Wet Coast Journals

Fall Planting, Harvesting

I did some planting today: Swiss chard and garlic. I also harvested jerusalem artichokes, one final pea pod, two small onions, and lots of tarragon, fennel and chives. Last week I harvested the garlic we had planted last summer.

The Jerusalem artichokes are growing quite tall. Underneath them the soil is cool, shaded, moist. It's like a forest floor. Here's a photo of the artichoke plants:

Pot luck at the library

Who needs a video store when you have the public library?

I love going to the library to see what videos and dvds are available. Instead of the boring, bland selection of month-old movies and made-for-video generic titles you get a really eclectic mix at the library. You'll find episodes of cheesy 60s sitcoms, modern European films, Hollywood classics from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, documentaries, children's stories, musicals, BBC television series, and who knows what else.

It's like a potluck. You go there with the videos and dvds you've been watching this week, and you see what's available this week. There's always a completely different mix because so many other people are doing the same thing.

For example, in the past few weeks I've taken out:

• the complete first season of the Larry Sanders Show on dvd
• the first four episodes of The Sopranos on dvd
• Pulp Fiction
• The Return of the Thin Man
• The Tailor of Panama
• Diamonds are Forever
• Five Children and It
• Hammer House of Horror (four schlock horror films on one dvd

and numerous others.

Best of all, it's free. And, of course, since it's a library, you'll be sure to find a good book or three to take out at the same time. Try to do that at Rogers or Blockbuster.

The Not-so-wet Coast

When I started this weblog back in June of this year, I decided that Wetcoast Journals would be an apt title, considering our environment.

However, this has turned out to be one of the driest summers in living memory. Severe water restrictions are in place in Vancouver because the reservoirs have been depleted. Forest and brush fires have forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes in the Interior. The provincial parks service has banned camping in all parks in southernn B.C.

It's at times like these that you appreciate, and long for, the rainy season on our not-so-wet coast.

Crime and Safety in the West End

The issues of crime and safety have started to come up more frequently in the West End. Last weekend, there was a public meeting at the West End Community Centre to discuss the issue. Our local MLA, Lorne Mayencourt came out with a typical (for him) statement that you're more likely to be ticketed for walking your dog without a leash in Nelson Park than for dealing drugs. (Why do reactionary thinkers always use this particular analogy? I have never seen anyone ticketed for having an unleashed dog. If only!) I didn't attend the meeting myself, but according to a friend who was there, the usual blaming of crime on street people occurred, but there was also a lot of recognition that the increase in crime was a result of cutbacks to social services.

My friend reports from the meeting that:

"The focus is the drug dealing which seems to be going on openly around the the neighbourhood and frustration with residents at the slowness of the police due to stretched resources. I found it fascinating the amount of information the residents know about the drug dealers, for example: Name of one of the leaders Thomas Moore, in his 40's, heads the group of kids on the BMX bikes. Woman with pitbull (due to the fact she carries the money) hangs out at Nelson Park- told a dog owner how wonderful this area was to hang out in. Phone at Bute and Davie (outside liquor store) refused use to resident who was informed it was for Meth deals only. This information came from seniors, long term residents (30 years) and dog owners who use the park. They realize that uping the police presence is just an immediate bandaid, but the other solutions- social programs, take longer to implement and they want action now."

But has there been an increase in crime in the West End? The police say no, but that "street disorder" has increased. A police inspector spoke at one of the WECAN meetings and said that what these people need is help, housing and jobs and this is what citizens should be addressing their concerns to at city council. Sensible words from the police.

This is going to be a tricky issue to deal with. There is obviously frustration, and it's compounded by the feeling that a lot of the drug and prostitution trade from the Downtown Eastside is spilling into our neighbourhood thanks to the crackdown there by the police. We have to be careful not to engage in a knee-jerk "clear the streets of the bums and winos" campaign, as Mayencourt seems to want. Yet, we do have to address the crime and safety issue. West End residents are becoming crime victims - mostly property crimes, but even those can be psychologically damaging. I've had my residence broken into twice (never while living in the West End though) and you feel violated.

And crimes against people occur in our neighbourhood as well. There were the shootings two weeks ago. There was a murder (a particularly evil act of gay-bashing) in 2001. There was the Korean student assaulted in Stanley Park, and others.

One thing I'd be interested to know is whether the crime rate is higher here than in other neighbourhoods, especially considering our higher density.

An excerpt from one of the WECAN meeting minutes is reprinted below. It gives a good summary of their concerns and their emphasis.

