EclecticLip

I’ll chatter more about SeaWorld in due course, but wanted to comment briefly on the San Diego Zoo’s “pandarrific” showcase exhibits, featuring China’s monochromatic bears.  Fascinatingly, the Zoo doesn’t own them; the pandas are loaned from China.  Like so much American prosperity. 

Despite their current vegetarian diet, pandas’ ancestors were carnivores, so they have a fairly short digestive tract.  As such, they don’t derive much nutrition from bamboo.  As such, they spend up to 14 hours a day eating — not altogether unlike cruise ship passengers.    Interestingly, the pandas only like the inner portion of the bamboo shoots; they’d “peel off” the outer strip of the bamboo shoots with their teeth — not unlike kids eating those “cheese-strings” sold in supermarkets today.  There was also a panda cub, sleeping in the treetops, ignoring the flashing cameras and cooing humans.  Preoccupied with panda life, the orca-patterned ursines were oblivious to the merchandising empire they supported on their furry little shoulders.

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(written Sept 27, posted Oct 9.  Got a lot done that day…    ) 

As to our trip to San Diego, we made it back, safe, sound, a bit lighter in the wallet and heavier everywhere else. 

The cruise ship was a fun experience; for three days we enjoyed a panda-esque lifestyle, eating and sleeping.  I’ll report more later, but very quickly, cruise ships — like all-inclusive resorts — are accessible to the First World’s middle classes due to differences in currency and labour valuation.  If staffed by fellow Westerners at prevailing rates, the experience would’ve been out of reach; it was made affordable thanks to the fact that wage standards in the crews’ home countries is much lower than here in Canada.

There’s nothing wrong with this arrangement of affairs, but from a sense of fairness one hopes that in the coming decades or centuries, future Filipino and Indonesian cruisers will enjoy the services of a Western crew, just to even things out.  And don’t get me started on building Chinese railroads…

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(originally written Sept 14, posted Oct 9)

Despite cruise ships being the ‘tar sands’ of tourism, we’ll be heading to San Diego next week on one of them.  I remember something about us having visited both Whitehorse and Yellowknife, a travel deal, and “quid pro quo”, but it’s a bit of a blur really. 

The boat ride will, however, give me a chance to do battle with Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a second time.  Back in my university summer-job days — lackey to a post-doc lackey of a tenured professor — I started the book, figuring my encyclopedic ignorance of Roman history would be an overcomeable hurdle.  After all, that’s why I was going to read the book, right?  To learn history!

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(Originally written August 4; posted Sept 5)

We used tar-sands oil aplenty on our Rockies trip, despoiling what’s left of the nature we motored about to see (most gasoline on the West Coast comes from Alberta — happy driving!).  The “tour de sightseeing” from Banff to Jasper was notable in that we met the same fellow tourists at every scenic viewpoint and pullout.  There were so many of her fellow countrymen around that when Aya asked people to take photos, she went straight to Japanese. 

We soon learned not to pull over in the hopes of spotting wildlife, unless at least two other vehicles had already done so — not unlike how a Venus Flytrap won’t close unless two of its trigger hairs are touched in quick succession.

A high point was getting a photo of this mother mountain goat and kid, from just across the highway.  Off-camera, papa goat looked on, perhaps wondering if our car was a Chevrolet.  (Louis Chevrolet’s last name was a corruption of “Chevre Lait”, or “goat’s milk”.)  But alas, it was a rental Sentra, tricked out with a/c, iPod connector, remote entry and power windows.  Features which have coincidentally become must-haves for our next vehicle. 

(Part 1 is here.) 

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Back from a Rockies roadtrip with the in-laws, the highlight of which was when a black bear family — a mother with two cubs — sauntered past our (parked) car on the road to Miette Hot Springs, near Jasper.  Below was the best picture: with my photographic skills, I managed to override the autofocus feature on the camera on the others. 

We first noticed the stopped cars on the other side of the road, so we turned our hazards on and idled our way forward.  When we saw the bears heading our way, we parked, not wanting to distract or otherwise irritate the ursine family.  After picking at some roadside dandelions, the mother bear decided to cross the road — and the cubs followed, in tow.  I didn’t appreciate how much they actually look like teddy bears.  Now, the term “teddy bear” comes from an incident between a bear and US President Theodore (”Teddy”) Roosevelt.  But unlike legendary Simpsons-hometown founder Jebediah Springfield, Roosevelt neither killed nor was killed by that bear.

