Just shoot me

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

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.

Culture clash

I just read a neat article explaining that in the past, roadways were considered to be shared space beween all users - including pedestrians, cart-drivers, vendors, and streetcars. Then, Henry Ford's Model T came along, causing a huge culture clash between cars and all the other users.

And now look at us! The streets are the exclusive domain of motorized vehicles and streetcars. The amount of time pedestrians spend on them is (in theory!) tightly controlled by signal lights and crosswalks.- Bikes... well, even if you're in a Toronto bike lane, you still have to be eagle-eyed to make sure you don't get "doored", and I've had people honk and yell at me for doing things on my bicycle that are perfectly legal .

Given the amount of car traffic that exists, and the relative size and weight ratio of vehicle:bike or vehicle:pedestrain, it's not surprising that cars have taken over. And really - it's not practical or safe in modern times for people to be wandering randomly around in the same space as cars and trucks. THat would just be a bad scene all around.




Still - I'd love to see more bike lanes and shared-use space. I think that if it's properly incorporated into urban design, people will use it. And will feel encourages to make a switch out of their cars - which is what we really need in order to improve air quality.

Grumble

Lately it seems like Google News's Sci/Tech section is all Tech and no Sci.

Just now I checked the news and while the top article was about the Discovery crew and the space shuttle reaching the space station (definitely qualifying as science, and pretty neat science as well), no matter how many times I expanded the section, all the other stories were about iPods or net neutrality or Nintendo or Microsoft. (And I won't be providing links to any of the companies because I feel irritable and they get enough promotion already.)

It's not that this stuff isn't interesting; clearly it is to a lot of people or it wouldn't pop up on Google - but these topics strike me more as though they belong in the business section. They're about new products or legal battles. To me that's not really "technology".

The weather is here

An article on ENN today is talking about which countries think they can control the weather and how much control they think they have. Apparently China and Russia think they have a lot of control: China says it can fill the Yellow River and Russia says that Moscow's parades have been saved from rain by its scientists.

American scientists seem to think that the level of control they're talking about is baloney - but they do say that we are capable of dispersing fog (I didn't know that!) - which is handy near airports - and that there may be some merit to the process of seeding clouds to try and force them to make rain.

I'm just hoping that the Americans are right and that nobody can really control the weather. I can just imagine what kind of "useful" scenarios would emerge if we actually could decide when and how much rain and sun we wanted. Who would have control? If China can can really make it rain - I'd like to know who is downwind from China, getting less rain, and who is downstream from China, getting flooded out? (How much would I have to pay to guarantee sunshine on my wedding day?) And what sorts of unexpected consequences could we expect from the weather control? I love that we think that putting more chemicals in the atmosphere is probably a good idea. It's never been a good idea before (I'm thinking here of stuff like CFCs (hole in the ozone layer), particulates (cardiovascular and respiratory mortality), leaded gasoline (nervous system deficits)...)

Of course it would be nice to fix some of the droughts and other climate problems that are happening in various parts of the world - but in my opinion we need to learn to manage our agricultural and human resources better - not go off on a tangent that has us trying to gain control of another aspect of nature.

Cottaging

I was lucky enough to spend the Canada day long weekend at a friend's cottage "up north". We swam, canoed, boated, played frisbee, barbequed, roasted marshmallows, made s'mores, and sang songs around the campfire.

It was awesome - so much fun.

I do feel ambivalent about cottaging though. We all seem to feel entitled to own or inhabit not one, but two properties, each with its own impacts on the environment. At cottages, we like to have lakes and forest and extra space around us, so the development becomes even more spread out, and our impact on the environment broadens. There's the waste to get rid of, pesticides, oil spills, noise, and garbage. Some areas look to me like a spread-out suburbia, rather than any kind of wilderness - and we usually drive long distances to get to them, contributing to air pollution.

I know that most cottages have a much smaller footprint on the environment than most houses. The owners of the cottage we visited this weekend would like to get it completely off the grid someday. Going to the cottage also gives people a chance to learn to appreciate the natural environment - and I think it's important especially for children in the city to have a chance to discover nature. Then again, many cottage prices in Ontario are reaching levels you'd expect to pay for a home - and have as many amenities.

Is there a balance betteen access to wilderness and preservation of the wilderness?

I don't know.

Happy (belated) Canada Day!

July 1st, 2006

What's HE smoking?

So there's this guy in Germany, Alexander Schoppmann, who is trying to get a new "smoker's airline" going. I heard him being interviewed on CBC's "As it Happens" this week. Schoppmann seems to envision the airline as a "luxury experience". He wants to use those planes that have two levels, bringing back the inflight upstairs lounge - something that I vaguely recall from when I was little. (All I ever saw of it was the mysterious spiral staircase heading upwards at the front of the plane. )

Schoppmann was claiming that the air in his planes will be cleaner than in regular commercial planes and that the WHO (World Health Organization) has said there's "no evidence for second-hand smoke".

I'm willing to buy that the air in most of the planes I fly in isn't great, but even with a state-of-the art air conditioner, I can't see how a the atmosphere in a plane full of smokers could be better. It's a whole additional set of chemicals (like small particles and carcinogens) introduced into the cabin in addition to the ones that are already there on any flight (like bacteria, perfumes, and God-knows-what-else).

As for his comments on second-hand smoke, I think he forgot his parachute. The Surgeon General just released a report about involuntary smoke that concluded (among other things) that "Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke".

And let me clue you into something I found on the WHO website under the heading "Second hand tobacco smoke":

Article 8 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted by all WHO Member States in May 2003, reads: “Protection from exposure to tobacco smoke
1. Parties recognise that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability.

Or how about this, also from the WHO site: "Second-hand smoke is a real and significant threat to public health. Supported by two decades of evidence, the scientific community now agrees that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke."


I don't know what Alexander Schoppmann's been smoking lately but it's got include something other than straight-up tobacco.

Fun with Words IV

I've been reading a bit of fluff called "The Bride of Anguished English" by Richard Lederer - it's basically a catalogue of mistakes and garbled English that have appeared in newspapers, church bulletins, transcripts of legal proceedings, students' essays, and so on. There is a section on "word botchers" - people who misspeak words without realizing it - like people who want a little piece of quiet for example. Here are some others from his book:

• "The chapter committees meet at the desacration of the committee chairman"
• "We have to deal seriously with this offense as a detergent to others"
• "His ex-wife recieved a decease and desist order"
• "He's a self-defacating person - that's why I admire him so much"
• "please, someone stop that incestuous pounding!"
• "They raised a great human cry"
• "A fool and his money are some party"

As Richard Lederer says in his book: "These [...] malapropsims are not prefabrications. They are not pigments of the imagination."

Flat earth - it's not funny!

Yesterday at the Shared Air Summit, Senator John Kerry compared climate change skeptics to flat-earthers. As in, even though to us on the ground, the curve is so slight that we can't see it, overwhelming evidence exists to suggest that the earth isn't flat.

Also that there are still people who will argue with you about the shape of the earth.

At least they are funnier (in their disclaimer, anyway) than the current administrations in Canada and the States. Politicians don't usually come with disclaimers (although that would be really handy for my next trip to the voting booth) - I suppose because they never admit to being wrong.

