Cruisin' For A G20 Bruisin'

I was not looking forward to leaving Vancouver - primarily for the reason that I knew I would be returning to a Toronto where a miniature police state, courtesy the Government of Canada, is busily under construction. Though the walls have begun to go up the disruptions right now are minor, but ultimately what it's like in the third week of June doesn't really matter. What's important is the G20 summit, the two-day summit for which Our Glorious Leader is shutting down the core of Canada's largest city and spending $1-billion (whoops, excuse me, that's $930-million - can't sacrifice accuracy, yanno) for the privilege, fake lake and all.

Here's a note: I work in downtown Toronto, right on the edge of the traffic control perimeter. Based on the reports on how things are most likely going to shake out, it looks like there's a good chance I will have to bring my passport to pass through the checkpoints. The prospect of needing my passport, the document that I use to transit national borders, to get around in my own fucking city alarms me greatly.

Summary: while the G20 summit in and of itself is not going to leave Toronto a smoking ruin, during it and a little while afterward, at least some of us will probably wish it had. The worst part, to my mind, is that there's absolutely no reason for it to have happened at all. I don't mean that the summit could have been held in Exhibition Place, an easily-secured and more isolated area that the city offered and the federal government rejected out of hand - I mean that it shouldn't have been held in this city, or, for that matter, any city.

This has long since escalated beyond photo-op to pure farce. One of the consistent narratives that Harper and the Conservatives have been spinning is that this is an opportunity to showcase Canada to the world - which is complete bullshit. All they're going to be "showcasing" is a lake that cost $2-million taxpayer dollars to build - money that could have gone to things that are, you know, actually worth something - and a city locked down behind security cordons, where not even kite-flying will be allowed. Because, you know, terrorists!! could strap a bomb to a kite! And... do something!

But that's the elephant in the room, isn't it? The insane depth of the security measures that will be going up in Toronto stem from one reason and one reason only - the threat of terrorism. If they really believe that there is a clear and present threat of a terrorist attack on the G20 summit, than in my opinion it shows only how utterly reckless and unconcerned with consequences the Conservatives are. Ultimately, though, whether the worst-case scenario comes to pass or it's just an issue of a few protestors or totally non-involved people getting beaten to death, the responsibility will fall at the feet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the others who buffaloed this summit through - and it's us, the people of Toronto, who will be left paying for it.

The idea of this being a vehicle to "showcase Canada to the world" is, in my mind, likewise flawed; it's entirely the wrong model for a summit with as much importance as the G20. In my mind, the appropriate comparison should be that of a behind-deadline writer being locked in a hotel room by his publisher until he produces enough copy. We're living in turbulent times, and it is the responsibility of the heads of government to look at the hard questions and to make some difficult decisions, not bask in the light of a media circus.

Because there is an alternative. I just wish that the people behind the summit had considered it before they decided it would be an awesome idea to throw the locks on Toronto.

The Holland America Line cruise ship MS Zuiderdam passes Vancouver's Brockton Point Lighthouse as it sails through Burrard Inlet, bound for the Pacific Ocean - June 12, 2010

While I was in Vancouver I saw two cruise ships making for the Lions Gate Bridge and the open ocean, the Coral Princess and MS Zuiderdam. Seeing as how cruises don't generally go up the St. Lawrence, these things aren't exactly a common sight in Toronto Harbour, and neither are they of a scale that can be appreciated from photographs alone. These things are literally floating cities, and I had no idea that something so absolutely massive could move so fast.

Wouldn't it be far more straightforward, not to mention less taxing on whatever hapless cities get saddled with the dubious privilege to host this wonderful summit in years to come, to just create a meeting place for future G20 summits and the like? Wouldn't it be easier to, bluntly, pack them all off on a ship? I mean, it's not as if we'd have to worry about the world leaders getting "out of touch" with the people - they're not in touch with them now, and the bigass security fences around the summit perimeter here are hardly going to encourage any extra awareness.

