Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

Parliament light show

On Parliament Hill, they put on a giant multimedia show twice a night. It is called Canada: the Spirit of a Country and it is both preachy and prescriptive. To anyone even slightly wary of government dictating values from on high, it seems a bit disturbing. It definitely seems absurd and over-done.

I hadn’t properly seen it before yesterday, when Emily and I happened across it. While the virtues it expresses are generally admirable, the delivery is incredibly Orwellian. Between psychedelic bursts of light projected across the front of Parliament, it plays videos and expounds in both official languages on the virtues of diversity and cultural exchange, peacekeeping, and the like. It’s like an over-the-top ‘Part of our Heritage’ commercial, though it seems a lot more disturbing. While the message may be an innocuous one, the propaganda approach is off-putting and the overenthusiastic promotion of Canada seems very much like a case of too much effort.

If you ignore the words, the light show itself is quite dramatic, though also profoundly discordant. It is very odd to see huge spinning abstract purple shapes projected all across Parliament, suddenly replaced with a pattern that looks like the razzle dazzle ships of World War I.

Standing within 50m of the war memorial, one might hope that we have moved beyond nationalism. At an aesthetic level, one might at least hope that we have moved beyond the kind of crude, half-deluded, and self-serving nationalism that the light show seems to represent.

Tricky bits of language

Living in Ottawa frequently involves encountering people speaking French. While I have been reasonably fluent at times, most of my felicity has been sapped by lack of use. There are many areas of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that make me feel uncertain and amateur.

In English, there are relatively few such areas. Only two really stand out as perpetually confusing for me:

I can never remember the proper use the subjunctive. I have never understood it, correctly structured phrases employing it still sound incorrect, and the Wikipedia entry is bewildering. As such, I avoid using the subjunctive altogether. I am in good company, at least. Somerset Maugham is reputed to have said: “The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.”
The other is the interaction of apostrophes and the letter ‘s’ in situations where words end in ‘s’ naturally. It gets no more confusing than when you have a word that always ends in ‘s,’ is being made plural, and is a possessive. For instance: “The different species’ characteristics can be easily distinguished.” I always feel inclined to say (and write) spee-sea-ze-ze-ze.

Without a doubt, I have looked up the proper usage of each of these dozens of times. The explanation is just very reluctant to stay in my brain. Not even reading Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves has provided any lasting understanding.

Light reading – the Harry Potter finale

Having read the first six Harry Potter books, it seemed only natural to read The Deathly Hallows as well. Without spoiling anything for people who plan to read it, but have not done so yet, I can say that the conclusion mirrored the overall mediocrity of the series – much more notable as a pop culture phenomenon than as books many people are likely to read in twenty years. The most notable contribution they made was probably to encourage children to read. Hopefully, they will go on to read more substantial fantasy series’ such as those of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, or Philip Pullman.

You have to wonder what Rowling is going to do with herself from now on. Millions of people are likely to read whatever she comes up with next – if she chooses to keep writing – but it’s anyone’s guess whether the next creation will enjoy anything like the widespread and enduring attention the seven Potter books have.

Those trying to maintain ignorance of the book’s contents should not read any further.

Continue reading “Light reading – the Harry Potter finale”

Real time ocean monitoring

The Neptune project, being led by the University of Victoria, is quite a considerable undertaking. The first stage of the plan is to make an 800km loop of fibre-optic and electrical cable and use it to connect five living room sized automated underwater data collection systems called ‘nodes.’ These will track fish stocks and undersea earthquakes, while collecting other kinds of data on an ongoing basis. This will be the first cabled ocean observatory with multiple nodes.

Ultimately, the system will expand to include 3000km of powered fibre-optic cable connecting a larger number of nodes, all capable of returning data in real time. Compared with systematic collection of data (go to a spot at set intervals and check what is happening) or sporadic collection (just use whatever data becomes available from whenever people happen to be in a place), real time data allows for different sorts of analysis and more comprehensive evaluations. The nodes will contain instruments including temperature meters, conductivity meters, pressure gauges, acoustic dopplers and hydrophones, current meters, wave sensors, electrometers, seismometers, cameras, nutrient monitors, sample storage containers, and autonomous robots.

The system should offer some useful data on migratory fisheries and whale movements, as well as the ominous rumblings of the Juan de Fuca plate, extending from British Columbia down to Oregon. It will also contribute to a more systematic understanding of ocean geology and ecology in general.

