Photo: Gulls at the Pond

There are a few ponds on the slopes of Little Mountain at Queen Elizabeth Park, ponds where the local duck and seagull population congregate in the hope that some human will not notice the signs and throw them some morsels. With the height of the sun in the sky, and the seagulls' proclivity to stay where they were, it's one of the few times I've seen standing birds casting a shadow. Minor thing, I know, but something I never really picked up on before.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Politics, Science, and Same-Sex Marriage

As Bill Nye explained to my generation back in the '90s, science rules. In science we have a mechanism for testing the way the world works, and even though there are those who have a vested interest in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the conclusions of some scientific inquiries it's far too valuable a tool to give up. It's not immediately apparent to the eye, but the twenty-first century world is built on a scientific foundation and we ignore that at our peril.

True to form, there's plenty of peril in politics. Politics and science have something of a caustic relationship in this day and age, since more often than not science is telling governments, "hey, you know that plan you're really keen to enact? It's bullshit." Politicians don't like it when hurdles are dropped in their paths - just look at Rob Ford's ongoing temper tantrum over Toronto's subway issue. What's more, by their actions politicians don't like using the scientific method - assuming, that is, that they understand it.

There's one aspect of society where a more scientific outlook would be particularly welcome, I think: same-sex marriage. For decades this was something that was addressed only in science fiction, if at all; over the last eleven years the idea of extending marriage has begun to pick up steam, and it's now fully legal in ten countries. It's going to be a long and uphill battle, though, since there are many out there who see same-sex marriage as a fearful, threatening thing, and will invest all their energy in bailing back the tide.

Australia is one of the many countries where same-sex marriage isn't currently recognized under the law, though there is a growing current of support for it. In fact, it's prominent enough in certain circles that last week, as part of its coverage of the 2012 Queensland state election, the Brisbane Times reported on an attack flyer being distributed in the Brisbane suburb of Ashgrove that accused Kate Jones, an MP in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, of supporting a "radical law that violates kids' rights to a mum and dad... and voted for same-gender unions that require zero commitment."

For clarification, this appears to relate to Queensland's Civil Partnerships Act, which allows couples to formally register their relationships with the government.

Register a same-sex relationship? Strewth! (Pictured: government. Hey, give me a break - it's hard finding photographic accompaniment for something abstract.)

Personally, I find it almost comical when I encounter politicians from Australia to the United States going on from the bully pulpit about how same-sex marriage will destroy society, somehow or other. A lot of people accept those that sort of claim uncritically because it meshes with their own beliefs; now it's not just that they oppose same-sex marriage because they think it's icky, but they're Standing Square and Strong in the Defense of Their Country! The scientific method doesn't enter into it at all.

Nevertheless, in situations like this the scientific method provides an appropriate counterpoint. Sure, you have all these organizations raising a hue and a cry over how legal recognition of same-sex marriage will destroy society... what I'd really like is to see them explain Canada. Remember that Canada has legally enshrined same-sex marriage for nearly ten years, from coast to coast to coast. Canadian society hasn't collapsed. Nor have things fallen apart in Iceland, Spain, South Africa, Argentina, Norway, or the other countries that allow it. Truly honest politicking would take these facts into account. The countries that allow same-sex marriage have, in essence, begun a grand social experiment, and a decade in things are calm. In Canada, it's barely even a thing.

In order to get that, though, you'd need a crop of honest politicians on the "no" side.

Like I said, then, ultimately it's comical - but the sort of comedy where you laugh because otherwise you'd cry.

Photo: The Bird Wants What it Wants

The birds at Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory are so accustomed to the presence of humans that they're even more fearless than urban pigeons; they will buzz visitor's heads or just walk around on the paths like it ain't no thing at all. Then there's this bird, which I think is some kind of Chinese pheasant but could just as easily not be one - hey! Yellow bird! Where are you going? You don't work there, you just live there! Can't you read the sign?

Birds today, I swear.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

An Act of More than Minor Treason

There's only been one instance in my entire history of telephone ownership that I've received a worthwhile robocall, and that was from Amtrak letting me know that my train the next day had been cancelled because of heavy snowfall in Seattle and that there was no alternative transportation available. Every other automatic call I've been received has been a complete waste of time - though they are somewhat considerate in that they usually start with a foghorn blasting in your ear or tell you to "hold for an important announcement," meaning you can hang up almost immediately and cut your time losses down to a few seconds.

When the call is purportedly from Elections Canada in the days leading up to a major federal election, though, it's a bit difficult for some people to just hang up. So instead, in dozens of ridings voters received robocalls claiming that their polling station had been relocated. While Peterborough Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro has recently said that his own campaign was targeted by robocalls, on the whole they appear to have been targeted at close-run ridings such as Etobicoke Centre, where the Conservative challenger won with a margin of twenty-six votes. This sort of thing works: voting just isn't a priority for many people, so if they head to what they think is their new polling station and instead find nothing, a lot of folk would just say nuts to the whole thing. Wheels have already begun turning for by-elections to be held in affected ridings, which may yet jam a stick between the spokes of Harper's majority.

While Elections Canada has been investigating this for nearly a year now, after initial complaints by voters in Guelph complaining of misdirecting calls, the news cycle started to pick it up again with the discovery that at least some of these calls traced back to Racknine, an Edmonton company that has done robocall work in the past for the Conservative Party. Evidence is still coming in regarding this, and on the whole I feel it's pretty damning for the Conservatives; the Greens were focusing all of their effort on Vancouver Island, the Liberals would gain nothing from keeping people from voting for them, and none of the scenarios I can imagine for NDP involvement make very much sense at all.

Regardless of who did it, the fact remains that a campaign such as this, an active campaign to mislead and suppress and prevent voters from exercising their democratic rights, strikes at the foundation of Canada's just society. It's an attack on democracy and therefore an attack on all of us. My own viewpoint is that whoever was behind this, whoever planned it, whoever orchestrated it, and whoever carried it out, whoever they may be, deserve to be charged with treason.

