Bird-popularity contest brings out more voters than residents

30. May 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sure, he's cute, but Vancouver's Bird of the Year? The Black-capped Chickadee. Photo © Russ, via creative commons & flickr

The robin chicks outside my window disappeared last night. At about 4:00 a.m., much rustling of shrubberies and great squawkings by Ma Robin occurred. When I poked my head outside, the three nearly grown babies had vanished.

For three weeks, the daily charting of the chicks’ progress was a household highlight. Their sudden, tragic loss has taken us all aback, bringing forth long faces and even a sniff or two. Last night, they no doubt became breakfast for an intrepid raccoon.

While Ma Robin built her nest, brooded eggs and stuffed bugs into gaping young beaks, our neighbours on the mainland elected Vancouver’s newest winged poster child. More than 700,000 people voted in the five-week-long popularity contest for Official City Bird of 2015. More than one-third of voters backed the Black-capped Chickadee over five other contenders.

Several things about the contest astonish me….

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We make it easy to keep tabs on each other

21. September 2013 · 2 comments · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Tinfoil hats. Photo © teaeff, via flickr

Tinfoil hats. Photo © teaeff, via flickr“They don’t need to read my mind,” I informed Nature Boy when he offered me his tinfoil helmet. “They can read everything else.”

What They would read are my emails, my Internet use, my cellphone data, and every other item or card on or near my person with a radio-frequency identification tag, GPS or other signal.

Every time I use a bank or credit card, turn my cellphone on, drive my GPS-enabled vehicle—even use a telephone landline—I leave a digital trail.

That trail can be tracked.

What I find truly amazing is that anyone could possibly find li’l ol’ me interesting enough to want to access the virtual banality of my existence.

Connected and ready to share (and be tracked). Photo © Nik Cubrilovic.
When former National Security Agency contractor-turned-renegade Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s Internet spying program earlier this year, the revelations threw light on who might be interested in the digital trails I and hundreds of millions of others create every day.

Compared to that, this month’s ruling by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to uphold B.C. employers’ rights to track their workers’ whereabouts seems, well, small potatoes….

Continue reading this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….