04.17.07

Strange divot

Posted in Canadian life, Random thoughts, Technology trends at 9:59 pm by ducky

Maps are quirky things. The Web is amazing.

I was looking at Canadian province boundaries for a hobby project of mine, and found a strange divot in the border between Nunavut and Northwest Territories. Google maps shows the border running happily due east along the 70th parallel, then suddenly dropping down about seven miles, going over about five miles, back up to the 70th parallel, and continuing east as if nothing had happened.

I was stumped as to what it might be. I looked at the area at the highest zoom, and I could see absolutely nothing interesting there: no roads, no lakes, no nothing.. I speculated that maybe there was a Minister of Parliment who had a summer cottage there, because nothing else made sense.

I asked the geography types here, and one asked a friend, who posted it on MetaFiler, and I got an answer! The short answer is that there was a prior land claim that the government just didn’t want to open up again.

It turns out that the reason that I couldn’t see anything interesting on the sat images was because Google had the divot in the wrong place. It’s supposed to be over to the right a bit. I drew a line on the map over where the Nunavut Act says it is supposed to be. There is in fact a lake there.

Now think about this. Fifteen years ago, I would have never had access to a map that showed that level of detail. (Or maybe I could get access, but it would take enough effort that it wouldn’t be something I did casually.) Fifteen years ago, if I wondered about the divot, I wouldn’t have even known how to start finding out what that divot was. And, if I found an error in the map, I wouldn’t have known who to contact about fixing the map in the next printing. Now, thanks to the Web, I can do all those things.

It’s been thirteen years since I discovered the Web, and I still think it is pretty amazing.

03.19.07

Comparative water use in BC and US

Posted in Canadian life, University life at 6:33 pm by ducky

One of the The neatest thing about living at Green College is the neat people I get to talk to all the time. One of them, Alice Cohen, gave a talk at Green recently about her research area: water. Specifically, she’s looking at the difference in water usage management between the US San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands. These islands have the same geography and the same climate, but different legal systems depending upon which side of the US/Canadian border they fall on. This makes them an ideal study case.

With a few exceptions, drinking water in Canada falls under provincial jurisdiction. The federal guidelines only apply when drinking water is a federal responsibility (in transboundary waters, on First Nations territory, in national parks, and were it affects coastal and inland fisheries). Although some provinces have taken on the Canadian federal guidelines, most provinces use their own standards. Provinces can elect to ignore parts of the federal standard if they so choose. This makes sense sometimes. For example, Prince Edward Island basically only has groundwater, so it might not make sense to spend money testing for things that are only present in surface water.

In the US, all public drinking water supplies must conform to the federally-determined Environmental Protection Agency standards. Generally speaking, then, the Washington State official standards are higher than the British Columbia standards. (There are some exceptions. Some BC municipalities, like Vancouver and Victoria, have adopted the federal Guidelines.)

Washington and BC also have a different approach towards supply. On the US side, you have to prove that there is adequate water before you are allowed to build a house. On the Canadian side, you do not.

Alice spent last summer interviewing residents of both islands on how groundwater management worked in practice on either side of the border. She found, to her surprise, that there ended up being very little difference “on the ground” in water management from one side of the border to the other, despite very different regulations.

She found that on the Canadian side, there were more extra-legal forces that kept water use down. On one island community, for example, the residents were metered and each resident’s use was posted in a public place. This form of “peer pressure” seemed to actually work. (Note that it is many hours journey to get from the islands to “civilization”. It is thus much more important to be on good terms with your neighbors out there than in a big metropolitan area. If you need a cup of flour or a gallon of gas, you can’t just run down to the corner store.)

Meanwhile, on the US side of the border, she found that people sometimes did things without permits in order to bypass restrictions. This is one example of the way that people actually interacted with water was very similar on both sides of the border.

02.12.07

Snow, flooding, rock slides, laryngitis

Posted in Canadian life, University life at 10:51 pm by ducky

I gave a talk last week at Web Directions North that I didn’t get to rehearse as much as I’d wanted due to snow, flooding, a rock slide, and laryngitis.