Through the ages, treason has taken many forms.

The Criminal Code of Canada defines treason as follows:

(2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,
(a) uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province;
(b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;
(c) conspires with any person to commit high treason or to do anything mentioned in paragraph (a);
(d) forms an intention to do anything that is high treason or that is mentioned in paragraph (a) and manifests that intention by an overt act; or
(e) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) or forms an intention to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) and manifests that intention by an overt act.

I'll be the first one to admit that "election fraud" isn't in there - but what is in there, under the category of high treason, is assault, kidnapping, and attempts on the life of the Queen; no surprise, considering that the continuum of treason laws stretch back centuries, and that back in the day treason was considered to be a more heinous offense even than murder.

Nevertheless, what we have here is an organized attempt to subvert the electoral process. It doesn't matter if two people were misled or twenty or two hundred, the fact of the matter is that the integrity of the democratic process must be sacrosanct if the elected government is to have any legitimacy at all. Whoever was behind the robocalling scheme isn't a traitor by the letter of the law, but to my eyes at least they are no better than a traitor. Electoral fraud isn't just some act of minor treason; whoever they are, by their actions they have undermined and compromised the democratic foundation of this country.

No matter what happens, I'm confident that the government will work to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible and put up some scapegoat so that the people can forget about what's going on and they can go back to telling us that ignorance is strength. The fact remains that the people behind this are effectively traitors of the modern age; they are traitors against democracy and traitors against the people.

Photo: Ghost of Granville Past

For ninety years it was there, hidden, and no one was the wiser until the demolition of the building at the southwest corner of Granville and Robson brought one of Vancouver's ghost signs back into the light. Back in 1922, just before the building that's now rubble was built, some enterprising promoter used its neighbor as a billboard to advertise the upcoming Harold Lloyd comedy film Grandma's Boy, which was to start showing across the street at the Capitol Theatre on October 2nd.

When that sign was painted, the establishment of Vancouver was still within living memory. Since it was bricked away, the whole city has changed around it... the whole world has changed around it, and it won't be long for the twenty-first century; despite the sign's value as a historical curiosity, there's a new tower to be built there. Nevertheless, it's in things like this sign - ordinary, everyday things, things that people at the time never intended or expected to last - that history really lives.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

A World-Class Hole in the Ground

The recent ups and downs of Toronto politics put me in the mind of an adventure serial from the early 20th century, like Flash Gordon and its precursors; a series of cliffhanger episodes, each one leaving the hero in some kind of dire peril, each time trying to top what happened last time and each time leaving the audience asking how the hero's going to get out of this one. In this particular political adventure, the hero is the city of Toronto and Rob Ford is the peril that keeps outdoing itself when you think things can't get any more ridiculous than they already have. First hizzoner acts like he thinks he's an absolute ruler, calling the will of Council irrelevant; then he gets his snivelling bootlickers on the TTC board to fire chief general manager Gary Webster without cause for having the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to not be a cowardly yes-man and meekly agree with what the mayor wants to do.

Yesterday, Ford took it directly to the people with an article in the Globe and Mail, in which he (or, more likely, someone in his office - I never got the impression that Ford was much of a lit'rary man) spends a few hundred words trying to conjure up a dream world where subways clatter hither and yon. It's something I never considered the possibility of encountering; this is literal subway propaganda.

Even if he didn't actually string these words together, Ford's fingerprint is all over it - the article is suffused with the casual assumptions of someone for whom public transit is not at all a part of their daily life. He leads off bemoaning that the average Toronto commute is twenty-four minutes longer than that in Los Angeles, but somehow I get the impression that that's focusing on vehicular commutes; I doubt it takes into account riders reliant on the 36 Finch West bus, the people who would have been beneficiaries of the Finch West LRT but are again caught in a storm of uncertainty now that Giorgio Mammoliti's insane, delusional Finch subway concept wasn't immediately forgotten. Also very Ford-like is the casual dismissal of the TTC before construction began on the Yonge subway in the 1940s, as if everything that had happened before then was irrelevant. Considering that the TTC and the patchwork of privately-run transit companies it replaced were streetcar operators until then, it's not much of a surprise that Ford wouldn't want to even risk acknowledging a history of surface-running transit.

What do you think you're doing, subway? The surface is for cars! Get back underground!

"The TTC must become a sustainable, world-class transit system... I passionately believe a world-class city builds world-class rapid transit," Ford says, because obviously cities like San Francisco, Vienna, Brussels, Frankfurt, Rome, London, and Los Angeles are on the same level as Indianapolis. "A hundred years from now, Toronto will have more subway lines providing reliable high-speed transportation for millions more people. The only real question is whether we will start building those subways now, or wait another 20 years and build them at 10 times the cost."

First off, Rob Ford is pretty much the last person who I feel is qualified to be expounding on the transportation patterns of the twenty-second century; we can make even fewer hard plans for it than the leadership of 1912 could plan for today, and would the leadership of 1912 have anticipated suburbanization, telecommuting, the ubiquitousness of the automobile, or the new cities that emerged in Scarborough and North York - places which, back in the early twentieth century, were as rural as Garafraxa. Ford's actions as mayor have demonstrated that he doesn't much care about the potential problems of the next decade, let alone the next century.

Nor is he much qualified to talk about cost, either. He claims that a "modest parking levy" could bring in $90 million or more per year, to be used as seed money for a public-private partnership to build the Sheppard subway extension. Now, granted, PPPs aren't unheard of in public transit - Vancouver's Canada Line was built that way, but there is a key difference in the situation. The Canada Line connects downtown Vancouver to Western Canada's busiest airport and a city of 200,000 people; Ford's dream Sheppard Line would connect a mall to North York's Potemkin downtown, about as wide as a fingernail.

