A better picture

Yesterday I featured an image taken with a long lens to highlight the number of cars parked on driveways in my neighbourhood. Tonight I am posting an image that is a little more indicative of the way the neighbourhood looks to those walking about the area.

Many folk spend lots of time and money landscaping their property. I find my neighbourhood is very much like a park and I enjoy walking here. Now that I am retired, maybe I will start focusing some energy on landscaping my place.

Buses, Cars and New Urbanism

Buses

Recently I had to take a Via train to Toronto and then grab a Go Transit bus to a small town outside T.O. I was the only person on the full-sized city bus that could have carried 60 passengers.

Noticing I was his only fare, the driver called ahead to see if any riders were waiting for the bus at my stop, the second last stop on the run. No one was at the terminal. It was deserted. The driver asked me exactly where I was going and, as he had no more passengers, he left the scheduled route to take me the final three kilometres to my destination. I had planned on walking.

I am not giving many details as I don't want to get this driver in trouble. But think about it. A bus taking a regular, daily run through Canada's biggest city, through dense suburbs to a small, outlying town often makes the trip empty. I was the only passenger the day I rode that bus and I'm from London. Not one resident of Toronto or any of the suburbs through which we drove had any interest in taking that bus.

Whenever I read an article about new urbanism, the claim is made that new urbanist communities have densities that encourage the use of mass transit, read buses. My bus ride calls that belief into question. With tens of thousands of potential riders, if not hundreds of thousands,  there is often not one rider. Not one!

Cars

Neighborhoods today require lots of parking.

I am not blogging as much as I once did; I am now grandparenting almost daily. This is like babysitting but done by a senior for love rather than by a teen for money.

The other day, while taking my granddaughter for a walk, I noticed a picture. I confess that it was taken with a long lens. The street does not actually look like a parking lot but that is not my point.

Most of these homes have two car garages and yet their driveways are filled with cars. Curious, I interviewed a few folk. It seems, that with both the husband and the wife working, two cars are the minimum number in my neighbourhood for each home.

Why don't these folk just take the bus? Hey, read the paragraphs above titled Buses. People, even people who have a bus route just a few feet away, hate riding buses.

Now, these couples often have children and if they are old enough, that explains the cars parked on the driveways. When our daughters are home, we often had five cars parked at our home: a Morgan, a Chevy, a Pontiac, a Ford and a Saturn.

Holiday weekends are worse. Christmas can be a real problem, even for us. I can park six cars on my property and I can use every one of those spaces at Christmas. This is a fact that brings us to new urbanism.

New Urbanism

Parking garages behind new urbanist homes in Oakville.

If  the ideal new urbanist community has lane ways to access the garages, where will the kids park their cars? And at Christmas, where do all the visitors park their cars? With the deep banks of plowed snow, this may present a problem.

I know a couple living in Cornell Village in Markham. It's one of the best known new urbanist communities in Canada. The next time we get together I am going to ask them about these apparent parking problems. And yes this couple has two cars and neither walks to work nor to the store. Why? See Buses and Cars above.

Cardiac imaging breakthrough at the UWO

Monday the University of Western Ontario announced the formation of the Biomedical Imaging Research Centre (BIRC). Thursday Western announced a breakthrough in cardiac imaging. The two announcements are closely linked.

Dr. James White, a cardiologist and core research scientist with BIRC led the team responsible for today's announced breakthrough offering cardiologists and surgeons a new imaging technique producing a single, 3D high-resolution image of the heart.

White successfully visualized the heart's blood vessels and a myocardial scar at the same time. A first!

Dr. S. de Ribaupierre

At the announcement of BIRC, Neurosurgeon Sandrine de Ribaupierre said advances in medical imaging are needed to improve safety. "It needs to be really accurate."

It was pointed out that these technologies are known to occasionally to give false positives or false negatives. Possibly the best known example of this was reported by neuroscientist Craig Bennett, then a graduate student at Dartmouth College, who scanned the brain of a dead salmon and the natural noise inherent in the fMRI data 'revealed' the dead fish was thinking.

This fMRI date 'revealed' the dead fish was thinking. BIRC holds the promise of improved imaging with increased diagnostic accuracy and fewer false positives.

With medical professionals placing more and more reliance on diagnostic imaging, accuracy is paramount - and increased accuracy in cardiac imaging is what Thursday's breakthrough announcement delivers with BIRC promising more to come.

Injuries to the heart from heart attacks or viral inflammation can result in permanent damage or scarring of the heart muscle. Using a 3-Tesla MRI White and his team constructed a three dimensional model of a patient's heart clearly showing the relationship between the heart's blood vessels and a permanent injury. Dr. White said, "This will help direct surgeons and cardiologists to better target the blood vessels that lead to (healthy) muscle . . . " and improve the outlooks for patients requiring pacemakers, bypass surgery or angioplasties.

