by Rod Edwards on February 4, 2010
Last night I attended an open house held by the City of Winnipeg’s consulting partner in their efforts to add more bike/walk/rollerblade infrastructure. One of the fascinating dimensions of doing so that had never really crossed my mind was winter, and snow removal.
For example: If the city builds double wide sidewalks that can accomdate bike traffic, it requires an investment in specifically sized snow-clearing equipment and time to run that equipment – which makes budgets untenable.
Similarly, if the city wanted to demarcate bike lines with curbs, those reflective nodules bolted into the pavement, or anything similar – well, the first snowplow of the season is going to scrape them off – that’s why the city has relied on paint to date.
On a positive note, creative minds are at work to devise solutions that fit both our sprawling tax base and the need to keep cyclists safe. The best idea I heard was to use rumble strips – make the strip as wide as the painted line on the street, and drivers suddenly have a great haptic reminder when they invade the bike lane. And, rumble strips won’t get scraped off by snowplows, won’t wash away like paint, don’t interfere with cross-traffic (like curbs), and still allow for parking.
Winter bike commuting is an arduous process, but there’s groups at work to make it safer and easier – though not any warmer!
by Rod Edwards on February 3, 2010
…by evicting non-natives from the Quebec reserve of Kahnawake. Specifically, they appear to be evicting 25 boyfriends & girlfriends of band members, who according to the community of 7,500, are a threat to their culture. 25 out of 7,500 – that’s a third of a percent – 0.33%.
Question 1: Is the Mohawk culture that vulnerable? Question 2: Is evicting other races really the best way to protect it? Question 3: Is there more story to what looks like a simply bizarre move?
Picture credit: Ericcson’s Blog
by Rod Edwards on October 29, 2009
Network neutrality, bandwidth shaping, megabits, the FCC, and the CRTC. NN is a confusing, acronym heavy mess that’s ill understood by policy makers and consumers alike (the FCC doesn’t get it). The simple image below explains it nicely.
Right now, its implicit that our choice of internet provider (Shaw) doesn’t impact our choice of, for example, news source – i.e.: I can open either the Globe and Mail or the National Post websites (or the BBC, Al Jazeera, etc.), and any will open with comparable speed. The proponents of network neutrality argue that if this “equal treatment” assumption isn’t codified into regulation, providers like Shaw are going to eventually seek to monetize their ability to control the traffic that they deliver – to consumer’s detriment. For example – what if Microsoft offered to pay Shaw XX million dollars to make Bing the only search engine available to Shaw customers at a certain price point?
Image Credit: AppleInsider
by Rod Edwards on October 28, 2009
I listened to a fascinating BBC World Service podcast the other day on Taliban & Al Qaeda’s finances. The thrust of the show was that an unintended consequence of an effective global crack-down on terror financing (freezing of accounts, prosecution of dubious “charities,” etc.) has been to drive terrorist organizations to criminal activity to finance their political activities.
The result two-pronged awful: (1) Afghanistan is evolving into a narco-terrorist state in the tradition of Mexico, threatening its future stability, and (2) heroin and opium are killing more westerners than war.
“If we do not address this, it will be hard to solve all the other problems in Afghanistan,” Mr. Costa said, adding that the lucrative nature of the heroin trade is creating a “narco-cartel” in Afghanistan that includes corrupt government and security officials.
The annual death toll in all NATO countries from heroin overdoses is estimated to be more than 10,000, an annual total that is about five times higher the number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the past eight years, the report said.
[NYT "Report Shows Afghan Drugs Reach Deep Into the West"]
There’s policy implications in here somewhere. The US has shown how ineffective the “War on Drugs” can be (see: Central America) – I can only imagine its infinitely worse trying to wage such a war somewhere as distant and hostile as Afghanistan. On the flip side, liberalizing drug policy around something like heroin takes away the lion’s teeth – at the expense of the fabric of our society.
At the root of the problem, I believe, is a mis-placed emphasis on the development of government & democracy in advance of a legitimate economy. The gap leaves the door open for insurgencies to strengthen their ties to a society, targeting to poor and disaffected, while newly minted governments provide them with ample motivation to do so – allegations of corruption, vote-rigging, and all the rest be-devil Afghan efforts, for example.
If an economy were built first (I’ll leave it to you to imagine how), I’d like to think the task of government building would be easier: employed people with opportunities are interested in stability and growing their opportunities, not running off to the hinterlands to raise poppies and learn how to fire RPG’s.
The bottom line is that the intersection of political-religious terrorism and narco-economics is a bad one.
What’s your suggestion for beating it?
Picture Credit: PrisonPlanet
by Rod Edwards on October 7, 2009
It worked on 40% of a study group. Given the costs of addiction in society – everything from healthcare, to the criminal industry that grows around it, to the damage to people and families – the concept of vaccinating against addictions seems profoundly beneficial.