When politicians are funny it's usually unintentional:Sorry dude. I realize it's a gratuitous poke at you - but c'mon. Your nonexistant Environmental plan is so unfunny.

Shared Air 2006

Today I was at the Shared Air Summit, which was put on by the Ontario provincial government for the second year in a row in an attempt to foster some discussion and cooperation between various "stakeholders" ( which is the usual buzzword to refer to people who know stuff or have some interest in whatever you're talking about) for improved air quality.

I'm quite clear, however, that one big part of the event was about communication to the public - there was lots of media there and three of the speakers would be draws for most Canadians: John Kerry, the Democratic Senator and former presidential candidate, Sara Renner, that x-country skiier who broke her pole in a race at the Turin Olympics and still got a silver medal, and Roberta Bondar, Canada's first woman in space. (And apparently the world's first neurologist in space, something that was repeated several times today but which I had never really heard before as a "Roberta Bondar claim-to-fame").

Although I do really hope that the summit does actually foster some cooperation among those people who hold the power (whether or not it's renewable presumably depends on their political popularity - ha!) - part of me is OK with the media circus that was created even though it was designed mostly to hype the Ontario Liberals. They have done some good stuff and that should be acknowledged - but also - if we want more progress, it's critical that people care about clean air, understand the climate change issues, realize the impact of their energy use, and be willing to make all of it into issues that could elect or defeat a government.

Fun with quotes

Oooo, I've been so delinquent. I have lots of things to say - I just haven't been near the computer much lately. Actually it has probably been a healthy break.

To get back into the blogging mode I thought I'd start off with a few quotations selected completely at random (OK, well, as random as opening a book to some page that's probably more likely to be near the beginning than towards the end can be, which if you're a statistician is probably not random at all, but ANYWAY) from

THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK
Quotations on the
Environment

Compiled, Annotated and Introduced by Oline Luinenberg & Stephen Osborne

Here goes:

1. ON THE SALUBRIOUS EFFECTS OF CERTAIN VEGETABLE LIFE-FORMS... Flowers in the city are like lipstick on a woman - it just makes you look better to have a little colour -Lady Bird Johnson, 1988
2. A ROSE IS A ROSE, ETC.... A tree is a tree. Now how many more do you need to look at? -Ronald Reagan, 1965
3. ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD'S FORESTS... It's as though the nations of the world decided to burn their libraries without bothering to see what is in them. -Daniel Janzen, biologist, Univ. of Penn., 1989
4. A TAUTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO NUCLEAR SAFETY... The record of the nuclear industry in this country has been excellent because in civil installations there have been no fatalaties in this country -Margaret Thatcher, 1990

There are more. Many more - but I'll save them for another day.

The heat is on

A new report requested by Congress from the U.S. National Academies of Science has confirmed that the last few decades have been the warmest of the past 400 years, and that the warming is almost certainly due to human activity.

George Bush probably has his fingers in his ears and is singing "lalalalalalala" as loud as he can - especially since his administration's climate change science program also released a report last month saying that "the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone".

Hopefully these two reports will put some pressure on Washington to do something about the emissions that cause climate change. Or at least change up the political climate some.

'Cuz you KNOW that is Al Gore runs again and IF he gest in he pretty much HAS to do something about the US's greenhouse gas emissions. After he made that lovely documentary an' all.

Don't pout, darling, it's the truth

Rona Ambrose, looking more like she's pouting for a photographer than considering greenhouse gases.

(IMAGE OBTAINED FROM A CBC NEWS WEBPAGE)






Apparently I'm not the only one questioning Rona Ambrose's ability to perform her job. The NDP tabled a motion before the commons demanding that she resign.

The motion won't pass; the Liberals have said they'll abstain from the vote. They apparently agree that she's incompetent but the Conservatives threatened to turn a passing vote into a Fall election - and the Liberals probably don't want to spur an election just yet in case Canadians still think that (not withstanding Ms. Ambrose's astounding lack of qualification for her job) the Torys are more competent than the Liberals on balance.

All I know is that SOMEBODY should PLEASE get Canada some kind of environmental plan. Surely someone up in Ottawa can manage that? Especially since a new report from NRTEE (National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy) says that Canada could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 using existing technology and without hurting the economy.

Intelligent bacteria

Cool! A Japanese reseach group has engineered a super-bacteria that can "eat up" (aka degrade) dioxin two or three times faster than wild-type strains. This is good news: in case you weren't sure, dioxin is thought to be one of the most toxic groups of chemicals us humans have allowed to seep into the environment. Not only that, they bioaccumulate in humans and animals - which basically means that their concentrations increase in our bodies over time as we consume other organisms that also contain dioxin due to its pretty much ubiquitous exposure.

Funny that today I also saw an article from ENN talking about whether or not we should be studying biological system to inspire technological development. Obviously it worked for the Japanese group - but then again, they weren't studying worm brains or fish jaws, as some of the researchers who went to a conference in Atlanta were. Who knows whether those projects will be helpful in the long run!

Proponents of intelligent design think scientists are nuts if they think these complex systems developed by hit-and-miss but are worth reverse engineering.

I say, if it works, and gets us faster degradation of dioxin (or any other useful application, really) - who cares how the original system came to be.

Camping in the smog

Yes, I have returned from my camping weekend, a pint or so lighter in blood... just kidding; the mosquitos actually weren't too bad - I think it was way to hot for them. I didn't see a single black fly though - I can't understand it; I thought this would be prime blackfly season. Maybe they just can't fly through all that dirty air.

I returned to my desk this morning to read that the smog advisory I spent my weekend under was terminated today. Yes, people, there was a smog advisory covering most of southern Ontario this weekend, from Windsor to Waterloo, to Toronto to Peterborough, up to Algonguin, even further up to yes, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury and North Bay and all parts in between (sigh) . Pretty sad to think that such a massive geographical area can be subject to bad air.

A recent study found that many suburban Toronto residents thought that the air was cleaner in their neighborhoods than it is downtown. Sorry, folks, try again. Air moves pretty easily from one location to another, dontcha know? And I'm pretty sure that the suburbs are where a lot of the cars live.

Maybe we need to figure out how to communicate better about air quality issues. If everyone realized that they were breathing dirty air too - would they feel more compelled to solve our air quality problems?

Gone camping

Yup, I'm headed north this weekend to commune with nature. I'll let y'all know how the bugs are doing when I get back...

Another China story

China is booming. The economy is growing, people are making money, and now they all have cars. During the rapid growth that happened, I guess a bunch of bicycle lanes got destroyed in a lot of cities as roads were widened and buildings erected.

Well, now the Chinese government wants them put back! The ministry of construction is ordering cities to replace any bicycle lanes that were eliminated.

The huge jump in car ownership in China is responsible for some terrible air pollution, not to mention way more traffic jams and accidents than the Chinese used to deal with.

Will putting bike lanes back in encourage this newly car-centric society to switch back to two wheels, I wonder?

Keep Cool

I just wanted to praise the Clean Air Foundation for all the great programs it runs, including "Energy smarts", "Mow down pollution", "Switch out", "Keep cool", "Car heaven", and "Cool shops".

