I'm OK with Canada's modest AI ambitions

Call me a Luddite, but I can't help but be extremely suspicious of the whole world's reckless infatuation with Artificial Intelligence (AI). I'm not saying the whole world is wrong and I am right - well, actually, I kind of am ... - but I just have this feeling that the level of obsession most people are exhibiting over it can't be healthy, and that we are likely headed down a dark rabbit hole of our own construction.

I can't help but feel that, much like 5G communications, we are adopting a huge, expensive and world-changing technology, just because it's there - because we can - not because we need it. AI adoption, and the number of huge, power-hungry data centres under construction, is not equivalent to economic output, or even productivity, although you'd be forgiven for thinking so from the media attention. 

AI is currently keepimg the world's stock exchanges at near record levels, in spite of all the other crap happening in the world, but not for any good logical reasons. Almost all of the big IPOs hitting the stock exhanges are tech related (mainly specifically AI-related). Call it a bubble or whatever other label you prefer. The markets have almost completely decoupled from the economy, and are largely running on the fumes of potential AI profitability. I've seen this movie before; it doesn't end well.

I read so many articles bemoaning Canada's sluggish uptake of AI (here's just one example) compared to our peers. Well, usually compared to the US. 30% of the US's real GDP growth now comes from private investment in IT equipment and software, compared to 5% in Canada, we are told. Data centre construction has increased by 180% in three years in the USA, while Canada doesn't even separate the category out from other spending on transportation, utilities and communications buildings. But is that such a bad thing. Who has it right?

Indeed, there is outright opposition to US-style unregulated expansion of AI data centres (except in US-style unregulated Alberta). Manitoba recently nixed a huge data centre development because, as Premier Wab Kinew explained, "there's a big threat to the environment and not much benefit to.the economy". Well, he's got a point. A similar process played out in Hamilton, Ontario.

Canada does have many AI data centres, hundreds of them, particularly in Quebec, and many more are being built as we speak. It's not like we have our heads completely in the sand. Do we have enough? Well, how long is a piece of string?

The huge bet south of the border on AI, and the all those data centres it relies on, is just that: a bet. The future gains from AI we keep reading about may not actually unfold as predicted, which would leave states, local governments and electricity payers on the hook for many decades.

Canada, generally speaking, is much more environmentally conscious than the US (despite Mark Carney's efforts to change that), and the environmental footprint of AI data centres has come under increasing scrutiny of late. AI requites massive electricity consumption, high water usage for cooling data centres, and heavy raw material extraction for hardware. It's no surprise that some of the strongest opposition to AI and, on a more local level, data centres is from an environmental perspective.

Another element, though, is the increasing Canadian distrust of AI: trust in AI is significantly lower in Canada than the global average, particularly as regards potential job losses. Data centres are the physical embodiment of AI and its perceived threat to society. That distrust of AI extends to the business community in Canada to some extent, which is investing much less in AI than the US.

Once again, is this necessarily a bad thing (as it is usually portrayed)? Is the helter-skelter scramble in the USA actually the right call? The US may be much more conservative than Canada in most respects, but Canadian business tends to be quite circumspect and risk-averse, and that's not always a bad thing (look at how Canadian banks dealt with the 2008 financial crisis compared the Americans).

Here's another thing. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that the computer equipment, batteries, switchgear, copper wiring, etc, needed for the US's AI rollout amounted to 23% of all US imports last year, increasing its trade deficit by roughly $200 billion. Canada's AI-related imports,non the other hand, remained pretty much consistent with previous years, and much more manageable.

So, who has it right? History will probably tell, but that doesn't much help today's planners. Mark Carney is making some moves to at least be seen to be doing something on AI, but even his strategy is pretty modest in the scheme of things. And, you know what? I'm OK with that. 

Canada's most important draw ever?

It's kind of pathetic, but kind of cute in a way. All of Canada is celebrating the one point it won agaist lowly Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 2026 World Cup, what is being referred to in some quarters (and only slightly tongue-in-cheek) as "the greatest draw in Canada's history".

