Don’t let our waste go to waste

Imagine, if you will, a system of disease surveillance that doesn’t rely on expensive and painful tests. It does not require us to get swabs stuck up our noses, needles poked into our arms, or even to answer banal questions about symptoms. Instead, this system asks us to go about our regular day, sleeping, waking, eating, and…. defecating… exactly as we would normally. In this system, heroic nerds—out of sight and out of mind—scoop and test samples of sewage in order to tell us whether disease rates are either concerning or tolerable.

Now imagine that shortsighted policymakers decide to defund such a surveillance system, just as its worth and pioneering quality are being celebrated worldwide.

Dr Raywat Deonandan, When The Poop Hits The Fan — Ontario wastewater testing needs to be expanded, not stripped back, Canada Healthwatch

Of course, you don’t have to imagine it, because that’s exactly what’s happening in the Province of Ontario. Dr. Deonandan’s short article linked does a great job of explaining why this is bad; the key points being:

  • It’s really the only metric we have left for informing the public about current infection risk
  • Vulnerable individuals require such information to determine what activities they can do when
  • It’s a useful source for ongoing scientific research into various infectious diseases and conditions
  • It can serve as an early warning system of new threats

The Ontario government points out that the Federal government is planning to expand its wastewater system in Ontario, suggesting that means that the provincial system is no longer needed. Problem is, all evidence suggests that the Federal system will be a poor cousin to what is in place now:

  • Far fewer sites (59 now, down to maybe 8)
  • Much slower release of information
  • No direct ties to hospitals, universities, and public health units
  • Less informative: fewer diseases covered, weaker data analysis

Let’s do a chart comparison. In Winter 2023, Ontario experienced the second biggest Covid wave ever. In Spring 2023, Ontario Covid rates dropped to the lowest level of the Omicron era. Which government agency’s wastewater data conveyed this information most clearly?

The Federal government’s?

Toronto wastewater data, federal

Or the Ontario government’s (GTA = Greater Toronto area)?

COVID wastewater signal GTA, Ontario chart.

My response

As I still (quite unfashionably) feel that Covid is a disease best avoided, I still (even more unfashionably) make some efforts to avoid catching it. This has included periodically checking these charts to assess how much vigilance is currently warranted.

I’m not really sure what I’ll do without that option. Just give up? (I don’t think I can just give up.) Stay at highest alert levels always? (I don’t think I can do that, either.)

It seems very unfair for government / public health to say “Make your own risk assessment!”, then remove any way doing that. So, I have tried to both raise public awareness about this, and contacted various levels of government to complain.

ActionResult
Emailed CBC KW (the region’s most popular morning radio station) to ask them to cover the story.They did a story on it the following week. And they emailed me back to thank me for suggesting it and for giving them a lead on who to interview for it.
Emailed the Big Story podcast to ask them to cover the story.No response and they haven’t covered the story.
Wrote a letter to the editor in the Waterloo Region Record (the local paper).They published it.
Wrote to complain to the Premier, the Minister of Health, and the Minister of the Environment of Ontario.The Ministry of the Environment emailed back saying to not worry my pretty little head about it, that they’re working with the Federal government to keep something going. (I might be paraphrasing.)
Wrote to my MPP, who is an Opposition member.She wrote back saying she agreed it was a terrible decision, and encouraged me to also complain to the government. (Her party has also spoken out against this decision.)
Wrote to some Waterloo Regional Council members, suggesting that they should lobby the Ontario government to not cancel the program.Did not hear back a thing from any of them. However, at one of their subsequent meetings, they did agree to contact the Federal government to try to get them to keep the program going.
Wrote to MPPs in the region who belong to the governing party to point out that it appeared that other cities were going to get some wastewater monitoring, but Waterloo wasn’t, and that wasn’t fair, since we pay as much as taxes as they do (that’s me trying to speak Conservative).TBD, because I just did that.