If you want to find out what they all are - you'll just have to visit their website - but here's a teaser: the Keep Cool Campaign promotes clean air, reduced energy use, and responsible recycling of old air conditioners. Here's the deal: bring your old, inefficient window A/C unit to a participating Home Depot (26 available locations) or Home Hardware (5 locations) some weekend this month, and you'll get a $25 gift card to spend at the store. Yup, $25, just like that, and you get rid of your old clunker! Or clunkers, if you have more than one.



Those old air conditioners use 30-70% more energy than an ENERGY STAR qualified models.

Yipes.

Apparently our energy use in the summer (due mainly to air conditioning) is actually overtaking the amount of energy we use in the winter to keep warm. That means more air pollution on days when lots of sun and warm temperatures already promots smog formation.

As for me, well, I won't be picking up a gift card anytime soon - we don't actually have an air conditioner! Of course, if this summer is as hot as some predictions I've heard, I might not have my sanity either by the end of it.

Energy awareness

Apparently Chinese government workers were ordered to go without cars, elevators and air conditioning today as part of an awareness campaign about saving energy.

The report, in the official China daily newspaper, (well, apparently - I can't seem to find the original article) said that China's 7 million public servants consume about 5 percent of the country's total electricity a year, equal to the electricity consumed annually by 780 million farmers.

China is undergoing incredible economic growth - I keep hearing how Asia is developing serious air quality problems as a result of the dramatic increases in car ownership and use and because of unregulated emissions from all sorts of industries. The massive growth combined with a huge (and in some areas, very dense) population is creating serious environmental issues including acute pollution crises, as well as energy shortages.

I wonder what would happen in Canada if our government decided that all of our civil servants should all do without cars, elevators, and air conditioning for a day? ... of course, a real-life energy shortage kind of made that choice for a whole bunch of us two years ago: that would be the famous blackout.

Global Warning

Over the weekend Pat and I went to see Al Gore's new documentary called "An Inconvenient Truth", which is all about global warming. My new pal Al cites a study that reviewed a random sample of ~1000 peer-reviewed articles on climate change and found that not one of them questioned whether or not it is happening. (He also shows that in the media, 53% of articles question climate change) .

The doc does a great job of showing the parallels between CO2 emissions and warming, and of explaining the potential consequences of gobal warming. Like, if Greenland starts to melt too fast, the whole gulf stream current could stop existing. That would be hugely bad news for all of us. And if all of Greenland melts, hundreds of millions of people in places like China and Bangladesh will find their homes underwater. (Oh, some of us will too here in North America but the numbers aren't quite as staggering).

Even though the film ends on a relatively hopeful note - I think the intent is to inspire - I left the theatre feeling pretty sad. I think it had to do with my revelation earlier this week that the Canadian government just does not care. And that probably, it hasn't for a while, regardless of the specific administration. What happened to us, Canada? We used to think we were environmental leaders!

WOOFstock

Yesterday Pat and I happened upon "WOOFstock" - a festival held in downtown Toronto for dogs. There were big dogs, small dogs, dogs with dresses on, and a dog dressed up as a hot dog. There were booths selling pet food, leashes, luxury doggie beds, frozen dog snacks, dog costumes, and dog toys.

It was highly disturbing.

Now, I know cute (I have previously mentioned my addiction to cuteoverload.com), and I understand the comfort and companionship that many people derive from their pets, not to mention a bit of protection and encouragement to get a little exercise... but the pet industry is outrageous.

A UNDP (United Nations Development PProgram) report indicates that the global pet food market was worth $27.5 billion in 1998 and is projected to grow to $40b by 2010. They also state that this is enough money to fund basic social protection for all low income countries. A separate UNDP report suggests that the world's most heavily indebted poor coutries would need to spend $20 billion between them to meet the millenium goals - which include things like eradicating extreme hunger and mortality and reducing child mortality.

It all makes the money we as a society spend on our pets (and on other luxuries, such as cosmetics - the UNDP has made a variey of interesting comparisons in the past) just seems so frivolous.

No dog needs (or wants) to wear a costume.

Small rant in honor of environment week

... and while I'm on the topic of the smog summit, I'd just like to point out that this year was the first year in seven years that there was no federal minister of the environment at the summit.

Pretty lame, IMO.

The general consensus among the people I chit-chatted with is that the federal government has no environmental plan right now. Apparently Rona Ambrose (the non-appearing minister in question) doesn't have much of a background in environmental issues. According to her website, she holds bachelor's and a mater's degrees in Arts and has previously worked on intergovernmental affairs. Yeah, I would say that might not really be the appropriate kind of preparation.

I also heard that funding has been pulled out from under the feet of NRCan (Natural Resources Canada), and while I guess we're still paying the employees there to show up at work, they don't really have anything to do when they get there. Not only that but other consultants, such as those running the repair our air fleet challenge, have also had their funding pulled.

I won't elaborate on what I think about all this because I might be forced to use some bad words.

Take a pill!

Yesterday at the smog summit I met a guy who claimed to be a former bigwig in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry (now he's into packaging (which seems an odd switch for a former pharma-guy); I gather he was at the smog summit because he's helping Loblaws to reduce their corrugated cardboard use by 50%) .

Her figures the next big thing in the air quality/health field will be drugs that treat the health impacts of exposure to air pollution. As in, something that would clean your blood of all those nasty toxins, or somehow prevent those respiratory effects if taken as a preventive agent.


He was trying to tell me that this should be where I focus my energies. You know, so that I can be successful and rich.

Even if I thought that he was right about this being a money-maker (and honestly? I can picture pharmaceutical companies trying it) I can't see myself ever being comfortable with such an approach. Aside from the fact that air pollution causes ecological and visibility problems in addition to health effects, I think that prevention is the only ethical approach to our air quality problems.

God. Let's not treat the symptom (ha! and any attendant side effects!). Let's prevent the disease in the first place.

Clean Air Day

Today I was at the smog summit in Toronto, which is held for the various constituent municipalities and regions to talk about different initiatives they've taken on and challenges they face when it comes to clean air. It's organized by the Clean Air Partnership.

It's great to hear that all municipalities are doing something - most of them have anti-idling bylaws, are involved in education campaigns in the schools, and are retrofitting municipal buildings to be more energy efficient. Some are replacing traditional streetlights with LEDs, which are much cheaper and more efficient, and others are investing in biodiesel and hybrid vehicles for the municipal fleets. Here are some of the highlights in my opinion:

• Burlington is offering free transit today and on several other days this summer to encourage residents to try it out
• Caledon is the first municipality to purchase all its power from Bullfrog power
• Newmarket has an environmentally progressive subdivision being built and another developer interested in following suit
• Vaughn works with local manufacturers to figure out how they can be more efficient and save money. In one case, a business was able to save about $80 000 in less than a year by becoming more efficient and less pollution. Now that makes sense!

Still, there's lots of work. Nobody mentioned the amount of money being put into highway and road construction and how new roads always seem to attract new cars. Ajax and at least one other municipality (AUGH! I can't recall which one!) were concerned that the Federal government appears unwilling to be a full partner in air quality and climate change initiatives. (And I was concerned that the federal minister of the environment was not at the summit.) As well, although the municipalities are trying to lead the way into sustainability, it is still not clear to me how they will convince the public and the corporate world to follow them.

a largely satisfactory cartoon

Today I came across an "archive of largely satisfactory cartoon freeware".

