Sushi Night

Oh Baby!

2007-05-17T16:12:00.000-05:00

A bunch of news outlets were recently publishing reports of a study that linked month of conception to a child's IQ. The researchers figured out that the kids conceived in June through August did the most poorly on standardized tests. Although I haven't read the original article, every report I've seen says that pesticide exposure at the time of conception is at fault - the idea pesticide use is typically high in the summer

And, you know, I'm willing to buy that the first three months in utero are pretty critical to a child's neurological development.

But presumably, they just did this by using the kids' birthdays, which would have also been linked to the test scores. So basically, they just have good correlation between date of birth and IQ. I mean, nobody found a way to measure their actual exposure to pesticides in utero, did they?

What I'm getting at, is why did they pick pesticide exposure at conception? It seems like there could be other good correlates: what about pesticide exposure at birth? Or allergen exposure at birth. After all, working backwards, these kids would have been born in March-May: springtime! Don't people get exposed to all sorts of weirdo chemicals as they prepare their gardens? Moms could easily transfer that stuff to their kids. Or maybe the kids are being exposed to pesticides in breast milk during their first summer.

Or maybe it's something else altogether: people alter all sorts of behaviours in the summer. Maybe they eat different stuff. Maybe they're exposed to more smog. Maybe the heat causes stress hormones to be released into the circulation of Moms-to-be.

Who knows? Maybe I need to read the original paper... but for the moment I'm not convinced.

Image from Petteri Sulonen and licensed under cc-by-2.0

Enviro Feature

2007-05-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

My sister just sent me prtty much the most awesome gift she's ever picked out.

It's a messenger bag made out of a movie billboard! It's a NEW product made by a company called ecoist - I've actually linked to them before, although I didn't realize it until I went to their website to see what they were all about.

The billboards are made of thick vinyl - it seems crazy for something that's so impermanent but they're intended for outdoor display and I guess they're designed to look good from the nearby highway in all kinds of weather. The typical lifespan of one of these oversize posters is the run of a movie - after which they they're taken down and landfilled. At least they used to be - now at least some of them are being turned into waterproof totes and bags. Mine has all sorts of pockets - perfect for me, who can already never find my cellphone when it's ringing - as well as a variety of nifty clips and zips.

My personal bag doesn't look like any of the ones on the website - the beauty of this product is that it changes as new movies come out and old posters are used up.

'Course, now I have to go and see a film called "Open Season" to find out who owns the cartoon face featured on my new tote.

probability.earthquake <- probability of coding success?

2007-04-20T18:02:00.000-05:00

Over the past couple of weeks I've been learning how to use a new program called Splus. Well, actually, I mostly feel like I'm bashing my head against concrete. It's a statistical software package and I'm trying to code up some nice analyses. Which would be fine if I had any coding skills. I have to say that the help files are spectacularly unhelpful to a beginner.

Anyway, because I'm all new at this Splus thing, I've been reading the "useful tips" that pop up each time I start a new session.

Today's tip said:

"When an earthquake strikes, take cover under a desk or doorway. Try to avoid areas near windows or heavy objects that might topple, and above all, do not panic".

This seems like odd advice to include with a statistical software package. I can only conclude that I'll just feel like there's an earthquake happening in the event that I actually ever get some useful code together.

Media savvy

2007-04-13T19:40:00.000-05:00

Erm, so if you pop a few pills your probability of dying is 75%???
And we thought we had an ageing population NOW.

Must confess: I got this from planet procrastination

I'm a little green with this laptop...

2007-04-04T18:08:00.000-05:00

As part of my new job where I actually get paid to do research, I am using a brand new laptop. We are just getting to know each other, and let's just say - there have been a few hiccups along the way.

The main problem is that it is not too sociable. It likes to sleep. That's fine; I like to sleep too after I've been awake for a certain amount of time. But when I wake up the laptop, half of the services stay sleeping. Including the server, internet, and firewall. It's kind of like if I got out of bed and then went and lay on the couch for the rest of the day.

The only solution seemed to be restarting the computer. So I was shutting it down every time I woke it up, which seems ... uh ... a bit counterproductive...

Anyway. We're moving past that little dilemma now and 'lil Lenovo and I are getting along just fine.

Yup, it's a Lenovo. And although I had nothing whatsoever to do with picking it out, I am happy to announce that Lenovo just topped an environmental ranking of electronics firms.

According to Greenpeace, the firm guarantees that it will take back and recycle any obsolete or nonfunctional piece of equipment that bears the Lenovo name. And let me just say that I love that it's a Chinese company leading the way.

Sadly, Lenovo products may still contains a few toxic ingredients - like brominated fire retardants, polyvinyl chloride, beryllium, and pthalates. Yummy. Hopefully it will soon get those outta there.

Apple, the funky-hip-gotta-have-an-iAnything company that everyone seems to love pretty much sucked on this ranking. They got 2.7 out of 10.

Roots loses contact with planet earth.

2007-03-30T15:41:00.000-05:00

A couple of weekends ago I was in the Eaton Centre when I was accosted by a young woman at the entryway to the Roots store. Spying our Gore-tex jackets and hiking boots, she correctly surmised that we might be "outdoorsy" types.

She wanted to sell us on this "great new product" that would help us on our hiking trips.

Air in a can. Yup, Roots is willing to sell us a can of 90% oxygen for the low-low price of $60. And once you use it all up, do not fret! It can be refilled for a mere $20!

According to Roots, flipping the little plastic nose cover up, bringing the cannister close to your face and spritzing while inhaling promotes mental alertness, relieves stress, increases energy and ability to concentrate.

WTF?!??

Uh, I have so many problems with this.

First - you have eviednce from what epidemiological/clinical studies exactly?

Second - My lungs are perfectly adapted to extract the amount of oxygen I need from the atmosphere thankyouverymuch.

Third - pure oxygen could damage my efficient little alveoli (the bits of my lungs that take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide). The atmosphere is actually made up mostly of nitrogen (not oxygen!) - it's only 20% oxygen. It's well-established that breathing 50-100% oxygen over a prolonged period of time causes lung damage. In fact, there are lung diseases where scarring occurs because of the presence of highly reactive oxygen radicals that are created when the lungs get all inflamed. Yuck. ...so is this cannister of 90% oxygen going to come with a warning label?

Fourth - $60 for something I can (continuously) get for free? You've GOT to be kidding me.

Fifth. Oh and so I'm going to lug this on the hiking trail with me?! Who did the focus groups with the outdoorsy people, I wonder? They didn't manage to figure out that most of us would want to reduce the weight we carry, that we're out there for the challenge and not a quick fix, that creating more "stuff" to send to landfill is unlikely to be our cup of tea.

Sixth - the salesgirl said "wouldn't it be better than breathing in that polluted air outside?" Aside from the fact I'd rather spend my $60 on reducing the amount of emissions I'm responsible for - is she suggesting I just attach this permanently to my nose? (besides, see #3) It's pretty hard to get away from outdoor or indoor pollution in Toronto and please tell me that they aren't really marketing this as a healthy alternative to our dirty air when the energy required to create and fill the cannisters probably caused some of the pollution?

Seventh - You know how athletes train at high altitude so that they can run faster? That's because there's less oxygen up there, so they are forcing their bodies to make more efficient use of the oxygen they do breathe. Which makes me wonder if overuse of Roots' new product could actually dampen the ability of your blood cells to transport oxygen around your body.

Eigth - are they trying to commodify air? I mean talk about tragedy of the commons. I think the most tragic thing would be that the commons ends up all owned and no longer common. (I'm not even going to get into bottled water here, people. But you can guess what I think of that). I refuse to even think about how someone could own my air.

Ninth - talk about a completely transparent attempt to sell me something, anything, for profit. Roots can take that attitude and shove it.

And ten: I leave this spot and all the numbers that come after ten open - for anyone who would like to add a thought.

I heart HP

2007-03-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

I was recently super-impressed with HP. I bought a new laserjet printer to save my sanity while printing all those copies of my thesis. Then, because I had printed so many pages (sorry, trees!), the toner cartridge ran out. ...and may I just say that it ran out well after I expected it to, given the amount of printing I did.

And THEN - when I opened the box for the new cartridge, I discovered that it is SO EASY to recycle the old one. They provide you with a postage-paid mailing label, and you just stick your old cartridge into the now one's box. Which is perfectly designed to fold closed again without even needing tape.

And the whole thing even fit in a regular mailbox. Whooppee! I love it when recycling is easy.

President Happy Owl gets Voted Out

2007-03-26T09:10:00.000-05:00

IMAGE IS FROM BBC'S CLIMATE CHALLENGE WEBPAGE

So yeserday I was trying to keep all of Europe in line. I was trying to meet carbon dioxide reduction targets by implementing policies and negotiating with other regions of the world. I did a decent job of reducing CO2 emissions...

...too bad most of Europe ended up starving. I got voted out because I was so unpopular - and apprently it will take a while to fix the damage I did.

I was playing a game called Climate Challenge. It was put together by the BBC to try and illustrate some of the causes of climate change, the policy options open to governments, and the challenges facing international policy negotiators.

I guess fixing the world's climate problems is kind of complicated. Now that I have a better idea of how the game works I might try again.

Too bad we only get one shot at this stuff in real life.

It is believed that... I'm a delinquent

2007-03-23T14:56:00.000-05:00

Ah, my poor sushi-night, I have been neglecting you. Partly, I've ben on a bit of a steep learning curve with my new postoctoral work, but mostly, I confess, I've just been azy.

Today someone actually commented on a previous post despite the site's inactivity... and someone else commented to ME that I hadn't been blogging much.

So here's hoping that I can get my groove back. It's appropriate that it's a Friday - tonight is ALWAYS sushi night! (for clarification, wander back through the archives to the first post ever).

It's also appropriate that I nobody strain their brain on a Friday afternoon. So Let's have some fun instead. Here's the "Dictionary Of Research Phrases", which I pulled from someone's science humour website. And may I say... "This Dictionary has long been known... to exist"

"It has long been known..."

I didn't look up the original references.

"A reasonable trend is evident..."

These data are practically meaningless.

"Of great theoretical and practical importance..."

It is interesting to me.

"While it has not been possible to provide definite anwers to these questions..."

An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.

"Three of the data sets were chosen for detailed study..."

The results of the others didn't match my conclusions.

"Typical results are shown..."

The best results are shown.

"These results will be shown in a subsequent report..."

Haven't gotten around to it.

"The most reliable results are those obtained by Jones..."

He was my graduate student.

"It is believed that..."

I think...

"It is generally believed that..."

A couple of other guys think so, too.

"Much more work is needed before a complete understanding of the phenomenon can be reached."

I don't understand it.

"This result is correct within an order of magnitude..."

It is wrong.

Kvetch

2007-02-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

I love that word. Kevtch. KvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetch....

Anyway - last night I got to be a part of Canada's first- ever "Complaints choir". The CBC Radio show As it Happens solicited complaints from their listeners, and had them set to music. It just aired.

hehehe.

I could tell you more, but I'll just send you here for the video, and here for the audio (End of Part 1).

(Wrt the video: Click on "Complaints Choir" ... who knows how long it will be linked to this page. After that you'll have to hunt us down on YouTube or something) .

At your service

2007-02-22T14:10:00.000-05:00

Today I went and donated blood for the first time in ages. Here I am, living pretty much down the street from a donor clinic, and I'm sure it's been at least a couple of years since I donated. Despite all that, I've made at least 10 donations so far in my life, according to Canadian Blood Services.

I figure I should donate - since I can. The needle pricks a bit, but other than that I'm really not affected by donating blood. One time several years ago I ran all the way to an appointment after donating - there had been a lineup and it took longer than I expected. (I didn't faint. Or really notice any discomfort except a little dampness under the arms!)

Plus, I'm O+, like most other Canadians, which makes me a good donor: anyone who is A+, B+ or O- + can receive my blood.

Most importantly, I once saw someone who'd recently had surgery literally go from ash-grey/barely functional to mildly pink and upbeat after receieving blood. It was amazing.

Incidentally, Japanese people apparently believe that your blood type predicts your personality. According to Wikipedia, I should be ambitious, athletic, robust, self-confident, and a natural leader. (Oh, and Arrogant, vain, insensitive, and ruthless.)

So I guess it comes down to this: I'm superior to anyone who hasn't recently donated, I am confident I will someday get my 50 donations pin, and I will take you to the clinic myself if you need a friend to lead the way. But I might not let you wimp out if we go.

Kidding. But if anyone wants more info, ask! Or see Canadian Blood Services.