Depleted uranium

My friend Nick has a post on Metafilter about depleted uranium. It is tough, militarily useful. controversial stuff.

Managing peak power demand

Readers may recall an earlier discussion about how moderating peak electricity demand serves climate change mitigation objectives. One mechanism presently operating towards this end is the PeakSAVER program, run by Toronto Hydro. According to WWF Canada:

Research commissioned by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) in 2003 found that peak-shaving programs could reduce peak demand by ten per cent, equivalent to the output of three of Ontario’s four remaining coal plants, and that a mere one per cent reduction in peak demand would have saved Ontario consumers $170 million in the previous year.

The PeakSAVER program allows Toronto Hydro to remotely turn down thousands of air conditioners and water heaters across the city. This is done within set limits, preventing air from exceeding certain temperatures and hot water from falling below them.

Another upshot of such programs is that they could be used to help overcome the limitations of renewable power. At times when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, electricity could flow unimpeded. At times where supply exceeds demand, non-essential usage could be throttled back, or variable pricing could be used to induce consumer action.

Festooned with Foosh mints

Thanks to a package that arrived today, I have 30 packages of Foosh mints in my cubicle. That represents 28.8g of pure caffeine and twice the number of mints shown in this photo from Oxford.

Mostly, the choice to purchase so many reflects the expense and annoyance of having them shipped from the US. Partly, it reflects the manic desire to accumulate large collections of desirable things that seems to be a prominent feature in human history.

Films and fish stocks

According to Shifting Baselines, it seems that Charles Clover’s excellent book “The End of the Line” is being made into a documentary film.

That was the book that inspired me to go meet Dr. Daniel Pauly at the UBC Fisheries Centre, as well as go on to write the article that was recently published in the MIT International Review.

Hopefully, the release of the film will raise the profile of the issue a bit. As morally dubious as the factory farming of land animals is, it does not endanger the survival of these species. That is not true of the modern industrialized fishing industry. The collapse of fisheries in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic is just a sign of what is to come to all fisheries worldwide unless aggressive conservation measures are put in place and enforced.

The inaccessibility of rail

There seem to be a lot of rail fans who read this blog. Like me, they would probably lament how the main train station in Ottawa was moved from downtown to a site 5km out of town that is only easily reached by highway. Admittedly, this happened in 1966, but it only came to my attention recently.

Definitely one of the most annoying aspects of inter-city public transit is how the stations tend to be located in inaccessible and often dangerous parts of town. Of course, with real estate prices being where they are – and with the ever more entrenched dominance of the automobile – that seems unlikely to change soon.

Footprints all over the web – Google Web History

When I am online, I usually have at least one Google service open. At home, I usually have a Google Mail window open at all times, as well as Google Calendar. At work, it is only the latter. What I didn’t know until today is that whenever you are logged into your Google account, Google is tracking your web usage through a system called Web History. Accessing the system allows you to ‘pause’ the recording and even delete what is already there. While the listings disappear from your screen, there is good reason to doubt whether they vanish from Google’s records.

It is common knowledge that Google saves every search query that gets input into it, and does so in a way that can be linked to an individual computer. The web history service, however, has more troubling implications. Whether you are at work, at home, or at an internet cafe, you just need to be logged into any Google service for it to be operating. Since more than one computer can be logged into a Google account at once, and there is no indication on either machine that this is happening, anybody who gets your password can monitor your web usage, as well as your email and any other Google services you use. Given how common keyloggers have become, this should worry people.

One very helpful feature Google could implement would be the option to show when and where you last logged into your account. That way, if someone has been peeking at your email from London while you have been in Seattle, you know that it may be time to change your password. Also desirable, but much less likely to happen, would be a requirement that services like GMail store your information as an encrypted archive. Even if the encryption was based on your password and a relatively weak cipher, it would make it impractical for either Google or malicious agents with access to their information storage systems to undertake the wholesale mining of the information therein.

The final reason for which this is concerning has to do with cooperation between companies and governments. It is widely rumoured that companies including Microsoft and Yahoo have helped the Chinese government to track down and prosecute dissidents, by turning over electronic records held outside China. Given the increasingly bold snooping of both democratic and authoritarian governments, a few more layers of durable protection built into the system would be prudent and encouraging.