Ron McMahon

Probably not your dad's perspective

I Have Seen The Light (Field) – This Will Transform Photography

Oct 25

Posted by Ron in Technology, Uncategorized | No Comments

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Light Field CameraYou may not have heard or read about it yet, but a new camera has been born.  This little device will transform both how you see photos, and also how you take them!

This device is called the Lytro Field Camera (www.lytro.com) and what is so revolutionary about the camera is that it is a completely new way of taking photographs.  Historically, photography was all about capturing light on a flat plane, initially a plate of glass and then strips of film.  When digital cameras were first developed, they sought to mimic the functionality of film with a flat rectangle of light sensors called a Charge Coupled Device (CCD).

About 15 years ago research began at Stanford University in to capturing images in a new way.  Researchers began trying to capture light fields, which back then required a room full of cameras and a supercomputer to process the results.  There has been a lot of work going on over those 15 years and on October 20, 2011 that room full of equipment was replaced by the world’s first commercial Light Field Camera.  I think that the two most significant aspects of this camera are the elimination of focus as we’ve come to understand it and the capability to choose to create either a 2D or 3D image from the same data.

It seems that the fundamental difference is in the Light Field Sensor, which is key to the camera, as it captures information on the colour and intensity of the light hitting it, but also the vector of where the light is coming from.  It is this vector information, along with some customized software, that enables the new capabilities.  The elimination of the focus point of a photograph reminds me of those movies where some grainy security camera image is manipulated by some actor to suddenly reveal stunning clarity where none existed before.  This camera does that, but only with the images that it captures – your brand new $7000 Canon 1D X won’t give you what this $399 shooter will.

The finish and design of this camera almost makes you think it was designed by Apple - sweet, simple design with almost no protection of the lens from what I can tell.  Like I said, this technology will transform photography, what I’m wondering is how the technology will transform video.  Since the output is capable of rendering in 2D or 3D from the same source image data, perhaps in a few short years we’ll have HD3D TV where the image displayed will be 3D if the user wants to see it that way, leaving the viewing mode decision to the watcher rather than the producer.  Consider the consequences of shipping a television show where users can decide for themselves which part of a show to keep in focus? I’m a fan of the Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker movies and TV shows of the 1980s like Airplane!, Top Secret!, Police Squad!, The Naked Gun, where there was often more than one thing happening in the scene at a time…imagine what this technology could empower in terms of gags that can only be seen if you focus on the far point of a scene, or the foreground?

One thing that is certain, this is technology that will transform our lives and culture in a way similar to the smartphone, as its capability, ease of use and profound change in how we see and experience the world around through our media devices us will impact television, movies, and the photos and videos we create at home.

 

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Thanks Steve

Oct 6

Posted by Ron in Uncategorized | No Comments

Steve Jobs

While we may have enriched you with our purchases of your products,
your products gave us all a far richer life.

Thanks.

Rest in Peace, Steve.

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Pissing on City Hall

Oct 31

Posted by Ron in Calgary, Democracy | No Comments

Old City HallI originally wrote this post back in April, but it has been sitting in my unfinished box for six months as I’ve pondered the wisdom of posting it.  Since the event I write about here I’ve encountered yet another ‘dog’ whom I did have arrested.  I’ve decided that I’m not going to get beyond my concerns about my actions and your reaction to what I write.  My conclusion is that regardless of what I say I will inevitably offend some, worry others and gain the support of a few.  I seek none of those, rather I simply need to get what I have to say off of my chest and I hope that someone far wiser than me gives feedback on this issue that I will learn and grow from.  So, to that end, here is my post:

I work at the City Hall complex in Calgary.  As I was heading home on Friday I saw him. He was creeping around the front corner of the Old City Hall building and by the way he was walking I KNEW he was fixing to relieve himself. I’ve seem him lurking around City Hall before and have actually seen him pissing on another part of the complex last year.  Usually a shout of ‘hey’ will scare away most, convincing them that this isn’t a good time, but he just ignored me, turned around and began urinating. All of my shouting at him was of no use.

