A small victory

Barack Obama, despite set-backs in the recent mid-term elections which saw the Republicans regain control of the US Senate, keeps gamely plugging away at the climate change file.
Obama is committing the USA to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26%-28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. The Republicans, of course, have vowed to reverse the decision, on the grounds that a few of their supporters may become poorer (and global warming is an urban myth anyway...)
This very specific American commitment, involving deeper cuts than heretofore considered, was given in return for a much less specific and altogether less impressive commitment by China, which pledges to ensure that their emissions peak by about 2030 (which could be interpreted as carte blanche for Chine to continue increasing its emissions for the next 15 years).
It remains, however, something of a landmark agreement, because China (now the biggest single emitter of greenhouse gases, representing nearly 30% of world emissions) is finally talking about limiting total carbon emissions and not just carbon intensity. The US and China together produce about 45% of the world's carbon dioxide (see the excellent interactive tool created by the Global Carbon Atlas project), so any pledges they are willing to make are globally significant.
It is also the first step in getting past the spurious line often used by countries like Canada and Australia that there is no point in trying to reduce emissions if other large emitters like China and India are doing nothing.
A small victory perhaps, but a victory nevertheless. And I'm not holding my breath for Stephen Harper to follow suit.

How are the mighty fallen

When popular CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi was first reported as having been summarily dismissed on allegations of sexual abuse and harassment back on October 26th 2014, my own initial reaction was similar to that of many others I read: the dastardly and reactionary CBC were overreaching themselves once again; a knee-jerk reaction by a prudish and narrow-minded corporation; there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation; etc, etc.
Of course, as we now know, despite Ghomeshi's outraged response that his "adventurous" sexual practices were wholly consensual and should not be subject to the scrutiny of either his employer or the press, the CBC's reaction may not have been quite as precipitous and knee-jerk as it appeared, and that there may well be much truth in the allegations of non-consensual behaviour amounting to sexual abuse. At least nine women have now come forward with their claims, along with some details of Ghomeshi's agressive and tyrannical management style and the "culture of fear" that pervaded his studio.
While the allegations remain as yet unproven, the affable and convivial man we thought we knew so well is starting to appear in a whole new light. Ghomeshi was the nearest thing the CBC had to a superstar, and his morning program Q was a mainstay of CBC's day. I too was a big fan of his easy-going yet percipient interviewing style, and I had a great deal of respect for his hard-working attitude and for the brand he had developed for himself. Little was I expecting these sordid revelations of a Jekyll-and-Hyde persona, and the whole affair presents a sobering example of how our preconceptions can blind us, however open-minded and perceptive we might think ourselves.
Whatever happens in the CBC's own third-party investigations and the parallel Toronto Police probe into his activities, Ghomeshi's moment in the sun is clearly over, and the apex of his career can only be succeeded by a crashing fall, with scant likelihood of a dignified exit from public life.
As David exclaims in the Bible, after the death of his friend and rival (and possibly homosexual lover) Jonathan: "How are the mighty fallen".

Kitten Clone

Douglas Coupland's latest book, Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent, is up to his usual high standard, and replete with memorable phrases, striking imagery and interesting takes on everyday life.
It is partly an investigation of one of the most important multinational companies you've probably never heard of. Alcatel-Lucent produces and maintains most of the cables, switches, routers, etc, on which the Internet relies, and it also owns and runs the influential ideas factory Bell Laboratories. But the book is also partly a meditation on the Internet itself (and technology and communications in general), how it has led us to where we are today, and where it may be taking us in the future.
Among the many pithy observations in the book (some of which may benefit from the context of the surrounding text) are the following:

"I miss my pre-Internet brain" (a slogan now also available on t-shirts)

"I thought that the Internet was a metaphor for life; now I think life is a metaphor for the Internet"

"Invention happens where and when it happens; you can't force invention into existence"

"You can have information or you can have a life, but you can't have both"

"The zeitgeist of the twenty-first century is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist"

"Everything is now overdocumented and yet underexperienced at the same time" 

"Haven't we all wanted to take a year or two off to digest the technologies we already have"

Interspersed with Coupland's own capricious wit and distinctive way with words are typographical pranks such as: the occasional long paragraph of technical gobbledygook rendered in smaller and smaller typeface until it literally falls off the bottom of the page; the word "cloud" randomly scattered and floating cloud-like over part of a page; section breaks marked by <br> (the HTML code for a new line); etc. Olivia Arthur's equally quirky photos also effectively break up the text.
This is a book of journalism, and it is full of thought-provoking research and interesting facts. But, being Douglas Copland (who is, after all, better known as a novelist and artist than as a writer of non-fiction), it is idiosyncratic journalism, whimsical and unconventional and often oblique in its focus.

Twitter lacking in #gravitas

I'm not a big fan of Twitter. I was vaguely intrigued by the idea at first, and I am sure that there do exist a great many trenchant and pithy pronouncements, all neatly forged within the restriction of 140 characters. But it soon became clear to me that the idea had been hijacked by a bandwagon of users with very little to say, users for whom 140 characters is more than enough to express their petty and infantile views and thoughts.
I was nevertheless a little taken aback recently when Blaise Campaoré, the long-time president of Burkina Faso, chose to broadcast his resignation in a Twitter post (as reported in the Wall Street Journal and other sources).
One would have thought that such a significant statement might have merited something a little more formal than a tweet, where it must have found itself in company with such pearls of wisdom as "My #cat has been sick again" and "What was #Rihanna thinking this time?".
Call me old-fashioned, but the platform seems completely inappropriate for such a proclamation, and if nothing else shows a certain disrespect for his citizens.

