Amalgamation, Negativity, Municipal Elections and my Teeth

In today's Chronicle, someone is quoted as regretting that there's no anti-amalgamation group in town.

Well, me, I'm opposed to amalgamation. I think it's a spectacularly stupid idea for Waterloo, for lots of reasons:

• Amalgamation has been shown to be expensive. Union contracts bump up to the highest level; there are virtually no cost savings; and so on.
  
• Waterloo property taxes will go up if we merge.
  
• I like our unique identity. Kitchener is a great place but is very different from Waterloo and vive la difference.
  
• Waterloo has an internationally known name. We should be building our brand, not diluting it.
  
• Merging with a city that's twice as big is tantamount to throwing away our self-determination.
  
• We already merge almost all the services that can be merged. If there are more opportunities to merge services (the only one I can think of is the libraries), then we can do that without amalgamation.
  

Crazy as it sounds, the main reason why some prominent Waterlooians are for amalgamation is that they think the city is currently mismanaged, and will be better run if it's part of Kitchener. They point to our chronic underfunding of the arts and library as key issues. But Jeeze Louise guys, if you want better management then vote for candidates who are qualified to do the job. If you have issues you want to influence, speak up - especially now, during an election campaign.

Despite my emphatic opposition to amalgamation, I can't get active in my opposition. For one thing, amalgamation has become The Beast That Will Not Die. It's like, every couple of years I hear someone say, "It's baaaack..." I am suffering from amalgamation fatigue. But even more than that, I have been working to oppose the LRT for two years now, and I'm sick, sick, sick of being negative. Fighting FOR something is so much more fun.

So what am I not against? Well this may be bucking the trend of popular lunacy, but I'm for fluoride in my drinking water. I think the anti-fluoride contingent is fueled by junk science, while the benefits of fluoridation are verified. I'm horrified by what has happened to my dentist, Dr. Harry Hoediono, for standing up for sanity and saying the simple truth. (People in this town play dirty: besides trashing his character, someone on the anti-fluoride side has now brought Harry up on charges for conspiring to spend money or some such thing.)

So why am I not out dressed as a giant tooth, promoting the cause of fluoridated drinking water? If I had kids, maybe I'd stand with Harry and brave the attacks of the pro-cavities crowd. But I don't, so I'm sitting this one out.

###

Waterloo's Mayoral Candidates Kick Off Election 2010

Tonight's Waterloo mayoral debate could be summed up like this, from left to right:

Jan d'Ailly: I bring experience, leadership ability, and a proactive approach.
Barbara Halloran: I've done a super job.
Franklin Ramsoomair: Ummmm.
Dale Ross: Slash the budget!

Actually, Ramsoomair had some interesting things to say, but he was unable to articulate a vision for his mayoralty. In fact, his ability to articulate his ideas was a problem throughout.

Ross, on the other hand, articulated his vision all too well. He wants to cut spending. Really - that's it. When asked about specific issues, he repeatedly said he'd have to get someone to tell him what to do or form a committee. His plan is to put the city through ten years of extremely restricted spending in order to pay down our debt.

The questions were excellent. Neil Acheson was a great moderator - when he asked the audience to not applaud, it created a much better debate than most. One quibble: I was disappointed by all the answers about bylaw enforcement: they all focused on unmaintained lawns and noise complaints, without mentioning the vital accessibility issue of snow clearance.

Bottom line: This is a two horse race, between Halloran and d'Ailly. I approach elections like a hiring process, and look for qualifications, experience, intelligence and vision. To my mind, d'Ailly is the best choice. But I enjoyed listening to all four of them. d'Ailly and Halloran were both refreshingly candid, and d'Ailly in particular was very detailed and informative. Good job all around.