Most dogs won’t ignore the threat from someone shouting at them, and will most often simply go and find some safer location, but this was no typical dog.  In fact it wasn’t a dog at all, it was an aboriginal guy in his 30s.  After finishing up he walked back to the steps in front of the Old City Hall building where I challenged him about his behaviour.  Of course anyone who dares urinate in public, let alone in the afternoon ON City Hall certainly isn’t up for a deep philosophical discussion.  He told me to ‘go away’.  He obviously doesn’t know me that well.

I continued to call him down about his behaviour, laziness and disrespect to which he asked me if ‘this was my country’.  I said yes, I am a Canadian and of course he then told me that this ‘wasn’t my country’.   He then asked me if I ‘had treaty rights’ to which I replied that treaty rights don’t include the right to piss wherever you want.  He said that the City hadn’t done anything for him or helped him to which I called him no better than a dog.  At this point it was clear that I would only be wasting my time with this individual and I continued on my way home.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this episode and what I could / should / will do differently the next time I encounter him doing something that he seems to enjoy doing on a frequent basis.  I know that instead of calling him what his behaviour is (a dog), I will simply question him if Chief Crowfoot (the chief with whom Treaty 7 was negotiated) would be proud of him. Maybe I’ll still call him a dog too.

Some readers may call in to question my wisdom in openly challenging someone who dares piss on City Hall, and others will be angry that I denigrate him by calling him a dog.  I am the type of person who won’t typically back down from confrontation, so I’m the guy who will try to stop such behaviour.  This behaviour and the words said to me make it clear that he had no respect for anyone and didn’t care about the society he lives in and likely depends on to feed and house him.  Just so you know, had he been well dressed, clean and white (might as well eliminate any bias accusations) I still would have responded in the same way.  Civility and respect for yourself and others simply demands different behaviour.  Yes, I’ve challenged others about public urination who are white middle class-looking men, once with compliance and once with derision as the response.

Almost all of the city’s homeless shelters are within a five minute walk of City Hall, and the complex, as a public building, is often full of these ‘citizens’ during working hours.  One does struggle with asking what the correct response is to these public spaces being so populated.  There are likely many homeless people walking the mezzanine of the City Hall complex that I don’t detect as homeless because they keep themselves publicly presentable, with a washed body and clothes.  Far too many others are just the opposite; dishevelled and stinking, they fill the air with an odour that repels others.  City Hall isn’t just a day-home for the city’s homeless population to hang out in the hours between when they can be in the shelters, it is also a place where the city’s business is conducted, where citizens come to obtain building permits and where our leadership meets to make decisions on how best to move our city forward in the 21st Century.

It is also a building that contains ‘City Hall School’, a resource that is used daily by students from all over the city as they travel to the highest seat of political power in this city to learn about how our City Hall functions.  While these students are here they will learn what bylaws are, such as those written against allowing dogs to run free in this city.  These are reasonable rules, after all nobody wants someone else’s dog making a mess on their property.  Perhaps those students would also learn about how we enforce these bylaws and what happens when they are violated.

In the end we have laws, rules and customs in our society to help ensure that everyone, regardless of ability, capability or fidelity can exist in peace with others.  If you choose to violate these structures that exist in our society you invite derision, exclusion or incarceration.  Some might say that this fellow was clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness, but I’d have to disagree.  I’ve had a lot of contact with people who are suffering with a wide variety of mental illnesses and this fellow was clearly fully engaged in his surroundings.  The only mental challenge would be a lack of respect for oneself and the world around you, if he were depressed he likely would not react to me in his aggressive manner.  He also was not mentally deficient. Stupid, foolish and unwise yes, but not dumb.

In the end this ‘man’ decided that his hatred of and resentment toward the world he lives in, the society he is a part of and the rule of law he lives under justified his actions against its most obvious physical symbol. This mutt that I encountered on the steps of the Old City Hall building deserved to be impounded.

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Liberally New

Jun 20

Posted by Ron in Democracy | No Comments

Photo by Chris Wattie of Reuters as posted on National Post website

They say that the Devil sits on your left shoulder, tempting you and this is why you throw salt over your left shoulder – to blind him. Well, if this photo from the National Post’s website is any guide to eternal temptations, it places Bob Rae right in the ‘hot’ seat.