“In clinical practice, you’d probably give people a booster shot every two months,” he said, which, compared with some long-term treatments, is “pretty easy to provide.” [MedPageToday]
How about an annual injection, like some birth control techniques?
Now, consider this: Would you advocate mandatory vaccination for all convicts as part of a return-to-society-productively protocol? I imagine addiction is a big factor in post-release recidivism. What if such a vaccine were available for alcohol? Such a drug would have saved this kid, and undoubtedly countless others.
by Rod Edwards on October 6, 2009
The film is “Osama” – the first film produced in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.
“This 2004 Golden Globe award winner for Best Foreign Language film, directed by Afghani Siddiq Barmak, is a stunning indictment of the repressive, fundamentalist Taliban regime and its treatment of women. Filmed on a shoestring budget, the film is a composite of a number of true stories, coalescing into one. It is harrowing look at a feudal sort of government that equated women with little more than chattel. Forced to be totally dependent on men, the question arises as to what would be their fate, if all the men in their world were to no longer be there for them.” [Customer Review, Amazon]
To sacrifice and struggle in helping a people defeat oppression is a noble cause. Whether we should do it, I do not believe can be questioned. Whether we are doing it right, I don’t know enough to answer.
by Rod Edwards on October 5, 2009
There’s a time, in the history of a people, when pride in what they can afford to do for everyone overshadows what individually they can afford to do for themselves. For Canadians, that time started in the forties and continues to this day. America’s tearing itself into partisan pieces over the same. Take a moment to look south and be proud of what we have achieved.
by Rod Edwards on October 1, 2009
Ok, CPC. I’ve said it before. Now is the time to be trailblazers and seize the technological high ground. From PBS, “Local Politicians Use Social Media to Connect with Voters:”
“A newspaper article gives you such a shallow understanding of the events that occurred at City Hall,” said recently elected Tuscaloosa, Ala., mayor Walter Maddox. “A television story is 30 seconds if you are lucky. Through our website, through Facebook, through MySpace and Twitter, we can provide a more detailed and compelling message to the voters of why we are making a certain policy decision. [PBS]
I found this PBS article on the blog of a fellow Manitoban, which I stumbled across on Twitter:
“During my commute this morning, I noticed a section of our street “under construction”. The street was closed off. I have no idea what they are doing. And why. It occurred to me that I’m no longer satisfied in “letting things happen to me”. Perhaps I’m influenced too much by participatory technologies, but I like to know what’s happening my community. Who decided this road should be repaired? Why? How long will it take? What other priorities were shelved as a result? Not-knowing is not acceptable.” [Elearnspace]
That’s a powerful statement: not-knowing is not acceptable. That’s an audience of ready-made evangelists and tech-savvy, politically-engaged voters that the CPC should be working to connect with. They’re in your community, down your street, in the car next to you on the morning commute. You don’t see them doing it, but they weild weight in their communities, online and off. How are we reaching them?
by Rod Edwards on September 29, 2009
As we get to know some of these chemicals better, we discover that they should not be trusted. Health Canada is proposing concentration limits for two common shampoo ingredients, siloxanes D4 and D5, aka, Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane and Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, respectively. D4 and D5 did make hair easier to dry, silky soft, and easier to work with. Also handy when making plastics and paint. Sometimes you need a little D4 or D5. Sometimes you need a lot. But Health Canada suspects that D4 and D5 are affecting fish and aquatic organisms. But, oh, how hair shines. [Salon]
Salon breaks down the toxic soup that costs the world’s consumers $40 billion every year – shampoo. Your shampoo, to be blunt, is full of crap. Crap that you pay for, crap that may well be poisoning you, and crap that certainly enters the water table and does who knows what. Hippy alarmism? Or common sense? I’m on the common sense side today – my pocket book is a shambles, and the more I look at what I spend on, the less of it I think I actually need.
“There are two types of ingredients in shampoo. One type cleans your hair. The other type strokes your emotions. I’m holding a bottle of Pantene Pro V, one of the world’s most popular shampoos. Of the 22 ingredients in this bottle of shampoo, three clean hair. The rest are in the bottle not for the hair, but for the psychology of the person using the shampoo. At least two-thirds of this bottle, by volume, was put there just to make me feel good.” [Salon]
by Rod Edwards on September 29, 2009
Is anyone else alarmed that savings rate and economic growth have been so negatively correlated for the last 20 years? Does anyone wonder, after looking at a chart like this, if the American economy has managed to create anything “real” in the last 20 years? We like to imagine that economic growth is driven by gains in real productivity and an increasingly wealthy society, but what if the last two decades of “growth” can be attributed solely to the consumer whims of a society willing to mortgage its own future?
Here’s a perspective inducing infographic from BillShrink.com on the decline of the American household savings rate, and the mounting debt that accompanied it. On the plus side, the chart shows an increase in savings rate and dip in accumulated household debt following the ‘09 credit crisis and accompanying recession.