Upcoming debates:

• Wednesday, Sept 22 - Waterloo Ward 1 candidates, Hauser Haus, WMRC
  
• Tuesday, Sept 28 - Waterloo Ward 3 candidates, Community Room, McCormick Community Center
  
• Wed, Sept 29 - Waterloo Ward 4 candidates, Room 207, RIM Park
  
• Thurs, Sept 30 - Waterloo Ward 5 candidates, Room 208, RIM Park
  
• Tues, Oct 5 - Waterloo Ward 6 candidates, Hauser Haus, WMRC
  
• Wed, Oct 6 - Waterloo Ward 7 candidates (uptown), Hauser Haus, WMRC
  
• Thus, Oct 7 - Regional Council candidates, Adult Rec Center
  
• Tues, Oct 19 - Public school board candidates, TBD
  
• Wed, Oct 20 - Regional Chair candidates, TBD
  
• Thurs, Oct 21 - Waterloo mayoral candidates (Round 2), Hauser Haus, WMRC

More info on the upcoming debates: WaterlooVotes.com

Update: The Waterloo Regional Record is also hosting its own debates. For a list of times and places, see here.

Update: Rogers TV schedule of debates on TV on Karen Scian's blog

Update: You can watch videos of debates on the Record's Vote 2010 site.

###

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Uptown Waterloo is booming.

Just at the corner of King and William, there are two new buildings going up. In the pie-shaped lot where Quiznos used to be, a financial services company is putting up an office building:


Across the street, the region's most expensive and luxurious condo building has been announced at 150 King:


Over at Erb Street there's the Barrelyards, nearly 13 acres in size. The details keep changing, but when it was officially announced in 2007 it was slated to have two hotels, two 25-storey condo towers, four rental apartment towers, 230,000 SF of office space, townhouses, and ten mixed retail/residential low rise buildings.


Next to the Barrelyards is the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, which is getting a mammoth and very exciting-looking addition:


Across the street from the Perimeter Institute is the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a complex of buildings:


And kitty-corner to the Balsillie School is the new Knox Presbyterian Church:


Then there's the 21-storey condo/townhouse complex at 144 Park, the new condo at Bridgeport and Peppler, and a proposal for a high-rise condo at 31 Alexandra. That's just what's already in the pipe. A commercial realtor told me recently that within five years he expects that King Street north of Erb will be a canyon of large new buildings. Projections of Caroline between Erb and William show all those parking lots replaced with buildings.

Minor note: None of this development has anything to do with LRT plans. Most was already in the works before the LRT proposal, and all of it is a direct result of the high rental rates in Uptown - brought about by the redeveloped Waterloo Square, new streetscape, programming in the Public Square, and general momentum of success in Uptown.

###

The Embarrassing Past of a Kettle and Pot

The ever-astute Elizabeth May has a theory. She thinks Harper is going to call an election this fall, even though he's down in the polls. She believes that Harper is focused on voter turnout rather than ratings, and that his strategy has been to reduce voter participation outside his base.

In the 2008 election campaign, she maintained, Mr. Harper purposely drove down voter participation in several ways. He called a snap election, he had the minimum numbers of days for a campaign, he had election day right after the long Thanksgiving weekend, he had changes in the Elections Act that meant people couldn’t vote without additional ID, and his attack ads had increased cynicism toward politics. The result was that every party’s total vote number went down, except the Green Party’s. The Liberals’ dropped the most and Mr. Harper was able to increase his minority.

. . .

Everybody thinks Mr. Harper’s right-wing manoeuvring, like his move on the census, has been disastrous, Ms. May said. "I bet he doesn’t think so. For his base, which is essentially the tea party of Canada, these are good messages."

May predicts that Harper's got a bunch of devastating attack ads to use against Michael Ignatieff, and that he'll unveil them during the campaign. They will include footage of Ignatieff before becoming Liberal party leader.

An example, she said, is some incredible statements the Liberal Leader made on torture when he appeared once on the Charlie Rose show. "The Conservatives must have a video archive of him saying things that Harper believes will make him unelectable." The Prime Minister is saving them for the campaign because "he wants the shock value."

