If you stick to the streets, it's easy to miss the existence of Toronto's ravine system. Geological legacies of the Ice Age, the ravines are bands of almost primeval forest winding through the city, and entering one is practically entering a different world.Today's photo is of Nordheimer Ravine, south of St. Clair Avenue West - less than a hundred meters south of St. Clair Avenue West, as point of fact. When I went down the staircase that connected the sidewalk to the ravine trail, the temperature dropped by ten degrees or so and the wall of trees shut out the urban sound completely. There's a similar spot on the bike trail through the Humber Valley, a bit south of Lawrence Avenue, as well as some sections of High Park.It's good to have somewhere to go where it's quiet and cool and green.
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There's an old theory that the tides of history ebb and flow from the influence of Great Men. This theory, popular in the 19th century but today unwelcome in the halls of academe, is based upon the degree to which the actions of singular influential "historical heroes" determine how events played out. Going by it, the American Revolution was won by the skill and fortitude of George Washington rather than the logistical and strategic challenges which the American environment posed to a military accustomed to Old World combat. I can see, in some respects, why its fall from grace took place. Individual actors are not the only ingredient in the grand scope of history, and in many cases it doesn't make an incredible difference who's running the show.This is one of the most critical considerations for any aspiring author of alternate history.On the battlefields of the First World War, say, individual generals can be seen as caught up in the current of history and the dominating philosophy of the times, which reduced soldiers to so many pawns thrown away for little or no gain.And yet, even then, there were individuals that nudged things the other way. Witness Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps in 1917 and architect of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. If someone like Field Marshal Haig was in charge instead, I find it distinctly implausible that a more traditional British general would have taken the steps that won Vimy Ridge for Canada.
GURPS Infinite Worlds is probably one of the most dedicated sourcebooks on alternate history we'll get for a while, and it includes three lenses for game masters building their own parallel worlds. The first is that of the Great Man, as above. The second is the Great Moment, which gives the most weight to greater social forces - the example it provides is that if Adolf Hitler had died in a 1917 gas attack, say, the postwar situation of Germany was such that "Julius Streicher or Joseph Goebbels or some unknown street fighter might have become dictator and launched World War II and the Final Solution." The third is the Great Motherland theory, which draws a great deal of inspiration from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, where history is based primarily on geographic factors and environmental adaptation.Nevertheless, the Great Motherland theory is a blunt instrument if there ever was one, and is best suited for exploring the Grand Sweep of history; any closer, and it's like using a telescope for reading glasses. Bear in mind that a world in which western Eurasian civilization is dominant would, under this theory, describe our world and one in which Nazi Germany rules Europe equally well.In my own opinion, all three lenses work, but at different resolutions of history. Right now, I'm working on an alternate history short where Pierre Trudeau was killed in 1968, jumping off the point of divergence I looked at in "To the Gallows" in January, and the question of how one man's absence would alter history is weighing heavily on my mind.It wouldn't destroy Canada. Neither would it make it a utopia. Countries are bigger than individuals, even when those individuals lead them, and from a distance a Trudeau-less Canada in 2009 would likely be broadly similar to our 2009 in terms of population, wealth, industries and so on.Getting closer, though, Trudeau shaped Canadian society to an extent that few others have, before or since. It was Trudeau that pushed through official, nationwide bilingualism and the National Energy Program - two moves that other Prime Ministers in his place might not have done. The culture of an Alberta that never asked for those Eastern bastards to freeze in the dark would, again, be broadly similar to our Alberta - it would take something on the order of global thermonuclear war to keep people from exploiting the tar sands - but would likely be noticeably different.Furthermore, there's the issue of Quebec. There's no telling how a different Prime Minister in 1970 would have dealt with the October Crisis. The world is a fundamentally chaotic system, and from time to time individuals do have a long enough lever to move the world.You may notice I used a lot of words like "possibly" and "likely" and so on in this post. For that, I only have recourse to S.M. Stirling, who quite rightly observed at a recent Worldcon panel that "alternate history is the ultimate non-falsifiable hypothesis."
