Greg Davis

The Harper government is supposed to announce plans on Friday to spend $16-billion – yes, $16-billion! – for a plane Canada doesn’t need.

via Just what we need: a $16-billion fighter jet – The Globe and Mail.

Yikes.

Very simple tool I have found useful at work.. surprisingly hard to find a windows 7 gadget that just gives you a simple countdown timer on your desktop that works as well as this one:

I was really inspired by http://tomatoi.st/ web service which provides an easy to use web interface for Pomodoro time management technique.

But unfortunately, tomatoi.st is down due to overload too often, so I spent 20 minutes and prepared a simple Windows 7 pomodoro gadget. It does just what’s needed – showing timers:

via Pomodoro Windows 7 gadget « Sharovatov’s Weblog.

Especially good if u just want a 25, 15, 5 minute timer and don’t need anything more than that.

Edit: I actually found this one to be more useful because you can pause and configure it.

This is very cool:

Google Scholar Alerts

Ever since we launched Google Scholar, people have asked us to help them keep up with current research. Over the years, we’ve made several improvements to help find recently published articles, including the “Recent articles” mode, a simple interface to limit search to recent years, and, of course, more frequent index updates. As the next step in this endeavor, we have recently added email alerts. Now you can create alerts for queries of your interest. When new articles that match your alert query are added to Google Scholar, we’ll send you an email update with links to these articles.

Updated list of what might actually be worth buying organic versus what not to bother with.  Or make sure you give the “dirty dozen” a good rinse.

Celery, peaches coated with the most pesticides: group – CTV News

Dirty Dozen Buy these organic	Clean 15 Lowest in pesticides
1. Celery	1. Onions
2. Peaches	2. Avocados
3. Strawberries	3. Sweet corn
4. Apples	4. Pineapples
5. U.S.-grown blueberries	5. Mango
6. Nectarines	6. Sweet peas
7. Sweet bell peppers	7. Asparagus
8. Spinach, kale and collard greens	8. Kiwi fruit
9. Cherries	9. Cabbage
10. Potatoes	10. Eggplant
11. Imported grapes	11. Cantaloupe
12. Lettuce	12. Watermelon
	13. Grapefruit
	14. Sweet potatoes
	15. Sweet onions

An excerpt of an interview posted on Warren Myer’s climate site deserves a bump in the wake of the big “environment” focused protest movement that swept Toronto this weekend:

Don’t we have a duty to protect or planet for future generations?(i.e. save it from deforestation, pollution etc)

Sure, but as I stated above, we have all kinds of duties to future generations, and not all of them have to do with the environment. But I would argue that the current obsession with small changes to trace levels of CO2 in the atmosphere has in fact gutted the environmental movement. Nothing else is getting done. Take deforestation. My personal interest is in protecting wilderness, and my charity of choice is land trusts that preserve the Amazon. But do you know the #1 cause of deforestation in the Amazon over the last decade? It was the Brazilian ethanol program, which is supposed to be fighting CO2, but now has been shown to do little or nothing for CO2 and it is incentivizing farmers to clear the Amazon to plant more switchgrass and other ethanol crops. Ditto in the US, where ethanol programs are raising food prices and adding to deforestationI would argue that CO2 is not even in the top 10 worst environmental problems in the world. Take clean water in Africa, which I do consider a top 10 problem. The only way Africans are going to get clean water is from using cheap energy to pump and treat water, cheap energy whose only really realistic source is from fossil fuels.

I actually prefer his other site Coyote Blog but both are worth subscribing to.

Had never noticed this:

Nice.

Ontario ratchets coal plant emissions cap down to 11.5 Mt beginning in 2011 – Davis LLP.

How about focusing on ratcheting down pollutants that affect local air and water quality..

In that capacity, the government issued a shareholder directive to OPG on May 20 limiting the CO2 emissions from OPG’s four coal-fired generating stations to 11.5 Mt per year. A previous directive in April 2008 set the limit for 2009 at 19.6 Mt and for this year at 15.6 Mt. The new limit established by the May 20th directive is therefore 41% lower than the 2009 limit and 26% lower than this year’s limit.