This tactic could work if Harper gets the timing right and prevents Ignatieff from having time to respond or recover. In the 2006 election a fake scandal invented by the NDP sewered Paul Martin; Martin was bouncing back from it, but he didn't have time before the election to recover enough, and it wasn't until months after the election that the scandal was fully debunked.

Or is it possible? Harper himself has recovered from revelations of his saying far worse things than Igantieff ever said. Harper, after all, denounced Canada as a "Northern welfare state in the worst sense of the term." In that speech he also spat on universal health care, women’s rights, the unemployed, francophone Canadians and all Canadian political parties, including his own.

###

Culture of Layoffs

Another story about another company laying off a percentage of their workforce. This time all we're told is that 81 employees were laid off, representing 5% of the workforce, and that the company "ended production of some unprofitable products".

I wonder what would happen if companies were expected to report more information about layoffs - and by "expected" I mean by law where possible, and by convention and community standards otherwise. And if they don't provide the info, newspapers should investigate and get the goods.

The information I'm looking for has to do with the negative side of layoffs. How long, on average, had these people worked there? What percentage got a good performance ranking in their last review? What sort of severance did the company provide? What was the total direct cost to the company of the layoffs (severance, out-placement, travel and consulting fees required by the move)?

If all these details were provided, would the market automatically react as strongly to reward companies that lay off a big chunk of their workforce?

I once worked for a publicly-owned company whose management was committed to avoiding a take-over. Every time the stock price fell they laid off employees to bring it back up. There were so many layoffs that they didn't use the terminations to get rid of low performers: terminations were totally a function of what someone was working on, and the best and the brightest regularly got cut. This culture of continuous layoffs created a totally dysfunctional company with a decidedly subpar product, but it also kept it successful.

That kind of success is a market distortion. Unproductive - even antiproductive - behavior is rewarded. It's a systemic failure.

###

BRT not a Viable Plan "B"

Now that we know how much the federal government is willing to contribute, it’s clear that the Region of Waterloo can’t afford the proposed LRT. The combined provincial/federal contributions leaves $235M to the Region and that is too much for us to carry. LRT is dead.

Well, not really. Now there's talk of going to the Region's Plan B, Bus Rapid Transit, or shortening the LRT route.

In the BRT plan, curbs are inserted in the middle of our streets so that buses can run in dedicated lanes. The BRT has many of the disadvantages of LRT:

• It costs hundreds of millions to build.
  
• It puts a disproportionate amount of our resources on one route.
  
• It prevents cars from turning left except at designated intersections.
  
• It disrupts car and bike use of the street.
  
• It disrupts other use of the street, including parades and festivals.
  
• The route is very difficult to alter.
  
• It is inconvenient for transit users because the stops are so infrequent.
  
• It creates an accessibility issue for seniors with walkers, parents with baby strollers, and the like.

The iXpress, which runs high tech buses on the same route as BRT, is no slower than BRT and costs one or two percent of BRT. (The iXpress route, including marketing, cost $9M. Of that, the buses cost $4M.) There is simply no reason to spend over $500M creating curbs in the middle of our streets.

In fact, it boggles the mind how the Region could propose creating a single bus route that costs $550M. In Toronto, dedicated bus lanes have nothing more than some diamond shapes painted on the pavement.

Building a shorter LRT route sounds like it might be equally crazy, but I haven't seen a proposal yet so I can't be sure. When I was in Istanbul in the early 90s I thought their two-station subway system was quite useful, so I'll withhold judgment - but with reservations.

I dearly wish that LRT were dead, for one simple reason: we're about to embark on a municipal election season, and it would be great if we could seriously discuss how to improve transit, rather than fight over this ridiculous, over-priced, destructive plan.

We could discuss initiatives such as the following:

• Running multiple iXpress routes.
  
• Forming a fleet of minibuses that run on little-used routes.
  
