This morning, I read an article in the Globe and Mail (Private toll tunnel under Gardiner appeals to Doug Ford) about some ideas you have for reducing traffic congestion that would not involve mandatory road tolls.

I have a number of issues with your arguments; for example, this layer-cake vision of the Gardiner would likely further isolate the city from Lake Ontario, and probably would probably require a massive reconstruction of the entire Gardiner given that it already seems to be falling apart. This could be chalked up to ideological differences, and I am willing to accept that we will likely always have differences in opinion, so this isn’t much of a problem. There is the other nagging problem of where one might expect all the extra cars that are taking your proposed tunnel downtown might actually go once they exit the tunnel, seeing as gridlock doesn’t just affect the inner-city highways. This is probably less of an ideological issue, since space will not change regardless of one’s political viewpoint. Since I am not a traffic engineer, I will not speak more to this, as perhaps there is some way we could change the flow of traffic downtown to remedy this; certainly, proper traffic light synchronisation might serve to speed things up, at least on certain roads I commute on.

However, there is one statement you have made I feel compelled to take real issue with, and your quote is: “If you’re asking would I pay five dollars to get downtown quicker and not knock off 14 bicycle riders on the way down Queen Street, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

In one short statement, you have implied that cyclists in the city are not only casually disposable members of society, but that the mowing down of cyclists in a manner that, if it so happened in real life (and similar incidents have happened), it would be considered anywhere along the spectrum of careless driving to mass murder.

I am a confident cyclist, and attitudes like these aren’t going to keep me off the road. But they will keep others off the road. More importantly, it is reprehensible that there are elected leaders of our city promoting the concept that bicycles on the road are asking to be run down by cars. If you ask any cyclist, even the most rabid anti-car ones out there, I would be shocked if you could find one that is actively looking to be hit by a car just to prove a point. Most people on bicycles simply want the same thing as drivers, which is to reach their destination in a reasonable amount of time and not die in the process. I doubt you would find this too much to ask for.

If you think this response is perhaps too strong, I would like to point out that the idea of the bicycle as a self-imposed death trap is prevalent in North America. You can see this in the way drivers that injure or kill cyclists are treated in the legal system (and, indeed, in the laws designed to punish these infractions). Bicycle collisions are likely to be underreported since the authorities do not seem to care about taking reports for infractions such as doorings and right-hooks, which are all too common, even for statistical purposes. And with recent Toronto bike planning, such as the spur-of-the-moment proposal to remove the Jarvis bike lanes and the underreported bike counts on John Street, it would seem the city is out to eliminate bikes from the road that vehicles haven’t managed to knock off yet, as you so eloquently put it.

Perhaps the Globe has written this out of context, and if so, I welcome you to clarify your comments. But if not, I would ask that even if you do not feel that cyclists have a place on city streets, an opinion you are certainly entitled to, that you at least speak of cyclists as citizens of Toronto and not as obstacles to be avoided when it is convenient. Cyclists are people too, and we deserve to at least be treated as though we should remain alive.

Sincerely,

Rob McWhinney

When I posted my first election piece almost two weeks ago, I was riding a personal high due to a rousing case of “hey, I might be healthy again.” And, as it turns out, I was terribly wrong. I actually still had a few days left of the horrible plague I had. Or maybe it was the black lung or something. I have worked a few coal mines in my day.

Actually, if I were to get the black lung, it’s probably more likely from getting stuck behind one of these on a bike (which is actually kind of painful for the lungs, if you ever get to experience that joy).

Granted, I wasn’t doing much biking in that time anyway, considering that I couldn’t get to Keele Street without coughing up a lung. Which would make sense that in the three and a half week period that I was sick, I only biked twice, after which I had no remaining lungs, and was thus required to stay full time in a tent of oxygen and hope that it might diffuse through my pores.

However, with the help of some antibiotics, and a some fresh new lungs I stole from a couple of local schoolchildren, I am back in action, and ready to take on federal politics with a renewed vigour!

And politics are… depressing.

The election started off on the predictable coalition front, in which Stephen Harper played up the Liberals as conniving, sneaky backstabbers who use political savvy to obtain power. Imagine… an unelected Prime Minister!