For the last couple of years, the middle lanes of St. Clair Avenue West have been torn apart in order to rebuild a streetcar right-of-way - the original was torn up in an oh-so-farsighted Depression-era construction project. It's at the point now where I'm not sure if it ever actually will be finished, but nevertheless, work goes on.Here, just east of Dufferin Street, the lanes have been prepared and the rails have been laid down. Everything but the rails themselves will be buried before this part of the line reopens for service.
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Recent days have seen the long-overdue return of Suaad Hagi Mohamud to Canada after spending nearly three months trapped in Kenya. She was taken into custody at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in mid-May because, apparently, her lips didn't match her four-year-old passport photo. When faced with a Canadian held in custody for such a reason, how did the Canadian consulate react? Obviously, it accused her of being an impostor and ever-so-helpfully voided her passport so that the Kenyan government could prosecute her for, among other things, being in the country illegally.A simple DNA test could have - and, eventually, did - solve this problem. Nevertheless, there wasn't even the beginning of action on this front until the end of July, more than two months after Mohamud's initial detainment. It's not as if it's an expensive option, as the Toronto Star reported that the government would bear the $810 cost. For a government, that's less than loose change in the couch.There's an old truism that actions speak louder than words, and through their conduct of this case the ruling Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been hollering to wake up the dead. Hollering about what they think of citizenship, and the way in which they view the people to whom they're accountable. I used to think that it was a government's responsibility and duty to support its citizens when they're in scrapes overseas, that that was part of what citizenship meant. A government has an obligation to protect the people who live under its jurisdiction, because otherwise, what's the point of a government at all?A government that can't do this is sad, a tragedy. A government that won't do this is something else again. I can buy a brief delay because, really, things only slowly move through bureaucracies, and there are few denser bureaucracies than in the parliaments and congresses of the world. But _two months?_What really got my goat about all this was that while going to work the day news broke that Ms. Mohamud was coming home, I passed an outdoor television that flashed a headline along the lines of "Conservatives maintain slight lead in poll." I can only hope that this was referring to the latest EKOS Research Associates poll, conducted on July 21st, which put the Conservatives at 32.8% to the Liberals' 32.5%, because otherwise, we have a government whose supporters don't care that it left a Canadian citizen to languish in limbo for two months. In its actions, Canada's government has demonstrated a contempt for citizenship, and the fact that no heads have yet rolled speaks volumes.I recently got my passport renewed, and I flew with it to Montreal and back with no problems at all. Nevertheless, the picture on it was taken in May. For the purposes of comparison, here's a photo of me taken on July 28, 2007, and my previous (heavily redacted for posting) passport, which was still valid at that time. I'm even wearing the same shirt in both photos. Nevertheless, if I had a passport photo like this now, I would not feel comfortable travelling on it given Ms. Mohamud's experience.
So what's the deal? Should we have to renew our passport photos every year so that we can't be as easily arrested for our lips looking wrong, or having different glasses, or losing or gaining enough weight to change the shape of our face? Or should we look to the government that has, by its actions, devalued a document that is meant to "allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary" - a direct quote from the first page of my passport.There's no such thing as tiered citizenship in Canada. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is very clear about this - every individual is equal before and under the law.
Though the Toronto streetcar system is still the most extensive in the Western Hemisphere, it would have been even larger if not for the streetcar abandonment policy that dominated the twenty years after the opening of the first subway. Most of the old system has vanished in the years since it was pulled up, as is the case on Rogers Road, but here and there some reminders hold on.Today, tracks remain on Wychwood Avenue just south of St. Clair, but have been disconnected from the rest of the system for decades. Originally they were non-revenue trackage linking the St. Clair Carhouse to the remainder of the system. Streetcars will never come here again. I think, personally, that the rails should stay. It's always good to have a reminder.
