A study by University of British Columbia professor Larry Frank indicates that people living in neighbourhoods where there was a greater concentration of shops and are within walking distance of workplaces have less chance of being obese than those who report that they drive to do their shopping or go to work. The report ("Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity and Time Spent in Cars") seems to blame the structure of the North American suburb where most people don't live in the city but instead live in outlying areas, spending more time commuting than they do exercising. However, skeptics "...questioned the relationship, saying that more sprawling neighborhoods may simply attract less physically active people and vice versa. " Read about it here in Canoe News or here in the Washington Post. I walk to work, a round trip of 2.6 kilometres (25 minutesX2) but I've also been looking for a car replacement. But then, I'm not fat. On another note, I phoned around on the weekend trying to find a place that would let me test drive the new Toyota Prius. The most common response I got was that they were selling sight-unseen and that I would have to wait in line to buy it. One sales person said that there simply weren't any Priuses in Vancouver that could be test driven. By coincidence, today on the way to work there was a Prius parked in the concourse of the federal government building a block from my office as an environmental display. On Toyota's website, there is a note talking about the shortage of models. Perhaps I should convince someone at the display to let me drive it off.

Not everything is sunny skies up ahead. According to U.S. authorities, al Qaeda is planning a major attack on the U.S. this summer and have law enforcement and various agencies scurrying to find the minions of bin Laden wherever they are in North America. Just two days ago, a man threw pellets of a hazardous substance onto a bus just outside my office building. It turned out to be an industrial pesticide. Everyone was released after observation. This summer, of course, the Olympics will be held in Athens. From what I hear, the terrorists themselves might despair of getting anything done in that city given its massive traffic and organization problems. Still, preparations for emergency personnel must go on. In Virginia, there is a sort of theme park for disaster relief workers. The Center for National Response is a 2500 foot long abandoned highway tunnel that is used to simulate large scale disasters for exercises. The inside is frequently remade to simulate biological attacks, WMDs, spills, and other mayhem. Fires, wreckage, actors screaming in panic and sporting gory wounds are often so realistic that some participants have been known to quit. Compared to my last trip to a Disney park, that actually sounds fun.

Interesting parallels come up in reading history and in watching the news develop in Iraq. At the same time as the U.S. struggles to regain direction in that far away land, I'm reading in Donald Kagan's "The Peleponnesian War" of similar internal and external disputes that eventually caused the decline of the Athenian empire. In its 'world war' against the Spartan oligarchy, the Athenian democracy was wracked with internal conflict between citizens who pressed for aggressive actions against the Spartan league and other citizens advocated softer, more moderate approaches. Each side pressed their case in the Athenian assembly, each gaining in turn a chance to affect the path of the Athenian foreign policy. Meanwhile, Sparta, in its restricted assembly (a few thousand citizens ruling over a majority of slaves and lesser subjects), still had to convince its own electorate to support the strategy of its leaders. Of course, this is in the era direct democracy. In Athens, many thousands were elgible to attend the debates but in practice only a few hundred to a few dozen came and maintaining quorum was a problem. As for decision-making, most decisions were by acclamation (a voice vote) and if it was not clear who was in the majority, only then would it be called to a counting of hands.

Lest the Greek democracy be painted in too lush terms, it should be noted that even among the Athenians, the demos often chose to impose harsh punishments on those citizens it deemed had acted in a treasonous manner or had acted incompetently on campaign. Exile was often the gentler punishment with death sentences and enslavement common. Even with such extreme consequences of life and death to be debated, contemporary historians such as Thyucidides bemoaned the power of demagogues such as Cleon and Alcibiades who were able to sway the masses to rash acts. (Remember that Socrates was condemned by the assembly. )

What sealed the demise of the Athenian democracy was in supporting a foolhardy expedition to Syracuse (Sicily) far from Athenian interests, flexing its naval might. Demagogues like Alcibiades continued to send reinforcements to the quagmire in Sicily, ignoring the enemy at their doorstep, the Spartans, who grew tired of Athenian imperial actions. Athens soon found that its allies (some of whom were coerced into joining with them) deserting them and their strength sapped. When the Syracuse expedition finally was defeated, Athens was forced to surrender in the face of a Spartan alliance.

My feature script "Exclusion Zone" was chosen to be workshopped this summer at Praxis. This is kind of the second round as part of the competition. In this session, the half of the scripts that were selected throughout the year will be workshopped with professional actors, directors and also the producers who edited the scripts in the spring and fall. Since the first round of workshopping I've rewritten it twice.

After seven years of moaning and groaning to himself, Morrissey (or 'Moz' as his fans like to refer to him) has released another solo album, this time coming at a recent revival in interest in the Smiths. I was a Smiths fan, and depressed besides when I discovered them just coming out of high school. I still wear black a lot, I consider life a bit melancholy and frequently am distressed. But now I make a little money and am looking for a new car. Can I possibly listen to Morrissey again? I can probably mumble the words to some of 'The Queen is Dead' album but my favourites are the poppy (though ironic) tracks that Morrissey, Marr produced. From his solo work, I still really love "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I get" (an anthem to stalking?) from the album Vauxhall and I. I thought I had left that behind but when I heard a few tracks from You are the Quarry I was hooked. This is great pop stuff. The groaning, navel gazing is there too but bookended by some splendid summertime (yes, summertime) lovely pop fronted by his high piped vocals. My favourites: "America is Not the World", ", "I have Forgiven Jesus", and "First of the Gang to Die". I'm finding it interesting that a new generation is now revering the Smiths, the 80s pop icons from Britain during Thatcherism. I don't pretend to know all about that but in every city, every suburb, there are likely people who feel bleak, yet not enough that they can't once in a while start bopping to ironic pop. So Morrissey is in his fifties and I am in my thirties and suddenly things are all the same again. No?

