Hasta La Gadget!

When did we enter a world where a fan can’t say something optimistic about their team without fear of backlash? I have been a Leaf fan my whole life and apart from a slight resurgence when I was five when Cliff Fletcher brought in Doug Gilmour and Dave Andreychuk and the call-up Felix Potvin lead the team to a 99-point season, I haven’t experienced many positive outcomes. But I am still a fan, through thick and thin (mostly thin, very thin).

And whether it be here, online, or in a bar talking to friends, I am always shocked at the overt and outward disgust people have when you try to defend or find morsels of optimism in the Leafs. And I expect this from non-Leaf fans — Habs, Canucks, Flames, Sens, etc. fans have always hated the Leafs as we get most of the TV coverage, the coveted 7 p.m. HNIC time slot, etc. But Leaf fans won’t hesitate to throw overt shade.

I understand having your backs up and being on the defensive, there hasn’t been much to celebrate or be proud of in the past 15 years. It can be disappointing to finally get a line that can produce goals (Alexander Mogilny, Mats Sundin and Gary Roberts for example) just to see the rest of the team and the goaltenders fall apart and provide no support.

The Red Sox have some of the most loyal and devout fans in the sporting world and they went over 80 years without winning a World Series. Sure they put on a good show most seasons with some big name players and often a playoff appearance. So is that what Toronto fans are looking for? Quality games? It is often criticized that the Leafs especially, cater to a corporate crowd in a rich market and don’t have the priority of quality players, games, hockey. Which I understand, and I agree, that should be a huge priority. But when CuJo and Sundin left the Leafs to join an organization better equipped to play quality hockey, we selfishly faulted them for it — even though we weren’t producing quality hockey here in Toronto.

What would make us, as Toronto fans, happy? Making the playoffs? One year, two years? First round? Second round? A Cup? There is so much positive press out there for Toronto being a huge market that could support two NHL teams… I suppose they mean financially support two teams, cause the way I see it — we can’t mentally or emotionally support the team we have.

It is fascinating to me as my primary profession is an advertiser that a brand can be so financially successful and continues to see revenue growth, with such ubiquitous negative press and public opinion. It’s like tequila — no one likes the taste, or the way it makes us feel the next morning, but we buy the ticket and go for the ride…

As the end of the summer heats up, so does the end of the Illinois’ governor’s race. In the political polls conducted so far, the Republican challenger Bruce Rauner seems to be leading Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, but the margins vary based on polling entity. Two Reboot Illinois/We Ask America polls had Rauner winning by 10 and 14 percentage points, but CBS/New York Times, Harstad Strategic Research and Rasmussen Reports polls showed him ahead by only a few percentage points. On the other hand, a Chicagon Sun-Times/We Ask America poll had Rauner ahead, leading by 13 points.

Why such large margins of differences?

Even as we conducted our own polls, we’ve consistently cautioned that polling represents a snapshot in time. It’s a measure of the attitudes of a random pool of respondents on the day they’re surveyed. Check out graphs on Reboot Illinois that show the differences between polls from several organizations based on timing and the particular sample pools that each poll captured.

Despite such varied margins of a lead, the polls still present a compelling argument for a Rauner victory in November. But Madeleine Doubek said it’s still too early to call Quinn toast. He is a well-established political player in the state. In those same polls, Quinn was generally ahead in Chicago, where a significant portion of Illinois voters come from on Election Day, meaning things could swing the other direction fast. Plus, many non-binding ballot questions in Chicago and across the state about the minimum wage, birth control and gun control may persuade Democratic-leaning voters to come out.

Of course, Rauner’s campaign also has been busy spending millions on political ads that could counteract Democratic efforts. At this point, anything could happen.

One morning a few weeks ago, I received an email from the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC), announcing the makeup of a provisional committee of experts that has been tasked with carrying out a comprehensive new study of genetically engineered (GE) crops. This study is supposed to assess the history of GE crops around the world, the diverse experiences of farmers in different countries and a wide range of “purported” negative and positive impacts of GE seeds and their associated technologies (for example, pesticides).

Done right, this could be an illuminating investigation, right? But as I looked over the bios provided on NRC’s webpage, I quickly realized that the Council appears to have a pretty poor idea of how to carry out such a challenging, complex and multifaceted study. In fact, this week 67 scientists and researchers publicly rebuked the NRC for failing, right at the outset, to put together a slate of experts equipped for the task.

Gaps in Expertise

The majority of the NRC panelists are biophysical scientists, no doubt highly skilled in what they do. Most have training in fields such as molecular biology, genetics, genomics, biochemistry, plant biotechnology, crop sciences and plant breeding. Several have spent a significant portion of their careers working within a GE-crop-development framework. There are a handful of others: a communications specialist who worked in public relations and marketing, an agricultural economist, and a couple of lawyers. (One has a relevant background in international law and human rights.) And, on this panel of 19, there is one sociologist. Just one.

As currently configured, NRC’s panel has nowhere near the scholarly or real-world expertise required to produce a credible product.

Now, remember, this panel is supposed to assess the history and impacts of GE crops on real people: on farmers and rural communities in countries around the world. I looked again over the list of experts. (Maybe I missed something.) Where were the rural and development sociologists, political economists, political ecologists, anthropologists, geographers, international development experts with real-world experience in community-based participatory research? Where were the public-health professionals, with expertise in occupational, environmental and community health? Where were those trained in multidisciplinary research and complex systems science? Where were those who understand and study agriculture as a complex, continually evolving social/cultural/ecological system?

I also noticed the paucity of women (just four!) — and the glaring absence of a single farmer on a panel tasked with assessing the experiences of… farmers!

Biotech Bias?

