hyphenated - Home

September 28, 2009 4:54 PM

glee

Jill had mentioned that it had promise, but I hadn't heard anything else about it. Then, last Wednesday, I stumbled across this while flipping through the channels after a terrible show, one that I somehow find myself watching despite its terribleness (yes, Tyra is involved), ended:

And I'm now hooked. There's something about the sarcastic humour and the sense that the show doesn't take itself too seriously that I quite enjoy. After watching the first few episodes, I agree with Jill - Glee has potential.

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September 22, 2009 7:14 PM

random dialogue

I'm not one to strike up random conversations with strangers. It's just not my nature. Whether I'm on a plane or waiting for the bus, I tend to keep to myself. Often, I'm so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I forget that I'm surrounded by people. Friends who see me walking down the street usually have to make a concerted attempt to get my attention because otherwise I'm oblivious to their presence.

Despite my tendencies to be contained within my own mental bubble, I had two atypical encounters with strangers this past weekend.

relaying the message

(A bus stop in downtown Vancouver on a busy street, early on a sunny autumn afternoon. I'm standing at the bus stop, getting impatient because the #20 bus is late and I'm late. Tall girl in long summer dress approaches, Blackberry in hand.)

Tall girl: I'm trying to send a text, but I can't spell relayed. R-I- (trails off)

Me: Relay?

Tall girl: You know, like, um, relaying a message?

Me: Yeah

Tall girl: Do you know?

Me: R-E-L-

Tall girl: Hang on... R-E-L-? (thumbs frantically typing)

Me: A-Y-E-D (glancing up the street to see if the bus is coming yet)

Tall girl: (more frantic typing) Yes! That's right!

Me: Yes, it is.

Tall girl: Thanks! (yelling over her shoulder as she runs up the street)

Me: No worries (looking up street, still no sign of the #20)

diversifying diet

(At the local fruit and veggie store late on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The small, cramped store is very crowded. I'm scanning the veggie counter for potential ingredients for the roasted veggies I plan to make for dinner. My basket contains carrots and a sweet potato and I reach for a bulb of fennel. A twentysomething guy wearing hipster glasses standing beside me looks over.)

Hipster guy: What are those?

Me: Oh, fennel. Fennel bulbs

Hipster guy: How do you eat them? (quizzical look on his face)

Me: It has a light licorice flavour. You can chop them up fine and put them in salads or you can roast them. But you want to cut this part off (pointing to the stems) because they're tough. But you can keep these bits (pointing at the dill-like fronds)

Hipster guy: Oh, thanks. I'm trying to diversify and try new vegetables. Those looked interesting.

Me: Oh, well, have a good evening (I put a fennel bulb in my basket, hipster guy grabs a turnip)

Filed under // Vancouver

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September 19, 2009 11:25 AM

got milk?

Recent dairy-related news, from Lily and the CBC, got me thinking about milk. The CBC story concluded that "despite decades of being largely exempt from free market forces, farmers have not been protected by governments from the global financial crisis that caused demand to crash" while Lily noted that "dairy farmers are experiencing a tough time. Of the price paid by us consumers for a litre of milk, 37% goes to the processor, 42% goes to the supermarket and a miserable 21% goes to the farmer" in Ireland.

The times are changing or perhaps, as the information above suggests, they have already changed. Is what was once considered a staple of the North American and European diet becoming less ubiquitous? Are dairy farms becoming less viable?

If the trend in my own consumption of milk is any indication, it would seem that the answer is yes. Over the past five years, my personal consumption of milk has decreased substantially. Growing up, a glass of milk with dinner was the norm and through CEGEP and my undergrad a bowl of Cheerios with milk was my typical breakfast. Now, I will occasionally have a glass of milk - usually to accompany chocolate, cake, or cookies. The reasoning behind the decline in my milk consumption is rooted in a few factors, the largest probably being my relationship and cohabitation with an Asian man. As his consumption of meat has dropped since we started living together, so has my intake of milk.

