Every 18th of April, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an organization I’ve been involved with since the very early 1990s, celebrates the International Day for Monuments and Sites. This year’s theme is Heritage and Science.

Heritage and science are inextricably woven together in two distinct ways. Science and technology lead to the creation of heritage and have for many years. From ancient observatories like Kokino in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to more modern sites like Maritime Greenwich in the UK, astronomy is but one of the fields of science that has had a profound impact on heritage.

At the same time, science and technology provide insights into heritage on a scale unheard of even a century ago. Application of science and technology such as radioisotope dating like carbon dating, X-ray diffraction and information management systems to new conservation tools and techniques mean that we can learn increasing amounts of information about artefacts and the cultures they come from.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have provided incredible opportunities for people in the heritage conservation field to communicate to each other and to the public at large. My involvement with ICOMOS over the years started with the creation of a gopher server followed shortly thereafter by ICOMOS’ first website, which was one of the earliest websites on the Internet. ICOMOS was the first international heritage organization in the world to have a presence on the Internet, something I’m very proud to have had a role in. It has lead to a grassroots group concerned about the imminent demolition of a heritage property in the UK finding the information they needed to convince the authorities to revoke the demolition permit and get the property designated. A reporter in Japan wrote a series of articles about the theft of carved stones from Japanese heritage sites that appeared in a national daily newspaper, raising the profile of these thefts.

Clearly, science and technology have had a profound impact on heritage and vice versa. I encourage you to visit ICOMOS’ 18 April website at 18april.icomos.org to learn more about the International Day for Monuments and Sites.

My Tracker had been sounding kind of throaty for a couple of days and when I poked at the tail pipe is swung back and forth. Not good.

So, last weekend I stopped by Active Green + Ross on Bank Street about an hour before they closed to see if they could do something to make it better. One of their technicians put the Tracker on a hoist and took a look. It turns out that the tail pipe was no longer attached to the resonator, and thus the rest of the exhaust system, and was only being held in place by a rubber anti-vibration mount.

He suggested that he could cut the heat shield off the resonator, slip a slightly larger piece of pipe over the resonator and cut the end on an angle, too. This sounded like a reasonable interim solution so I said “go for it”. After ten or fifteen minutes, he had crafted a temporary tail pipe.

When I went to pay for it, the person at the counter said “don’t worry about it”.  “Seriously?” I asked holding out my credit card.  “Yup. If you decide to replace the muffler, hopefully you’ll come back to us.”

Wow! Here’s a company that gets it. For the cost of a couple of feet of pipe, a clamp and fifteen minutes of the technician’s time, they’ve done more to make me want to go back to them than any advertising campaign could.

So, if you need a muffler replaced or other maintenance done on your car you should check out Active Green + Ross.

So, I leaped dragged myself out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed half dead this morning expecting to take the test for the spoken part of my French second language equivalency rating this morning. With a sore throat and trying to cough up a lung about once a minute the test was shaping up to be a magical experience. The unexpected snow this morning was just icing on the cake.

As I staggered to work, my cellphone rang. It was the voicemail system at work calling because someone had left a message. I punched in my password and listened to a message from the language testing people. My test, which had already been rescheduled once because of a scheduling snafu, was cancelled because the examiner was sick. I arrived at work, checked my email and then promptly went home sick.

Some days when you think it’s really not worth getting out of bed you should seize that thought and run with it.

Maybe Tuesday will be more of a success.

The Globe and Mail had a story this morning that caught my eye. To combat the use of cell phones by students in his school, Steve Gray, the principal of Port Hardy Secondary School, purchased a cell phone jamming device. The students figured out within a couple of days that something was interfering with their cell phones and quickly organized a demonstration. The principal eventually gave in and turned off the device.

At first pass, jamming cell phones in the school might seem like a not unreasonable solution to the problem. Students shouldn’t be using their cell phones in class, so if their phones are jammed it shouldn’t affect them.

The problem is that cell phone jamming devices are illegal in Canada under sections 4 and 9 of the Radiocommunication Act. Specifically, Section 4(2) states:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, distribute, lease, offer for sale or sell any radio apparatus, interference-causing equipment or radio-sensitive equipment for which a technical acceptance certificate is required under this Act, otherwise than in accordance with such a certificate.

