Sure as hell ain't Algiers

It's been a month since I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and the occasion has neatly coincided with the 2007 edition of The Economist's annual survey of the world's most livable cities. Vancouver ranks first out of 132. A citation, if you will:

The Economist Intelligence Unit says Vancouver was chosen number-one due to a low crime rate, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed transport and communications infrastructure.

While I cannot disagree with the premises of this assessment, a few things I've noticed in the user comments I agree with:

1. Vancouver is tremendously aesthetically pleasing — epic, even. It easily qualifies as the most visually stunning city in Canada, architecture included.

2. Downtown Vancouver has a startling number of panhandlers, junkies, and homeless persons. And I don't just mean the notorious Downtown East Side. I mean the whole downtown. I'm don't mean your usual 'sign-out-front-head-down' homeless person, either — the sort that reminds one of the cruel and unusual realities of society, nature, and capitalism. I'm talking down-and-out v. 2.0: legion, mobile, and aggressive. I'm certain 99.9% of Vancouver's homeless population suffers from cruel life circumstances and means absolutely no harm, but I actually feel less safe at night here than in other places in Canada and abroad as a result — counting in Montreal, Toronto, London, Geneva, and Paris, for example. Has Canada's shelter/mental-care system really failed this badly?

3. B.C., as one reader points out, stands for "Bring Cash."

4. Despite the condos and downtown density, Vancouver's urban centres are spread out and very 'suburb.' The white culture downtown (and I mean on the downtown peninsula only) is very 'experientially'-oriented, in a suburban sort of way: car, kids, condo, kayaks, mountain bike. It's an inward-looking, if outward-experiencing, existence. The city life, being disjointed and stretched out around large residential 'deadzones' (to borrow a phrase), seems to suffer as a result. One must, following the rule of the Vancouver road, be mobile.

(On an aside, I'm told there is a sizable indie population at 12th and Main, though I'm not sure if that's a plus.)

5. The Georgia Straight is the best weekly in Canada.

6. Fresh air is a great, great thing.

~

Democracy is a Harsh Mistress

Election Monitors Be Hatin', Say Kazakhs

Man at Robson St. Coffee Shop:

"Dude, does your iPod say 'Modest Mussorgsky'?"
"Yep."
"Is that Swedish Death Metal or something?"
"More like late 19th-century Romantic."
"Oh... Cool."

Another reason to avoid LA

Your plane might explode.

Officials said the WestJet Boeing 737, carrying 136 passengers, came within 15 metres of colliding with a 150-seat Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 that was taking off.
[...]
The "runway incursion" was the eighth such incident at LAX this year, matching the total for all of 2006.

According to my calculations, the approximate chance you might almost die* from a plane collision in 2007 at LAX¹ is:

1 in 58,157

(or about 0.001719 percent)


-------------------

¹656,842 aircraft movements in 2006 at LAX (Source: Airports Council International) = approx. 465,263 aircraft movements by August 15, 2007, presuming no significant change in airport traffic between 2006 and 2007. Divided by eight incidences of near-death = 58,157.
*Presuming 100% death rate upon collision.

Wikipedia Vandals Exposed!

...And they are, apparently, among the U.S.'s most cherished institutions.

The BBC reported yesterday that a new program called "Wikipedia Scanner" allows users to track Wikipedia edits back to their sources via IP address association.

While the media attention given to IP-address tracking seems relatively new, the method used by the program is anything but. At a forum I used to monitor, staff members once tracked down a user's residential address using little but an IP address and google after he posted a suicide note on the forum — a serious one. An administrator called the appropriate county authorities and, as far as events thereafter indicated, a suicide was prevented.

Forums with registered members or any sort of IP logging mechanism have had this ability for years.

What is interesting about the BBC report, though, is that IP addresses traced back to the CIA and the U.S. Democratic Party appear to have engaged in myriad acts of Wikipedia Vandalism.

Not only were these clear acts of vandalism, instead of say, what you'd expect from the CIA — questionable NPOV editing — they were outright moronic acts of vandalism, too. One edit traced to a CIA computer involved nothing but the insertion of the term "Wahhhhhh!" into Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Wikipedia bio.

(...makes me wonder if anyone at the vaunted Liberal Party of Canada or CPC has been tampering with Wikipedia's pages on Canadian politics... perhaps I should take a gander and find out...)

No Yasukuni

This is new. Too bad Abe is otherwise in a lot of trouble.

