My pseudo-sister-in-law

There is an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie talks about family, and distinguishes between the family you are born with and the family you make for yourself – namely, your friends.

I share this love for the family you make for yourself, and I have many friends that I consider family. And in the pantheon of my framily, Miss Sarah Barmak holds a very special place in my heart.

 

Altogether now: Aaaawww...

 

When I saw her for the first time in a year in Vermont, I literally welled up with tears. I call her my pseudo sister-in-law, because the title “my brother’s girlfriend” is woefully inadequate.

She and my brother just celebrated their fourth anniversary, much to my delight. I like to remind him that she was mine first, though. Before I introduced her to my brother (the most important man in the world to me), I was proud to call her my friend. Granted, she was a fairly new friend – I had only known her for a year – but I could tell we would undoubtedly become closer and better friends for many years to come. Already in the brief space I had known her, we had shared intimate details and been brazenly honest (as we are wont to do) about all our romantic and familial aches and pains.

I could see that we would be friends for a long time, and I could also see that my brother would go mad over her: a petite, wordy, opinionated, brainy brunette with a massive comic book collection and a pair of 12 hole DMs? Perfetto.

Their meeting was momentous. Those of you who were there will remember it well. For those who weren’t I’ll recount it sometime for you. Certainly I plan to tell the story drunk as a skunk, garbed in a miniskirt and tux blazer at their wedding (should they choose to get married).

It may not exactly have been love at first sight, but it didn’t take them long to see how well matched they were: she moved into Ben’s house six weeks after they met. This was not only one of Ben’s most dramatic courtings, it is also the first time he’s lived with any woman. I am proud of my match.

 

Best match ever, fact.

 

Since then I have come to know and love Sarah on a much deeper and richer level than I perhaps ever could have otherwise. And should she and Ben not work out in the end (knock on wood), I will continue to love her just the same. As I said when they began dating, our friendship will not change. I didn’t introduce a friend to my brother just to risk losing a friend. That would be silly, to grow closer to somebody just to put your bond in jeapordy.

Because in so many ways she has become like a sister to me. In fact, when I came down ill this week, she cared for me like family would: cooking me food, buying me medication, and putting up with my insufferable whining. People’s true colours always show in times of stress, and she showed she truly has a maternal nature, whether she knows it or not. Seeing her care for my brother in his recent times of ill health touches my heart like not much ever has.

I like to tease Sarah that she has a cold heart, because she doesn’t instinctively love puppies, skiing, or babies. But she knows (I hope) that I’m only teasing. She may have a very independent spirit, take a very post-modern attitude towards life, and occasionally say insensitive things, but she truly does have a heart of gold. She is a good person, to the very core, who has genuine compassion and who shows incredibly generosity at every turn. That is not something you can easily say about people.

We are not exactly cut from the same cloth – simply put, she is a cat and I am a dog. We differ in many many ways, and I worry that perhaps she is under the impression that I disparage her ways because they are not like my own.

Puh. Shaw.

This will sound cliché, but its true: I love her all the more because of the ways in which we differ. I love that she can teach me about so many things I know so little about: philosophy, visual art, time, relativity (in all its forms).

I love even more how I learn from her in personal ways: she is a paragon of so many virtues I admire in others and lack myself. She is one of the most non-judgemental people I have ever met. She is humble and modest (dear God, could I learn from her). She really knows how to relax, calm down, and take it easy (again, dear God, could I learn from her). And, perhaps most of all, I can learn from her patience. There are so many ways that I admire and learn from Sarah, and I’m still discovering more five years after meeting her.

But for all her wisdom and reason, she is highly skilled at letting loose, having fun, and on occasion, making a silly mess of herself. I mean, just check out the pics of her making faces on her birthday. Brilliant. Beautiful women who are not afraid to make themselves look ugly for the sake of comedy are the best.

 

Beautiful women who make themselves look silly for the sake of comedy rock.

 

She loves to eat – passionately. She is actually my favourite person on the face of the earth to eat with. Not a single thought is ever given to nutrition, calories or fads – we just love to eat good food that is good for us together. It’s as though food tastes better when I share it with her.

 

One cheese-loving girl.

 

She has immaculate, quirky, classy and original taste, and her birthday and Christmas presents always become fast favourites in my wardrobe. You know that pink-coral cross-tie incredibly low cut top of mine? Or that tiny pine cone encased in silver? Or the recycled magazine earrings? Pure Barmak.

