Carnival of the Canucks, Part 2: Two Turtlenecks

I can’t talk about Canadian Blogs without mentioning BlogsCanada and its directory of Canadian blogs and their monthly listing of top Canadian blogs. Jim Elve, one of the people behind BlogsCanada also has a blog, Officially Unofficial. He recently got a scoop that hasn’t received enough attention — a two–part interview with Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, a Toronto-based blogger, who blogs in both Persian and English, fights the good fight against censorship (and especially for the freedom of his native Iran) and is running for Iranian parliament.

Jim will be hosting next week’s Carnival of the Canucks and gets bonus points from me for being that rarest of breeds: the Canadian accordion player.

The award for Most Idealistic Canadian Blog has to go to Dave Pollard’s How to Save the World, wherein he sets out to do just that. Also of interest are two recent postings, What Keeps Executives Awake at Night, in which he looks at “the usual” solutions to business problems versus his approach, and Are You a Closet Canadian?, which points to a great test to see if your attitudes are generally more Canadian (trending towards “idealism and autonomy”) or American (in the “status and security” area, trending towards “exlcusion and intensity”).

I cannot praise Steph “Sniffles” Troeth’s blog, Dandruff, enough. I love her writing and observations, and had a chance to meet her along with a number of YULBloggers (YUL is the airport code for Montreal’s Mirabel airport) in September. A notable recent entry: The Relationship Quagmire, in which she comments on the inadequacies of XFN (XHTML Friends Network), a computer-readable way of documenting relationships between people.

(I am of the opinion that having computer programmers design social software is dangerously similar to having deaf people design violins. The previous sentence also gives me an excuse to sneak in a link to Seb’s Open Research, which is also a Canadian blog. Clever, no?)

Here’s hoping that Happygirl’s Christmas wishes come true. But really, Happygirl, I think you should wish for better than “A date with a non-boring non-ugly guy who is slightly normal.” I think I fit at least 66% of the bill, but as regualr readers may have deduced, my dance card is full.