Thousands of crane and heavy equipment operators go on strike. So if you needed to lift something really heavy, well, you should have done that last week.
Jordin Sparks wins American Idol. Now she will go on to have a career as brilliantly successful as Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, and that crazy dude with the prematurely white hair from last season who rips off Joe Cocker's shtick. And in ten months' time, Fox will start the whole shebang once again and we will all be vaguely interested for reasons we can't quite explain once again. It's the circle of life, people!
David Miller initiates painfully cautious pilot program to convert city's automotive fleet to plug-in hybrids. Just for purposes of comparison, New York City is both planning a downtown congestion charge and a full conversion of its taxi fleet within five years. So once again, Toronto's municipal leadership prefers that we be a pale imitation of New York City.
City contractor accidentally makes speedbump near Rouge Beach Park too high; it scrapes the bottom of cars. What the article doesn't tell you is that this is on purpose and is secretly part of David Miller's environmental plan to convince people to stop driving. (Nobody said it was a good plan.)
And Toronto FC managed a draw in a friendly game against top-tier Portuguese club Benfica.
Image by Chris Jackson from Torontoist's Flickr group.
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Hey you! Yes you with the incandescent bulb! Put in a CF so I have enough juice to plug in my car, eh?
Plugging in cars is not a solution to the smog problem. That electricity is still generated somewhere and Nanticoke is still the biggest carbon polluter in the GTA. Even if Nanticoke shuts down (or is converted) or if the power comes from another source, unless that source is renewable it still comes with an environmental cost, such as nuclear waste. Furthermore, the batteries' length of life hasn't been studied in Canada extensively (and yes, our winters will be a factor) and if they have to be replaced, how will they be disposed of? Very few of these issues seem to have been addressed. As an asthmatic, sure, I would like to see fewer smog days, and yeah, I try to do my part, but we need to start looking at broader and more intensive solutions to these things, not just another technical fix.
Yea, why should we settle for being a pale imitation of NY - lets by a full-out imitation. New York, New York, the town so nice that Toronto built another in Canada. Original thinking, who needs it?
I got an email from Tyler Hamilton (the guy who wrote the star article) after I asked him some questions - apparently the plan is that you plug in your car using offpeak baseload power (hydro and nuclear). Great idea but unless the plug points are unhackable (not standard outlets and with remote control like the Hydro aircon programme) the chances of Toronto car owners resisting the urge to plug in in daytime are small.
Regarding the comparison to New York:
Someone once told me the difference between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians count money while Americans spend it.
This is best exemplified by the collective dithering at budget time and excessive fretting about net balances at the expense of real economies of scale being introduced like a smart commuter card. The futher deferral of this means that it will cost a lot more later than now.
Nervous Nellies and collective ditherers--that's us to a T.