• Creating an on-demand transit system for the elderly and poor families.
  
• Implementing marketing programs such as cheap family passes on weekends.
  
• Running more buses to festivals, events, the Aud, and so on.
  
• Creating a free shuttle.
  
• Reducing fares.
  
• And on and on...

We could take a step back and look at other issues around transit:

• Transforming our sprawl into a livable city.
  
• Making sure our transit system is adequate for the needs of people who have to take transit.
  
• Identifying people who don't take transit but would like to, and finding how we could get them to use it.

We’re the community that got designated the world’s most intelligent. Why have we spent two years chasing the old failed trend of rapid transit? It all comes down to the way LRT was pushed on us. There were fake public consultations (I say they were fake because I went to them) and there was never any real needs assessment: someone at the top of the Region conceived this notion and forced it through the system. Here's an example: about 18 months ago a city hall committee I'm on met with rapid transit planners. At that time my committee included a former mayor, former city councillor, and former regional councillor, and we had spent a lot of time researching and discussing the issue. Over a couple of hours we discussed our concerns with the regional employees, and they didn't take a single note. They didn't even bother to get out a pen or notepad. They hedged most of our questions. It is really no wonder why we ended up with an LRT plan that would have killed uptown Waterloo, been an enormous white elephant and drained funding from the rest of the transit budget. It was a vanity project.

###

Canada's Homegrown Terrorists

I don't condone terrorism at all. But the western military involvement in Afghanistan is a humanitarian disaster, and Afghans who fight to end it are not necessarily in the same class as religious fundamentalists who want to punish the west for holding different values.

When a community is occupied by military forces who round up innocent citizens and transfer them to people who torture, abuse and in some cases kill them; when bombs are dropped by planes on a regular basis; when regular citizens are regularly killed; when infrastructure is destroyed; when a country turns into a chess board for foreign powers to fight over - we have to expect that people are going to fight back.

A lot of Afghan "insurgents" aren't Taliban or gangsters but just people who are protecting their homes and families. Western media presents the occupation as humanitarian, but it isn't. We are killing innocent people. Their families are fighting back. The longer we continue to kill Afghans, the more Aghans are going to become "radicalized."

There is incontrovertable proof that Canada had a policy to pass on Afghans we detained to people who would torture them. Our roundups captured a lot of innocent people. When this came out in the press, most Canadians didn't care. Our government was very clear that it didn't care. Don't you think that might be a reason for an Afghan-Canadian to become "radicalized"?

The latest terrorist plots are homegrown in that our military policy is creating them. Our government's policies appear to be breaking international law. In order to cover up their acts, Harper took extraordinary antidemocratic measures, including disrupting parliamentary committees, smearing whistle blowers and shutting down parliament. This whole situation smells very bad.

###

Did You Get Pears?

"Did you get pears? Did you get pears? Did you get pears?" "We'll discuss it inside."
- the last lines of last Sunday's episode of Mad Men

What the heck was that all about? Were they showing us that Don has sunk so low that his decrepit old neighbors don't trust him enough to discuss produce purchases in front of him? Were they telling us that Don has returned to his roots - left upper middle class suburbia for a low-rent dump? Was this Don observing what he might have become - a whiny, dependent old man - if his marriage hadn't ended? Were we seeing that even when he's sunk into alcoholism and isolation, Don is always observing things about people that help him be a great ad man (as opposed to the focus groups he dismissed earlier in the episode)? Was it a comment on the paranoia in America during the 60s? Or was it a coded message to the audience, with pears really being "pairs" - telling us to observe the dualities in the episode?

Could it possibly be that all those meanings were packed into that one, brief, seemingly pointless little segment? Or is this show so enigmatic that we can create our own meaning?

Sometimes Mad Men seems more like a poem than a novel.

