Terahertz

Reason made a brief appearance in the bowels of bureaucracy recently, it last just long enough for the BC Local Elections Task Force to soundly reject the calls for the re-establishment of the corporate vote in municipal elections.

The corporations still plan to lobby for it, but I think the public has spoken.

By the time you finish reading this post, well over 5500 litres of oil will have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil continues to pour out of a busted well and the slick continues to grow and has already hit land in some parts of Florida. Meanwhile, closer to home, the question that seems to be off of the provincial radar is when will our offshore wells be built so they can threaten our fragile habitats?

It has been over a month since an explosion rocked British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizons oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast left eleven people missing and presumed dead and well over 790,000 litres of oil has gushed into the sea. There has been little success at stopping the flow so far.

It seems hard to tell if any remorse is being felt by the heads of BP for a disaster that is shaping up to be worse than the Exxon Valdez spill in the North Pacific years ago. Perhaps their biggest fear is either the public relations hit or that they will not be able to profit off this spilt oil.

Just a week prior to the last provincial election in 2009, Premier Gordon Campbell signalled that a provincial Liberal government would continue to lobby for an end to the offshore drilling moratorium that inhibits BC from building wells at sea. This position was in line with the Liberal’s 2001 commitment to have an offshore drilling industry in BC by 2010.

Days later he squeaked by with a slim majority government. It was soon leaked that the provincial deficit would be much larger than promised and that BC, along with Ontario, would be implementing an HST. It should not be a surprise then that after dropping twenty points in the polls that Campbell would not want to broach the subject of offshore oil wells.

Yet with the recent tragedy in the Gulf, it is more pertinent than ever to find out what our far-too-secretive government is up to. While the typically oil-friendly federal Conservative environment minister Jim Prentice has backed off from any new offshore projects and has reaffirmed moratoriums on drilling off BC’s shorelines.

Darrell Dexter, the newly-elected NDP premier of Nova Scotia, was quick to pledge his continuing support to offshore moratoriums in his province and even Barack Obama has gotten behind a temporary slow-down. Obviously no leader would want to publicly come out as pro-drilling right now, so I guess Campbell’s silence on the issue speaks as much to the issue as a press conference would. There is currently no sign that Campbell plans to back down on offshore drilling.

As a non-renewable resource, it is quite clear that at some point in the future we will run out of oil. And while there is still a lot of it underground, the remaining supplies are in increasingly difficult regions to access. Whether it is in the Alberta tar sands, under politically unstable regimes, or deep under the Arctic ice sheets, there are many political and environmental issues that must be addressed if we want to responsible drill for this oil. And while a leak off BCs coast may be containable, imagine the damage that could be done were a disaster to befall an arctic well, with hundreds of thousands of litres of oil covering the undersides of the ices sheets.

Of course, I personally would love to see the end of the oil age in my life time, the fact of the matter is that this laptop I am typing on, the synthetic portions of my clothes, and countless other products use barrels and barrels of oil, let alone the amount that we use for energy. A lot of work has been done on alternative energies, and there is a huge need for more investment, but until those industries are positioned to meet the demands, we will either have to continue drilling for oil, or massively cut out consumption.

I believe that it is possible to extract oil from the tar sands and deep underwater both safely and with as little environmental damage as possible, however, if our leaders fail to discuss if they are even interested in such activities, how are we to trust them to ensure the proper regulatory regimes are in place when corporations do begin to stick their pipes in the ground?

I had an idea today. Like most ideas, it’s not original, and builds a lot on work that others have done, but it’s one that hasn’t been applied within the freethought movement yet, to my knowledge (at least in Canada).

The idea is, as I’ve now learned, based off the growing social enterprise movement which seeks to have companies run for financial, social and environmental gain – the triple bottom line. In many cases the corporation is actually a non-profit or charitable organization which runs a business to fund its work and expansion. A highly successful model of this sort of idea is the Salvation Army’s Thrift Stores which finance much of their missionary and religious work.

So the idea that I had today was sparked by a desire within the Vancouver skeptical/freethought community to have a place of our own, that is a venue where we can routinely host out discussions, meetings and set up an office or two.

Currently CFI Vancouver meets sporadically in cheap or free spaces that are provided by campus groups or rented at reduced rates (through its charitable status) and the BC Humanist Association meets weekly at the Oakridge Senior’s Centre through a deal they have there.

CFI is committed to seeing something more permanent in the next few years be established and while the Senior’s Centre is a great venue for the BCHA, there is the justified concern both inside and outside the organization that the word “senior” in the venue’s name is a deterrent.

So the idea I had was that these organizations ought to found a coffee shop/cafe, which during regular hours can be open to the public for coffee, cookies, and what-have you, with an extra influence of humanism and skepticism present (such as a resource library for the curious and some science-inspired artwork or something). Then, during evenings, weekends, or whenever it is needed, the shop can close up, move the tables aside (or not) and serve as a meeting venue for the invested groups.

