Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

June 15, 2007 18:05 +0000 | Agriculture Conservatives Energy Environment Nuclear Politics 1

I'll start with the good news because it's quite exciting and I have a picture ;-)

According to Torontoist, there's a guy by the name of Gordon Graff who wants to build a massive vertical farm right in the middle of Toronto. Imagine, instead of trucking in our food from all of the place, we grow it right here, a 20min walk from our homes.

The structure above is designed to feed 35,000 people and would consist of growing areas for everything from potates, to wheat to chickens for meat and eggs. I've been talking about this sort of thing and people have been telling me that I'm crazy... I guess I'm not the only one :-)

For more information (and pictures!) of other designs by other architects around the world, visit Vertical Farm.

And now the bad news.

The Conservative minority government has seen fit to approve a plan to search for a site to permanently store nuclear waste. Note that I used the word "store" and not "dispose" as the article does, since it's important that we remember that you can't dispose of nuclear waste... ever.

This decision is going to live with the next 1000 generations of Canadians and our government is making it sound like we can just put this stuff in a hole and ignore it 'till it goes away. It won't. Not until it leaks into the groundwater and contaminates the biosphere. Sadly though, I'm not surprised.

May 29, 2007 19:49 +0000 | Politics 0

The face of the anti-war movement in the United states has resigned in disgust over lack of action and comtempt she's received from both the Republicans and democrats:

I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.

Cindy Sheehan, CBC.ca

I wish I didn't understand her reasoning... but I do... all too well.

April 18, 2007 19:29 +0000 | Energy Environment Liberals Politics 1

Following in Australia's footsteps, Ontario will soon become the first jurisdiction in North America to ban the old, inefficient, incandescent bulbs. It's a good step in the right direction, I just wish someone had thought of it sooner or at the very least introduced sliding taxes on the whole thing instead.

March 28, 2007 14:41 +0000 | Civil Rights Politics 2

Well not really, but I saw this this morning on one of the mailing lists to which I belong. Apparently, someone realised that McCain's MySpace page was pulling images from their site rather than copying them over to their own server (essentially stealing bandwidth). But rather than taking down the image, the owner replaced the pic with one containing the following message:

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between two passionate females.

Bloody brilliant.

March 05, 2007 15:02 +0000 | Politics 2

Attack ads on the Liberals in Quebec
Blatant, public media support from the military
Polls showing increased public support for the Conservatives (wtf are you all thinking??).
Big cash payouts to municipalities for transit projects that have been on the books for decades.

The Conservatives are going to call an election and they're going to do it as soon as the snow melts. Expect the budget to be stupidly unsupportable so they can call a vote of non-confidence. Expect them to blame the fall of the government on their primary opposition at the time.

I hope I'm wrong, but it just looks too obvious.

March 03, 2007 03:06 +0000 | Green Party NDP Politics 2

Setting aside for the moment that the environmental and health platforms for the Green Party are superior to those of the NDP, it's press conferences like this one that give me serious pause regarding my long standing support for the NDP.

What the hell are they thinking over there?

January 10, 2006 19:08 +0000 | Canada Politics 3

From my father via email this afternoon:

Martin, Harper and Layton are flying on a small private plane to a political gathering on Salt Spring Island when Martin turns to Harper and says, chuckling, "You know, I could throw a $1000 bill out the window right now and make someone very happy."

Harper shrugs and replies, "Well, I could throw ten $100 bills out the window and make ten people happy."

Not to be outdone, Layton says, "Well I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw all three of them out the window and make 32 million people happy."