###

Waterloo's Burgeoning Club Zone

On King Street in the block north of Erb, we already have two bars catering to heavy drinking: the Vault Lounge and Chainsaw. Around the corner on Regina, the patio of the Royal Canadian Legion is another noisy, boozy spot.

New Year’s Eve, 2008, I walked by the Vault with my 80 year old mother about an hour before a massive brawl broke out on the sidewalk. The police called it a riot as dozens of drunken patrons fought; people were stabbed with broken bottles and bones were broken. Last summer the Vault was the scene of another late night brawl.


Now, directly across the street from the Vault and next door to Chainsaw, the Waterloo Theater seems poised to become a nightclub.


Here's some local buzz about the plans for the Waterloo Theater, which apparently will be called Beta. I'm not sure there's anything to be done to prevent Beta at this stage. A local resident has asked the Alcohol and Gaming Commission to withhold the liquor license, but it's doubtful that that approach will work. If the City of Waterloo had funded the arts to a decent degree (and not thrown so much of available funds into the pit that is the Clay and Glass Gallery), perhaps the previous attempts to make the theater a cultural center (Theater Athena and the Waterloo Entertainment Center) would not have failed.

As a long-time Waterlooian, I'm a bit paranoid about Waterloo suffering the fate of Kitchener. When I was growing up in Waterloo in the 60s and early 70s, downtown Kitchener was a wonderful, vibrant area full of interesting shops. The main attraction was the string of movie theaters along King Street. One of the downfalls of Kitchener was when those theaters got turned into clubs, with all the drunken brawls, public urination and vandalism that goes along with nightclubs.

The core of Uptown is King Street from William to Erb. Uptown needs to expand north up King, and our new nightclub zone is the first block north. The area is slated for streetscape improvements next spring. I'm really concerned that this concentration of booze cans (as the Chronicle likes to call them) will mess up the development of other blocks to the north.

Some of our city councillors believe that any criticism of bars is due to teetotalling tendencies that must be ignored. I disagree. Local politicians may have heard out-of-line complaints about bars; that doesn't mean that all concerns about bars are invalid.

###

Laurel Trail Interrupted

Laurel Trail runs along Laurel Creek and the railway tracks through Uptown Waterloo, Waterloo Park, and the University of Waterloo. It's a beautiful trail and my bike route to work. Here's a particularly pretty spot:

In recent years, the city of Waterloo planted flowers where the trail used to be along the tracks from Caroline to King. From the Waterloo Square north parking lot, here's where the trail used to be, east to King:

...and where the trail used to be, west to Caroline:

I guess City Hall figured that people following the trail can walk on the tracks or in the parking lot. That's a real pain for bicyclists and roller bladers. Also, the break in continuity is a problem for what is already a poorly marked trail.

Laurel Trail should be clearly marked, be paved, and have snow removal - not be a hodgepodge of unmarked segments of path.

The Iron Horse Trail is also abandoned as it goes through Uptown, picking up as it exits each end. Trails should be showcased in Uptown, not abandoned!

###

Empty Lakes and Concrete Canyons

I snapped this picture of Silver Lake in Waterloo Park yesterday. I was standing on the foot bridge at the western edge of the lake.


In case you're wondering, that dry land is part of the "lake". Water levels in creeks and rivers around the area are fairly high now, even though it's the middle of summer. Not so with Laurel Creek in Waterloo.

A few decades ago, amid concerns that water levels would rise, the city of Waterloo lined creek beds in ghastly-looking blocks of rocks encased in chicken wire. I remember when they did that to Laurel Creek near Marshall, destroying beautiful banks, trees, and plants. You could see the wheel treads of the bulldozers for years. A beautiful burbling brook became a hideous mess.

The park behind Waterloo City Hall got the full treatment: Laurel Creek was buried at the bottom of a concrete canyon:


A block away, just across Erb Street in a less heavily travelled area, Laurel creek is in its natural banks again:


Former mayor Joan McKinnon told me that the water projections of forty years ago turned out to be incorrect, and Laurel Creek has instead dropped in volume. I wonder if there's any way to boost it.