Obviously, I'm not prepared to defend the claim that my dietary fluctuations are in any way representative so I did some research. A few findings, based on USDA data:

Consumption of milk is dropping

Consumption of sweet dairy products is on the rise

Consumption of savory dairy products is also increasing

Subsidies
Forecasted Milk income loss program payments in 2009: $1.1 billion

The USDA Farm Service Agency's (FSA) MILC Program supports the dairy industry by providing direct counter-cyclical style payments to milk producers on a monthly basis when the Boston Federal Milk Marketing Order Class I price for fluid milk falls below the benchmark of $16.94 per hundredweight (cwt.) Source

Prices (The first graph is 2008 data)

Click here to download:

got_milk.zip (29 KB)

I'm sure I've only just scratched the surface in the depth and breadth of my research, but the preliminary results seem interesting nonetheless.

The data I dug up and presented here shows the trend away from the consumption of unadulterated milk, which seems to coincide with the obsolescence of milkmen. As an aside, there are little wooden boxes with doors that have been nailed shut embedded in the walls beside each door in my building. I can only guess that they were for the daily milk delivery because they're about the same size as a milk bottle (which I'm lucky enough to still be able to purchase my milk in, thanks to Avalon).

Consumption of value-added dairy products is one the rise (although demand for eggnog seems stable), but farmers get a smaller cut of the revenues on the sale of these products as compared to milk. As a result, the overall share of the value transmitted to the farmer is going down.

The interesting thing here, and it is alluded to in the CBC article, is that demand for milk used to be considered inelastic. Milk was a staple - everyone got it delivered to their door on a daily basis and changes in price or income would have very minor impacts on demand. However, an increasing percentage of dairy is being consumed as ice cream and cheese and other value-added products. Demand for these is probably more elastic - as prices rise or incomes drop, people are likely to omit these items from their grocery list. As such, with the recession, it is not surprising that farmers are feeling the pinch and that subsidies are on the rise.

Filed under // food

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September 12, 2009 4:53 PM

the common bond between seafood and books

What do books and seafood have in common?

Unfortunately, there is no hilarious punch-line (at least that I'm aware of). But, a Vancouverite who gives the question enough thought might come up with the answer I had in mind: Joe Fortes.

I've lived in Vancouver for five years and in the West End for over three years, within walking distance of the Joe Fortes branch of the Vancouver Public Library and the Joe Fortes Seafood Restaurant. And, despite the references, I only discovered today who Joe Fortes is.

I stubbled upon the story of Joe Fortes quite by accident while perusing one of my favorite websites: the City of Vancouver Archives photo site. I love using the search feature to type in local landmarks and West End street names to get a glimpse of what the city looked like before the era of concrete apartment buildings and glass condominiums.

This morning, I searched for Stanley Park and found these gems, dating from 1890s and early 1900s:

Then, I queried "English Bay", with the following being a small sample of the results:

The first photo was captioned: "Joe (Seraphim) Fortes in front of his tent at English Bay". Who was Joe Fortes, exactly?

❝ One of the best-known of British Columbia's early Black pioneers would have to be Seraphim "Joe" Fortes, a man who has had much written about his presence in Vancouver from 1885 to 1922. Despite the many words describing his life in Vancouver, however, very little appears to be known about the man himself... [H]e arrived in Vancouver aboard a three-masted barque ... eventually settling in a small cottage on English Bay near Stanley Park. With his home so close to the water, it is no surprise that he became the official lifeguard and keeper of the beach, where he saved many lives and taught hundreds of children how to swim. Archival notes attribute Joe with establishing English Bay as a primary swimming beach for 'the residents of Vancouver. The location today is still one of the most popular swimming and sunbathing areas in the Lower Mainland. (via the Black Historical Cultural Society)

❝Seraphim “Joe” Fortes ... was a former sailor, originally from Barbados and then Liverpool, and a legendary figure in the early history of Vancouver, Canada. After moving to the city in 1885 (the year before it was incorporated), he worked as a labourer and bartender (at the Sunnyside Hotel on Maple Tree Square in Gastown), then became a fixture at English Bay Beach, where he lived in a small cottage, acted as unofficial security guard, and taught hundreds of children how to swim. The city appointed the burly, friendly man, who had been a competitive swimmer in England, as its first official lifeguard at the turn of the twentieth century.
When he died in 1922, Vancouver held a record-breaking funeral procession for Fortes, which was especially unusual because he was one of the city's few black citizens at the time. Even in the twenty-first century, Vancouverites remember him with a monument near the site of his home, a branch of the Vancouver Public Library, and a well-known downtown restaurant, named after him when it opened in 1985, one hundred years after he arrived in Canada.

