PDP #170: The Bugmobile

The Annex is a place where strange and unexpected things can happen. Therefore, it didn't surprise me much last October when, while waiting for the lights to change at Bloor and Bathurst, one of the cars backed up at the intersection was absolutely covered with insects. Plastic insects, mind you, but still insects. It was the sort of picture I could not possibly pass up.

I'd never seen it before, and I haven't seen it since. If not for this photographic evidence, I might not believe I'd seen it at all.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Rossi: Campaigning Against Our Interests

If transit is going to be a major issue in the Toronto muncipal election, so be it. Good transit is one of the measures of a great city, and we should be focusing our attention on it. I can't speak for my fellow mayoral candidates, as I don't really know their attitudes or interests, but I myself am a dedicated transit user. I do not own a car. I do not want to own a car. I have a G1 driver's license that is used as identification while purchasing beer and entering bars. Transit is thus an important issue for me, as it is for many Torontonians, because it's how I get from one place to another when it's too far, too cold, or too much of a lazy day to walk.

So you can imagine how I reacted when Rocco Rossi, one of the present frontrunners in this embryonic race, revealed the first plank of his platform to be an opposition to transit initiatives. In fact, you don't have to imagine it, because I wrote about it when it happened. Since then, I've been thinking about it more and more.

A few days ago I read a story on the BBC dealing with the popular response to President Obama's health care proposals in the United States, with the author trying to determine why so many of the people who would be helped by the proposed program were so vehemently against it. One of the main conclusions, as I recall, was that the people in question resented being told what they needed by the government, rather than arriving at that conclusion themselves.

In much the same way, I resent Rossi's suggestion that transit is something that can, or should, be simply put on hold, his implication that the current state of transit is adequate for Toronto. It isn't. We are still coasting on projects that were begun in the 1970s. That we've waited decades to begin a new system expansion like Transit City is bad enough - to bury it because Rossi wants to score some emotional points with people who are fed up by the TTC is indicative of a perspective that looks backward, not forward. That's the kind of perspective this city cannot afford to have in power. It's the twenty-first century - we will get nowhere contemplating the twentieth.

Realistically, transit is absolutely essential to Toronto, full stop. Because that's exactly what would happen to the city if transit was unavailable. We saw it back in 2008, in the provincial government's lightning-quick response to the TTC strike - within forty-eight hours the union was legislated back to work. Contrast this to Ottawa's experience, where OC Transpo, the city's public transit operator, was on strike for fifty-one days before the situation was resolved. Toronto could not last fifty-one days with its transit stopped. I'd be surprised if it could last 5.1 days without things getting seriously squirrely.

Beyond that, I believe that limiting public transit options is an assault on freedom of choice. Every once in a while I see people fulminating about how public transit is a waste of money, how no one uses it, and it'd be better off gone, and it's hilarious. No one is herding people onto buses, subways, or streetcars at gunpoint. If anything, the opposite is true; the planning decisions that have been made over the last seventy years across North America amount to forcing people to use cars, as most North American cities are completely unsuited for transit.

In Toronto, we have an opportunity many cities lack - to have a city where transit is a comfortable, reliable alternative. To have the choice of not having to take the car. To throw that away would be to abandon the wisdom of those who refused to gut the TTC when every other city thought automobiles were the future, and of those who kept the Spadina Expressway on the planning maps where it belongs.

PDP #169: Glass and Girders

Whether it be called Metropolis, Toronto Life Square, 10 Dundas East, or something else entirely, that billboard-festooned concrete structure at the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas has been there long enough now that it's hard to picture what used to occupy the space. Though, that has a lot to do with the site being an empty brownfield for a few years between demolition of the existing buildings and the commencement of construction.

This photo was taken on October 18, 2006 from Dundas Square, while construction was still ongoing. I would post a higher-quality one, but this is the only in-progress one I have - and it's not exactly as if I can just pop downtown and take another one.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Common Words #10: The Ossuary

Writing a novel is easy. One of the most important factors in writing a long-form work is endurance - when you've got weeks or months of solid writing ahead of you before everything is wrapped up, you've got the luxury to plan as you go and head in the general direction of the conclusion. As long as there are interesting sights for the reader along the way, you'll generally be forgiven for not taking the straight path. Besides, honestly, that can easily be boring.

Short stories are completely different. When you have a hard word limit of six thousand, you don't have the freedom to develop it as you go. There's not much room for worldbuilding in short stories, and there's definitely no opportunity for detouring. I, personally, found it rather easier to write a novel over a period of three months and two days than it's been to write short stories.

Short shorts are the absolute hardest. It takes a lot of practice to write a story with a word count in the hundreds, and to make it good. It's a category I haven't really focused on, myself - it's difficult to come up with an idea that can be crystallized and explored satisfactorily in such a small space.

