Don’t actually read this.
Go over here, and read this instead.
It is much better, and I wrote it.
End transmission
Tag: apropos of nothing
Where I been
I’ve got excuses.
I haven’t written much in the last two weeks, but I have been on vacation, pulling Scotch Broom, digging a km of Mountain Bike trail, sawing down trees without a chainsaw, drinking beer to stave off the heat, and, most time-eating of all, I picked up the latest Neal Stephenson novel, REAMDE.
This was an impulse purchase the way off to vacation, but I knew what I was getting into. I still remember where I was (on a school bus in the Nevada Desert) the first time I read chapter 1 of Snow Crash and met The Deliverator. I love the stuff Stephenson writes, and I had held off until the new one came out in Paperback, partly to reduce the size of the damn thing to less than a curling rock, and partly because I don’t have time for fiction right now.
Alas, it is pretty engrossing. It reads like an action movie (much like his break-out novel Snow Crash), and large swathsof it take part in my old neighbourhood – the Kootenays. So far, it is less intellectually satisfying than some of his other books. I think this is because it is Stephenson’s first book where he has fetishizes guns. Much like he fetishized nanotechnology in Diamond Age or Science-as-Religion in Anathem, this is a book not about guns, but where guns are the locus of most plot advancement from the opening scene of a family reunion shoot-off. And unlike other topics he has fetishized in the past (radical environmentalism in Zodiac, code-making and code-breaking in Cryptonomicon), I am just not all that interested in guns as a topic.
Still, the guy can write some compelling characters and his level of detail makes me want to have a copy of Google Earth open while I read, just so I can scan the streets he is describing in Xiamen, China or Georgetown, Washington. (he also has an early humourous tip-of-the-hat to the legend that the original idea for Google Earth itself was cribbed from his novel Snow Crash)
I’m only 700 pages in, so bug off, I’m reading. Its Summertime.
Canada Day Saturna Style
As has become a tradition, Ms.NWimby and I spent Canada Day in a fireworks free zone: The Saturna Island Lamb BarBQ.
This is a great small community event where a couple of thousand people descend on Saturna Island (population: about 300) to enjoy local lamb roasted over an open fire, music, entertainment, craft booths, a book exchange, kids games and sports, et al.
We have been going often enough that we actually have an assigned task (a shift at the Ice Cream Booth), and a reserved spot on the grassy knoll in the beer garden, from where we can watch the bands.
Happy Canada Day, all.
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| Nothing saya Canada Day like a beer garden and a Mountie. |
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| A small town festival so well estabished, it runs like a swiss watch. |
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| The latest in Saturna Ice Cream Booth fashion. |
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| The team, from right to left: Sales, Heavy Lifting, Scoop Master, Scoop Apprentice. |
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| What we are all here for, 20+ locally raised sheep, roasted around the open fire. |
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| Ms. NWimby rocking the front row on the Grassy Knoll. |
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| POV from the Front Row, after the Great Tent Install… |
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| East Point on Saturna, where I think someone was filming a Rush album cover… |
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| I was at the beer garden for a while, then had dreams of chasing a seal while riding bareback on a sandstone sea lion… |
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| It must have been a crazy dream, because I also ran into my current favourite Canadian.. on Canada Day! and my head had turned into a van de Graaff generator! |
An open letter to the guy driving the Grey Volks, BC Licence Plate 707 PRE.
Look, it is pretty clear our relationship go off on the wrong foot. I’m the guy on the bike you tried to kill today? In case there were more than one, I was the one on Garden City Way in Richmond.
Admittedly, there were quite a few bikes out today, it being “Bike to Work Week” and all, but I try to ride my bike in a few times every week, so I’ll probably see you again on Garden City Way, so I thought we should talk this thing out.
You see, when you tried to merge in front of the traffic on Garden City, that narrow little lane you were driving up was actually a bike lane. Notice how the shape painted on the pavement looked like the bike I was riding, and how the lane was too narrow for your car? That is why I was taking up the whole lane, riding along at 30km/h and minding my own business. I did not realize I was preventing you racing up the right side of the road in the bike lane to get a premium spot in front of the cars tolling along Garden City at 50km/h in the car lane (the wide one, no bikes painted in it). First off, let me profusely apologize for potentially causing you to be behind another car in rush hour in Richmond, it may have cost you literally seconds that you would not have been able to make up until at least the next stop light.