Hosting the G20 on a cruise ship would enable a decrease of the security overhead - it's easier to secure something floating than the downtown core of a city - and it could be put in the middle of a carrier battle group for the duration. There's no way that renting out such a ship for a few days would be more expensive than Toronto's security tab. The way things are going, we're getting to the point where we need to lock our leaders in a room until they come up with workable solutions. This way, even if they do manage to jimmy the door, they'd have to swim for it. Hell, it might be easier for them to just make decisions and do things. Shock!

PDP #235: And the City Far Below

Yesterday I left Vancouver and returned to Toronto. It will be some days yet before I'm fully adjusted. The plane's route took us over the mountains of southern British Columbia, and in that part of the country it was a clear day. From my seat just aft of the wing, I had a clear view of what turned out to be the city of Penticton, with Okanagan Lake spreading to the north. If you squint, you might be able to see Ogopogo.

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.

Short SF Review #14: "The Frontliners"

"The Frontliners," by Verge Foray
Appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1974

She risked a mini-warp - dangerous in the atmospheric fringe - and came out of it seventy miles higher, with body and ego-field still together. Her detector immediately revealed half a dozen guardsmen within range. She had warped into the middle of a platoon! She quickly warped again, and came out to see a spectacular display of flares blossom around the spot she had just vacated.

The 1970s were an incredible time. They gave us the summer blockbuster, the energy crisis, eye-blistering fashion, and an undercurrent of inevitable apocalypse that has only recently resurfaced in popular culture in the context of climate change, though back then it tended to focus around the far more simplistic "pollution," in addition to overpopulation and the threat of nuclear war. Personally, I'm glad to have not been around for the 1970s. When I say "incredible," I mean it in the sense that I have difficulty believing they were actually real.

The July 1974 issue of Galaxy, which I stumbled across in the bargain basement of a comic book store in Kitsilano, has done a lot to convince me that while the 1970s were real, it does not follow that they were necessarily believable. Exhibit A is that month's cover story, "The Frontliners" by Verge Foray, a pen name used by author Howard L. Myers - who, it seems, died in 1971.

In this case the cover worked exactly as it had been intended to. I bought it because I had to know just what the frak is going on, no matter how ridiculous it seemed to be. As it turns out, this cover is pretty much totally faithful to what you'll find in the story - the only reason I don't say one hundred percent faithful is because I'm not sure if the number of arrows in her quiver is accurate.

Yes, really.

"The Frontliners" is set in a sufficiently distant future that humanity's diaspora has led to the establishment of large interstellar states, two of which - the Lontastan Federation and the Primgranese Commonality - struggle and compete ruthlessly in the "econo-war," a situation that's not particularly well-explained in the story but may be the Cold War recast through a stellar lens. Our heroine is Gweanvin Oster, an ultra-deep-cover agent of the Commonality, said to come from "a long-established family, one which had devoted itself for generations to the job of resembling loyal citizens of the Lontastan Federation." She's a mutant - the story is nonspecific, to my recollection, as to whether or not she's the result of genetic engineering - and only knows one other member of her "species," a Federation frontliner named Marvis Jans - she's the woman in blue, firing the raygun on the cover. Gweanvin's mission has her infiltrating a top-secret Federation research project, a sort of psychic amplifier that would allow the minds of every Federation citizen to be subject to scrutiny.

You would think that the horrifically dystopian possibilities presented by this project would drive the conflict in the story, but you'd be wrong. In fact, the author seemingly goes out of his way to downplay the dangers of mental privacy being swept away. Gweanvin attempts to interface with the core of the device, but is discovered and is forced to flee to report back to her masters in the Commonality.

At this point, the story really begins running on Rule of Cool. The sufficiently distant future of the setting is enough to provide some seriously capable technology - the key being life-support implants that, in addition to protecting their users from hostile environments, also enable personal, shipless interstellar flight. For some reason. It's not explained anywhere in the story, just taken for a given, and I had to reread the part where Gweanvin escapes from the planet with security guardsmen in hot pursuit to figure out just what the hell was going on.

