Bailie.com

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Can electrical sockets be useful and beautiful?

Some great designs for electrical outlets, especially the ones that make it easy to unplug electronics when not being charged.

Vancouver snow situation and the 2010 Winter Olympics

The snow here, oh, the snow! In our pocket of Burnaby, we had about three feet of the stuff. Its been on the ground for a couple of weeks now, and is slowly melting, although the snow is being replaced by flooding. The snow removal in Vancouver and surrounding areas has been next to abysmal. There was one night where an estimated 8,000 people waited for the Skytrain that never came. As someone who used to live in Montreal, where they have snow removal down to a fine art, I am flabbergasted by the ongoing inefficiencies and lack of services that is [not] provided to residents. Yeah, yeah, I know - they broke their budgets; that just means they didn’t budget well for what was inevitable. We’ve had significant snow for three years now, and each year it gets worse, so it’s time that the city faced up to the fact that they need a snow plan.

In Montreal, we would see a snow scooper tackling the streets, with a series of dump trucks behind it, where the snow would be deposited, and trucked away to dump in a spot where it wouldn’t flood homes when it melted. In greater Vancouver, you’re lucky to see a snowplow on the main roads a day or two after a big storm. And if you live on a side street, forget it. In Montreal, the city takes little Caterpillars along the sidewalks to clear them. Here, there’s an honour system whereby the residents are supposed to clear the snow in front of their buildings. Except when I got off the bus into a large snowbank, I noticed that I was outside of a city-owned park – and the city hadn’t cleared! So clearly, the honour system is impractical.

Keeping the region moving during a snowstorm - this winter was the last practice run to get it right. In a year, a whole raft of tourists will be upon us for the Winter Olympics, but if it snows, they’ll be stuck in their hotel rooms, unable to use public or private transit, and will have to resort to watching events on TV instead of using their uber-expensive tickets to get to the venues. (Who knows, maybe even the athletes won’t be able to attend, if they get stuck in their rooms. Now, that would be funny!) If the government doesn’t go consult with the cities who know how to do snow removal, the right way, these winter Olympics will become the Laughing Stock Olympics. I wonder if anyone is thinking about this other than my friend, L, whose rant on an email list gave me the idea to vent our frustrations here.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Who knew soy could be so bad for you?

After years of liking soy alternating with avoiding soy, I found some explanation for the digestive problems that plagued me re soy: The Ploy of Soy. When my grandson was young, he had violent gastric reactions to soy, much to the disbelief of some pro-vegetarian friends who insisted on feeding him soy, and from which we suffered from during a ferry ride home.