This is another part where propaganda comes in, since he doesn't actually bother to justify this; he just states it as a given. That right there is the crux of the problem, and the most likely reason why he can find anyone to use as examples in his constant "people want subways" claims - he treats these projects of his as if the only barriers are political. When people at Eglinton Square tell him they'd rather have a subway than LRT to Scarborough, they probably assume that they're equally valid choices, that Ford would not be putting the question forward if the resources to build the subway didn't exist. But they don't; last year, the TTC's estimate for subway construction cost was $351 million per kilometer. Ford's "modest parking levy" would therefore be able to build maybe four hundred meters of subway per year - not including stations, of course. Those are extra.

Rob Ford may cloak himself in the garb of progress, constantly repeat the mantras of sustainability and a "world-class" Toronto - whatever the hell that means - but his actions have demonstrated that those aren't his interests. His is a mayoralty of fiat and pique, in which ideology is the core consideration. Ford has amply demonstrated over the last year that he's incapable of disassociating his own view with what's good for the city; with Ford, it's his way or the highway, and woe betide any light rail train that gets in his way.

Photo: A Broadway Overload

Come to think of it, I can't remember why the Commercial-Broadway platform was so absurdly overloaded when I took this picture, back on the morning of June 17, 2011. In my experience, crowds like this are rare on the SkyTrain outside of track maintenance days and rush-hour train malfunctions; when the system is working fine, the trains pass through fast enough to keep the crush of people from becoming overwhelming. At least the design of the system means that track-level garbage fires, a common cause of morning delays on the Toronto subway, aren't really much of a thing here.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Quaff Review #20: Olympia

It's enough to drive a man to drink, what's going on today - war and rumors of war, Rob Ford smashing the democratic process in Toronto, the rain that comes down so often in Metro Vancouver except when it doesn't. While I like to aim for what comes out of the microbreweries and the craft breweries, the fact is that the beer stores in downtown New Westminster don't exactly have a vast selection. Still, there are times when I go against the admonishment to drink good beer, times when I'm just looking for a six-pack of something to take the edge off. Most of the options I have over here are more or less unique to this end of the continent; I never saw so much as a discarded can of Olympia during all my time in Ontario.

Olympia Beer has a long history in the Pacific Northwest, going back to the 1890s when it was first brewed in Tumwater, Washington - near Olympia, so perhaps hence the name. Despite regional popularity, the makers fell on hard times and were bought out thirty years ago, to the point that its main production point today is a SABMiller plant in California. The cans for sale in British Columbia claim to have been brewed by the "Oly Brewing Company" in Saskatoon, but I can't find any reference to this supposed brewery that isn't some other review. I wouldn't be very surprised if it was produced in the United States and just relabeled; certainly, the only French on this can is that which identifies it as "bière."

That's enough of a history lesson, though - you can't drink history. You want to know how it is as a beer today, right? Well, the tagline for Olympia Beer is "it's the water," which I suspect derives from its use of water from artisanal wells back in the day. Today, though, "it's the water" is just plain honest; that's practically all that there is inside the can. It's the most accurate proof I've found yet of the "sex in a canoe" joke.

Remember to cut the plastic rings so turtles don't get their heads stuck in them and die!

After going through a six-pack of this stuff, I've had a good chance to reflect on the virtues of modern Olympia Beer - far more than when I review a craft beer based on a sole and solitary bottle - and I've come to the conclusion that there aren't really any. When it comes to taste, there isn't really any - the strongest element I can detect is the water. No bite, no kick, barely even a sharp reminder of the 5% alc./vol. that's supposedly in there. I find it not just bland, but offensively bland. Now that I've done my research, I'm not particularly surprised by this; it's made by a major multinational beer manufacturing conglomerate, so of course it's going to be shitty. In my experience, multinationals don't very much care about things like "taste" or "quality" or "inventiveness" - rather, they care about saturating the airwaves with advertisements for their product so that they can sell two-fours by the truckload.

What makes it even more galling is that of the multinational-owned swill for sale at the local bottle-o, it's not even the best value for money. Rainier Beer is something like fifty cents cheaper. Still, if you're looking for something of low price with no kick or aftertaste or anything that, just a suggestion of beer to take the edge off... try something else. Seriously. Go look for something that you've never seen advertised with a label that you don't recognize, or a bottle that says it was brewed in Portland. Don't put down your dollars on inferior beer.

ANDREW'S RATING: 0.5/5

Previous Quaff Reviews

• #19: Eel River Açaí Berry Wheat Ale
  
• #18: Bah Humbug
  
• #17: KLB Raspberry Wheat Beer
  
• #16: Mana Energy Potion
  
• #15: HE'BREW Messiah Bold
  
• #14: Mackinac Pale Ale
  
• #13: Ola Dubh Special Reserve 40
  
• #12: Hitachino Nest Japanese Classic Ale
  
• #11: La Loubécoise
  
• #10: Summer Honey Seasonal Ale
  
• #9: Earthquake High Gravity Lager
  
• #8: Route des épices
  
• #7: Sparks Plus
  
• #6: Hurricane High Gravity Lager
  
• #5: L'Indépendante
  
• #4: Antigravity Light Ale
  
• #3: Nektar
  
• #2: Innis & Gunn Original
  
• #1: Abbey Belgian Spiced Ale

Photo: The New Lytton Square

Work has been progressing on Westminster Pier Park along the New Westminster waterfront all through the winter, although the signs up on the parkade still give the previous completion date of fall 2011. In the time I've been watching, it's gone from piles driven down into the riverbank to the floating park taking shape. Now it's dominated by the metal skeleton of Lytton Square, a modern replication of New Westminster's original nineteenth-century public market. Apparently once it's done it'll house concessions and a gathering space; once it's done, though, I won't be able to take any more pictures quite like this, either.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Achievements in Ignorance

In very rare and narrow circumstances, there's a certain advantage to ignorance. Every once in a while, we meet a roadblock in life that we feel like there's no choice but to climb, and only once we're on the other side do we find out just how damn dangerous it was to scuttle across. There are things that we would never do if we had a greater understanding of what it really meant in order to do it, things we do because they seem easy or convenient and the fact that we're playing the numbers every time we do it is hidden from our senses - like living in a seismic danger zone, for example, or on the flanks of a sleeping volcano. If people had known that, say, Mount Rainier was ready to blow its top, it's doubtful that cities would have been built where ancient lahars seared the earth.