All the talk this past month about the Liberal Party of Canada and the National New Democratic Party merging in to a new ‘SuperParty’ called the Liberal Democrats has pundit tongues wagging furiously from every side of the political spectrum.  While the leadership of each party is quickly denying that this is happening, the truth is likely that this was a trial balloon, raised by the parties involved to measure if this idea has wings in the wider Canadian public’s opinion.

I for one really like the idea.  There are a number of really compelling reasons for each party to get solidly behind such a merger, but in the end the most important reason is power.

  • The NDP will not likely form a government in my lifetime, they are just too extreme in opinion or too beholden to unions for far too many Canadians to trust them with the future of their nation.
  • The Liberals have the great challenge of forming a majority government without a traditional support base from Quebec that has been permanently usurped by the BQ.  These ridings are never coming back as the most likely future of these seats will reside in a foreign nation.
  • The Conservative Party resisted amalgamation for much of the decade after Mulroney left the party a ghost of its 1984 power zenith.  Only through the elimination of vote splitting between competing right-wind parties did the right had any realistic hope of forming government.
  • Merger with like minded competitors has a very potent and successful track record in recent Canadian electoral history;
    • Consider the ‘BC Liberal’ Party in British Columbia – formed out of the ashes of the Social Credit and Liberal Parties when they merged together in the early 1990s and are now in power.
    • The Wildrose Alliance Party in Alberta – formed out of the  merger of the Alberta Alliance Party and the Wildrose Party.  Some political commentators (and politicians) fear that this young party will form the next political dynasty in Alberta.
    • The Saskatchewan Party –  a party that was formed out of the rump of Grant Devine’s Saskatchewan Progressive Conservatives and some frustrated members of the provincial Liberal Party now in power.

Of course, the biggest obstacle to this proposal moving forward is the entrenched interests.  There are plenty of people in both the federal Liberal and NDP parties who are very comfortable with the roles and privileges that they currently enjoy that may not come their way in a Liberal Democrat party.  In this case, however, the courage of a commitment to something bigger than one’s own self interest must overcome comfort.

Hopefully the results of this trial balloon will lead to brave and bold moves to form Canada’s next great federal party – the Canadian Liberal Democratic Party.  As the right succeeded by blending in the more extreme Reform / Alliance in with the historic Progressive Conservative Party, so too must the Liberals meld together with the NDP – and provide Canadians with a single and stronger left-wing federal option to counter the now-unified right.  To fail to do so will result in a long power drought for the Liberal Party of Canada.

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Stealing Our Culture

May 25

Posted by Ron in Uncategorized | No Comments

Jasper Totem PoleThis is a copy of the letter I sent earlier today to Jim Prentice, Minister responsible for Parks Canada.

Mr. Prentice,

I am writing to you today in response to a most troubling event that I’m told you are the cause of.  A significant cultural artefact of Alberta’s 20th Century history is about to be permanently removed from our province, forever diminishing our contact with and connection to our province’s great history.

The Raven Totem Pole that has stood tall in Jasper Alberta for close to a century has, on your order, been chopped down and removed from its historical home without any public input.  The people of Jasper and Alberta are witnessing the forced removal of one of our historic artefacts that for almost a century helped to commemorate and mark the successful completion of The Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert through Jasper.

Generations of Canadians and global travellers have encountered this totem pole as they have arrived in Jasper by rail.  The great Haida skill that created these beautiful carvings inspired the leadership of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad to celebrate and share this great art with travellers at key points along its great length.  Thanks to Jasper’s aired climate its totem pole is probably the only surviving sample of 19th century Haida carving and now you intend on permanently removing this historic artefact from its Alberta home.

As you know, The Parks Canada Agency Act was created in 1998 with the specific and legal charge “to protect the nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage in national parks…in view of their special role in the lives of Canadians and the fabric of the nation, to present that heritage…giving expression to our identity as Canadians…to protect conserve and present that heritage…to commemorate places, people and events of national historic significance…to ensure the commemorative integrity of national historic sites…to protect heritage railway stations and the heritage character of federal heritage buildings…for this and future generations..”

