The good folks at It’s Hot in Here radio invited me on today for a dis­cus­sion of the tar sands, tankers, and Enbridge pipelines. Michigonian interest in that last topic has been sub­stan­tially sharp­ened by the Battle Creek spill two weeks ago, but aware­ness of the Albertan tar sands is still thin in the U.S., even among enviros. So maybe I can be for­given for launching into a petro­leum dia­tribe fully 45 min­utes long. It cer­tainly felt good to get that off my chest.

Here’s the audio. I start around 7:00 and finally calm down at about 52:00.

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Two things I entirely forgot to mention:

• The cur­rent foot­print of tar sands oper­a­tions is about 1.5 times the size of metro Detroit (it’s good to work in local units).
• The BP spill. I totally failed to work that in in any way.

It’s been a long time since I blogged. And I’m not going to right now either. Instead, here’s a list of some of the things that I’ve almost blogged about recently:

• Context Signaling in US Military Communication
• How the Scholarly Character of Wikipedia Responds to Perturbation
• Ecologists Exchange Thoughts on Ecosystem-​​based Fisheries Management
• Late/​Early Thoughts on Tablet Computing
• Analytical Implications of the Census Discontinuity
• The Yasuni-​​ITT Deal

I advo­cate to new blog­gers that they should main­tain a con­sis­tent rhythm to their posts. The idea is that if you main­tain a posting fre­quency, your readers will know roughly how often to check your blog. That way they won’t go away dis­ap­pointed, even if you don’t blog all that often. I’ve been breaking that rule lately. Mostly I blame some of my friends who have recently gotten into blog­ging, and have raised the quality bar for me. Thanks a lot guys.

Incidentally, I appre­ciate that my peers are now arriving at blog­ging, just as we’re being told that blogs are dead. We’re also being told that the web is dead. Both are lies. The growth of blog­ging is slowing, and claiming that a decreasing accel­er­a­tion is the same as death is a depend­able fal­lacy of the western neo-​​capitalist mindset. And the growth of the web is actu­ally accel­er­ating. For heavens sake.

It’s just been a little quiet around this part of the web, that’s all.

July 15^th: See below for an update

50 years ago today Congo DRC gained inde­pen­dence from Belgium. Since then the gov­ern­ment has taken on mas­sive debt eagerly offered by rich northern nations and insti­tu­tions. Debt relief is held by some to be one of the most effec­tive actions avail­able to rich coun­tries to facil­i­tate improved gov­er­nance in the global south. To that end, the International Monetary Fund was about to for­give its sub­stan­tial por­tion of Congo’s debt, but that action is being actively blocked by a single country: Canada.

Why in the world would we do that? Apparently, we’re using debt for­give­ness as a bar­gaining tool to force Congo to re-​​activate the oper­ating license of a Canadian mining com­pany. The com­pany is called First Quantum, and the Congolese gov­ern­ment recently revoked their right to operate three expen­sive copper mines after a review of mining prac­tices. The mines are now being trans­ferred to another inter­na­tional mining group, Highwind Properties. The Harper admin­is­tra­tion pre­vi­ously made a sim­ilar move to pre­vent that transfer when the Paris Club of Congolese debt holders con­sid­ered aban­doning their debt.

Kolwezi mine, from the First Quantum website

At the G20/​G8 con­fer­ences, Prime Minister Harper claimed that the transfer of the oper­ating licenses vio­lated the rule of law and is framing the blocking of debt relief as stand for orderly gov­er­nance. First Quantum has a dubious record in Congo. In 2000 a UN panel pointed out that inter­na­tional min­eral devel­op­ment con­tributes directly to the brutal and ongoing con­flict in Congo, and iden­ti­fied First Quantum as one of a group of com­pa­nies failing to abide by OECD stan­dards designed to lessen that con­flict. Since then a Canadian-​​influenced second panel absolved First Quantum under a more lax set of cri­teria.

I don’t know much about how First Quantum cur­rently oper­ates in the Congo, or how Highwind Properties would operate, or what the spe­cific moti­va­tions of the Congolese offi­cials were who trans­ferred the mines from one to the other. But I do know that Canadian mining com­pa­nies have a bad record for envi­ron­mental and human-​​rights choices in devel­oping coun­tries, and the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that First Quantum’s ear­lier Congolese oper­a­tions may have lived up to that rep­u­ta­tion. If First Quantum is indeed inno­cent of oper­a­tional abuses, then I don’t doubt Canada can pursue their cor­po­rate rights in any number of inter­na­tional trade nego­ti­a­tion venues. Blocking an effort at debt for­give­ness, in Congo DRC, on the Congolese 50^th anniver­sary, in favour of a single Canadian mining cor­po­ra­tion, is a despi­cable move.

Update July 15^th:

The IMF and World Bank went ahead with the debt relief pro­gram, with Canada abstaining from the vote. I wonder what the status of the Paris Club debt relief action is?