There’s a few bonuses in this format. First, the coffee shop serves as an advertisement and fundraiser for the associated charities. Second, the venue would accommodate the majority of the events being held (the larger lectures and debates will always require large campus lecture halls), and would have coffee and snacks available, and could even be potentially licensed.

The drawbacks are the large initial investment required (likely a few $100,000 which none of these organizations have), and the requirement that someone will actually have to manage the business end of things.

However, with a strong business plan and the right people, it should be possible to raise the requisite funds via government grants, personal donations, and loans if necessary.

It’s also worth noting that under Vancouver’s basic commercial zoning laws [pdf], most of these types of spaces can be used for the categories of cultural and recreational (including clubs and community centres), institutional (schools), offices, retail and services. So there should be no difficulty with this portion.

Now, who has some entrepreneurial experience and wants to get this started?

Guess what came in the mail today (besides the notification that my tax refund will be at least $850 and my giant welcome package to Coast Capital Savings):

That’s my $30 refund from Edmonton SkyShuttle. They also offered “apologies for the lack of service.”

While I still have no plans to use the SkyShuttle in the future (with three trips through the Edmonton Airport before May planned), it’s good to see that a Better Business Bureau complaint can still get resolved after some patience.

I’m still holding out hope that Edmonton Transit will get their shit together, work with the region, and get any kind of bus service to the airport.

People generally acknowledge that BC politics is messed up, but this push to regain the corporate municipal vote [pdf] here really takes puts the ass in asylum.

The claim is that businesses are being unfairly taxed without representation, ergo businesses ought to have a vote at the municipal level.

Never mind that every business owner and employee that actually lives in the city they operate in already has a vote.

Never mind that the only other place in the world that shills like this is the business district of London, England.

Never mind that the guy who wrote that trite in the Vancouver Sun is “known for showing up at Burnaby council meetings wearing his scoutmaster uniform.”

Just remember that democracy is, in it’s most pure form, a system of people governing themselves. In Canada, at least, corporations are not people.

First the long-overdue news: The Edmonton Transit System Advisory Board is strongly recommending that when the South LRT extension opens at Century Park that ETS add a route that goes from the new LRT station to the airport as an add-fare for an extra $2.50 [pdf report]. They recommend half-hour service and have strong evidence that the service would be hugely successful and would break even at 27 riders per bus (under half full I think).

The better news: This will mean the end of the crap scam-of-a-service that is the Edmonton Sky Shuttle.

Why I want the Edmonton Sky Shuttle to die:

1. My first experiences with the Shuttle a few years ago were terrifying reckless drivers who made it their mission to race around Edmonton side streets and down the QE2 in record time to attempt to get to the airport.
2. Their disclaimer that shuttles may be ±15 minutes, which on half-hour service means their shuttles show up at random intervals, up to an hour apart. Note that Edmonton Transit is much more consistent with their timings then this (and don’t give me stories of when the bus was late – think how many times it was on time).
3. Their shuttles have been 45 minutes late (for my girlfriend a few weeks ago).
4. Their fake “Going Green” campaign which means they no longer stop (or even slow down) at half their stops, while they still run empty or half-empty vans to the airport. Meanwhile, I’ve had a couple rides since this new “only stop if you book us” policy where the driver still stops at every hotel en route.
5. The driver I had from the airport at 1 am one night who had his buddy in the passenger seat play a portable DVD player for him to watch while highway driving – that helped me feel safe.
6. Their grade of F from the Better Business Bureau.
7. Their new stop at Army & Navy (which is more convenient for where I live in Edmonton), is apparently at the SE entrance (on 104 St.), however that extra information is not listed anywhere on their website (the best they list is in the dropdown list on the “Book Online” feature which gives the Whyte Avenue address).
8. After waiting 10 minutes past my time of booking for a shuttle at the wrong Army & Navy entrance I had to call them only to find out that they claimed to have stopped at Army & Navy at the scheduled time, and would book me on the next Shuttle.
9. After waiting until 5 minutes after the next scheduled time, the shuttle I was told was coming and looking for me drove right by and after calling the dispatcher again he circled the block and picked me up, while I was about to hail a cab.
10. At no point in the 3 phone calls to dispatch complaining about the lack of shuttles for me did they offer any sort of apology for their service, and rather promised a shuttle was going to be “right there” when it was actually still 10 minutes away.
11. When I brought all my complaints to the driver before getting off the airport before paying, he neither cared, apologized, or even shed a tear that I would never use their service again.
12. Once, when we were waiting for a sky shuttle with a large group, the van filled and a couple of us had to wait at the curb for a shuttle they were sending, after half an hour we just grabbed a waiting cab. Luckily their atrocious customer service has meant they’re only routinely taking between 1 and 5 people per trip.
13. (Although more minor) Some sketchy gum got stuck to my foot in the last ride I took to the airport.
14. Also, I doubt that they have permission from the city to stop at half of the curbside stops they offer (the Army & Navy one is an ETS stop). If they do have permission, perhaps they could get a nice little sign to make it obvious that you’re waiting for their shuttle.

