The outdoors – Page 16 – a sibilant intake of breath

Demonstrating British Columbia’s beauty

One of the big reasons for opposing the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is because of how 200 oil tankers a year would threaten the coast of British Columbia.

I think everyone who has seen that coastline understands its beauty and ecological importance. At the same time, I suspect the idea can be made more salient for people by showing them photos and video of the areas that could be affected if the pipeline goes through.

It’s not clear what the most effective approach would be for reminding people about what is at stake. Really there is a spectrum of possibility, ranging from fantastic shots taken by talented photographers on top-notch gear and shown in magazines and galleries to amateur shots taken by visitors and ordinary British Columbians and uploaded to Facebook or Flickr.

In all likelihood, many approaches will be tried simultaneously. For my own part, I have been thinking about a potential photo show that would incorporate photos of the B.C. coast as well as photos from the successful protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, which took place in Washington D.C.. Toronto may not be the most appropriate venue for that, since people here don’t have much of a personal emotional stake in the integrity of west coast ecosystems.

Perhaps I should try and find the time to set up yet another website, where people could contribute photos from B.C. and explain why they oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline…

Risk/efficiency trade-offs in pathfinding

Finding my way to a new building, it struck me that two major strategies are possible in urban pathfinding. You can try to follow the most efficient path or you can try to minimize your odds of getting lost. Call those the ‘efficiency’ and ‘reduced risk’ approaches.

Each has some level of appeal. Nobody wants to take an unnecessarily circuitous route, when there is a shorter one available. At the same time, it is foolish to take a path that is nominally shorter but which involves much higher risks of getting lost or having other sorts of trouble.

Shortcuts are a classic example. They speak out to the part of us that seeks efficiency, but they carry special risks. When you deviate from the conventional path, you open the possibility of arriving much sooner than you would otherwise, but you also open the possibility of arriving much later or not at all.

Personally, I am willing to trade a fair bit of efficiency in exchange for simplicity. Even if I can conceivably save time by cutting corners, I prefer to stick to simple routes that I can remember and understand. Subways are good for this – they don’t take you as close to your destination as buses often might, but they are easier to understand.

As an aside, the worst ever solution to the risk/efficiency problem is the ‘try and buzz the head waiter’s home island with your cruise ship‘ strategy. In choosing people to captain cruise ships, there should probably some process to screen out those with such reckless tendencies…

Much delayed and snowed upon

The combination of grossly insufficient sleep and mild snowfall has produced a morning of havoc. My normally-hour-and-a-half commute became two and a half hours, with people crammed cheek-by-jowl in a streetcar with totally fogged windows, lurching among confused drivers. Then, I forgot my (quite durable and expensive) umbrella somewhere on the subway or in a subway station.

With luck, it will turn up at the TTC lost and found within a few days.

The Northern Gateway pipeline

With the commencement of hearings, the political fight over the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is now beginning in earnest. The proposed pipeline would carry bitumen from the oil sands to the Pacific coast for export. It would encourage the development of the oil sands and contribute to the fastest-growing category of emissions of greenhouse gas pollution in Canada. It would increase the total fraction of the world’s fossil fuels that will be burned, affecting how much climate change the world will experience. Having walked away from the Kyoto Protocol – and with no effective mechanism for curbing emissions in place – it is difficult to argue that Canada is doing its part to respond to this serious global problem.

In addition to the climate arguments, there is always some risk of a spill, either along the pipeline or with tankers off the B.C. coast. If what I read in John Vaillant‘s The Golden Spruce is at all accurate, the Hecate Strait is a particularly treacherous waterway. As anyone who has visited the coast of British Columbia knows, it’s also a beautiful and environmentally rich part of the world, both on land and in the sea. It would be a really awful place for another Deepwater Horizon-type disaster.

At present, the hearings on the pipeline are expected to last for 18 months. As we have seen from the Keystone XL pipeline, however, timetables are clearly subject to change as the debate progresses.

Roundabouts: faster and safer

Anyone who has lived in the UK is probably familiar with roundabouts: a type of intersection that does away with traffic signals, in favour of rotation around a central area.

They may be a bit confusing to the unfamiliar, but they apparently have large advantages in both safety and speed:

One of their main attractions, says Mayor Brainard, is safety. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent research group, estimates that converting intersections with traffic lights to roundabouts reduces all crashes by 37% and crashes that involve an injury by 75%. At traffic lights the most common accidents are faster, right-angled collisions. These crashes are eliminated with roundabouts because vehicles travel more slowly and in the same direction. The most common accident is a sideswipe, generally no more than a cosmetic annoyance.