Citizens are concerned with immediate problems of drug trafficking, discarded syringes, thefts and burglaries, and hooliganism in the parks and alleyways.

We discussed the issue of diminishing police resources in the city (in general), and in the West End in particular. The population of downtown Vancouver has increased by 60% in the last 10 years and policing resources have been reduced by 30%. This is an extremely alarming trend, and must be addressed. We will add our voices to those calling for an increase in police foot patrols and more rigorous monitoring of our neighbourhoods.

We also discussed the issue of diminishing city services for dealing with people with drug addiction problems, alcoholism, and mental illness. These are serious concerns and are very symptomatic of the general problem. They go in tandem with the diminishing health of the neighbourhood, and these issues must be addressed forthwith.

WECAN will be developing resources for neighbours to protect their properties, and for mobilizing the police to assist in patrolling neighbourhoods. We also plan to have guest speakers at our meetings, and Lorne Mayencourt will be asked to come to the next meeting.

The WECAN website will be available by week's end (August 29th). The website will be the place to find out information about the meetings, including all contact information for city officials, the police, provincial and federal politicians. In addition, the website will have sample letters to send to officials.

A Handy Google Tool

I generally don't use the Google search engine. One reason is just general contrariness - if everyone else is doing it, I don't want to do it. A second reason is that I find KillerInfo more useful because it groups its results into category.

However, Google has recently introduced a very useful feature - a calculator built into the search box (thanks to Ars Technica for this information). You can enter simple arithmetic functions (e.g., 4+5*3) or expressions such as "a foot in millimetres" or "a cup in teaspoons" and it will give you the answer. Handy for cooking or metric conversion!

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I haven't had much time to post to this blog lately; ironically, because I've been creating a Movable Type blog for a client.

This particular client is running for public office. I had created a standard website for him, with a home page, bio page, links, contact info, donation form. But now he wanted more. He had been to Howard Dean's website and wanted all the bells and whistles that Dean had. (Never mind the fact that as a major candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in the U.S. Howard Dean employs an entire web team, not just one overworked peon!)

Dean's site has become the new standard for political campaigns. Now every campaign has to have a weblog, a newsletter sign-up, a guestbook, a photo gallery, and so on. He certainly has raised the bar. Four years ago it was enough just to have a website.

But candidates have to keep in mind that a website is a tool. It can't replace an effective campaign, but it can help one. If a candidate is weak, or facing overwhelming odds or just has an ineffective campaign, a cool website and a candidate blog are not going to turn things around.

Save Mitlenatch Island!

There's a small island in the Gulf of Georgia, just south of Cortes Island, southeast of Campbell River, that's in danger.

It's called Mitlenatch Island, and its home to thousands of birds: cormorants, seagulls, oyster catchers, harlequin ducks (as well as less common eagles, herons and sandpipers), and many seals as well. The wildlife find it ideal because of the abundant fish, the isolation from predators and the nesting environment. It has been referred to as "the Galapagos of the north."

The island is a provincial park and is protected by a volunteer warden program. The wardens stay in a small cabin for a week at a time in the summer - no electricity, no running water - and ensure that visitors keep to the paths and don't harass the wildlife. They're brought in by B.C. Parks, who also provide them with food. It's a small part of the B.C. Parks budget, but it's in danger, because of budget cuts.

If B.C. Parks stops the warden program, there will be no-one to protect the island and its inhabitants from the ravages of humanity; from the daytrippers from Campbell River, or the gin-and-tonic sailors from Vancouver.

We can do our bit. Write to your MLA and tell him or her that the budget for the warden program on Mitlenatch Island must be preserved. Send a copy to Joyce Murray, Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection, and to Premier Gordon Campbell.

NewsMac

I've discovered, thanks to MacWorld's MacGems column a great donation-ware news reader. It's called NewsMac and it's the most elegant news reader I've found yet for OS X. It comes with several channels and categories built-in (business, world news, software, mac) and you can add your own. If you like, you can send the creator a little something as a token of appreciation, but you don't have to - and the reminder to do so only appears once. You can find NewsMac at www.thinkmac.co.uk/. The link given in the MacWorld article is broken.

Ten Years with the Internet

Ten years ago today I signed up for an internet account.

It was a different world back then. Commercial internet providers were just beginning to get started, following the loosening of the restrictions imposed by the U.S.'s National Science Council. The first graphical browser, NCSA Mosaic, was just being distributed (I was surprised there wasn't more of a fuss made this year about that significant anniversary - after all, the ability to include images on websites really opened up the internet to the wider public. Talk about a killer app - Mosaic was it.)