Saw this job posting for a NiCHE Project Coordinator in my inbox and thought it might be interesting for some people I know. I’m a fan of the project and would be in to this if I was looking for work..

Responsibilities
The NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment) Project Coordinator will be responsible for developing and supporting our network’s knowledge mobilization activities. The incumbent will supervise the day-to-day management of this national network, supporting and collaborating with scholars to ensure that project goals are met in a timely and efficient manner. As part of these duties, the incumbent will maintain the network’s Drupal-based content management website, creating online content regularly and encouraging others to contribute. S/he will act as a co-applicant in some grant writing, coordinate workshops and other events, organize meetings, draft reports, manage budgets, and assist with other general administrative tasks. S/he will also be involved in developing and participating in collaborative environmental history / historical geography projects with other NiCHE members. The incumbent must be energetic, self-directed, and able to work independently.

Qualifications
Education:
- Master’s degree or higher in Environmental History, Historical Geography, or a related discipline required
- Doctorate in related field preferred

Experience:
- Recent related experience in an academic or research environment
- Familiarity with issues facing Canadian researchers in History, Geography, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines is an asset, as is work on collaborative research projects

Skills & Expertise:
- Academic background, familiarity with environmental history / historical geography, SSHRC, and grant writing
- Communication skills, organization skills, problem-solving skills
- Personal qualities including: emotional intelligence, high energy, reliability, creativity, determination, passion, diplomacy, and mature and astute judgment

Wide Awake by Patricia Morrisroe (2010)

With only slight reservation, I have to recommend this book. Most books on sleep that I’ve come across are a pretty useless summary of the underdeveloped science of sleep. Written by doctors, covering the so called stages of sleep (in my opinion blunt, bogus, unhelpful), rules of sleep hygiene; I have yet to find anything other than the obvious that would be of any use to someone looking to improve their sleep. But Morrisroe’s book is a refreshing approach, weaving her personal narrative of a struggle with sleep issues in with the state of the (mostly junk) science being employed by the professionals she encounters. She is able to use a bit of a budget, presumably available to her from the book contract, to seek out every possible approach available to people who seek out help to remedy sleep issues. Everything you might want to know about is covered, from sleep studies to psychotherapy.

You’ll enjoy it particularly if you are more likely to have issues staying asleep rather than falling asleep. The author is repeatedly frustrated with the available advice being focused on how to get to sleep, when she has never had any problems with that step (rather she suffers from what is sometimes called sleep maintenance insomnia).

If you want to sample the author’s writing on the subject before investing in the book, I’d recommend these two NYT articles:
A Thousand and One Sleepless Nights
More Than Enough Hours in Every Day

My only knock on the book is that in one of her later chapters she gets a little caught up in the idea of dream analysis, where I was a bit put off by her insinuation that dreams have some sort of paranormal power to look in to the future. But when the analysis of her own psychology gets pretty deep, the insights she gains from taking a look at her unconscious is a surprising validation of Freudian thought that will leave any honest reader with lots to think about.

I’d have to include this book among a top three reads on the subject including:
Lights Out (not the best writing but a must-read nonetheless)
At Day’s Close

Yikes I know I could get hit with a few of these:

LIST OF NOTABLE FINES

including fine, court cost and victim fine surcharge

Improper bicycle lighting – $35

Fail to wear proper helmet (under 18) – $80

Two people riding on a bicycle – $110

Riding along crosswalk – $110

Disobey officer directing traffic – $110

No bell or horn on bicycle – $110

Defective bell or horn – $110

Red light, fail to stop – $190

Careless driving – $325

via Toronto cyclists feel the heat, at $325 a ticket – Posted Toronto.

I hope it doesn’t take a fine at some point to straighten me out, but I don’t have a bell on my bike and often cruise through reds if there is no traffic.  Not sure I’m a big fan of these rules.  But even the rep from the “bike union” quoted in the article seemed to fall in line with these fines..

Okay I guess if I think about it, it makes sense to have them so the cops can have a leg to stand on when enforcing stupid behavior. But to actively have cops hiding behind vans to bust people riding through reds?  Not a fan.