Things like this are understandable when it comes to the ground beneath our feet; it appears stable, and that appearance is deceiving. It's one thing to make achievements in ignorance when the natural danger not only looks safe, but has been that way for ten thousand years. It's another thing entirely to extend that ignorance to something new, and something human-made.

That is, of course, if you consider the beings who write the bills that our parliaments and congresses foist on us to be human.

It could be that they are actually tricksy crows who have learned to hold pens in their beaks.

Remember Vic Toews, he of the mustache, who asserted that one either stood with the Conservatives in support of their internet surveillance bill, or with the child pornographers? That claim, in itself, was an achievement in ignorance; it was so ridiculous, so far beyond the pale that it galvanized a response in the form of the now-defunct @Vikileaks30 and the #TellVicEverything hashtag on Twitter. That response was quickly picked up by the media and spread well beyond that segment of the population that uses Twitter, spread far and wide.

According to an interview with the CBC this past weekend, good ol' Vic was "surprised" at the content of the bill he's been so vociferously defending. "This is the first time that I'm hearing this somehow extends ordinary police emergency powers [to telecommunications]," he said. "In my opinion, it doesn't. And it shouldn't."

Well, Vic, it's too bad that what your opinion of what the bill says is irrelevant; the only thing that matters are the words on the page. A page which, incidentally, was hastily and cynically retitled from the Lawful Access Act to the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. He does, however, deserve some measure of kudos for stating so forthrightly that he is not doing his goddamn job. Of course he wouldn't put that into words - that's where it comes down to folks like me to interpret.

Realistically, though, this sort of ignorance is completely inexcusable. As Minister of Public Safety and the prime defender of this bill in the House of Commons, it is Vic Toews' responsibility and duty to understand this bill and what it represents. He has demonstrated through his words that he has failed in that responsibility, and has failed us.

In the course of my own job, from time to time things with some measure of legal sensitivity cross my desk, and it's my responsibility to see that they're dealt with appropriately. If I didn't, and subsequently told my bosses something along the lines of "I didn't pay attention to what I was doing, but in my opinion it wasn't a problem," how much longer do you think they'd be my bosses for? There are some things where no second chances should be given, and I think that government is a good place to find them.

Vic Toews has demonstrated through his actions that, in his mind, accusing the Opposition of standing alongside child pornographers is more important than understanding the bill he's defending. For that he no longer has any business being in the House of Commons, and the fact that he will doubtless remain there only goes to show how intellectually and morally bankrupt the Conservative Party has become.

Photo: Shining Through the Clouds

I'd never been down to Kits Beach before yesterday; Kitsilano is far enough from New West, and enough of a hassle to get to by transit, that I've only rarely headed down that way. The rain that had been dominating the morning let up in the early afternoon, and as the sky blazed through cracks in the cloud cover, people and their dogs went out to pound the sands of English Bay. It almost seems more honest with this level of cloud cover out over the ocean - a more honest Vancouver day.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Short SF Review #22: When Planets Collide

"Star Trek: When Planets Collide," author(s) unknown
Appeared in Gold Key's STAR TREK #6, December 1969

"There are our space bogies--and still on collision course! Mr. Spock... what if they should hit...?"
"At their estimated point of contact, the results would be catastrophic, Scotty! The shock waves upon impact alone would pitch many of the Alpho planets out of orbit... to burn in space!"

I know it should be obvious to everyone with even a whiff of familiarity with the subject matter, but it still bears repeating: if you're looking for actual science that makes sense, rather than buzzword particles invented by some writer because the plot needs to be resolved somehow and all that liquor isn't going to drink itself, you're not going to find it in Star Trek. While the franchise did act as a gateway for me and many others into the greater world of science fiction, the facile way in which it portrays scientific and physical phenomena can be stunting; it was only in the last couple of years that I began to understand and appreciate how spaceflight actually works.

Compared to comic books, Star Trek flowed from the pen of Carl Sagan. This is particularly true when the comic books in question are Star Trek comic books. Beginning in the late 1960s, shortly after the cancellation of the original series and tapping into the groundswell of Star Trek fandom that arose with the show's syndication, Gold Key Comics published more than sixty issues of licensed Star Trek comics - and in those pages that hid behind covers made of photo collages that rarely had any relationship to the story within, Star Trek's casual disregard for scientific rigor collided with the completely out-there, ridiculous, anything-goes stuff that comics have been, and continue to be, known for. I mean, I've been told that the Flash's costume is made out of pure speed. Speed isn't even a thing.

Nevertheless - Star Trek comics were made in the 1960s, and in part because they were crazy as hell they were, and remain, entertaining to some degree. Much of the rest of the entertainment value comes from the fact that they're so bad, they're good, in part because of the vast liberties taken by the comic writers and artists from Gene Roddenberry's source material. I mean, these are comics where the Enterprise is regularly depicted as a stereotypical rocketship with flame spewing from the warp nacelles, where Captain Kirk is given to exclamations like "great galloping galaxies" and "howling comets," and where the resolution of the very first story was of the Enterprise scouring a planet of life. Now that's the Starfleet way!

Those meteorites have punctured the bridge, and space air is leaking in! Goggles on, everyone! (Comic page TM & © 2008 CBS Studios. All rights reserved.)