Dr. A. Fenster

The London research will not be restricted to MRIs. Dr. Aaron Fenster, BIRC director and Robarts Research Institute scientist, said London has all the necessary medical-imaging technologies for extensive research: MRIs, PET scanners, CT equipment, X-ray machines and SPECT imaging.

The Biomedical Imaging Research Centre is about more than scanners it is about people. BIRC brings together researchers from Western's Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Lawson Health and Research Institute, Robarts Research Institute, the biomedical-engineering graduate program at the UWO and more. 150 graduate students plus 50 associate scientists in basic and clinical research will work with dozens of BIRC core scientists.

Fenster said, "We assembled the centre with the vision to become the most successful integrated biomedical-research program in Canada . . . to become one of the top five in the world . . . "

This is research with almost immediate practical applications. According to de Ribaupierre, there is no point in pushing scanning technology "if you are not going to use it clinically." To this end, the researchers will be working closely with clinicians.

Dr. M. Strong

Dr. Michael Strong, Dean of the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, said, "It does us absolutely no good to bring a group of individuals together and say we are going to call you a centre if it doesn't mean something at the end of the day . . . Otherwise it is just a name . . . "

Today's breakthrough announcement adds weight to Strong's strong words.
 _______________________________________________

As someone who recently had an MRI with another yet to come, two 25 minute trips through a nuclear scanning device, a transesophageal echocardiogram and  looking at the possibility of undergoing a cardiac ablation, I know how important accurate imaging is to the successful outcome of some very serious medical procedures. When I heard about the Biomedical Imaging Research Centre press conference, I just had to attend and report.

Incredible Car Ads

This post has been re-written to reflect the wealth of imaginative, amusing car ads. Some I don't believe are shown in North America. The first ad from Nissan is witty but take car with some of the others --- a few shocked my wife. I wouldn't want to play some of these on a computer at work.

If you liked the Polar Bear ad, check out Kidzilla with a sound track featuring a little rock and roll by the King --- Elvis. Or, this one, Baby, showing how having a family doesn't mean having a boring car.

If you are not a work, and you are in an 18+ environment, these three are good. I do wonder if the first two are real ads. The bouncing breasts ad is reminiscent of the Lucky Airlines ad in Putney Swope by Robert Downey Sr. Is reality really catching up with the mad ad campaigns of old Putney?

Nissan ad - may contain etc.
Toyota ad - I love Air Conditioning - may contain etc.
This Toyota ad is funny and not shocking. It is suitable for all but the really young would only get the slapstick humor.

And if you are wondering how Putney Swope back in the '60s approached airline advertising in a hip world, here is the link:
Lucky Airlines

Who's a photojournalist?

Nineteen years ago a young co-ed named Gwen Jacob strolled topless down the streets of Guelph, Ontario. That hot summer day was destined to become even hotter for Jacob as her simple, impetuous act landed her in hot water for years to come.

The issue of public nudity raised by Jacob's actions, and how it is covered by the media, was revisited in a recent article written by Stephanie Dearing. Dearing posted a story to the Digital Journal, complete with photos, from a recent Guelph celebration honoring Jacob's walk. Some photos from Dearing's report were taken down by DJ editors due to their frontal nudity. Other less revealing images were left to illustrate her story.

Jacob may have run afoul of our prudish laws in 1991 but it was not until 1996 that the charge against Jacob was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal ending years of legal wrangling. It was a decision that put the events of 1991 in the proper perspective. It is too bad that all Canadian media didn't handle the story and the verdict with the same maturity as the courts.

When the verdict was announced, excitement rippled through Canadian newsrooms, "Women have the right to go topless!" Photographers, they like to be called photojournalists in the newspaper business, were dispatched to pools and beaches across the province to bring back shots of the hordes of bare breasted Canadian women now released upon the nation.

Even the respected New York Times noted the shock waves reverberating through the far north as Canadian moral standards were reportedly shredded, left in tatters by legions of half-naked women. The caption under their art read:

"In Ottawa, women are allowed to go topless at beaches and outdoor pools. At a beach, Lisa Regimbal walked by a topless Connie Morden. (Canadian Press)"

I have a black and white copy of that picture and Lisa looks properly put off by the chance encounter. The iconic image was shot by an award-winning Ottawa Sun photographer who later moved it to The Canadian Press. It was through the Ottawa Sun photos the world discovered Ottawa women go topless.