Honestly, I'd much rather have read a story that dealt with the implications of ubiquitous telepathic surveillance and the potential freedoms offered by personal interstellar flight capacity on these characters. It seems like they would go well together. Instead, we get a "desperate flight to return home with key information" plot that's not much different from a spy pursuit story through West Berlin and the East German countryside circa 1960.

No matter how far in the future it is, the technology isn't *entirely* unimpeachable. With power reserves limited, Gweanvin is forced to land on the first habitable planet she comes across - Arbora, a world where technological civilization didn't do so well after colonization. With the help of a local woodsman, Holm Ocanon, she struggles to recharge her implant and complete her flight home, all the while trying to slip away from Marvis Jans' pursuit. The ending of the story actually makes a lot more sense, ultimately, than when it first begins to unfold.

I'll admit right off that the story does work - it just doesn't work as well as it might, in my opinion, had it been built from different parts. Stylistically I found it reminiscent of Robert A. Heinlein in a way - possibly because the most recent novel of his I read, Friday, deals with a broadly similar protagonist. Some parts of the language were a bit bumpy as well, such as a male character referring to a female character as "a dish" - which is the real problem with slang. Using terms that are modern frequently causes that sort of disconnect for me. I had an easier time suspending my disbelief over the ability to fly through space independently - of course, though, I wanted to do that. Because it's totally awesome.

ANDREW'S RATING: 3.75/5

Previous Short SF Reviews:

• #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)

PDP #234: The Wreckage on Helmcken

By now you may have read about, or seen one of the YouTube videos regarding, the partial collapse during demolition of a Vancouver building on Thursday, at Hornby Street and Helmcken Street in downtown - a collapse that sheared a lightpole in half and nearly pancaked a couple of people. As it happens, I have been staying literally a block away from where that happened, and so last night I went past to see what was left.

Only what would have been the basement foundation is still intact; otherwise, the former site of 834 Helmcken Street is scattered with fallen bricks and twisted debris, much like the site of the Queen West fire in Toronto a couple of years back. There was a vague smell of dust still hanging in the air, and the door was one of the largest things still intact.

Or, at least, still recognizably a door.

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.

Tourist, Educate Thyself

The other day I was riding the SkyTrain - yes, I know, completely out of character, but bear with me - and, while the train was waiting with its doors open at Commercial-Broadway Station, I overheard a tourist asked someone near the doors if this was the train to the airport. I assume that he was a tourist because 1) he had an Australian accent, and 2) he was looking for directions to the airport. As it was, the person he asked just said no; had it been me, I would've given directions.

For those of you playing along at home, the simplest way to get from Commercial-Broadway Station to Vancouver International Airport by SkyTrain is to ride an Expo Line or Millennium Line train to Waterfront Station and transfer there to the Canada Line. Riding to Granville Station and transferring to Vancouver City Centre Station is also acceptable, but not quite as direct.

This train is, in fact, for YVR-Airport.

Nevertheless, you'd think that if you're a tourist in a strange city, you'd make an effort to at least know how to access the airport via public transit, as it's a rather important destination. It's not as if the SkyTrain is complicated, either - the bus system is one of the most chaotic and difficult-to-understand I've ever used, but the SkyTrain is straightforward and simple. In my book, familiarizing yourself with the basic methods of getting around a city you know you're going to visit is just good sense; just like if you're travelling to a place that speaks another language, you should at least know how to say please and thank you and how to order beer.

Because, really, I've always believed that the point of going to new places is to come to a greater understanding of both the new and the old - in addition to what you discover about the place you've journeyed to, that knowledge can be placed in context with what you didn't know before. Without that proper context, knowledge is inert - travel and trade and interchange with new perspectives is what's required for dynamism and growth. Compare the trajectory of the independent and perpetually squabbling Greek city-states, for example, with that of China under, say, the Qin Dynasty.