Stardate 23:00.9 - the Enterprise is zooming around in the Alpho Galaxy when its "TV space scanner" picks up two planets on a collision course. I'm not sure what the writer of this particular story meant by "galaxy," whether it was just an issue of people back then tending not to distinguish between "galaxy" and "solar system" - roughly equivalent to not drawing a distinction between the neighborhood you live in and the continent you live on. (Not that it makes much sense either way. "Planets... in the galaxy and orbiting Alpho!" Spock says, incredulously.) For some reason that is not explored whatsoever, the collision of these planets wold be a Pretty Bad Thing and so the Enterprise blasts for the closer planet on full rocket thrust across the thousands of... *sigh* galaxy miles to investigate.

When I say "investigate," of course, I mean "blow up." Because that's how Kirk rolls, you know. Kirk and Spock and Mr. Scott beam down to the planet from a room that bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the transporter room shown in the television show, and are immediately attacked! The planet is inhabited, despite appearances - what a twist! Can Captain Kirk convince his captors that he's come to save them, not destroy them?

Do you really need to ask that? I mean, as I write this I'm not even finished reading the thing, and it's still plenty obvious. This is Captain James T. Kirk we're talking about. Therefore, anticipating the plots of Armageddon and Deep Impact thirty years in advance, Kirk and Spock and a few others who I can't tell who they're supposed to be because only Kirk and Spock bear any resemblance whatsoever to their actors beam down to the second planet and start melting mountains in order to place the atomic charges at just the right places to avert disaster.

But... as Spock says, in perhaps one of his most in-character moments ever, "Great Zounds!" The second planet is also inhabited! I bet you didn't see that one coming. I mean, what's a hamfisted adventure story without a wholly artificial conflict based on convenient coincidences, anyway? Not to worry! Spock knows about a supernova remnant that radiates "a repelling force of the tenth magnitude!" Can the Enterprise use this last chance to save the two inhabited worlds - when it's restricted to a speed of 110,000 miles per second while towing the fragment? Not bloody likely, but come on! These guys obviously know nothing about how space works. So just go with it!

Does it work? Honestly, I wouldn't have been totally surprised if it hadn't. This is, after all, a comic series where the first solution was genocide. Does the comic work? That depends on how you approach it. It barely hews to the source material, it's insulting to the intelligence, and the conflict is purely artificial, engineered to make things as "exciting" as possible and failing miserably. So, it's as good as an average episode of Voyager. Heyoooooo!

ANDREW'S RATING: 0.5/5. In general, these comics are best appreciated the same way that Joel, Mike, and the bots appreciated movies.

Previous Short SF Reviews:

• #21: "You Source of Tears" (Andrew Barton)
  
• #20: "The Helix" (Gerard Rejskind)
  
• #19: "The Thirst Quenchers" (Rick Raphael)
  
• #18: "Hackers" (Rick Cook)
  
• #17: "Attached to the Land" (Donald J. Bingle)
  
• #16: "The Great Gizmo Machine!" (Pierce Rand and John Forte)
  
• #15: "Alien Psychologist" (Erik Fennel)
  
• #14: "The Frontliners" (Verge Foray)
  
• #13: "Second Chance" (Walter Kubilius and Fletcher Pratt)
  
• #12: "Hades" (Charles F. Ksanda)
  
• #11: "Revolt of the Ants" (Milton Kaletsky)
  
• #10: "Blessed Are the Meekbots" (Daniel F. Galouye)
  
• #9: "To Make a New Neanderthal" (W. Macfarlane)
  
• #8: "Funnel Hawk" (Tom Ligon)
  
• #7: Testing... One, Two, Three, Four" (Steve Chapman)
  
• #6: "Bite" (Lawrence A. Perkins)
  
• #5: "No Shoulder to Cry On" (Hank Davis)
  
• #4: "Crazy Oil" (Brenda Pearce)
  
• #3: "The Saturn Game" (Poul Anderson)
  
• #2: "Job Inaction" (Timothy Zahn)
  
• #1: "Roachstompers" (S.M. Stirling)

Photo: Deceptively Steep and Incomplete

At a high enough zoom, the camera lens distorts the true picture of reality. The SkyTrain tracks don't really have anything in common with a roller coaster where they descend into the short subway between New Westminster and Columbia, but when the camera's bringing things closer to the eye some things inevitably get lost in the translation.

This photo was taken in March 2011 - it'd look fairly different now, if only because the cold metal skeleton of Plaza 88 around New West Station is a bit more than a skeleton now.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Tech and Sensibility

Devices look the way they do for a reason. Maybe tests showed that it was the most ergonomic design for the function, maybe the designer was inspired by old science fiction, or maybe the manufacturer's just taking the opportunity to push as many spare parts as possible out of the warehouse. The point is that in many cases, design and device aesthetics are of paramount importance - I mean, would iPhones be as popular if they were bricks of aluminum with rivets as thick as your thumb? The way a device looks is a common shorthand for how advanced it is - the sleek lines of a modern smartphone just look more advanced than 1980s car phones.

Nevertheless, if you're building a coherent and believable world - no matter what medium you're using - that sensibility should still be there. Sure, the VISOR worn by Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation was modelled off a plastic barrette, but for most people it was likely far enough removed from its original source that it didn't trip people up; that it would cause a reaction of "damn, look at that guy's freaky future glasses" rather than "damn, that guy's wearing a woman's hair clip on his face."

There can be times, though, where this fails - and when it fails spectacularly, that's where it becomes interesting to folks like me, in the same sense that a train derailment can be interesting. I ran across such an example in GURPS Ultra-Tech, a supplement for the GURPS roleplaying system written in 1989 and updated in 1991, which details speculative equipment for future campaigns from a decidedly 1980s lens - not that such a lens is unwelcome, even today. One device in particular never ceased to raise the question of "what the hell were they thinking," both in the context of the book itself and whatever future world that would think it was a good idea.

