Given the history of Vancouver politics, I’m completely unsurprised by yet another delay. Paul Martin could make a decision faster than our civic government.

I’m expecting a Royal Commission followed by a judicial inquiry into it’s findings. After that, no doubt, the First Nations will launch a protest.

Stanley Park’s hollow tree gets reprieve
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 | 1:35 AM ET CBC News

The Vancouver Park Board has decided to study options to keep Stanley Park’s famous hollow tree instead of axing it this week as planned.

Board commissioners voted in a regular meeting Monday night to give a 150-day reprieve to one of Vancouver’s oldest treasures. Park board engineers will study options to possibly keep the dead cedar.

In my town, polar fleece is considered a fashion statement (although I’m shifting to natural fabrics personally, both wool and organic cotton.)

Armani says italy is ‘too slovenly’
Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, June 24, 2008

ROME — Giorgio Armani, the godfather of Italian style, has excoriated his home country for slipping into “slovenliness.” As he unveiled a collection of trim blazers and sharply cut suits in Milan, Armani said Italians had let themselves go. “It is time to straighten ourselves out, we are too slovenly,”

In May of 1998 the Atlantic Monthy print an article called A Special Moment in History

It beings with a caution to:

BEWARE of people preaching that we live in special times. People have preached that message before, and those who listened sold their furniture and climbed up on rooftops to await ascension

and then goes on:

And yet, for all that, we may live in a special time.

The rest of the article goes on to make several points with society, in general, has yet to fully aware of. The article’s well worth reading, and should lead to some careful reflection on the values of our world.

“…William Catton, who was a sociologist at Washington State University before his retirement, once tried to calculate the amount of energy human beings use each day. In hunter-gatherer times is was about 2,500 calories, all of it food. That is the daily energy intake of a common dolphin. A modern human being uses 31,000 calories a day, most of it in the form of fossil fuel. That is the intake of a pilot whale. And the average American uses six times that—as much as a sperm whale.”

The emphasis is mine.

This is closely followed by another good point, particularly salient to my life.

“…Some scientists in Vancouver tried to calculate one such ‘footprint’ and found that although 1.7 million people lived on a million acres surrounding their city, those people required 21.5 million acres of land to support them—wheat fields in Alberta, oil fields in Saudi Arabia, tomato fields in California. People in Manhattan are as dependent on faraway resources as people on the Mir space station.”

Galactica Season Four has just ended and it was far far better than Season Three which, in my opinion got wrapped up in its own sense of self-importance with an obvious Iraq war allegory.

The finale was excellent, although the second to last episode was better (and written by Jane Espenson.) By far, my favourite moment came towards the end when the crew lands on Earth, and Adama reaches down to pick up a handful of sand.

I have seen the future salvation of humanity, my friends, and it comes on a wet, foggy beach in Vancouver.

Season Five in 2009 seems to be promising, with ten episodes to come.

…or not, as the case may be.

Sam Sullivan is out as the NPA candidate for Mayor of Vancouver, leaving him in office as a lame duck until November. Effectively, Peter Ladner is the mayor starting today.

Don’t believe me? Vancouver’s electoral system is not like those of most Canadian cities. There are no wards: all councillors are elected on a city wide basis, as is the Mayor. This makes the Mayor’s chair one of first among equals: every chair in that room has the same mandate. With Sam not running in the next election, he’s the worst kind of lame duck at the moment.

I’ve never been a fan of Sam, but I’m not convinced that Ladner’s going to be a huge improvement. He’s been lackluster as a councillor, and I see no reason to think this will change.

This city needs leadership from it’s Mayor, and that will only come with an overhaul of the structure of the city’s government. The appetite for that, unfortunately, appears to be a long time coming.

Blueback was the first boat home on Sunday, although Saturday’s lack of wind left us flailing. It did, however, give us a chance to put out our asymmetrical sail.

2:36 seconds into the video, the girl wearing the number 32 with her sleeves rolled up.

you can always count on a penguin.

Luc Bourdon had been riding for 10 days before this accident. Lack of rider training is the number one cause of motorcycle accidents.

Schneider wasn’t surprised Bourdon would ride a motorcycle.

“Something like this, buying a motorcycle, just fits right into his persona. Always fearless and doing whatever he felt would give him that rush or make him excited.”

I told someone awhile ago that I’d never get on the back of a bike with anyone who thought that riding motorcycles was cool. Kids who are looking for “a rush” are the ones who wind up dead.

The Toronto Star asks a very important question today.

How green is wine in a box?
Experts disagree on how much of a Tetra Pak can really be recycled
May 28, 2008 04:30 AM NANCY J. WHITE

While shoppers at Ontario’s liquor stores may soon be toting their own reusable bags, they still have an eco-dilemma: is it greener to buy wine in a glass bottle or in a Tetra Pak carton?

