Brent Kearney

It was a beautiful October evening in Banff, and I was home early — as I often am on Mondays — looking forward to getting out for a run before the sun set. Things were busy at work and at home, I had a lot on my mind, including ramping up training for the cross country ski season, and for my next adventure race in the early summer. I was feeling good, and started off with a strong pace towards the Sundance Canyon, just down the hill from my place.

I enjoy that route in the evenings, because the trail runs east-west, providing spectacular scenery at dusk, when the skies turn purple, yellow, pink and sometimes even shades of green. Given the time that I was leaving for my run, I would have been treated to this during my return from the canyon, if it weren’t for one of my neighbours, her little dog, and an old dead tree.

I had just picked up speed, running down-hill on the trail from my house, when I spotted the little dog, connected to it’s owners by one of those ever-expanding retractable leashes.

This is a random photo of a dog from Google Images. It is not the actual dog that tripped me. I was too busy running and being stabbed to take photos.

There are a lot of wind storms here in the mountains, and as a result, fallen trees are very common. I don’t think twice about jumping over them while running, or bunny-hopping them on my mountain bike. So I was habitually unconcerned that there was a fallen tree crossing my path. It just so happened that at the exact moment my feet left the ground, as I hopped over the tree, the hyper little dog made a last-moment lunge for me. I cleared the dog, but not it’s leash, which snagged my foot, tripping me onto the downed tree. Which was covered in branches…

Thank you, Trey Parker & Matt Stone!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, and I was hoping to have this blog redesigned before my next post. Oh well. I’ve been busy with all kinds of things in the past few months.

There has been a lot of cool developments in the news since Christmas, stuff I’d normally mention (this is, after all, a *web log*). So I thought I’d write a quick little summary of some interesting things I’ve recently read.

Underwater Breathing Device Invented

As reported on IsraCast, an Israeli engineer has invented a device that allows people to breath the oxygen stored in water, the way that fish do. It’s still experimental, but in a few years, “the new tankless breathing system will be operational and will be attached to a diver in the form of a vest that will enable him to stay underwater for a period of many hours.”

Science Gains Insights About Morality via Brain Injury and Primate Studies

The Science section of the New York Times has an interesting article on the study of primates and their altruistic behavior, which strongly overlaps our own. This research shows that morality evolved long before philosophy or religion. Also, a very interesting finding, as reported by Reuters, about a study on people with a particular frontal lobe brain injury: they were more likely to make utilitarian ethical choices. That is, when confronted with the choice of doing harm to an individual for the benefit of the larger group v.s. doing no harm to an individual despite consequences for a group of people, they would choose the former. Many people choose the latter. For example, would you kill your own child so that 10 other children could live? The subjects of this study would usually say “yes”. They should have titled the study, “How to fix a Kantian.”

British Research Shows that Alcohol and Tobacco are as Bad as Presently Illegal Drugs

“In the end, the experts agreed with each other — but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.” This article in Time details a study in the U.K. of 20 different drugs and their harmful effects on people and society. They came up with a danger ranking of substances that people use recreationally; alcohol placed 6th and tobacco 9th. Marijuana placed 11th, and surprisingly, Ecstasy came in last, at 20th. “The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary,” argues the head scientist, however, his conclusion is rather obtuse: that alcohol and tobacco should be banned as well. I think many people would argue the opposite: that all of the other drugs should be legalized, or at least those below 5th on the list.

Skiing in Banff Still Rocks

Last but not least, I wanted to mention that despite the very warm temperatures lately, the ski conditions at Sunshine this week were superb. They got 37cm of snow in 3 days, and it was like mid-winter conditions up there. It stayed cold enough in the Village. Not too many people were around either, so there was plenty of fresh, fluffy powder to bomb around in. We’ve also had a string of sunny bluebird days, so it’s really quite excellent! :)

A Vancouver music label, Nettwork Productions, seems to be the first big label to really understand how screwed up the music industry is, and to realize that there is more opportunity in music than there has ever been. They realize that file-sharing is a good thing for artists, and they encourage fans to download the raw data used in making recordings so that they can create their own remixes from it. Nettwork represents several big acts, including Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sarah McLachlan and Bare Naked Ladies.

Wired magazine reports that the creative genius behind the company is its CEO, Terry McBride.

“For decades, people in music have used the number of albums sold as a measuring stick for success,” McBride says. “We’re trying to get people to see beyond that. It’s about revenue from music, however you make it – selling concert tickets, licensing to TV, or selling packed USB drives.”

When Nettwerk manages a band, the band owns their own label and retains ownership of their intellectual property, which gets them $5 or $6 per CD sale, as opposed to the traditional $1 or $2. Nettwerk sets about the business of selling the music, not plastic discs, and takes 20% as its share of the profit. This stands in stark contrast to the vampires that make up today’s recording industry. The RIAA whines about declining CD sales, when they don’t realize that music is about more than plastic discs:

The market for music is thriving. With the rise of peer-to-peer networks, the iPod, and other digital technologies – plus a 100 percent jump in concert ticket sales since 1999 – the world is awash in music. The industry now has more sources of revenue – ringtones, concert tickets, license agreements with TV shows and videogames – than ever before.

Nettwerk has embraced technology and empowered fans to help market music for them. They setup software to track how many CDs fans have recommended and sold to their friends, and rewards them with prizes. This is only the beginning, according to McBride. They plan on becoming somewhat of a venture capitalist for bands:

“Once we have access to all the intellectual property, we’re going to offer shares in individual artists and take in equity investments,” McBride says. “Eventually, a major band could be its own public company.” The key, he adds, sounding like an overzealous investment banker, is that the value of a band would be measured like a stock and would receive capitalization in expectation of future earnings. “At that point, even a band selling 100,000 units a year becomes profitable,” McBride says.

A visionary like McBride is just what the music industry needed. Hopefully bands will hear about it and flock away from the big labels as fast as possible.

I came across a cool site this morning about work and business, and found this tidbit rather striking, so I thought I’d share it:

Semco sounds like a pretty amazing company! There are a lot of articles out there on Semco and its CEO, Ricardo Semler. My reading list just grew a bit longer.

Last year on Canada Day, I hiked from Banff up the west end of Mt. Rundle. This year, it was the other end, also known as “EEOR”, the East End of Rundle, just outside of Canmore. Rundle is indeed a huge mountain with many peaks, stretching from Banff to Canmore. We scrambled to the eastern-most peak. According to the Calgary Outdoors club, EEOR is a 6 to 7 hour difficult hike, to an elevation of 2700m. Maybe we found an easier route — it took us 1:40 to get up, and about the same to get down, even though we got a bit lost near the bottom. Although short, it was a sweet day! Check out the pix!