While my opinions have changed in the intervening years, my first real encounter with representatives of the Green Party of Ontario didn't exactly reflect well on the organization. Today's photo was taken in Peterborough on September 17, 2003, during the height of the provincial election campaign that resulted in Dalton "Evil Reptilian Kitten-Eater From Another Planet" McGuinty putting an end to eight years of Progressive Conservative leadership in Queen's Park. I know that, as a university and college town, Peterborough was and probably still is more open to the Green agenda than most - that still doesn't mean that a rally centered around a guy in a blue-and-yellow inflatable fat man costume parading around downtown is the best way to get potential voters to take you seriously.Tim Holland was the GPO's Peterborough candidate for the 2003 election, and despite compelling inflatable-fat-guy parades, the 1,605 votes he captured were only enough to put him past one independent candidate and another from the Family Coalition Party. In the 2007 election the Green Party's vote total under Miriam Stucky increased to 4,444 votes, which is pretty cool for the numerological significance alone.
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There's nothing that frustrates me more than China, India, and the rest of the developing countries insisting that they should be given a blank check to pollute as much as they want while they industrialize because that's the same way the West did it. While I can see the point, it doesn't apply as such in the world we have today. The West industrialized the way it did because outside of isolated areas, there was no alternative to dirty coal-burning power generation in the Industrial Revolution.That is not the case today, but in all things inerta is difficult to overcome. Now we're paying the price.Yesterday's New York Times carried Felicity Barringer's story "Climate Legislation Sends Chill Through Areas Fueled by Coal," looking at the threat of electrical rate increases in Missouri as a result of potential legislation to put a hard cap on carbon dioxide emissions. According to the article, the state of Missouri gets 80% of its power from coal-burning power plants, which together emit seventy-five million tons of carbon dioxide yearly. Missouri and places like it will be the grounds-zero of privation should laws restricting greenhouse gas emissions come into place.The overriding theme of the twenty-first century, I think, is going to be one of adjustment. Adjusting to new standards, new practices, new ways of living and a world that will in many ways be a new one compared to the way it is now. "We can barely afford what we have now," says a Missourian quoted in the Times' article, but "what we have now" includes "a double-door refrigerator, a washer and dryer, six televisions, three computers, and an iron" - for three people - and an average monthly hydro bill in summer of $250 US ($306.54 CDN).Something is obviously wrong here, aside from the degree to which Missouri relies on coal power. It's that Western civilization has become accustomed to cheap, plentiful electricity, and does not care where that electricity comes from, so long as it comes. These attitudes are fast becoming as dangerous as the idea that the Third World can pollute however much it wants, because that's how it's always been done.Changing is going to hurt when the time comes.Nevertheless, though it will be painful, that does not mean that it does not have to be done, or that it is avoidable. The opposite, in fact, is true. We've spent too much time idling with our eyes shut to switch easily now; the window of opportunity for a smooth transition probably closed before I was born. It is incumbent upon all of us to abandon coal burning as soon as possible and transition to environmentally friendly modes of power generation, such as nuclear.Incidentally, if you believe that nuclear power is not an environmentally friendly mode of power generation, you're a part of the problem. If it hadn't been for well-meaning but empty-headed environmental campaigners like Greenpeace agitating against the construction of nuclear power plants, we wouldn't be in this bind today. They've built some inertia of their own, but it will only lead us to the same place that burning coal will.
I've said before that clarity is key to running an efficient and effective public transportation system. In a system as large as the Toronto Transit Commission, problems will inevitably slip through the cracks, of course, but that should only encourage all of us to watch out for them. Today's photo was, in a departure for the Public Domain Photography series, not actually taken by me. It was instead captured by the frood Tesseract, who recently found it at Bloor-Yonge station on his way downtown and passed it on to me. Here's his comment:"Thanks to Tesseract for finding this one at the Sorth End of the Bloor Subway platform. As the photo is of the public domain, I release it into the digital public domain."Can't really argue with the man, can I? Personally, I feel this oversight would be a lot more forgivable if only the "r" and "u" keys weren't so far away from one another.