In fact, they really should have won, if they had had just a few minutes longer, or if they had had a few more of their best players back from injury. But that's a lot of "ifs". They squandered several good chances, hit the bar, etc.

But the bottom line is, that single point for a 1-1 tie is more than Canada has ever won in its previous two World Cup appearances (1986 and 2022) put together, and the first time they have not actually lost. So, yes, a big deal, I guess, and arguably boost towards getting out of the group stages for the first time. (Switzerland would be an unlikely victory, but Qatar ought to be beatable.)

Canada as a footballing nation is still in its infancy. In 2023, soccer was still only the fifth most popular sport in Canada, after hockey, basketball, American/Canadian football and baseball. Compare that to most countries in Europe, South America, Africa, where soccer is almost the ONLY sport, and you get an idea of the kind of obstacle Canada is having to surmount.

That said, soccer has been the fastest-growing sport for several years now in Canada, and is now probably the most played team sport in terms of active participation, especially among youth. But this is still a very recent phenomenon, much of it driven by Canada's increasing immigration population.

Anyway, take it for what it is. At the moment, soccer is very much top of mind here in Canada and, in the population imagination, the sky's the limit. So: Go Canada!

The sad natural history of Mauritius

It's weird to find out about it by reading Salman Rushdie's memoirs book Joseph Anton, but I only found out today that the now-extinct dodo was endemic only to the island of Mauritius. Furthermore, the island used to boast a whole slew of other, much less known, flightless or near-flightless birds, all now extinct also.

Mauritius is a speck in the Indian Ocean, about two thousand kilometres off the coast of Africa. The only other places even vaguely close are another speck called Réunion, and a the much larger island of Madagascar. It's the original island paradise - white sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, lush volcanic peaks - but man, is it isolated. 

The seafaring Dutch found it, though, at the end of the 16th century, at which time it was entirely uninhabited but chock-full of endemic birds and animals. By the time the Dutch left, just over a hundred years later, they (and their dogs and imported rats) had managed to kill off almost all of the native species, including the dodo. The French then moved in and established a sugar industry based on slave labour. A century after that, the British moved in to Mauritius and abolished slavery, but brought in hundreds of thousands of indentured workers from India (slavery lite), the descendents of whom still live there today.

So, a sorry history, to be sure. But it was all the extinct flightless birds that intrigued me. The dodo we know about, but Wikipedia has a whole page of links on the extinct animals of Mauritius, many of them flightless or at least flight-challenged birds, like the red rail, the Mauritius sheldgoose, the Mauritius ground thrush, the broad-billed parrot, the Mauritius blue pigeon, the Mauritius scops owl, the Mauritian turtle dove, the Mascarene coot, the Mascarene grey parakeet, etc. 

In addition to flightlessness, or at least poor flight ability, these birds, and many of the other Mauritian animals now extinct, these birds were terminally naive and trusting, having developed with no real predators, and certainly nothing like the rapacious humans now moving into the area.

Imagine being a Dutch explorer back in 1598, arriving on the pristine shores of Mauritius, full of curiousz ground-based animals and birds. What would you have done? Probably killed as many as possible. We were a pretty savage bunch back then.

Trump's attendance at Knicks game sheer selfishness

New York Knicks fans are saying that Donald Trump's presence at Game 3 of the NBA finals "killed the vibe", "messed up the flow" and generally "jinxed" the team, when he attended the last game against the San Antonio Spurs.

The Knicks were 2-0 up in the series and on a record-breaking 13-game play-off winning streak, when the Spurs beat them 115-111 in Game 3. Trump was heartily booed whenever his image appeared on the jumbotron, despite his own contention that "it was mostly cheers" (it was mostly cheers when he was NOT on the screen). This was New York, after all - not a big Trump town.

Fans were already up in arms after facing enhanced security screening at Madison square Gardens due to Trump's presence, causing waits of over two hours. Even getting to the venue was a nightmare, with many streets cordoned off and barred to vehicles while Trump arrived in his motorcade to boos and signs saying "Nobody wants you here", "Trump must go", and "Impeach. Convict. Remove." Local businesses, hoping to make a healthy profit from a home game, complained that the streets were deserted and takings were down.