Setting up a PC to access the internet was difficult, as the code needed was not built into either the Mac or Windows operating systems. You had to dial up your internet provider's telnet site, download the files (using a 14.4k modem), wrestle with such concepts as tcp/ip and ppp, and futz around for hours to get it working. And when you did, you didn't have much. An e-mail address, yes, but who was there to email? It reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert installs a videophone and sits around waiting and hoping that another computer geek will do the same so he'll have someone to contact.

There were the newsgroups though. Back then, newsgroups were very popular. With one click you could find people out there who had similar interests as you and converse with them (in asynchronous time) about those mutual interests. I belonged to several - cats, P.G. Wodehouse, army brats, Stephen Sondheim fans, a couple of medical groups. (And even today, by going to Google Groups I can look back at my old postings. It's a strange feeling - was that pompous person really me?

And there were the now almost-forgotten information retrieval tools like Archie, Veronica, Gopher -- now superseded by the web. FTP is still used, of course, but quietly, and without fanfare, the gopher sites have been closed down.

There was the web. Even before Mosaic, there was Lynx, a text-based browser (still in use!). I'll never forget the thrill I had when I typed in the URL for one of the sample sites my ISP provided and, after the signals crept through the 14.4k modem and out into the world and back, the text came back - I think it was a NASA site. And when I clicked on one of the links in the text and was transported to another site geographically located halfway across the world (I think it was the CERN site - birthplace of the web), well, I felt like an explorer seeing a new world.

It was a smaller world, and you knew more people. Those first non-academic/non-military web users were a close-knit community. You could go to a website where you could enter your birthdate, and other users would send you birthday greetings on the big day. Everybody had a personal page, with links to the cool sites they had discovered (remember the Cool Site of the Day?), biographies, pictures of themselves and their animals. Even my cats each had their own webpage, with images and biographical information. I even had a rudimentary blog -- a travelogue of my vacation in France and my train trip across the United States.

Of course, as in any world, there was good and bad. There were people who had been using the web for years who were upset at the sudden popularity of their secret universe, and hostile towards those they considered "newbies". Every newsgroup had its FAQ for newbies, which laid down THE RULES. You weren't treated seriously if your email address ended with .com (later, you weren't treated seriously if your email address was aol.com). You weren't treated seriously if your email address was a random string of numbers and letters rather than something based on your name or your nickname. You were treated seriously if you had your own web address (unless it had a ~ (tilde) in it.

But that gradually faded - though it creeps in again any time a new web technology begins to get popular - for example, many of the old webloggers (not a majority by any means) treat those who've arrived lately with condescension. An inevitable, if unfortunate, reaction to change.

Inevitably, as more people began to use the web, the commercial interests began to dip their toes in the water. Companies posted their own websites, banner ads appeared, browsers improved, Apple and Microsoft built in the internet connectivity, modems became faster. The internet changed - the web became the primary tool (followed by email) and the newsgroups faded into the background (though they are still heavily used).

Something was lost, and something was gained. The internet was no longer a small community; but it was accessible to more people and there was more to explore.

New technologies developed: MUDs, listserv, chat groups, online gaming, and of course, viruses and spam.

The Net is still evolving and going in new directions that could not be envisioned. Blogs, newsfeeds, video chat, virtual communities, and who knows what next?

What a long strange trip it's been, and will be.

All Over Creation

I just finished reading Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation. An excellent book; humorous, dramatic, emotional, and thought-provoking. Superficially, it's about genetically modified foods, but on a deeper level it's about the cycle of life from creation through germination through growth through procreation, death and on to creation again. It's about growing older and losing one's parents, and losing one's children. It's about life.

Silly Season for News

The other day the page one headline in the Globe and Mail was "Public against judges making laws: poll". It was, to say the least, a misleading story.

The Globe had a polling company ask Canadians whether judges or Parliament should have ultimate authority to make laws in Canada. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming majority said Parliament.

But the very question was frivilous and misleading. The context was the two recent judiciary decisions that current laws that don't allow same-sex marriages violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This poll result can be challenged on many grounds, including the fact that the issue is too complex for such a simple question and that no context was given for the question.

The judges were not making policy in either of these decisions. They were trying to decide if one law passed by a legislature (regarding marriage) was in violation of a higher law passed by nine provincial legislatures and the Parliament of Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In other words, our elected representatives were still the ones making the laws, not the judiciary.