With respect to this totem pole, which Parks Canada acquired with the 2000 purchase of the Jasper Heritage Railway Station from CN, you sir have not met the charge made to you by being the Minister responsible for enforcing this Act.

The removal of this Alberta artefact is the cause of at least three violations of the Parks Canada Act;

  1. Removing the original totem pole, with the intent of returning it to the west coast will ensure that what remains of this nationally historic art will soon, as is the Haida custom, rot to oblivion – stealing the opportunity from future generations of Canadians to physically experience a Haida carving from the 1800s.  I believe that this violates section (a) of the Parks Canada Agency Act, where you are charged with protecting Canada’s cultural heritage.
  2. I agree that removing this totem pole from its existing outdoor location was a prudent move to protect both the public and the pole itself from harm should it topple.  However, removing this pole from the town where it was deliberately placed and stood for close to a century deprives Canadians from being able to experience this art in the location it was meant to be in.  The Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad acquired this totem pole from the Haida and there has been no outstanding claim of theft or malfeasance on the part of those visionaries who knew that promoting Haida culture in this manner would enhance and expand Canadian culture.  Removing this artefact from Alberta impoverishes its citizens and culture and casts a questionable shadow on the respect and dignity that should be extended to the thousands who toiled for years to give us the great northern route to the Pacific.  Failing to ensure that this historic artefact remains in its Jasper home is an abrogation of Parks Canada’s responsibility to present that heritage to Canadians.
  3. The decision by your department to deface this totem pole by stripping it of its colourful paint has not only permanently damaged the pole, but it has also cast a revisionist pall over the history of this Jasper jewel.  The reliefs on this pole were colourfully painted numerous times by its owners as a means to both protect and enhance this landmark.  Removing this embellishment is akin to tearing down the Jasper Railway station because it isn’t the actual original station.  The Act doesn’t direct Parks Canada to perform revisionist presentation, but to “to protect heritage railway stations and the heritage character of federal heritage buildings”

I call on you, Minister Prentice, to stop the destruction and theft of an important Alberta cultural and social icon.  While I understand the desire to bring to Jasper a new Haida-built totem pole, this does not negate the ownership and value of the original totem pole.  There have been no Alberta-wide public consultations that I am aware of to measure the willingness of Albertans to simply give up one of their treasures that has been entrusted to us by our forbearers as a celebration of their great accomplishments.  Your decision to unilaterally remove one of our young province’s cherished historic artefacts is something that future generations will surely question and rue.

I ask that you cancel this project and instead invest in an appropriate facility in Jasper where this beautiful example of the community’s first and probably greatest public art can continue to be presented, protected and preserved for the enjoyment of our and future generations of Canadians.

Ron McMahon

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On Guard For Thee?

May 20

Posted by Ron in Civil Service, Democracy | No Comments

Canadian SoldierLast week’s announcement by the Federal Conservatives that they would be mothballing 50% of the country’s naval coastal patrol fleet showed that our country is quickly spending itself into an unsustainable debt with the war we are fighting in Afghanistan.

The Federal Government has been very reluctant in revealing solid and timely figures as to the actual cost of this war, but one outstanding civil servant, Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report (to Parliament, not the governing Conservatives who want to keep this a secret from you) last year showing that this war would end up costing at least $18,100,000,000 by 2011.

That $18 Billion dollars has to come from somewhere, and right now it is coming from debt taken on by the Federal Government, which works out to $1,500 for each household in Canada.  How long does it take you to earn $1500?  Are you happy to have been required to give up that much of your money for something that doesn’t improve your country one bit?  That is a pretty big slice of your taxes going to pay for us to ‘encourage’ Afghans to adopt democracy (or we’ll shoot them, I guess).