And in the end, the Knicks lost, and a record-breaking run came to an end. Make of that what you will.

Trump may be a long-time Knicks fan, but he really didn't have to go to the game. It was sheer selfishness and narcissism. And it backfired, big-time, on any number of levels. 

UPDATE

A wild Game 4 went the Knicks' way too. Trump did not attend. Are you seeing a trend here?

America's latest World Cup affront

God, the current American administration really knows how to manufacture a public relations disaster out of thin air!

After multiple reports of incidents like the Iranian World Cup soccer team's support squad being denied entry, and even the players being forced to jump through all sorts of hoops just to play the games they have already earned and deserve - why are they even scheduled to play in the US? With games also being played in Mexico and Canada, surely that could have been avoided - now we have a lone Somali referee being denied entry at the last minute.

Omar Artan is an experienced FIFA -approved international referee, and has all his papers in order, including his travel visa. He was named referee of the year last year by the Confederation of African Football, and he would have been the first referee from his country to officiate at such a prestigious event, the honour of his lifetime.

Instead, he was pulled over at Miami airport, subjected to 11 hours of interrogation, and denied entry "due to vetting concerns" by US Customs and Border Protection. He was put back on  plane home. They later "clarified" that the Somalian was refused admission due to "association with suspected members of terror organizations", with no other details being offered.

There has been understandable outrage across most of the world. As a former England player put it: "Every few hours its another story - another story about fans denied, players denied, officials denied, journalists denied, now refs. Is this how the hosts behave really for the greatest game, the greatest tournament in the world?"

So much for Gianni Infantino promising "Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico and the United States". There are those who argue that FIFA has lost complete control of this particular World Cup, and that the scandals from the last two tournaments, in Russia and Qatar, are starting to pale into insignificance at the side of what is happening in the United States.

Canadian politicians have also weighed in, saying that Mr. Artan would be welcome to officiate in Canada. But apparently even that would not be an acceptable solution because all the referees are required to attend a training hub in Florida before the games begin. Ridiculous!

Mr. Artan arrived back in Somalia to a hero's welcome, greeted by MPs, government and football federation officials, social media celebrities, and many of his fellow referees. He has quickly become an icon in his homeland. He took the moral high ground, praising FIFA and vowing to be back refereeing at the 2030 FIFA World Cup in Spain/Portugal/Morocco.

Donald Trump and the rest of his merry band of crooks and thugs have their dirty fingerprints all over this late decision. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the order for this latest indignity came right from the top. Trump has singled out Somalia several times for some of his most offensive insults, calling it "barely a country" and "garbage", and claiming that "they just run around killing each other".

How can it possibly be in America's interests to have the rest of the world hate them so?

What to do when you get a rick bite (Ontario edution)

I guess it was only a matter of time before I or my wife got bitten by a tick. It happened to my wife this last weekend on an otherwise beautiful walk in the Rouge Valley. Except, we didn't realize it until two days later (it was on her stomach for one thing!)

I knew I had to take it off as soon as possible with tweezers (pull straight out, no twisting or smearing!) But I had no idea what to do next. Well, now I do!

First, I took a photo of it and identified the tick through eTick.ca - some kind of AI application, I guess. We received a positive identification within just a couple of hours and, sure enough, it was a black-legged tick, or deer tick, the kind that potentially carries Lyme Disease. Not all of them carry the disease, so all was not lost at this point. But that was a  pretty impressive service, I thought.

My next stop was the Public Health Ontario webpage on  Lyme Disease. This resource has a flowchart you can follow to decide whether or not you need to get a prophylactic antibiotic shot. The first question is: do you have the tell-tale bulls-eye rash and/or flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, headache, stiff neck, fatigue, decreased appetite, muscle and joint pains, joint swelling, swollen lymph nodes, etc). If so, go straight to see a doctor or nurse practitioner. In our case, though, the answer was no, so go to Question 2.