GermEnlarger

2007-02-19T18:08:00.000-05:00

I was feeling totally frustrated today because I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing with the project I'm working on. All I can say, is this is a fantastic place to remenisce and have a few laughs. And feel more sorry for Beaker than I do for me.

Poor Beaker. Things just never go well for him.

Image from Beaker and the GermEnlarger

Sorry about the pixillated look of it. It's old-school, ya know?

Me, me, me!

2007-02-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

Al Gore, who seems to have been transmogrified from boring political guy-in-a-tie to celebrity environmentalist since the release of his famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is dabbling in even more hollywood hype.

His doc is already nominated for an Oscar (and so is Melissa Etheridge for her song "I Need to Wake Up", which was featured in the film), but he's already moving on. He's become a concert-organizer.

He's putting together a series of global concerts set to play (and air) over a 24-hour period on July 7th. Sort of like the Live 8 thing that happened a couple of summers ago.

This concert's called Live Earth. Good title.

It's part of a broader campaign called "Save our Selves". I'm hating that title.

It sounds a little too inward-focused and way too cheesy. Sort of like, "I'm only doing this because I'd just hate it if the sea levels rose and the carpet in my beachfront mansion got damaged".

I mean, yeah, I don't want to be personally affected by climate change either, but I'm also a little concerned about those folks living in the low-lying areas of Bangladesh who have no voice whatsoever.

Apparently the concerts will happen in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Sydney, London and cities to be announced in Japan, Brazil and the United States. The countries with the cash. And a lot of the CO2 emissions. And the political clout. Nice for us that we can "Save Our Selves" if we decide to.

I'm being cynical - lots of people are concerned about global effects - but this title implies that we would only want to address climate change if it might hurt us personally - as opposed to harming other people, or the community at large. Thank goodness that any actions people in the West take to save themselves can't be reserved for the West alone - by definition, they'll have global effects.

Proceeds from the concert will go to fight climate change. Whatever works I guess.

Mm, lard from sewage

2007-02-15T16:49:00.000-05:00

I always figure that one reason why most of us don't always buy organic food is the pricetag - I mean, other than availability, there doesn't really seem to be any other good reason to choose non-organic. You know - that"normal" food that cann often be mass-produced, sprayed with pesticides or fed hormones?

But in China, those that can afford it are willing to pay lots of cash for organic - as much as ten times the cost of the so-called "normal" food. That's because over there, there's not much regulation going on and even less capacity to monitor what's actually happening. For example, there are 200 million farms of 1-2 acres each. That's a lot of farms to visit.

The lack of oversight is probably how lard made from sewage and recycled industrial oil was being sold there.

Ew.

The guy who was doing that has been arrested - and other crackdowns have happened after meat from sick and dead animals was sold to consumers and duck eggs were found to contain a cancer-causing dye. These are examples of people who are delibeerately trying to sneak some terrible stuff past the system. But if they can swing it - who knows what stuff is getting into the food supply unintentionally?

Pesticide soup, anyone?

A grand day!

2007-02-14T18:11:00.000-05:00

Things that make me happy:

#1 You can call me doctor! Well.. almost. I defended my PhD thesis last week and somehow managed to get out of the whole deal with only minor revisions to do. Once those are complete and my advisor signs off on the whole deal, I'll be Dr. Happy Owl to you. Heh.

#2 My sweetie got me the best Valentine's Gift Evah! That's right folks, he got us a clean air pass: he offest a year's worth of CO2 emissions from our car. AND got me some fair-trade, organic chocolate. I don't think it gets better than that, ladies!

#3 Inkling Magazine. I love them. They seem to like me.

#3 Snow, so much snow... Combined with the tooth-cracking cold we've been having here, it's really winter. Gives me hope that there will still be snow around if I ever have kids and want to take them tobogganing. PLUS we went x-country skiing last weekend, ya'll. Now THAT was fun.

#4 And, well - hey, look, I'm back on blogger. It's been a while. But life got wayyy less stressful after that pesky defence thingy, so hopefully I'll be able to get back to regular posting.

..now ON with my Sorels and OFF I shall toddle to the LCBO - 'cuz someone around here deserves some nice wine with dinner tonight.

Only skin deep?

2007-01-28T16:11:00.000-05:00

Nobody would ever call me a slave to the cosmetics industry. I just can't be bothered to spend the time doing my makeup and putting goo in my hair - especially since I work mostly from home.

Also I often have only the vaguest notion of what the various lotions and potions are actually supposed to do (Uh, "antioxidant rescue serum"? "Skin Polishing Enzyme Treatment"? I recognize all the words in these names but still have no idea of the specific purpose of these things).

Maybe it's a good thing I'm not too fussed about them. It turns out that lots of cosmetics contain pthalates - chemicals that have been shown to mess with animals' hormone systems. Scientists aren't sure whether they could affect humans or not - but in rodents they cause reduced fertility, increased risk of breast cancer, cause premature puberty, and have even been related to bahavioural changes.

So wait - the stuff that we wear to make ourselves appear more sexy might interefere with the natural processes that regulate our reproductive system and sexual function?

That's messed up.

A lot of hot air

2007-01-26T15:26:00.000-05:00

Apparently the "origin of man" isn't the only "controversial" topic that must not be taught to impressionable young minds these days . A father in Washington managed to prevent his daughter's science class from watching Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Apparently Frosty Hardiman thinks that it's Anti-American because it "blam[es] our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming". Well, uh, it doesn't say that the US are the only ones on this planet who are emitting CO2, but it does paint a pretty grim picture of the American approach to the problem so far.

Hardiman managed to get it stopped because teachers have to obtain permission from the school board before they present "controversial" materials in their classes. I can't really imagine denying a teacher permission to show this particular (Oscar-Nominated) documentary.

Perhaps the issue of climate change is still under debate. I don't buy that, but even if I did, there would still be a benefit to showing the video - and discussing it. No kid is going to learn much if they're never allowed to question the status quo. Nevermind that the documentary is full of geography and showcases the beauty of our planet. And it introduces an important political figure in an accessible way.

Could he really, possibly, believe that his kids are probably better off watching stuff like American Idol?!

Meno Mosso

2007-01-19T11:25:00.000-05:00

Just want to point y'all in the direction of a new blog that promises to be loadsa fun for anyone with an interest in classical music and/or jazz... and downright educational for those of us who wish we knew more.

Meno Mosso

Gettin' my Religion...

2007-01-19T10:56:00.000-05:00

Clipart from Clipartheaven.com

Stereotyping is a bad idea. Folks, this is not news, but we all do it sometimes.

For example, I've been equating Evangelism with right-wing politics. Let's face it, I've been equating evangelists with right-wing Christian nutbars.

But it turns out that a bunch of evangelists in the U.S. are on the climate change bandwagon. The National Association of Evangelicals is collaborating with the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Together, they are trying to convince the U.S. administration that they really need to do something about global warming.

It sounds like such a strange combination - and yet Harvard is potentially bringing a powerful segment of US social culture - one which was probably instrumental in Bush's election wins - into the climate change game.

And maybe what we need here is for politicians to get some climate change religion. If we could all just believe that climate change is really happening, that Manhattan could end up under water, and that 50% of species worldwide might die, wouldn't it be obvious that something should be done?

It's time to take global warming to heart, Bush. Don't worry, I know you've already taken Jesus into your heart - but I suspect He'll make room.

Moving Mountains

2007-01-17T18:28:00.000-05:00

Apparently it is actually possible to move mountains - or, well, enough of them to have a noticeable effect, anyway.

The Swedish town of Kiruna is located on Kiirunavaara mountain. More to the point, it's above an iron ore min that is the economic driver of the town, supplying most of the local jobs. You might expect a sad story about how the mine will soon clase and the little Arctic town will die, precipiotating the demise of a way of life...

But no! Fear not. There are still 800 million tonnes of crude ore in the ground. While there's no danger of running out of ore to mine just yet, it seems that enough has been taken away that the foundations of the town above it are becoming unstable.

So they've decided to move a big chunk of the town away from the mining area. They picked the new site just this month.

Sounds like a costly endeavour - and it is - on the order of ~4.3 billion US dollars, not including rerouting the railway and roads. To move about half the building in the town by about 4 km. But I guess the income from the mine must be worth it, since it sounds like there aren't too many Kirunians making much of a fuss... or should I say, undermining the mayor's plans...

I spy, with my little dime...

2007-01-16T15:45:00.000-05:00

Last week the US issued a warning to US defense contractors about Canadian coins that might contain radio frequency transmitters inside them. The transmitters could presumably be used to track the movements of the people carrying them (no hints about which coins had the transmitters).

It all sounded very odd to me. After all, if the person being spied on was staying in Canada, you'd think they might spend the coin without knowing it - which makes it, er, a little tricky to follow the person who doesn't have it anymore. And if they ended up back to the US - or in any other country, you'd think they would empty their pockets to avoid carrying around the useless coin. So you'd probably be tracking the location of the dresser in their bedroom.

I guess you might get an idea of where these defense contractors live - but that's about it. I don't think you'd be guaranteed to find out anything about where they go day-to-day over the long term.

Well - lately, the US has retracted their claim about the transmitters. There seems to be no statement affirming that the transmitters weren't there. It's all so bizarre. Perhaps the Americans were just mystified by our two-toned currency?

I would like to think someone was doing some nifty study in Canada about where our currency goes while it's in circulation: "The Wonderful Journeys of Fred the Quarter or Terry the Toonie" sort of thing.

Now that would be cool.

iCool

2007-01-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

...does anyone aside from me find it funny that the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section abbreviates to "ROB"?

But anyway, the ROB - and the front page of the main section actually, today is all about Apple's new "Phone". Computer. TV. Blackberry. Whatever it is, I have to say it looks pretty good. Despite trying very hard to resist the pull of "cool" that Apple's been exerting with all its nifty i-products, i-have to admit that this little gizmo is pretty smart.

There is no need for a number pad, since everything is done using a touch screen, so its entire face can be used to display video. It can tell whether you're holding it in "portrait" or "landscape" orientation and adjust the picture automatically. If you're listening to music and someone calls, it tuns down the volume automatically. It comes with either a 4 G or 8 G hard drive, and is equipped with a web browser, and built-in wireless.

And it even knows when you're bringing it close to your head so that you don't accidentally use the touch-screen with your earlobe.

'Course, at the moment it's still $500 USD which is way too much for me to spend on something that basically gathers a bunch of servicesI already have into one place. And seriously, the last thing I need is to be able to check my email more often.

With this dress...

2007-01-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

This weekend I've been sorting photos from our wedding. And I have to say, damn, we all looked fine! I sort of laugh when I think back to me choosing my wedding dress. I went to the bridal salons surrounded by a gaggle of girls - which was way too much fun. I stared at photo after photo of weddng dresses on the internet. I logged on to bridal message boards. In short, something quite odd happened to me - I became obsessed with "the dress".

But I also agonized over the whole concept - I was so conflicted about wanting a traditional white dress - and about spending so much money on something that I would only be wearing for a day. I was pretty happy when I found a floor sample that fit me, looked great - and was 70% off to boot. It assuaged my guilt about "buying in" to the whole fancy gown deal.

Yesterday I took it to The Bride's Project, whose tag line is "Finding a cost-conscious option for brides, while helping children with cancer". Basically, people (and some salons) donate their wedding dresses, which are then resold to brides who don't mind wearing something that's been used. Or not. Some of the dresses are new... All of the dresses are a steal of a deal.

And all the proceeds go to support Camp Quality, which helps kids affected by cancer go camping, or else to the Canadian Cancer Society or the Breast Cancer Foundation. So the whole thing is totally awesome.

My only regret... has nothing to do with giving away the dress. I loved it, but I do not feel sad that it's gone. Nope, my only regret is that I didn't know about the Bride's Project in time to go shopping there in the first place.

Canadians are HOT

2007-01-05T16:46:00.000-05:00

Apparently the environment has topped Canadians' list of things to be concerned about. They've decided that it's more important than health care or the war in Afghansitan.

I'm slightly flabbergasted. I always have the feeling that we sort of care... when we have a moment and only if it doesn't cost us anything. But whatever, I hope it lasts long enough that the government moves on it.

Yesterday's cabinet shuffle - putting John Baird in charge of the environment portfolio - appeared to send a message that Harper is listening. But I'm a little nervous that this Canadian concern is only going to last as long as the abnormal weather. If it actually snows next month, will we all forget how wierded out we are by the current warm temperatures?