Since I was in the bike lane, moving at a pretty brisk pace, I was a little surprised to get honked at by someone riding my back wheel in a crappy late model Jetta or such shitbox in the bike lane. Hence, when I turned by body around to look at the source of the honk, and saw you 16 inches off my back wheel, that look on my face was one of surprise and confusion. I honestly did not understand what you expected me to do. My options were to continue to ride in the bike lane (now slower than 30km/h, as I had to sit up and look behind me to see what the fuss was all about), or, I suppose, to throw myself into the ditch and get out of your way. Although it appeared the latter was your preferred option, I didn’t really see that as the best bet for my getting home in time to make my 6:30 meeting with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
As I turned back forward, I heard the crappy little overwound 4-banger in the shitbox you lease for $150/month begin to pick up revs. Apparently, the people over in the car lane exercised some defensive driving skills (you can Google that) or became more cognizant of the importance of your mission, and moved back, permitting you to now occupy the car lane. Therefore, you felt the need to throw a few kernels on the popcorn popper you call an engine to gun past me. Not yet fully in the car lane, you passed rather close to me. And at this point, I am ashamed to admit, I might have used a swear word in the interrogative.
Lucky you pay an extra $10/month for the factory sunroof option in the shitbox, as you looked through it at me and perhaps you could hear me mutter under my breath, in the spirit of genuine curiosity: “What the Fuck?”. Note it was said with no anger, as I was, at this point, just confused by your behaviour. I had not yet managed to calculate the situation to the level where I could generate actual anger. Now, far be it from me to opine on another’s personal space issues, we only just met a few seconds earlier, but I may suggest that any time you are looking at a passing cyclist through the sunroof when that cyclist is in the bike lane, you are probably too close. Apparently, you felt this was not close enough…
Now let me be clear here. When you took that opportunity to purposely swerve your car into the bike lane and force me into the ditch, you were trying to kill me. That was, for lack of a better term, attempted murder. I evaded contact through luck, nothing else, I cannot even thank my usually cat-like reflexes, as they I have none. When 3000lbs of wheezing shitty steel & plastic at speed contacts a cyclist going 25km/h on an asphalt road with a grassy shoulder before a hard sidewalk with telephone poles and sign standards astride, the possibility of that cyclist dying is not marginal. The chances of serious bodily harm are large, the chances that I would walk away from the incident are very small. It might have also dented your car… what would that do to your lease payments!?!
You did something very stupid, for which my dying was not an impossibility.
That loud horn you heard was the guy in the Sierra Waste truck two cars behind you, expressing his surprise and distain for what he witnessed. He stopped to make sure I was OK, and was tempted to run you down. I assured him I was OK, and he should probably not get involved. When he asked why you were trying to kill me, I had to admit I had no answer. Maybe the combination of the steroids that are accelerating your male pattern baldness (the gelled spikey hair doesn’t hide all) and the daily low-level exposure to Aqua Velva was rotting your brain. Or maybe you are just a dangerous asshole who shouldn’t be allowed to operate machinery.
Anyway I have your car type, I have your licence plate, I saw your dumbass visage through the sunroof, and I have the contact info for the guy in the Sierra Waste truck, whom I will not name, but will only refer to as “willing eye witness”. I will be meeting with the Richmond Police tomorrow. I do some work with them, pretty conscientious guys and gals for the most part. I know a few members who like to ride bikes. Maybe I’ll show up with donuts.
Oh, and now that I have done the math and discover anger is an appropriate response, I should let you know. If you come back to your crappy leased financial burden with licence plate 707 PRE one day, and find someone has unthreaded the valve cores from all four tires and your air vents smell of urine? You will know I noticed your car parked there and left you my calling card. Smells better than Aqua Velva.
Short take on Minister Lake
For the most part BC Minister of Envrionment Terry Lake seems like a pretty good guy. He is smart, educated, says the right things, seems to have his head screwed on straight. One of the few “Good Guys” in the BC Liberals camp. I wanna believe.
Then I get a series of tweets from him, all talking about the great time he is having at the Vancouver Auto Show, shilling for the New Car Dealers of BC.
Isn’t a sitting Minister of Environment providing hourly tweets promoting the Vancouver Auto Show a little… I dunno… unaware?
Goodbye Green, Hello NWimby
Please excuse me while I engage in some meta-blogging.