But I have tried. I wrote this story, "The Ossuary," in October 2005, and I only discovered it recently while poking through my hard drive. It comes in at two hundred and ninety-nine words. I imagine it was a challenge to write; I can't remember the process.

*****
"The Ossuary"
by Andrew Barton
*****

The structure was rotten. Iona stepped lightly, afraid that the floor would give way beneath her. It had stood for millennia, to be sure, but she had no desire to hasten its collapse. The treasures inside were too valuable for that.

"It's like an ossuary," Iona breathed. The skins of the building had been eroded long ago, leaving only a bleached skeleton. Most of it was swept by harsh, uncompromising winds, and it was only in the protected shadows and oases that anything was left to be found.

Whoever had used the place hadn't believed in shelves or Dewey. Iona wasn't much of a librarian, and while she knew what she needed to find, the path was dark and foreboding. If she tried she could see the ancient footprints of thieves long dead, and when she did she cursed their shades.

"I'm not afraid to say it," Iona muttered. "History is more important than your stomachs."

It had been their kind that made Iona and her comrades dig in the dirt for the bones of forgotten civilizations, their kind that had denied humankind its ancient heritage. She hoped their own bones had been worn to dust long ago.

The ancients might be dust now, but their legacy was still remembered.

A wide, satisfied grin spread across her face as she pushed the debris away. The air tasted purer here, away from the once-great central hall, unbreathed for generations on end. The treasure remained, she was sure of it.

She spent what seemed like hours sorting through the books, each one embossed with alien ideographs. At last she came across it, and felt a warmth spread through her. It hadn't be a waste after all.

When she lifted the cover, just the slightest bit, the pages within dissolved to powder.

*****

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Previously on Common Words

• #9: Tranquility's Prologue
  
• #8: Corona
  
• #7: The Tragic Myth
  
• #6: The Platinum Desolation
  
• #5: The Worlds Machine
  
• #4: Tranquil Fragments
  
• #3: The Software Market on Rainier
  
• #2: Sixty-Ton Payload
  
• #1: To the Gallows

PDP #168: R2-Mailto

I found this mailbox, painted to look like R2-D2 from Star Wars, outside the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when I was there last October. The website it refers to, USPSjedimaster.com, seems to have been removed from the internet now, and the promotion dates back to at least March 2007. It seems to have been a contest to determine what Star Wars character would appear on a new stamp - it would seem that Yoda won.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Mutually Assured Relativity

We're on the edge of a bold new era in space exploration. In the next few years, Kepler and other probes like it will add more and more exoplanets to our maps of the galaxy, potentially even exoplanets the size and general nature of Earth. If there is a life-bearing world in a nearby system, it will not be much longer until it's found - there are no shadows or horizons for it to hide behind.

For what it's worth, I hope that we do not find any evidence of active technological civilizations, and for one simple reason - because there are no shadows or horizons in space for anyone to hide behind. The belief that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would have to be friendly by dint of its survival is not necessarily true. If nice guys finish last, it's because bastards have a tendency to come in first - because bastards are ruthless enough to do what they need to stay in first. Even here, we have a reflection of Earthly politics.

Relativistic weapons are something that aren't commonly seen in science fiction - I'm not sure if that's because the concept is a fairly recent one, or if most authors just don't want to think through the implications of what Einstein figured out - but the more that I think about them, the more I believe glossing over them is a mistake. To put it simply, a relativistic weapon is the ultimate bullet. Take a probe, an asteroid, a small rock, anything, and accelerate it to a high fraction of the speed of light - say, 0.99 c or somewhere in that area. At that speed, relativistic effects would result in the mass of the projectile being far higher than at relative rest. It would also have a truly ferocious reserve of kinetic energy behind it.

What's more, it would be as much of a "bolt from the blue" as is possible in space. At that speed, the projectile would be nipping the heels of its own light, as well as any radio reports from potential forward observers. The first evidence of its approach would be when it was practically on top of its target - little to no warning time. A relativistic weapon would, in my estimation, be the weapon of choice to destroy a planet, if necessary.

There are some who think that extraterrestrials would consider it necessary. Tom Ligon's "El Dorado," which appeared in the October 2007 Analog, is based around this concept. In that case, the weapon is only deflected from its target through extreme good fortune. Ligon's extraterrestrials attacked out of a religious motive, but one could just as easily imagine a species who sets aside a stock of relativistic weapons as insurance - to destroy anyone who could knock them off their pedestal, just as soon as they realize there's someone around who might, conceivably, at some distant future time do the knocking.