Toronto's municipal elections: the fallout

The city of Toronto is just recovering from a typically nasty, and atypically long, election campaign. We are still languishing in that dazed-and-confused election hangover state.
And while I have no intention of raking over the coals and revisiting all the issues and personality clashes that have been done to death over the last year or so - suffice to say, in my own humble opinion, we did not get the mayor we deserve, but we avoided the mayor that no city deserves - a recent article in the indispensable Globe and Mail has highlighted one specific issue that I find particularly interesting.
Apparently, 37 out of 38 incumbent counsellors were re-elected, with just 7 new councillors providing some modicum of new blood in council debates (one of which presumably being ex-Mayor Rob Ford, who inexplicably waltzed to a landslide victory in Ward 2 without even trying).
Business as usual or what? Granted, the debate will now be taking place under a less divisive and distracting leadership, or at least one would hope so. But it still begs the question as to what extent voters have actually considered the candidates, what it is that that they represent, and their positions on the various issues.
The dispiriting indications are, however, that an awful lot of people just vote with a knee-jerk reaction, checking the name of perhaps the only candidate they have actually heard of. How else to explain the re-election of demonstrably failed politicians such as Rob Ford, Georgio Mammoliti, et al? As to how to explain such a knee-jerk reaction in spite of the negative press such candidates have garnered throughout their incumbency, I am at a complete loss.
All in all, a poor and somewhat depressing reflection on the value of local democracy.

I'm back! Did you miss me?

After some six years of hiatus, I'm thinking I may take up my blog again. Not because I think anyone will read it - that never seemed to be the case, even back in the heyday of the personal blog a few years ago - but more as an exercise in catharsis, a kind of cheap version of therapy. I write for myself, but you are welome to share it.
During my silent years, I have managed to avoid pouring scorn and acrimony on the whole of Rob Ford's mayoralty; Stephen Harper's continued steady erosion of Canadian democracy, environmental integrity and international reputation; wars here, there and seemingly everywhere; and many other matters of local, national and international concern.
But now I'm back, and I plan on contributing my twopenn'orth on issues, both crucial and random, that I come across in the press and in daily life.
I'm sure the world will be a better, and more comprehensible, place for it.

Shifting Sands

Last week the Globe and Mail ran an excellent eight-part series of in-depth articles about the Canadian oil patch - the oil sands of Alberta - under the title "Shifting Sands":
Part 1: An empire from a tub of goo
Part 2: The kinder, gentler energy superpower
Part 3: Why Cape Breton shakes in the echo of this distant boom
Part 4: Life on the cold side of the country's hottest economy
Part 5: Frugal Norway saves for life after the boom
Part 6: The climatic costs of rapid growth
Part 7: Looking for solutions to the carbon conundrum
Part 8: Canada, the world and the oil sands
I thought Part 5 in particular was very interesting. I had read before about Norway's ultra-sensible treatment of their significant oil revenues, but this was a good summary, and the comparisons with Alberta and Canada were very telling, I thought.

A black and white issue

During this last week, the Toronto District School Board trustees have narrowly but definitively passed a contentious motion to open the door to what it's proponents are calling "Afro-centric schools".
It has generated no end of acrimonious discussion on local talk radio, and a fair amount of bad feeling, as much in Toronto's black community as anywhere else.
The final vote was a narrow 11-9, which maybe indicates just how contentious it really is, and was essentially just a vote on the broad principle (as opposed to principal) involved, especially as it seems far from clear just what "Afro-centric" means, and no locations or grades or firm budgets or even firm timing have been finalized (although, timing-wise, September 2009 has been put forward, and cost-wise we seem to be looking at almost $1 million).
The province of Ontario has been unequivocal in asserting that no new provincial money will be available for it, so any investment in such a project will have to come out of current capital and operating budgets, and the Board is notoriously underfunded already.
So it seems to me that worsening the underfunding of the rest of the school system on a point of principle is wrong-headed. But maybe that point of principle is sufficiently important and sufficiently "right" for us to overlook this? Unfortunately, no.
Undoubtedly the proposal is well-intentioned, but in my opinion and, that of many other commentators both, black and white, misguided.
The intention and primum mobile of the proposal is to address the school dropout rate for English-speaking students of Caribbean descent, which is up to 40% and clearly unacceptable. This proposed solution - which as far as I can tell involves attempting to integrate the history, culture and experiences of blacks in society into the regular curriculum (sort of a Black History Month all year round) - is supposed to miraculously fix that. As though learning about Marcus Garvey and Granville T. Woods is going to encourage these kids to merrily skip along to their schools in the mornings, and leave behind their gangs and street crime in preference for homework and exam revision!
Possibly more worrying is the movement towards segregation and marginalization it would represent. Angela Wilson, the who put forward the motion, claims "It's not about segregation, it's about self-determination" but, whether it is "about" segregation or not, that would be the end the result, and personally I don't want to go there.
I have heard too many black teachers and black mothers from risky areas argue against the proposal to be persuaded by it, and it seems like a dangerous first step down a slippery slope in the wrong direction.
By all means pump more public money into public education and into the most troubled parts of our community (whether they be predominantly Caribbean or not), but this is not the way to go.