Best of all, she is one of the wittiest humans I have ever met – and that is saying a lot. But I am not being hyperbolic. She has an unparalleled ability to sum up just about anything, no matter how complicated or ridiculous, with the most compact, succinct and hilarious statements.

Intelligent, compassionate, open-minded, complex, and of course, beautiful, Sarah is truly a unique and wonderful woman, one that I am sincerely proud to count among both my friends and my family. I feel like I got to pick my own sister-in-law – how cool. And, who knows. Maybe I also got to help craft my own nieces and nephews… no pressure or anything. But, you know… just maybe.

Even if that never happens, and even if things don’t work out in the end with my brother (knock on wood), I am still so happy that they came together in the first place, and that I grew to love and know her as I do now. My life has been better with her in it.

And you know, just like a great love, or a best friend, I remember the day we met perfectly. We had a meeting at The Varsity (where we were co-editors), when I was the science editor and she was the rep covering the Scarborough and Mississauga campuses at the U of T. After she left the meeting early, somebody mentioned her name. “Who’s Sarah – you mean that really pretty and funny brunette?” I asked.

I’ve learned a lot about her in the past five years. But the first impression didn’t do too bad.

 

I love Sarah Barmak.

My Big Fat Post Modern Wedding

Last week, I got married. To my Wife Rebecca – or Bex, as she is better known.

Me n' my Wife.

 

Truth be told, we’ve been married (on Facebook at least) for many months. But we thought it was time to do our marriage justice and tie the knot properly, with 70 friends and a crate of champagne.

 

The ultimate post modern marriage. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike.

 

Let me be clear: We are not lesbians. We do not have sex with each other. This is not a legal marriage, nor a civil partnership. We are not going to raise children together. We have long-term sexual relationships with men, and we both fully plan on finding “the one,” being with them forever and having babies.

Many people seem to have misunderstood this point, and a surprising number declined the invitation to our wedding because they found the whole concept so odd. It made them uncomfortable. More’s the pity.

So I am writing this for everyone who was confused by our marriage, to explain why she is my Wife.

Here it is: She is my match.

My match. Photo Credit: Joseph Edmonds

 

She is an immaculate wordsmith, and an unparalleled punner. She will banter and chatter with me for hours on end, instead of running out of interesting things to say, sitting awkwardly in silence, or tiring of my words. She can destroy you in Scrabble, politely, using only real words (none of those ridiculous ones like “qaid” and “zitis” that you only find in the bullshit Scrabble dictionary). She is schooled in the Greek and Latin classics, works professionally as a journalist, and writes her mobile phone texts and notes on Facebook with proper spelling and punctuation. (I abhor txt spk.)

The other night I sent her a text, and she wrote back: “Wife, I am too drunk to read your text, but check out how my spelling is still accurate.”

This spoke volumes.

She has dark brown eyes that you could stare into for hours. She shares my love of wearing inappropriately low-cut tops to the office. She loves food, passionately. She is also allergic to bullshit, cats and aspirin (who the hell is allergic to aspirin?). She doesn’t withhold her affections, she wears her heart on her sleeve, and she has endless (some might say excessive) patience with friends and family when they step out of line.

We are, as the Brits say, “cut from the same cloth.” Or as Bex puts it, “we are mates of soul.”

When we met, it was love at first sight.
 

Love at first sight: Hagop introduces Bex to Zoe. Photo Credit: Me

 

Our mutual friend Hagop brought her to meet me in the lineup outside a London club for a dubstep night. She had already imbibed four pints before our meeting (this set a precedent for what is a pattern of hers). We made small talk for a few minutes, and then she mentioned that she had just broken up with her boyfriend of four years.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, and rubbed her arm comfortingly. “We need to get you trashed. Right now.” And I scurried off and bought a bottle of rum.

It was an instant bond. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen for a friend so quickly and so easily.

I have other girlfriends I love no less, and whom I would call “my Best Friend.”

But Bex is my Wife. The distinction between Bex and my Best Friends is that, if either one of us were male, we would actually date, marry and have babies. We were made for each other.

We have called each other “Wife” – both to each other and when referring to each other – for well on a year now.

Hence we decided it was high time we actually got married.