Rather than continue to borrow money to fund this ‘vote-or-die’ war the Federal Conservatives are hunting for spare change in the sofa.  One shinny penny was found in the idea of shutting down half of the already tiny fleet of vessels employed to guard our country against those who really do pose a direct and immediate threat to our nation’s security.  I guess forcing democracy on to the citizens of a nation on the other side of the planet is a far more worthwhile endeavour than ensuring that coastal Canadians can rest assured that someone is on guard for them.

Of course once word got round of this inane idea and Canadians began to express the foolishness of its government, the idea was withdrawn in the midst of awkward and illogical excuses as to how such a beastly idea ever saw the light of a press release.   I think that we all breathed a sigh of relief to see that the Federal Conservatives might actually value its own citizen’s safety more highly than the effort to make the Prime Minister look good for his allied partners in the Afghanistan mire.

The problem is; there are few other pennies to be pulled from the sofa, leaving yours the only other pocket to pick in order to pay the costs of this foolhardy war.

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Don’t Build Against the Inevitable

May 11

Posted by Ron in Calgary, Civil Service | No Comments

Clean To The Core AshtrayThe people in charge of the ‘Clean To The Core’ project in downtown Calgary seem to be attempting some social engineering that is bound to fail. They have the mandate to set up policies, systems and equipment that will help to make Calgary’s downtown core cleaner.   This includes adding more police to foot patrols along 7 and 8th Avenues, installing additional garbage cans and newspaper recycling bins along C-Train stations.

In general this project has really helped to clean up the City’s core, but there is one problem with how they are approaching one aspect of this initiative.   Anyone who has spent some time people watching almost anywhere that people smoke outside buildings will note that there is a flow at these sites.  Smokers come outside and light up, puffing their way through their cancer sticks until they reach either the end or a time deadline, at which point they snuff the cigarette, leaving it either in a provided receptacle or on the ground.  At various points during the day other smokers will come along and gather the remnants of tobacco for reuse.  This is a disgusting behaviour, but it is something that we are likely to see as long as cigarettes cost money and we have the poor (forever).

The designers of the Clean to the Core project seem to have forgotten this fact and have attempted to build cigarette butt receptacles that are purposed to be inaccessible to these roving recyclers.  The result hasn’t been very pretty.  Almost every one of these receptacles has been vandalized as someone has violently acted against it in an effort to unlock its treasure (there is literally a lock on these units).  The end state is a broken receptacle and a pile of ash and butts all over the ground, resulting in an even bigger mess than existed before the receptacle was installed.

By attempting to prevent the inevitable these designers have set themselves up to fail.  What they should have done is recognize the reality of this behaviour and designed policies and receptacles that both facilitate and take advantage of this behaviour.  It can be done and it is not that hard to do.

When was the last time you saw a pop can lying in the gutter or on the street downtown for two days straight?  Probably never.  This is because we pay people real money if they hand them in to a recycling depot.  This decades-old policy has prevented the mass littering of our streets, given the poor an incentive-based reward for effort and has ensured that billions of tonnes of metal and glass is effectively and efficiently recycled.

While there may not be the ability to physically recycle cigarette butts in to new products like we can with pop cans, we can apply the same principle of deposit and return on each cigarette filter.  Applying a 10 cent recycling fee to the cost plus a 5 cent environmental levy to pay for the program and volia! The scourge of cigarette butts littering our streets would be gone overnight.

The same innovative thinking needs to be extended to other items that are currently recycled for a fee, like bottles and cans.  As with the newspaper recycling bins at the C-Train stations, the City needs to install can and bottle recycling bins that would be designed in such a way that they easily facilitate the removal of contents by those who gather these valuables for recycling.  Such a design has to be durable and safe for all its users and so what if someone other than a City employee empties the bin, the $1.50 worth of cans it contains SAVES the city money by not requiring a civic employee to go and empty the bin, freeing them to focus on keeping the rest of the C-Train system Clean to the Core.

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When Worlds Collide

May 10

Posted by Ron in Democracy | No Comments

Gattaca Movie Poster

Happy Mother’s Day.

One of my all-time favourite television series has to be Connections with James Burke.  What I’ve always found so appealing with the show is how Burke is able to knit together a riveting story of progress in the face of ignorance and challenge spiced with a generous helping of accident and luck.