Newscam: This is a rifle-sized and -shaped camera used by news teams (and surveillance crews). It is identical to the digital camera described above... it looks so much like a rifle that it is dangerous to use around hair-triggered counter-sniper teams; cameramen are advised to wear armor. (GURPS Ultra-Tech, pg. 31.)

There are so many things wrong with this concept, I can't even begin to address them all.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course this isn't a firearm! Now just let me point it at your face for that hostile interview we were talking about."

It seems like a prank, honestly. The idea of taking a professional video camera and making it look enough like a weapon that it can be easily confused for one seems like something the engineers at Panaphonics, Magnetbox, or Sorny would slam together after a few too many joints in the loading dock combined with a healthy disregard for the customer. Sure, a professional camera won't necessarily be as bulky once videotapes stop being used, but it's a fair bet they'll still be fairly bulky - the more mass something has, the easier it is to keep stable without the use of a tripod, and while the whole shakycam aesthetic may have worked on Battlestar Galactica, people don't look for that on the six o'clock news.

Honestly, the only reason I can think of as to why someone would actively design professional video cameras to bear a close resemblance to military rifles is as part of some vast project to eventually allow a "news crew" to infiltrate a normally secure area, sort of like what happened in Air Force One except the attackers wouldn't have to raid the weapons lockers.

When you're dealing with lines on a page, the only limits to the possibilities of design are what will fit on the page. With that sort of wide-open field, it behooves all creators to think things through.

Photo: The Path Out of High Park

There aren't many places in Toronto where you can forget that you're in the middle of Toronto. It's rather a different situation than what prevails in Metro Vancouver, where you can amble into the forests around Burnaby's Deer Lake or crunch into the preserved rainforest in Stanley Park or get off a bus in North Vancouver and find stargates and DHDs behind ancient trees in Lynn Canyon. In built-up Toronto, the only spots where the city gets held in abeyance are places like the thickly-forested Nordheimer Ravine, parts of the Humber Valley along the bicycle trail, and High Park. When it was first opened, High Park was on the absolute fringe of the city - by now, of course, the city has grown around it. I took this photo of a path leading out of it up to Bloor Street West back in 2008.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Dealing in Absolutes

You know, it sure is thoughtful of the Conservatives - now that they've got a majority in the House of Commons and can thus do whatever the hell they want thanks to the wonderfully broken system we call Westminster-style parliament - to keep giving us reasons why it was such a bad idea to elect them into power in the first place, because they don't have to face the electorate for another three years and by then most people will have forgotten.

The latest was a zinger of a punch delivered by Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety - a position, incidentally, that immediately brings to mind Revolutionary France - in response to an opposition MP who attacked the Conservatives for overstepping their bounds with their latest controversial law, which would substantially increase the ability of the police to conduct potentially invasive investigations into Canadians' digital lives without first obtaining a warrant to do so. Michael Geist provides a good look into the implications of this bill - I encourage everyone to check it out.

"He can either stand with us," Toews said of his critic, "or with the child pornographers."

Just don't think about that for a minute - here's a picture of a bunny.

It's rare that things are so utterly black-and-white in politics. Usually people have to dig a bit for things like this. As the Globe and Mail says, though, this is completely in-character for the Conservatives; eight years ago, when they were still trying to crack Liberal fortunes in the House, the party issued press releases claiming that the Liberals and the New Democratic Party supported child pornography. Now that they don't have to worry about the opposition or the electorate, why should we be surprised that this sort of talk is resurfacing?

The way I see it, there are only two options here - Vic Toews is either a manipulator or a shithead. Either he's fully aware of what he's doing and is using the argument to marginalize opposition, or he honestly believes that an ordinary, law-abiding citizen would have no reason to oppose what the Conservatives are putting forward. I can't figure out which is worse.

It's easy to realize why they actually use this charge: it's indefensible, horrific, political poison to touch and thus they toss these claims like grenades. The fact that the Conservatives do use it, and have used it consistently, likewise explains a lot about the way the party as a whole thinks. For the Conservatives, it seems, everything boils down to a binary choice - this or that, us or them, good or evil.

That's no way to run a government. It's a cynical ploy to marginalize their opponents in the eyes of their core supporters, the people who will follow them solely because they are Conservatives - like, say, Alberta, which seems to have an inexplicable political reflex in that it consistently gives absolute majorities of its votes to the big blue machine. It's that kind of automatic support, support given without regard to whether the party acts in a manner to make it worthy of that support, that energizes things like this. If the Conservatives were still a minority government, Harper would likely have already thrown Toews under the bus by now. Here's hoping that this causes at least some of those automatic supporters to consider throwing the Conservatives under the bus instead come 2015.

At its core, it's completely indefensible - equivalent to me saying that either one stands with the opposition or with the fascists. If an opposition MP stood up in the house and suggested that the Conservatives were supporters of fascism, I have no doubt that that MP would shortly find out what it felt like to be raked over the coals.

The ideal of government is consensus, not dominance. Binary choices have no place there. Nevertheless, there are far too many people out there who can only think in terms of one or zero - good or evil.

Photo: An Old New Look

Back when I was growing up, the buses always looked the same - they were all GM New Look buses from the late 1950s, made famous by the one in Speed with the bomb in it. Fifteen years ago they were ubiquitous, but as new models came into service the aging Fishbowls were gradually pulled out of service. Barrie Transit made heavy use of them in the 1990s, and in Toronto they puttered on until 2011, when the last of them were retired from service.

Back in 2008, I caught Toronto's bus #2250 waiting for the light to change at University and Gerrard. It's probably in a scrapheap now.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Simplicity, the Writer's Friend

I may still be a beginning writer, but it doesn't take a five-time Grand Master to recognize, and point out, flaws in the craft. Something that only someone who's deeply, deeply experienced can see is honestly not that much of a problem - it's when it's something that anyone can pick up on that you know you've got a problem.