What you can do

Various sites make it pretty fast and easy to write your own letter of complaint (thanks to John Dupuis for compiling)…

  • Safe Care Ontario: Email template you can copy (and adapt, if you’re ambitious) and a list of the email addresses to send it to you. (Also material for other valuable campaigns you can join in on, should you be even more ambitious.)
  • Still COVIDing Canada: Handy-dandy mailto: links for key provicial politicians, and another email template. Bonus: email template and contact information for municipal politicians in Waterloo (hey, that’s my town!) and Ottawa.
  • Wastewater Advocacy Resources: Google Drive with contact information, email script, phone script, and social media post suggestions.

And I dare say that even you don’t live in Ontario, don’t let that stop you! (Though you might want to adapt the email wording…) The data is serving international research purposes; as with this article in the scientific Nature journal: SARS-CoV-2 viral titer measurements in Ontario, Canada wastewaters throughout the COVID-19 pandemic:

When integrated with other types of epidemiological data, WBS can contribute to a more holistic understanding of disease incidence at both the provincial and national levels in Canada. The extensive dataset and comprehensive methodology outlined in this manuscript, which includes specific normalization techniques, is not only instrumental in improving the current understanding of SARS-CoV-2 WBS but also holds promise for helping public health units and researchers make better predictions for future outbreaks of similar viral diseases. This set of protocols can be adapted by other research institutions or public health agencies interested in employing WBS.

Don’t have a cow, man

Giving up eating beef and drinking glasses of milk was pretty easy. Could I go further?

Instances of Avian flu keep turning up in mammals. Most concerning of late to us human mammals are cases in cows in America. Cats drinking raw cow milk haven’t fared well. Not to worry, they say, because pasteurization kills the virus. Or does it? Well, nothing’s been found so far in commercial pasteurized milk. Especially in Canada. But how hard are we looking?

Overall, I don’t know if the potential risk of HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) is itself reason enough to cut back on consuming beef and dairy.

I do know that there are plenty of other reasons to consider doing that:

  • For your tummy! A lot of people are lactose intolerant. Not everyone who is knows it.
  • For the climate! Cows are the most emissions-intensive animals to raise.
  • For the cows! The life quality of dairy or beef cattle on factory farms… isn’t great.
  • For the humans! Migrant farm workers, in particular, are often exploited.

It’s all got me thinking… Maybe I could at least cut back?

Where’s the beef?

The meat part is done and dusted. I gave up eating beef years ago.

To be honest, I didn’t do it for any of the fine reasons I listed above. Since being a teenager, I’d been a little suspicious of ground beef. I wondered, what was really in that burger? But I didn’t entirely stop eating them until I read Fast Food Nation, which provided an answer:

There is shit in the meat.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

(Here I feel compelled to point out that Fast Food Nation was published way back in 2001. Maybe the sanitary conditions have improved since then. Maybe there isn’t so much shit in the meat now. I dunno. I haven’t looked into it.)

Steak, though less shitty, was excised from my diet some time after that, more as a health measure. To follow that general “try to eat less red meat” advice.

Got milk?

Drinking milk all by itself, in a glass, is also something I gave up decades ago. And again, not for any particularly high-minded reasons. At some point, as a teenager, I just decided I preferred drinking other beverages.

Silk unsweetened almond milk.
Silk unsweetened is generally my favourite almond milk

But I continued to use milk as an ingredient. Continue. It’s not a past tense thing. But, I have reduced it, without much pain.

Almond milk, for some time now, has become my go-to for smoothies and hot cereals, because I enjoy the almond flavor with those foods. And while almond milk is not the most environmental choice of milk alternative, it’s still more environmental than dairy milk.

It’s also lower in carbs than dairy milk, if you care about that sort of thing.

And while I haven’t tried this yet—because I don’t bake that much—I’ve read that barista-style oat milk is the best substitute for dairy milk in many recipes. Speaking of which…

You’re the cream in my coffee

Elmhurst Oat Creamer, unsweetened.

Finding an alternative to cream for my coffee was initially a challenge, because many non-dairy creamers contain sugar. I don’t like my coffee to be sweetened, and I don’t need any extra sugar in my diet in general.