I enjoyed several of the cartoons so thought I'd share an environmental risk-assessment-type one (since I'm sort of an environmental risk assessment type myself):

Bush gets interested in climate change?

PICTURE THANKS TO NASA

Apparently climate change might be a big threat to Florida. Two researchers say that warming is causing a long-term increase in the number of bad storms experienced by the state. They say that warming of the ocean by 1 degree Farenheit since 1970 has doubled the number of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes.

There's lots of debate (as usual with the climate change issue) about whether they're right - some say that the region is experiencing a natural upswing in the number of bad storms, and that climate change isn't a factor.

A reason this might be news is that the state Governor met to talk with the researchers, and Bush has even commented on their results (apparently he thinks they are "compelling". I'm sure he's experienced in critical thinking about approaches to hurricane modelling and can tell whether their research is any good).

Maybe Bush will pay attention. After all, he owes Florida and its hanging chads bigtime.

Risk tradeoffs

Environmental Defence released a roport today describing a study blood samples were collected from several families across Canada and then tested for various toxins. The most important finding appears to be that many of the children have higher blood levels of some toxins than their parents do.

This is worrisome - after all, these kids have years of exposure left ahead of them. The main chemicals of concern are those used in flame retardants and stain-resistant clothing - chemicals which are extensively used today.

The story seems to have been extensively picked up by the media - and of course Canadians should be kept informed about potential risks like this.

But.

The way the media handles stories like this sometimes bugs me - it often feels alarmist. Here are some things that bothered me this time around:

1. in no secondary report could I actually find what the measured levels were! (I have now downloaded the original report which does contain this information - and have realized that I don't have the expertise to interpret the levels of risk associated with these exposures anyway. )

2. the report also concludes that for substances which have been regulated, childrens' blood levels were lower than their parents'. This was not the highlight of the news stories - but is equally important information IMO.

3. sometimes the cost-benefit implications of getting rid of a chemical should be considered - what is the risk of chronic exposure to flame retardants versus the number of kids who are likely to be more severely burned in their absence? Is there an alternative that we know is safe? I don't know the answer to those questions and I'd like to.

Thanks to Caroline who pointed out the report to me this morning

My precioussssss!

Yeurgh. It seems that although China's one-per-family babies should be awfully precious, there are a number of companies over there who are willing to risk the health of the country's next generation for profit. The most recent example has a company using plastic from discarded CDs to make baby bottles. According to the factory manager (in an article from China Daily),

"the factory used the reclaimed plastic because it was much cheaper than clean material"

It turns out that the bottles contain hydroxybenzene, a yucky chemical that leaches into warm milk and harms the kidneys and liver.

This company is not alone either: Reuters is reporting that two years ago, 13 babies died and more than 200 got sick after ingesting fake milk powder, and more recently, tests on children’s clothing have found that many containe a dye that can cause bladder and urethra cancer with chronic exposure. As in, the type of exposure you might get from wearing a piece of clothing a lot.

Ahhh, capitalism has come to China.

Maybe these examples are the exception; I hope so. Although it's hard to know how to value the health of the next generation, even in purely economic terms it's a poor trade for the financial gains these ethically-challenged companies are hoping for.

Besides. It's just so wrong.

In Celebration of Bike Week

It is Toronto Bike Week this week. And as it turns out I have an awesome, new, thematically appropriate (for this blog, anyway) cycling shirt with which to celebrate:

IT'S A SUSHI BIKE SHIRT!!!

I love sushi. I love biking. I especially love biking when it replaces driving and reduces air pollution and gets me a workout. And completely concidentally, we've been invited out tomorrow - to visit a Japanese friend who is preparing food for us. Oo, this is good.

Left or Right?

Last night some guy wearing a "Green Party" button on his lapel was outside our local cafe having a smoke.

I don't get it:

Aren't green party people typically environmentalist, socialist, left-wing types? And aren't cigarette companies representative of everything corporate, and capitalist? I mean, Philip Morris owns Kraft - between the cigarettes, peanut butter and that unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese, they are making trillions of dollars. And I'm thinking that altrusim is not a major part of their investment portfolio.

Why is it that the stereotype of the artsy left-wing types so often includes smoking? It seems like such a contradction in values to me.

Holes in the upper atmosphere and beyond

Yesterday I was writing about how I hoped that our collective actions - and those of our governments - really have made a difference to the ozone layer, but that although a new model predicted that the hole will disappear by 2050, I wanted more data before I would really believe that the hole is truly shrinking.

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess!

Apparently there is other evidence out there that the loss of ozone is levelling off: data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from NASA and from a global monitoring network have shown that chlorine (a major component of CFCs, which caused the hole in the ozone layer in the first place) has leveled off in the atmosphere, and now show that ozone loss is leveling off, too.

The paper, by Betsy Weatherhead of NOAA says that the improvements are due to the 1987 enaction of the Montreal protocol. So hopefully that shrinkage will start to happen soon.

How nice to have a Canadian association to an environmental success story (however remote). How frustrating that the current Canadian environmental agenda seems to have disappeared into a hole of a blacker variety.

Click here for NOAA's latest view of the hole in the ozone layer. I wanted to show you today's picture but it won't upload for some reason. Grrr.

Here's to shrinkage

Everyone always says, " look after the environment, don't pollute, we're wrecking this place and we all need to take action". And then it always feels like any action I might take is pretty tiny compared to the big 'ole problems we seem to be facing, and that geez, nobody else is taking that action along with me.

Today I read that the hole in the ozone layer might actually start shrinking - and that it could be gone by 2050. Of course this is based on a computer model developed by one research group - and as with all science there's a bit of disagreement about whether or not they're right - but the point is, we found out there was a problem (CFC emissions), we took some action (reducing CFC emissions, disallowing them in newer products) and we got a result.

Erm, well not yet actually. We definitely got reduced CFC emissions... however, according to these modellers, the hole has reached its maximum size. Which sort of implies to me that it hasn't actually started shrinking yet. I know a lot of equations and complicated stuff goes into those models but I'll be feeling a whole lot more confident once that hole in the ozone layer is for sure getting smaller again.

I feel famous

Today, I found out that my blog has independently been discovered by two really cool forces in my life - by someone I know - the director of my choir, Cantores Celestes - which I talked about in this post, and by my very favorite girl-nerd science blog, inkycircus, who picked up on my Rustle the Leaf post from a couple of days ago. Aw, I like Rustle too.

Second Cup and the mystery of the expanding coffee

Second Cup has decided to change all their coffee sizes. Except they haven't actually changed much about the cup size except to rename them. What I used to get when I ordered a medium is now called "small". What Pat used to get when he ordered a large is now called "medium". And so on.

I think the price per cup (for the medium aka small) has gone up by two pennies.



So what are they doing?

(a) hoping that multitudes of people will initially order the wrong size and so they'll get more coffee and pay more by accident thereby temporarily increasing profits for Second Cup

(b) planning to cash in on that extra two cents per cup (I soppose that two cents per cup times many many cups isn't insignificant) and hoping that people won't notice the price difference because they'll be too busy wondering what size they should order

(c) hoping that we'll all get used to drinking bigger cups of coffee because we'll start off ordering the wrong size by mistake - but will end up getting used to buying and paying for more java, thereby increasing profits for Second Cup

(d) Just messing with us so that someone can claim they've rebranded the company or some such nonsense. Which, presumably, would be aimed at increasing customers thereby increasing profits for Second Cup

Ya, really, who knows what they're up to.