Things around here are going to change a bit. I have been blogging as “GreenNewWest” for almost two years now, but I actually started blogging before that as a way to keep in touch with friends and family back home while travelling, something I continue to do at T’N’PotR .
Clearly, I didn’t put a lot of thinking into where this blog was going, or about the actual process of blogging, when I got into GreenNewWest. The choice of Blogger was make quickly, as it was free and easy. I didn’t want to waste time learning new software or interfaces, I just wanted to write. The same detailed consideration was taken in choosing the Blogs name. I literally went into Blogger, decided that no-one was going to read “Pat Johnstone.blogspot”, and that good names like “google” had already been taken.
My initial intent of this blog was to talk about New Westminster, politics, and the environment from a scientific viewpoint. This made sense as, at the time, I was fully immersed in the New Westminster Environmental Partners, I was getting into my new job as an Environmental Coordinator, and I was becoming more involved in local politics. To define my politics at the time into a simple category, “Green” seemed to fit the best, and “GreenNewWest.blogspot” was available. Design a banner and Bob’s Yer Uncle.
In hindsight, If I knew I was going to do this for more than a few months or weeks, or that anyone other than my Mom might read this, I might have put more thought into those initial steps, but I didn’t, so here we are. Hearing my blog name mentioned during a City Council meeting by someone who was clearly neither me nor my Mom, got me thinking: If I’m going to keep doing this thing, I gotta make it mine, no borrowed labels. Therefore a name change is in order.
Why change? Part of the problem is that “Green” is one of those words that acts like baggage: makes life easier at first, people can figure out where your niche is. Eventually any niche just slows you down. The word “green” is so loaded with preconceptions and alleged linkages, that it seems to define the viewpoint before it is expressed. I didn’t vote for the Green Party last election (although I do think Elizabeth May is doing an excellent job in Ottawa, and is punching well above her weight hitting issues that the other opposition parties are missing, mostly as they stare inwards during their respective leadership races). If you mention “Green” to anyone who doesn’t immediately make the Green Party or Greenpeace association, they will think either of money (if they are over 40), or pot (if they re under 40).
Forthe record, I quit smoking pot years ago, and all my money is tied up in a mortgage on a 70-year-old house (its kinda small, a little sketchy, and pretty old, but I can almost afford it…)
I also want this blog to continue to explore parts of my life here in New Westminster that are not necessarily “Green”. Even for an environmental scientist, environmental coordinator, and environmentalist like me, putting a Green spin on every story gets tiresome. Sometimes, I just want to talk about my back yard.
“NIMBY” is a term commonly used to describe many environmental arguments, an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”.
Like scare tactics based on complex conspiracy theories and logical fallacies, the NIMBY approach to environmental issues is one I try strenuously to avoid. Some local issues such as the United Boulevard Extension and the burning of Metro Vancouver trash can easily fall into NIMBYism, but I have always tried to make it clear that what is good for my gander is good for others’ geese. Moving the Metro Vancouver incinerator to Crofton does not end my opposition to the idea of burning trash for profit. It is precisely other municipalities’ successes with limiting the growth of automobiledom that encouraged us to say no to UBE, and in the end, I wanted to see the UBE money spent on real, sustainable transportation improvements (like Evergreen, or Rails for the Valley) even if they are not in New Westminster. I am a lot of things, many of them irrational, but a Nimby I’m not.
Ultimately, New Westminster is my back yard, but so is BC, from the Gulf Islands where my In-laws live to the Kootenays where my Parents live – I spend a lot of time in both places. And I like to travel to futerher off areas. I also recognize that everything I do in my literal back yard – that 1,500 square feet where my compost and my green cone and my fig tree and my carport are – impacts the City, the Province, the Country and the World, just as the rest of the world impacts my back yard. This is why we “act locally and think globally”.
So, as of now, GreenNewWest is no more. Bring on NWimby.blogspot.com , because New Westminster Is My Back Yard. (I’m thinking the “W” can be silent in acronymic conversation.)
Clearly, I am no internet whizz, so hopefully, if you go to GreenNewWest it will prompt you to come here instead. I moved all of the GNW archive over here, so you can still scroll through and search the horror of my past, but of course links and such probably get screwed up, and your links will probably need updating. Maybe a year from now, if I’m still here, that won’t be such a problem, but until then, thanks off the patience, and update your links.