But Elmhurst makes an unsweetened oat coffee creamer that I like just fine. It also works for me in black tea. Not going to lie—it has a somewhat different taste than milk / cream, so it might not work for you. But could be worth a try. And oat is a really good environmental choice.

Continue reading “Don’t have a cow, man” →

Mercer and Arden, kids and the symphony, and more odd ducks

The only problem with having events scheduled for sequential Saturdays was that it was getting in the way of movie night. By the third week, we solved our dilemma by watching a movie on Friday night.

Radical, huh?

Anyone but You was quite entertaining. Very funny in parts. As long as you’re good with the whole romantic comedy genre, I say go for it.

But, on to the events.

The will they or won’t they tour: Jann Arden & Rick Mercer

Chronologically, this was first up. Not only for our series of outings, but also for Jann Arden and Rick Mercer, who began their tour of the country in Kitchener. Jann Arden is a singer/songwriter (and also actor and novelist). Rick Mercer is a satirist, comedian, and author.

The Will or Won't They Tour poster: Jann Arden & Rick Mercer.

How the two met was something Rick explained during their live “Night of laughs and intimate conversation”. He was in Calgary filming a bit for his show, Rick Mercer Report. Only the bit was a flop—wasn’t going to air. They had to quickly come up with something else. One suggestion he got was to have Jann Arden give him a tour of Calgary. And he was like, “Jann Arden? Great singer, but I think she’s a depressive!”

Continue reading “Mercer and Arden, kids and the symphony, and more odd ducks” →

Relationship lessons from movies

Without meaning to, we went through a series of movies about couples (before breaking the spell with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is very sweet, and not in a bad way): You Hurt My Feelings, Anatomy of a Fall, Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love, and Past Lives. These are the key questions each one seems to address.

You Hurt My Feelings

Is honesty the best policy?

The least artsy of this collection of movies, I suppose, it centres on a happily married couple, Beth and Don, whose relationship is shook when she overhears him honestly tell his brother-in-law that he didn’t like her novel, which is still working its way toward publication. Things become tense and initially, Don has no idea why.

Beth and Don are also having work struggles: Don is a psychiatrist with some unhappy clients, who feel that he hasn’t really helped them. Beth is stunned to discover that the students in her small writing class not only hadn’t read her previous book; they didn’t even know she’d written one. And their son is wilting under the pressure of their expectations, and is angry about it.

So yeah, it’s a movie about relatively privileged people and their relatively minor personal problems. But it’s snappily written, funny, and very well cast, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies as the lead characters. Jean and I both enjoyed it.

As to the question… Well, in life, as in the movie, sometimes you do want to blunt your honesty in order to be encouraging. But it can go too far. At a certain point, a relationship should be strong enough to handle the truth that you don’t, in fact, appreciate those V-neck sweaters you’ve been gifted with every year.

Anatomy of a Fall

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

OK, the question is from Hamilton, but it still seems apropos for this movie. The husband and father, Samuel, dies at the start of it, from falling out of his office window. His wife Sandra is the only one home at time. Their partly sighted son Daniel is the one who comes across the body, after a walk with his dog. We, the audience, don’t see what caused the fall.

Sandra lives, Samuel dies, but who tells the story? Initially, Sandra, mostly, as she’s trying to defend herself against an accusation of murder. Daniel also participates, and in doing so, realizes that he has decide what he believes is the truth about what he heard. But in one of the movies many twists—the nature of which I won’t reveal—even Samuel is able to give some input as to his state of mind at the time.

This was a fascinating one, and I came to my own conclusions about what I believed happened—but not because the movie spoon-fed them to me. The facts remain ambiguous to the end, a fact Jean found deeply unsettling.

Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love

Do opposites attract?

Sometimes, for sure, and this movie, the most popular Québecois film of 2023, presents one such case. Sophia, a philosophy professor, is in a comfortable but staid long-term relationship with another professor when she meets Sylvain, a handsome craftsman hired to do some renovations on her country home. Sophia and Sylvain’s attraction is quick and deep and soon consummated. And consummated again. And again.