The illusion of May 24th long weekend

Every year it happens. I look forward to the long weekend in May. May two-four. Yep, the unofficial beginning of summer.

Like lots of other Canadians, I percieve that this long weekend is the first time it's sensible to go hang out in the woods - or to be outdoors doing something at least vaguely adventurous that doesn't require wearing snowpants.

Except that every year it rains. And it's cold. And this year I forgot the freakin' tent poles! Yep, three whole hours away from Toronto, and I have a brainwave that the tent poles may not have actually been packed in the bag with the tent. Sure enough, the tent bag was very squishy. No hope that I might be wrong.

So we end up shelling out a bunch of cash for a Coleman tent that has a fly about the size of my pinkie fingernail, and which proceeds to leak like a sieve precisely at each of the four corners as it pours rain overnight. Which is does, since it's May 24th weekend and it pretty much rains every year as far as I can recall.

Ah well. We managed to stay warm due to multiple layers of fleece and dry due to the astounding floorspace involved in the Coleman version of the "3-man tent". And we even got in some hiking along the Bruce Trail and saw some pretty spectacular scenery.

And this time next year, I'll probably be getting ready to enjoy my first "outside" weekend of the year once again.

More climate change propaganda?

Rustle the Leaf is a weekly syndicated comic strip designed "to communicate essential environmental themes and truths". It's an educational website and they provide instructions on how to link to the current strip, so I don't think thye'll mind me posting this one from their archives here.

It's got an odd but environmentally appropriate cast of characters that includes Rustle (the leaf), an acorn, and a water drop. [Reminds me of the stories my Dad used to tell about the adventures of Henry the water drop. I think the science-y part of me has clear genetic origins!]

Ironically, this week's strip is about converting animal waste into energy - so maybe the comment in my post from yesterday about not wanting to have extra poo around was a bit premature!

My propaganda wins

Oh, goody. A group I've never heard of called the Competitive Enterprise Institute has come up with a commercial extolling the benefits of a greenhouse gas. The idea is to counter some of the alarmist climate change stuff coming out in the media - most notably, the documentry featuring Al Gore called "An Inconvenient Truth".

Apparently the ad starts off like this:

A little girl blows away dandelion fluff as an announcer says, "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life".

Yup, that waste product left over when our bodies have gotten all the oxygen goodness out of it is part of life. Mind you, our bodies creates a variety of other waste products as well and I'm not sure that I'd happily accept having an excess of that stuff around in my "ambient environment" just because it was a byproduct of some useful industrial process... I won't even to get started listing chemicals that are vital for life and which are poisonous at high exposure levels.

"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love," the ad runs. "Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed -- what would our lives be like then?"

I'm guessing that the alternative they're implying is something out of the dark ages. We'll have no light,ever, be forced to eat everything raw, and have walk miles to our workplaces (uphill both ways, and we won't even have any good hiking boots because they're probably all made in China).

I humbly offer an alternative view: phased-in green power including hydroelectric and wind power coupled with development of efficient products (heard of the Energuide?), reduction in electricity use (ahem, could we turn off the office lights overnight, please?) , embracing locally-grown produce, and designing communities that encourage walking and cycling.

AM I TILTING AT WINDMILLS?

Mmm... you smell... funny.

I read on popgadget today that Demeter Fragrance Library (I've never heard of them before but who knows, I don't relaly keep up with the fragrance world) is releasing a limited edition of...

Eau de Play-Doh. 1 oz costs $19. (U.S. funds, I presume.)

I guess it's in honour of Play-doh's fiftieth anniversary, but if you ask me it's plain wierd. I can imagine two seconds of nostalgic happiness followed by mild disgust for the rest of the day. Nope, could not wear this to the office. (Well, you know - if I went to an office)

I checked the website for Demeter Fragrance Library, and they have other scnts too, including chocolate chip cookie, mojito, and kahala Kamikazee (all YUM!) as well as beetroot, turpentine, sawdust, and holy water.

I'm still wondering what the holy water smell would be.

Census Day!

Today is census day in Canada. Apparently you can actually get fined $500 or spend three months in jail if you don't fill it out - although I don't know how often that actually happens. On the National tonight, it was reported that for every person not counted, the province loses 11000 dollars in federal transfer payments. Sounds like a lot of cashola!

We got the long form - which included over 50 questions and took P. ages to fill out online. Some of the questions were even a bit subjective - how many hours of unpaid housework did I do last week... umm... I'm not too sure?

And what a warm fuzzy feeling I get inside when I think of how we've helped all those companies that use postal codes and census data to direct their marketing.

Another H2O commercial gripe

Brita has a new TV commercial that points out that tap water and the water in your toilet tank come from the SAME source.

I think I was supposed to think: Ewww. And that obviously, it must be a good idea to put a filter on my tap, because who wants to think about drinking that nasty water in the toilet, right?

Before we hit the commercial's punch line I was actually thinking that maybe the ad was about water conservation. Silly moi.

Sheesh. Talk about playing on peoples' fears about bacteria.

Canada Health Day

According to a supplement in my daily national newspaper (provided for the Canada Health Network) today is Canada Health Day.

I find it a little odd that I'm registered in a graduate-level University program all about health, where a lot of us (rather unsurprisingly) research public health issues - and I hadn't heard of Canada health day at all.

Not through school, or the media, or just random emails from various agiencies I deal with.

What is Canada health day supposed to be? 'Cuz if I didn't even know about it - surely - it wasn't an education/awareness campaign?

A bit of drama..

Two nights ago as P. and I were cleaning up after dinner, we had the back door open because it was warm in the kitchen.

"Smell like campfire", I commented.

Several minutes later, this was the scene from our front window:


Turns out the the apartment three units to our left was well and truly on fire. The firefighters had to go in with sledgehammers and we could hear them tearing apart the walls as we stood on our back deck. Lots of smoke too. Considering that all the buildings are essentially the same building here - one big string of storefronts with apartments above them, I wasn't really sure that we should actually bestanding on our back deck...!

Hurrah for the Toronto fire department - they managed to get everything under control relatively quickly. I did decide to not go to bed until I was sure they were packing up their equipment though!

Thirsty?

I just saw Aquafina's new TV commercial last night - they show how wonderful and pure Aquafina water is by sticking some instrument into it that measures total dissolved solids and comes up with some very small number. [Now that I think about it - was it a number greater than zero? What were the units? I'll have to watch more closely next time]

Interesting since total dissolved solids are related mostly to palatability and their absence does not necessarily imply safety or absence of pollutants.

Aquafina water probably doesn't contain bacteria or other pollutants - I don't really know, and this TV commercial does nothing to convince me one way or the other.

I wonder if the implication is that taste is the most important consideration for consumers of bottled water, or if it's that Aquafina assumes that although water safety is important to the public, we are easily duped into believing that water purity and safety can be determined by some arbitrary scientific-sounding test.