Meanwhile, another group of scientists and researchers criticized NRC for failing to diversify the range of institutional interests represented on the panel. Several of the panelists come from the biosafety and biotechnology support programs of USAID and USDA, and the Monsanto-affiliated Donald Danforth Plant Science Center — institutions that, as the letter says, are “devoted to the research, development, commercialization, export and/or trade in GE crops.”

NRC committee members are supposed to serve as individuals, leaving behind the interests of their home institutions. That’s fine to say and makes sense in theory. But in reality, how we think, the kinds of questions we ask and how we go about answering them are all inevitably influenced not only by disciplinary background but also by the assumptions of our professional community, the orientation of our institutional “homes” and a host of other sociocultural factors. (That recognition, by the way, and a commitment to including a diversity of disciplines and institutional perspectives, as well as equitable gender and geographic representation, is in part what made the UN-sponsored IAASTD report so unique among evidence-based assessments.)

Transparency, Please

I am also troubled by the lack of clarity and transparency that surrounds the study. Despite a partial commitment to transparency at certain stages of the review process, many things remain opaque. What are the origins of this study? Who are its sponsors? Who at NRC decided on committee participant invitations? And as the study gets underway, how will minority perspectives and dissenting opinions be treated?

NRC states that the final product will be a consensus report. In my experience, this usually results in a watered-down report that presents only the lowest common denominator of what everyone can agree on.

Far more useful — particularly in a study of a highly controversial topic such as GE crops — would be an unflinching, honest presentation of the plurality of opinions and differing interpretations of evidence that exist. This would better reflect and help us to understand the very real tensions (and their causes) among scientists, farmers and the public at large about how best to achieve the food system we want.

Asking the Wrong Questions

Perhaps the most troubling feature of this new GE study is that NRC appears to be asking the wrong questions in the wrong way. The study takes as its starting (and ending) point the question of GE crops and asks how this technology might contribute to agricultural innovation.

A far more useful approach would be to step back and ask: What are the challenges facing agriculture today? What do we need to know and understand in order to transform our agrifood system into one that is equitable, resilient and sustainable? (Hint: The IAASTD already asked those questions, and with over 400 authors from 80 countries, they did an excellent job at answering them.)

Many of the solutions to today’s agrifood-system challenges will be social, economic and political. Some may have a technological component. The problem with NRC’s approach is that asking how one technology can address a very complex array of mostly nontechnical issues — and then looking at it in isolation from other possible solutions — can become a self-limiting exercise.

Public Input?

To be fair, NRC appears to be making an effort to open its doors to public engagement. The agency offered a 20-day comment period on its provisional committee slate (now closed). There will be several committee meetings over the course of the study that are open to the public, with the first taking place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15 and 16. And anyone can recommend experts to present to the committee. But what NRC will do with this public feedback is anybody’s guess.

Unless things change radically and fast, this NRC study appears destined (or designed?) to produce just another myopic “what could go wrong” endorsement of the biotech industry’s products. That outcome would be a missed opportunity by the Council to provide the public and policymakers with a truly meaningful, nuanced and illuminating report. Surely our National Academy of Sciences can do better.

For much of my life, I’ve chased after the “big idea”, or in other words, the one idea that would save me from insignificance and anonymity. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably felt the urge to find your big idea too.

But, I’m starting to think this is a lie.

What if there is no big idea?

What if we’re wasting our time going in search of an illusion?

It wasn’t until recently that I found out I was.

Truth is, a big idea isn’t as big as we imagine it to be.

If you think about the iPhone, you would think it’s a big idea. The iPhone has completely revolutionized the phone market. But if you analyze it closely, zoom in on what innovation actually happened, you would see that Apple didn’t create the phone. In fact, when people heard that Apple was entering into the phone market, many of them shrugged their shoulders. They didn’t care. The phone already existed, but they’re big idea was simply improving on what already existed.

So often we imagine success to come once we innovate, come out with something completely new. But our “big ideas” aren’t always new things.

Our big ideas are sometimes improving on simple ones.

But if you ask others what success looks like, they would most likely tell you that success follows coming out with something new. You can’t blame them. We’ve been primed through our history classes that success looks like Thomas Edison discovering the lightbulb and Henry Ford making the automobile.

Not only that, but we have a certain lens that can only see the finished product, not the hard work it took to arrive upon that idea. If we could see the hard work, we would find that successful people most often didn’t come up with something entirely new.

Instead, they rummaged through a number of simple ideas until it formed the path to their big idea.

This is how big ideas are. Our big ideas are built off of a culmination of many simple ideas.

For instance, the success of Guy Laliberté’s Cirque de Soleil began from a simple performing troupe of clowns. Laliberté didn’t all of a sudden wake up with this idea of having the largest theatrical production in the world. His big idea was built off the simple idea he was currently executing.

Our big ideas are comprised of the many simple actions we choose today.

If you’re in a start-up company that appears like a simple idea, don’t worry that it didn’t start out as being big. Instead, dream higher. See what simple things you can improve on today. And after a while, you’ll stumble across your innovation.

Neglecting the simple ideas won’t form your innovation. Your innovation will come from improving simple ideas.

That might not be how we envision success, but to see success coming from an utterly new idea would cripple us from not doing anything significant at all.

Deny the illusion of having a big idea. Search for it through the simple ideas around you, and you’ll find the treasure you’re looking for.

This post was originally featured on nealsamudre.com.

At some point in your nerdy childhood, you surely imagined what it would be like to build an entire exoskeleton out of Lego. How much fun would that be to have a Lego creation you could actually climb inside and drive around?! Well, award-winning Lego enthusiast Diavo Voltaggio is well on his way to that bright future.

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