August is traditionally supposed to be a month when news outlets report on silly stories because there isn't any real news happening. I guess this is an example. But shame on the Globe for running the story, especially as the hidden implication is that the judiciary in these cases went against the feelings of the majority of Canadians when they ruled that prohibitions against same-sex marriage violated the Charter. Such a story can only bolster those who oppose same-sex marriages.

Not in our neighbourhood?

Early this morning two men were shot on the street just half a block from where I live. I heard the gunfire, at about 3:30 a.m., but thought it was just part of my dream and went back to sleep. I didn't realize what had happened until I was getting my daily local news fix at the canada.com site where the story was the lead item on the Vancouver page.

You don't think of this sort of thing happening in the West End. Break-ins, littering, drug dealing, yes, but shootings? No. It'll probably turn out to be a personal dispute rather than a random act (the police are still investigating at this time), but it still gives you an odd feeling - partly excitement and partly fear.

Voter Privacy

I spent the weekend at a software train-the-trainer session on some new vote-tracking software.

The software looks good; though it takes a lot of power to run, and only works on the latest Wintel machines with Windows XP and at least 256 megs of RAM, and Microsoft Access. That puts it out of range of a lot of smaller constituencies, especially between elections. And as for me, I'm naturally prejudiced in favour of Mac machines and against Windows.

I was a relative neophyte at this. I've worked on elections before, but I've never been involved with the data side. Some of the people there have been using database programs to keep track of voters, donors, etc. for years.

The moment that stuck in my mind was when one woman moaned about the fact that the voters list didn't include telephone numbers.

From her point of view as a database administrator, the comment made perfect sense. If the official voters list included telephone numbers then contacting potential voters would be very easy. But if she were to look at it from the point of view of an ordinary citizen, she would probably be appalled if the voters list included phone numbers. Could you imagine looking at the published voters list and seeing your name and telephone number emblazoned there for all to see?

Later, during a coffee break, several of the people were complaining about how caller id on telephones was making it more difficult to raise funds and to canvass for votes.

These are conscientious, progressive, caring people; and they were complaining about measures -- one legal, one technological -- that help preserve privacy. And why? Because these measures hindered their efforts to elect progressive candidates; candidates who would probably be sympathetic to measures to protect privacy.

I think that sometimes we need to eschew expediency when it conflicts with our principles. Telephone numbers on the voters list; blocking call display; they may help us get elected, but I'd forego them if they meant compromising our principles.

Gordo Revisited

Andrew makes some interesting points in his in his comment about my entry yesterday regarding the rumours about Gordon Campbell.

If indeed Campbell has been misusing his power and his position of authority then he should resign, and the media should report on it. Certainly he would have been screaming blue murder should it have been an NDP premier in this situation.

However, I disagree that my analysis was superficial. Based on the information that I had received (obviously a less complete rumour than some of the ones floating out there) it was correct - a private case of adultery is not grounds for resignation in a pluralistic society such as Canada in the 21st century. If, as I said above, the adultery involved a misuse of public funds and a betrayal of public trust, then that's a different matter.

But my main contention still stands: if Gordo goes, it won't make a damn bit of difference to the hateful, hurtful Liberal agenda.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Rumours are once again circulating that B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell was either on his way to see, or just had visited, his mistress when he was stopped for drunk driving in Maui back in January. Now, or so the updated rumour goes, the mistress is about to give birth; Campbell's wife is about to divorce him and Gordo himself is about to resign.

It's interesting to look at the emails that are flying about this rumour. On the one hand: indignation that the traditional media is suppressing the story (but is it a story? should the mainstream media be reporting gossip?) On the other hand: glee at the prospect that Campbell, who seems so upright and stern, should fall like this.

I'm not a fan of Gordo. I think that he and his Liberals have done a lot of damage to British Columbia and especially to its most vulnerable residents. I think he is mean-spirited, narrow-minded and vindictive. But would I get pleasure out of his resignation?

No. First, if Campbell does have a "mistress" (a sexist word), that's a matter for him, his wife and the other woman involved. It's none of my business. It' s none of your business. Second, this is not a matter to resign over. Presiding over the wholesale selling of the province's assets; the dismantling of the public sector; the harming of innocent British Columbians; yes, that he should resign for. Not for matters involving his personal life. Finally, even if Campbell were to resign over this (and I can't see him resigning over adultery - not in the 21st century) I don't think it would make the slightest difference to the way the province is being mis-governed. the Liberals would still have 76 out of 79 seats in the Legislature. They would quickly elect a photogenic replacement for Campbell as leader and life would go on as before. Changing the captain on the ship won't alter its course.