Plus - there has been talk of an upcoming election - which could garner big promises from all the parties - or could just put everything on hold once again while all the politicians wander around their ridings trying to make nice. Maybe wI should give us more credit, but I worry that by the time an election is over, the collective Canadian consciousness will be focussed on something entirely different.

Could it be?!

2007-01-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

I finally have a defense date. For my doctoral dissertation. Yep, in five weeks minus a day I'll be sweating it out in front of my committee trying desperately to answer their questions. And be articulate at the same time.

I'm partly exhilarated and partly terrified

Paid announcement...

2007-01-02T15:32:00.000-05:00

We spent yesterday afternoon at the movies. It felt like celebrating the New Year by embracing advertising. Lovely.The theatre feels like an amusement part, with flashing lights, overpriced candy and popcorn, and even a bar (after all, who wouldn't want to relax after seeing a movie by having a drink in a loud, tacky, teenage-filled hallway, right by the lineup for the bathrooms).

Worse, the movie started a fulll 25 minutes after the advertized time. We were inundated with ads for cars, perfume, and video game consoles. Normally I don't mind the previews, but really, that's just another ad - and I was sick of waiting for the film I paid for to start.

Supid theatre - I paid $12 to see a movie. Not the commercials. It's completely scandalous that they can get away with showing them at all.

The Ride Program

2006-12-31T18:45:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!! It's a night when most of us might have a drink or so - but it's important to get home SAFE and sound. Whether that means taking transit, having a desginated driver, or waiting around for a cab - you gotta make sure your ride is taken care of.

One of Discovery's top 12 Biology stories of 2006 is about some wierd little worm that has evolved to have no mouth, no guts, and no excretory organs. Instead, it has a series of bacteria living beneath its skin which cooperate with each other and with the worm to somehow create energy for the worm and get rid of it's waste. What do the bacteria get out of the relationship?
Well, a place to hang out - and a free ride, obviously!

See y'all in 2007!

Full of beans

2006-12-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

Soy-based substitutes aren't just for meat anymore. Forget pretend salami, veggie hotdogs, and tofurki...

(I don't mind tofu... but Tofurki?? It sounds so wierd. I may just have to try that one day. )

Now you can have soybeans in your home. Literally - a new soy-based adhesive may soon be replacing formaldehyde-based ones in engineered wood like plywood and particleboard.

Formaldehyde isn't nice - it's been associated with irritation of the eyes, skin, nose, throat, and lower airways. Oh yeah, and some studies suggest it might case cancer - like nasopharyngeal, nasal, prostate, lung, and pancreatic cancers as well as leukemia. Even though there's still a bit of uncertainty about those results, it just sounds all-round bad. And people who work in construction often have much higher exposures than you and I, who simply live in our homes and sit on our decks sipping Margaritas...

Anyhoo, the idea of soy protein adhesives has been around for a while - but they weren't durable enough until someone figured out they could crosslink the protein with some kind of resin to make the adhesive look more like what a mussel uses to stick itself to the bottom of a boat.

And those little bu**ers do not like to let go.

A bean, informed by a mollusk, might improve your bedroom floor. Wierd. But true.

Sheer Lunacy?

2006-12-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

Is is possible to pander to materialists and simultaneously save the world?

Maybe - a company called Ecoist makes all its stuff - handbags, belts, placemats, and accessories - from recycled materials . If you buy a bag, they'll plant a tree. Not only is this a great idea, but the bags are actually pretty swish-looking.

If I wasn't still full from Christmas dinner my favorites would probably be the bags made from candy wrappers (I am an afficionado of treats of all kinds after all)... but I'm also partial to the ones made of Luna bar wrappers - since I associate those with hangin' out in the backcountry and plus their ingredients are 70% organic.

Too bad I rarely carry a hadbag (I'm more of a backpack girl, myself). Maybe I'll get me some placemats instead.

You know you want one...

2006-12-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

I just bought someone two chickens for Christmas. I was thinking about getting the goat - but I decided that it was probably more than I was willing to spend.

Quoi on earth is she talking about, you're asking yourself. Well, I went shopping at Oxfam Unwrapped... where the money I spend goes directly to fund projects in developing nations that involve the gifts I chose. So in Ethiopia, women are being trained in poultry production. It's part of a program that

"is aimed at increasing women’s economic wealth, their ownership and responsibility in managing household assets and their involvement in decision-making that affects their lives and their community"

Sounds good to me. Basically, the women who sign up get to start out with twelve chicks and enough grain to feed them for a year.

Apparently the local market for both chickens and eggs has improved over the past few years...

...although it's not clear which improved first.

Mon(k)ey Business

2006-12-20T12:34:00.000-05:00

I was walking down Queen St. the other day when I was offered a free reusable shopping bag by a rep from Telus. I confess to taking it - and I also confess that it was mostly because he said there would be a chocolate bar inside.

Since then, I have seen people carrying these Telus bags all over the place. Are they just handing out zillions of the bags over the course of several days, or are people really going to use this feebie? If so, it's magnificent marketing on the part of Telus. As Pat put it: you wouldn't really want to carry around a bag with the Rogers Telecommunications logo... but that Telus monkey is pretty cute!

Inside my bag I found (yes, my chocolate bar - which by the way tasted a lot like wax), plus some lime green wrapping paper and little gift tags featuring the abovementioned cute monkeys. Telus colour scheme: yep, Telus logo: nowhere to be found.

My first thought: I could actually use this, which might assuage my guilt about accepting a bag of stuff I don't need that required energy to produce and will otherwise end up as landfill.

My second thought: Telus is infiltrating my Christmas and I will be facilitating subconscious advertising to anyone who sees a gift I wrapped in green or tagged with a monkey.

So now I'll face the conundrum: do I use my shopping bag and thereby save plastic bags but advertise for Telus? Do I use other reusable shopping bags and chuck this one, thereby refusing to advertise for Telus but contributing to Toronto's already ridiculous waste management problem?

Honestly - I could have avoided this with just a tiny bit of willpower... and as if I don't already have enough chocolate around at this time of year.

World's Coolest Online Magazine

2006-12-19T15:11:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned Inkycircus before - the bestest girl-nerd blog ever. I mean, where else will you find posts about people who acted out mitosis in a swimming people (and videotaped themselves!), or how insecticide might be the secret ingredient in Stradivarius violins. I mean, neato.

Well now there's a MAGAZINE!! Hurrah. It's called Inkling Magazine. Click on over, people, it's way cool.

And watch the upcoming articles carefully ;) You never know who might be contributing...

I've got worms

2006-12-14T21:13:00.000-05:00

I love Christmas carols and hymn - I really do. They remind me of how excited I used to feel around this time of year when I was a kid: just about bursting with anticipation. There's something really nice about just knowing all the words and being able to sing them with alomst anyone - a very "community" kind of experience.

But. For almost a week now I have had a fragment of some Christmas tune I don't really know stuck in my head:

..Willie, play your fife and drum, Robin [something, something hum a bit here];Tu-ra-lu-ra-lu, Pat-a-pat-a-pan...

And that's all I know. And it's not even a great song. Heck, it's not even a traditional carol. And it's driving me crazy!

This type of thing is called an earworm. It's a great name for a REALLY IRRITATING THING.

A thing as lovely as a tree?

2006-12-13T19:54:00.000-05:00

*sounds of Christmas carols playing softly in the background...*

Ahh, Christmastime. I'm thinking of smells of gingerbread and nutmeg, mulled wine, pine needles, and PVC fixed with lead.

*sounds of needle being scraped off record* ... What?!

Ah yes. I read an article today saying that most artificial Christmas trees are made of PVC - polyvinyl chloride, which is a known carcinogen at the very least. And lead, which is a developmental and reproductive health hazard, is apparently used to stabilize PVC compounds, so it might be in your fake tree as well.

So if you have an artificial tree, don't chew on it.

And real trees? Well, nice to think that they're out there sucking in some of that excess carbon dioxide while they're growing to be nice and perfectly conical for us - but sadly, they will just release it back into the atmosphere as they decay after you throw it out. Not only that, but depending on where you buy your tree, it might have been treated with insecticides or pesticides.

So if you have a real tree, don't chew on it.

And if you aren't Christian, thank goodness. You get out of all of this bringing-a-tree-inside stuff which is a really weird tradition when you really think about it.

Cereal Cars?

2006-12-12T15:50:00.001-05:00

Got any flax in your car? How about soy? Sugar cane? Corn? Nope, I'm not asking if you've been to you nearest organic-foods store. Actually, some major vehicle manufacturers are substituting bio-based products like flax, abaca fibers, and soy-based foams to make the fabric and seat cushions in cars - reducing dependence on petroleum-based products and (hopefully) lowering the carbon emissions required to make the bits and pieces that go into your vehicle.

Toyota, Honda, and (I'm a little weirded out by this, but hey, willing to applaud) Ford are the leaders in making sustainable and healthy changes to some of their cars. In addition to adding stuff that sounds like it belongs in a health nut's cereal to their seat cushions, they are also trying to reduce the amount of plastic and PVC (polyvinyl chloride, a nasty chemical that's notoriously difficult to recycle) they use. This should also reduce the off-gassing of unhealthy chemicals into cars. Chemicals that trigger allergies or cause ong-term health effects. (Uh, yeah. So. That new-car smell? Not exactly good for you.)

Despite these moves, an Ecology Centre Report still only gives out a top grade of C+ (to Toyota). Clearly, there's lots more to be done.

Bring on the granola!

Fun with words, meet climate change

2006-12-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I heard a radio announcer attribute a quote to "Don Quixoto". I'm not sure if it was him or my ears, since I'm pretty sure the dude in question is actually called Don Quixote. Whose "real name in the book" (if that makes sense) was Alonso Quixano. And really, the author is Cervantes. I mean, who do you actually cite when the words were spoken by a fictional character who adopts a new name?

Anyway, so I'm listening to the radio and thinking, ...huh? ... "Don Kyoto" ????

I'm thinking this might be a character who does not see wind power as the solution to our greenhouse gas emissions woes.

Or, a guy who thinks it's possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but he doesn't really have the right tools for the job and most people think he's completely mad.

Either way, here in Canada, Don Kyoto is definitely a fictional character.

Know Your Audience

2006-12-06T17:29:00.000-05:00

There was a time when I was doing a lot of procrastinating (I was supposed to be preparing for my comprehensive exams) that I got a little addicted to the Oprah Winfrey show.

I like that she takes up important "causes" - because millions of people listen to her and follow her and believe every word that comes out of her mouth. I couldn't stand the giveaway shows and the celebrity-who-is-shilling-his/her-latest-offering shows. In the end, I just got a bit tired of Oprah. Besides, I finally got back to work - so I haven't tuned in in ages.

But when I heard that Al Gore was going to be on Oprah yesterday to talk about his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I had to turn on my TV.

Possibly Al Gore has never watched Oprah (gasp!) , but I'm not sure that he had a great read on his audience. Oprah's audiences relate best to the human condition: tragedy, heroes, struggles, victories.

And Al Gore was talking about infrared radiation. And going through his slides at warp speed.

When I turned it off they were starting to get into "how this affects YOU" a bit more, but overall I felt pretty disappointed. I think a major opportunity to communicate to the driving-everywhere, disposable-item-loving, well-meaning-but-oblivious crowd was missed.

Image from NASA via the National Space Science Data Centre.
(This site is not endorsed by NASA)

Erm, if Big Tobacco could just butt out?!

2006-12-05T14:55:00.000-05:00

AUGH! Those slimy Tobacco industry types have generated horrible, deceptive communications tactics that have inflitrated the consciousness of a bunch of other industries.

First, it was global warming. Now, Gooderich Corporation and other polluting companies in California have adopted those same approaches in an effort to avoid dealing with perchlorate in drinking water. They have even hired a public relations firm that was used by Philip Morris - to develop an anit-regulation campaign. And they're churning out stuff that looks like scientific evidence of the safety of California's drinking water supply - but is actually poorly constructed science intended to implant doubt in the public mind.

Apparently Gooderich, which had a factory in Rialto, about an hour ouside of LA, decided to dispose of tonnes of rocket fuel in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And so they put in in a giant, unlined pit behind the factory. Natch, the stuff seeped into the water supply. Which is a huge drag, considering how precious water is in California.

In Rialto, they figured out that the water was contaminated over ten years ago. And Gooderich is still tryng to weasel out of the cleanup.

The company may be rich, but "good" doesn't even come into it.

Texas toast?

2006-11-30T22:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently Texas has plans to open 19 new coal-fired electrical facilities over the next few years.

