One of the last and largest non-profit feminist bookstores in North America, the thirty-six-year-old TWB has weathered its share of troubled times: in 1984 the store was firebombed along with a then-attached Henry Morgentaler abortion clinic, in the 1990s it pulled itself out of the red in a time when most of North America’s feminist bookstores went under, and in the early years of this decade it resisted a post-9/11 wannabe boycott waged in response to the sale of politically controversial buttons.

Keep reading at Torontoist.

Here’s some excellent footage of a horrible event when Michael Bryant, the formally-promising politician, killed Darcy Allen Sheppard. Sheppard was a bike courier who the media has portrayed as a troubled man with no real grounds for those accusations.

So one evening Bryant and Sheppard got in a scuffle and Bryant seems to have decided (after drinking teat evening) to use his car has a deadly weapon and drag the cyclist along Bloor street. Bryant is such a good driver that he was able to drive into the opposing lane while Sheppard was dangling on the side of Bryant’s vehicle and ram Sheppard into a couple trees and a mailbox thus fatally wounding Sheppard.

This is what happened moments before the accused Michael Bryant killed a man.

How long do you think it’ll be before Bryant’s press team shows up and posts a comment defending him?

Here’s a quick thought, since California is the state most likely to go bankrupt thanks to bipartisan efforts to destroy the American economy, will Cali be the first state to break away from the republic?

Oh, and on a side note – Toronto police admit CCTV setups don’t prevent crime, but want the cameras anyway.

One of the best Toronto blogs, perhaps the best, Torontoist is closing down on Dec. 31st.

This is not a good thing. It’s a really solid site with good writers and I really hope that it will live on in some form or another. It very well could, thanks to this quickly created facebook group to revive the blog.

This song is better than the last one I posted:

I was at the NextMedia conference (all about monetizing digital media) held at Circa nightclub – yes a nightclub.

A note to Toronto conference and event planners: please do NOT have events at Circa.

The wi-fi is very weak if one can get it at all.
It’s an awkward layout for presentations, same with the lighting.
It’s way too dark in the club (at least I can’t see everyone’s imperfections).
Conferences with natural light and colours produce more creative thinking I find.
There are no outlets to plug in my laptop, which means I take fewer notes.
The lunch was kinda awkward because there was no clear place to eat it.
People only talk about how odd it is to have a conference in a club.
They seem to cool the air something as if the club is thumping and bodies are rubbing
Lastly the venue feels like a club and not a place to do anything but E and put date rape drugs in young girls’ drinks or whatever it is people who go to clubs do. Maybe stab and shoot each other? Quite frankly that isn’t my scene – sorry.