Where am I?
Once again, lousy excuses for not posting more.
I have opinions galore, on New West Council taking a hold-on-just-a-minute position on the Pattullo Bridge (good), on the NWEP chiming in about the Pattullo (excellent), on the Peter Kent’s continued asshattery (no longer shocking), on how some New West Rabble were perilously close to starting a grassroots “Friends of Jen Arbo” campaign, just for the fun of it (and might just yet)… and other things.
But I am up to my eyeballs with this event, which I am helping organize along with being one of the speakers. I am pretty excited to be hearing Paul Anderson’s Talk. There has been so much said about Northen Gateway, It will be interesting to hear about the science of the Envrionmental Assessment.
So everything else is on hold. Talk to you after the 16th.
Meanwhile, for your entertainment, here a buddy and I are checking out the Mayor Rob Ford’s new Public Transit System proposal for Toronto:
Roomy.
Freedom of Crappy Information
The Wikipedia/Reddit/BoingBoing protest today, stemming from the SOPA “Stop On-line Piracy Act” and PIPA “Protect Intellectual Property Act” legislation pending in the Excited States was an interesting event. The issues are huge: freedom of information versus ownership of intellectual property, or at least how it is being cast.
So I am now going to do a long rant, almost as dull as looking at Wiki’s black page today.
I think this is a fight between an existing paradigm for information and the opening of a whole new world. This is nothing less than the first strike in WWW 3.0 with the old media (print, music, motion pictures) finally understanding that their business model is dead, but they will not go down without a fight.
More importantly, this is definitely NOT a battle between the “little guy” every day internet users and file sharers and the “Big Business” people who make movies, run record labels and produce printed materials. The antagonists here are one type of Big Business (record labels, movie studios, TV networks) and another type of Big Business (Google, YouTube, Wikipedia). To one group, the “little guy” is a customer, to the other, he is the product.
The Business Model of the old media was to sell you content. You bought books, you bought movie tickets, you bought records. Pretty simple. The improvement on this was the business model where you get the print or the music or the movie for free, but they sell your attention to a third party advertiser – Newspapers, Radio, Network TV. The internet has completed that transition, as the only real product Google has is your attention. “Free” websites like those taking part in the blackout today make a lot of money selling your attention to advertisers. Wikipedia is amazing, as they get the users to generate the content – as I guess Google does with things like Blogger, the “free” host of this blog. I’m sure they are tracking your use, after all, I can go to Google Analytics and download the stats for my Blog, including stats about the people who visit it.
There is a market for websurfing info. I met a woman a few weeks ago who worked for a marketing research firm, they had 200,000 “volunteers” who shared their surfing habits with her firm, who stats-massaged them, then packaged them into marketing plans for clients. She was reluctant to mention it, but admitted most of the “volunteers” had no idea they were volunteers, because they didn’t read the small print of their terms and conditions of some free “App” they downloaded for their iPhones.
So the SOPA and PIPA Act battle seems to be between old media, who want to make you pay for content, and new media, who want to make it easy for you to share content you may or may not have created, as long as they can track how you do it.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn. Because the internet is, in my opinion, too big to stop. The whole purpose of it is to be distributed, and the Old Media types can whack-a-mole with sites trying to “steal” their intellectual property, but they will never win. I’m not saying it is right, I’m saying it is reality. Old Media would be better served trying to update their business models before they join the buggy whip and quill pen industries in the dustbin of old ideas.
Still, isn’t this about freedom of information, you say? I guess it is, but primarily, it is about the freedom of bad information. If I am going to fight a freedom of information battle, it will be against Elsevier and the Research Works Act. This Act will ensure that the private sector will be rewarded by having the exclusive distribution rights to academic research papers.
For those of you not in science, let me explain. When Patrick Johnstone, researcher, does a bit of science, he tries to publish it in a peer reviewed journal. You do this for several reasons: it provides legitimacy to the research you do, to is the easiest way to share your data and results with other researchers – they an vet it, they can prove it wrong, they can build on it. That is how science works. We also do it because our worth as a researcher is often measured by out ability to publish original work in academic journals. In a sen se, these journals are the currency of science
In the good old days, these journals were produced by academic organizations, say, the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences is produced by the Geological Association of Canada. If you were a member of the GAC, you got a copy of the CJES every month, and Academic institutions would get copies for their libraries. Students and other researchers would go to the library and (illegally – but that’s the grey area) photocopy papers from the Journal and cite them, learn from them, etc.