As the mother bear passed by the driver’s side front-bumper, cubs in tow, it belatedly occurred to me to roll up my window.    Still, it was very cool to come within about five feet of a sloth of bears in the wild — sloth being a term for a group of them, like a “murder” of crows, “crash” of rhinos, “clowder” of cats and personal favourite, “bloat” of hippos.  It was cooler still, that we were safely ensconced in an automobile at the time. 

The photo also got picked up by Yves Smith on her economics blog, one of the half-dozen or so on my daily reading list.  It was Sunday’s “antidote-du-jour“.  The backstory to her pseudonym is that it’s a play on the Biblical Adam and Eve, and Adam Smith being the codifier of capitalism.

(Originally written April 12; posted Oct 9)

We got to Yellowknife by flying WestJet, an airline for which I have a soft spot.  They were the first stock I made money on, despite my having bought them on September 4th, 2001.  If memory serves, they still netted me a 50% gain within the year; $900 or thereabouts.  (I promptly swore off airline stocks forever thereafter.)  All of which reinforces how ridiculously small retail investors like me are, in the big picture.  Compared to the market sharks and their chums, we fit somewhere in the plankton spectrum. 

At the time, WestJet was in an envious competitive position: they were in an industry with high barriers to entry and only one major competitor, Air Canada, which was mired in a doom loop to bankruptcy.  WestJet’s biggest competitive advantage was that they patterned themselves on Southwest Airlines in the US (stock symbol “LUV” – seriously).  As such, they only flew one type of plane – Boeing 737’s – which brought many benefits, perhaps the biggest of which that they only needed to carry one set of spare parts.  With their innumerable plane types, Air Canada had to keep a massive inventory of parts on hand, and train pilots, flight and maintenance crew on an extensive menu of planes.

While our flight was delightful, a quick online check shows that WestJet is facing some headwinds, as even the best companies occasionally do (even the mighty Apple will meet its worm, one day).  But in a potentially-disastrous shift in strategy, the new CEO may abandon the 737-only strategy, eliminating its strongest competitive advantage.

As a result, WestJet may go from poster-child for business book Built to Last… to a fallen prodigy worthy of the trequel, How the Mighty Fall.

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(Originally written March 15.  Posted March 28) 

We’re back from the Diamond Capital of North America(tm), with tales of our quartz-priced travels and gypsum-level accomodations. 

On the flight over, I was struck by the vast expanse of the north — most of the landscape was as empty as the mind of a Zen adept.  It was astonishing, thrilling in a way, to see an entire landscape under the horizon, unoverrun by civilization and unblemished by the mark of man.

On the other end of the spectrum, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the oil sands from 35000 feet, but sadly Fort MacMurray and its environs were crowded over.  So much for seeing one of the “7 eyesores of the industrial world” with my own eyes.*

The first thing I noticed when stepping off the plane and into the frosty frontier, was that the airport was very small.  You walk off a ramp onto the tarmac and into the terminal building.  Mind you, Yellowknife does have a third small baggage conveyor, to Whitehorse’s two.  And it’s got bilingual ads at the airport — English and Japanese!  Playing to the tourist base, the audio tour of the legislative assembly building is also available in Japanese, as well as the expected English, French, and nine other official languages of the territory.  While there seemed to be more Japanese folks in Yellowknife than Aussies at Whistler, it’s apparently a big draw for German tourists too.  Which means *both* sides of my family tree predisposed me to visit.  In a sense, it may have been my genetic destiny!  (That and invading Russia…  hmm, maybe it’s an Arctic wanderlust thing.)

Back to the igloo-esque legislature building: it’s open on weekends, staffed by a volunteer and a security guard.  Built in 1993, it’s the first permanent legislative building for the Territories.  Prior legislatures met in the ballrooms of Yellowknife hotels, with occasional “road trips” hither and yon; maybe an attempt to neutralize the Yellowknifers’ home field advantage.    The NWT flag was actually designed by a Manitoba high schooler, who in 1969 won $1000 for his inspiration, about thirty times what graphic design student Caroline Davidson was paid three years later, for designing the Nike Swoosh.  (To Phil Knight’s credit — did I just write that? — he later gave her an envelope-full of Nike stock.)