West End Privilege

A woman claimed in a Vancouver Courier article this week that when she complained to the City about a shortage of parking spaces in the West End because of the Fireworks, she was told that "it was a privilege to live in the West End".

If true, this is rather disturbing.

Yes, those of us who live in the West End are lucky. The location is convenient to downtown, to the seawall and to Stanley Park. The streets are lined with trees, we have all the advantages of a large population but the feel of a small village. Still, that does not mean that our concerns should be ignored.

Would a city official tell a Shaughnessey matron who called in with a complaint that she should consider herself lucky to live where she does? I don't think so.

To take this bizarre logic to its extreme, residents of the Downtown Eastside should consider themselves lucky. After all, they live within walking distance of downtown! So they should ignore their real problems and count their blessings. Indeed, everyone in Vancouver should consider themselves lucky. After all, they have the privilege of living in a beautiful city with a mild climate, stunning scenery and beautiful beaches. So what if the air is polluted, if urban sprawl is destroying the natural surroundings, if the streets are littered, if hooliganism and crime is on the rise. City Hall is under no obligation to do anything because we're "privileged" to live here.

If Frodo Baggins had internet access

A Weapon in the Fight for Internet Privacy

Thanks to Dave Green's Need to Know newsletter, I've discovered a good way to foil some of the e-mail harvesters.

Many websites require you to enter an email address before you can download software, updates or whatever. In some cases, you can enter any old garbage, such as fakeaddress@idontexist.com, and then you'll be allowed to go to the download page. Recognizing that a lot of people do enter bogus addresses, some of these sites have become more cunning - they will send the web address where you can go for the download to the email address that you enter. In other words, if you enter a bogus address, you won't get to the site. On the other hand, if you enter your real email address, they now can add you to their database and contact you with all those wonderful bandwith-hogging advertisement junk mails.

What to do? Simple, enter any name you can think of followed by @mailinator.com (e.g., anynameyoucanthinkof@mailinator.com) when you're asked for an email address; then go to the Mailinator site, enter "anynameyoucanthinkof" in the box and check your mail.

And it can be any name you can think of. Of course, if it's something plain, like joe or frank or jill@mailinator.com, someone else may be using it too. So you're better off using something esoteric that you will be able to remember, such as "bobthewonderfulguy" or "superjillsmith". The addresses aren't password protected so anyone can go to the Mailinator site, enter a name at random and see the mail that's waiting.

There's a limit of 10 messages per mailbox, with no attachments allowed, and mail disappears after "a few hours" according to their faq. You can continue using the same name, or use a different one - it doesn't matter; if the name doesn't exist in the mailinator database, they'll generate it as soon as you enter it. And you can't retrieve the mail using your own email program - you have to get it at mailinator.com.

And of course, your own privacy is protected. You don't give your name or your real email address. And if anyone sends spam to the account, so what? It's gone in a few hours.

I'm sure there are many other potential uses for this service, but the one that immediately sprung to mind was the email harvesting one.

I'm a firm believer in giving out the least amount of demographic information possible on websites. I don't see why Amazon or AOL Times-Warner needs to know my age, gender, birthdate, etc. When required to give this information I usually randomly enter values. We have to fight in every way we can to protect what's left of our privacy. Thanks to mailinator we have one more tool with which to do so.

Sims for Peace!

I attended a fascinating thesis defence today.

Some unkind souls might call that an oxymoron, but where I work - the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University - there is a lot of fascinating research being done at the hazy borderlands between art and technology. To take but two examples of many, there's a professor is exploring ways of giving animated characters more realistic expressions -- exploring how a face's expressions give us insight into what a person is saying and feeling; other researchers are exploring intelligent fabrics, and so on.

This particular thesis defence was given by Cindy Poremba, a Masters student student who has also just joined the faculty at the campus as a sessional lecturer. She has also done research into why girls are turned off by technology, but her thesis topic today was "The Player as Author: Digital Games and Agency", an exploration of how computer game players become co-creators of the games they play.

She gave as one example the multitude of modifications done to The Sims. Whole communities have developed devoted to creating modifications for The Sims - clothing, furniture, knicknacks. For them, the main interest is not in the game play originally devised by the game's creator, Will Wright, but in their own enhancements.

A fascinating topic. You can find out more at Poremba's website.

I was especially intrigued with her accounts of two particular examples, both related to the peace movement. One was the creation of posters that could be downloaded and placed on the walls of the Sims' homes. The other is the insertion of anti-war messages and actions into the popular online shooter game, Counter Strike.

