Tag Archives: Add new tag

Vancouver’s new poet laureate

Leave a reply

I just saw and heard Brad Cran’s first event as Vancouver’s poet laureate. The inaugural poet laureate, George McWhirter was present at the City of Vancouver chambers today (May 5, 2009) at 3:45 pm along with the city council, mayor, and many of Cran’s supporters.

I enjoyed the poetry (both Cran’s and that of the children from grade two [not sure which school]). I gather he’s a community activist of some sort although I haven’t come across him before. His first poem was about the violence we’ve had recently. I’m not sure what the title was other than it had the word bullet in it. His poems are relatively brief and the few I’ve heard or read concern themselves with contemporary urban life. Cran made a point of mentioning the Downtown Eastside before reciting his poem about community. Then, it was the kids’ turn. It was about what you’d expect from a group of seven and eight year olds. Charming, funny, ofetn concerned with candy, ice cream, and pets, and with an occasional reference to contemporary social issues e.g. homelessness. Apparently, this is a preview of a longer piece with children that Cran plans to work on as part of his duties as Vancouver’s poet laureate.

Cran thanked everybody and their uncle and made special mention of a new book that George McWhirter edited,  A Verse Map of Vancouver. I think it was one of McWhirter’s poet laureate projects. Cran’s appointment, like McWhirter’s, is for three years.

Maskwriting facilities at 4D Labs and some bottom-up engineering news

1 Reply

Following up on yesterday’s news from Simon Fraser University (SFU), I gather that maskwriting has to do with fabricating nanoscale materials and the facility they will be building for their 4D Labs will allow them to create nanoscale structures that measure less than 20 nanometres.

“This capability will eventually be as key to nanoscale materials fabrication as the photocopier is to information dissemination,” explains [Byron] Gates, 4D LABS’ director of nanofabrication. “With our new maskwriting facility, we’ll be able to fabricate the next generation of technologies, particularly in the fields of alternative energy and biomedical engineering.”

Local companies will not have send off to Alberta to get this work done and it will give 4D Labs some revenue.  Given that universities are under pressure these days to develop new revenue streams, this has to be good news.

Meanwhile, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently published a paper describing their work on bottom-up engineering of DNA ‘seeds’. The two main approaches to engineering in nanotechnology (and this is simplified) are top-down and bottom-up. Traditional enginerring has been top-down; we make things smaller and smaller. The bottom-up approach means taking your cue from biological processes (or nature) and encouraging objects to build themselves or to ‘grow’. There’s more here.

The Project for Emergining Nanotechnologies’ June 17, 2009 event (mentioned in yesterday’s posting) has been rescheduled to Fall 2009.