Just learning that was enough to surprise me.

Ontario is at least trying to phase out coal. The government is having trouble staying on target with the timing they originally (and somewhat uninformedly, according to lots of air quality management people I've spoken to) promised - but they have at least recognized that the health impacts of the pollutants that spew out of the stacks are significant. One plant has been closed already (the Lakeview plant). Five to go.

So I couldn't quite believe that there are still jurisdictions in North America that want to build new coal-fired facilities. The most I can hope for out of this is that this means they're closing some older plants, since the new ones are likely required to meet higher emissions and technology standards than any existing ones.

It might not matter though. A report from last week says that the new plants could cause as many as 240 additional deaths each year and as many as 12,000 over the plants' expected 50-year lifespan.

C'mon Texas. Are you gonna take that?

Just give me a buzz...

2006-11-24T18:06:00.000-05:00

I'm one of those annoying people who only has a cellphone. Annoying, because when you try to phone me, it's invariable off, or it's on and I can hear it ringing, but I can't find it.

So I miss a lot of calls. I figure that's OK - I don't want to use my cellphone too much. Aside from the crazy phone bills I get if I'm not careful, there's been some debate about whether having that thing so close to your head for so long could cause brain tumours.

Well, apparently, it's not only my brain I might have to worry about. Cellphone radiation has just been shown to cause major reproductive damage to female fruit flies. Some scientists in Greece exposed fruit flies to radiation from two common types of cellphones for six days ... and thereby induced death of all sorts of cells associated with developing eggs. They figure the radiation caused the DNA in the cells to fragment.

Well, I'm no fruit fly. Aside from assuming that the reproductive system of a fruit fly is probably not like that of a human, I'm guessing the flies reveived full-body exposure to the radiation. And that the radiation wasn't "downsized" to match the size of the bugs.

Overall I can't say that I'm convinced that this is what would happen to me ... even if I placed my cellphone over my ovaries instead of my ear. And plus I wouldn't be able to hear anything that way.

But it's still kind of creepy. Maybe I should get a land line someday...

We'll be swimming in Estrogen

2006-11-23T20:52:00.000-05:00

So hi, I'm back for the second day in a row; downright amazing when you consider my posting track record of late. Part of the reason I've been absent from sushinight (so sad) is that I've been busy teaching a course on the health effects of chemical exposures in the workplace. And some of the material was not, shall we say, intimately known to me before I lectured about it.

One of the main topics I've been talking about in class lately is how some chemicals can mimic the hormones in the human body. And the hormonal system is complicated, let me tell you (and not just during puberty, which we all know is a complicated time directly related to wierd things happening with hormones).

But I digress.

Pesticides are one of the biggest baddest classes of compounds when it comes to disrupting hormonal systems. Lots of them are capable of mimicing estrogen. Now, estrogen regulates all sorts of things but I would be most worried about its effect on the reproductive system. Like, say upsetting the female cycle... or affecting fetuses - causing perhaps feminization of baby boys, or weird reproductive deficits when those babies reach adulthood.

Of course, it's hard to say what the effect of very low-dose exposure to environmental contaminants is. But I was still surprised to hear that the EPA has decided to allow pesticide application over and near bodies of water. Apparently, as long as it's needed to control aquatic weeds, mosquitoes or other pests, it can be applied straight into the water or onto overhanging foliage.

Eurgh....

In the bag

2006-11-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

Plastic bags are the scourge of humanity. IMO, anyways. They last forever, they're cheap and globally available, and they are completely disposable. During my travels in developing countries, I see them piled in garbage dumps and and twisted around vegetation at the side of the road. They blow around the streets of even the most advanced cities in the world, and around even the prettiest countrysides. And man are they ugly.

But Ireland has sorted out a solution: they charge the equivalent of about 20-22 cents per plastic bag as a "bag tax". All fund raised go back to the Environment Ministry to be redistributed for funding environmental projects.

And voila! The government managed to cut plastic bag use by over 90% and raise 3.5 million Euros in the first five months. Shoppers use their own reusable bags, and less plastic, and fewer emissions enter the world.

Smart. Easy. Ireland's been doing it since 2002.

Soooooooo.... Apparently Canadians use 10-15 billion plastic bags per year.

Just sayin'.

Canada Plays at Climate Change

2006-11-11T16:21:00.000-05:00

You know, I really don't think that Canada will meet its Kyoto targets.

See, to meet its targets, Canada was supposed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below what they were in 1990 by 2010. Too bad our emissions have gone up by 24% since we ratified the protocol.

Oops.

Besides, the Conservatives keep on saying we won't. And since, uh, they're kind of in charge of deeloping environmental policy right now, that means there's a pretty good chance they're right.

Apparently though, we still haven't told the Kyoto people that we're not going to make it. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, says that Canada has not formally withdrawn from the protocol.

So maybe I'm being a pessimistic. Yeah that's it, the conservatives DO have a hidden agenda. Secretly they have this amazing plan that will signify dramatic alteration in political attitudes toward the environment and initiate a remarkable change in public behaviour...

Uh, or maybe we're just being kind of lame. I love how one of the quotes in this article is, "Canada has the tradition of being an international player," said Greenpeace Canada's Steven Guilbeault.

I'm thinking, yeah, ... player

Lest We Forget

2006-11-11T16:13:00.000-05:00

Civic Duty

2006-11-09T21:34:00.000-05:00

Municipal elections are coming up on Monday and I haven't got a clue. The only thing I know about the candidates in my area is the names of three who have signs sprinkled around the neighborhood. I know nothing about their platforms, ideas, or plans.

So Helen Kennedy, Joseph Tuan, and Adam Vaughn: who are you?!

In a lot of ways it's my fault that I'm not engaged with what's going on here - I haven't picked up eye or NOW in ages, and I don't get the Toronto Star. Those are probably the only papers likely to profile my ward. The only thing I did read about my ward in the Globe was that it's "hotly contested".

Which makes it even wierder that nothing has come through the mail slot: no flyers. No notifications of candidate debates. Nada. Nobody has done anything to try and sway me.

Worse, I haven't got any infromation about where or when I'm supposed to vote, despite the fact that I'm living exactly where I did for the last elections. I'll be able to figure that one out, but what if I was new to the neighborhood? Or didn't get out much?

Geez, as if voter turnout isn't dismal enough.

Peanut allergies?

2006-11-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

On the weekend, P and I were unpacking some wedding gifts that friends had very generously bought for us. I felt uneasy about the sheer amount of paper, cardboard, and styrofoam packing that seemed to be involved. I was beginning to feel that all the trees I planted with my years at Wilderness Reforestation could not account for the carbon that was associated with the life cycle of our wedding-gift-related packing materials.

Then Pat said, "these aren't so bad - they're biodegradable, see?!" - and stuck his tongue against one of the squishy white peanut-thingies. And it dissolved. Sort of.

I have to admit that I did a taste-test too. The taste is nothing to write home about. Actually, it's nothing at all. They do kind of 'melt'. I characterize the texture as vaguely distasteful. Especially after it's wet.

Well, then I was sort of wondering what I might have ingested.

Turns out I probably don't have to worry too much - these things are made mostly of starch. Yup, 95% cornstarch and 5% polyacrylonitrile, a synthetic polymer.

No news yet on the side effects of trace exposures to polyacrylonitrile.

Swirling vortex of marine hell

2006-11-06T15:55:00.000-05:00

So apparently there's a swirling vortex threatening life as we know it. Marine life, that is.

The swirling mass of plastic toothbrushes, toys, condoms and God-known-what-else-and-just-maybe-I-don't want-to-think-about-it-too-much is located in the Pacific ocean, close to the Northwestern Haawaiian islands. Marine animals are getting tangled in it (not good for obvious reasons of being unable to complete basic physiological functions), eating it (not good since its nutritional value is exactly zero and it's often jammed with toxic chemicals), and riding it around the ocean currents (sounds like fun; however not good since this is how invasive species problems get started).

The swirling vortex is apparently rather dynamic but sometime it gets to be as big as Texas.

I've taken a bus across part of texas. It's a d**n big state.

And this plastic stuff - it should be classified as a state too. A environmental state of emergency.

garbage bag picture by material boy copied under the Share Alike lisence

Aw, Roomba!

2006-11-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

I have a robot.

A friend gave us a Roomba for a wedding gift. It's this disc-shaped contraption that travels around your floors, sucking up dirt and cleaning them for you.

I set it going for the first time yesterday. And so, instead of spending my time pushing around a vacuum cleaner, I spent my time sitting in front of the computer... being distracted by Roomba.

It's neat. It seems like the pattern it follows is random, but it eventually covers the whole floor. It disappears under the couch and dresser, but eventually finds its way back out. It explores its way around corners. I think it's more sophisticated than it lets on.

It's like having a little critter around - doing jobs for you. I rescued it when it got caught on the carpet tassel, but it was otherwise totally capable without me. When it was done I looked after its care and grooming needs carefully. I felt sorry for it when I found hairs wound around its brushes (yuck).

I actually sort of ... feel kind of affectionate towards it.

I hope robots never come and take over the world. Apparently all they'll have to do to win me over is a bit of housekeeping.

Days of the dead

2006-11-02T15:53:00.000-05:00

Tuesday was Hallowe'en - which was always my favorite holiday of the year.

Technically, Hallowe'en is based on pagan festivals celebrating the one time of the year that the spirits might be able to make contact with the physical the rest of us live in. I guess that's where the emphasis on ghosts, witches, and goblis comes from.

I didn't really get that as a kid - I wasn't scared; I just wanted to have the most original costume of anyone in my school. So, one year I was a toaster. Once I was a turtle. Another year I was a grandfather clock. Bar of Ivory soap. Cupboard.

The common element to my costumes was the cardboard box. Which was dumb, since climbing stairs to front doors around the neighborhood is almost impossible when your knees have a range of about 15 degrees from vertical.

I heard a reference to the "day of the dead" on the radio this morning: it's a very different perspective on the same idea.

Mexicans celebrate the day(s) of the dead between October 31- November 2 as a time to welcome dead relatives back into their homes and remember them.

I kind of like the visual of sitting in my living room with semitransparent versions of the people I miss, all of us drinking cups of tea...

So - while I've given up on wearing cardboard boxes, I guess I'm still not spooked out by this time of year.

The key to a good blizzard

2006-10-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

I was in the grocery store last week, trundling my cart past the vast middle bit of the store containing inedibles. I can't understand how it's profitable for stores to be purveyors of everything from bean sprouts to deck chairs; to me it's analagous to that old saying "jack of all trades, master of none". How can they be any good at selling groceries when they're trying to sell all this other stuff as well?!

Anyay - I spotted a product that gave me the heebi-jeebies. Actually, a family of products. They were keychains, shaped like (i) a Dairy Queen ice cream cone (ii) a Dairy Queen ice cream sandwich, and (iii) some brand name mint-chocolate candy whose name presently escapes me. Probably because when I was a kid, I wasn't the focus of marketing efforts the way children are today. Each item had the appropriate logo prominently displayed.

I'm not a parent. But. I can't imagine buying my kid a toy with a food logo on it. To me, it's a gift that celebrates our unsustainable, consumerist lifestyle (useless plastic toy with no educational value, likely to be quickly discarded) and our unhealthy habits (message to child: candies and desserts are highly desirable). Not only that, but the product is straight up advertising - which I might alternately describe as cunning psychological manipulation.

Then again, lots of parents get their kids brand-name clothing. I suppose that's not so different.

Twisted

2006-10-25T15:17:00.000-05:00

Smoking rates have been going down across Canada for at least a couple of decades now. That's great news for Canadians - smoking is related to a whole host of horrible diseases including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, heart disease, and cancer of the mouth; ugh.

Teenaged girls are usually really prone to following trends, so here's hoping they'll pick up on this. Right now smoking rates among girls aged 15-17 are higher than among boys of the same age.

Apparently they think it will help them stay thin.

I think that most models and celebrities that are role models for teenaged girls these days are at an unhealthy weight. We also know that childhood obesity is on the rise in Canada - partly because our kids aren't getting enough exercise - and partly because of bad food choices.

This is so twisted. I mean, exposing yourself to a well-known toxin - probably in an effort to attain an unhealthy weight, instead of getting regular exercise and eating right.

Not only that - apparently it doesn't work anyway.

Ode to my newspaper

2006-10-23T21:26:00.000-05:00

O where hast thou gone, newspaper mine?

Normally I love snuggling down with my paper and a cup of coffee. I read it in a very specific order (back page of the front section, letters to the editor, editorials/commentary, health and science pages, news, entertainment. Unless it's the Saturday paper. I read that one in a whole different order.)