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The subject of augmented reality recently came up on one of the forums I visit, and predictably, the thread was full of people squeeing over how awesome it would be to be able to delegate more and more and more memory and comprehension tasks to their phones - not exactly in those WORDS, mind you, but I feel it's most honest to get my own personal feelings about the whole things out the door soonest.Augmented reality promises to be the killer app of the early 21st century. The BBC recently reported on an in-development AR application for the iPhone, currently the alpha and omega of AR functionality, that uses the phone's camera, accelerometer, and GPS to display directions to the nearest Underground station when the phone is held up.Sure, it has the promise to revolutionize the way we interact with people and the world. What concerns me is that it won't necessarily do that in a good way. Frankly, the implications of augmented reality becoming widespread scare the shit out of me.Privacy, even the extremely basic expectations of privacy one has in the public sphere, has the potential to be even further eroded by the wide availablility of AR systems. Facial recognition technology is proceeding apace even now; for the last two years, adding the string "&imgtype=face" to a Google Images search will reprocess your search request with Google's facial recognition technology. Sure, it's not foolproof; when I searched "toronto" and appended the string, the eighth hit was an ordinary picture of the Toronto skyline, but technology always marches on.Twenty years from now, when reasonably mature AR systems are available, I have no trouble imagining rigs that run with facial recognition software that, upon seeing a passer-by on the street, could scan the internet for matching photos and slap their name above their head in a virtual space that only the AR-user could see. You wouldn't have to go to Cheers for everyone to know your name. What further worries me about that prospect, though, is that there are people who cheerlead it.I'm sorry, but my preference for every stranger with an augmented reality system to not be able to know who I am probably outweighs your desire to not have to worry about forgetting someone's name and being embarrassed by that. I'd rather not have to walk around in public wearing massive sunglasses in order to not be recognized, thank you.Augmented reality is one of those big topics I'll probably be returning to again and again. I foresee it being the "cell phone craze" of the 21st century, and if that's the case I can take comfort in the knowledge that I'll most likely remain an outside observer - I don't have a cell phone, let alone a smart phone, so why would I need AR?Unless, of course, they start redesigning society so that mechanical assistance of that sort is mandatory. Happiness is mandatory, citizen. Praise Friend Computer.
The thing you have to understand about the Montreal Metro is that, unlike the Toronto subway, it has had an aesthetic component since the very beginning. Whereas most Toronto stations were built to practically the same blueprints and varied only in whether their tiles were pearl grey, English eggshell, or primrose in color.This is one of the entrances to Square-Victoria metro station in downtown Montreal. The gate is one of the same kind that is used on the Paris Métro, the Montreal Metro's spiritual ancestor. The equivalent here would be for a TTC station to incorporate design elements inspired by the London Underground - but no. See, that might look appealing. Not for the likes of Torontonians, I suppose.
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While at Worldcon in Montreal earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend a couple of panels dealing with the subject of climate change: one explored potential ways to mitigate it through geoengineering, and the other investigated whether or not it was "storyable." Though I did get a few interesting ideas from it, the single overriding concept I left the two panels was this: we're fucked.1The news I see after having returned home isn't much better. Australian newspapers have been charting the course of a potential emissions trading scheme in that country for at least the last few weeks, if not more, and nothing of what they're reporting looks good. On August 13th, Australia time, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article entitled "Doubters attend lecture as ETS bill heads for doom," with a simple message: this bill is fucked.The proposed ETS is the work of Malcolm Turnbull, leader of Australia's Liberal Party and thus Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament. Having never seen him in action, I've got no idea how Mr. Turnbull compares to Stéphane Dion in the charisma department, but I'm already seeing disturbing correspondences with Canada's own wrestling match with environmental legislation, after Canada's Liberal Party fought and lost an election with environmental issues as one of their prominent planks.Granted, Australian PM Kevin Rudd's no Stephen Harper - though both their Wikipedia pages are, as of this writing, "semi-protected to prevent libelous additions." For one, Rudd actually seems to think that climate change is a problem, and has been making noise about Doing Something. Hell, his first official act as PM was to sign the Kyoto Protocol for Australia.The problem here is one of coordination and correspondence. Sure, most countries say that climate change is a problem and that they want to do something about it, but none of them actually will until someone makes the first move. Rudd has delayed the