A lot of this, I know, comes from my own biases shining through. When I landed here, aside from how to reach the airport and hotel I didn't know very much - but after a couple days of just wandering around downtown and more outlying areas, I built a map for myself. I'm well aware that my adherence to the wandering ethos is not universal. Even then, though, there's nothing stopping a misdirected tourist from writing "take Canada Line to airport" on a piece of pocket paper - then the question becomes, much more directly, "where can I transfer to the Canada Line?"

Like I said, though, it's easiest at Waterfront. There, at least, you don't have to go outside.

PDP #233: Tracking the Trackless Trolley

Vancouver and Toronto have at least this in common - they're now the only two cities in Canada with a network of wires strung above their streets. While in Toronto they power streetcars, here in Vancouver that's how the electricity flows into what is now the country's last operating fleet of trolleybuses, thanks to the city of Edmonton's short-sighted abandonment of its system last year. They're great vehicles to ride, though they take a bit of getting used to: when one is stopped, say waiting for a streetlight to change from red to green, aside from the hum of a few fans it is entirely silent. You really can't appreciate how horrifically loud an internal combustion engine is when all of a sudden you don't have to hear it anymore. Given that Toronto abandoned its own trolleybus system back in 1993, this is the first opportunity I've had to actually experience one.

In this photo, trolley #2262 is waiting to turn off Seymour Street onto West Cordova in downtown Vancouver, bound ultimately for Phibbs Exchange.

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.

A Brief of Five Vancouver Bridges

Vancouver is a city profoundly influenced by its geography. Unlike Toronto, where the only real discontinuities in the landscape are the ravines carved by the glaciers as they went by, modern Vancouver is very much the triumph of engineering over natural obstacles. I found that most evident in the bridges here. There aren't that many significant bridges in Toronto, and they're rather utilitarian; they carry roads above the Don Valley and the other major ravines and not much else.

In Vancouver, the situation is different: the major bridges here span equally major bodies of water, and at least some of them were built to be more than just things that keep the traffic from falling into the waves. In the days I've spent here so far I've gone across a few of them, and found that they each have their own positive and negative qualities - observations that I'll share with you from five bridges in total, proceeding from west to east.

Lions Gate Bridge

The Lions Gate Bridge is the most picturesque of Vancouver's current bridges, and is the most involved to reach by foot from downtown. It spans Burrard Inlet, linking Vancouver with the hemmed-in suburbia of the North Shore - specifically, it links the North Shore to Stanley Park. Between the southern end of the bridge and the traffic lights at West Georgia and Denham, there's nearly three kilometers of open road with deep, seemingly unbroken forest on both sides. I did this walk my first day in Vancouver, a matter of hours after stepping off the plane, and it was like I'd gone into some other world. It was one of the things I'd planned out before I arrived - if nothing else, it would provide a crackerjack platform for skyline shots.

Approaching from the south, the towers of the Lions Gate Bridge don't reveal themselves until you're close by, thanks to the equally towering trees of Stanley Park. It carries three traffic lanes and two sidewalks shared between bicyclists and pedestrians. I didn't see any bicyclists as I crossed, and only one or two other pedestrians. There are no consistent "lanes," but regular reminders that bicyclists should be using the inner half of the sidewalk and pedestrians the outer.

Frankly, I didn't appreciate the degree to which crossing the Lions Gate Bridge would terrify me until I'd already started, and at that point I was committed; I wasn't about to hike back through Stanley Park in defeat. Nevertheless, the sidewalks are only nine feet wide, with no real separation from the high-speed traffic lanes except a roughly knee-high barrier and, at intervals, the steel cables that keep the bridge suspended. On the other side, the only thing standing between me and the deceptively calm waters of Burrard Inlet was a barrier fence about five feet high. Unlike Toronto's Prince Edward Viaduct, the Lions Gate Bridge doesn't have suicide prevention barriers - for that matter, none of the Vancouver bridges I went across seemed to. What the Lions Gate does have, at the southern end and at intervals across the span, are yellow boxes that contain crisis hotline telephones.