“The deci­sion comes despite oppo­si­tion from Canada, which abstained from voting over Congo’s expro­pri­a­tion of Canadian com­pany First Quantum’s rights to one of the world’s largest copper mines.

The Canadian com­pany has taken its case to the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, and Canada’s objec­tions had for months delayed announce­ment of the debt relief.”

But the World Bank and IMF announced Thursday — the day after Congo marked 50 years of inde­pen­dence from Belgium — that they will sup­port $11.1 bil­lion in relief under the pro­gram for heavily indebted poor coun­tries and $1.2 bil­lion under a mul­ti­lat­eral debt relief ini­tia­tive.
–World Bank, IMF sup­port $12.3 bil­lion debt relief for Congo despite objec­tions from Canada, SF Examiner/​AP

I’m on vaca­tion, or rather I’m in between two back-​​to-​​back vaca­tions. Both involve visits to major fis­sures in the earth’s surface.

The first fis­sure was Nootka Sound, which is filled with salty ocean water and scruffy conifer-​​topped marine islands and sleek, curious sea mammals.

Tomorrow I leave for the second fis­sure, which is the Grand Canyon. I don’t yet know what’s in there, but I’ll let you know.

While vis­iting a friend who lives on a boat, I noticed that on her nau­tical charts Richmond was labelled an island. Which I sup­pose it is. And that fur­ther­more that island isn’t called “Richmond”. It’s actu­ally called Lulu Island.

NOAA chart via GeoGarage

That’s a great name, but where does it come from? I checked the internet, and the con­sensus seems to be that Lulu Island was named in the 1860s, after a women named Lulu Sweet.

So who was Lulu Sweet? Not so clear. Here’s Wikipedia’s take:

“Lulu Island was named in 1862 for Lulu Sweet, a pop­ular show­girl, pos­sibly of Kanaka (Hawaiian) origin, who was dating the mayor of New Westminster when the island was named (she had bought prop­erty there).”

It’s always about real estate in Vancouver, even when it’s about show­girls. The BC Geographic Names Information System records a few similar-​​but-​​different the­o­ries about Lulu. Was she indeed a show­girl in the first troupe to visit New West?

“Named in 1862 by Colonel Moody, RE, in com­mand of a detach­ment of the Royal Engineers then sta­tioned at New Westminster, after Lulu Sweet, a young actress trav­el­ling with the first the­atrical troupe that ever acted in that city. ‘Her con­duct, acting and graceful man­ners gave great sat­is­fac­tion, and were appre­ci­ated to such an extent by her friends and patrons that the island was named after her.’”

or was she actu­ally in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay company?

“As reported in the 1897 British Columbia Year Book, Lulu was a Hawaiian or Kanaka, in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company. [.… At times over the next years the majority of Fort Langley employees were of Hawaiian descent, but HBC archives don’t describe any inci­dent or occa­sion that would war­rant such a gesture.]”

Colonel Richard Moody was not, as the Wikipedia article is per­haps implying, the first mayor of New Westminster. He was a Royal Engineer and one of BC’s first Lieutenant Governors, back when that meant some­thing. He also picked the site for New West, because he wanted to make it the province’s first offi­cial cap­ital. (The first unof­fi­cial cap­ital was Langley. Apparently the early British Columbians had poor taste in cap­i­tals.) According to the cor­re­spon­dence of his per­sonal sec­re­tary, Moody was respon­sible for out-​​maneuvering the regional rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He also had a wife and 7 kids, so it would be inter­esting if he was spending a lot of time hanging around with a Hawaiian women in the employ of the HBC.

The Vancouver History web­site has some details which sup­port the show­girl theory, pegs her at 16 years old at the time of the naming, and sug­gests Moody and Sweet may only have known each other in passing.

“On January 10, 1861 (a date of January 12, 1860 is also cited), during a tour of local waters, the com­mander of the Engineers, Col. Richard Moody, was showing Miss Sweet var­ious fea­tures of the land­scape. As they passed one island in the Fraser, she asked its name. “It has no name as yet,” Col. Moody responded, “but in tribute to you we shall call it Lulu Island.”

Unfortunately, they don’t cite their sources. Nor does this Richmond art project’s site, which car­ries on the water-​​tour nar­ra­tive, and fur­ther­more claims that Lulu was from San Francisco (not Hawaii?), revered by the news­pa­pers for being chaste and beau­tiful, and that Moody was “one of her most ardent admirers”.

I happen to be a fan of the orig­inal name of North Vancouver: Moodyville. It wasn’t named after Col. Moody but we can pre­tend it was. Then we can res­ur­rect the true names of both North Van and Richmond, and the ardent admirers can gaze across Vancouver at each other.

Eric Fischer used the loca­tions of geo­t­agged photos on Flickr to make a series of city maps he calls The Geotaggers’s World Atlas. Then he got even clev­erer and fig­ured out which of the photos came from locals and which came from tourists, based on the time lag in between pho­tographs. The result is a new set of maps called Locals and Tourists.

