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.

The grammar of data and datum

Sticklers for proper grammar are fond of pointing out how frequently people misuse the word ‘data.’ A ‘datum’ is singular; data are plural. The Economist Style Guide (a companion on my desk) explains:

Data and media are plural. So are whereabouts. Teams that take the name of a town, country or university are plural, even when they look singular: England were bowled out for 56.

Law and order defies the rules of grammar and is singular.

While this may be technically accurate, it has always clashed with my intuition – and not only because those who supposedly use the term incorrectly far outnumber whose who follow grammarian cant.

The question for me is whether ‘data’ is more like cats or more like water. The cats are increasingly annoyed about all this talk of grammar, but they remain distinct, countable, independent entities. The water, by contrast, is salty, ever-present, and part of an amalgamated mass. I may have seen Ghost in the Shell a few too many times, but the data-water equivalency long since became firmly entrenched for me.

Gore’s ten points

Al Gore has recently presented a ten-point plan for the United States to deal with climate change over the course of the next few decades:

An immediate “carbon freeze” that would cap U.S. CO2 emissions at current levels, followed by a program to generate 90% reductions by 2050.
Start a long-term tax shift to reduce payroll taxes and increase taxes on CO2 emissions.
Put aside a portion of carbon tax revenues to help low-income people make the transition.
Create a strong international treaty by working toward “de facto compliance with Kyoto” and moving up the start date for Kyoto’s successor from 2012 to 2010.
Implement a moratorium on construction of new coal-fired power plants that are not compatible with carbon capture and sequestration.
Create an “ELECTRANET” — a smart electricity grid that allows individuals and businesses to feed power back in at prevailing market rates.
Raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
Set a date for a ban on incandescent light bulbs.
Create “Connie Mae,” a carbon-neutral mortgage association, to help defray the upfront costs of energy-efficient building.
Have the Securities and Exchange Commission require disclosure of carbon emissions in corporate reporting, as a relevant “material risk.”

A much more detailed discussion of the points can be found on Grist. It is safe to expect considerable elaboration in Gore’s upcoming book: The Path to Survival. It will be available as of Earth Day (April 22nd) of 2008.

It is an interesting – and distinctly American – mix. It seems like number one is the uber-recommendation, while the others are more specific subsidiary policies. Exactly how such a freeze could be implemented – politically, economically, and legally – is a massive question. That said, it is a list that targets many of the major opportunities for domestic emission mitigation. It will be interesting to see whether any of these get the endorsement of Democratic or Republican candidates in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. If so, it will make for a big break with past half-hearted and voluntary measures.

PS. Those unfamiliar with the American mortgages will understand number nine better if they read about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: America’s huge and bizarrely named quasi-government-backed mortgage corporations.

APEC joke motorcade

By now, most people will have heard about the prank pulled off at APEC by the Australian television show The Chaser’s War on Everything. In short, they managed to get a fake motorcade of black cars with Canadian flags on them through two checkpoints and within ten metres of the hotel where President Bush was saying – all this during the heaviest security Sydney has ever seen, and while a man dressed as Osama bin Laden was in one of the cars. Previously, they managed to convince various film studios and embassies in Australia to allow them to bring a huge wooden horse into their secure compounds. Naturally, it was full of sword wielding men in silly period costumes. They also have a series of sketches where men dressed as stereotypical tourists manage to wander into all manner of secure areas, while people in traditional Arab garb get stopped within minutes.

All told, I think this prank is pretty funny. It also demonstrates how a bunch of circling helicopters and huge steel fences aren’t much good for security when the people you hire are muppets and the procedures you employ are half-baked. The fake passes that got them through both the ‘Green Zone’ and more secure ‘Red Zone’ checkpoints are hilarious.

Passivhaus

There has been a lot of talk lately about compact fluorescent light bulbs. Huge billboards of David Suzuki looking like a genie, with a glowing CF bulb floating above his hand, dot the landscape. While these bulbs are a lot more efficient, they aren’t likely to make a huge difference in the long run. Arguably, it would be better to focus on encouraging the building of passive houses, which require no energy for heating, rather than making marginal improvements in existing dwellings. It may be entirely desirable to do both, but when it comes to finding a symbolic signal issue to rally around as energy conservationists, the latter option is a lot more impressive.