Poremba links to an account on the iafrica.com website by Keith Just, called "Give online peace a chance." You should read it for yourself as it's both entertaining and heartening, but here's one quote:

"Making their way with stealth and precision your team of crack anti-terrorist operatives takes up position on the roof of a building overlooking a tense hostage situation. After receiving the go-ahead you give the order to engage the enemy with extreme prejudice.

"All of a sudden you find yourself quite alone, the members of your elite team cry out in unison "We are martyrs for peace" and leap 30 storeys to their deaths while you look on in dimly-comprehending amazement."

When one thinks about anti-war activists, computer gamers aren't the first to come to mind. Maybe they should be. Their subversion at least isn't talking to the converted. The people accidently viewing the messages of the Velvet Strikers are usually not pro-peace; but perhaps some of them will start to think a bit because of those messages.

Death of the shopping mall; birth of the quasi-public mall

Patrick Condon sent the following link to the Livable Communities listserv, predicting the "extinction" of the shopping mall.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/07/02/pf/yourhome/deadmalls/

What seems to be happening, at least in Canada, is that malls are beginning to attract more public tenants as opposed to private ones. In London, Ontario, the major tenants of the downtown Galleria Mall are the London Public Library, the University of Western Ontario’s Continuing Studies division and a jointly run public art gallery.

I believe that in Windsor, Ontario, the public art gallery temporarily moved into a shopping mall while its space was used for the Windsor Casino (my memory may be faulty on this).

Closer to home, at the Central City mall in north Surrey, two of the major tenants are public institutions — Simon Fraser University and the federal Citizenship and Immigration department. A third major tenant is a private college. Meanwhile the retail outlets are dying. Sears has closed one of its two floors in the mall and will concentrate in future on standalone outlet stores (meaning vast acres devoted to parking spaces and big box stores).

So, as the shoppers disappear, and the retail outlets move to new locations accessible only by car, the public sector is moving in to the older malls. While this is good for the mall owners (they maintain revenue) and for the smaller services within the malls (restaurants especially); I find it disturbing that public institutions subject themselves to the whims of a private sector landlord. Mall landlords in the past have exercised their prerogative to keep people they consider undesirable off the premises.

Moving to Movable Type

It took a couple of days, but I've finally finished transferring my weblog from Nucleus to Movable Type.

I found Nucleus was okay, but it wasn't very versatile. The archiving and category options were limited. Movable Type offers much more and the default templates are all I'll need - until I feel the desire to tweak them, that is ;-).

It took a while to set up though. Installing Movable Type is not for the novice or the faint of heart (though you can get them to do it for you, for a price). There were a lot of tricky details involving Perl scripts, cgi-bin directories, caches and cookies. But, with the help of the wonderful people at the Movable Type support boards, I was able to get it working. And it was satisfying to finally get it working.

Surfing the (Spider) Web

Traffic Calming on Denman

The West End Residents Association didn't win at City Council on the issue of progressive traffic calming measures at the corner of Denman and Comox (see my entry for July 15). Instead, City Council went along with their engineering department's recommendation for a pedestrian-activated traffic light at that particular intersection.

However, Council did add a rider to the motion approving the trafffic light; that engineering work on traffic calming measures for Denman. Now it's up to us to push the engineering department on that issue, to ensure that this resolution isn't forgotten.

Denman is a busy street with many uses. People use it to get to Stanley Park and to English Bay. Drivers use it as a shortcut to Georgia Street and the Lions Gate Bridge. It's a heavily used pedestrian thoroughfare and is also a shopping destination in its own right, with many small, independently owned stores. Lately, the through traffic seems to be taking over and pedestrians have a difficult time, what with the heavy vehicle traffic.

And now we have some legal clout to mitigate that.

Cats Between the Sheets

One of life's many imponderables is why cats delight in interfering with changing the bed linen.

Even before you start to strip the sheets; even while you're thinking about it; any and all cats in the household will mysteriously appear in the bedroom, ready and watchful. And the instant you begin, they'll be interfering - sitting on the bed so that you can't remove the old sheets; entangling themselves in the blankets; crawling into the pillowcases, and most importantly, burrowing beneath the new sheet as soon as it's placed on the bed, thus preventing you from finishing the job, unless you delight in suffocating cats (which you probably will, before the ordeal is over).