In writing, brevity is a virtue and one of the highest commandments is "thou shalt not waste the reader's time" - or watcher's, or listener's, depending on what medium you're writing for. While indirectness or extended rambles inevitably make their way into first draft versions, part of the revision process is supposed to be the excision of those unnecessary bits, removing the superstructure and every other bit that doesn't strictly need to be there in order to make the thing hold together. Even just thinking about this slightly improved my current work-in-progress in that way; the issue is that the satellite phone connection in the story is scratchy, it's irrelevant that it's being caused by higher-than-normal activity in a gas giant's radiation belts.

Some writers aren't necessarily as quick to pull this sort of unnecessary padding out of their stories, and while it's not always to their detriment it frequently is. The number one offender in this realm, as far as I'm concerned, is Star Trek - specifically, the modern chain of series that aired from 1987 to 2005. The only reason, I think, why I don't recall it leaping out at me more at the time was because I wasn't actively wrestling with these issues at the time.

For example, I've acquired a piece of the script from the Deep Space 9 episode "Sacrifice of Angels," the main attraction of which was the massive computer-generated space battle. The writers on DS9 made a conscious effort to avoid reliance on technobabble of the sort that dominated Star Trek: The Next Generation, but even then some shone through in the form of unnecessary word filler. Take this example...

INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE

NOG

Sir, I can't get through to anybody! Communications are down!

The back half of the bridge EXPLODES in a shower of sparks.

O'BRIEN

They're jamming our signal by generating a rotating EM pulse.

SISKO

Can you clear it?

O'BRIEN

I'm trying!

The bridge continues to EXPLODE. Time passes. Starships dart around like fighter aircraft. More things EXPLODE.

O'BRIEN

Comms back on line!

The first time I saw this scene after a long while in which I hadn't, O'Brien's line screeched and groaned like a door with a hundred hinges in need of oil. It's simple, really - why do we, as the audience, care how the Jem'Hadar are futzing with the radio? The fact that they're spamming electromagnetic pulses would be relevant if this was the core issue of the story, with the conflict arising from the challenges faced in overcoming it, but here it's just verbal wallpaper that adds absolutely nothing to the story.

There are only two things that need to be addressed in that scene: communications are down, and they need to be fixed. Captain Sisko is trying to keep his ship from flying apart at the seams - it is unnecessary for him to know exactly what is causing this latest issue, because he is not the one who will be fixing it. Were I to rewrite the example scene, it would be something like this:

INT - U.S.S. DEFIANT BRIDGE

NOG

Sir, I can't get through to anybody! Communications are down!

The bridge SHAKES and RUMBLES under heavy weapons fire. The consoles do not EXPLODE, thanks to the robustness you would expect 24th-century electronics to exhibit.

SISKO

Chief!

O'BRIEN

On it!

See, that's all we need to know - communications are down, but Chief O'Brien knows the score because he is good at his job and is already focused on solving it. He does not need to explain what the situation is to justify a higher "bridge communications" rating in his next performance review.

Simplicity is every writer's friend. It's not something to hide from or to leave in one's dust. Doing that only means that you're doing a disservice to the audience.

Photo: SkyTrain, Suspended

Blue sky is a precious commodity in a Lower Mainland winter, but it was there in time for me to watch a Mark II Expo Line train buzz across the SkyBridge, Surrey-bound. In contrast to the late-evening trains to Surrey, this one doesn't seem to be particularly crushloaded; even after midnight, I've known Surrey trains to be standing-room only all the way to Columbia.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

The Midnight Ride of Rob, "Revered"

I keep encountering people who say they want subways. That taxpayers want subways. That Toronto deserves subways. That Toronto is a world-class city and needs subways, just like world-class cities like New York and London and Madrid and Moscow have subways. One of the biggest boosters of this want is hizzoner da mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, but the titan of December 2010 is now flailing like a windsock in a hurricane after Toronto City Council voted against his monomaniacally obsessive obsession with a completely underground $8.2 billion Eglinton light rail line, because he seems to be personally offended by the idea of public transit taking up his precious, precious road lanes. For Metro Vancouver, this would be comparable to the Evergreen Line being built underground (and, thus, to only a fraction of the length it'll actually go once it's done) because people in charge find the SkyTrain aesthetically displeasing.

Even after Council repudiated his plan, though, Ford wasn't beat. He did what he's always done and took his case straight to the people... that is, the people who happened to be riding the Scarborough RT at midnight, and afterward the 34 Eglinton East bus, trying to convince as many Scarboroughnians as he could of the rightness of his plan. Note, though, that he confined his midnight ride to the area that the spin machine has decided will be "hard done by" in this, even though Council's plan calls for an extension of the RT once it's converted to LRT - he didn't take his case to the riders of the 36 Finch West bus, which is probably all the best for him, because there he would have had to explain why they didn't deserve rapid transit.

Even so, Ford still has his boosters in council and comment threads, though to be honest I can't rightly apprehend the sort of world that some of them are evidently living in. "world class cities have subways, not LRTs which would freeze in winter and create an eye sore like scarborough has. look to the future," wrote avroe105, because cities like Calgary and Buffalo and Edmonton are well-known for their warm temperatures year-round.

Taxpayers want subways, Ford says. "taxpayers want subways. we don't want streetcars screwing up our roads. all the councillors who don't understand this and voted against our mayor should resign in disgrace. go get em rob - you know your right," says Last Real Canadian, ignoring that the honest debate was never about LRT versus subways - it was about LRT versus nothing. People may want subways, sure, but when that question is posed it usually seems to be posed in a vacuum; never honestly, never in consideration of how much things cost.