Though she initially tells herself it will just be a fling, ending things proves harder than expected and Sophia starts to wonder about the possibility of a long-term relationship with Sylvain. But they are very different, in education, background, wealth, interests… Each phase of their relationship is punctuated by a section of Sophia’s lecture in the course she’s giving about the nature of love (philosophically speaking).

That structure made me think of Le déclin de l’empire américain, though this film, directed by Monia Chokry, definitely has its own strong vision. Jean and I were both drawn in, and he was better at predicting how things would turn out. Fun fact: This movie beat Oppenheimer as Best Foreign Film at the César Awards in France.

Past Lives

Do you ever really get over your first love?

Easy question; of course you don’t! But few people have the trajectory with their first love as the one followed in this film. Nora and Hae Sung are childhood friends in South Korea. Nora’s mom, wanting her to have good memories of South Korea before the family immigrates to Canada, arranges for them to go on a “date”, the apex of which is them holding hands.

But with her family’s pending departure, the two friends are separated before any true, mature romance can bloom. Years later, though, they find one another on Facebook. The sparks still seem to be there, but so is the distance…

By the time Nora and Hae Sung finally do meet again, in New York, Nora is married to Arthur, a perfectly decent guy who is a good sport about the whole thing.

This is a very low-key, gentle movie—too understated for Jean, who gave up partway through. But I quite enjoyed this exploration of the paths not taken, of the forces beyond your control, and what you do with that knowledge. It was lovely.

Won’t whine about the amount of wine: Niagara 2024

We don’t pledge to continue this annually forevermore, but there’s no denying that this is the third year in a row we head to the Niagara area around now. In a lot of ways, it’s a good time to visit: it’s low season, so somewhat cheaper, and quite a bit less crowded—often resulting in better service. Weather of course can be iffy but that means, sometimes, it’s not bad!

Same destination, but that doesn’t mean it was all the same activities. These were the new:

  • Visiting Reif Estate Winery
  • Staying at Shaw Club, Niagara-on-the-Lake
  • Reserving Wine Dome Lounge at Fielding Estate Winery
  • Staying and dining at Inn on the Twenty, Jordan

And these were repeats, though not necessarily “same old”:

  • Dining at Peller Estates Winery
  • Wine tasting at Strewn Winery
  • Hiking the Niagara Glen trail
  • Dining at Treadwells
  • Hiking the Twenty Valley trail, Jordan

Despite knowing I was heading into wine country, I would not have predicted trying a $100 bottle of wine, nor a sherry nearly as old as I am. And yet!

Continue reading “Won’t whine about the amount of wine: Niagara 2024” →

Getting out of the house

“I’d almost forgotten what that was like”, Jean commented, as we exited the Registry Theatre after a Larry Larson’s Jazz Guys concert. And by that, he met a live musical performance of any kind.

We’d intended to attend many a live musical performance over these past and coming months, but then the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony suddenly and apparently irrevocably went bankrupt—a mere week before what would have been their first concert of the season. Our season’s tickets for various performances, from Bolero to Magic! to Back to the Future to Shostakovitch, suddenly longer worth nothing more than a tax receipt.

There are efforts underway to try to revive the local arts scene, but who knows. Government funding is tight all around. The Globe and Mail has been covering the problems that theatre companies have been experiencing right across the country (🎁 article link). Mirvish is doing fine, but others are not. I suppose the lack of audience return is due to combination of people having become increasingly accustomed to home entertainment; inflation lowering budgetary for spending on discretionary events; and some remaining concern about the health risks of crowded spaces.

But for us, at least this year, it was just mainly that the Symphony disappeared. And we’ve had trouble finding appealing alternatives. It’s been some time since we’ve been out anywhere.

February has seemed virtually packed with arts activities, comparatively speaking.

Continue reading “Getting out of the house” →

Books 2023

Instead of an overview, I decided to focus on two books that captured some of the social unease of 2023. (Albeit with additional recommendation of short story collection How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa.)