Allow me to brag for a moment

I sing in a women's choir in Toronto called Cantores Celestes and we have just released a new CD (it's actually the choir's fourth). It's called "The Circle Never Ends" and it's a combination of choral/bluegrass - we collaborated with an excellent bluegrass band called the Foggy Hogtown Boys. Sounds wierd but actually we sound pretty damn good.

Anyway, cuts from the CD have now been played on the radio in every province in Canada as well as in California. And Toronto's CBC 99.1 chose it as their disc of the month for May.

Yee-haw!!

Creepy crawlies

Scientists have developed small robots that can fool cockroaches into thinking they are part of the gang. The "robo-roaches" have pheremone molecules on the them and are programmed to interact with real cockroaches. I gather the researchers think we'll soon we'll be able to have our own pied piper of cockroach-land, rounding up all of these horrible buggies so that we can finally go ahead and get rid of them.

I'm all for getting rid of roaches - they Really. Are. Gross. And they can carry diseases all over your nice clean counters in the middle of the night without you knowing.

To me, the creepiness of this announcement has nothing to do with the insect aspect and everything to do with the controlling communities of animals thing. One of the researchers was quoted as saying:

"It would be interesting to build our own intelligent societies of animals"

Yeah. And then - I know, we could build our own intelligent societies of people. And they would be modelled after MY vision of the way the world should be - MINE, Mwahahahahaha...

Besides, these animals already have "collective intellingence" - it's what the researchers are modelling and without it, this project would never have worked. I don't really get why us taking control of the collective action of the animal group makes it more "intelligent".

It just makes us more in control - and that is not the same thing. [KEYWORD in above quote: "our". Oh, now I'm getting all militant about how we want to control the earth and everything in it. Better stop typing NOW before this really goes off the rails]

Honestly. Just eat the sugar and go fly a kite.

So aspartame doesn't cause cancer after all - so say a group of European scientists who also seem to think that they have been so thorough and are so smart that their conclusions should put this issue to bed.

The problem is that just last year there was a study released showing that aspartame produced lymphomas in rats.

ASPARTAME

I dunno - I'd have to go and read all the studies myself to figure out what I believe, and I'm just not that committed to this topic. I'm sure every study has issues: number of animals tested, doses selected, extrapolation of results to humans, extrapolation to low doses... That's sort of the nature of trying to do animal research and then saying it applies to humans.

All I know is that if we could all just take control of our own lives and figure out that really, all most of us need to do is eat healthily and get a bit of exercise, then the stuff wouldn't be such a hot item to begin with.

Stereotype, begone!

I thought the stereotype was that men didn't really discuss relationships with each other; that it wasn't really very macho. After today though, I've cancelled my subscription to that belief.

This morning, in the gym, I overheard two guys discussing a friend's breakup with a girl and whether or not it was the right decision... all while they were lifting some nice big weights.

Later, I passed two guys on the crosswalk, and one was saying to the other:
"...I mean, I wonder what that relationship is actually like, between those two..."

And later, one guy to another as they walked down the sidewalk behind me:
"... a relationship can't (fu**in') be all about sex, you know? There's gotta be more to it than that..."

So guys do actually think about this relationship stuff after all. Aw, that's nice.

Ah, we didn't need that science stuff anyway...

Apparently in Britain, universities are closing all sorts of science courses. Not just science courses actually, entire science departments - and not wierd, random, non-mainstream departments, very mainstream ones like chemistry and physics.

That can't be good.

Apparently members of the Commons Science and Technology Committee said that "This is the logical outcome of introducing a market in higher education". Well, then, obviously the market isn't very good at figuring out what might be beneficial to us all in the long term. Doesn't this vague, "market thing" know anything about the economic potential in industries like: pharmaceutical, aerospace, electronics...

I guess that they've allowed the universities to be autonomous - basically because they're allowing them to get their funding from outside the government - and now they have no control over what happens there and can't 'make the universities keep these departments going.

If losing entire science depatments is the logical result of this approach, the obvious question seem to be:

"WTF were they thinking?"

Thanks to Amazon.com for the Beaker plush toy image

It's my birthday...

Well, not quite yet. I'm a June baby. Which, according to some guy from the New Scientist who does their science blog, means I'm (statistically) more likely to commit suicide, have anorexia, become an alcoholic, or develop Alzheimer's disease. Oh joy.

(Uh, let's be clear - I'm happy with life. This is just me reporting on information that results purely from someone's statistical analysis. And we all know that statistics is pretty much capable of demonstrating any relationship we'd like it to, as long as we omit a teeny bit of context here and there)

The only (statistical) bonus associated with being born in June - according to this guy's summary anyway - is that I'm more likely to have been a medical student.

Oops, I guess I missed that boat.

Oho! Fun with Words III...

I found this website today that makes me feel so relieved. It's a list of all sorts of common spelling and language mistakes that people make in English. It stresses me out when people write things like ,

"... it was a mute point"

See this earlier post of mine ...and also this one)

Knowing that this stuff drives other people bananas and seeing all these errors in one big list somehow makes me feel a little bit more at peace with this (ungrammatical) world.

Bears and hippos, oh my!

Polar Bears and Hippos are now classified as threatened species. This makes me so angry, and very sad - both are huge, amazing, majestic animals that we have no right to be affecting. The main threat to polar bears is reduced habitat because of climate change, and hippos are being hunted without restriction in the Congo.

The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, says that 16,000 species of animals and plants are at risk of disappearing, including one in four mammals and one in eight birds.


Why do us humans think we're at the top of the food chain? We seem to have the impression that we're in charge of the earth. Too bad for us that the earth's ecosystems are more like a web than a chain. We are eventually going to tip ecology's balance so far off-kilter that it will be beyond redemption. And I wouldn't be surprised if the one strand of the web that could have saved us will be some tiny bacterium or some insect we classify as a pest.

We have no clue what we're doing.

My yearly treeplanting nostalgia

Ahhh, spring. A few years ago, I would have been preparing to head up to Northern Ontario to plant some trees. The smell of thawing earth and new vegetation always reminds me of the trek up there. I miss being so constantly in the forest - far away from the city and cars and noise. There's something really great about hard physical work outdoors - feeling truly tired is part of it, but I think that it allowed me to make a real connection with nature - hokey as that sounds.

Aside from learning how to really work hard, physically (something that I thought I knew how to do but really didn't - I'd say that I kept getting better at driving myself each year) - I also met and became very close to a lot of people I would never have otherwise spoken to.

And it was one of the few situations in my life where I was frequantly the lone woman in a group of men - and feeling comfortable and equal in that setting has probably empowered me immensely.

Ok, I'll stop being all warm and fuzzy about it now and pine for my treeplanting days on my own.

Pine for my treeplanting days. Haha.

Thanks to New North Greenhouses for the photo of baby jackpines

Early onset dementia??

I was in a concert last night and one of my friends who came handed me a $20 to cover the cost of her ticket when I saw her after the show. Not even 30 minutes later, I was helping to clean up... I pulled everything out of my pockets and tossed it into a garbage bag. It wasn't until about an hour later that I realized that I probably threw out twenty bucks. And since the tickets were actually only $15, I owe this friend $5 - so I'm out $25 now.