A dramatised reenactment of your supposed response to the dreaded idea of a coalition government.

Yes – Ignatieff has tried it before, and he’ll try it again!

Well, except, I guess he didn’t actually try it before, since it was that nerdy guy with the funny accent who tried it the first time. And, of course, if you were paying close attention, there was that whole incident where Harper himself said that a coalition government was a viable option.

Of course, that was different, because when he said “coalition,” he meant “a right-wing party merger and simultaneous drainage of approval for the federal Liberal party which lead us to the circumstances in which we find ourselves today and not an actual coalition because using the words I actually meant to use would be too convenient.” Oh, and that letter where he talked about forming a coalition was completely different because he didn’t actually intend to follow through with it

And of course, the smooth-yet-questionable tactical manoeuvring that was proroguing parliament to avoid a confidence vote was totally cool, while that smooth-yet-questionable tactical manoeuvring that was forming a coalition of the opposition was uncalled for, because, you know, one of them had a precedent. Guess which one?

And, yet again, it’s clearly horrible that someone who wasn’t elected Prime Minister would be allowed to become Prime Minister. Except that we totally don’t elect a Prime Minister.

But I digress.

It is pretty fortunate that the coalition issue hasn’t dominated the election this entire time. For one, it would be really, really tedious to hear Stephen Harper do on continuously about one thing over and over. Granted, what I perceive as an over-reliance of the Tories on talking points (although, all parties are guilty) is pretty tedious anyway. But it would be worse.

So, fortunately, Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals released a platform. Sure, it’s kind of boring. Sure, I don’t actually really agree with the fundamental ideas in it. And sure, I don’t actually like my family that much.

(In case you were wondering: yes, he is flashing “do me” eyes in that photo. But it’s in an intellectual way, so you can feel okay about it.)

Of course, the platform hasn’t led to much of a discussion of ideas. More exciting, and more pressing issues have clearly arisen. Like keeping a party that more than 1 in 20 voters cast ballots for out of the national debates.

Yep, that's the face I made, too.

Or, if you prefer, disenfranchising young people, blaming staff for the problem, and eventually apologising when you realise you look like an ass.

Or perhaps letting your constituents know that you don’t want them to know your stance on anything by refusing to attend local all-candidates debates.

Yes, these are all more important than the discussion of ideas.

Actually, none of this would be depressing, except for the fact that it hasn’t managed to dent the popularity of the Conservatives, although it has managed to make Michael Ignatieff seem slightly less undesirable, apparently. The popular opinion is hard to get rolling these days, it seems (unless you tap into populism, but I don’t want to think about that right now).

Sigh. Maybe next time I’ll be less pessimistic, as I won’t have left this untended for two weeks, and I’ll have less terrible things to view at once.

In the meantime, we can enjoy this teaser trailer for the tea party what is plausibly the next Conservative minority. Huzzah!

I kept up with this for maybe one or two weeks before running out of interesting things to say.

Sure, I had a couple of posts half-started, but the result was never as fun, or as interesting, or even as readable as I had imagined it to be. The first one was commenting on the internet’s ability to turn everyone into coffee and tea snobs, inspired by a friend’s comment that was something along the lines of, “Don’t judge me because I made tea in the microwave.” I thought it was a bit curious that I knew myself that tea is not best made in the microwave, and why it is that now everyone seems to know the “correct” ways of making tea and coffee. But, along the way, I encountered two problems:

1. my tea snobbery coincided with my move away from residence, so maybe the correlation is actually just from my level of trashiness in general; and
2. everyone already knows that it’s easy to find information on the internet, and you probably don’t want to read a post that probably could have been written in the late ’90s by someone who still uses the phrase “cyberspace.”

Heh. Newbie.

I also started a post called “Dichotomies are tearing us apart, Lisa,” in which I bemoaned the slow descent into black-and-white thinking that seems to be pervading public discourse. The whole thing became preachy very quickly, and mercifully I abandoned that one as well. I think all three of us can breathe a sigh of relief that it never saw the light of day (although I still maintain that politics and media should respect the intelligence of their audience and allow them to think a bit for themselves, and the audience should likewise stop being lazy and do some critical thinking from time to time).