What locals like, though, is that it is on average far quicker to traverse a series of roundabouts than a similar number of stop lights. Indeed, one national study of ten intersections that could have been turned into roundabouts found that vehicle delays would have been reduced by 62-74% (nationally saving 325,000 hours of motorists’ time annually). Moreover, because fewer vehicles had to wait for traffic lights, 235,000 gallons of fuel could have been saved.

Perhaps we ought to see more in North America.

Does anyone have experience in cycling in roundabouts?

Night of Dread

Yesterday, I participated in the novel, engaging, and pleasantly pagan festivities at Toronto’s Night of Dread. Put on by the Clay and Paper Theatre Company (whose work I have photographed before), the evening involved both small and gigantic representations of fears including ‘corruption’, ‘nuclear war’, ‘selfish leadership’, and ‘lack of stability’.

Accompanied by drummers and brass instruments, a parade marched out from Dufferin Grove Park and out around the neighbourhood before people assembled to see some of the fears burned atop a massive bonfire, followed by more music and special bread. I can’t explain exactly why, but seeing families and children at the event was comforting and encouraging. It may have something to do with the act of physically coming together within a community, making art, and participating in a non-commercial spectacle together.

The sense of history that accompanies gathering around a fire is also a comforting reminder that humanity has always had troubles. It is easy to look at woes from nuclear meltdowns and tsunamis to wars and currency crises and think that we are living in the worst of times, or even the end of times. Gathering in a manner that would have been recognizable to people from thousands of years ago drives one to think about all the fears, misfortunes, and tragedies that have afflicted the world across that span, and it kindles a hope that we might overcome (or at least continue to contain) the dangers and sorrows that exist now.

The symbolism may not be sophisticated, but it is rather satisfying to see enormous representations of fears marched around and eventually burned. The pyrotechnic element reminded me of Luminox.

Civilian unmanned aerial vehicles

For about US$2,000, you can get a pretty ridiculous camera-equipped UAV, which can be controlled by radio at a range of up to 15km. People fly them using live video streaming to goggles.

One group of people using these drones has made some impressive videos of places like New York City and the Matterhorn. Their work is pretty audacious, both in terms of how they flirt with the destruction of their drones by flying close to obstacles and because of how they flirt with trouble with the authorities by flying low in major urban centres.

These drones may have been part of the inspiration for the drone-related plot points in William Gibson’s latest novel, Zero History.

“The Pedaler’s Wager” – Toronto

Starting tomorrow, the Clay and Paper Theatre Company are performing their original show “The Pedaler’s Wager” in Dufferin Grove Park, Toronto. It sounds like quite a lively experience:

This original comedy features puppetry, live music, and our very own CYCLOPS: Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad. Each weekend audience members are invited to cycle from act to act alongside performers, literally following the troupe to the show’s conclusion.

The show runs from July 20th until August 14th, and all performances start in Dufferin Grove Park.

Stationary performances are happening Wednesday through Sunday at 7:00pm and Friday at 2:00pm.

Traveling performances start on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00pm and require that you bring your own bicycle to follow the performers from Dufferin Grove Park to Fred Hamilton Park and Trinity Bellwoods Park.

The show is $10, or pay what you can.

Back on two wheels

More than a year after I broke my collarbone, I re-inflated my tires, strapped on a new helmet, and went for a ride along the canal, past the locks beside Parliament, along the river, up Booth Street, along Dow’s Lake, and back home along the canal.

Cycling may carry the distinct risk of breaking your neck, but it beats paying $60 per month to exercise under constant social surveillance at a gym.

Reduced screen time

Blogging

We are in the middle of Ottawa’s bright and pleasant season, which precedes the stultifying heat season. As such, I am trying to reduce the amount of time I spent in front of computers. Keeping it at nine hours a day or so seems like an OK goal, though it may involve substantially diminished blogging activities.

Still, the ideas I come up with might be more refined with the benefit of time, and I might make some headway against my insane backlog of reading. Oh, and I might finally find a new job.

Photography

Regardless of whether I find time to write or not, I will keep providing photos of the day. Regarding photography, I was wondering if anyone in Ottawa would be interested in buying a framed print of mine. The prints would be 10″ by 15″ and would cost $75 framed. I could probably mail prints to people outside Ottawa, at an additional cost.

I could make very high quality prints at that size of pretty much any photo in my Flickr portfolio. I could also seek out unpublished prints of particular subjects, upon request.

I am also increasingly well-equipped to take studio-type portraits, so if anybody needs some and is willing to play the role of lighting guinea pig, they should let me know.