However, publishing and producing these journals, distributing them to libraries and – this is more important – creating on-line access to papers and searchable databases of their content – soon became the interest of a few Multi-national Corporations. Elsevier being probably the biggest. This is a Dutch company that also does great business running arms shows, but that’s another story.
As a result, for scientific researchers to share data over this great technology designed originally to allow scientific researchers to share data – the internet – they gotta pay Elsevier or the like. If you search for the paper I wrote in 2006 while doing my Masters, you can find it mentioned in library search engines, but if you try to read it on line you get this. Ingenta Corporation owns it. You can read it for $40. Trust me, I will see none of that money. I have no right to that intellectual property.
Or you can do what this instructor has done, and put it on line illegally. Which I, as the author, might be OK with (no money out of my pocket), but the Research Works Act wants to make sure is very illegal.
I can hear you now – Who cares? A couple of tweedy-sleeved academics can’t own their vanity projects. But the problem isn’t my little paper about some obscure rock outcrops in the Gulf Islands (talk about Crappy Information!), it is about how academic data will be kept more separate from the public at a time when the entire world is shifting towards freer exchange of information.
So when the topic of Anthropogenic Climate Change comes up, a crank like “Lord” Monkton can make a bunch of bald assertions about how CO2 is good for plants, and therefore climate change isn’t a problem, then back it up with an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph and a blog post put out by the Heartland Institute. It’s all bullshit, but it looks legit to the average reader. How is a curious person to know? A well-intentioned scientist could refute the points made by Monkton with a ream of scientific data to the contrary. She could even give you links to 20 or 30 peer reviewed scientific articles that clearly demonstrate the falsehood of Monkton’s statements. But you won’t be able to read them unless you pay $100 or more to get past Elsevier’s paywall.
So the freedom of information question to me is this: What is the fate of our discourse in the WalMart world if bullshit is free, but factual scientific data costs large?
Starting 2012 Off-line
As has become custom, I have been using the year-end holiday season to recharge my batteries, chill out, relax, etc. This means a lot of reading, a lot of new learning, and very little writing. Along with the increasingly-frustrating ravings of Dr. Moore, I have been reading Master Transportation Plans, found a couple of interesting new on-line sources of better science around environmental issues, and have even been reading a bit of fiction: a rare luxury for me. So I have not been writing much.
However, once again, the News Leader asked me to contribute to the year-ending Looking Back / Looking Forward feature, on the topic of local environmental issues. I can’t help but feel 2011 was a good year locally for the environment, just as giant steps backwards were taken nationally and internationally.
I’m not one prone to New Years Resolutions – my life is full enough of half-realized aspirations – but I do have some plans for 2012. Obviously, the Master Transportation Plan and Pattullo Bridge public consultations will be meaningful and interesting. There are a couple of big captial projects at the Royal City Curling Club that have been on the back burner too long, and I will relish being the “Past President” of the NWEP, seeing what exciting new directions the group takes under the refreshed Board and crazy-smart and outspoken new President. I also need to take a little more analytical approach to my gardening, the shotgun approach is getting frustrating. Oh, and finish the basement renos, and ride my bike more, and replace the back fence, and spend more time on Saturna, and stop using the car to commute so often, and get a day of curling practice in every week to work on my draw weight, and… what was I saying about half-realized aspirations?
Hare Krishmas!
There will be a serious reduction in blogging for the next week or two. It’s the holidays, days are short, and you really should be talking to your family, friends, and neighbors, not checking on on a grumpy blogger. I should be talking to mine, instead of being a grumpy blogger.
If you really can’t get enough of reading my diatribes, be sure to check out the Year End edition of the News Leader, where I will be answering a few questions about the year in review and the year to come, along with some other New West rabble.
In the mean time, I will be reading transportation plans, checking out my copy of Dr. Patrick Moore’s Ph.D. thesis, sipping scotch, and generally enjoying life.
And, early in the New Year, I will resume starting sentences – or whole paragraphs – with conjunctions, and will pull out a whole new quiver of prepositions to end sentences with.
Oh, and I think I am going to finally change the name of this Blog – the “Green” thing is so 2010.
Finally, can I show off my present?
Happy 2012 everyone.