I think it's something they learn in cat school, along with such valuable lessons as how to get underfoot when a human is carrying something fragile and/or cumbersome; the proper way of snubbing food and finding the most inaccessible and inconvenient spot to pass a hairball.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to see whether the cat is still under the sheet. I'd like to finish making the bed sometime today.

Socks and Sandals

As the hottest summer in Vancouver in recent years drags on I've been noticing a disturbing trend lately: old men wearing socks and sandals.

It's reached the point where if I see an elderly white man wearing shorts I glance down at their feet just to confirm my suspicion. And sure enough, they're all wearing socks and sandals. I shudder and avert my eyes.

It seems so pointless. The reason for wearing sandals (for men anyway; I've never been able to fathom women's footwear) is to give the toes some fresh air in the hot weather; let them enjoy the breeze as a reward for being confined to dark smelly socks for three seasons of the year. The reason for wearing socks, on the other hand, is to prevent those same toes from freezing in the winter. So why combine the two; why on earth wear socks with sandals? Do you wear mittens in the summer? Or galoshes in the desert? No. So why socks and sandals?

I've figured out why it bothers me. Because, God willing, I will be in that demographic in another 20 or so years and I want to know will I be wearing socks and sandals? Will I some day wake up on a pleasant summer morning and put on a pair of socks and then slip my besocked feet into my sandals? And if so, will it happen all at once - will I gleefully put on my socks and sandals while humming the Beatles' "When I'm 64"? Or will it happen gradually? One day I'll tentatively reach for the socks, then shake my head and put my bare feet into the sandals; the next day, actually touch the socks; the third day pick them up and finger them for a few minutes before putting them back; and then finally, one awful day, hesitantly slip on the socks and the sandals and venture out into the world, a fashion statement on spindly legs.

I have to know: why do elderly white males wear socks with sandals?

1. Is this a fashion thing? In other words, when the present cohort of elderly white males moves on to its well-earned rest, will the mania for socks and sandals go with it?
2. Is it hardwired into the brain? Have our ancestors been putting socks and sandals together since we lived in East Africa, foraging for grubs and keeping a wary eye out for lions?
3. Is it for reasons of comfort and health? Do circulatory problems associated with aging render our feet chilly, forcing us to wear socks with our sandals? (But in that case, why wear sandals at all? Why not socks and sneakers?)

A lot depends on the answer to this question. If it's a generational thing, then I don't have to worry. If it's a health/comfort issue, then again, I won't worry, because when my tootsies are chilly, I'll sensibly put on my sneakers with my socks.

But if it's hardwired into the brain, then there's nothing I can do about it, so please shoot me when you see me on the street wearing socks and sandals.

Wasting Time with the Guardian Online

Thanks to Heather Mallick, the only columnist in the Globe and Mail consistently worth reading (Rick Salutin is hit and miss), I now have a new way of spending time that really should be spent doing more worthy things such as vacuuming, cleaning the tub, and digging out the pesky moss that gets between the cracks on the patio.

It's the talk section of the Guardian Unlimited, a website operated by that most worthy of British newspapers, The Guardian.

I've known about the Guardian Unlimited for a long time (there's a link on the right side of my main page), but I had ignored their message boards, assuming (wrongly) that they were run of the mill commentary on the issues of the day.) Heather Mallick has shown me how wrong I was. In just the Talk section of Books there are many threads that I could spend days exploring - changing one letter of a book title to come up with a different work entirely; authors you hate without even read their books (where I found the priceless Martin Amis quote "II could never finish Kafka's novels, but then again, neither could he"), and "books you eventually get round to but wish you hadn't bothered."

But time to wrap this up; I have time to waste over at the Guardian Unlimited site. Thank you Ms Mallick!

A streetcar city without streetcars

Patrick Condon, a landscape architecture professor at the University of British Columbia, was asked by David Beers of the Vancouver Planning Commission for his views on the proposed RAV (Richmond Airport Vancouver) rapid transit line.

Professor Condon says he "supports transit but would like to see the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people when public money is spent. I am also concerned that our transit investments help create a more sustainable region for our children. I believe that there is a better solution than RAV when assessed against these criteria."

With permission, I reproduce Professor Condon's views, as distributed to the Smart Growth BC Livable Communities listserv.

A streetcar city without streetcars.

The dismantling of the Vancouver streetcar system was a tragedy. Similar
tragedies hit most other North American cities, Toronto the notable
exception. It is well documented that General Motors and a consortium of
other auto related interests intentionally dismantled many North American
streetcar systems - first by purchasing profitable systems in the 30s and
40s, then dismantling them in the 40s and 50s. Yet the bones of cities
built around the streetcar system remain essentially unchanged. Vancouver
is still a streetcar city - so is Portland.