Snow: This might not sound like a biggie, but the Annual Green College Ski Trip happened on Feb 3 and 4. I had been ignoring my husband for days on end as I worked on my presentation, and I couldn’t really spend the domestic credits that it would take to skip the trip.

Flood: While Jim, I, and 26 other residents were on the ski trip, one of my neighbor’s sprinklers failed and gushed water into his room for 40 minutes before the firefighters and residents got it shut off. (Yes, we collectively are looking into the emergency procedures around here.) While our room ultimately had no water damage, nobody knew if they other sprinklers were also going to go off or not, or if the water would leak into our room.

Resident Mika McKinnon, who impresses me more and more as time goes on, basically took charge and organized posses of people to go into neighboring rooms (via the we’ll-let-you-back-into-your-room-if-you-get-locked-out master key holders), unplug all of our electrical appliances, and take laptop computers out and to hold them in a dry place.

Note that they had zero legal right to do this. If I wanted to, I could probably sue them up one side and down the other for breaking and entering, and trespass to chattels if not outright theft. And yet, they had absolutely every moral right to do so. As Mika’s father is a lawyer, I presume that she realized that she could get in legal trouble for doing so, yet did so anyway. I greatly admire her for that, and I am very grateful to her and all the others for rescuing our laptops.

Rock slides: On Sunday, the day we were supposed to come back from the ski trip, a rock slide closed the only road back to home for eight hours. This meant that we got back late. Not only did that mean that I didn’t get Sunday evening to rehearse, but tapping lightly on the door of the guy who had our laptops failed to rouse him. It took another day to get our laptops back.

Laryngitis: On Tuesday evening, my co-presenter emailed me to tell me that he had lost his voice. It looked like maybe I would have to give his presentation and mine… and while I knew about some of his stuff, there were some detailed technical issues that I didn’t actually know anything about. So I tried to cram knowledge about his area.

Fortunately, his voice came back by Thursday, so I didn’t have to give his talk.

My talk went okay. I got some trustworthy feedback that at least some people liked it, but it wasn’t nearly as polished and professional as I am capable of. Next time.

12.15.06

Canadian bureaucracy

Posted in Canadian life at 6:00 pm by ducky

My experiences with Canadian bureaucracy have been surprisingly pleasant. For example:

  • When I went to apply for my SIN ID (a tax ID number, equivalent to the US Social Security number), it took me twenty minutes from the time I got in the door to the time I walked out.
  • Seven relatives and I were on Pender Island when storms knocked out power and heat at the house we were renting for the weekend. I called BC Ferries to find out if Pender Island’s ferry terminal had a warm place to wait, if the ferries were running, if we could leave early, etc. I immediately got a real human being who happily gave me what information she had and the direct phone number to the Pender terminal, and wished me luck getting home.
  • Jim phoned the BC tax office to ask a question about setting up his consulting business.  He got one level of phonebot menu before being sent to a human. The human picked up in two rings, answered his question, and wished him luck in his venture.

In addition to being very pleasant to deal with, the Canadian bureaucracies seem much more flexible than U.S. ones. It seems that in the U.S., There Are Rules, and the individual agents have no discretion. In Canada, it seems like the agents have much more discretion to be reasonable.

This is probably due in part to a much smaller population, meaning fewer levels of bureaucracy. I suspect that it’s also due to smaller socioeconomic stratification. As Larissa Tieden’s research explains, humans think that low-status people do bad things. This means that if there are fewer low-status people dealing with the bureaucracy, then there will be less suspicion about them trying to “take advantage of the system”.

I’ve often thought about how income discrepancies hurt even the wealthy: they have to worry more about crime, for example. I hadn’t ever thought about how status discrepancies might make bureaucracy more annoying.

(Note that I have the impression that people think that European bureaucracies are worse than U.S. bureaucracies; perhaps this is due to greater emphasis on social class?)

11.22.06

Flashing green lights

Posted in Canadian life at 6:11 pm by ducky

When we came to Vancouver, we were very puzzled by flashing green traffic lights. When we asked Canadians, they said that they were intersections where a pedestrian might push the button to turn the light red. The government-owned Insurance Corporation of British Columbia also describes the flashing green in that way.