The rules of engagement for our celebration were simple: men were to dress as women.

Hagop and Ross, looking very pretty indeed. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

Neon, as Norman Bates. Aces High. Photo Credit: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

 

Women were to dress as men.

 

Emma looking incredibly dapper. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

Harriet, enjoying some light reading. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

Everyone was to take the next day off work

Our guests kept Bex and I segregated before the ceremony, saying “Brides must not see each other beforehand!” which I thought silly and unnecessary. But when she walked down that aisle and I saw her, looking so beautiful, escorted by our friend Neon and smiling at me, my skin prickled with goosebumps. I kid you not.

Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

I wore my vestal virgin dress (which I’ve had for 10 years). When Bex first saw me wearing it she said “Oh my god, you look so pure, I want to sacrifice you!”

Hagop, having the honour of being the one who introduced us, was the vicar.

Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

He almost bought a priesthood online, but decided he didn’t need to bother. “It doesn’t matter to me, if I just say I’m a vicar then I’m a vicar,” he said. Fair play.

We enlisted some professional photographers – the very awesome Mike Mike Mike

Mike Mike Mike. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

Lauren Blue

Lauren Blue.

and Flavia Fraser-Cannon (Bex’s Best Friend, my new wife-in-law)

My new wife-in-law Flavia, with our vicar Hagop. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

whose photos I respectfully replicate here and to whom I am very grateful for capturing one of the most amazing nights of my life.

Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

You see, I never thought I would get married. I don’t believe in the institution.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in true love and monogamy whole-heartedly. I dated just one person between the ages of 15 and 20. I sincerely want to be with just one person for my whole life, to have babies and grow old together in passion and in friendship.

But I don’t believe in the concept of “marriage.”

I don’t think a license from a priest or the government makes my relationship with someone different. It’s just a piece of paper.

In fact, I find the very notion that I should have to go through a ceremony with somebody before our love is considered valid to be downright offensive.

It’s a waste of money. My parents, who were paired for three decades, spent the $20,000 they had painstakingly saved on the down payment for a house, instead of a wedding. I think that was incredibly clever. Should any man with wads of cash in his pocket desperately want to marry me (as unlikely as that is, given my propensity to date writers and musicians), I would ask that we spend the money on a home, a holiday, or just give it to charity.

I don’t want a diamond ring. I am very clumsy and I lose things easily – it would just be a stress and a worry. Also, diamonds tend to be mined by workers who toil in horrible dark mines under slavish conditions. Screw that.

Lastly, I can’t be bothered to deal with the anxiety. For many couples, organizing the event and getting their (often dysfunctional) families together can be an unbearable stress.

I don’t believe in marriage. I have never wanted to marry anyone.

But I wanted to marry Bex.

The exchanging of rings. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue.

 

I wanted to celebrate our friendship.

 

Our first kiss. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

I wanted to pay homage to the fact that in the middle of the night outside a crappy nightclub, two kindred spirits can find each other.

 

Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

I wanted to rejoice in the fact that two women can choose to remain single and wed each other instead of marrying mediocre males.

Throwing the flowers. Who caught them? Everybody. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

Instead of getting hitched at 18 to start pumping out sprogs, we can go to university, work professionally as writers, have our words and our thoughts taken seriously, and on occasion stay out very very late getting very very drunk with each other.

Wives like to make mischief.

 

This is what feminism is all about.

And what better way to celebrate than with 70 friends all in drag and bubbling on champagne?

I wanted to celebrate with my best friends, with my modern urban family.

My chosen dad, Kier, giving me away. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

In London I have found many brothers and sisters, people that I consider family.

My chosen sisters, Lily and Gemma. I love them like family. Photo Credit: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

 

Somebody once told my aunt, “You’ve always been gay.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not a lesbian.” She said.

“Yes, but you’ve always lived like a gay person: You make your friends your family.”

So I guess in that way, Bex and I actually are gay.

With everyone in the dress of the opposite gender celebrating the marriage of two straight women who do not have sex with each other this was, quite simply, the ultimate post-modern marriage.

Hagop said to us, at the end of the night, “You are the coolest people ever – how many girls would marry each other like this?” We were, as the Brits say, chuffed.

Everyone said that this was an incredible party, and rightly so.