That the Lions Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge posed one significant problem, in addition to the narrowness of the pedestrian walkway: whenever a vehicle motored past, it felt like the whole damn bridge was shaking. By the midpoint I was wondering what my chances would be like if a major earthquake tore through while I was still on it, and after passing the northern tower I walked the rest of the span at a pace just short of a run. I've never been so glad to have real, solid ground beneath my feet as I was when I made it to North Vancouver.

It's a beautiful bridge though, and well worth its place as a symbol of the city and region - if you squint, it's rather reminiscent of the Golden Gate Bridge, though it's greenish and not International Orange. I just consider myself fortunate I crossed when I did; before it went through a full deck replacement ten years ago, the sidewalks were all of four feet wide.

Burrard Bridge

Note: Blogger refused to upload this photo and that of the Cambie Street Bridge, which is why I've had to take recourse to Photobucket thumbnails. Apologies for the discontinuity.

The Burrard Bridge is the westernmost of the three bridges that span False Creek and feed more or less directly into downtown Vancouver. Easily visible from Granville Island, the Burrard Bridge carries Burrard Street - yes, I know, what a shock - into Kitsilano, and it's both older and far more solid-under-the-feet than the swaying, suspended wonder that is the Lions Gate Bridge. Given the greater degree to which it's tied into Vancouver's urban fabric, it makes sense that the Burrard Bridge sets aside plenty of room for non-motor vehicle traffic; in addition to the wide pedestrian sidewalk on the western side of the bridge, bicycles have their own, physically separated, dedicated lanes on the western and eastern sides. It's a good thing, too. Vancouver completely lacks a municipal expressway system of any kind, and so during rush hour its streets tend to get a bit busy. Speaking as a pedestrian, it's totally luxurious.

For me, it just sucked that I couldn't legitimately access the eastern span with only my feet, because that way lies good views of the city and Granville Island. It's also solid; it's a steel truss bridge with more in common with the Prince Edward Viaduct than the Lions Gate Bridge. The barrier at the edge of the sidewalk is approximately the same size as that on the Lions Gate, though a bit beefier - it's made of stone rather than metal - and the crossing didn't set off any of my "you've really screwed up now, boy" senses.

The Art Deco style, in my opinion, really makes the Burrard Bridge worth experiencing. There are two observation platforms on the west side of the bridge, set within the towers; while the southern platform was closed off when I passed, the northern is still a great place for views of the West End, Kitsilano, Stanley Park, the North Shore mountains and the widening sweep of English Bay.

Granville Street Bridge

Of all Vancouver's bridges, I feel the Granville Street Bridge would fit the best in Toronto; as a product of the 1950s it's not only completely devoid of architectural value - on my first day here, when I went over to Granville Island, I overheard a couple of guys talking about the bridges and how boring this one was - but pedestrians seem to have pretty much been an afterthought in the design process. It carries Granville Street across False Creek, though Seymour Street and Howe Street both split off it on the downtown side in an elevated interchange that's rather reminiscent, to me, of the Los Angeles style - streets completely separated from the ground and the "street life," doing their own thing up in the sky.

Like the Burrard Bridge, it's a solid bridge - if you go to Granville Island you can see just how solid, because it's built directly overhead. Note, though, that there's no direct access from the bridge to the island as it's elevated ninety feet above. Nor is it decorative: the sidewalks are just sidewalks and the railings and lightpoles are stark, ordinary metal. The views of Granville Island, False Creek, and the surrounding city make up for it very slightly, and the spiderweb of trolleybus wires overhead help somewhat, but not too much.

The sidewalks are where the Granville Street Bridge really came up short. As you can see in the photograph, there's no barrier between the sidewalk and the road. At all. I don't know what it was, but the Granville Street Bridge was the place where I found it most plausible that some dude could come up behind me on the sidewalk and shove me over the side. What a wonderful Vancouver experience - come for the weather, stay for a screaming dive into beautiful False Creek!