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If you've read some of my earlier posts, you know that I'm not entirely entranced by the prospect of ebooks seizing a commanding market share from ordinary books full of pages to keep the covers apart. As in many other fields, the headlong charge toward advancement at any cost is being done without regard to the potential consequences - the overriding thought seems to be "wouldn't it be cool if we did this?" instead of "what would happen if we did this?"On April 4, the Slipstream section of the New York Times ran Brad Stone's article "Is This the Future of the Digital Book?", examining the efforts of online entrepreneur Bradley Inman to reinvent fiction for the Internet generation, combining "great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream" into works intended to be read on mobile platforms. The concept is called a "vook," I suppose a combination of "video book," which Stone speculates "might just represent a possible future for the beleaguered book industry."Interesting on its own, isn't it? It seems that way to me, though I can hardly be sure because I am most emphatically not part of the vook's target market - the only "mobile device" I own is a watch with a big hand and a smaller hand. Nevertheless, the more niches we have in which to indulge our creativity, the richer our culture will be and we'll all be better off as a result. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the habits that something like a vook would encourage, and the constant, viscous undercurrent of assumption that the day of the book is ending."Even worse," Stone writes, "on multipurpose reading devices like the iPhone, more immediately gratifying pastimes like video games are a click away for readers with short attention spans."The way I see it, that one sentence is ground zero of the argument as to why vooks are necessary, that otherwise people won't read them because they're Just Too Long. This is exactly the wrong way to go about this. We should not and can not cater to people who cannot invest a modicum of time in something, whose attention can be held only by throwing an array of beeps and buzzes and flashing lights at them. Low attention spans have been a problem for decades; we should be fighting them, not encouraging them.Moreover, I find that the concept of the vook as an integrated platform of text, video, and other multimedia would of necessity diminish the author's control of the creation. Today, an author only ever has to answer to an editor, and until then all the work and sweat is her or his own. The only barriers to entry for an author today are talent and skill. I wrote "The Platinum Desolation" in Notepad; I needed nothing else.Vooks, on the other hand, would require infrastructure. Few authors have high-quality film equipment and access to high-quality actors. Rather than fill vooks with amateurish multimedia that would repel readers rather than attract them, I can easily see the publishing companies becoming more and more involved in that side of production. The story would cease to be the author's vision and instead be taken over by the company so that it is put together along lines Scientifically Proven to draw customers in.Futurist Jamais Cascio over at Open the Future has written recently about the concept of "resilience," writing on how a healthy future civilization must disengage from the brittle just-in-time, so-long-as-it-works methodology we've built our society on. Vooks, and ebooks in general, are just as equally a part of that. They are entirely reliant on the Internet as it currently exists, and in fact are worthless without it. I have trouble imagining an equivalent of my recent discovery of Analog back issues from 1965 where vooks are concerned. In the electronic world, things just don't seem to age as well.The future has the potential to be a wonderful place, but with every day that goes by it feels like we want to see it so badly we're not even bothering to build a bridge there.
A few minutes' walk away from the house in Barrie where I grew up, there was a swamp. That's what we all called it, anyway. Once you reached the end of the road, a few steps took you from the edge of suburbia to the wilds of nature, each shoved against the other without anything in between. It was an outpost of the primeval land amid the encroachment of ever more houses, big backyards, long driveways, and arrow-straight streets. The forest around it was deep and alive, and you didn't need to go very deep into it to forget where you were.The Swamp doesn't exist anymore. At least, not the way I remember it, not as anything but a shadow of what it was. A new road has been drilled straight through it, and much of the forest has been felled to clear the way for new housing developments - as if new sprawling tracts of cardboard McMansions so that 9-to-5 ex-Torontonians can raise children in a drab, blank, howling wilderness of a community are exactly what we need more of. I don't like going back there. I dislike being reminded of what we've lost, and what we continue to lose with every passing day.