Most disappointingly, I also learned this;

Returned Tetra Pak cartons are sent by container ship to mills in China and Korea.
(A Michigan mill recently closed, and the Tetra Pak company is looking for recycling options in Canada, says Koel.)

That Michigan mill used to handle Vancouver’s recycling of Tetra-Paks, a fact that caused me to stop purchasing items when I had a choice. (Orange Juice and soup stocks are packed in little else these days.) That it’s now closed means, no doubt, that Vancouver’s Tetra-Paks now embark on the same worldwide journey.

It’s my view that the government should pass legislation requiring local recycling for manufacturers who choose packaging to provide a local recycling option where one is not available.

Refillable glass bottles. That’s a better way to go. Avalon Milk does it in Vancouver, and it’s the only milk I buy.

Tetra Paks are horrible, and I’m offended by the fact that wines like French Rabbit wrap themselves in an environmental flag without a second thought to the real impact of their products.

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a wonderful book, written by physicist Janna Levin.

Though I’ve long been familiar with Alan Turing, and an admirer of his I had no idea that Turing had committed suicide (at least that’s the book’s thesis, and appears to be the most commonly shared opinion.) I also had no idea that he had been prosecuted for homosexuality.

It’s shocking to think of how different the world might have been if Turing had been allowed to continue his work.

Is anybody falling for this?

Bernier quits cabinet post over security breach
Foreign affairs minister departs ahead of ex-girlfriend’s TV interview
Last Updated: Monday, May 26, 2008 | 11:04 PM ET CBC News

Embattled Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has resigned from cabinet over a security breach involving classified documents, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters on Monday.

This isn’t a new story, but when I’ve mentioned it to people in the past they never seem to take me seriously. Bananas are going extinct, in large part because of a lack of varietal diversity.

Why bananas are a parable for our times
JOHANN HARI

Below the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: Bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon — in five, 10 or 30 years — the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world — and where they are leading us.

The Phoenix Lander has touched down on Mars, using a highly accurate jet based landing system. This is a change from earlier landing methods which essentially use air bags to soften a landing and allow rovers to bounce to a stop. Sufficient for robotics, but probably not for a human landing (it’s also a less accurate method.”

Wired has an article as does the New Scientist while Scientific American’s site hasn’t yet been updated, but I’m sure it will be.

Wired also has a link to mission control’s chatter line during the landing. Very cool.

This is the a key step in a hopefully renewed push for space exploration.

is that you’re just hiding from the reality of the situation. Everybody needs to pay their way on carbon emissions, not just the rich ones. A sliding scale for necessities makes sense (charge more for automotive fuel, less for home heating) but cap and trade doesn’t address this either.

Layton raises carbon-tax alarm
BILL CURRY From Friday’s Globe and Mail
May 23, 2008 at 4:56 AM EDT
OTTAWA— NDP Leader Jack Layton launched a vehement campaign against carbon taxes yesterday and was quickly accused of alarmist pandering by prominent Canadian environmentalists.

Speaking to a fundraiser for an Ottawa homeless shelter, Mr. Layton said carbon taxes would raise home heating costs and hurt Canadians living on the margins. He said big corporations should bear the lion’s share of Canada’s climate-change tab and a federal ombudsman should ensure those costs aren’t passed on to consumers.

“With energy costs soaring in Canada, we’ve got to ensure that the solutions to climate change don’t aggravate an already dire situation for those who struggle to make ends meet,” Mr. Layton said.

Written by David Quammen and published in Harper’s Magazine in October of 1998 everybody should read this article in its fully.

It’s a reminder of our small place in the world, and the dangerous potential of the future—a future that’s already 10 years old.

“…why has the rate of extinction—low throughout most of Earth’s history—spiked upward cataclysmically on just a few occasion?…The Ordovician extinction, 439 million years ago, entailed the disappearance of roughly 85 percent of marine animal species…The Devonian extinction, 367 million years ago, seems to have been almost as severe. About 245 million years ago came the Permian extinction, the worst ever, claiming 95 percent of all known animal species.” pp. 58

“How long is the lag between a nadir of impoverishment and a recoverty to ecological fullness? That’s another of [David] Jablonski’s research interests. His rough estimates run to 5 or 10 million years.” pp. 58

Continue reading "Planet of Weeds: Tallying the Losses of Earth’s Animals and Plants"

It should come as no secret who I’m cheering for in this year’s Stanley Cup Final.

Yes yes, according to my Swedish Rocket it was 37 degrees celsius today. I think it lacks credibility, but it was a fun number to see.

Trails were hiked, pedals were pushed and I sparked up the motorcycle and headed to Richmond for some fish and chips. It’s officially summertime, at least in my life.

Nasa has discovered the world’s youngest supernova. A needle in a haystack.

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