Latest Twitterance:

@ianb: I promised @mainsocial I wouldn't say anything bad about this (Vancouver bike lanes set to expand): http://t.co/nABPkWrH 3 hrs ago

The US Health Care Debate

August 13, 2009

American politics are so polarized at the moment around the issue of health care that it’s hard to envision a favourable outcome.  I would define a favourable outcome as a more cost-efficient system that guarantees coverage for all American citizens and provides non-elective treatment for free — or, at least, on a co-pay basis that [...]

Read the full article →

The Drug Trade in BC: You’re Soaking In It..

August 6, 2009

British Columbia’s economy has remained relatively bouyant through the global economic turmoil.  One example of this is home prices… whereas Real Estate in popular cities like Los Angeles, Miami, and others have experienced 20%-40% declines amid massive economic carnage — Vancouver (and, by extension, the rest of the province) has not been nearly as hard [...]

Read the full article →

The Chevy Volt: Why there’s no hope for Big Auto

September 18, 2008

File this item under the “triumph of compromise and the death of innovation” category, dear readers. Here is a car I would be delighted to buy, unveiled in January 2007 — The Chevy Volt concept car: It’s a car so popular that it was requested for the upcoming Transformers movie by the director. Graceful, aggressive [...]

Read the full article →

World Bank weighs in on ethanol

April 14, 2008

Finally, some common sense! On Friday in the Guardian World Bank head Robert Zoellick was quoted while speaking at an IMF meeting, saying that “in the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others [...]

Read the full article →

The End of Cheap Food

December 20, 2007

This, dear friends, is a headline which should scare you.  Last week’s The Economist featured this rather alarmist (but accurate) headline on the cover.  And you should all pay heed.  Food is of course a benchmark for inflation, and among peoples in differing classes its price has served as a great equalizer.  When food costs more, we [...]

Read the full article →

William McDonough’s Talk @ TED

August 29, 2007

Through various chicanes and twists I stumbled today on a 20-minute talk from TED 2005 by architect and designer William McDonough. There is of course much discussion of sustainability at events like this, but moreso than most he’s a guy who’s walking the walk. The video describes a building complex designed for The Gap headquarters [...]

Read the full article →

Ethanol is Sparking an Agribubble

July 5, 2007

The law of unintended consequences can be a bitch. When you meddle with the natural order of things, imbalances inevitably occur. Regulators (because that’s what they do) observe the imbalances and add more meddling regulations in an attempt to counteract them — creating yet further imbalances. The end result is what you have today: an [...]

Read the full article →

Ethanol is an addiction we can do without…

May 25, 2007

I am reading with increasing dismay about the steady march of Ethanol into the North American psyche as an alternative to buying fuel in the form of light, sweet crude oil from those mean, nasty Arabs. On the surface the idea behind biodiesel and ethanol is appealing and touches all of the perceived pain points [...]

Read the full article →

Warning Labels on Fat Kids

July 14, 2005

Some folks wanna put warning labels on Soft Drinks. I think that, just to be sure, the US should install warning labels on all fingers indicating that putting them in proximity to one’s mouth while holding food could result in dire obesity, particularly in North America. But does anyone really think that Warning Labels are [...]

Read the full article →