To qualify as a passive house, a building must use less than 15 kWh per square metre per year for heating. That works out to less than $1 per square metre at current energy prices in Ontario. Total primary energy usage for such houses (heating, hot water, and electricity) is not to exceed 120 kWh per square metre per year. The technology to do this isn’t absolutely cutting edge: a passive house has been continuously inhabited in Darmstadt since 1991.

Apparently, building super-insulated houses with the ability to heat and cool themselves using just the ambient light and heat in their surroundings does not cost significantly more than building ordinary houses (though it requires different materials and more expertise). Given how virtually none of them exist in North America, it seems fair to say that consumer demand – even with high energy prices – is not sufficient to drive a large scale shift.

A number of different policies could help boost adoption: municipalities could require that a certain proportion of commercial and residential buildings constructed be passive in this way, subsidies or tax breaks could be given to firms that choose to employ such construction methods, and so forth. At the very least, government could make a concerted effort to do most of its own building in this way.

Masses of additional information is online:

As environmental statements go, building or living in such a house is probably much better than driving a Prius.

From glowing pixels to my walls

I am thinking of getting a few 8×10″ or larger prints made from some of my photos. While the exclusively IKEA furniture does create an overwhelming sense of individuality on its own, it might be good to add a bit of my own touch to this apartment.

I don’t suppose anybody is aware of a capable Ottawa photo lab (something akin to Vancouver’s Custom Colour)?

Betting on a long shot

While it is unwise to place too much hope in unproven technologies like carbon capture and sequestration or nuclear fusion as mechanisms to address climate change, there is also a good case to be made for expanded research and development in promising areas. As such, it is more than a bit regrettable that Canada withdrew participation from the largest international fusion research effort back in 2003. It may be a long shot and it may take fifty years or more to reach the point of commercial deployment, but fusion does seem to be one possible long-term option.

In addition to providing electrical power, fusion plants could also be used to produce hydrogen for vehicles by means of electrolysis. Depending on their ultimate ability to scale production up and down, they could also be important for peak power management. Even if we accept that 50 years may be an ambitious period for fusion technology to mature, it is possible that the first commercial fusion plants could be coming online just as coal plants built today are reaching the end of their lives.

Betting on a long shot isn’t always a bad idea – especially when it is one strategy among many alternatives.

Term time

Even though I am not attending, the resumption of school seems to have quickened the pace of the world again. I like the feeling.

Chevron’s climate game

Remember when the BBC came up with a climate change game? Well, now Chevron has done so, as well. Apparently, all the data in the game came from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The BBC game suffered a fair bit of well-deserved criticism. I have yet to give the Chevron simulation a comprehensive try, but I am waiting with a fair bit of curiousity for a chance.

You can read a bit more about the Chevron game on R-Squared: a popular energy blog.

[9 September 2007] This game doesn’t really have much to it. By constraining you to the management of a single city over the span of a couple of decades, it excludes both the chronological and geographic scale at which real change needs to take place. Still, it is interesting from a corporate public relations standpoint. Unsurprisingly, the game simply forbids you from using a power balance that excludes petroleum.

New ideas in genetics

The high school biology version of genetics we all learned seems to be faring increasingly poorly, though that is no real surprise. The first actual human genome was sequenced recently. It belongs to J. Craig Venter, founder of Celera Genomics: the private firm that competed with the Human Genome Project to first map the human genome. Both groups used genetic material from multiple subjects and used mathematical tools that may have underplayed the level of genetic diversity that exists in human DNA.

Meanwhile, RNA is getting a lot more attention.

Some half-related earlier posts: the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition and the Human Microbiome Project.

Romance in our time

On a lighthearted note: How to woo women with mangoes and magical realism. This guide was written by my friend Emily Horn (not to be confused with Emily Paddon) and seems quite useful for the contemporary suitor.

On the matter of novels, Marquez and Murakami would definitely not be my top choices (not least because I don’t particularly enjoy either). I would go with something comic but also substantial, or something that seems particularly well married to the person in question. While the suggestions given are unlikely to possess universal validity, they may prove empowering to those seeking to woo those who are similar to Emily – quirky, literary, honest, and not presumptuous.

Comparing the object of your affection to a prairie vole may or may not be a good plan.

[Update: 30 September 2007] Emily’s relationship advice has a new entry: Chicken Soup for the Breaker-Upper Soul. It makes for interesting reading.