Section 9(1)(b) states:

9. (1) No person shall

(b) without lawful excuse, interfere with or obstruct any radiocommunication;

Anyone who violates either section 4 or 9(1)(a) or (b) or who “without lawful excuse, manufactures, imports, distributes, leases, offers for sale, sells, installs, modifies, operates or possesses any equipment or device, or any component thereof, under circumstances that give rise to a reasonable inference that the equipment, device or component has been used, or is or was intended to be used, for the purpose of contravening section 9” is …

guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable, in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or to both, or, in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars.

The principal claims that he didn’t think it was illegal to operate the jammer. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  He now knows that it is illegal to operate or even possess a cell phone jammer, but he’s quoted in the article as stating “I’m going to hold onto it and hope the regulations follow reality.”

Industry Canada needs to immediately confiscate the device and fine the school board for breaking the law by both having operated the device and possessing it.

And the students need to respect the rules established by their school and turn their phones off when they’re in class.

Fans of the Simpsons should get the reference in the title of this entry and can skip ahead. For the rest of you: start watching the Simpsons. Geez. Anyway, in one episode, the town of Springfield celebrates Whacking Day, much to Lisa’s horror and disgust. Basically, the citizens of Springfield drive snakes into the town square and then club them to death. Lisa enlists the help of Barry White to rescue the snakes by cranking up the bass while he signs. The vibrations attract the snakes away to safety and it’s Bart who convinces the citizens that they need to stop it because Whacking Day was original invented in 1924 as an excuse to beat up the Irish in Springfield. Now you know know about the reference to Whacking Day, so let’s return to the other people.

According to the Australian Museum’s website, cane toads are large heavily-built amphibians with dry warty skin. They have a bony head and over their eyes are bony ridges that meet above the nose. They sit upright and move in short rapid hops. Their hind feet have leathery webbing between the toes and their front feet are unwebbed. Adult Cane Toads have large swellings – the parotoid glands – on each shoulder behind the eardrum. They’re are found in habitats ranging from sand dunes and coastal heath to the margins of rainforest and mangroves. They are most abundant in open clearings in urban areas, and in grassland and woodland.

Dogs lick them and get a bit of a high from the poisons they excrete from the glands on their back. Some vets are reporting that some dogs are becoming cane toad junkies as a result. Naturally, this has lead to people licking them to get a psychadelic high from them, which is incredibly dangerous because they’re very toxic. But people still do it anyway.

They were deliberately introduced from Hawaii to Australia in 1935 to control scarab beetles, which sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, no one thought to check that the toads could jump high enough to get to the beetles, which live on top of sugar cane stalks. They can’t.

They are, however, very good are reproducing.

As a result, Australia has zillions of cane toads and they’ve become a serious problem in some parts of the country. The Queensland government held its first Toad Day Out this past weekend. They held kill-a-toad festivals, with BBQs, and contests to see who could find the biggest cane toad. (No, really, I am not making this up.)

“To see the look on the faces of the kids as we were handling and weighing the toads and then euthanizing them was just…,” Townsville City Councilman Vern Veitch said, breaking off to let out a contented sigh. “The children really got into the character of the event.”

The toads were checked out by expects to ensure they were evil cane toads and not harmless banjo frogs (which happen to be endangered). If they were declared evil then they were either frozen or popped in plastic bags full of carbon dioxide. Apparently, even the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was on-board with the killing of the toads — as long as it was done humanely.

Fun for the whole family!

Near the end of January, I posted some pictures I took of sunrise one morning. Last week, on the first day of Spring, I took some more pictures at sunrise. Here’s a photo from each day, side by side for your viewing convenience:

January 21, 2009

March 20, 2009

The astute observer will have noticed that the sun is rising 10 to 20 degrees to the left of where it did on January 21st. This got me to thinking that there’s an experiment you can try at home based on this difference.

(more…)

Or you can watch it here.

A tip o’ the hat to XUP for giving me the idea for this!