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A little more than twelve hours ago, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conducted a missile launch test. The missile lumbered aloft at 11:20 AM local time and was claimed to have successfully deployed its payload into orbit by that Indomitable Bastion of Truth Which Never Ever Lies, the Korean Central News Agency. Most of the world sees this action for what it rightly is, a provocative movement by the last real rogue state. Should North Korea develop an arsenal of ballistic missiles, it would become a far greater threat to its neighbors than it has been in all the years since 1953.This particular launch was conducted by an Unha carrier rocket, based upon North Korea's existing Taepodong-2 ballistic missile, and for which there have been no complete flight tests. Considering that it took SpaceX four tries to smooth out all the rough edges on their Falcon 1 rocket, it's hardly a surprise that the rocket and its payload, supposedly the Kwangmyongsong-2 communications satellite, failed to achieve orbit and crashed into the Pacific.Nevertheless, as world leaders react to Kim Jong-Il's latest defiant gesture, the issue continues to be framed in what I can't help but classify as a twentieth century mode of thinking. It's all being framed as the necessary prevention of North Korea developing a ballistic missile system that would further magnify the threat of its nuclear arsenal. Nuclear proliferation does remain a major issue, but unlike the days of the Cold War I do not believe that it is the most serious issue that faces us today - honestly, I would be surprised if it was in the top five.The spread of rocketry to more and more organizations has the potential to make possible a new threat to the world which, while no less dangerous than the spectre of nuclear proliferation, would be far more subtle, incredibly difficult to reverse, and is hardly recognized as a danger by a majority of the world in the first place. I didn't want to write about this until the launch had been completed, because my nagging fear was that the North Koreans were not attempting to launch a communications satellite, but trigger the Kessler Syndrome.The problem with orbit is that nothing really goes away. Until an object dips low enough to burn up in the atmosphere, it will remain wheeling around Earth at orbital velocity, whether it is a functioning satellite or a discarded wrench or even something as innocuous as a lost screw. The problem arises when these objects collide with one another. Orbital velocity carries incredible kinetic energy, and it would not take much of an impact to reduce a satellite to shrapnel.There are enough satellites in orbit right now that, if left alone, many of their orbits would certainly intersect, resulting in the destruction of both and the generation of huge quantities of debris zipping through Low Earth Orbit on new paths of their own, new paths which would undoubtedly send them crashing into yet more satellites. If we are ever to go into space in a serious way, active removal of this orbital debris will be an absolute necessity. Otherwise this cascade of satellite debris destroying satellites and creating yet more debris could easily lead to the generation of a cloud of debris saturating Low Earth Orbit, rendering spaceflight effectively impossible for decades or generations.That would be bad enough. The problem is that this is a situation which can conceivably be husbanded by knowing hands. Imagine, if you will, that the North Korean rocket managed to deliver its payload into orbit. Then imagine that the payload was not a communications satellite as KCNA claimed, but instead a thousand or so ball bearings. These ball bearings would be sprayed out every which way, wheeling around in individual orbits, a thousand whiffs of grapeshot to shred the satellite system.It's easy to forget about the way space works because so much of it runs counter to the expectations of those who've never left Earth. Space is effectively eternal, and low orbit has a long memory. If we're to make it out of the twenty-first century with any health and strength at all, it's incumbent upon all of us to recognize the dangers of the Kessler Syndrome, and to take action to ensure that low orbit is not allowed to become a wall around the world.
I don't know much more about this photograph than anyone reading it would. It was taken during an early evening walk on a quiet rural road in County Sligo, Ireland on February 18, 2004. To determine any details other than that is a job for the wordsmith, the fantasist. This was someone's home once, long ago - the state of decay and foliage growth attests that well enough. How long, though? Years, decades, a century? Maybe two?I never went inside. It just didn't seem proper.