Yet, that also struck me as insane. Destroying alien worlds because they might, conceivably, at some point become a potential threat? Beyond the sheer moral concerns, there's also the issue of incomplete intelligence - a species that launched a relativistic missile could well be sealing its own fate. A relativistic missile could be deflected - most likely by chance, but there's always that chance. Even if it succeeds, there's no guaranteeing the target doesn't have its own stock of relativistic missiles, and that a dying species' last act would be to press the button that would annihilate their murderers a few years or decades down the line. There could even be a third power, unknown to the attackers, who would destroy the attackers' own worlds the way we would put down a rabid dog.

There's nothing for planets to hide behind in space. That's one of the reasons why I hope that we're alone in this particular area of spacetime. Of course, relativistic missiles lose most of their teeth if faster-than-light travel is brought into the equation - sky surveys from multiple vantage points, separated by multiple light-years, should be able to detect an accelerating relativistic weapon well before it reaches the target.

On the other hand, the way our current understanding of the universe goes, we can either have FTL or causality, and our scientists seem to prefer the latter. Personally, however, I'd rather have a universe where effects can precede their causes under the proper circumstances than a universe where aliens can exterminate entire worlds because they don't like the crackling of their radios.

PDP #167: A Thousand Marching Feet

I've got no idea how many people took part in the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament rally in Toronto last Saturday. I've seen estimates ranging from three thousand to five thousand to fifteen thousand, and I'm not a sufficiently good head-counter to judge whether they're accurate - though, from what I saw there, I suspect it trended toward the lower numbers of that range. Still, that many people was something to see.

In this photograph, taken from the edge of Nathan Phillips Square, the vanguard of the rally turns northwest from Queen Street West onto Bay Street, heading north.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Repainting the Red Rocket

There's a photo I took on Saturday that I wanted to post but didn't, because I feared that there was some small chance of it becoming another anti-TTC lightning rod like the photograph of the sleeping collector in McCowan station. I've been riding the TTC for a while, and it seems like with each passing day the groundswell of anti-TTC rhetoric rumbles a little louder. The recent fare increase undoubtedly has something to do with it - though I have to wonder how much these people would be complaining if there hadn't been a fare freeze in 2009 - but otherwise, I'm not sure why this all seems to be coming to a head now. What is clear, though, is that the TTC has a serious, serious image problem.

I think the time may have come for the TTC to reinvent itself - to redesign itself for the 21st century, to win back riders who have become disenchanted with the state of the system, and to entice new riders who until now have stayed in their cars. No transit system can thrive by simply peddling to the base. Discretionary riders, people who choose whether or not to use transit depending on how convenient is at the time, are every bit as important to the health of a system as the core ridership. That's one reason why networks such as Transit City are so important - the greater the connections offered by a network, the more attractive it will become to new riders.

I'm not advocating the dismantling of the TTC. No one would profit by that - what it needs is decent marketing, an image overhaul. The Oakland, California-based weblog Living in the O recently wrote about this in the context of San Francisco Bay Area transit systems standing to learn something from what the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has done in recent years, but it's a lesson that the TTC needs as well. It needs to stop just calling itself "the Better Way" and do something to make it true in the minds of the people. Take this TTC commercial from 1984, for example - it makes the system look vibrant and exciting, a great way to get around. Can you see them springing for something like this today? Maybe that's the problem.



The problem, I think, may be that the TTC has so ingrained itself into Toronto's urban fabric - streetcars have been rumbling under the TTC aegis for ninety years, and the subway has been part of the way people get around for more than half a century. That can breed bureaucratic inertia and a sense of false security - the idea that the TTC has always been here, so it will always remain, and that people will continue to take it because they always have. That's a dangerous way to think, and I hope that the TTC does not actually think like that. It's instructive to compare it to LACMTA, though, which runs a system that is still building out, still integrating itself into the urban fabric. Fred Camino at The Source, the LACMTA's weblog, recently wrote that he's "met long-time Angelenos who weren't even aware that L.A. had a subway or an extensive light rail system." In contrast, you wouldn't easily find a Torontonian who was unaware of the existence of the subway system or streetcar network - but you wouldn't have much difficulty finding someone who had bad things to say about both of them.

Improving the system is an absolute necessity. For all that I disagree with him on other issues, Rocco Rossi had a point when he called the TTC "the world's best 1970s public transit system." After a burst of subway construction that ended in 1980, the TTC has pretty much rested on its laurels - though, admittedly, a lot of this has to do with the degree to which successive governments thought it would be a fun idea to defund the TTC to as great a degree as possible, because public transit is for nerds, right?

Considering recent events, though, an image overhaul may well be a necessary component of improving the system - rejuvenating it. I've written before that names are important - so perhaps a fresh name and image for the system would be a place to start. Whereas today we just ride the Toronto subway, perhaps in the future we should be riding the Toronto Metro.