Citizens of Portland have begun rebuilding their streetcar system. They are
the only North American city to do so. Originally they chose the
inexpensive streetcar option out of desperation, having narrowly lost a
regional referendum aimed at financing an expansion of their MAX light rail
system, a system that costs over 50 million US per mile. That is about half
of what Skytrain costs per mile, but still more than Portland could afford.
With the failure of that initiative, Portland officials needed to either
give up on rail transit or become smarter. Fortunately, smart won out. Now
the city of Portland has its first ten miles of a modern streetcar system.
Soon they will have thirty.

Streetcars are much smaller and lighter than light rail systems, with cars
that are similar in scale to our 99-B articulated buses. Streetcars ride
either on or off street right-of-ways. They can be integrated with
traffic, use a dedicated lane in the street, or have their own right of way
as local conditions and performance demands dictate. The technology used in
Portland is capable of speeds up to 90k.

The cost for the Portland streetcar system? Under 20 million US per mile.
They went with streetcar because it was all they could afford. Today they
could not be happier with their thrift. The neighbourhoods through which
the streetcar line runs have seen enormous increases in high intensity
mixed use development. Real estate valuation increases in surrounding
blocks will likely make the streetcar the smartest public infrastructure
investment in Portland's history. These increases occurred precisely
because the system, small in scale and street friendly, added quality to
the neighbourhoods through which it traversed rather than degrading them.

For the 1.7 billion CD budget for the RAV you could buy enough Portland
type streetcar to connect to the airport and Richmond up both Arbutus and
Granville - and you could throw in a line on Main Street for good measure.
You would still have enough money left to connect the Commercial Street
Skytrain station to UBC up Broadway and/or 4th. And did I mention you would
still have enough to connect Langley and Cloverdale to the Surrey Skytrain
terminus using the old interurban line? And let's not forget that you could
probably expect the same increases in neighbourhood quality and value
experienced in Portland for all neighbourhoods traversed.

If it works this well in Portland why are we spending 5 times more per
kilometer here? The answer is single-track thinking, literally and
figuratively speaking. From the beginning, RAV planners (and the Millennium
Line planners before them) seem to have presumed that speed was all that
mattered. Planners argued that trips from the urban periphery to the urban
centre had to be less than an hour to lure suburban residents from cars
onto transit. Streetcar systems are not the best choice for that so they
never got a hearing.

But this thinking has a fatal flaw. It assumes that the key trip to
accommodate is the trip from suburb to centre. This assumption contradicts
the "complete community" premise of the GVRD's Liveable Region Strategic
Plan. Building complete communities is the number one goal of that plan -
places where folks can live, work, and shop within a reasonable distance
(say within a 5k radius). The plan presumes that job centres will still
exist and that many people will still commute long distances, but that over
time the distribution of jobs and homes will come into balance. This is
already happening. Even RAV advocates recognize the two-way nature of
commuting. Center cities are no longer the dominant providers of jobs. RAV
proponents acknowledge this when they include "reverse commuters" to
justify their ridership projections, ignoring the fact the RAV system is
part of the Skytrain "hub and spoke system" concept that only makes sense
if you assume that suburbs will stay largely residential forever - while
the vast preponderance of jobs will be downtown. That's not the way it is
now, jobs are increasingly moving out to where people live.

Our original streetcar system, based on an interconnected web concept
rather than a hub and spoke concept, served all districts equally. That is
why our cities look the way they do, with linear commercial and job areas
hugging the "streetcar arterials." Quiet residential blocks sat back from
these arterials, people living a short walk from a streetcar arterial and
the shops that lined them. It is a design that made sense then. It makes
even more sense now. Streetcar systems are more in keeping with the
Livable Region Strategic Plan than Skytrain and will most certainly be
more compatible with the Sustainable Region Initiative which may replace it.

The simple fact is worth restating. Vancouver and its immediate neighbours
are streetcar cities without the streetcars. Unlike Skytrain transit,
streetcar transit would support the continued development of higher density
mixed-use projects along the miles and miles of "trolley car arterials"
that are our greatest but most unappreciated urban resource. For most of us
these trolley car arterials are the centres of our daily activities - the
centres of our community life.

It is becoming increasingly obvious: The transit question is not about
getting visitors from the airport to downtown. It is about re-enforcing
mobility for area citizens where they live, close to where they live. It is
about providing transit for our neighbourhoods, not through them.

Patrick M. Condon