Crystal Palace, Dubai Style

Everything is made of ice: the walls, tables and chairs; cups, glasses and plates; the art on the wall, the sculptures depicting Dubai's skyline, the beaded curtains, the two-metre-chandelier and the bar.

Read all about it.

About this Iggy business...

...simple: better late than never. Regardless of one thinks of Ignatieff's foreign-policy views, I for one always find it refreshing when a politician candidly admits an error in judgement.

(Bonus points, of course, if that error in judgment didn't actually lead to a catastrophe, form the basis for a misguided policy, or kill anyone.)

I do wish Iggy could be a bit more to-the-point, though...

Keep dem der kids away from mah Mahjong

4 shizzle.

(Don't ask why my title has a Texas accent.)

Bourne better than Bond?

Legacy, cultural influence, and popular zeitgeist-ness notwithstanding — maybe. Or perhaps not. At the very least, though, the latest Bourne (and last?) kicks serious ass.

....On another note, don't ever order from the unnamed fast-food chain that's upstairs in Vancouver's Scotiabank/Granville St. theatre. Not unless you want to wait for an hour while you watch the staff go about mundane tasks in such an excruciating, maladroit, sloth-like, piecemeal fashion that I cannot possibly begin to describe it here.

(Well... this wouldn't be a very bloggish blog if I didn't write something substantial now and then. So here's an attempt. Fact to know: movie starts at 10:50 p.m.)

10:40. Cashier takes order. Cashier relays order to staffer. Staffer looks at order. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier relays order to staffer again. Staffer looks confused. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer realizes order. 10:41. Staffer goes to back table. Staffer finds a burger bun on back table. Staffer places bottom half of burger bun on different part of table. Staffer goes looking for burger patty. 10:42. Staffer realizes burger patty is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. Cashier asks question about drink. 10:43. Cashier begins filling requested drink. Staffer emerges from freezer with burger patty. Staffer places burger patty on grill. Staffer stares at burger patty on grill. Drink overflows. 10:44. Cashier apologizes. 10:45. Staffer takes burger patty off grill. Cashier fills new drink. Cashier apologizes. Staffer looks confused. Staffer discovers burger bun on table. 10:46. Staffer places burger patty on bun. Staffer looks confused. Cashier apologizes. Staffer realizes burger needs top bun. Staffer looks confused again. Staffer realizes top bun is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. 10:47. Cashier hands over refilled drink. Staffer emerges from freezer with top bun. Staffer realizes bun must be thawed. Staffer places bun in toaster. Staffer stares at toaster. Staffer turns around. Staffer sees original top bun next to burger patty and bottom bun. Staffer puts original top bun in toaster. 10:48. Staffer realizes original top bun is already thawed. Cashier removes original top bun from toaster. Second top bun emerges from toaster. 10:49. Staffer is unsure what to do with extra thawed top bun. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks confused. Staffer puts extra bun next to original bun. 10:50. Staffer looks for pickle. Staffer realizes pickle is in freezer. Staffer goes in freezer. 10:51. Staffer returns from freezer with pickle. Staffer places pickle on burger. 10:52. Staffer looks at pickle. Staffer looks at burger. Staffer looks confused. 10:53. Staffer realizes burger needs tomato. Staffer goes in freezer looking for tomato. 10:54. Staffer emerges from freezer with no tomato. 10:55. Staffer looks in smaller freezer. Staffer finds tomato. Staffer looks happy. 10:56. Staffer places tomato on top of pickle on burger. Staffer looks at tomato. Staffer looks at burger. Staffer looks at top bun. Staffer looks confused. 10:57. Staffer takes tomato off pickle. Staffer takes pickle off burger. Staffer places tomato on burger. Staffer places pickle on tomato. Staffer looks happy. 10:58. Staffer places original top bun on burger. Staffer stares at burger. Staffer looks confused. 10:59. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks at staffer. Staffer looks at cashier. Cashier looks confused. Staffer looks confused. Cashier looks at me. 11:00. "Ketchup?"

(Thank God for previews.)

It's About That Time...

...to attempt to save the Sudan. Low and behold, the 62-year-old United Nations Security Council, still woefully outdated, always insidiously political, today made an intelligent decision about one of those rare crises that garner universal admonishment: it voted to send the world's largest peacekeeping force into the Sudan. Note the inclusion of an "African Union mandate" in the UNSC's resolution, underlining (or belying?) the sad fact that a [u]regional security force should and could have been given legally-binding permission to go in ages ago[/u], but wasn't, largely because of UNSC politics.

Better late than never, I s'pose....