Anyway, as a result, this blog, along with my drive to actually write anything in it, has stagnated for a bit until I could come up with something to motivate me. And, lo and behold, the federal election came.

So, truth be told, I have good reason to be disenfranchised with our political system. For starters, I grew up as a lefty in Toryland under the watch of Ralph Klein, who, when he isn’t getting drunk and throwing money at homeless people, throws books at 17-year-old girls.

Right now, I live under a federal government with a disdain for the “Toronto elite,” which I can’t actually figure out a meaning for.

The dropping of said monocles was accompanied by a hearty, "Well, I never!"

Presumably, elite means someone who is either educated or has money, but does not support the Conservative Party of Canada. This would surprisingly include myself, made even more shocking by the 50-ish dollars I had in taxable income in 2010. Being an elite isn’t as cracked up as it might seem.

And, finally, Toronto has now earned the unfortunate moniker of “Ford Country” thanks to our current mayor, Rob Ford.

I totally live right by that yellow dot.

I know it has been said many times, but I still have to iterate that I find Ford to be highly embarrassing. He shares our federal government’s taste for media evasion, and while he used to fly off the cuff in council:

he has at least toned down since he was elected mayor, but sadly, the crazy tirades have just been replaced with bizarre talking points.

I could go on about Ford since the material is readily available, but it’s been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that. My main point is that for the majority of my life, I have lived under governments that, if not outright grinding my political views into the ground with their heel, are at least on the opposing side of the political spectrum. I have good reason to feel defeated, because in all of these cases I have discussed, the political right has fairly won the election and the left was defeated. Fair enough. It would be easy to tune out of politics, dismissing it as a bunch of talking heads who don’t speak to my interests. And if the “shut up and stop whining” call of the right is to be heeded (in the words of the lovely Sue-Ann Levy, “Read my lips you ‘left-wing kooks’: You lost. Get over it“), this is exactly what I should do.

However, I don’t particularly like taking the easy way. While I have never been actively involved in politics in that I haven’t ever run for any office, nor have I gotten involved in any campaigns (although I am a member of the Green Party of Canada, just not a very active one), I think being on the opposing side of the current government is the best time to be engaged. Rather than blindly accepting the actions of “your side,” you are forced to figure out what exactly you find distasteful about the policies of your government, and what you think the ideal alternative should be. I find that I am more interested in following politics when someone I despise is in power, and that interest carries over to when someone I like is in power. It’s taught me to be a good critical thinker when it comes to government regardless of the idea. And besides, it isn’t like Sue-Ann Levy just piped down and shut up when David Miller was mayor of Toronto, as she continually bemoaned the state of politics using the unfortunately trite nickname of “Socialist Silly Hall” for city hall during the time.

I thought there was too much text here, so I needed a photo to break things up but couldn't come up with anything relevant. So, you get a grapefruit again.

And so, with that spirit in mind, I am totally excited for a federal election (May 2!), and will be following it with a good deal of interest. I decided it would be fun to write about it, rather than just mutter under my breath like I usually do. If you are not particularly interested in the election, I am hoping to be posting regularly with my thoughts, and perhaps you can follow that way. I’ll try to keep it amusing and look at each party with a fair critical eye, as despite being a member of one of the federal parties, I still consider my vote up for grabs.

Although, I admit that I have a strong bias against the Conservatives, because as much as I have tried, I can’t really offer any respect for Stephen Harper. He isn’t as bad as I thought he might be, granted, but I get the feeling that despite all the responsible government crap he spouts, he really doesn’t actually like our democracy and would be happier as a dictator. This is a politician (originally I put “man” instead of “politician,” but I judging from what little I have seen about the guy’s family, he doesn’t seem like he is as big of an asshole in person as he is in the House of Commons) who sees absolutely nothing even remotely humourous about peace, love, and understanding.

I will give him one thing: he has some impeccable hair.

First up for discussion, in all likelihood, will be the coalition fear-mongering tactics, in what seems to be the first of what will probably be many strategies by the Conservatives to campaign by deriding the other parties rather than discussing actual ideas or platforms. What fun! My secret hope is that the professorial part of Michael Ignatieff will ignore that and treat Canadians as intelligent, sentient beings like they actually are.