Question 2 assesses the level of risk of Lyme Disease, and asks if all four of these risk factors apply: the tick has been removed in the last 72 hours; the bite occurred in a high-risk area (Google it); the tick was likely attached for at least 24 hours; and you have no allergy to the antibiotic doxycycline. In our case, we "ticked" all of these, so a dose of doxycycline was recommended (that seems to be the ONLY antibiotic that is recommended). If we had not been able to tick off all four, then the advice is just to monitor the bite and see if any symptoms occur.

So, we went to our local pharmacy - pharmacists innOntario are now authorized to treat this kind of thing, no need for a doctor's appointment - bought 2 tablets of doxycycline (after the pharmacist briefly went over all of the above), and Bob's your proverbial uncle. Actually, he even waived the $2.99 cost, so the whole thing cost us ... nothing!

What a good system!

Why air conditioning might not be the best solution to hot weather

We do have air conditioning in our Toronto lakefront house (well, it's a heat pump - same idea, just cheaper and more efficient). But cool breezes off the lake and a certain attitude conspire against us using it very often.

American family and friends despair of us, but it's always seemed counter-intuitive to me to respond to climate change-induced exteme heat events by firing up a power-hogging electrical device which will only make climate change worse. It's also horribly expensive, as electricity rates creep up. 

But we do use it a few times a year, mainly on very hot nights where sleep would otherwise be impossible. During the day, even when it's hot, we tend not to use it - hot is just how it is in the summer. You can maybe see why visiting American family members shake their heads.

Turns out, though, I'm probably right. Certainly about the climate change piece, but also the half-formed idea I have always had that air conditioning is just not particularly healthy, and maybe even dangerous.

It's a fact that extreme heat events kill more people in the affluent West than in the wilds of Africa, where the heat is typically so much more intense and air conditioning is all but unheard of. Over millennia, Africans have adapted to the heat, physiologically and in their habits and conditions: houses maximize air flow, the workday is arranged around the hottest parts of the day, clothing is loose and cool, hydration is a regular feature of life.

But also, there's evidence that chronic use of air conditioning can reduce such resilience. Although air conditioning in offices can improve labour productivity, fans and proper air circulation can achieve the same benefits, at least up to around 30°C. In residential homes, though, AC can prove downright dangerous. In increasingly common "compound climate events" - where a heat wave induces a power failure, for example - the rapid change in temperature can result in more heat stress than the high temperatures alone. As one recent American study puts it, "high AC prevalence may have the unintended effect of amplifying heat vulnerability during grid failure events". You only have to walk out of an over-air-conditioned store into the hot street to understand the logic of that.

Now, I'm not saying that air conditioning should be banned. Nearly a third of the deaths during heat waves occur among the elderly over 80 years of age, and more Europeans than North Americans tend to die from heat exposure (air conditioning is much more prevalent in North America). It's essential that seniors homes nursing homes and hospitals are air-conditioned, and even residential apartment blocks where a high proportion of senior citizens live. 

I just think we overuse it. We don't need frigid conditions in our houses and stores during the few months of the year when the weather is actually nice and warm; that is just perversity. Maybe a fan works well most of the time, maybe just opening the windows would be sufficient. Take a cold shower, have a cold drink. Don't just automatically hit the AC button, and if you do, don't set the temperature unnecessarily low.

FIFA may have miscalculated in Canada

Not only is the upcoming World Cup not going to work out as beneficial to host cities Toronto and Vancouver as advertised, it might not even work out as well for FIFA as they had hoped.

The way these things usually work is: FIFA does pretty much whatever it wants and makes all its big money up front, while the host cities and their citizens carry all the risk and the expense. That's still how it works this time, except that FIFA's policy of charging top dollar for ticket prices may not be quite as effective as usual. FIFA's dynamic pricing policy has resulted in some of the most expensive World Cup tickets ever, and many Canadians are thinking twice about them (and the $17 beers).