Here’s Vancouver:

Red dots are photos from tourists, blue dots are from locals, and yellow are cases where Eric’s algo­rithm wasn’t able to con­clu­sively dif­fer­en­tiate. I notice two things.

1. Vancouver is the 9^th city on the list of 96. And according to Eric, he ordered them “by the number of pic­tures taken by locals”. So Vancouverites like to take photos of their city. (Although I sup­pose it depends on how big the other cities in the project were). Compare for instance with Las Vegas.

2. Everything east of down­town belongs to the locals. Clark, Commercial, East Hastings, 2^nd and for some reason Heatley are thick bands of solid blue.

crop

Except that I don’t entirely trust point #2. It just doesn’t make sense that Heatley would out­shine Broadway as a go-​​to des­ti­na­tion for pho­tog­ra­phers. Here’s what I think is hap­pening: there aren’t actu­ally that many people who go on blanket photo mis­sions, then do the geeky work of linking their imagery output to GPS tracks and uploading them in bulk to flickr. Those few pho­tomatic enthu­si­asts are dri­ving the apparent pat­terns. That theory is anec­do­tally sup­ported by this com­ment from Roland.

It’s a striking dif­fer­en­tial nonethe­less. Next time I find myself vis­iting a new city, an inter­esting project would be to track down the places that the locals think are worthy of camera action, but don’t usu­ally get much interest from for­eign photogs.

I don’t know how I didn’t know about Do It With Joy, a 1976 doc­u­men­tary about one of the first treeplanting crews working out of a hand-​​hewn camp up the Nass Valley, orga­nized by Dirk Brinkman in a giant beard, and fea­turing some kick-​​ass mat­tock and blues:

The film was made by Nicholas and Simon Kendall, among others. It’s a gold mine of imagery from the foun­da­tional era of treeplanting, and beau­ti­fully bearded.

“Everytime I meet someone who’s really messed up in their head, I often think wow, what that person needs is to go treeplanting, that would be a really nice gift for them.”

– Pauline Kendall
(who I think hauled a load of com­post from our over­stock pile a while back)

An updated ver­sion, with where-​​are-​​they-​​now inter­views (and hope­fully better quality) might be avail­able from Orca Productions. If it is, we’ll be holding a viewing at the house some­time soon.

Here’s a 1987 CBC report, which catches up with Dirk Brinkman, who has swapped his beard for Bill Gates glasses and is tap­ping away at an Apple IIe, trying to figure out how to increase treeplanting pro­duc­tion to meet the growing late 80’s demand. If he only knew I would arrive 13 years later, he wouldn’t be so stressed. It also fea­tures this haircut:

“Back in British Columbia, in the hills south­west of Vanderhouf, black­flies and mutiny fill the air”

And 35 years after we started, here’s a prime example of the recent surge in digital-​​facilitated planter-​​made clearcut reportage: Faces and Hands, a series of short vids by Millefiore Clarkes being dis­trib­uted by Peppermill Records. The episodes will show up weekly on the Peppermill site. Here’s episode one:

My treeplanting con­tract, being just a very small one, has ended. I am back in Vancouver and happy to be here.

Our planting crew, being just a very small one, is pic­tured below. Thanks to Mike Cawley for the pic­ture. Absent from the photo are Mike and our rookie Drew.

Deva, Peter, Marie-​​Christine, Me (below), Rich (above), Andrew, shovel.

That’s me mod­eling a pil­sner, energy drink of choice in the Northlands.

As antic­i­pated, it was indeed as close to coastal planting as I’ve come. Most of the crew were coastal vets, according to them the cut­blocks weren’t much dif­ferent from what could be found around, say, Bute Inlet. Although they also pointed out that the extremes of slope and slash size weren’t as extreme as true coastal extrem­i­ties, and that the rain was coming in from above rather than from side­ways. Which is fine. Close to coastal style planting is as close as I ever want to come.

The bud­dhists say that self-​​awareness allows you to suffer and yet not truly suffer. That occurred to me once or twice when I was working through the worst of what was indeed pretty bad land, and finding myself men­tally in rea­son­ably good shape. I guess there is some ben­efit to being a planting vet, namely that you can get through more treeplanting with equa­nimity intact. I wish I could say the same of my shins.

Tree prices were high, crew and com­pany were good, and camping out on the Dinwoodie home­stead was fun. My back feels a little funny, but I’ve got some more jingle in my pocket and I’m home in the city. And I get to swagger around here pre­tending to be a treeplanter back from a con­tract. Two weeks of slash climbing is a rea­son­able price to pay for these privileges.

I’ve posted a few photos from my cur­rent little treeplanting con­tract. One more shift to go.

for­give the cliché

I’m pleased to see that a second member of the 60’s rock outfit The Chob has now com­mented on my post cel­e­brating the lyrics of their song We’re Pretty Quick.

“Amazing to keep finding posts about We’re pretty Quick after all these years. Funny that none of them has gotten the lyrics exactly right yet.”

Okay, so maybe I was cel­e­brating the wrong lyrics. I still like them.