Lately I haven't had time to read the paper at all. And I'm feeling a bit lost without my daily dose of print media: I haven't even read all the commentary about Canada's proposed Clean Air Act yet!

It's not just that I might be turning myself into an uninformed bozo (hopefully not); I also miss the ritual.

And I seem to have replaced it with a singularly unclean activity as far as air goes: commuting.

*sigh*

The Harper Index

2006-10-22T12:19:00.000-05:00

Today I discovered Green Living Magazine's humour page.

They've created the "Harper Index", by assigning numbers to some of the more, uh, interesting environmental approaches the Conservatives are taking.

For example, Green Living counts 11 emissions-reduction programs that have been reclassified as "work completed". Apparently this basically means that their funding was taken away. Brilliant. They also note that neither the Canadian Foundation for Atmospheric Science nor the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Network has had their funding renewed.

They also note that the Tories cancelled the Energuide program, which they say cost -$100 per tonne of CO2 saved, and at the same time, brought on board the new transit-pass program, which apparently costs $2000 per tonne of CO2 saved.

According to the PM's website, one of the ways we're supposed to be getting out of this air pollution and greenhouse gas miasma is to "Harness new technologies".

So, wait. We stop funding research and innovation into these new technologies, and, what... wait until there's enough chemistry in the air that these solutions are going to coalesce, like magic, from the pollutants around us?

Science Sentence Structure

2006-10-21T13:39:00.000-05:00

Scientists have discovered a way to synthesize a bunch of new antibacterial agents by treating the compounds as if they were sentences and rearranging the components according to basic rules of grammar.

When researchers look at these kinds of molecules - which are basically strings of amino acids - they write them down on paper (or, OK, probably on a computer screen) using a letter to represent each individual amino acid.

When they started looking at compounds that were naturally antibacterial they realized that there were patterns in the order of the letters - just like there are with words and sentence structures in spoken or written language.

So THEN, they used a bunch of real grammar rules to reorder the letters - thereby designing new compounds, which they then synthesized in the lab. And they found that lots of those compounds had antibacterial activity too.

Oh, I think I've died and gone to heaven. The disciplines of Science and Language have merged.

Your dinner might be a terrorist target

2006-10-19T15:09:00.000-05:00

According to a recent New York Times article, 80% of beef consumed in the US is slaughtered by four companies, 75% of the precut salads are processed by two companies, and 30% of the milk is processed by one company.

The article points out that because the food processing and livestock industries in America are so centralized, it would be super-easy to attack (and completely disrupt) the food distribution chain.

What would happen if it actually was targeted? Increased imports of chilean oranges and costa rican bananas does not sound as if it would fill the holes in the food chain or in our stomachs. Foreign fruit does not a sustainable food supply make.

Sadly, neither do locally produced foods - for the moment, anyway.

Imagine if we all suddenly had to live according to the rules of J.B. Mackinnon and Alisa Smith (they of the 100 mile diet that was so ably pointed out to me by both Jordan and Simone). This is the couple who decided to eat only foods from within 100 miles of their home in BC for a whole year. They discovered that they couldn't use sugar or most grains in their cooking. They also had trouble buying meat from locally-raised livestock, since the feed was usually brought in from miles away.

Now imagine that it's not our deliberate choice choice to do this kind of thing and we're all forced to try and figure it out all at once because we actually can't truck in most of the foods we usually do as the result of a massive disruption in the food supply chain.

We'd be completely screwed.

...add one more point to the "eating locally" scoreboard, if you please...

Thanks Simone, for the link!

Bikes and buttons

2006-10-15T20:10:00.000-05:00

This weekend I'm in Vancouver, learning all about the city thanks to friends of our who live here and have done a fabulous job of showing us the sights.

Yesterday we went biking around the city and I discovered that Vancouver has a simple solution to one of the simplest and most annoying problems that can face a cyclist. That is: when cycling along a minor road which intersects with a busy street and being faced with a red light that won't change on its own. Anyone who wants to cross the street needs to push a button to activate a light change. In Toronto, that button is invariably located on a pole on the inside of the sidewalk. Cyclists have to either work their bikes up over the curb to get to it or dismount the bike over to the button before returning to the road and reorienting the bike to the original direction of travel.

It' s a pain in the a@@.

Here, the pole with the button is on the outside of the sidewalk, easily accessible to both pedestrians and bicycles.

Such a simple solution.. and just one of ways that Vancouver makes cyclists feel welcome.

The gloves are OFF!!

2006-10-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

What you might think this post is about:

Yep, that's it, I've had it with the Harper government and their so-called environmental plan. We don't even really need to go into why intensity-based emissions standards don't really float my boat... seeing Harper fly across the country from Ottawa to Vancouver to announce that there will be a clean air announcement next week in Ottawa just proves to me that he's full of hot air (see my post of two days ago about airplanes and greenhouse gases...).

What it's actually about:

Oh, man, it snowed today in Toronto. And I was outside when it happened and my fingers were cold.

Manufactured Landscapes

2006-10-11T15:35:00.000-05:00

I recently saw Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary that follows photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels around China (and a little bit in Bangladesh), taking pictures of large-scale human-made landscapes like factories, quarries, the Three Gorges dam, and recycling yards.

The images are captivating - I was absolutely not expecting to be so drawn to images of workers, scrap plastic, mine tailings, and huge piles of coal.

One bit of footage showed a woman's hands assembling an electrical switch box. She manages to put in all sorts of bits of plastic and wire and slot or twist each one into place within seconds. There must have been at least ten different bits to put together but she says she can do four hundred units a day without overtime.

I could have watched that over and over; it was fascinating.

I feel quite odd about the pictures: I found the images disturbing because of what they imply to me about the massive impact that society has on the land and the global ecosystem - and yet... there were a bunch of pictures that I wouldn't mind having on my wall. Burtynsky is able to find amazing beauty where I would have found only destruction and despair.

apes he sees - he just takes fascinating pictures and makes everyone who sees them think.

I'm wondering...

2006-10-10T14:43:00.000-05:00

...how David Suzuki feels about the zillions of hours he spends travelling around.

He's a passionate environmentalist, he hosts the Nature of Things, he was nominated as one of Canada's "Greatest Canadians", and he's published lots of great books about the environment, like the Sacred Balance. I've been lucky enough to hear him speak in person a couple of times. Each time I am struck by his passion, his conviction.. and a sense that he feels complete frustration with his audience. He just doesn't understand why the rest of the world doesn't see the problems we're creating for ourselves as a result of all our unsustainable activities.

He jets all over the place to try and get his message across... and air travel is apparently a big problem for greenhouse gas emissions. He is a great speaker, and an accessible speaker. Everyone who hears him understands what he's talking about - and feels motivated to do something. I think we need people like him to educate and motivate the rest of us.

But I still wonder... how does he feel every time he steps on a plane?

Plain English

2006-10-10T10:43:00.000-05:00

I've been reading journal articles again. Still. Whatever. And sometimes, the language is so obscure. It's as if the authors think they'll look smarter by using long words and the most convoluted phrasing possible.

But: it seems that someone has heard my prayers to the Gods of Language: it's The Plain English Campaign !!

Ta daaaah! Based in the UK, they are at my rescue, with a mission to make sure that information is expressed is clearly as possible. They've helped all sorts of organizations, including UK government departments make sure that their public info can be understood by, uh, the public.

I think my favorite parts of the website are the gobbldygook generator, which lets you create "empty, meaningless phrases" with the click of a mouse, and the Golden Bull archive, which lists winners of an annual award presented for the worst examples of real gobbledygook.
An example to whet your appetite:

Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust for an Agenda for Change document

'Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.

Huh?!

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

2006-10-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

...and round, and round, and round...

Yesterday I decided to take the greyhound bus to Waterloo instead of the car. I thought it would be comfortable, stress-free for me, I might get a little work done, and it might assuage my guilt about all the driving I've been doing back and forth between Toronto and Waterloo. Maybe. A tiny bit.

The trip there was great. The bus left right on time and delivered me right to the door of my building on campus.

The ride home was ... on a school bus. Rumor had it that Greyhound ran out of normal busses. So they sent the school busses to the Waterloo crowd, no doubt figuring that the naive little students would be the least likely to complain.

And maybe they are. They all just seemed to get on without complaining. And then it was freezing on the bus so they all just put on their jackets. We all just sat there with our bags packed on the floor and in our lap and our knees digging into the seats in front of us. And nobody seemed too bothered when we got to Toronto and the bus driver started asking if anyone knew how to get to the bus station.

AND the bust trip took over three hours, although that seemed to be mostly a result of traffic; nothing that the driver or company could control.

Am I just getting old and cranky? I felt singularly unimpressed but couldn't decide whether I should just roll with it and assume that Greyhoud was doing the best they could given an unpredictable passenger load (they don't sell tickets for specific seats or even specific days; just specific journeys), or complain and try to get them to refund my ticket.

Protein Puzzle

2006-10-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

I recently participated in conversation about vegetarianism that left me with the impression that a lot of non-vegetarians believe that those who choose not to eat meat do so out of a general love for animals and belief in their rights.

I'm not so sure... I once met a vegetarian who just really didn't like the texture of meat - but I think that many people avoid meat today because of the impact raising animals for consumption has on the planet. It turns out that this has a name (and its own Wikipedia page!) - it's called "Environmental Vegetarianism". It basically says that the amount of land that is deforested to grow food for cattle and allow them to graze, the type of agriculture used to grow their food, the amount of water that is used to raise one animal, and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by vehicles used to feed and transport food, animals, and meat are unacceptable.

Seems straightforward enough...

But what about this: many soy-based products (like tofu!) are grown using monoculture, are causing extensive deforestation in places like Brazil, are subsuming small farms and local, more productive types of agriculture, and that many soy operations in places like South America are run by foreigners. And: a 2003 publication says that it's our whole food system that's unsustainable - in Western societies, anyway. We depend too heavily on fossil fules to package our food and move everything around.

So basically, we're screwed no matter what we choose to eat.

So what's a girl got to do to reduce her guilt around here?

Well, let's be honest. I have never been a vegetarian - but it's pretty clear that vegetarians do have less of an impact on the planet than us meat-eaters. Peer-reviewed research suggests that meaty meals have 1.5-2 times the impact as veggie meals over the whole life cycles of their porduction and disposal, and a bunch of scientists in Sweden are pretty sure that pork meals have less of an impact than vegetarian meals. There's more evidence than that out there - and I'm a little concerned that the life-cycle assessments used to get it aren't taking into account the social impacts of mega-agriculture by foreign corporations in developing nations... but I suppose that 's not something that would be different by protein type anyways.

Next project: I wonder if my tofu package will tell me where they soy was grown and is there Canadian tofu?

Next project after that: get a real job so that I can afford to put my money where my blog is.

Ah, allow me!

2006-10-03T15:42:00.000-05:00

hey, Jordan....! This is for you:

Since California is targeting GHG (greenhouse gas) emission, let's look at those! If you're curious about NOx, SOx, VOCs, or PM emissions, all of which are associated with mortality as well as cardiovascular and respiratory illness - you can find more pie charts here. This image is for Ontario, by the way; the divisions would be quite a bit different in other countries, especially developing nations.

The writing on this figure is very tiny, so let me enlighten us all. We have:

Total Industrial: 29%
Transportation: 27%
Residential and Agriculture: 13%
Power Generation: 11%
Agr0-ecosystems: 6%
Commercial/ Public Admin: 6%
Fossil Fuel Industries : 4%
Waste: 4%

The source for this by the way is 1999 data collected by Natural Resources Canada

I think that one of the reasons we focus on cars is that we as individuals can make an immediate decision to change the way we use them, whereas industrial and power generation emissions often seem a bit more distal. Also, because so many personal vehicles are big and shiny and use a lot of gas, cars are emblematic of our (and I mean mainly North Americans by "our", for the time being anyway) consumerist, materialist lifestyle. Cars are everywhere - so they are a very visible symbol of our societal willingness to place immediate convenience above the less obvious possibility of global warming.

It's also the easiest way of penetrating the community consiousness, I think. It's easier for people to associate emissions from the tailpipe - which they can feel, or see - with having an impact than it is for them to realize that running the air conditioner causes tons of emissions at some power generation facility several km away.

Even more distal: industrial emissions - which are a big source of GHG. Which products sitting on my desk are associated with emissions? Which industries do I benefit from on a regular basis? This takes some thought.