Then today I completely forgot about a social event I was supposed to go to - and was looking forward to - and I have no idea why. It's not even like I was caught up in doing something important...

What is happening to my brain cells???

What? - I agree with Wente??

This almost never happens. Margaret Wente is a columnist at the Globe and Mail who usually gets me all riled up with her Saturday columns. But today... I find myself agreeing with her.

She wrote about Wendy Mesley's recent TV show - where Wendy, a breast cancer survivor, talked about how there's a cancer epidemic and blamed it entirely on all the chemicals we are exposed to through products we buy or industrial emissions. I saw the show and it made me mad too.

The problem was, she really misrepresented the facts. Sure, the absolute numbers of cancer cases are going up in Canada - quite a bit. But so is the number of older people. And cancer usually happens to older people. If you look at cancer rates over the past years - they have actually been pretty stable, and some of the rates for specific cancers have actually decreased.

I'm willing to buy the argument that being exposed to more chemicals and mixtures of chemicals probably doesn't exactly benefit our health. But many chemicals we worry about are also produced in nature. How can we avoid those? And some of the doses we're exposed to are so very small - they are unlikely to pose much risk.

In any case, it is certainly not possible to say that most cancer cases today are due to environmental exposures. Some clear risk factors for cancer (like smoking, and even eating enough vegetables and getting exercise) are a result of personal choices that people make.

We all take risks on a daily basis - and we are so often much more willing to accept even a high risk if we percieve it as having been our choice. So - while it is often worthwhile to try and reduce risks that are beyond our control, in this case it was out of proportion to blame "cancer in today's world" entirely on environmental exposures.

Chinese Chests

Apparently the average cup size in China is increasing. It used to be that most bras sold in China were cup size A or B - but now manufacturers are making more of the bigger cup sizes.

On Inkycircus, where I found this, they think that the "explanation" provided by the Shanghai Daily - that Chinese women are becoming bigger-breasted due to increases in nutritious eating and participation in physical activity - is a load of hooey. They propose that increases in McDonald's consumption might be the real culprit. Some of the commentary from the peanut gallery suggests that it might actually be related to more hormonal birth control intake.

To me, either of the latter two explanations sounds plausible... but either way, I bet the Chinese MEN aren't complaining... ha!

Green bricks?

Apparently someone has figured out how to take fly ash - which is produced as a pollutant byproduct by coal-fired power plants - and turn it into bricks.

This sounds great becuase normally fly ash has to be disposed of in special landfills. Not only that - but the technique uses a high-pressure system that doesn't cause the air pollutant emissions you typically get with "traditionl brick" - making techniques.

(Oooh, I can just see it: the brick-people-association, or whoever represents brick-makers, will be getting upset if this idea gains momentum)

My only question: fly ash contains mercury, lead and other toxic chemicals. I'd want to be pretty sure that my exposure was going to be verrry low if these bricks were going to be a part of any building where I spend a lot of time...

Graduate research I'm glad isn't mine

I already find that scheduling meetings with graduate supervisors and committee members can be tedious - especially if you're trying to gather more than one of them at a time! Sometimes it feels like it's holding up my progress (although I'm actually pretty sure that my progress is mostly hampered by my own procrastination).

But thank goodness my research doesn't depend on NASA launching a satellite! Apparently some grad students at Hampton Univeristy are doing research that is all about corroborating the findings of CALIPSO, an earth-observing satellite.

Whose launch has been canceled repeatedly for over a year! Ouch. That would be so frustrating!

Apparently the advisors on this type of research usually have an alternative research project ideas lined up for their students though... juist in case they can't wait on NASA any longer!!

I am woman, hear me ROAR!

PHOTO FROM... A JAR WEBSITE(!)

I know that nowadays, in Canada anyway, women can pretty much do whatever they want... but we can all identify what the stereotypical female idea was (dainty, claen and well-groomed, good good, great housekeeper) and probably would still identify traits such as being more emotional, more interested in clothing and baby animals and generally physically less strong as being more (generally) "female" than "male".

So maybe it's not so surprising that doing any of the things that fit into the traditional female stereotype well makes me feel merely competent, whereas doing anything more physically demanding or that required tools makes me feel tough.

I just came back from a run in the rain. I got absolutely soaked, looked more like drowned rat than dainty housekeeper... but I felt (still feel) great. Strong. Tough.

RAWR.

Maybe I'll go lift some heavy stuff and turn on some power tools now.

Awwwwwww.....

Well, my tough-girl no-nonsense side thinks this sort of stuff is silly. Yes, that's definitely it. A waste of good, potentially productive time. Completely frivolous.

But... these guys are so good at what they do.

You'll just have to click on the link to find out what has reduced my entire vocabulary to one word - "Awwwwwwwwwwwwww" - for extended periods of time.

Mulroney? Really?!

Last night former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was declared the "greenest" Prime Ministed that Canada has ever had. The award was voted on by environmentalists and a few others including former Liberal environment minister Sheila Copps, was handed out by an environmental magazine called Corporate Knights.

Wierd. I never would have predicted Mulroney for this award, but admit I haven't a clue about what most governments in recent years have actually done about the environment ... and although I do know that Muroney was in on Meech Lake and Free Trade, I was still in my early teens when he was in office and probably not paying much attention to anything that wasn't big news.

I do know that Canada used to be percieved internationally as a leader in environmental action - now, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, we are ranked 28th out of 30 OEDC nations on our environmental record. Which I find shocking.

Apparently none of the prime ministers since Mulroney (there have been four: Kim Campbell, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper) got even a single vote.

Maybe it's time for Canada to be a leader again.

PAT USES PEDAL POWER TO GET A LOOK AT ONTARIO'S ELECTRICITY GRID

Etiquette I never learned

I was at one of those social gatherings yesterday where everyone stands around chatting, there are hors d'oeuvres circulating, and platters of fruit and veggies, crackers and cheese...

I can NEVER figure out how you're supposed to manage it: I'm chatting, drink in hand, and someone comes around with a tray of spring rolls and sushi. Yum. So I take the proffered napkin. NOW what am I supposed to do - how to pick up the food - since both hands are now occupied? And then, even more complicated, how do you eat it? I can sort of manage this if I only pick up one item, by mashing the napkin against my glass while I pick up the food (yesterday, this resulted in a soggy napkin since I was having a cold drink and the glass was "sweating").

It's even worse if I stop at a table and load up my napkin with a selection of things and then pick up my drink and move away from the table.

Hmmm. Maybe you're not really supposed to "load up your napkin". Ah well, I'm not exactly the rep for "Dainty R Us".

(PHOTO: A RESTAURANT IN MICHIGAN CALLED BJ'S. NEVER HEARD OF IT. LOOKS GOOD.)

A taxing endeavour

I've just realized that I should do my taxes. I know that this should have been obvious from the time I got my first 2005 T4 in the mail, but the end of April has somehow snuck up on me.

Every year I'm amazed that the general public is (in theory) supposed to be able to figure out this tax thing themselves. I guess the tax software that's available now does simplify things, but anyone who has ever perused the tax guide and navigated the forms by hand knows that they are anything but straightforward. It seems like no matter which page you start with, you're supposed to have filled out some other schedule or form already. It's a never-ending circle of form-filling hell.