introduction of emissions trading in Australia until at least 2011 for this very reason.Predictably, the coal companies are throwing their weight around in this debate, and Australia is uniquely vulnerable to coal companies. It's a dry continent, so there are few rivers substantial enough to dam for hydroelectric power - only 6.8% of its electricity is from hydro sources, according to the World Nuclear Association - and while it is not quite as crazy as neighboring New Zealand, there is still enough anti-nuclear hysteria in Australia that nuclear power generation has no presence at all.The end result is that Australia is utterly dependent on coal to a degree practically unmatched anywhere else - even China has a more diversified generation portfolio. According to the Australian Coal Association, more than eighty percent of Australia's electricity is derived from burning coal. Australian coal plants produced nearly 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year in 2007. How can anyone down there possibly entertain fantasies of environmental stewardship without totally ignoring that?The problem with governments is that governments have to, have to, govern with the status quo in mind, because if they rock the boat too much an angry electorate will throw the bums out. The problem with the status quo is that the assumption that goes along with it is that we have unlimited time to change things around, that we could keep burning fossil fuels at our steadily-climbing rate until the 22nd century or beyond, and that nothing bad would happen.Science does not bear this out. Carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing, the icecaps are melting, and the permafrost is beginning to thaw - and the methane currently sequestered in the permafrost, the methane that has the potential to kick global warming into a seriously high gear, is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about.At least in places like Canada, the United States, France, and even China, dirty and dysenvironmental coal-based generation is not the only source of power. Australia, handcuffed as it is to the fortunes and filth of burning coal, has a lot further to go.1 For example, a solar shade with 8% reflectivity, stationed at the Sol-Earth L1 point to reduce solar impact on Earth by 0.25% and temperatures by 2 degrees Fahrenheit, would be a good way to create a "planetary thermometer" for environmental regulation, if only there was an easy way to build thirty-seven million tons worth of solar shade up there.
I found this blue hydrant along rue Berri in Montreal while I believed I was walking south, but was in fact walking north; if not for Henri-Bourassa metro station, I might've ended up in the Rivière des Prairies. It's not as if red fire hydrants don't exist in Montreal; I saw a few of them while I was there.If any Montrealers know what the function of this is, or whether it's just an ordinary fire hydrant that happens to be blue instead of red (and, if so, why), that'd be pretty awesome, actually.
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"Quebec is different, very different," said the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, the single least popular and most hated Prime Minister in Canadian history. "It is not strange or weird, it is just different."Its beer is also different. In fact, I am led to believe that it will never submit.Much of Quebec's recent history with regard to the rest of the country has been bound up in its 1980 and 1995 attempts to go its own way as an independent state, though the recent silence on that front looks to break the fifteen-year cycle of referenda before it really had a chance to begin. The Parti Québécois hasn't been in power for six years, and the current Liberal majority in the National Assembly seems to be keeping things on an even keel with little talk of separation.Not everyone is satisfied with this. Thus, enter L'indépendante, a new craft-brewed beer produced to raise awareness of and support for Quebec independence. A portion of profits from the sale of L'indépendante are, according to Google Translate, "used to promote the country of Quebec."That's right - this is separatist beer. Naturally, once I learned of its existence, I realized I couldn't go all the way to Montreal and not try some. For the purposes of reviewing it, you understand. It doesn't make me a bad Canadian. Besides, this is one beer that will be found on the shelves of an LCBO around the same time as I have the chance to vote for a Bloc Québécois candidate in Trinity—Spadina.The first thing I found is that L'indépendante is hard to find. Apparently it hasn't been selling as well as its creators hoped, and as an independent beer it doesn't have quite the heft necessary to get into the limited cooler space of Quebec's depanneurs and grocery stores. I found it at La Fromagerie Marché Atwater in Montreal's Atwater Market, a cheese store with a rather wide selection of beers - many of which were local Quebec beers that I'd never seen before. If I'd had more time in the province, I would have tried some of them out as well.It took a few minutes of careful searching to find the L'indépendante; as far as I could see, the six-bottle case I picked up was the only one they had in stock. All told, it cost me $15.49 CDN, which included a $0.60 bottle deposit charge ("depot bouteille"), $0.66 GST, and $1.04 in Quebec sales tax. For purposes of comparison, a six-bottle case of Antigravity Light Ale is $11.95 at the LCBO before Ontario's interminable sales taxes.L'indépendante, though it has its charms, is no Antigravity Light Ale.
love that lens flare
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