(via Wikipedia)

I now find myself wishing I had known the history of Joe Fortes sooner, because I don't think that most people in Vancouver know about him and I'd have liked to spread the word. My sense is that, when asked "what do you know about Joe Fortes?", Vancouverites are more likely to describe the roof-top patio or the menu than the black man that lived near English Bay and taught people how to swim.

Some more photos of Joe, from the Archives:

And a couple more photos of Stanley Park (the first - taken near Second Beach) and English Bay (the second one - view of what is now Kits Beach from the West End)

Click here to download:

the_common_bond_between_seafoo.zip (107 KB)

(I had attached more photos, but they seemed to have disappeared en route from my email to Posterous. I encourage you to check out the Archives site - it's "win")

Filed under // Canada Vancouver

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September 12, 2009 12:36 AM

the other side

As per a few previous posts, Vancouver is a great place to live. In preparing to leave, I can't help but take stock of all I will miss. Stanley Park. English Bay. Cheap sushi. Waffles. Japadog. Walking just about everywhere. "Socialism".

But, there are some things that I won't miss. Ridiculous housing prices. Rain. The Olympics. The discourse associate with the Downtown Eastside.

I dislike what the Downtown Eastside represents: Failure. Not the failure of individuals - most of the people who reside in the alleys and parks and "hotels" in the neighborhood are victims of the the failure of society. Failure to address the bigger issues. Homelessness and drug abuse are not the problems - they are symptoms. Matt Good said it well in an interview earlier this week on Q:

To play mp3s in your browser, you will need to have Javascript turned on and have Flash Player 9 or better installed.

As stated, the Olympics add insult to injury. Whenever the suggestion is made that more funds and resources be dedicated to replace Band-Aid solutions with more effective (and costly) programs that would better address the ills that result in the symptoms displayed daily in the Downtown Eastside, the response is that it can't be done. We don't have the funds. The resources don't exist. But when it is suggested that taxpayer money fund a massive sporting event, the barriers miraculously drop. For example, public funds are helping to cover the costs of the Olympic village, which includes units that are breaking the bank despite being classified as affordable, while thousands live on the streets because we can't afford to provide adequate and appropriate social programs.

The rhetoric has been repeated time and again. The rhetoric is rooted in legacy. By hosting the Games, short-term costs and inconveniences will result in long term gains. Better public transit (e.g., SkyTrain to YVR), new sports facilities (e.g., the Richmond Olympic Oval), memories (e.g., volunteering at a venue or dancing in the Opening Ceremony). And on and on.

I've lived in a city that has hosted the Olympics. The rosy legacy seems to fade quickly and, in some cases, very suddenly (not unlike chucks of concrete falling from above). Debt was ultimately the legacy of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. I'll be surprised if debt isn't the predominant legacy of the 2010 Games too. Rhetoric versus reality.

And the debt incurred to host the Games will be yet another reason why we can't afford to provide the necessary services and programs to address the systemic issues in the Downtown Eastside and, as a result, must continue to rely on Band-Aids instead, like cops acting as front-line mental health workers.

I won't miss waking up at 2am to the screams of a schizophrenic man being shoved into a paddy wagon because he was disturbing the peace.

Filed under // Vancouver

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September 4, 2009 12:20 AM

vital stats

Leave it to Twitter to raise some interesting questions to ponder. One that came up in my stream recently:

Would you be dead or alive if there was no western medicine during your lifetime?

via @finitor via @iangogame

Having given it quite a bit of thought, I don't know. Before the age at which I can recall events vividly, I had an asthma attack that resulted in being taken to the hospital and given a mask with some meds (I only remember the mask because I got to take it home and we played doctor with it for years after). It was the one and only asthma incident in my life and I'm not sure if I would've died without modern medicine, but it seems to be the closest I ever came.

Actually, the closest I probably ever came to dying was caused by modern medicine. I inherited a lazy eye such that I had double vision until it was surgically corrected when I was five. During the surgery, my heart started beating irregularly and may have stopped for a brief period. After diagnostic testing post-surgery, the conclusion was that I had an adverse reaction to the anesthetic. While modern medicine allows me to see straight most of the time (when I'm really tired, my left eye has a tendency to drift off center to this day - sexy, I know), it also threatened my very existence.