The Survivalists: A Novel by Kashana Cauley

The Survivalists, by Kashana Cauley, is a novel centred on Aretha, a young Black lawyer. Near the start, she goes on a date with the handsome Aaron. She doesn’t go into the date with high hopes, but she and Aaron really hit it off. However, this is not a romance novel.

Aaron is a coffee entrepreneur—he sources, roasts, and brews high-quality beans. He works out of his home, a mansion that he shares with two other people. Their focus is not so much on coffee. Brittany and James are more into protein bars, bunkers, martial arts, go bags… and guns. They are survivalists.

Aretha finds this out only gradually, learning some of the alarming details only after she moves in with Aaron. Aaron is frequently away, hunting down beans, leaving Aretha trying to make the best of it with her odd roommates. Meanwhile, her career prospects, which she has banked her entire future, seem in increasing jeopardy as a new hire consistently outshines her. The prospect of working on survival gradually takes on more of an appeal, much to her best friend’s dismay.

It’s definitely uncomfortable taking this journey with Aretha, whose choices at many points are… not the ones I would have made, let’s put it that way. And that made be the reason for the rather polarizing reviews of this book. But I was really drawn into this story, and I felt it was saying something about today’s society, and its risks, and how much we can protect ourselves from them.

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein.

Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein, is a more personal work of non-fiction than this author has produced in the past. Over the years, Naomi Klein has been confused with Naomi Wolf, author of (most famously) The Beauty Myth. This became something of a problem during the pandemic era, as the previously liberal and feminist Naomi Wolf came to embrace anti-vaccine, pro-gun, conspiratorial, right-wing beliefs.

Klein is alarmed that her name is mistakenly being associated with extremely troubling opinions that she by no means shares. She discusses how this damages her online “brand”, not being at all sure what to do about it, and the fact this is even a concern is something of an irony for the author who first came to fame with No Logo.

Klein then becomes very curious about the question many were asking: what the heck did happen to Naomi Wolf? Klein researches Wolf’s past, revisiting some of her past work, noting some of its limitations, and pointing out areas where her data is weaker. And also traces the history of her declining influence in leftist circles, which culminates when Wolf’s confusion about the phrase “death recorded” as indicating execution when it meant the opposite, led to the cancellation of her book Outrages.

In contrast to the mocking engendered by that, Wolf was truly embraced by the right, receiving the kind of acclaim and popularity she hadn’t had in years. Stuck at home during the pandemic like the rest of us, Klein became somewhat obsessed with following Wolf’s trajectory—even to the point of becoming a devoted listener of Steve Bannon’s podcast (shudder), where Wolf is a frequent guest.

The book looks into the wider questions of how the right has been so successful in garnering attention and enthusiastic followers. “They get the facts wrong but the feelings right.” Klein notes the missed opportunities on the left to fight the government for policies such as school ventilation upgrades, debt cancellation, and permanent paid sick days for all. (But also the difficulty in doing so when everyone is, by necessity, separated.)

It also examines the predecessor anti-vaccine debates and their effects on the autism community, along with a fascinating but appalling history of approaches to treatment of autistic children. (Klein’s son is autistic.) It covers the lost opportunities on climate change. And using the point that both she and Wolf are Jewish and have made stances related to that, it also includes what turned out to be a very timely chapter on Israel and Palestine.

It’s all a bit of an unsettling journey, through the personal and the political and back again. Klein concludes that we need to continue fighting for what we believe in, as a group effort. But with no illusions that it’s going to be easy.

The music of 2023 wasn’t

Of 2023. Meaning, this year I spent most of my time listening to music I already own, rather than discovering new sounds on streaming services or radio. So not that much of it was music released in 2023.

Not sure how much this was cause vs. effect, but I also had trouble settling with any particular music streaming service this year.