Tax software and online filing makes everything much simpler - but still - every year it seems like someone publishes a comparison of the return you'd get if you, your tax software, or an accountant does your return. And every year, the best way to go is with the accountant.

It hardly seems reasonable that in most cases, only a professional can really do your taxes properly, since every Canadian is required to submit them every year.

Viva Las Vegas

So this weekend I went to Paris, Venice, and New York, stopped overnight in the Middle East, visited the pyramids and oh, yeah, saw a medieval castle and a pirate ship.

Yep, I was in Las Vegas, Nevada. On "the strip", you can visit almost any fantasy world you want. Including the fantasy of winning a million.

Heading to Las Vegas over Easter weekend is sort of like creating a collision of worship: resurrection versus acquisition. (Although in Vegas, the desire to acquire can lead to quite the opposite effect - depletion. Or should I say donation - to the Gods of the corporate world).

Rice is nice

Apparently for every one degree increase (Celcius) in ambient temperature, rice yields decline by about 15%.

Pretty scary when you consider that the globe is supposedly warming due to climate change and that about three billion people on this here warm globe rely on rice to feed themselves.

Luckily, the folks at the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) are on it. They're trying to develop rice that can handle flooding, drought, and with high temperatures. They've had some successes before - having developed a high-yield rice back in th '60s - so there is hope.
They're also trying to develop rice that's enriched with Vatamin A. By implanting two genes from a daffodil and one from a bacterium into a variety of rice called japonica rice.

Sounds wierd to me, but hey - whatever works.

Hurrah for raw sewage

In Oslo, they've started using raw sewage to heat their homes. Heat is extracted from the sewage and transferred to hot water pipes - which then send hot water back to homes around the city. The technology is basically the same thing that makes a fridge work, and the city is suddenly able to heat the equivalent of about 9000 apartments per year - and save about 6000 tonnes of oil that would have otherwise been burned..

It sounds as though the technology could be used all over the place, which is way cool. So far the only problem in Oslo seems to be the irregular water flows. As in, there's not much raw sewage available early on Monday mornings (4-6 AM) because most people go to bed early on Sunday night.
Tangentially, my favorite quote from the whole article is this:

"In Oslo, untreated sewer flows -- from toilets, bathtubs, sinks and rainwater from the streets -- runs into the system past a filter that keeps out big objects such as dead rats."
There's just something grisly about the "big objects such as dead rats" bit.

Reconciling Punk with what is corporate and superficial

I have always thought of people who are into the "punk" look as being rebellious, anti-establishment types. Yesterday I was walking up Yonge street behind a guy whose hair was carefully styled in a prickle of 2-inch spikes. His jeans were ripped acid wash, andI'd be willing to bet that metal studs featured somewhere in his attire, although I couldn't see any from behind.

The guy was carrying shopping bags from about three or four different stores that feature prominantly at the Eaton Centre. Huh? This guy shops at a mall that dilineates the centre of Toronto's corporate merchandising universe?

Also. It must have taken ages for him to style his hair, and really, achieving that punk look must actually take a bit of effort and require a very fashion-conscious approach to getting dressed. Which means... that what is superficial becomes important. Again..Huh?

The one time when fuzzy and sticky go together...

Remember when Canadian x-country skier Sara Renner snapped her pole during her Olympic race and a Norwegian coach handed her his pole from the sidelines? She went on to win a silver medal while the Norwegians finished fourth.

Yep, it was a great Olympic story. Apparently Canadians have been feeling all warm and fuzzy about it pretty much ever since.

Michael Page, of Montreal, started "Project Maple Syrup", asking Canadians to donate money for, or cans of, maple syrup for the Norwegians. When I read that more than 7000 cans, or 5.2 tonnes of the stuff was sent last week, I nearly fell off my chair. Who could ever get through so many pancakes. Or waffles. Or... or what else do you really eat with maple syrup?

(Is Canada secretly trying to destroy Norway's 2010 Olympic chances by inducing carb and sugar comas in their athletes?)

Thank goodness there are actually just a whole lot of people who contribute to sending a national team to the Olympics - the Canadian embassy is going to pass it out to a whole bunch of people, including the Norwegian Olympic committee and the Norwegian athletes, as well as volunteers and friends.

Bring on the pancakes.

Computer-centric

image from www.calculator.org/MediaKitImages/

Yesterday I started working on a calculation assignment for a class I'm taking. It's the sort of thing I haven't done in ages and I found myself trying to remember how to get started. It felt so odd to sit down with just a piece of paper, a pencil and a calculator and begin by listing all the variables at the top of the page.

The keyboard that sits in the middle of the desk kept getting in my way, and I didn't have a functioning calculator around so I had to use the one on the computer.

Eventually I ended up typing out the whole calcuation assignment, which seems odd since it's kind of a pain to insert a bunch of equations into a Word document... but at the same time, the idea of handing in anything written out by hand seems... archaic.

The technology takeover of my life is apparently complete.

Care to discuss global warming?

Global warming - is it happening or not? Considering the winter Toronto just had, with little or no snow and warm temperatures throughout January and February, it's not hard to feel a little concerned about the weather.

There is lots of evidence to suggest that us humans are affecting the climate of the earth, and there are also several coherent expressions of skepticism out there - like Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Scientific American is promoting a bit more discussion. They have a blogger, George Musser, on the job, answering queries from skeptics about climate change.

Although you have to click through a few screens to get to the good stuff, it's an interesting read.

Maybe this shouldn't bug me, but it does

Apparently the Royal Canadian Mint, in co-operation with the Breast Cancer Foundation of Canada, is releasing a pink-ribbon quarter.

It is truly fantastic that there is so much awareness and fundraising about breast cancer - there were those 'target" T-shirts, there's the weekend to end breast cancer, and there are all sorts of pink ribbon-driven cooking, yard-sale, and craft-related fundraisers.

Whoever's running the Breast Cancer fundraising program is a genius.

It also gives me the feeling of being a slick, corporate, marketing machine. And I'm wary of that.

With respect to the quarter... there are other chronic diseases that should be important to Canadians that we rarely hear about: heart disease, for example... and all of the other cancers. Or what about diseases that are not commonly thought of as killers, but which have a profound effect on the lives of many Canadians: asthma and COPD, diabetes.
See this graph? It's mortality rate vs. year for Canadians of all ages. I made it using public data online at Health Canada.

Starting from the top:

• Turquoise: Circulatory Disease
• Purple: Ischeamic Heart Disease
• Green: Lung Cancer
• Red: Colorectal Cancer
• Blue: Breast Cancer
• Dark Green: Asthma

So I'm curious as to when we'll be seeing the heart, the bloodstream, the lungs, and the gastrointestinal tract on our quarters.

Symbolizing an intersection of worlds

World #1:

Any world created in literature, through clever and skilful use of words and phraseology. Literature is a way to express themes and make arguments through use of metaphor, and simile, and above all, requires creation of a damn good story...

World #2:

The outdoors - the kind involving wilderness and self-propelled adventure, escaping from roads and man-made structures and boundaries, testing your own limits, and seeing the beauty of nature while in it.

So what actually happened is that yesterday I was at Mountain Equipment Co-op... and so was Margaret Atwood, grand dame of Canadian literature.

Cool.