California and the Big Six

2006-09-29T15:07:00.000-05:00

California's going to court. The state is sueing what it calls the "big six" automakers (GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda), and is seeking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (the quote I found from the attorney general for the state wasn't too specific on exact amounts...) in damages.

These car manufacturers continue to churn out vehicles that emit CO2 - that so very famous greenhouse gas. In fact, the cars made by these companies emit 289 000 000 metric tonnes (or thereabouts) of the stuff into the American atmosphere every year. That really is a lot. And California is feeling the effects of global warming, it says: reduced snow pack (which will lead to water shortages in an area that is already home of some of the worst water supply problems on the continent), increased ozone pollution and concomitant health effects, beach erosion, wildlife impacts...

So California s trying to do something. They legislated tougher emissions from tailpipes - the strictest such regulations ever as part of their plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% (hurrah!!). And the car companies are holding them up by making legal claims that federal law overrules the new state law on tailpipe emissions (Boo).

And so California appears to be retaliating. And I have to say it's kind of fun, and I love that the whole thing has generated a ton of publicity.

The problem is: why doesn't the state sue the people who drive the cars? Or the municipalities for not providing alternate public transit alternatives?

Who, ultimately is responsible for these emissions? Is is the car companies, with their alluring and coersive advertising? They do prefer that we spend more dollars, which means buying bigger, less fuel-efficient cars, after all. Is it the governement, which often builds roads instead of funding transit? Perhaps it's the scientific community for failing to adequately convey conviction about whether global warming is happening at all - or the oil industry for injecting doubt into the debate.

Or... is it us, who appear to place convenience above the short and long-term health of our communities (and put pressure on our political leaders to build more roads)?

P.S. Thanks Simone for the tipoff!

Fun with words VII

2006-09-27T16:36:00.000-05:00

So according to some random website I came across today (OK, actually, it's a column from the Hindustan Times), there's a new "longest word in the English language". It's

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

It’s 45 letters long. It’s a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, mostly found in volcanoes. I'm wondering if this is common among volcanologists - mostly because if it qualifies as an occupational disease then I might be able to included it in one of the lectures I have to give next week.

The author listed a bunch of really long words - some that don't really count as words in the English language because they aren't really used, like

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk,

(representing the thunderclap when Adam and Eve were thrown out off Eden. Honestly now. Who could ever be tenacious enough to figure out how to say that without looking at it?)

Then we have:

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (fear of long words... Ihehe)

floccinaucinihilipilification (the art of estimating something to be worthless)

Oh, and antidisestablishmentarianism - the long word we usually think of first? Apparently, since the church was not disestablished (i.e, the disestablishmentarians weren't too fond of the church of England in the mid-1800s.. but clearly, the church is still, uh established), the word is no longer in use.

Stress offers relief!

2006-09-27T16:24:00.000-05:00

...so I've been working away at this darn degree for, oh, we won't go into details about how many years, now. I've had on-and-off other things to do, like do a bit of consulting, marking papers at the university, writing my own for submission - and of course all my fun extra-curriculars.

But nothing that needs to be done NOW. For most of the stuff I've been working on, there's been lots of time or a flexible deadline. And so I've achieved a high level of skill at procrastination. Oh yes, I have my favorite webistes, and I'm a regular contributor to a couple of discussion boards. For the nonprofit I volunteer with, I take on those weekday chores that regular folks (the ones who have jobs) can't do... I do feel minor guilt at making cookies midday, but nothing that warm, gooey chocolate chips can't cure. Oh, and I have a blog...

I was starting to get worried that I no longer actually had the skill to focus on a task for longer than five seconds at a time. I was thinking that this could be a disadvantage should I ever actually enter the workforce.

[sending prayers to the thesis Gods]Please!![\sending prayers]

Lately though, I've had a lot to do. I've actually been feeling a bit ... gasp! stressed. And I've found myself sitting at the computer actually focussed on "work-related stuff" for several hours at a time. Without checking a single message board.

Thank God. I still know how to concentrate.

Philip Morris, Climate Change Skeptic

2006-09-23T10:32:00.000-05:00

I think I have been aware for a while that Big Tobacco has some sneaky ways of influencing public opinion and injecting questionable evidence about cigarettes and smoking into the marketplace. One of the ways they do this is by using "front groups" that appear to represent restaurateurs and bar owners to oppose smoking bylaws, for example.

But who knew that Philip Morris would end up financing communication of biased climate change skepticism? An recently published excerpt from a new book explains how this ended up happening: back in the day (OK, about 15 years ago) a public relations company told PM that they needed to create the impression that a grassroots movement had formed out of the blue to fight "overregulation", and that it should protray the dangers of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among many. The others could be things like concerns about pesticides and cellphones - and climate change.

The public relations company founded a coalition - and got paid lost of cashola by PM - to do this. So basically, Big Tobacco got involved in providing biased information about all sorts of issues to the public. The whole point was to select out the research (however minimal it might be compared to the entire body of scientific literature) that could create doubt in the public mind about all of these issues, and undermine the credibility of government research in general.

That's just lovely.

Thanks Caroline, for the link!

COD

2006-09-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about the declining/recovering/maybe recovering/maybe not cod stocks on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. I'm talking about picking up something at the post office that is designated as "C.O.D.", or "cash on delivery".

Silly Moi, I have never picked up a COD package before and I assumed that in this modern day and age, that "cash" really meant "cash or debit or credit card" at the very minimum.

Imagine to my surprise as I picked up an item that I needed to pay almost $500 for (wedding photos have arrived!) that I actually needed CASH.

I gather from Canada Post's website that debit and credit card "may be used (where available)". I am so surprised that this does not include "everywhere".

I tried to figure out what proportion of Canada Post outlets have this capability (not mine, obviously, which meant that I had to trot off to the bank and wait in another lineup and actually speak to a teller - unusual in this day and age but I wanted more money than the ATM was willing to give me... I felt like I was doing everything the "old-fashioned way" today), but I couldn't find any stats during my rather limited search of their website.

Ah, searching the web. So much for my "old-fashioned" day!

Devilry

2006-09-20T22:09:00.000-05:00

Hehe...

...did anyone else hear the translation of Chavez' speech to the UN today where he called George Bush the devil?

Funny. And the audience could be heard chucking in the background, much to my surprise. Maybe the UN delegates are a bit less straight-laced and politically correct than I would have suspected.

Of course, (IMO) Bush isn't actually quite as smart as the devil, nor does he have much control over what happens in the U.S. (Or Iraq, which may become his own personal hell eventually, but that's another post altogether). Still, his (non-existant?) environmental strategy may result in some parts of his country becoming significantly warmer over the long-term. And having most of Manhattan underwater (which is a projected to happen under some climate change scenarios) would certainly be hellish for anyone who currently has an address there.

The Dutch get tired of windmills

2006-09-19T08:42:00.000-05:00

The traditional Ducth landscape: flat, green, a dike in the background, and a windmill gently turning in the foreground. Ah, how pastoral.

Well, not so much these days. The Dutch are starting to get sick of all the power-generating windmills that are in their picturesque landscape, so they are deciding to move some of their windfarms offshore where they can't be seen.

In all truth, these wind turbines seem barely related to the windmills of the past: their arms reach as high as a football field is long - and the first offshore wind farm is going have 36 of them, all side-by-side. The Dutch government - which aims to get 9 % of its energy from renewable sources by 2010 (which is only four years away, folks..!!), has mapped out plans for a total of 65 offshore wind farms in the next ten yous. Somehow they have managed to do this without obstructing shipping lanes or anyone's view (except perhaps on extremely clear days - and methinks those are pretty rare in Holland).

The Netherlands seems to be working really hard to make renewables "work". I wish we were as committed to finding alternatives that work in Canada.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

2006-09-17T08:35:00.000-05:00

Hehe, Wikipedia has a whole page dedicated to this question. And it's called "chicken.on-wiki" which somehow strikes me as being quite hilarious.

The page is filled with "answers" from famous (mostly historical) personalities.

I.e., Erwin Schrödinger's answer: Chicken? Chicken!? Where's my cat?

------------------

Actually (and somewhat to my disappointment I must say), after a quick "google" I discovered that there are tons similar of why did the chicken cross the road websites, like this one:

Colonel Sanders' answer: I missed one?

and this one:

Bill Gates' answer: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook...

The fact that there are so many websites makesthe whole thing seem much less novel - and therefore way less funny. Still, Schroedinger's "answer" to the riddle will probably keep me giggling at random points throughout the day.

I can't answer that

2006-09-15T15:05:00.000-05:00

It's the beginning of September - ah, a time for renewal, for starting new things, for re-committing to old projects. Even my horoscope said yesterday that it was a good time to get focussed and that I will be productive.

One of my new projects is that I'm teaching this term. Yup - I'm actually in charge of making sure some young minds absorb some specific information. And I get to lecture to them three times a week (poor things). This was a very exciting chance for me to try out this whole teaching gig - after all, if I decide I want to be an academic (the jury's still out on that - although less because of the teaching and more because of some the department politics I've observed even as a lowly graduate student) I will probably end up doing a lot of instructing.

Anyway - week one of lectures is now complete. And people who know me keep saying, "so how is it going?"

The funny thing is... it's really hard to tell. I find it a bit stressful coming up with the right number of slides three times a week - although once I've got that together the talking part's not so bad. What I wonder is: how the students percieve the class. It's not as if they come up afterwards and say, "hey, by the way, you did a great job of explaining that concept today", or "you know, I find you kind of boring". They just gather up their stuff and head on their merry way...

...so that's what I'll do too, unless I hear any complaints, I guess!

Ridiculous Revenge

2006-09-12T15:26:00.000-05:00

So the sad story of labour day weekend was that Steve Irwin, aka the "Crocodile Hunter" was killed while he was filming a documentary. A stingray got him right in the heart. Apparently it's quite ucommon for a stingray to actually be fatal, and Steve Irwin's death is only the third recorded stingray fatality in Australia.

OK, THIS IS A STINGRAY FROM THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, NOT AUSTRALIA, BUT WHATEVER

And now people are out, taking revenge - on other stingrays. Yep, at least ten have been found dead since Steve Irwin died - most often with their tails cut right off. Oh, so that makes a lot of sense. In order to express anger about the death of someone admired for their ability to bring excitment and information about animals and conservation to the public, it make sooo much sense to go and kill some wildlife. The same wildlife that Irwin was no doubt attempting to highlight in his documentary in order to educate people about how cool it is.

The Crocodile Hunter must just be rolling over in his grave.

Frivolous Festival, or..?

2006-09-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

So the big event in Toronto these days is TIFF, or the Toronto film festival. It's an event that reminds my why the flim industry always seems (to me) like one big paradox:

Many of the movies screened at the festival will be described as "exploring human nature" "pushing boundaries", or "examining the self/the world/our relationships". Basically, a lot of these films are creative attempts to help us - and the people who made them - better understand ourselves and our surroundings. They are trying to penetrate our (collective public) brains, make us think about new things, and understand ourselves and our world better. Although not all films screened at the festival are trying to be profound - some are just fun flicks, this is definitely a palpable side of TIFF.

But then... the festival's alter ego seems to be pure superficiality. Most obviously is the crazy celebrity culture: social columnists trying to figure out who will come to TO and who will be a "no-show", people staking out spots outside Roy Thompson Hall and the Sutton Hotel just to get a glimpse of someone famous, and the sudden displacement of world news by movie stars in National newspapers (I'm thinking here of Saturday's Globe and Mail, which had Penelope Cruz on the front cover). For people involved in the film industry, it seems worse: they have to get into the right parties, appear in the right magazines and papers, and wear the right clothing for each event.

So is it really about stimulating thought and discussion - or is it actually just about looks and fame?

Faith Parade?

2006-09-09T16:54:00.000-05:00

Today whilst wandering the streets of Toronto, we came upon a whole bunch of different "events": taste of Toronto, (where I had some very mediocre curry), a protest against corruption in Taiwan, and a bunch of women who were apparently celebrating "Tai Chi Day" by wearing bright orange T-shirts.

And then there was all this religious-y stuff. I'm not sure why, and some quick Googling was not enlightening. We saw music and evangelism and quite a crowd behind Queen's park this afternoon - and earlier, a parade that completely clogged Yonge and College. It included several different flatbeds full of people, each producing some variety of Christian music. All were producing said music loud enough for it to be distorted and pretty unmusical. At the end of the parade was a flatbed with several people depicting the crucifixion (including someone who was on the cross). That was the bit that made me realize that the whole show made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I'm not sure why: I have no issue with Christianity or of being proud of your faith... and surely it can't be the "show-off" tendencies of the parade - since I thoroughly enjoy the pride parade.
Maybe it's just that get the feeling that everyone in the parade thinks that everyone else would be so much better off if they'd join in. It's probably something that I project onto the event rather than something real. Wonder what that says about me. Religion is such a wierd thing.