"In its weekly bulletin distributed to 18,000 agencies, the FBI says to look out for people wearing bulky jackets on warm days, smelling of chemicals, or even individuals whose fists are tightly clenched." Apparently, if you see one of these in the U.S., it could be a suicide bomber ... or a crackhead .. or someone emerging from a comic shop...

This is really a must read for anyone who is at all interested in the financial basis behind modern terrorism: how they are funded, how they operate as pseudo corporations and governments, how they can't be defeated unless they are seen as living, breathing financial agents. Napoleoni's "Modern Jihad" comes at a time when Iraq is nearing failed state status, breeding conditions that gave rise to al Qaeda, FARC, the PLO and Hizbollah.

Napoleoni writes that in the wake of a failed government, certain groups can take advantage of the absence of the rule of law, the economic destitution and the resulting helplessness to present their own organization in place of government. (Terrorists, of course, want to speed the fall of government through their actions)

In Chechnya, the war between the Chechnyan separatists and the Russian government has created such a wasteland that Jihadists backed by Saudi and Pakistani money have found it easy to supplant the formerly secular rebels with a new extremist view. In Colombia, the predations of the drug lords, the corruption of the Colombian government helped the cause of FARC who stepped in to provide services to the growers and supplanted the narco-terrorists as a new Mafia. FARC in Colombia, the PLO in Lebanon in the late 80s, all acted as governments, providing not only welfare to their citizens but also employment and protection. These are what Napoleoni calls "state shells".

The comparison between terrorist methods of funding their organizations and criminal groups is a highlight of the book. Not only do some of these groups supplant criminal organizations, they also work in concert with them. In one passage, Napoleoni writes of a bank heist conducted by the PLO in concert with the Christian Phalangists in Beirut that resorted to the assistance of Sicilian safecrackers. More importantly, it is shown in the book that sophisticated terror groups use methods quite similar to the worldwide mafia to launder their money and to enable money transfers. Like the mafia, they make use of loose banking regulations, cash smuggling and the use of legitimate fronts. At one time, Osama bin Laden, through his base of operations in the Sudan, cornered the world production of gum arabic, the key ingredient in sweets preservatives.

al Qaeda is involved in even more sophisticated financial schemes including stock market manipulation (they are suspected to have engaged in their own form of insider trading running up to the September 11th attacks by buying gold and shorting other stocks). They buy and sell companies, trade in commodities and, as much as possible, attempt to stock up on survival commodities that hold value against currency such as gold, precious minerals and other items that can be traded more easily (and with less potential for tracing) than currency) especially when traditional financial instruments can't be reached. It is pointed out that Osama bin Laden is not really anti-capitalist, but anti-western capitalist.

The book comes as a stern warning to those fighting 'the war against terror' not to ignore the money-side of the battle. Recently during the 9/11 hearings it was found that the vast majority of American treasury investigators are dedicated to putting pressure on the Castro government versus tracking down the Octopodean financial basis of al Qaeda. Napoleoni shows these terror groups to be corporations in themselves requiring balance sheets, liquidity and profit-loss motives in order to keep their more public operations living and breathing. Finally, the chaos that comes in the wake of war is shown to be the prime breeding ground for a financially prescient terror organization, a lesson to the planners in Iraq today.

Read more about this book here >>

New Scientist reports that researchers have found that penguins that have been banded for tracking purposes breed far less and have offspring that survive at half the rate of the offspring of unbanded animals. A French team says that the bands have increased the drag on the underwater wings of the penguins which may lead to less efficient hunting and other behaviour. As a result, all of the data collected in studies using banding might be called into question.

I've finally looked into RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and have decided it could be a good thing. For one, as a news junkie, I regularly plow through major and minor online newspapers for current events, tech news and entertainment news So RSS works for me. Since it takes so little effort to make this page RSS, then I've made it so. RSS is a way for people with RSS readers to be informed whenever a page is updated. I don't think anyone really checks this page every day (and I don't update it every day) this is a way for people to know when there is truly something new to read. 1. First, get yourself an RSS reader 2. Then right click on the red "XML" button at the top of this folder, choose "Copy Shortcut" and then add it into your reader according to its instructions. Don't just do it to read this page, you can add a wealth of RSS feeds from Reuters, Globe and Mail, Slashdot.org, to Wired. Any regularly updated news page or popular blog will have one.

I've had few opportunities to do nothing recently what with an interesting web contract, lots of heated business at work and halfway participating in helping my brother with his impending wedding. So, I've had to make time to shoot with the Fuji. From left to right, an odd piece of art or industrial diagnostic that can be found underneath the Granville Street Bridge. You explain it to me. Second, a crow tearing apart a smaller bird on top of someone's nice car. Third, Vespas on sale on Hamilton Street, reflecting my interest in acquiring new transportation. The third and fourth shots open up into a mini gallery of a neat piece of urban art that resembles, with the night-time lighting, Myst-like game architecture. It's located on False Creek.