We could have a beautiful (and cooler) uptown if we made the most of Laurel Creek. A hundred years ago Silver Lake was a popular swimming spot; we might not achieve that again, but it could be a pretty place if it had water and maybe even a fountain. Laurel Creek behind City Hall should be naturalized with willow trees hanging over it and rounded grassy banks. It may never be as spectacular as the rushing creek that runs through downtown Boulder, Colorado, but it could be a lovely urban park.

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Cleanup efforts

Immediately after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and it was known that oil was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, people around the world started offering assistance to clean up the oil. There are many countries that have skimmers that can remove oil from water far more efficiently than any US technology can do it. A great unexplained scandal is why they have not yet been allowed to help, but it seems to have to do with overly cautious US bureaucracy. Now that hurricane season has arrived (and it's predicted to be a bad one), there will not be as many opportunities for skimming oil.

The first good news has arrived in the form of a Taiwanese tanker that [it is hoped] can scoop up 21 million gallons of water a day, separate out most of the oil and siphon it to a nearby ship, then put the cleaner water back in the Gulf. However, even it needs to wait approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, as current regulations won't allow it to put dirty water back in the Gulf - even if it's cleaner.

###

How much oil has spilled?

Since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up on April 20 until today (July 1), various estimates put the amount of oil that has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico at between 100 million and 200 million US gallons. Some of the oil has been siphoned, burned or skimmed from the water. The current official estimate of the remaining oil in the Gulf as of Thursday was 140 million gallons. It is estimated that 1.4 to 2.7 million gallons is being added to that each day.

###

Why is the Gulf Oil Spill Different Colors?

When I was collecting photos of the Gulf oil spill recently, I was puzzled why some of the pictures showed red oil, while some was the usual iridescent black.

Turns out oil turns red when mixed with water. Wierd Koops, chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, says, "the red-brown color happens when oil picks up more than 60 percent water."

###

What Will Happen to All that Oil From the Gulf Oil Spill?

Some of the oil that has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico is being reclaimed by BP. The rule of thumb seems to be that if it has turned red, the oil is too "weathered" to be commercially viable, but if it's still black it may be salvagable with processing.

In a gigantic rescue effort, a small amount of the oil has been brought ashore manually - by boats and by people bending over and picking it up off beaches. The oil in liquid form will be put in injection wells, while contaminated solid waste will go to special landfills.

As part of the cleanup effort, some of the oil on the surface of the water has been set on fire.

The Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills predicts that about 35 percent of the remaining oil will evaporate, about 20 percent will find its way to the ocean, and roughly half will remain in the Gulf of Mexico - some on the surface and the rest dispersed throughout the water.

The oil that goes to the ocean will round the tip of Florida and then probably get caught up in the northward-flowing Gulf Stream. Simulations predict that that oil will flow close to the coast of North America.

The Gulf Stream eventually finds its way to the Norwegian Sea, where the cooled water becomes heavy and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The trip from Florida to the sink will take about 18 months (based on this analysis of how long ashes dumped in Fort Lauderdale will take to get to England). After sinking in the Norwegian Sea, the Gulf Stream waters flow back south and reappear in the Pacific about 1,600 years later.

Some or all of the oil in the Gulf Stream will drop off en route. Tar balls may wash ashore. The oil may foul beaches and fisheries all up the east coast, although the simulations predict it will veer offshore long before Canada. Some of the oil will disperse in the Atlantic or sink to the bottom - which is reputedly already littered with tar balls from other oil spills and from chronic oil leakage from practices like dock degreasing.

A hurricane, tropical storm, or even plain old high winds could cause several problems.

High winds could dislodge or destroy the booms that are containing some of the oil, causing the slick to spread further. They would also likely cause large waves that will drive more oil ashore.

