McArtery Clogging

My job requires me to do shift work. It’s hell on earth, and to be honest I’m not quite sure that I can do it much longer. I’ve been working the night shift for the last few days, (10pm-8am) and it hasn’t been going so well. Normally 10 hours isn’t that long of a shift, but when its dark out, and theres no escape, you suddenly realized your trapped. (This is where I do a mime-impression of me trapped in a box)

Har Har

So this morning at 6 am I was DYING for some food. My workplace is pretty high-class. There’s tons of stuff to snack on. Like soda crackers… and soda crackers. Did I mention we get all the free soda crackers we want? I decided that instead of filling up my stomach with one form of useless crap I would fill it up with another. I would make the ultimate sacrifice and walk a whopping 4 city blocks to get to Mcdonalds at 6am. Now, I’ve never been to a McDonalds that early – In fact I RARELY ever go – but you’d sort of assume that at 6 the breakfast food would be relatively fresh. Don’t kid yourself people. It was the greasiest, heaviest breakfast I’ve ever eaten. And I loved it. That probably has more to do with the fact that I was willing to eat a dogs ass at that moment in time, other than the fact that McD’s whips out great food – because it obviously doesn’t. 2 hours later I was wondering whether or not i’d made the right choice. Perhaps the soda crackers would have been better.

Tonight should be easier. I went up to Dundas and wandered around until I saw ‘Shawarma 2 Go’ perhaps one of the best greek places in Toronto. Small. Cheap. Tasty, and fresh.

-T

Smog in the GTA

Just a picture I took today, probably the most humid day I’ve ever felt. Of course, most of that humidity was laced with pollutants and acids. Anyway this view is off my balcony, looking onto a gully with a small creek, surrounded by trees. It’s generally a beautiful sight, when compared to the boring grid of houses we call suburbia. Regardless, I thought I was going to see the reenactment of Gorillas in the Mist — Better yet, the SNL skit with Sigourney Weaver guest starring as herself in the movie. Hilarious — They took these spray bottles to make the mist.
HA!

Seriously though, pollution isn’t that funny.

Take a look at the full-size picture

Devils Lake Diversion

Another issue on my mind which hasn’t received enough attention, is the issue of Devils Lake, in North Dakota. Great Lakes Directory has a great article summarizing the issue.

“There has always been something quaintly reassuring about the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. That stolid Republican, William Taft, was president when Canada and the U.S. inked their remarkable pact. Sir Wilfrid Laurier was prime minister — although Britain signed on behalf of its bustling dominion. The two neighbours vowed to preserve the quality and quantity of their shared water, creating an International Joint Commission to arbitrate disputes. Through peace and war and the Depression, it has worked: 51 of the 53 joint references were resolved by mutual agreement.

And then along came North Dakota and its rash decision to lower Devils Lake. That closed, befouled so-called “sub-basin” about 100 km from the Manitoba border has been flooding its banks since a cycle of rainy weather began in 1993: the volume of water, tainted with agricultural chemical run-off, has quadrupled. Up to now, it’s been a North Dakota problem. In the late 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a lengthy study of diversion proposals. Daunted by the complexity and cost of the corps’ approach, North Dakota adopted its own unilateral, far cheaper project to dig an outlet canal to the Sheyenne River, a tributary of the Red River that meanders north into Canada and Lake Winnipeg. The state proceeded without its own environmental study — and ignored many of the corps’ planned safeguards, including a pricey sand filter. Pumping starts in mid-June.”

Okay that was a big excerpt. The polluted water won’t just end at lake Winnipeg. From there, water flows into hudson bay, which has been kept relatively clean. What impact this will have on wildlife, and the health of the surrounding native population is anyone’s guess – because nobody has carried out a proper investigation.

Again, short-term thinking in this situation will bring about long-term consequences. I just hope that the Canadian and American governments can get their act together long enough to stop fucking up.

America Edits Global Warming Impact

Wired and the NYT are reporting that the US government has edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The reports were originally compiled by government scientists and approved in their original form by their supervisors. This is seriously Orwellian. The government cannot change the fact that major industries dumping CO2 is directly affecting our climate, by simply changing the report. What they can do is make it less of an issue by denying people fighting for restrictive legistlation with the information they need to make change happen. This type of short-term thinking is just what’s going to put us in the dog house. Every decision should be made with long-term consequences in mind.