A year later the Ottawa Sun ran another shot from the same staff shooter's topless-on-an-Ottawa-beach assignment, but there was one big difference: The blonde woman, so aghast at encountering nudity on a local beach in the first picture, is quite relaxed as she chats with her half naked friend in this second image. Here are the cutlines used by the Ottawa Sun under the second picture:

"Last summer, Lisa Regimbal, left, bear (sic) it all while chatting with Connie Morden."

(Yes, that is the quote. Bares is spelled incorrectly and the young ladies have had their names switched.)

Why the confusion? Why did the women display such different reactions to toplessness as depicted in the two pictures? The answer is simple: The pictures were set-ups. It was so difficult to find naked women on the beach in Ottawa that the Sun used models. I contacted the mother of one of the models and confirmed  the Ottawa Sun topless-at-the-beach pictures were fake and taken at an arranged photo shoot. (At one point in my career, I actually worked with the shooter who took the shots. I got the impression from talking with him that the shots were bogus.)

The Toronto Sun moved a lot of images of topless lasses that summer, mostly to other papers in the Sun Media chain, and I know the editors at The London Free Press were duly thankful -- at least many of the male editors. But, after careful consideration, all these images were rejected for publication. And it was not just for the front nudity.

The London Free Press editors always decided there were enough incongruities among the photos to cast doubt on their veracity. It was decided that these pictures were all illustrations and not news photos.

It is interesting that the Digital Journal pulled the first pictures posted to their online newspaper from the topless event held in Guelph celebrating Gwen Jacob's triumph. Naked breasts may now be seen in public but naked breasts are still not going to be seen on the electronic pages of the Digital Journal.

DJ replaced the offending images with honest, if standard, photos showing naked backs suggesting naked fronts. These pictures still told the story but in in a muted tone. The Digital Journal editors may be conservative but, unlike their Sun Media counterparts from the past, they were honest.

Look at these two pictures running side by side. The young woman on the left was posing for a Sun Media illustration to accompany a news story. The image on the right is from the DJ article.

One picture is definitely honest and the other is highly questionable. Which picture was taken by a photojournalist and which picture was taken by a photographer. I say the image on the right from the Digital Journal was taken by a photojournalist and not the trumped-up one on the left from the Ottawa Sun.

A cool optical illusion

I discovered a couple of interesting blogs that specialize in optical illusions. Click on the above art so that you have only the art, and not my entire blog, on your monitor. Now, stare at the centre black cross. The colour should change to green and even begin to disappear. If it doesn't work try moving closer --- I was about a foot from my monitor when it worked. If you like this, check out some of the other optical illusions on the Mighty Optical Illusions site.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Fleming calls it "placemaking."

John Fleming, Manager of Implementation Planning, City of London, Ontario, was interviewed by The London Free Press reporter Randy Richmond back in 2006. It is interesting to look at a development that was featured in the paper as an example of New Urbanism in London and discover what we find today.

A porch in the New Urbanism development.

First, Fleming does not like the term New Urbanism according to Richmond's story. Fleming prefers "placemaking" as the term for developments where the cookie-cutter approach is out. Where porches wrap around the homes so that the street "gets a view of something architecturally interesting."

Richmond tells us that there are dozens of ways of turning subdivisions into more walkable, pleasant neighbourhoods.

I hate to break this to Fleming and Richmond but my neighbourhood, despite its crescents and cul-de-sacs, has sidewalks teaming with folk. They are out walking their dogs or simply strolling for the sheer pleasure of it. We don't need a special trail for strolling. No one does!

Heck, on my court the strollers don't even need a sidewalk.

And in my neighbourhood we don't need wrap-around porches to enjoy our paper, a coffee, and a chat with a neighbour. All the porches need to be is large enough for a chair or two. That's it.

In fact, the perfect porch may be the simplest porch. With no railings to rot and no roof to maintain, simple porches will not grow old, deteriorate and be demolished rather than repaired.

When I was a photographer with the paper I was surprised to learn how many older homes I visited for the Homes section originally had rather grand porches. Now, those porches only exist in pictures.

Personally, I like the cookie-cutter look. It is too bad that Richmond and Fleming don't. I like the condos that are part of the development The Free Press featured as an example of New Urbanism. I'm not disappointed but I wonder how Richmond and Fleming feel. Betrayed?

One feature of the New Urbanism development that didn't get deep sixed is the walking and jogging trail - an example of placemaking in action. It runs behind some homes and condos. A recent visit showed the trail was well used but not well maintained. The asphalt was cracked and blistered with plants pushing their way up and pushing the asphalt apart. Who is supposed to maintain this trail? The city?

John Fleming calls it "placemaking" rather than smart growth. I now know why. Smart growth could refer to weeds and not to the proposed developments that turn subdivisions into more walkable, pleasant neighbourhoods with the ultimate goal of a little more soul, a sense of place.

You know, I can't even write those words and keep a straight face.