Franke, who is an artist and author of Bothered by My Green Conscience (and creator of other superb visual essays), and who I’ve linked to here numerous times, wrote a blog post today where she mentioned how the Canadian government is trying to stop her right to creative expression and free speech. Here is an excerpt from her blog post:

The Canadian Government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, is actively working to shut down my solo European art exhibition, which is set to tour 20 cities in Europe. The government’s interference includes phoning the corporate sponsor, and persuading them to cancel their $75,000 sponsorship.

Canadian officials have also bullied the NGO, Nektarina Non Profit, and warned them repeatedly to cancel the exhibition because they are opposed to “Franke James.”

Franke’s visual essays are powerful stories about the environment and about what we need to do to save the environment and ultimately, ourselves. To attempt to stop an artist from expressing herself is not something that you’d expect a democratic country to do, but that’s exactly what’s being done. Here’s an actual quote:

“Who was the idiot who approved an art show by that woman, Franke James?”

- Memorable words from one of Canada’s top officials on hearing that the Canadian Embassy in Croatia had offered support for Franke’s art show.

So, she needs our support. You can support Franke by tweeting or blogging about this, sharing it on Facebook (or Google+), leaving a comment on her blog post, or even emailing your friends.

I’m not sure if I’ll look back on 2010 a few years later and remember it differently, but right now I can’t say that I’m unhappy that we’re in 2011.

Sorry for the radio silence from my end. I wish that there were a compelling reason why I am not posting regularly, but it’s a combination of just being busy with other stuff, i.e. non-Internet life, and sometimes not having much to say. I have definitely reduced the amount of time that I spend online, and spending time doing other things is nice. Who’d have thought it, eh — that there this a whole other world offline?

Happy New Year 2011 by the way. May your 2011 be bright and shiny, just like the sunshine over Bangalore at the moment.

The Annual Strand Book Festival
at Basava Bhavan, Opp. Hotel Chalukya and Sophia School, Bangalore

Fri 26 Nov – Sun 12 Dec
10 – 8.30pm

Discounts up to 80%

Parking in and around the venue.

I’ve been for a few years now and I always find something good. Can’t wait.

I remember that the school principal used to use a green coloured pen to sign letters or late slips or whatever. That green seemed exotic at the time.

I think teachers didn’t want you to write in red because they evaluate answer sheets with their own red pens and the colour clash can lead to confusions.

What I don’t get though is why we’re asked not to use any of the other colours. Green is a perfectly fine colour to use, so is violet, maybe even brown. I’ve never tried the latter two, so I don’t know.

I did buy red and green refills a few weeks ago and I started using the green one, but I had to change to blue. I was afraid that someone would use the green pen without knowing and accuse me of ruining a cheque leaf or whatever else.

Which brings me to my second point. I get why schools — whose job it is to get you ready to conform — would restrict the colour of pens that you can use. Why is there the same restriction in the real world? A form that I came across recently had instructions that told you to use blue ink only. And, in my various forays into the real world, corporate or otherwise, I can’t remember a single time that I’ve seen a pen with green or a purple coloured ink being used. I’m not kidding.

I can make a case for not using red because it’s associated with danger (traffic signal for example) but why not green or any of the other reasonably dark colours? I’m not asking for yellow and pink pens because I think that they’ll be hard to read on white paper, but brown, purple, green, maroon — they’re all colours that can be read.

If you know the answer or have a theory about why we use only specific coloured inks, feel free to chime in. I’m stumped.

Some research after the fact

After I finished writing this post, I went to Google and found this article. It explains why blue ink is preferable on legal documents — it contrasts with the black print. Another point made, in a different place, was about copiers and scanners and how certain colours don’t copy or scan well.

Interestingly, there’s a lot of discussion on this topic but I haven’t come across any definitive answers.

• Which Is Best, Blue Or Black Ink?
• Why must I use black ink only on my application forms?
• Legality of red ink

I am sure that most of us have done this at some point — mention that you’re sending an attachment in an email and forget to attach the file. I love that someone in the Gmail team decided to do something about it.

When an application does something that helps you, it makes you warm and fuzzy, — so, it’s just me then? — and in this case, grateful. So, thanks Gmail developer, whoever you are.

Just to make the user experience better, I’d have preferred the OK and Cancel buttons to be replaced by Send and Don’t Send. I had to re-read the message to be sure and then choose Cancel.

Still, I’m happy about what the Gmail team did right. Bravo.

Epilogue: The email was sent with the attachment.