PDP #166: A Sign in the Wilderness

On Saturday, the Toronto rally for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament brought an estimated 3,000-5,000 people together to demonstrate against Prime Minister Harper keeping Parliament shuttered until March. That was the theory, at least. While the signs were overwhelmingly supporting CAPP's point - the free placards that were there for the taking had a great deal to do with that - the prospect of a demonstration also attracted the usual suspects.

There was a sign from the International Bolshevik Tendency, advocating that we Abolish the Monarchy! For a Workers' Republic! Others urged WOMEN TAKE OVER PARLIAMENT NOW and WOMEN UNITE BABY STRIKE. It was a similar deal at the Toronto pro-Coalition rally in December 2008 - whenever the prospect of a major demonstration arises, fringe groups like the Bolsheviks will latch onto it to wave their signs and be seen even though they really have nothing to do with the matter at hand.

Some, though, were creative and well-done. The Spartans Against Tyranny I mentioned yesterday were probably the best. Another one, which I photographed as the march wound its way up Bay Street, was shaped like a perogie. James Bow reports that free perogies were being handed out at the Kitchener-Waterloo rally - all we got were signs shaped like them. But that's close enough for me.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

The Internet Will Save the World

Recently, a coworker asked me what I thought was the most important invention in history. A few of the usual candidates flickered through my mind - the wheel, space flight, nuclear power - but only one of them stuck. "Writing," I said, and I believe that I'm right. Writing is the most important advance any society can have. Without writing, information can only be passed down orally, leaving it vulnerable to mutation as it's told and retold down through the years. Writing is a prerequisite to the development of an advanced technological society - you just try committing something like quantum mechanics firmly to memory.

The Internet, I think, is the latest example of why writing is so important. In it we have a communications tool like no other, a tool that in the last twenty years has reshaped the way we look at the world, built new bridges of understanding, and created vast opportunities. Ideas can be shared, philosophies examined, and vast, sprawling arguments are there to be had. People have never been able to talk so freely and easily as they can with a keyboard, a monitor, and an Internet connection. Humanity is networking, and the iterative strength of that network will continue to increase in the years ahead.

It's already demonstrated its possibilities, in fits and in starts. Projects like SETI@home and Folding@home take advantage of the distributed computing power made possible by the Internet to crunch numbers cheaply and efficiently. The Internet made it easy for people to come together and donate to the legal defense fund of Peter Watts, an sf author who was assaulted by US border guards at the Port Huron crossing in December. Without the Internet, there would be no such thing as a Rickroll - and who would want to live in a world like that?

Yesterday, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstrated what else the Internet can do - or, more possibly, gave us a preview of what the Internet will continue to do in the future. You see, the Parliament of Canada was supposed to open tomorrow after its Christmas recess, but on December 30 Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he was proroguing - that is, shutting down - Parliament until March 3, ostensibly so that the government could focus on economic stimulus work. This is the second time Harper's done this - the first was in December 2008, when he shut down Parliament to avoid facing a vote of no confidence from the opposition parties that would have brought down his minority Conservative government and forced an election.

A lot of people aren't happy about this, and Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament - a Facebook group founded by University of Alberta student Christopher White, with almost 214,000 members as of this writing - took action by organizing rallies across Canada. I was at and around the rally in Toronto, possibly the largest one - the Star estimated the crowd at 3,000, enough to fill Dundas Square with bodies, and enough to make a veritable river of humanity when the march spilled out onto Yonge Street behind a moving police roadblock of mounted and bicycle officers. Similar events were held from Antigonish to Yellowknife, and even places like Dallas and New York City to let expats get their opinions in - and those expressions ran the gamut from handmade placards to free men standing, a few against many.

Yesterday in Toronto, it was around -2° C (that's 28.4° Fahrenheit, for those of you who like having water freeze at 32°). These Spartans Against Tyranny are therefore crazy, and therefore awesome.

I don't think a series of rallies of this extent could have been planned from nothing in this short a span of time before the Internet. Beyond that, though, the very existence of the rallies demonstrates the possibilities that the Internet brings to bear. I don't doubt that Harper deliberately announced the prorogation on December 30 - after all, who's paying attention to the news on New Year's Eve Eve? Everyone is out in line at the liquor stores or already getting drunk. Online attention fanned the flames of this news.

Communication is the most important thing we can do, and the most important thing we can encourage. Communication bridges the gaps, provides new perspectives on our vexations, and fresh ideas for seemingly intractable problems. We will face a great many challenges in the century ahead, but as long as we stay in touch and talk together, I believe we will manage to stay calm and carry on.