Break the Addiction

2006-09-07T17:10:00.000-05:00

... our addiction to dirty energy, that is.

Students at a bunch of schools in the States have managed to introduce fees of about $30 per student to pay for clean energy for their schools. The money is used by the colleges to buy electricity from sources such as wind power or solar power.

That would be cool all on its own, but I've now read that MTV and an NGO called the Energy Action Coalition are launching a competition to encourage more schools in the U.S. to get on the green bandwagon. The contest is being called "Break the Addiction" (geddit?)

Way cool. The winning students will get prizes like a green renovations for their student lounges.

This is the latest in a slew of media attention that's been devoted to energy efficiency this summer. For example, TV ads in Ontario promoted power-saving strategies this year - the first time I've ever seen an ad like that and all part of a pretty impressive (I think) education and incentive program started by the provincial government this year.

Are we finally going to get people to pay attention to the implications of our energy use, I wonder?

I Hate My Fridge

2006-09-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

My fridge sucks. It sucks energy, and it sucks the life out of my veggies.

It's a clunker - think "beer fridge in my pal's basement" and you're probably thinking of the right kind of refrigerator. I don't know what vintage it actually is, except OLD. The darn thing doesn't seem to keep anything fresh - if I buy anything that comes in bunches, like spinach or lettuce, I'm almost guaranteed to be throwing some of it out. I hate that - it makes me feel guilty. And irritated that I've wasted perfectly good spinach that I paid for.

On the other hand, shopping for fruit and veg every single day is a bit tiresome. In the last few years, it's been fairly easy because of my flexible graduate-student schedule. Lately though, I've been busier and the time it takes to maintain a stash of fresh produce is getting to be a bit of a bore.

But, wait! It's not all about MOI. Did you know that refrigerators use the most energy out of any household appliance? According to the David Suzuki Foundation, A 2002 Energy Star refrigerator uses less than half the electricity of a standard 10-year-old model. Geez, we're letting Nanticoke pump all that air pollution into our city air for this?

So, my fridge contributes to poor air quality, food waste, and my own personal frustration. Sadly, I live in a rental unit and don't have a whole lot of control over the appliances in it... I have a feeling that as long as it seems to be colder inside than out, nobody will be replacing it anytime soon.

Yesterday's Post

2006-09-05T21:06:00.000-05:00

Labour day weekend is over. Actually it was sort of over last night, which is why this should have been yesterday's post. I heard on the news yesterday that there was a parade in downtown Toronto celebrating workers and reminding Canadians that there are labour issues that still need sorting out.

I was surprised to realize that I'd never actually heard of a Canadian labour day parade before... and apparently there's at least one other parade held every year (in Ottawa). I'm not sure if this speaks more to my ignorance of labour issues or to bad timing tied to a lack of publicity for the events.

Or this: labour day has never had anything to do with unions or worker rights for me - it's always been a potent symbol of the end of summer. It's all about going back to school or work and taking on a new, more motivated attitude towards work - or life in general.

I like having this division between summer and fall.... but somehow I want the day off to be all about vacations and laziness and rumpled clothing and flipflops. Not about work. I wonder if many Canadians feel the same way - could this be why the meaning of "labour day" is lost on so many of us?

O Canada, native home of asbestos

2006-09-01T19:23:00.000-05:00

(IMAGE OF CHRYSOTILE ASBESTOS)

O Canada, I'm not too impressed. I've been reading up on asbestos lately and while I knew that we were one of the countries that still mined asbestos, I didn't quite realize that Canada is the second-largest producer of asbestos in the world (behind Russia). Also that we export 95% of it.

That's nice of us: we don't want to get asbestosis or mesothelioma or various cancers - all of which are horrible diseases that can be caused by exposure to asbestos - but we're willing to let people in some poor third-world nation take the risk. Because that's where most of it goes: 60 countries, including Britain, France, Australia and the European Union (i.e., all the rich ones) have banned its use in whole or in part. So we're offering places like India the chance to have a preventable health disaster.

Because it is preventable: the link between exposure and disease is pretty clear. In fact, there has been tonnes of litigious activity in the developed countries, and rightly so in many cases. After all, the first cases were won in 1929 - but we've sure had lots of people working, unprotected, with asbestos since then. There's the Holmes foundry, in Sarnia, where levels of airborne asbestos thousands of times the current allowed level were measured before the place shut down. Now there's a cluster of asbestos-related diseases there.

Now that I've made my bias clear, I should briefly present to you the industry argument: the form of asbestos mined here is called chrysotile, and is thought to be less dangerous than some of the other forms. It is much harder and less dusty and likely to break into potentially dangerous fibres than the older forms (called crocidolite and amosite). Apparently, " representatives of the world's major chrysotile exporting mines signed an agreement whereby they committed to supply chrysotile fibre only to those companies that demonstrate compliance with national health and safety regulations. "

Well... whatever.

Irony in the Headlines

2006-08-31T12:10:00.000-05:00

Today's prize for environmental irony in a headline goes to....

Drought to Shut Down Canadian Rain Forest Resort

Honestly. Rain forest. Drought. Well, it turns out that it's not just one business being shut down, but a whole slew of them. The city council in Tofino has ordered all commercial businesses in Tofino to shut down and stop using municipal water supplies by this Friday.

Which the resorts are loving, of course, since this is happening just as the last long weekend of the summer (presumably a great time to rake in a little resort-town cash) arrives. NOT! Some of them have arranged to truck in tanker-loads of water. Others have closed - and considering the fabuloso weekend I just had, my heart goes out to this couple in particular.

Anyway, what's happened is that the reservoir is at an all-time low and there just hasn't been much rain. In this rainforest area. Oh yeah, and Tofino, which apparently has about 1700 permanent residents, swells to about 22000 people in the summer. I guess that would put a little pressure on the local water supply. Also - it's probably going to be one of the driest Augusts ever in the region.

So, shall we get back to the climate change argument? Or to the topic of the massive ecological footprint the average North American has? Alternately, we could discuss human attitudes and perceptions towards nature and try to understand why acceptance of our right to dominate and control seems so pervasive. So hard to choose.

A picture of Tofino (it really is beautiful) that I took from this website

Photosensitive

2006-08-30T10:38:00.000-05:00

And one other thing before I dive into post-holiday work mode. I've been meaning to do this for ages: let me introduce you to the best photoblog around: photosensitive.

The photos are taken by Jordan (noted sushinight commentator!) I hope he doesn't mind that I'm showcasing him here a bit ...

Hitched!

2006-08-30T10:25:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted here, but I do have a good excuse, honest. And besides, I probably saw my most loyal readers in person this weekend anyway.

SO, a big shout-out: to all you readers but especially to Caroline, Jordan, Simone, and Heather, who routinely comment on my blog - thank you my dears - and who, this weekend, were all at the best darn party I've ever thrown.

Yup, I got married - and it was SO fantastic. Everything went right, and it was really really FUN.

Cheers!!

...we can get back to the environment and all that other stuff tomorrow.

Social Acceptability and Air Quality

2006-08-21T08:26:00.000-05:00

I was at a friend's for dinner last night and we got into a huge debate about what it's going to take to get people to cut their energy use sufficiently to improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I'm in Newfoundland right now and talking about air quality here is way different than in Ontario: there isn't really a problem with air quality here. The population is much smaller and less dense than in southern Ontario, and any emissions are blown away by the consistent high winds here in any case.

I was arguing that social pressure might be a useful tool for getting people to change their behaviour: if your neighbors think less of you for driving to the corner store rather than walking, would you be less likely to take the car? Or leave your lights on when you're not in the room? Would store owners persist in blasting the air conditioning while having their front door open onto the street if people associated that action with waste and their childrens' poor health?

After all, it seems to have worked for the anti- tobacco lobby: fifteen years ago, most smokers would have felt comfortable lighting up almost anywhere. Now, the smokers I know light up only in private, mainly because they are made to feel like pariahs if they do it in public.

Still, this approach might only work in a region like southwestern Ontario: where the threat of a blackout or similar energy crisis seems real, the air pollution hanging above the cities is visible, and people who have respiratory disease like asthma feel the impact of air pollution on their health. I think that it would be very tricky to make the connection between airborne pollutant emissions and poor health for the public here.

And the concept of an energy crisis..? In Newfoundland, the crisis is still that the province gave up so much hydroelectric power for practically nothing... there is no sense here that energy conservation is something that would benefit the community.

Greenthinkers

2006-08-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

Today I stumbled upon a cool blog called Greenthinkers. It's "an informal forum for thoughts and ideas on how to live a more green life".

And they have loads of fun, useful, and curious information on there:

Fun: the Toronto company called chopper couture that makes rock 'n roll T-shirts out of bamboo fibers.

Useful: telling us about "Recycling for Charities", which lets you get rid of of your old digital equipment and support charities at the same time. Sounds like win-win to me.

Curious? Find out what the heck "organic leather" could possibly mean!

Equal opportunity for brown spots and wierd shapes

2006-08-16T12:21:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I was on a bit of a rant about how I would like to buy more organic produce but have trouble getting past its high pricetag.

This essay from the New York Times is a moving portrayal of why organic farming is so costly - personally and financially. It's a shame that with all the hard work that goes into organic produce, the fruits and veggies themselves still end up being infested a lot of the time (see Jordan's comment on my previous post).

I guess they often don't look as pleasing either: brown spots and odd shapes are more common in organic produce - this shouldn't bother us but we have been well-trained to select the healthiest-looking food for ourselves: in a very modern way this would be designed to get value for money and in a very ancient was this would have been a survival technique.

Too bad that the healthiest-looking fruit these days often tastes a bit like cardboard. A stanford prof explains that tomatos are usually picked before they're ripe (so that they aren't soft and squishable as they travel across the continent) and then made to look red and ripe (sadly without the usual sugar infusion you get with natural ripening) using ethylene. Yum, ethylene-tomatoes. I wonder if exposure to ethylene would prevent a tomato from being classified as being organic?

The same prof explains that some companies are trying to get around this problem by modifying the tomatoes' genes to alter the ripening process. I wonder what the per tomato cost will be to make them look good and travel well compared to the per tomato cost to farm tomatoes organically and locally?

...adjusted to reflect the relative nutritional value and environmental imact of creating each tomato of course. Which would be an complex thing to figure out.

Pigeons pack phones for pollution

2006-08-14T20:04:00.000-05:00

A group in San Jose California is combining art and science by releasing a bunch of urban homing pigeons into the neighborhood equipped with cellphones and air quality sensors. The pigeons, their paths and the measured pollution levels were mapped in real time and sent to a blog. The project only looked at carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides - but these should be reasonable markers for urban pollution levels.

Some people have expressed concerns that wearing the "backpacks" might be stressful to the pigeons and also that the project is redundant because the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is already measuring pollution levels in the area. The group claims that the apparatus doesn't bother the pigeons (and most of the flights were a couple of hours at most in any case). In contrast to the EPA monitors, which are stationary, these birds were moving around while they collected data. From the maps on the site, it looks as if most of the birds staye fairly close to where they were released - so the results would be most useful for looking at spatial difference in pollution at a neighborhood level.

It all sounds kind of cool to me. I wonder if they looked at the pollution levels with respect to distance above the ground as well at latitude/longitude (the typical way to map dispersed pollutants) - I didn't see this on the site and don't know if it would yield interesting results or not.

PHOTO FROM THE PIGEONBLOG SITE

P.S. Kensington

2006-08-14T10:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was one of Kensington Market's Pedestrian Sundays - which basically means that they shut the area off to motorized traffic and have a big community party. There are seven of them scheduled between May and October and each has a theme. Most of them are on the last Sunday of the month but this one was a special P.S. Kensington celebrating the anniversary of the big blackout.

There was so much energy in the market - huge games of chess and scrabble laid out on the pavement, at least three different percussion bands that I saw marching around and playing, a juggler, a demonstration of something that resembled a cross between a martial art and a dance, and a chance to pin up a statement saying where you were when the lights went out. Add to that tons of people, food stalls and vendors in the streets - it was a great, diverse, celebratory community atmosphere.

I also loved that the intent was to encourage people to celebrate without electricity to remind ourselves about the blackout and the costs of our energy use. Radios, for example, were strongly discouraged. They weren't necessary anyway - there was tons of live music and sound all around.