  • Spotify: A service I’ve tried off and on over the years (whenever they offer me a discount, as I don’t like the ad version), but it was mostly off in 2023.
  • YouTube Music: I did subscribe to this earlier in the year. As a previous Google Play Music user, I’d built up a pretty good music data set in there. But YouTube Music has never been as good as Google Play Music was. On the July long weekend, I tried to find some sort of Canada Day playlist there, and pretty much came up empty. (Maybe because Google was at this point fighting with the federal government over streaming service regulations?) This led me to try out…
Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, Deezer logos.
Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, and ?
  • Amazon Music Unlimited which offered me a three-month free trial. I found that they had quite a few fun Canada Day playlists! Of course, in general they had only a fuzzy idea of my music tastes, but it still a decent enough service for when I wanted to listen to something other than “my” music. Still, when this offer ran out, we decided to switch to…
  • Amazon Prime Music: Because it was included with Prime, which we already had. But I had not realized that with Prime, in most cases, you can only listen to albums or playlists in shuffle mode. And it won’t even show you in what order it’s shuffled songs into.
    While this was perfectly fine for Jean, it was overly limited for me. Sometimes I want to shuffle; sometimes I do not. Either way, I like to see what’s up next. Hence, I decided to take up another three-month offer to try…
  • Apple Music: It’s pretty nice. No ads, no limitations, clean interface, good queue, embedded lyrics. Will I pay for it when the free period is done? Tbd.

No Spotify Wrapped for me

I did not use that service enough. I did find it pretty amusing that most every other digital service of any kind that I used tried to offer something similar. My Kobo erReader: What a bookish year it’s been! My Washington Post Newsprint: What’s your reader type? My Starbucks year in review? I’m not even kidding! Look back at your Starbucks routine!

I mean…

YouTube Music had enough data to cobble something together for me. Apparently the song I listened to those most on that service last year was…

Continue reading “The music of 2023 wasn’t” →

Movies 2023

I really didn’t write about movies much this year, but I did see some, so let’s catch up…

In theatres

We most recently (on Boxing Day) saw The Holdovers—appropriate timing, as the movie does take place at Christmas. It’s a story about a boy’s boarding school where a few students, “the holdovers”, are not able to go home at Christmas. One teacher, played by Paul Giamatti, is tasked with watching over them.

The movie is directed by Alexander Payne, who also directed Sideways, which also starred Paul Giamatti. It’s similar to that movie only in that it’s also a character-driven story focused on male relationships. I did enjoy it, even though it didn’t particularly pass the Bechdel Test. Jean liked it well enough also, though he prefers plot-driven movies.

Whereas Barbie…

Continue reading “Movies 2023” →

2023, the “No Netflix” year in TV

Although… Has it been a year since I cancelled Netflix? Not really sure.

Been a while, though. Long enough that I’m completely behind on recent seasons of Stranger Things, The Crown, Ginny and Georgia, Sex Education, Derry Girls… And I have yet to see the Glass Onion movie, or the Shania Twain documentary.

The plan at the time was to cancel it for a few months and try out another service, then cancel that one and try another, then maybe back to Netflix, and so on. Only it didn’t quite work at that way. Shortly after cancelling Netflix, I got a several months free offer for Apple TV, which I then kept afterwards (as it was quite cheap at the time). Soon after that, I got a similar free offer for Disney+. That was so many new TV options at once (along with Prime and Crave and even cable), that I did not end up circling back to Netflix.

Hence a completely Netflix-free list of TV shows I particularly enjoyed in 2023.

  1. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Crave)
  2. Drops of God (Apple)
  3. Fleishman Is In Trouble (Disney)
  4. The White Lotus (Crave)
  5. Sort of (CBC)
  6. Schmigadoon / Schmicago (Apple)
  7. Poker Face (City TV)
  8. Shrinking (Apple)
  9. Only Murders in the Building (Disney)
  10. I Have Nothing (Crave)

With honourable mentions Jack Ryan (Prime), Our Flag Means Death (Crave), Platonic (Apple), Extraordinary (Disney), Good Omens (Prime), and Upload (Prime).

Continue reading “2023, the “No Netflix” year in TV” →