The question also got me thinking about something I've pondered a bit in the past: how has modern medicine impacted gene frequencies within the population? I started contemplating this when a friend of mine was speculating on the reasons for the increased prevalence of allergies amongst children.

source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db10.pdf

I've heard the hypotheses about the links between immunizations, cleanliness, etc. and allergies, but I've yet to be convinced and I'm sticking to my theory: more and more people with potentially fatal food allergies are surviving to reproduce (due to modern medicine) and, as a result, the prevalence of food allergies is increasing. My theory is that modern medicine is to some extent responsible for the rise in allergies. Modern medicine has essentially transformed traits that once greatly compromised a person's fitness into traits that are almost inconsequential from a Darwinian perspective.

Back in the day, if you were unknowingly allergic to peanuts as a child and ate a peanut you'd probably go into anaphylactic shock and die, such that the genes that contributed to the allergy would not propagate. Today, children with severe peanut allergies are more likely to survive allergic reactions (due to advances in modern medicine), learn to avoid peanuts, and live to reproduce. And, the gene(s) responsible for the allergy are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. And so on, with the frequency of the gene(s) and the number of people with the allergy increasing with every subsequent generation.

Just some more food for thought.

Filed under // food science & technology

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August 30, 2009 5:14 PM

personas

While exploring Posterous earlier, I discovered Personas, an interesting site that deciphers how the internet sees you. The site's philosophy:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

So, I punched in my name and, once the information had been compiled, this is what I got:

Having Googled myself in the past, I know that my name usually comes up in relation to my academic pursuits. So, the references to management, professional, and education were not surprising. I'm still scratching my head as to how online, sports, art, and fashion were extracted - I suppose that these are examples of the inadvertent errors, although, given that my name is essentially a unique identifier, I highly doubt that the errors are the result of confusion with other people with the same name.

Then I did the same exercise with my handle (or whatever ariannerh is called - I seem to remember Kevin referring to it as a handle). I haven't included my surname on my Twitter or Posterous accounts, so the data used to formulate the results using ariannerh shouldn't overlap with those used when I entered my name. And, the results were remarkably different:

As one might expect, the online persona that I have consciously created through tweets and blogging seems to be much more representative of who I perceive myself to be, although the emphasis on fame is puzzling. Good to know that the persona that I've cultivated is slightly less illegal and much more social than the persona that has been subconsciously created based on my "real life" pursuits.

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August 29, 2009 10:09 PM

carpe diem

Summer is coming to an end. I can hardly believe that September is right around the corner, bringing with it the inevitable rain and grey that define winter in Vancouver. I'm interested to discover what winter holds further south on the Pacific coast, but I'm not ready to see the end of another fabulous Vancouver summer. So, after a productive morning of shopping (found a dress to wear to my friend's wedding next weekend and it was on sale - bonus!) and catching up with family on the phone, I called Andrew to see if he was up for a game of pitch and putt, which he was.

Having spent the afternoon catching up with Andrew while clubbing a ball around the fringes of Stanley Park, I'm coming to terms with how much I'm going to miss this city. To think that I live 20 minutes (walking) from the downtown core, yet can walk 10 minutes in the opposite direction to play a round of golf amongst the resident geese while the afternoon fades into evening and the crimson sun sets over the ocean ... I don't think you can get that anywhere else.

While there are elements of Vancouver that I don't appreciate, the five years that I've spent here have been filled with great afternoons just like this one because the city is developed such that one can conveniently enjoy the beauty of the environment in which it's situated. No escape plans necessary. While it becomes easy to take it for granted, with the summer winding down and the move to San Francisco looming, this afternoon was fully appreciated.

Filed under // family & friends Vancouver

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August 26, 2009 4:28 PM

the true north strong and free

I was up in the Yukon and Alaska for work earlier this week and would love to go back on a road trip so I could have more time to soak in the spectacular scenery (rather than snap photos of it from inside a moving vehicle).

Click here to download:

the_true_north_strong_and_free.zip (5632 KB)

Filed under // Canada

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August 23, 2009 1:38 PM

california

I knew that there were a lot of songs about California, but I had no clue that there were this many. I came across this video yesterday and was reminded how much Joni Mitchell's music resonates with me. Her voice brings me back to wonderful weekends at home on the farm (my parents are fans) and her lyrics are rich, evocative, simple, and strong.

Filed under // books & art

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