Storm surge could drive contaminated water up canals and rivers. (It was storm surge that caused the flooding of New Orleans in the hours and days after Katrina.) A major concern in New Orleans is that the contaminated water will reach Lake Pontchartrain.

The oil itself is a deadly carcinogen, and the tons of dispersants that have been dropped on the slick make it even more toxic. It might seem insane to add more poisons to the mix, until we get to the next hurricane problem - which requires that we get oil off the surface as quickly as possible, and which is the reason for the dispersants.

The biggest concern about hurricanes is that the toxic mess will be picked up by the wind and carried inland. It could be carried hundreds or even thousands of miles before it's dropped on crops and pastures (from which it will spread throughout the food chain) and it will contaminate lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the rest of the water supply.

Of the oil that remains in the Gulf, some will stay in the water forever. Some of it will seep onshore, especially into the salt water marshes that stretch inland for a hundred miles in places. Hurricanes, storm surges and other forces of nature will continue to carry it further inland, possibly for decades to come.

Many people seem to think that BP can pay the costs of the oil spill's damage, but this is way too big for a single company to cover.

(The comic is from xkcd.)

###

Oil Spills

Let's all keep in mind that the BP oil spill is a big story because it's close to home and because it's a follow-up to the even bigger (in terms of newstand revenue) story of the Katrina disaster. Oil contamination of the oceans goes on all the time, and is greatly under-reported.

Nigeria has been devastated by oil for decades. The New York Times reports that an oil spill the size of the Exxon Valdez has happened every year for 50 years in the oil fields of Nigeria, with the oil gushing into sensitive wet lands. A recent article in The Guardian is even more devastating, saying that life expectancy has plummeted in rural Nigeria as the oil spills contaminate drinking water. Protest has been brutally repressed, epitomized by the horrific execution of poet Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. (Due to outrage at that atrocity, Shell finally paid $15M for its involvement, which was just one in a long history of human rights violations perpetrated by and for the oil companies.)

Like the Gulf spill, Nigerian oil spills don't just affect the local ecology. The oil flows out the Niger delta and into the Atlantic ocean. Also, over half of Nigerian oil wells are off-shore, and they're no safer than the ones on land.

Mexico had an oil spill in 1979-80 that held the previous record (140 million US gallons) and was only surpassed by BP today, at least according to current official estimates.

Tankers have spills at sea all the time that cause barely a ripple of notice.

Chronic oil pollution activities such as degreasing docks has also been chronicled as causing major environmental damage everywhere that oil is shipped.

Years ago I read an interview with a deep sea explorer who said that tar balls litter the floors of our oceans.

(There are also natural oil leaks, like Bush Hill in the Gulf of Mexico, but they generally become part of an ecosystem: the oil and gas is eaten by bacteria, which are in turn eaten by things like worms and mussels. Still, they sometimes result in tar balls washing on to beaches.)
###

The Singularity Happened... and I Missed It!

Why should we accept that transformative change can only be caused by artificial intelligence or genetic modification of the brain or encounters with aliens? What if it's something so profound that we're not able to predict it or even realize, at the time, that it's happened? What if it's something not even dreamed of by Ray Kurzweil or Charles Stross?

Old-timey sci-fi writers John Wyndham, Charles Harness and Theodore Sturgeon saw the future as human evolution. In More than Human, Sturgeon saw evolution as not just the development of psychic abilities but also the creation of multi-person organisms, leading to the next stage of man, homo gestalt.

In one of my [many] favorite sci-fi novels, Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain, there's a sort-of singularity (arguably it's not fast or profound enough, but it's the same idea) that's a confluence of three events: breakthroughs in human genetic engineering, the invention of cold fusion, and a popular new religion that preaches libertarianism.