Given his midnight ride, I guess Ford is clinging to the notion of his subway because he thinks costs, like Council, is irrelevant. In that respect, Rob, as a member of the Torontonian diaspora, here's what I would want if I still hung my hat south of Steeles. LRT? Subway? No to both - I want a helicopter.

You heard me. I want a helicopter to land outside my apartment every day to fly me to work, and then once my shift is over to pick me up from downtown and fly me back home. Can you imagine how short my commute would be? As for costs... who cares? I want a helicopter! TAXPAYERS WANT HELICOPTERS!

I knew all those photos of helicopters would come in handy someday.

I imagine the ordinary person on the street realistic enough to know that no one's getting a helicopter, but somehow that skepticism breaks down when it comes to subways. Perhaps it's because unlike helicopter commuting, subways in Toronto are already a familiar part of the urban fabric and have been done before; perhaps they only have a vague idea of what's being done regarding subways in the rest of the world. (Here's a hint: New York is the only city in North America that's building a new subway line right now, and Los Angeles is the only other one that has such a thing on the books - but LA is focusing more on its light rail network. Shock! Horror!)

Aside from a handful of outliers, if the question was posed honestly in terms of cost, people served, and so on, I have to wonder how many people would still prefer a subway, given the alternative. Much of the political storm now is being kicked up by the Ford loyalists - what sort of person would invest so much of their self-worth in being on the "winning team," politically, when that team is led by Rob Ford?

Photo: Back On the Rails

Schadenfreude? It was more like schadenford when I heard the news yesterday. Rob Ford, once seen as the invincible titan of Toronto municipal politics, had to watch while his plans crumbled around him as City Council voted 25-18 to reverse his ill-conceived, ideologically-focused money pit that was the $8.2 billion, completely underground Eglinton Crosstown light rail line, and to reinstate a significant chunk of the Transit City program that he unilaterally declared dead on his first day in the mayor's chair - because, as the right-wing spin machine has been trying to push for weeks now, Rob Ford campaigned and won on subway building. When it comes to all that stuff about "stopping the gravy train" or "respect for taxpayers" that was actually front and center during his campaign, just forget about that - Ford zealots and worthless rags like the Toronto Sun already have, a long time ago.

Here's a photo of a light rail train in Phoenix, Arizona, which is known to be a hotbed of liberalism. I mean, they've got light rail, don't they?


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).

Standing Room Only

I've been a regular SkyTrain rider for long enough now, I think, to start picking up on some patterns. Enough that I can tell there seems to have been a definite upswing in ridership since late 2010, in keeping with that massive wall ad in Granville Station that crows about how Metro has experienced a 9% increase in transit usage since the Olympics. (Incidentally, I think the Olympics might be a good "year zero" for a Vancouver-specific calendar, "Before the Olympics" and "After the Olympics," much like a civilization arising after a nuclear war might divide their calendar into "Before the Apocalypse" and "After the Apocalypse.") One thing I've noticed in particular is that when I'm travelling during the week, it's becoming more and more difficult to avoid trains that are already packed to the rafters - even when you're boarding at Granville.

It happens to me fairly regularly on my usual trips into and away from downtown Vancouver, partially because I seem to have a particular knack for arriving on the platform when the next train is an Expo Line train to Surrey. Though the lines aren't signed when trains are westbound, it's always blindingly obvious when an Expo Line train pulls into Columbia Station; it's the one that's already full. Presumably it had been full ever since pulling out of Surrey Central Station, where more than twenty bus routes pulling in riders from across the southland converge. By the same token, when I arrive on the Granville platform shortly after my 9:30 clockout, not only is the platform packed once the train arrives, but it's almost always an Expo Line train that's packed as well. Nine times out of ten, it seems to be a Mark I train on top of that, which only makes the ensuing ride even more fun. Even if it's not crammed then, if it's a game day, there'll be a hundred or so people shoving aboard at Stadium/Chinatown.

On the whole, if you considered the ridership figures of the SkyTrain in conjunction with the capacity of its rolling stock, I wouldn't be surprised if in that respect it proved to be busier than the Toronto subway. Outside of rush hours, I don't remember ever encountering crowds like I do here - but it feels like you could fit an entire SkyTrain inside a Toronto subway train and have room left over.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm not trying to complain about the room. I sit down at work, it's nice to be able to stand up for a while, all I'm looking for in that circumstance is something to lean on that isn't a door that could theoretically open between stations and send me tumbling to the ground. I'm used to such conditions, and the only real annoyance I have is the way my arm starts to get tired when I'm holding on to one of the poles. No, what I'm trying to consider is the view of someone who's new to transit, or only an occasional user of transit - how welcoming is a train going to be when some people have to get off just to allow riders to alight?

It looks a lot smaller than it really is from this perspective.

I ran the numbers to see if it was cost-effective for me to use transit, but that was only because of my curiosity; I have no intention of trading my FareCard for an ignition key. However, I'm not the sort of person that TransLink really needs to consider; most people wouldn't run those numbers. The important people in this consideration are, I think, the occasional riders - the riders by choice. Many of them would look at the packed conditions, at the cars where there's not much chance of hurting yourself in the event of a sudden braking maneuver because you've got a dozen people around you to cushion your fall, and ask themselves why they weren't just driving. At least when you're behind the wheel of a car you don't have strangers pressing in on you from every direction.

I'm not sure what TransLink's loading standards are. Still, if Surrey's population continues growing without a concomitant expansion of the employment sector in the southland, trains connecting Surrey and Vancouver are only going to become more crowded. It's something that won't be solved easily, but there are a lot of ways to go about it - additional trains, lower headways, the exclusive use of bigger Mark II trains on the Expo Line, and more long-term concepts like the extension of West Coast Express service across the Fraser to provide another route to Vancouver. Hell, maybe we could convince some other city to build an ICTS network just so there'd be someone to unload the old trains onto.

The only thing that can't be done, if Metro's transit network is to gain greater relevance in the future, is nothing.