Powerful women

SD = (HC x SP x EE) ** Women
where,
SD = Sustainable Development
HC = Human Condition (basic needs such as shelter, food, clean water, medicine)
SP = Social Position (such as cast or cultural prosecution)
EE = Enabling Environment (everything from climate & weather to agriculture policy, land ownership rights , business start-up complexity , access to investment funds)


This is a very interesting equation presented by Kevin McCort, the CEO at CARE Canada, to help describe the complexity in international development. Note the three factors HC, SP and EE are all interacting functions and the product is then raised to the power of women. A few women will have a small change in development, but a lot will cause an enormous change. And a zero in any factor, no matter how many women are involved will generate no results.

I have heard George Roter, co-founder of Engineers Without Borders comment that if you monitored just one single factor in a society as a proxy for development it would be women's education level. For a society to have more women with more education will require a cascade of things to have occurred which in total will minimize the systemic problems associated with poverty such as access to healthcare, social imbalance, etc - in essence HC, SP & EE.

Tomorrow Today Election Q&A

A group of twelve national conservation and environmental groups submitted six questions to the leaders of all the national parties. The 90-second per question video response from each party is interesting in part due to the absence of any response from the Conservatives.

Election season - where is the science debate?

Looking through the standard national media sites I found only one article about Canadian science and technology policy. The CBC article essentially asks the same thing I am asking - where is the public debate or discussion?

The Liberals are showing steady increases to NSERC; the Green Party would invest in "green" technology and remove funding to the oil industry. But I would like to hear how the Conservatives justify the elimination of the National Science Advisor earlier this year. Who is advising the PM? Maybe Stockwell Day who thinks humans lived with dinosaurs within the last few thousand years? Mr. Harper and other cabinet members seem to follow the George Bush school of anti-science. While 22% of Canadians polled believe "God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years," is it really too much to ask for our elected officials to have a better education?

Our economy isn't going to make it too far into the 21st century unless we have a more science-literate population. And that requires appropriate political understanding and foresight. The natural resource extraction industries which were the foundation of Canada need to be eclipsed by value added industries that will require substantial understanding of science and technology by the workforce and by politicians.

Burano Italy

Near Venice is the famous Murano glass factory. In fact you can buy the glass all over the place around here. But you would be hard pressed to find anything equal to the colourful village of Burano where every little house is painted some wild or vibrant colour. And they have canals too. And a leaning tower.
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Brigade Video DRAFT

Editing video is both fun and time consuming. With about ten hours of video and a few hundred photos to work with I am slowly working towards a 10-15 minute video. I will also assemble a bunch of other clips together to make a DVD to distribute to the crew members and other crews. This is a link to my .mac account which will eventually morph into my mcmurtry.ca site.

My Best Brigade Shot - Ready, Switch !

Like everyone involved with the David Thompson Brigade, I am struggling to decide what is my single best photo. At this point, this blurred-in-camera shot of the Canadian Voyageur crew doing a switch is my favourite. For me, this captures the essence of the experience - a blur of people working together in complete synchronization. Often it wasn't obvious who was doing the work. Often you only saw it briefly while you were focused on something else. Often it seemed like others were able to effortlessly do something you could not.

In the beginning it was frustrating to see a crew like the Voyageurs slip past at what seemed an impossible rate while we struggled to make our boat respond to clumsy efforts. The first revelation was a clean switch which in time became simple even in high winds, big waves and rapids. One day on the Rainy River we snuck up on the Canadian Voyageurs and beat them to shore at a crew change - it wasn't really a race, but to everyone on the crew it was a small victory which we will probably remember (and boasted of) for a long time.

BlackBerry top wireless device

Research in Motion was the top-selling wireless handset maker in the U.S. in July, marking the third consecutive month the company has held the position, according to Avian Securities' monthly U.S. wireless handset survey. The BlackBerry Curve was the best-selling device. LG ranked second in the survey . . . The study is based on a survey of service representatives at retail stores of the four major wireless operators--AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Surfing the Dog

We had a good day on the Dog River on July 10th. This is just a quick low-resolution edit.

Grand portage

The Brigade drove across the border into Minnesota on Friday with canoes in tow for a visit to the Grand Portage National Monument. This is the location of an important fur trade era fort of the Northwest Company. David Thompson arrived upon the same stone beach where we launched our canoes. We toasted him with milk, something he didn't have in his years in the north.
Thursday morning we spent two hours surfing a series of waves along the Kamanistiqua River. The Kam drops an impressive two hundred feet at Kakabeka Falls. We avoided the scary rapids and enjoyed the day in a modest narrow.
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Quetico

July 4th
We have spent three days traveling through Quetico Provincial Park. The first camp was on Tanner Lake (the picture of the canoes), the second was on Sturgeon and tonight we are on an island East of Emerald Island on Pickerel Lake.

We were on the water again this morning at 6:30, paddling the narrow, twisting river from Sturgeon to Twin Lakes. We interrupted three moose having their morning meal as we approached the first portage. After carrying several canoes and our gear across the 800 meters we were all getting tired. The second portage, Pine, was about 500 meters, and left everyone tired and hungry. After a long lunch we paddled for an hour into Pickerel Lake and found a nice campsite on an island.

Ellie, on the right in the third picture, is one of the captains of the Shawnigan crew. She has paddled with us for this section while John is away for a few days.
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