One of the show’s common themes is that how our world is today, especially when it comes to technology, was no certainty.  So many technological leaps that have brought us the world we have now are shown to be the result of happenstance and accident, where one incredible discovery or another would not have happened save for a chance meeting or incidental interest.  Burke shows that those who are responsible for so many of our fantastic leaps of knowledge and understanding are often not those whom we’d expect.  It most often isn’t the leaders or the wisest or those who are solely engaged in research and study who’ve come up with the truly transformative ideas, observations and applications, rather it is those in the shadows, the cast-offs or those whom society has chosen to demean, dehumanize and disregard.

God works that way, of course.  1 Corinthians 1:18-30 covers it quite well and it is summarized in verses 27-28: “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are…” We have a line of history so rich in western culture that shows this to be true again and again, yet our culture actively refuses to acknowledge it.

The world of faith and the world of science have been colliding for centuries, probably long before Galileo fell out of favour with the Pope.  While the two have long since come to agreement with the construction of the solar system, there still remains a vast gulf between what God tells us about the world and the workings of the universe and what science thinks it knows and is furiously trying to prove. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him…”

Humanity is constantly trying to pursue wisdom, knowledge and understanding.  The Bible provides a great foundation upon which to work from in our fundamental understandings of the universe (cosmology), human nature (psychiatry), our sinful nature (sociology, economics, criminology, social biology, etc. etc.).  I’m not saying that one should consider the Bible to be an end-point of knowledge, but if you solely look at it as a book of wisdom (rather than God’s message of love to you) written 2000-3500 years ago, it stands up pretty well as something that gives us guideposts and basic principles upon which to set forth from and on to greater human knowledge and understanding.

Our technology has now advanced to such a degree that we now can know things that used to be a surprise, like the sex of a child before birth.  Our research in to genetics and our natural human biases (the sin of pride,  jealousy and covetousness) have combined to create a world where we now murder our children before they are even born.  The ancients (whom modernists scoff at as primitive) fell under the spell of thinking that sacrificing your first-born son to Moloch would bring prosperity to a family.  Have we really advanced from that point of view and behaviour or have the worlds of science and human selfishness collided in this new genocide?

Since science is the modern religion, and those who practice science are its priests, we trust them to lead us in our worship.  Mothers are poked and prodded, scanned and sized almost from the moment they conceive.  We are told that this effort is all about ensuring that mother and baby are well, but what isn’t spoken is the ‘what if’, the consequences of an unexpected discovery.  Last year in Canada alone 100,000 children were victims of abortion.  The ancients have nothing on us when it comes to sacrificing our children to help ensure that we are successful and prosperous.  After all, we are told that to give birth to an imperfect child will cost us dearly, first in expensive healthcare and then, more importantly, this child will cost us opportunities to see first steps, or to hear first words or to experience great academic report cards.  By choosing this easy ‘therapeutic’ path our modern sacrifice to Moloch is once again putting the desires and interests of the powerful ahead of the weak.

Perhaps you don’t think that this is really happening, if so I challenge you to keep your eyes open for children <15 years old who are in wheel chairs, or who walk with wrist or arm crutches.  When was the last time you saw a young Canadian child with a cleft-lip or any other typically common birth defect?  No, these children are incredibly rare today because they are being killed before they are even born, sacrificed on the Molochular altar of convenience.  Mothers are being told that this is for the best, freeing them to have another child next year that can be the perfect child they always wanted.

The prospects for the future are even more dim. The movie GATTACA is a fine example of what we are likely to end up with in respect to being able to some day determine a child’s entire life capability and span with an instant scan of DNA.  Unlike the movie, such as scan would happen in-utero, and will likely result in another jump in the number of children denied the right to a life on the basis of someone else’s evaluation of their value.

