Archive for September, 2007

Musical introduction

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

For many years now, I have wanted to know more about the history and details of music. Other than listening, my musical experience is all more than a decade old, and consists of (badly) playing the recorder and autoharp in elementary school. From time to time, various friends with musical knowledge have given me some [...]

Vermont’s regulatory victory

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Well known as a progressive place, Vermont seems to have recently struck a notable blow in the fight to develop regulatory structures to address climate change. A heated court case had developed between car manufacturers and the state government about whether the latter could impose tough emission limits on cars and light trucks. William Sessions, [...]

Cycling in southern Ottawa

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

This was an ideal day to explore the Ottawa environs par velo. It was bright and pleasantly cool, and the fall leaves are changing colour. Mostly, I explored the paths south of Centretown on the side of various watercourses: the Rideau Canal, Rideau River, etc. I found Carleton University by accident, and discovered a very [...]

Bike helmet debate

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

I had no idea there was such an active debate about the utility of bicycle helmets. My assumption had always been that they provided unambiguous protection from direct contact between hard materials and the skull and had a limited secondary value in diminishing momentum at the time of collision by crushing.
Some of the arguments against [...]

Wheels and muscles

Friday, September 28th, 2007

The new bike and I did Critical Mass tonight. This is the third city where I have participated, along with Oxford and Vancouver. This one had the narrowest demographic; every person there looked like they were a stereotypical leftist undergraduate. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it would be good for the event to represent [...]

A banking analogy for climate

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Every day, new announcements are made about possible emission pathways (X% reduction below year A levels by year B, and so forth). A reasonable number of people, however, seem to be confused about the relationship between emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations, and climatic change. While describing the whole system would require a huge amount of writing, [...]