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Now that the Decline and Fall of John Tory - the erstwhile Next Premier of Ontario - has receded into history, change is on the horizon. The presently leaderless Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario will need to re-establish its bona fides with the electorate in order to have a chance of redecorating Dalton's office come 2011, and the most direct way to do that is to choose a leader that can guide the party with a fresh face into the future. The rudder started turning yesterday when Tim Hudak, Member of Provincial Parliament for Niagara West—Glanbrook, threw himself into contention.Provincial politics in Ontario have been dominated by Dalton McGuinty's Liberal Party for the last six years, ever since the voters sent Ernie Eves and, by extension, the legacy of Premier Mike Harris to the curb. Presently the Liberals command an overwhelming majority in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, holding seventy-two seats to the Progressive Conservatives' twenty-four. Nevertheless, that kind of majority can evaporate easily in the right circumstances - such as, say, an economic recession. Though the Liberals already have a plan in place to bribe Ontarians with their own money, the passage of the harmonized sales tax - set to go live on Canada Day, 2010 - will no doubt be a bruise on many voters when the polling stations open, two years from now.John Tory may never have had a serious chance to take Ontario's helm in 2007, if only because he exercised poor judgement by choosing to stand for election in Don Valley West, one of Toronto's inner suburban ridings - because, realistically, the way things generally go, Conservatives do not have a chance in hell of winning any riding south of Steeles Avenue. Hudak, by contrast, has served as an MPP since 1995, long enough for three ridings to be dissolved and reformed under him. In 2007, he won his seat by a margin of 20.9% - more than ten thousand votes.So he's obviously popular, and a canny enough politician to retain his seat even as Ontario turned away from what the Progressive Conservatives had come to represent under Mike Harris. There's just one problem.Tim Hudak? Who is this guy?Let's see what the backgrounders and papers say. He's from Fort Erie... he's got a Master's in economics... and he says that "we've got to move beyond the red Tory versus blue Tory debate." He is, according to the National Post, from the right wing of the party. Not really all that much to go on, says I.Outside of extremely rare circumstances, an MPP is not going to be well-known outside of his or her own riding. The same was true for Dalton McGuinty in the provincial election of 1999, and his campaign was devastated by PC attack ads that marked him as "just not up to the job." I have no doubt that in the days and weeks to come, there will be a push to build Mr. Hudak into more of a known quantity for the people of Ontario. After all, that's the best way, isn't it? To quote a comrade who I talked about this posting with, "they didn't think anyone we'd heard of had a chance of winning our trust?"Tim Hudak is a cipher, pure and simple, ready to be dressed up in whatever clothes are most advantageous for the Progressive Conservatives and readied to do his level best to win command of the province. It's just that I have to wonder who he is. As of the time I write this, his photo does not appear on his Wikipedia article. For that matter, not even a photo of his riding appears on its own article. It's a question mark superimposed on the world, which is a fairly accurate reflection of what Ontarians outside of Niagara West—Glanbrook know about Tim Hudak.We'll see how things develop in the months and years ahead. Though the Toronto Star describes Hudak as "the presumed front-runner," his bid for the leadership is contested by Christine Elliott, Frank Klees, and Randy Hillier. There's plenty of time for the news to come out - there's plenty of time for the dialogue to be framed. Somehow, I expect that he will end up exhibiting all the traits and beliefs necessary to appeal to 905ers who yearn in their hearts to vote for the PCs again and damn the torpedoes.Personally, I mostly wanted to get in on the ground floor of calling him "Tim Who-Dat?," because it's such a painfully obvious pun that all of the papers will be using it if his campaign goes anywhere at all. Look at the degree to which Joe Clark has been unable to live down his nickname.
It seems to me that the Scarborough RT is the red-headed stepchild of Toronto's transit system. Completed in 1985 and hardly modified since then, it runs from Kennedy station to McCowan station first through the backyards of Scarborough's blighted, post-industrial wasteland, only to transition in the width of one street to that city's gleaming downtown, the entirety of which can be found For Your Convenience within the walls of Scarborough Town Centre. It may be my downtown lifestyle talking, but more often than not it's easy to forget that the RT exists in the first place.Personally I have always thought that the Scarborough RT as it currently stands wasn't worth the money it cost to build it, and isn't worth what it costs to maintain; I would much rather have had a subway extension where its rails now run. However, the Ontario government apparently disagrees with me; of the $9 billion the provincial government yesterday allocated to Greater Toronto transit construction and development, $1.4 billion is being devoted to new vehicle purchases for, and an extension of, the Scarborough RT system.Today's photo is of a westbound/southbound RT train entering Scarborough Centre station, the only station on the entire line worth going to.
