The Social Responsibility of Business
** Written for Dr. Robert Mittelman, STNL 331: Strategy for Business and Sustainability, Royal Roads University, October 23, 2020. In his classic 1970 opinion piece, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, Milton Friedman complains about...
Canada Day in the Strange Times
Canada Day was sort of cancelled this year. It’s usually my favourite holiday. Downtown Victoria is shut down to car traffic as thousands of tourists flood the Inner Harbour for a concert on the Legislature lawn. Usually it’s local bands, one year it was Sarah...
Build an open closet out of gas pipe
My partner and I both own a full apartment's worth of stuff. When we first talked seriously about living together, we realized that combining into either of our tiny apartments was a bad idea. Besides, each of us had sworn wouldn't move our of current apartments...
Contributing to Open Source Code
In February of 2017, I was assigned to look after the New York Observer. My first task was a stale ticket about FBIA warnings. FBIA (Facebook Instant Articles) is a platform that Facebook is promoting to help articles load faster on mobile, within the Facebook...
Preserving the History of Cobble Hill
The Cobble Hill Historical Society is a non-profit group dedicated to preserving the history of Cobble Hill and the surrounding areas (Duncan, Shawnigan and Cowichan). They are embarking on an ambitious project to digitize and catalogue their historical assets. We're...
Helping scientists look after grey whales
Clayoquot Whales is a site maintained by Josie Byington, a scientist who tracks whale movements in and around Clayoquot Sound and Barkley Sound here in BC. A couple months ago she reached out to my company for help. She has whale sighting reports coming in every week,...
Faking It
When I was five I found out that I can’t hear. I didn’t notice anything wrong but my parents, teachers, they noticed. I was acting out. I got hearing aids and some assistance, but for the most part, I went through all of school without ever knowing what was going on....
Bottle Depot vs Recycle BC
This poster went around recently. It says that Bottle Depot, the biggest recycling company in Victoria, won't accept Blue Box materials anymore. It was a real kick in the gut when I saw this, and for a lot of other people as well. We try our best to recycle...
Extended Producer Responsibility
As a human living in a progressive, west coast city where everyone brings their own bags and mugs and has gardens and chickens in the backyard and rides their bike, I feel like we are already doing as much as we can, and at the same time not remotely enough, to stop...