If you're in Toronto, check out the next P.S. Kensington days: on the last Sunday in August, September, and October, there will be celebrations of air, earth, and Hallowe'en, respectively.

See you there..?!

When you wish upon a star...

2006-08-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

This weekend is the time for the annula perseid meteor shower. Apparently this year is won't be too spectacular, because the moon's going to be 87% full and will basically be outshining the meteors.

How sad... still, you might catch a few, especially if you're watching tonight or tomorrow evening before the moon rises. NASA says there's potential of seeing something called an "earthgrazer" if you lie back and look up between about 8-10 PM. An earthgrazer skims horizontally across the sky, just touching the atmosphere (sort of like a stone skipping across a pond). To us it will look like it's moving north to south.

I would love to get out of the city and lie back on a blanket for a few hours and watch - too bad I'm not still in the middle of rural Coloado like I was last week; that would have made for a perfect view. Oh well - it will be back next year and apparently the moon won't be getting in the way: it should make for a much better view.

Nature's pretty cool, huh?

Cyclin' in the rain

2006-08-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

When we arrived in Colorado for our cycling trip, we were told that the region was in a ten-year drought, and that we should not expect to experience much rain (actually a good chunk of the U.S. appears to be in drought conditions). As we got our trip underway, we found that we got wet almost every day, at least for a little while. One night it rained all night, and towards the end of the trip, which was in New Mexico, we detoured around a whole section that is apparently impassable after it's been raining. From our detour along a regional road we could see the dark clouds and downwards streaks that signify rain hanging in the mountais we would have ridden through.

When we asked people if the rain was usual, we were told, that yes, this was in fact the local monsoon season, so the rain was perfectly normal. It was just that it hadn't fallen during the last ten years due to the drought. We were also told that the arroyos in New Mexico were running faster and higher than they had in years.

I wonder at what point a changed climate becomes the new normal? To me, ten years of drought signifies a changed trend in the weather; I would have called the rain unusual. Add to this that the long-term trends for the region suggest that the last hundred years or so have been the wettest in a long time overall.

Perhaps in a region where water is so scarce, it is hard to accept that a year with rain could be the exception rather than the rule.

HOW much for those strawberries?!

2006-08-09T13:48:00.000-05:00

While we were in Colorado we were hosted for a couple of nights by my second cousin and her husband. These two, aside from being fun, friendly, wonderful people - and incredibly generous with their time, space, and food, are a shining example of how to do grocery shopping.

They buy as much of their produce as possible from a store that stocks fuit and veggies grown in Colorado. Open the fridge, and most products are labeled as being organic. They rarely eat meat and when they do, it's grass-fed, and hormone-free.

These two are among the only people I know who have so wholeheartedly embraced the concept of reducing their impact on the world around them. They are not contributing to produce being flown or driven all over the world, they are not contributing to the destruction of land by overgrazing with cattle, and they are not supporting use of pesticides and other harmful chemicals in the environment.

Now for my confession: I bought 5 pints of strawberries from California yesterday because they were such a good deal, and I probably couldn't find an "organic" label in my refrigerator if I opened it right now.

Despite understanding the benefits of buying local food and organic produce, I am still lured by low prices. Seeing someone actually act out the principles of buying locally and organic caught me off-guard. I know the theory is great, but a little guilt thrown in by seeing someone act more responsibly than me is helpful too!

So - I'm starting to think a little harder about what I'm buying. After all, there's NO reason to buy tomatoes from the U.S. if I can get some grown in Ontario for the same price. Baby step number one.

Now on to the next step - which I believe is appealing to my cheap side by thinking carefully about the true cost of unmindful grocery shopping. I'll be starting here: with a good read about "food miles" (comes in England, but you'll get the drift).

I'm BAAAAAAACK!!

2006-08-08T20:29:00.000-05:00

Ah, day one back in the old life. I've been away for two weeks having a lovely vacation mountain biking through the Colorado Rockies (and through a teensy bit of that famous red New Mexico landscape).

I always dread the return after time away - specifically, that point when whatever vehicle I'm in pulls away from the airport and aims itself homeward. After all the fuss to get luggage and either return to a parked car, meet someone, or snag a taxi, it's the first quiet moment ... and it's when that wierd feeling of, "was the whole time away just a dream?" hits me. At this particular interval I always feel acutely that whatever trip I've been on could all have been something I just imagined.

I'm pretty sure the trip wasn't a dream though - it was all fun and adventures and a few good lessons too.

One theory I'm working on as a result of the trip is roughly as follows:

"as any cyclists of group of cyclists approaches within 500 feet of a mountain pass of 10 000 feet or higher (ok, I know, feet/metres, but gosh darn it, I was n the States, using American maps. I digress.), rain will begin to fall on the pass in question. Clouds will appear more threatening and may also produce thunder, lightning, and hail as the cyclists reach close proximity of said mountain pass. The rain will continue to fall no matter how long the cyclist(s) may huddle under any structure present at or close to the pass, including but not limited to interpretive signs, outhouses, or small groves of trees."

Gone Cyclin'

2006-07-20T17:07:00.000-05:00

I'll be away, cruisin' around the States (OK, only one very small part of the States, but it should be fan-shmastic) on my bike for the next couple of weeks.

Until then!

Veggies with punch cards?

2006-07-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

Apparently China is going to track every single vegetable that enters "Olympic kitchens" (I assume this refers to the athlete's village and restaurants at or near Olympic venues). Every cabbage and every pea pod is going to have an identity number and file.

It sounds like they want to track each incoming veggie and approve all vegetables consumed during the Olympics, so that they can make sure none are contaminated with high levels of pesticides or other pollutants (something Greenpeace has found in Chinese vegetables before).

Sounds arduous. And what about all those Chinese people who eat (potentially contaminated) Chinese veggies every day? I hope someone's evaluating this problem in a bit more of an "upstream" kind of a way. Seems like this identity tag method is pretty far downstream from the problem's source.

Also I find it highly bizarre that the report explaining this vegetable policy apparently does not mention fruit at all.

Black extinction

2006-07-19T13:23:00.000-05:00

Apparently the West African Black Rhino may now be extinct. The last place they were seen was in Cameroon, and recent extensive surveys show no evidence of their presence there now.

What they did find was evidence of lots of poaching. I guess the rhinoceros horns are (were) worth about $50 000 each, so people were after their horns to sell to foreign markets - even though trade in the horns has been illegal for a while.

This story makes me MAD. And SAD.

I am guessing that the people who poached the rhinos were probably poor and saw the animals as a way to keep them and their families alive... that's my sense of why a lot of poaching in Africa happens although I could be wrong. The problem lies farther afield I think: Asian medicine uses the rhino horn to fight malaria, epilepsy and "other ailments", (whatever that means).

This approach to curing people by killing off an entire species suggests a bit of a crazy ecological imbalance (espeically since there are other approaches to handling these illnesses)... and it does not strike me as being very sustainable, either.

Then again, us humans have always been lousy at the concept of sustainability.

It looks like Cameroon had people guarding the few rhinos that were left.
They had instructions to shoot poachers on sight.

Canadians in Lebanon

2006-07-18T08:40:00.000-05:00

All the international news coverage lately has focussed on the escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Here in Canada, one of the big news topics is how soon our government can get those 50 000 Canadians who are in Lebanon out. Many Canadians are frustrated that other (mostly European) countries seem to have started to get their citizens out almost right away, while the ships leased by Canada won't be able to start transporting Canadians to Cyprus until tomorrow - and then only if it's safe. Another problem is that some Canadians are trapped in smaller communities in Lebanon (especially in the south) and will have no way to reach these ships. A couple of things strike me about all this:

1. We are so focussed on getting the expats out, and yet most Lebanese people have no option to leave. Although I suppose it's not feasible for us to get all the Lebanese people out of harm's way, it makes me feel like we consider them and their safety to be less important than that of Canadians'. There's an inequality about this "save your own skin" attitude that makes me feel uncomfortable.

2. 50 000 people is a lot of people and the south end of Lebanon is essentially a war zone. The conflict seems to have escalated very quickly and Canada is so far away. I understand why the Canadians want to get out but I wonder what actions could have been possible to rescue people any faster. How realistic are our expectations?

Fun with Quotes II

2006-07-14T18:33:00.000-05:00

I Googled "Environment Quotes" today to see what I got. Here are some of my favourites from the number one page that popped up, Quotations about the Environment from the Quote Garden:

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. ~Robert Orben

It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. ~Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. ~Bill Vaughn

I'm starting to feel a bit preachy. Especially since I drove from Toronto to Waterloo and back yesterday - about 100 km each way, and it was just me in the car. Time to go and calculate my ecological footprint or something.

Hm, moving from feeling preachy to guilty... is that really the solution here?

NOW what should I think?

2006-07-14T18:20:00.000-05:00

Apparently Al Gore has been praising Walmart. "What?!", you say? "I thought Walmart was a big bad corporation that we didn't want to have anything to do with, with its taking-over-of-small-towns, and its terrible record on employee practises."

(That's what I said too)

Well, apparently Walmart has a soft spot for the environment. Who knew? They want to become corporate environmental leaders actually, and have set three goals for themsleves:

reducing waste to zero
moving toward using only renewable energy
offering more products made in a way that preserves the environment

Progress all of those goals will certainly be measurable over time - which sort of implies they might actually be serious. After all, we'll be able to call them on it if they don't make any changes. The stores have already been doing some retrofits: installing more efficient lighting and refrigerators - and new prototype stores should be 30-50% more efficient over the long term than the current ones are.

I haven't shopped at Walmart in forever - and that's a function of (a) my disapproval of what I percieve to be poor handling of employees + their impact on independent buisnesses and, (b) let's admit it - the fact that it's highly inconvenient for me to get to one.

I may have to reexamine my attitude towards Walmart. If only they could get along with the idea of unions.

Stick it

2006-07-12T18:20:00.000-05:00

For the environmentally-minded: you can now own a real memory stick. Yes, you can stick your stick into your computer. It will help with those sticky situations where you have to move data around. Or can act as a temporary backup if you want to make sure certain files stick around in case of computer blowups.

Although, truthfully (and unsurprisingly, given the name of this blog), I kind of like these memory keys better. Nothing like having what looks like a piece of raw fish hanging out of your USB port.

Thanks to popgadget

Just shoot me

2006-07-11T20:24:00.000-05:00

Grrr; I'm mad at Canon. I'm talking about the kind of Canon that makes cameras.

I have one - a little digital number that I rather like. I can take pictures with all sorts of settings, take a bit of video, upload it all to my computer in a snap. Lord, I sound like a commercial.

Except that... I dropped it.

Now I can do everything except actually take the picture. The camera focuses, turns on the ready light, zooms in an out, successfully displays photos on its screen and allows me to apply various settings.

It just won't actually record images any more.

So I took it to the camera store. Where they saide that they would have to send it away to Canon for a price of $50 and that the fix would probably cost $200-$300. Which is about the replacement cost for the freakin' camera.

I just know that it's some little electronic thing and that it's probably a common problem, and I feel so helpless and frustrated and annoyed that I can't do a thing to fix it on my own.

I guess it's back to my trusty fully manual, dinosaur-era but perfectly functional Nikon. And yes, I've dropped it before too. Onto a cement floor. And it still takes photos just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Garbaggio

2006-07-10T18:39:00.000-05:00

Viva Italia...!

THis evening I was watching news coverage of the crowds partying in Toronto last night after the Italians won the World Cup yesterday - it sounds like it was a massive party, everyone had a great time, and nobody got hurt. Hurrah for goodwill and fun!!

But the GARBAGE!! I always feel sort of stunned that it's a matter of course that the city has to send in bulldozers to clean up the garbage that gets tossed onto the street at large-scale events. In last night's case, maybe part of the problem was a lack of garbage and recycling containers - after all, it's not like little Italy is intended to handle quite that many people on a usual basis! But... it seems like a lot of partygoers at any big event consider it the city's responsability to clean up after them. I can't imagine feeling that way - I was taught to pick up after myself, not to litter, and to leave a place at least as clean as when I arrived. I've been know to carry around an empty plastic bottle with me for hours if I don't see a recycling bin.

The TV coverage from last night showed piles of garbage being collected by city workers early this morning.

This strikes me as being symptomatic of a broader North American attitude towards stewardship of our shared environment:

"I don't need it any more so I'll just dump it right here. Someone else can deal with my waste."

Lame. Irresponsible. And pretty gross.