Customer service apparently isn’t important when you run the only affordable way to get from the remote Edmonton International Airport (one-way cabs cost around $50). Their ridership seems to be declining and I don’t doubt that if the city has its act together and approves the airport bus route (and doesn’t cave to the cab lobby) that the Sky Shuttle will quickly disappear from the roads.

It’s bad enough already that the only way to get from the airport to Edmonton is Airport Taxi (no other cab companies are allowed to pick-up from the airport), a limo, or the Sky Shuttle; and to go from Edmonton to the airport you can take any cab (except Airport Taxi), a limo, or the Sky Shuttle. This means that other than the Sky Shuttle – every cab is empty on at least one leg of the 45-minute one way Edmonton-Airport trip.

So here’s hoping that Edmonton Transit listens to their advisory board, smartens up and makes this bus route a go come April – that will mean only a couple cab rides for me, because I’ll be caught dead before another dollar of mine goes to Edmonton Sky Shuttle.

Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and considering Geer Week (formerly Eng Week) is coming up on campus, it may be another week before I really get going again.

Anyways, here’s a round up of news items I feel like sharing:

• The Garneau Theatre is under new ownership. I was initially very conserned about this story, as they were talking (and still are) about tearing down the front entrance. However, it turns out that they are doing this to essentially revamp it and the theatre will continue to operate (even during construction). This is a great indie theatre, and it’s good to know it will continue. (Speaking of indie films, see Milk if you haven’t yet).
• In the past month and a bit the Alberta Tories have found another way to increase our carbon emissions and finger the recession: spending a quarter million on flying across the globe. Teleconferencing is so 1990s, face to face is the only possible way to convince people that the tar sands aren’t evil.
• And speaking of tar sands, the oil companies released a poll that found that almost half of people polled in Edmonton and Toronto don’t trust a word they say. I feel a little bad that they had to spend money to confirm this.
• Alberta leads Canada in job losses in December as Albertans lost nearly 20,000 jobs. But the good news that the Journal finds: Edmonton is still tied for lowest unemployment rate (however, they neglect to mention homeless rates).
• And finally, keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming report on carbon-capture technology that the Tories are banking $2 billion on (and wanting the broke federal government to match). Eng Phys director Dr. Backhouse did a (very rough) ballpark calculation on carbon-capture and figures that if we bury all our carbon burned and continue to increase at a steady rate that we’ll be out of oxygen (since you have to take 2 oxygen atoms for every carbon atom you remove from the atmosphere, since we bury carbon dioxide) in 750 years. Of course, the issue becomes more of a threat if you realize that a slight change in oxygen content in our atmosphere will likely have drastic effects.

Until I get another chance to write, here’s some blogs (that are regularly updated) that I follow regularly (in loose category labels):

Atheism:

• Friendly Atheist
• Greta Christina’s Blog
• It’s the Thought that Counts
• Open Parachute
• Pharyngula
• Science after Sunclipse
• The Teapot Atheist
• Tiny Frog

Web Comics

• garfield minus garfield
• Ctrl + Alt + Del
• PHD Comics
• XKCD

Politics

• Alberta: Get Rich or Die Trying
• CalgaryGrit
• Challenging the Commonplace
• daveberta
• DTK
• James Laxer
• Tiny Perfect Blog
• To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth

I read lots more than that, but that should be a good start.

This past Wednesday evening Alan and I got the opportunity to get a tour of the new Future Shop in South Edmonton Common. They gave us food, a tour, and a free bluetooth headset in the interests of biasing our opinions.

This store is massive. It’s more than double the size of an average Future Shop. Imagine a Costco-sized warehouse dedicated to electronics.

But they weren’t going to settle with being the largest store, this is also a special pilot store where they plan on introducing new product lines and feeling out new markets.
Read the rest of this entry »

Choice can suck sometimes. Especially when you want to be sceptical about new purchases.

Canada is notorious for having horribly over-priced cellular telephone rates, so when faced with the prospect of having to purchase a new cell plan, I would almost rather resort to smoke signals.

Nevertheless, I tabulated a chart that picks the best deals for myself which require: Read the rest of this entry »

Usually I don’t expect much when I call a utility company in terms of customer service or getting what I want quickly or painlessly, but I must give special recognition to Shaw Cable/Internet.

Although you still have to go through an automated machine, you’re hooked up to a real person pretty quickly, and on the past few occasions it has taken less than five minutes to clear everything up.

On this last occasion, Sonia had taken over cable/internet services here at home (she moved in), and I had not called to cancel (although I did tell them I was cancelling when they called a couple weeks ago to try to sell me cable).  I then got a bill for August internet, so I called and said I was actually disconnected a couple weeks ago.  They quickly double checked their file, cancelled the next bill, and even told me they were issuing me a refund for the half of July that I’m not going to be using.  I want to emphasize that I didn’t even ask for a refund, he just told me the cheque is in the mail.

The only quarrel I may have with Shaw is that at $43/month their high-speed internet package feels a bit pricey (or I’m just cheap), but they do offer student deals in September if you sign up for an 8-month contract.

So kudos to Shaw, and may more companies actually strive to reach this level of support.