Fair to say that things are pretty relaxed up in the Territories — someone outside can look all the way into the legislative chamber while they’re in session.  Reinforcing this impression, the security guard at the offices of Joint Task Force North told me that, even though the Canadian Forces were a “diet Coke of a military” he was “pretty sure” the building didn’t offer tours.  He then suggested a couple tourist venues I might consider visiting during my stay.

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* this is my list, in no particular order; readers’ private lists may vary:

- Ohio’s pride, the Cuyahoga River, which caught fire a record thirteen times over the years  
      (note: since cleaned up)
      (note 2: I sure hope that’s a record…)

- the great manure lagoons of the factory farms of the American midwest

- the Yanacocha Mine in Peru: a “cyanide fortified” open pit gold mine as big as the tax havens where its investors probably hide their winnings: bigger than Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, it’s a whisker smaller than the Cayman Islands

- the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch         (filed in Wikipedia under that very name!) 

- the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone 
      (note: in the quarter-century since 300,000 people were evacuated, wildlife seem to be thriving there)

- Alberta’s oil sands tailing ponds

- Exxon Headquarters in Texas - scientific illiteracy central

(incidentally, three score and ten years before Exxon started funding global warming deniers, the President of Union Oil bankrolled the publication and distribution of three million copies of the first American Christian Fundamentalist tracts.  Fun guys, those oil barons…)

(Originally written March 18; posted April 10) 

One of the first things you see at Yellowknife’s airport is that the diamond ads are bilingual — that’s English and Japanese.  I noticed a slight difference between them, though… 

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The mining show this year (2010 - not sure if they recycle the web address annually) featured a lot more well-dressed people than in years past — which probably means a lot of first-timers, which itself means gold is due for a plunge.  All the better to part newcomers and their money. 

Longer-term, the outlook for the shiny-metal-with-the-colour-of-the-sun seems bright, if only because of the dire financial straits most countries seem to be in.  For example, if the interest rates on Japanese debt went up from their current 1.5%-ish to 4%, the annual interest would exceed the government’s entire tax revenues for everything.  This problem is exacerbated by demographic decline: the total population is dropping… but the “working-age” population is dropping much, much faster.  The same problems plague Europe and North America to varying extents.  On the plus side, Japanese vacations may become affordable again…

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In a complimentary copy of Resource World magazine, I saw an ad for a mining firm which noted that Green Technologies are dependent on “exotic” materials like silicon, neodymium, lanthanum, and heavy rare earth metals.  Yes, apparently silicon fits in that category, despite being a component of silica (sand) — the most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust!!

The free issue of BCBusiness featured a roundtable of economists, arguing over what governments should do to support the economy.  I’ve always considered economics to be a bit Rashomon-esque: starting with your political sensibility, you can find an entrenched economic philosophy that affirms it.  And I think the kaleidoscope of contradictory opinion in economics is one reason some business people disbelieve global warming — they can’t believe other fields actually achieve consensus on anything.  Anyways, the article did have an AWESOME moment of truth from John Richards of SFU. 

Q - What might be the most surprising thing in 2010?
A - I am no good at forecasting.

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I noticed a lot of companies from Yellowknife (”diamond capital of North America!”) at the conference, but that’s probably just because we made plans to visit the Northwest Territories in March — part of my ongoing “Tour de Tundra”.  I’m aiming for a Canadian Arctic tourism hat-trick; what with the Yukon two years back and the NWT this year, hopefully we can make it to Nunavut in 2012.  Y’know, before the Mayan calendar flips over. 

The combined Lonely Planet guide to the NWT and Nunavut — 32 pages, downloadable for about $2 — yielded some surprising facts.  For instance, the NWT legislature IS SHAPED LIKE AN IGLOO; and when it comes to official languages, the Territories have not two, not three, not four, not five (…let me skip ahead here…) but ELEVEN.  Eleven official languages, for thirty thousand people!  It puts Switzerland’s three-or-four, to shame. 

Apparently temperatures in Yellowknife in mid-March have ranged from -43 to +22 Celsius.  So, taking my planning cues from corporate leadership, I’ll be packing t-shirts and shorts. 

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We went on a double date on Saturday with some friends, to the Metro Vancouver landfill in Delta.  (There was an open house, and being the romantic type that I am…)  We spent a couple hours there and saw all the highlights — the mountains of garbage, the compost piles, huge machinery (sitting idle), and Teamsters (funnily enough, also sitting idle). 