In the meantime, you can go try a fun little tool that CBC is putting out: the Vote Compass. Mine looks not surprisingly like this (although I did it yesterday and ended up right directly in between the NDP and the Greens, and I’m not sure what changed):

Anyway, stay tuned for more of what will, hopefully, not be a soul-destroying excercise.

No word yet as to whether the IYC has successfully lobbied to change the atomic number of carbon to 2011.

According to the IYC website, the purpose of the year is to have “a worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind.” That makes what I do sound vaguely important.

It was conceived by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. IUPAC is famous for coming up with all the horrible nomenclature rules you may have had to learn to label chemicals if you have ever taken chemistry. They are also famous for their fancy logo, which is WAY cooler than the IYC logo.

I see some globe type things, a balance, a flask, and something that looks like a cannon. I sort of looks like a face, and the guy has a moustache. Or maybe a pipe. Or perhaps it’s supposed to be testicles. It sort of looks like that too. Someone should tell testicles that they shouldn’t be smoking a pipe. Anyway, IUPAC wanted chemistry to have a little party, but they wanted it to last a whole year and wanted to make sure that EVERYONE nerdy was going to come. So they invited UNESCO to come along. UNESCO likes cake, so the IYC was born.

I’m not entirely sure where I was planning on going with this. You see, I donated blood tonight, and my head is a tad fuzzy at the moment. I feel like I have the attention span of a grapefruit.

Yep. This is a grapefruit.

Or maybe some ADHD kid trying to eat a grapefruit, but maybe wants to be eating cupcakes or paste or something instead. Or whatever.

Why the hell was this ever embroidered on something?

Hey look, here’s what news contains grapefruit today:

The suspense is killing me. Will he? Won't he? Even if he know's he'll strike out? What is a Florida Governor Rick Scott to do?

Anyway, I think what triggered this was a friend sharing this video, wherein an animated character suddenly has an existential crisis because chemistry stops being a thing.

It turns out that the American Chemical Society makes a ton of other videos, all equally entertaining for young and old, including this one that ruins magic.

If you want to delve further into IYC and the massive black hole of fun that is chemistry, there are other activities you could do to participate, like:

• take a quiz;
• write an essay on “A World Without Polymers”; or
• write a poem about the “secret life of chemicals.”

The excitement just never ends.

So, bow down to mighty chemistry, or it will smite ye good. And each time you see a chemist in 2011, give him or her a big hug. Don’t tell them why. They’ll know.

Grapefruit again: I’m still not sure where I was going with this. I actually think chemistry is somewhat cool, but I think I’ve just managed to be slightly sarcastic about this. I also don’t know how to end this. Perhaps I should plan this sort of thing out better if I’m going to post semi-regularly. Or just not post after donating blood.

Here, I drew you a shitty picture of chemistry to make up for it:

Erlenmeyer flask, bitches.

It’s somewhat understandable that it makes national news, given that a large portion of Canada’s population lives in the path of the storm, and that a good number of flights go through Pearson Airport. The lead-up to the storm was a little much, but I guess it was a slow news week. Except for that Egypt thing, maybe.

Last time there was a big winter storm in the GTA, I believe the media referred to it as “snowmageddon,” and Toronto got maybe 6 inches of snow.

It sounds at least reasonably bad out there. Toronto Star is covering it… live!.

And the main page link makes it sound like a musical.

Snowstorm... LIVE!

Note the use of the bike in the photo. This speaks to me. It says, “Hey look, this guy bikes in the storm of the century, but you are too wimpy to bike when there are flurries.”

Anyway, that’s not negligible damage they are reporting, my friends; no businessmen will be drinking wine en route to nearby cities via Porter this morning, which is tragic. Pearson has 300 cancelled flights, so far. And Environment Canada says it’s “pretty bad.” The Toronto District School Board has cancelled classes, and several campuses have cancelled classes, although so far, not mine.