The movie GATTACA presents a great argument as to why such pre-determinism is wrong and anti-human.  It is a story of the human spirit, which (so far) can’t be measured or quantified as a ratio on which to determine one’s right to life.  It is a story of one man’s determination to be more than science told him that he could be and another man’s repudiation of his perfection, and like one of James Burke’s great tales of human discovery and innovation we see how our greatest value is not in how strong our bones, muscles or mind is, but in the shape and strength of our character.

What mother wouldn’t choose a child of great character above all other characteristics?  I don’t think that we’ll ever get to a point where we will be able to quantify a person’s character before birth, perhaps God will keep us from such a discovery by “[destroying] the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”  And that is a good thing.

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Monkey in the Middle

May 7

Posted by Ron in Calgary, Civil Service, Democracy | No Comments

Not a happy monkeyIf you are like me, you are filled with mixed emotions when you recall what it was like to play Monkey in the Middle as a child.

You know the game; gather three together and try to keep the ball from being intercepted by the person in the middle as it is thrown between the two other players.

When the game is played with unequally sized children (with the smallest typically ending up in the middle) It is an experience of frustration for the ‘monkey’ and a thrilling power trip for the ones passing amongst themselves.
The leaders of Alberta’s School Boards must be feeling like they’ve been invited to play in yet another round of Monkey in the Middle.
This time the player who brought the ball, Dave Hancock the Alberta Minister of Education, is playing keep-away along with parents of all Alberta students.
The schoolboard trustees are left in the middle, trying their best to wrestle away the ball from the bigger and more powerful players who’ve made all the rules and seem assured of victory no matter how hard one tries.
The real problem here is the fact that this is no mere game, regardless of what taxpayers and the minister may try to tell you.  Careers and the quality of our children’s education is what is on the line in this ‘game’. The minister keeps on playing coy as if he thinks that it will all ‘work out ok in the end’, and tells school board leadership to go and use up funds that have been socked away for other purposes just to cover the bills brought on by his government’s agreements.
This is no game.
It is time that this Honourable Member showed real leadership and rather than playing games with the public and those entrusted with educating the next generation, he should be taking this matter seriously and sitting down with all involved and developing a real strategy and plan for ensuring that sufficient, sustainable and secure funding for education is in place regardless of the daily winds of economic change that blow around this province.
To fail to do so  is simply an aping of leadership.

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Get Off The Road!

May 6

Posted by Ron in Calgary, Civil Service, Democracy | No Comments

Rail Diesel CarThe Alberta Government is about to finally release $470 million of the $2 billion that it set aside 2 years ago to help fund ‘innovative transportation ideas’ in its Green Trip transit fund.

Today’s Calgary Herald has an article that covers these facts and for once I have to congratulate the Conservative minister of Transportation, Luke Ouellette because he is complaining that “most transit ideas haven’t been ‘innovative’ enough.”

He’s right!

None of the proposals identified in the article for the use of these funds call for the purchase or subsidy for the lease of Rail Diesel Cars like the one on the left.  These units are still very plentiful, as Industrial Rail Services in Moncton, NB has focused on gathering a large fleet and preparing them for rebuilding to 21st century standards.  A few weeks ago the Federal Government announced a $12.6 million dollar contract to have six units rebuilt by Industrial Rail Services for use across northern Ontario.

VIA Rail used to run this type of train between Edmonton and Calgary, but that stopped decades ago.  There is also a lot of talk about building a high-speed rail service between the Capital and Calgary and that is a great idea, but what we also need is a viable and quickly available commuter solution.

Those of you who live in Calgary will know that today we were hit with yet another big snow storm that brought Deerfoot Trail and other roadways to a standstill.   It is ironic that our ‘leaders’ are clamouring to bring us ever more road-based transit ‘solutions’ when a superior and cost competitive option is available.  I’d like to propose to the minister that his department consider funding a 2-year trial run of The Calgary Clipper commuter rail service between Airdrie and downtown Calgary.  This would be a service that won’t get stuck when our already overloaded roadways get greasy and it will make a huge difference in our CO2 emissions to boot!

What do you think about The Calgary Clipper? Do you think that we should get ‘All Aboard’ this idea or are the more traditional bus-based solutions that Calgary and its commuter communities are pitching a better option for the minister to fund?

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