Cambie Street Bridge

Though it's officially known as the Cambie Bridge - so says the commemorative plaque at the north end - this bridge seems to be widely known as the Cambie Street Bridge for the extremely valid reason that it carries Cambie Street. It's the third and easternmost crossing of False Creek, and from here the eastern shore of False Creek - just before the glittering silver geodesic dome of Science World - is clearly visible. It's also the newest of the crossings, having been opened in 1985. Like Science World, it's a beneficiary of Expo 86 - appropriate, given the "transportation and communication" theme of that particular World's Fair.

It shows. While it's not much to look at in architectural terms either, the designers of this bridge recognized that it would not be used solely by drivers. If the Burrard Bridge's reservations for pedestrians are luxurious, the Cambie Street Bridge's sidewalks are beyond reproach: though shared between pedestrians and bicyclists, they're fully fourteen feet wide, and separated from traffic by a small railing, an addition with incredible psychological value. It's the only one of the major bridges directly accessible via SkyTrain - Olympic Village Station on the new Canada Line is adjacent to its southern approach. When I went across the clouds that had made my trip across the Granville Street Bridge so waterlogged had lightened considerably, and there were a few other people chattering and taking photographs of the views from over the side. I'm always thankful when I'm not the only one. It makes me seem far more normal.

On the northern side, while the routes for drivers are rather direct, for pedestrians and cyclists there's a bit of choice. Different paths peel off at different elevations, circling up, down, and around like miniature highway interchanges to put you on the ground at the right spot. It was rather well done.

Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge

This fifth bridge is, technically speaking, not in Vancouver at all - it's actually in the District of North Vancouver, part of Metro Vancouver, in Lynn Canyon Park - but is easily accessible by TransLink's 229 bus from Lonsdale Quay or Phibbs Exchange. The Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge is a purely pedestrian bridge, nearly a century old, strung one hundred and sixty-four feet above the rushing waters below. It links the main entrance, ecology centre, and cafe site with the extensive hiking trails on the far side of the canyon. I definitely recommend a trip across the bridge and a hike around on the other side; it's nature pure and untrammeled over there, like you're walking around on another planet, entirely unspoiled. In fact, Lynn Canyon Park has in fact been other planets on television - if you've ever watched Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis, the feel of the place will be familiar. For my part, I wouldn't have been surprised to stumble across an overgrown DHD.

A few words of caution, though: this bridge is narrow, and it sways. For me, getting across was a simple matter of grabbing onto the big woven steel cable and not letting go. Still - what a view!

HOLD ON--!

PDP #232: Giant Monumental Crab

I've been in Vancouver for a couple of days now, and one thing I've noticed that really sets it apart from Toronto is its apparent dedication to artistic endeavors: sure, Toronto has its murals and its sculptures too, but in Vancouver they're practically on every block. Yesterday I crossed the Burrard Bridge to Kitsilano and stumbled upon one that may well be the most inspiring of them all. It sits in a pool outside the building in Vanier Park that houses the Museum of Vancouver and H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and was placed in 1967 to commemorate the people of Vancouver's victory over the Giant Enemy Crabs from outer space - they were, you see, able to attack their weak points for massive damage. Rumors of the involvement of a strange, poofy-haired man with an improbably long scarf are, I'm sure, nothing more than rumors.

I have it on good authority, though I haven't been able to corroborate it yet, that the design of the building itself is inspired by the Crabs' starship.

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.

I Shot An Error Into the Air

One of the more sinister inventions in the world of finance, in my opinion, is the idea of compound interest: when interest itself earns additional interest. It's a pretty sweet deal if you're the one to whom the money is flowing, but in most cases it's flowing to a loan shark or a credit card company, and someone can easily be driven into the depths of financial despair by compound interest if they're not careful.

Vaguely similar to that, and extremely damaging in its own right, is the concept of compound mistakes. Here, one poor choice has the potential to snowball, closing avenues that could have led to better choices and taking the subject of the decision further away from what might have been considered the ideal. Whether you're talking about a building or a plan of action the foundation needs to be solid, and if whoever's in charge makes an ill-advised decision early in the process, that decision will echo and, depending on the nature of the project, make it difficult to alter course.