Female authors Margaret Atwood and P.D. James envision a future where a failed ability to reproduce is the cause of massive change. I don't see futurism as a feminist issue, but they do suggest a different direction - and the paranoia that we won't wake up to the change until it's too late. I suppose you could translate that paranoia to the singularity idea by suspecting that aliens are already among us, changing things quietly under the covers. Or maybe we simply can't comprehend the change that's happening to us personally, as I can't differentiate my personal development from the societal changes happening during my childhood in the 60s and 70s.

In Stross's worlds a singularity is akin to an apocalypse: overnight society crumbles and most people die. That's not an event that people would fail to notice. (Unless it didn't happen in the northern hemisphere, or wasn't good at selling papers?)

###

Bribing Canadian Politicians

Richard Fadden, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), is in the news this week spilling some very important information: the Chinese government is paying Canadian politicians to spy for it.

It seems clear to me that this was no mistake: he went to the CBC interview to give this information. He must have known that he was risking his career to say this. I suspect he felt it was important for the public to know. Why would he do that? Because we vote in politicians, and once in office there's little that can be done to prevent this sort of thing. The head of CSIS probably weighed his options and decided that the only way to successfully address the issue was to make it public.

The news spin has been about everything but the main issue.

On The Current this morning, Anna Maria Tremonti focused on how this is a slur on the Chinese community in Canada.

Today's Globe has a column about how heads should roll at the CBC because they delayed broadcasting the interview until the eve of the arrival of the Chinese head of state.

Maclean's attacks the whistle blower, saying that his backpedaling is "awkward" and a "ragged retreat".

Is this willful denial, or are serious news outlets - as I hope - sending out investigative journalists to follow up on this story and get us some facts?

And kudos to the CBC for airing this interview just before the G20, when it will get picked up by international media. They may have realized that Canadians wouldn't be able to see the forest for the trees.

###

Photos of the Gulf Oil Spill

The floor of the Gulf of Mexico, pre-spill:


The surface near the gusher:


Oil approaching a beach in June:


A graph showing where oil has hit land, June 19:


Thousands of individuals are attempting to clean the beaches by hand:


Oil seeping into a salt water marsh:

The Plan

Harper's plan seemed to be this:

• In early summer, host two huge prestigious international meetings (the G20 and G8 summits). Be seen on home soil as top dog among Obama, Cameron, Herkel, et al.
  
• A few days later, host the queen. Be seen on home soil as top dog with the lady on the money.
  
• While the queen is here, announce the new G-G. Be seen as the guy who appoints the other top dogs.
  
• Ride the wave of national pride and personal adulation through the summer (without pesky parliament interfering).

Then, in late August or early September, dissolve parliament and call an election.

This scenario explains a lot.

It explains why Harper was so interested in the G8/20 all of a sudden. This is the guy who was publicly disdainful of these leader get-togethers. This is the guy who showed up late for photo ops and blew off an Obama speech to do a press event at a donut shop. This isn't even a regular meeting - the G20 summit is in November, and this is just an add-on.

It explains the odd wording of the Afghan detainee document deal that would allow Harper to cancel the opposition party's access to the documents if he wins a majority.

It even goes a little towards explaining why he prorogued parliament and then delayed so long on signing the agreement on release of the Afghan documents... his plan was that parliament would have very little time to see those documents before he used his majority to yank them back.

And he almost pulled it off. By now, the Canadian public was supposed to be dazzled by a sense of our growing international importance. By next month, we were supposed to adore the man who made it all happen. Last week Harper's PR team released a photo of him standing alone in the House of Commons, looking pensive. This was just the beginning of a repositioning. I have no doubt that a whole series of photos, events and ads were planned to remake Harper in the eyes of the country. It didn't have to fool everyone, and it didn't have to fool anyone for long - just long enough to win a majority.

It's lovely irony that Harper is hoist by his own petard. To get maximum political benefit from the summits, he let the organizers go hog wild on costs. If the government had managed to hide the costs of the G8/20 summits, we might have had a Conservative majority by Thanksgiving. (Gack - we still might.)

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