This was not a terribly satisfactory answer to us, as most of the streetlights that we’ve seen had a button for pedestrians to cause the traffic light to change (although it sometimes would take a while).

The important thing to know about flashing green traffic lights in British Columbia is that the cross traffic has a stop sign, not a a stop light. This means

  • If you are coming up on a flashing green, a car just might cross or turn in front of you. Do not be alarmed or appalled: as long as it is safe to do so, they are allowed.
  • If you are that cross traffic, you might have to wait a while to cross. I was really surprised that this would work, but it does. Pedestrian traffic in Vancouver correlates very well with auto traffic. If traffic is heavy enough that you can’t find a break to cross, there will be a pedestrian along in a bit to change the light for your cross traffic to red, thus giving you an opportunity to cross. If there are no pedestrians around to run interference for you, then there won’t be much traffic, and you will find a natural break.

One problem with the flashing green traffic lights is that in (at least parts of) Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Quebec, there are flashing green lights that mean the same as a green left arrow in most places: “oncoming traffic is stopped”. (There are some reports that this happens even in Vancouver suburbs.) It doesn’t work well when e.g. Ontario drivers come to Vancouver or vice versa!

11.15.06

US/Canada linguistic differences

Posted in Canadian life at 10:00 pm by ducky

While the linguistic differences are subtle between the US and Canada, they do exist.

  • Canadians use a flatter “a” sound than Americans in many words. Many (but not all) Canadians say caat, fahther, paastuh, Maareeoh, draamuh, Jaavuh, Naatsee, and daatuh where Americans usually say caat, fahther, pahstuh, Mahreeoh, drahmuh, Jahvuh, Nahtsee, and daytuh.
  • The “ou” in about, round, house, and about is slightly different from US versions; in the US, it sounds like the “ow” in “how”, but it sounds closer to the “oo” in boot in Canada. (Althrough there is variation across Canada in how close to “oo” the “ow” is.) There is a nice Wikipedia article on the Canadian Rising vowel sounds, and there’s also a page with a bunch of Canadian sound clips on it.
  • Americans and Canadians both distinguish between the noun form of produce (stress on second syllable) and the verb form (stress on first syllable), but Canadians also distinguish between the noun and verb forms of project and process by stressing the first syllable of the noun and the second of the verb.
  • Canadians have rounder “o” sounds in some words. For example, Canadians say toomohrroh, bohrroh, and prohcess where Americans say toomahrroh, bahrroh, and prahcess (for tomorrow, borrow, and process).
  • Canadians say marking and invigilating where Americans say grading and proctoring. While both say first-year, second-year, third-year, and fourth-year, only Americans say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior.
  • Canadians pronounce the last letter of the alphabet zed while Americans say zee.
  • Canadians will sometimes say, “last day” (for example, to refer to the last time that a class met) where Americans never do. Americans will say “last time” instead.
  • Americans (perhaps because they don’t have premier as elected officials) tend to use the same pronunciation as for the opening night of a movie: preeMEER, while the Canadians call the official the PREEmeer.
  • Canadians say reezohrs where Americans say reesohrs (for resource).
  • Some (not all) Americans think that a toboggan is a knit hat, while Canadians (and some Americans) think that a toboggan is a sled.

Not all Canadians or Americans say things the way I just described, but enough do to make it noticable.

Update: My buddy Vince points out:

  • Canadians use washrooms where Americans use bathrooms. (Usually in Canada, that’s where you take a bath.)
  • Some Americans say ruff instead of roof.
  • Americans sometimes say veehihkuhlwhere Canadians say veeihkuhl.
  • Americans tend to say “uh-huh” where Canadians would say “you’re welcome”. (And Canadians find “uh-huh” a bit rude.)
  • Some Americans say “y’all” for second-person-plural, while no Canadians do.
  • A knit hat is a tuque, pronounced like too with a k at the end.

Addendum: Canadians think that “skating” with no qualifier means “ice skating”.