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There has never been a shortage of heroes. No matter what tradition you delve into, no matter which culture you evaluate, there have always been that handful of brave men brimming with courage and spirit who strike forth into the hostile wilderness, stand up against incredible odds and refuse to bow, and set the world on a different course through sheer force of will. Heroes represent a vital foundation for a healthy society, as figures of respect who are worthy of emulation.It's only relatively recently that there have been more than scattered acknowledgments that this only constitutes half of the equation. Certainly we have our Aeneases, our Laozis, our Robin Hoods, and our John Henrys. It's reflective of the state of society throughout the vast majority of recorded history. Nevertheless, when I look through the annals of heroism, it seems to me that for the most part it's an essentially uninterrupted sausagefest of forthright, steadfast, dynamic dudes.This is something that's always irritated me.Last weekend I went and saw DreamWorks' new CG film Monsters vs. Aliens, at least partially because the rest of my group of friends went and saw it on Saturday while I was at the convention and out of contact. Though the unquestionable highlight of the film was Stephen Colbert being a brave president, what struck me in retrospect was how it dealt with the protagonist, Susan "Ginormica" Murphy, a Big Damn Hero in more than one sense of the word. In this movie we're given a character who is supremely competent, capable, and courageous - an attitude buttressed by the one-scene side characters of Katie and Cuthbert ("this is the worst date ever") - and is also the only female character of any real consequence. From what it seems to me, this is not a common thing. Had Monsters vs. Aliens been made twenty or so years ago, I have trouble believing that the writers would have made this same choice.That's aside from the effectively embryonic state of CG at the time, even.Although I've not written about it before, I'm no stranger to jawing and grothing over this. To put it bluntly I'm damn tired of the hero taking all the fame and the respect and the glory, when it's far past time that heroines get their due. I've tried to follow this philosophy in my own writing. The protagonist of "The Platinum Desolation" is female. The protagonist of the first serious story I ever wrote, way back in 1997, was female. The character I wrote around for a stretch of years during my late high school and university years was female. For me it's a case that I don't want to write male heroes, because not only do I see it as overdone, even their victories are beginning to taste like cardboard.It's different for heroines. I would argue that in a great many situations, a heroine's victory is sweeter and more satisfying than a hero's, if only because so many cultures and institutions throughout history have thrown up barriers against precisely that. Aside from a handful of outliers and extraordinaries, it seems it's only in the last forty years that the idea of a strong female character has gained mainstream acceptance. Prior to that, the work of saving the day was always Man's Work, with female characters shunted to the sidelines, killed by the villain to provide the hero with motivation, or captured in order to keep the "damsel in distress" trope alive and kicking.Culturally, before the modern era - or, potentially, in a future era that has adopted old traditions, such as the CoDominium setting of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - a heroine would have had to overcome adversities that would not be present for a hero. A young man could travel the land as a knight-errant, righting wrongs; the same was not true of women. For most of written history, their place was the home, and it is only comparatively recently that female characters have really started moving into the positions once denied them.I remember when Star Trek: Voyager first hit the airwaves, way back in the nearly prehistoric era that those of us in the Business of History call "1995." Everyone who was connected with television or the Star Trek fandom and had column inches to fill was going on about how Captain Janeway was the first female captain in a Star Trek series, how the franchise was finally moving into the modern day, so on and so forth. Fourteen years later, a woman in charge isn't a "new thing" anymore.The continued proliferation of heroines front-and-center in popular entertainment can, in my mind, only have positive effects. For one it acts as a much-needed broom of the system, sweeping out the cobwebs and dust of old concepts and outmoded beliefs regarding gender relations which have no place in this modern world.More than that, heroines breathe new life into situations and setups which have grown listless from overuse. Men and women don't approach the world in exactly the same way, and a well-crafted heroine would not (and, really, should not) be a metaphorical man in metaphorical drag. The future deserves better.I may be a guy, but that doesn't mean I have to spend my precious time reading or writing about other guys.