Living in Toronto, I get a lot of opportunities to witness the phenomenon of compound mistakes first-hand. I imagine there are plenty of people who would agree that the plan for Toronto's hosting of the upcoming G20 summit, to take an example that's prominent in the news, was a decision monumental in its maliciousness or stupidity. Every day I run into news that compounds the poor nature of that decision: a tab in excess of $1-billion for security, the virtual shutdown of downtown Toronto in the time leading up to the summit, the economic damage that will result in enclosing the heart of Canada's financial center behind a ten-foot-tall fence. The only saving grace, I think, is the summit's temporary nature - by July 1 the world leaders will be gone, and hopefully so will the fence and the plethora of new CCTV cameras. By, say, 2015, the bruises will probably have faded.

A better example for the danger of compound mistakes is, I think, found in the TTC. Sometimes, when I really think about it, the Toronto subway and streetcar systems strike me as impossible machines: knowing what I know about the back-end stuff, the revenue and lack of support, I have difficulty understanding how they can work at all. Certainly I don't know first-hand any other transit systems that have to work as hard as the TTC does just to stay in the same place.

Although the more immediate cause of the TTC's woes is simple - the provincial and federal governments are completely unwilling to assist it - ultimately, I think, it traces back to decisions made in the 1970s. Fundamentally, the Toronto subway in particular still is a 1970s transit system. Since 1982, the only substantial additions to the system have been the Scarborough RT, the Sheppard Line, and Downsview station - in that same span of time, both Los Angeles and Vancouver built their current rail transit infrastructures from nothing - and while Toronto is having to beg and scrape at the feet of the provincial government for a drastically pared-down Transit Village, Los Angeles is building a new light-rail line and planning a subway extension clear to the Pacific Ocean while Vancouver is set to start building its new Evergreen Line.

Things could have been different. There were plans, even in the 1970s, to ensure the system's smooth expansion into the future. We could have built the Downtown Relief Line starting in the late 1980s, before the system became overloaded to its current extent, but the transformation of what was unused railway land in 1985 to towering condominium towers in 2010 complicates that project significantly. We could have dispensed with the Sheppard stubway and the transfer to the Sheppard East LRT by building light-rail straight through along Sheppard, but we didn't. Instead we're getting an extension of the subway into Vaughan, of all places, and not because it's actually necessary but because of political interest and political interest alone.

You can try to build a mighty tower, but if you're building it on top of a bed of gelatin, it's only going to be able to stand so high before it comes all crashing down. I can only hope the next Mayor is a fan of Tetris, because there's going to be a lot of puzzles for he or she to solve.

PDP #231: New Planet, Strange Architecture

It's been a few months coming, but I've had the time booked off for a while and yesterday I finally landed on Caprica, heart of the colonies. It cost a few extra cubits for one of the FTL liners - I mean, who has time these days to go from Virgon to Caprica by sublight? - and well worth it. Only hours after lifting from Boskirk Spaceport I was free and clear to indulge that which makes the days worth living: just wandering around, having absolutely no idea where I'm going except for extremely vague impressions I gleaned from the Come On, Caprica guidebook.

Not that Caprica City's a bad place to wander around - it's great. It's like nothing on Virgon, and that's the crux of the problem. I don't know if you've noticed, but Capricans have some weird tastes in architecture - like those towers that look like they're made of nothing but glass and would shatter if you tapped them wrong. But they're positively normal compared to buildings like the one I photographed yesterday. For the life of me, I've got no idea what it's supposed to be. It could be courthouses for all I know, or a library, or a temple. That's the thing you really need to understand about Capricans - on this planet, form and function seem to have absolutely no bearing on each other.

The weather's been pretty good though. I heartily recommend.

EDIT: Seems as if it's a library after all. I tell you, those Capricans...

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies throughout the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. 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.