11.12.06

Status of Women Canada

Posted in Canadian life at 10:12 pm by ducky

My bud Karen Parker is involved with the Status of Women Canada web site, where it says that the current government cut the Status of Women Canada’s budget from CDN$12M to CDN$7M shortly after Stephen Harper (the Prime Minister) came to power.
While I definitely think it’s bad that the budget got cut, part of me is agog that they managed to get CDN$12M in an official government capacity. If there is something similar in the US, I don’t know about it. I think women’s rights are strictly handled by NGOs in the US, such as the National Organization for Women.

11.11.06

Remembrance Day / Veteran's Day

Posted in Canadian life at 10:02 pm by ducky

November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in the US. You would think they would be basically the same thing, but their observance has some significant differences.

Remembrance Day is a pretty big deal in Canada. It honors members of the armed forces who were killed during war — dead people. Remembrance Day is a government holiday, there are services on November 11 that many people go to, there are two minutes of silence at 11:11 (the time the WW1 Armistice was signed), and it is common for people wear poppies on their clothing on the day of (and before, and after). My husband and I have two poppies and wear them.

Veterans Day is not observed to the same degree. It honors war veterans — principally the living, with the dead remembered on Memorial Day. Veterans Day is a government holiday, but lots of businesses and schools stay open.

Perhaps Veterans Day is less of a big deal because veterans are living, breathing human beings with flaws and foibles, whose sacrifices varied wildly. If you happen to be acquainted with a veteran who you don’t like — maybe your uncle-in-law Fred was an incompetent paper-pusher in the Navy for two years during peacetime and who got wickedly drunk last Thanksgiving and groped your sister and then peed in the ficus — then perhaps that might sour you on honoring veterans.

Perhaps you are a liberal, and have a bias that all veterans are knee-jerk conservatives. You might be uneasy honoring those who you think of as your political opponents.

People who died in wars, however, don’t have many flaws and foibles. They don’t vote against you in presidential elections. And it is absolutely clear that they sacrificed everything for their fellow citizens.

Symbology is also important. On Memorial Day in the US, the dominant symbol is the flag, a symbol which for some people symbolizes the dark side of the US. While the US flag represents liberty and freedom to many of her citizens, there are others who see it as a symbol of military aggressiveness and/or reactionary politics.

The poppy — which is worn in Canada, the UK, and Australia on Remembrance Day — is extremely non-aggressive. (Flowers were a symbol of the US anti-Vietnam war movement, even.) The image that it evokes is of not of tanks, planes, and guns, but of graveyards. It is a symbol that is not politically charged; it is as meaningful to anti-war demonstrators as to the most ardent supporters of military action.

Finally, the link to Armistice Day is still very clear in Canadian culture (in part because of the poem In Flanders Field, which was written by a Canadian). Meanwhile, the link to Armistice Day has faded in the US. That link is important, because Armistice Day was when the war ended. It can be seen as a day of honoring peace as much (or perhaps more) than a day honoring war.

The end result is that Remembrance Day is something that is easier for absolutely everybody to support than Veterans Day.

11.08.06

That's just WRONG!

Posted in Canadian life at 9:26 pm by ducky

Somehow I managed to miss it last year…

Canadian Thanksgiving is in mid-October, compared to the late-November of the United States. One could guess that perhaps because Canada is colder, their growing season ends sooner, and so their harvest celebration is earlier. I don’t think that’s it, however, as in November the harvest is well past in most of the US as well.

It turns out that one of the things that the later US Thanksgiving does is keeps Christmas at bay longer. The Toronto Santa Claus Parade will happen on November 19th this year.
In general, I really like Canadian culture, but having Christmas propaganda happen in November? That’s just wrong.

10.16.06

Update on Globe and Mail Green College article

Posted in Canadian life, University life at 9:27 am by ducky

Update: As I mentioned in my response to the Globe and Mail article about Green College, it reported that the Principal, Keith Benson, said that there was lots of drinking and partying. I’ve asked around, and my sources report that there was a problem with one pair of roommates in the spring of 2005 (the semester before I got here), and that some people moved out because of it. It was not a generalized problem.

Meanwhile, the Equity office says that for confidentiality reasons, they can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any complaints.

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