I'd feel pretty good about staying in bed and slowly morphing into Jabba the Hut today, U of T. And I'd feel a lot better about doing so if I knew that it was dangerous enough to get to campus that you'd cancel classes for lowly undergrads. Thanks for NOTHING.

But you may have other questions, and less selfish ones than “What the hell am I supposed to do with my kid NOW?” Such as, “How might this storm affect the common man?” “What would Snowstorm: The Musical sound like when not reported on by the liberal elite?” “But can we still move really expensive research equipment in this weather?”

Lucky for you, I decided to live blog this event for you at no extra charge. I’ll update sporadically throughout the day, so you can wait by your browser and impulsively hit the refresh button like a crack-addicted lab rat pumps his cocaine lever. Here is some theme music for day:

(Yes, I think someone actually made that.)

To make this easier, I will name the snowstorm. I am going to call him Larry. Hi, Larry!

This is what the Larry looks like from my living room, as seen with my super-high-quality camera phone:

This is what Larry looks like from my living room, but from a different window that is next to my computer desk:

Larry looks fluffy and soft. Like a kitten.

And that is all I have for now.

UPDATE (9:09 AM): Just for the record, I am well aware that no one will actually sit in front of my blog and hit refresh like some sort of crack rat.

UPDATE (9:20 AM): Outside. Disappointed that I am not awash in a sea of ice. I was sort of hoping that visibilty would be so low that I couldn’t see my phone well enough to type. Also that it would be cold enough for hands to fall off.

OH MY GOD THERE IS SO MUCH SNOW!!!

Oops, that was Edmonton from a couple of weeks ago.

This is much more anti-climactic.

UPDATE (9:26 AM): I only pray that if I fall on the way to the subway that someone finds me in all this snow.

This was about the pinnacle of Larry, depth-wise, that I encountered.

UPDATE (9:44 AM): Good news: Larry did not interrupt Coke delivery this morning.

UPDATE (9:46 AM): Also, I’m typing this on an iPhone as I walk, so as you can imagine, the snow must be of epic proportions.

Thank goodness some kind soul has offered me this small reprieve from the relentless snow.

UPDATE (9:50 AM): Something interesting to report: I just saw a pink co-op taxi.

UPDATE (10:25 AM): Phone changed my title again. And I’m missing a post. The gist of it: “Seriously, Larry? Not even a TTC delay? Honestly.” Blargh! Fortunately I am safe indoors from Larry’s frightening grasp and on my laptop.

Also, photos now!

Another exciting development is that a friend has informed me that CityTV has a Storm Centre, which should meet all your winter storm needs.

Apparently they had a feature on Larry for a full 20 minutes on Monday and how he was planning on ravaging Toronto. And they didn’t bring up the meteorology of winter storms even once. That’s not vaguely sciencey at ALL, CityTV. I disapprove.

UPDATE (11:03 AM): Toronto Star has not yet admitted in their LIVE! coverage that there isn’t much of an issue with the snow:

Be careful, though: there are still a few more centimetres to come. And visibility is only half a kilometre at the moment, which according to Google Earth, is roughly the distance between Dundas and Queen along Spadina Avenue, and roughly two orders of magnitude larger than the average distance between moving cars in the GTA.

UPDATE (11:11 AM): Now the main page of the Star looks like this:

And now the musical is: “Live From Egypt: Unrest and Violence!” Coverage is complete with these duelling photo features:

I love Toronto.

UPDATE (11:20 AM): I was so busy making screencaps that I neglected to notice that our friend, Larry, is dead:

Godspeed you on your way, sweet Larry.

I suggest you celebrate surviving the great storm of ’11 by feeding your inner dagron with today’s Groupon; what better way is there to commemorate this shared experience than with shared consumerism?

UPDATE (11:49 AM): Since everyone else is posting it…

I’m off to go move an expensive analytical instrument now. I imagine I will be more or less completely unimpeded by the warpath left by Larry.

UPDATE (12:28 PM): Somewhere, a cyclist says, “But they haven’t cleared the bike lanes yet.”

UPDATE (3:48 PM): So it appears campus movers closed today, based on the observations that they aren’t answering their phones and they never showed up to move my equipment, which wasted 4 hours of my day.

And so, in closing, screw you, Larry.