Some of the trucks were basically steamrollers with spiky knobs on the wheels; the vehicular equivalent of high heels, I suppose.  The knobs concentrate the weight of the vehicle, compressing the mountains of trash.  (And there are several mountains.)

There were maybe a dozen booths set up — like a small farmer’s market — where one could pick up materials from BC Hydro PowerSmart, local composting or wildlife groups.  Unlike any farmer’s market I’d been to though, they had volunteers grilling up hot dogs and burgers (free ones!).  There was pop, but no bottled water, funnily enough. 

There were also some falconers — falcons are brought in occasionally to scare away seagulls; some contractors even train the falcons not just to intimidate, but to kill.  With that in mind, I asked if the falcons could be used against Canada geese; but it seems the latter don’t scare easily.  I believe the falconer’s words were “oh, no - they’d probably kill [falcon’s name which I’ve forgotten]”.  Frankly, I’d've thought a pirate with a falcon would have gotten more props than pirates with parrots, but what do I know?  I’d've thought the frilly, puffy-sleeved shirts didn’t convey menace very well, either. 

I did ask Metro Vancouver Wastewater Treatment if they had open houses; sadly, they don’t.  I’ll have to book a private appointment.  They did say that they can tell when each period of a playoff game ends, ’cause everyone gets up and uses the washroom at once.

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As for the Eat! Vancouver show, all the usual suspects were there — Freedom 55, Club Intrawest (time-shares), Tourism Barbados…

As is now the custom at these shows, they handed out reusable plastic bags at the entrance, this time from Bosa Foods.  Puzzlingly, my resuable bag contained a disposable plastic bag in which the freebies were placed.  (My two co-show goers’ bags were disposables-free.)  Given how popular these are as handouts, one wonders how many reusable (but unused) plastic bags now line the continent’s closets and pantries.  Marc Jaccard, who studies the effectiveness of climate legislation at SFU, points out that most people have unused compact fluorescent lights in their closets, because — like him — they bought more than they could install.  The underlying point is that these devices don’t save energy (or in the case of the bags, plastic) unless they’re actually used.

The folks from Liberation BC (an animal welfare group) were there; from them I learned that the SPCA actually has a certificate program to identify livestock producers who treat the animals less cruelly.  They were seated beside a local pork farmer, and seemed politely resigned to their situation’s irony.  The fellow sells sausages at the local farm markets, so presumably doesn’t use factory farming techniques, which are fairly capital intensive.

They also pointed me to the Rabbit River Farms booth, home of BC’s first SPCA-approved eggs.  Looking at the surprisingly richly-hued contents of the egg basket they’d brought, I realized that I’d come to assume that not only did eggs only come in white or brown, but that they only came in one specific shade each of white or brown.  The baskets contained eggs which were Small, Medium and Large, and a few half again as large, euphemistically referred to as “Ouch”.  Apparently, as hens get older they produce fewer but bigger eggs.  Sort of like Beethoven with his symphonies, I guess.

The folks from Island Farms were there too, with samples of cantaloupe-flavoured ice cream, which comes in containers labelled with bigger Chinese characters than Western.  Melon-flavoured ice cream is pretty big in Japan, so I suppose they’re targeting Asian tastes.  Avalon Dairy was there also.  The purveyors of bottled milk had developed an Omega-3 enriched milk product, sold as Vitala.  (Before I continue, I can’t help commenting that the impact of making and transporting glass bottles is almost certainly larger than the impact of a landfilled-after-one-use Tetra Pak.  It’s a case where a twentieth-century packaging solution is better than the older nineteenth-century one.)

But I digress.  Vitala milk is Omega-3 enriched.  I asked whether they feed the cows a high-flax diet (a trick used by some companies to make eggs’ yolks a deeper yellow, and allow Omega-3 claims to be made) — and that was true.  But there was more.  Their diet is tuna-enriched.  (Our cat doesn’t even get a tuna-enriched diet!  Well, not all that often.)  Tuna, which sits near the top of the marine food web, reduced to a bovine nutritional supplement…  (”Mercury-fortified”!    )

While the cows get factory dregs (the “mechanically separated meat” equivalent of the fish-food industry) the predator-to-prey ratio is like a pyramid: you need a lot at the bottom of the food web to support a few at the top.  (Hmm… not unlike manager-employee ratios, come to think of it…)  Taking the top levels down to the base of another pyramid is astonishingly inefficient; it’d be like growing wildebeest to feed lions to fatten giraffes.