While Canada was hugely excited by the prospect of holding World Cup games at first, the bloom is off the rose somewhat of late. Less than a week before the first games, hundreds of tickets remain unsold for events that were once expected to be oversold many times over.

Unlike many another country, soccer here is popular but a distant third or even fourth love, after hockey, baseball and basketball. Both Vancouver and Toronto are overwhelmingly cities of immigrants, most of whom have brought their idolization of soccer with them to Canada. But, as a nation, our national pride is invested much more in hockey, even in baseball and basketball, than it is in soccer. Football is not a core part of our national psyche, as it is for so many other countries.

So, there is a certain subset of the population that is socccer-mad, and will pay whatever it takes to watch a world-class display of football, even if that might be Ghana v Panama or Senegal v Iraq. But, past that, the delirium starts to fade, and there has been push-back against what many perceive as FIFA's greed and insensitivitiy. Even bona fide fans feel they are being charged exorbitant ticket prices. Even local hotels are only at about 80% capacity, which is about the same as usual during summer months. (Or according to other stats, less than half full!) So, did FIFA miscalculate?

Embattled FIFA president Gianni Infantino claims that demand for tickets has been ten times that of the last two World Cups added together, but that doesn't seem to have played out here in Canada. Infantino claims that, "there are expensive tickets, yes, but there are also affordable tickets". The face value of the cheapest tickets to the opening game in Canada (the home team versus Bosnia & Herzegovina) starts at over C$1,000, which most Canadian fans (particularly recent immigrants) will find far from affordable. It feels to many residents like they are paying for the games, but still can't attend them.

One Toronto fan summed it up well: "I've given up, and at this point, I don't want to give my money to FIFA. I'm done with them. I get that, while they can control pricing, it feels like an affront to what makes football great: it's a sport for everyone. Accessibility ought to make it easier for fans - especially those living in the host cities - to see the games."

A "sports economist" from Concordia University explains that FIFA is in the business of maximizing its revenues, not of filling stadiums (and certainly not of providing a memorable experience for local fans). Sometimes it makes more commercial sense to sell high-priced tickets than to fill lower-priced seats. The practice from previous World Cup tournaments of making more tickets accessible to local residents has been supplanted this year by the more lucrative strategy of real-time variable pricing models, which it says "aligns with industry trends across various sports and entertainment sectors". As the sports economics prof puts it, "There is no competition, so they can behave in whatever immoral, unethical, improper way they want - unless fans are prepared to walk away." Well, it seems some fans at least have walked away. 

It's thought that, as the date of the first games approaches, the prices of the remaining tickets may drop drastically. But don't bet on on it. This is FIFA at the controls, after all. 

One other wild card in all this is that Ontario recently passed a law, just in time for the World Cup, that bans the resale of tickets at prices above the original face value. So, in theory at least, we shouldn't be seeing resales on StubHub or on FIFA's own resale platform at the kinds of ridiculous prices seen in some other jurisdictions. But ... FIFA is still in charge of those original face values. And regulation and policing of the new law is almost impossible, according to experts.

Meanwhile, FIFA continues to make PR mistakes, further alienating local people. It has banned reusable water containers at the eleventh hour, ostensibly for safety reasons, and only allows fans to bring in one small factory-sealed soft plastic disposable bottle of water. (This was a climb-down after the initial announcement that NO water bottles could be brought in.) After that, they can of course buy FIFA's own high-priced disposable bottled of water to deal with the high temperatures expected during the tournament. Toronto's environmentally-conscious council has complained loudly. 

There's even a "Reboot FIFA" campaign underway, looking to deliver "the largest single complaint FIFA will ever have received about the conduct of its senior officials", covering a range of issues including exorbitant ticket prices and the semi-official offering of a peace prize to a notorious war-monger.

For what it's worth, the venerable Sports Illustrated magazine has voted Vancouver the best of the 16 host cities, mainly for the stadium's central situation and accessibility, the good public transportation, the city's walkability, and it's mild weather. Surprisingly enough, Toronto came in at No.3, separated from Vancouver only by Seattle.