Why We Can't Say No: Addictions in Modern Culture

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I'm no stranger to addicts as I live in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. For those who don't know, it's Canada's poorest neighbourhood and it swarming with alcoholics and drug addicts, many literally outside of my front doorstep. These people have been down in the gutters for so long that they've just come to accept the conditions that they remain in, even if it is the death of them. And even I, with my exposure to this problem, have an amount of disconnect from the situation and these people. After all, they are drug addicts and alcoholics, and I'm not. And the people who I spend time with and perceive as 'normal' are not. But that illusion was shattered... a number of times actually. I suppose it has to be shattered more than once because it is far too comfortable to keep these people at a distance. Comfort, unfortunately, is the enemy of progress.

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Internet: A Human Right?

 - Urbino, Italy - The cover of the December 2009 issue of Wired Italia Magazine consisted of a beautiful picture, artwork, and one only sentence: “I candidate the Internet as World Heritage,” by Shirin Ebadi. Inside, an editorial by editor-in-chief Riccardo Luna said:

Today, we candidate the Internet for the upcoming Nobel Prize for Peace. Internet and Peace, can you feel it? They’re so good together that one wouldn’t even want to explain. […] This thing, either you get it immediately or you’ll never accept it, BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor, once told me. […] BJ is relevant to this story. In 2003, he opened a laboratory at Stanford to prove how the Internet carries a culture of peace. […] Internet is not like a telegraph, or a fridge, as those who cannot understand would say. Internet is something that’s never existed before. The first mass construction weapon. It’s up to us to use it properly. And many people do everyday. The Nobel Prize is for them.

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Ignorant Minds in Critical Times, Or, Why Arguing Over The Internet Sucks Out My Soul

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Some time ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine over Facebook.  I won’t get into what it was about, because I don’t want to distract from what happened next.  A mutual friend came in to share her opinion.  Okay, no problem there, opinions are always welcomed.  But here’s how she prefaced it:

“Here’s what I think, but bear in mind this is my opinion and nothing anyone will say is going to change it.  So don’t even try.”

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Raping the Minds of The Fatherless Generation

- Vancouver, British Columbia -

"I feel like it's your job to parent them. If you're the parent, be a parent. I'm a parent, I have daughters. How would I really sound as a person walking around my house, 'Bitch, pick this up.' Profanity around my house, no. But this is music, this is my art, this is what I do" - Eminem

Very often, I've heard many Hip-Hop stars all deny any responsibility for the impact of their art on the most vulnerable generation of our society: our children. It is parroted by many stars that parents need to watch what their kids are watching and listening to. They need to be more involved and take a more active role in protecting their kids from artistic content, which is apparently not produced for them. You see, in many artists' minds, the only responsibility that an artist has is to himself: to be true to himself and to never bend to any pressure that would manipulate his most truest expression; no matter how clean or explicit that expression is.

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