We make good party. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

The girls, garbed in comfy suits and waistcoats, were spared the insecurity and anxiety that normally comes with choosing a dress for a wedding. They loved it.

My beautiful friend Aurora, hiding her beauty behind a comfy beard. Photo Credit: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

Rebecca, looking debonair, as always. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

Erin letting it all hang out. With chest hair. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

And the boys – not surprisingly – enjoyed wearing cocktail dresses and mini skirts more than they had anticipated. It was very amusing – and revealing – to see which of them took particularly great pleasure in cross-dressing.

Our dearest Harky, Hagop's brother, looking like a sexy beast. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

My dear friend Aaron, loving the drag. Perhaps more than he thought he would. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

My dearest Kier and Jan, looking so slick. (Kier, I can see your crotch). Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

I think my favourite moment was when Hagop’s father Rolph walked in, saw 70 people in drag and Bex (whom he’s known for a decade) being married to some chick by Hagop, smiled, and seemed to think to himself, “Cool.”

 

Rolph, looking quite comfortable. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

We saw in the dawn, and everybody agrees that we giggled more at this party than we had at any other for quite some time.

I love my urban family like you don't even know. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

Thank you to everyone for making our special night so incredible.

I want to give a special thank you to my Best Friend Lily,

My Best Friend Lily. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

who means the Earth to me. She baked us a cake,

Yummy yummy cake baked by my best friend Lily. Photo Credit: Joseph Edmonds.

 

and made us matching rings. With the keys to our hearts. Aw.

My ring. Made by My Lily. Photo Credit: Me.

 

I want to thank my incredible Best Male Friend Kier, who gave me away, for staying up all night and looking so sexy in his cocktail dress.

My chosen pimp daddy Kier giving me away. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

And, of course, I want to give a special thank you to Hagop,

 

Hagop looking deservedly proud. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

for sourcing the champagne, for hosting the night at his house, for marrying us with the proper script, for hooking up dope lights, speakers and a smoke machine, and – most of all – for introducing us in the first place.

Our holy trinity. Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

This was, as Bex puts it, the “BEST WEDDING EVER – FACT.”

Many other girls, we have discovered, have “Wives.” Many girls have seen our photos and said “Oh my god that is the best idea EVER I am SO doing that.”

Bex and I are going to draft The Gospel of Wife to enshrine the concept. Such as: “Wives will never be too trashed at the same time. One Wife will always sober up when the other needs looking after.” Or “Wife will always know what to order for Wife in a restaurant when Wife can’t decide what she wants.” Or “Wife will always be able to tell when Wife is menstruating.”

You know what? I love being married.

I love looking at the ring on my finger.

 

"I just had to get it for you, it was so perfectly bling," she said. I wear it all the time now. Photo Credit: Me

 

I am still amazed by the fact that she picked this up for me by herself (after I had said we would need to go together to make sure they would fit), and that it fits perfectly. “Well you gesture with your hands a lot when you speak,” she said, “I have a good idea of what your hands look like.”

I love being able to say “My Wife is on her way,” or “My Wife is going to interview a Duchess next week.”

I love having a Wife.

And I love my Wife.

Maybe this whole marriage thing isn’t so silly after all.

 

Best. Wedding. Ever. Fact. Photo Credit: Lauren Blue

 

Just maybe.

 

 

Addendum: I record here, for posterity, our vows. Both were written on trains in a rush. Bex’s is far superior to mine, as I fully expected.

 

My Vow:

For my wife, with her piercing brown eyes, immaculate Scrabble skills, and the capacity to drink any man under the table, in her I found a wife.

I have never wanted to wed a man, but Bex I want to marry. Without hesitation.

I pledge to scrutinize all unscrupulous and unsuitable suitors. For there will be many before any is good enough for Wife.

I promise to never tease when you’ve had too much, to sober up when you need my solid arm, and hold your hair with patience.

I will never whine when you are on the rag, I will never dissect your personality, and I will never – ever – divorce you.

But most of all, I vow to love your family as my own – as I know you will mine. There are two types of family, you know. Those you inherit, and those you choose.

I left one family behind to find another here, and in London, I have found sisters, brothers, cousins, parents, and more.

You are all the reason I adore this grim, grey, expensive, pretentious, classist and alcoholic city so much.

Because even in the middle of the night, outside a shitty club in Soho, you can still find a kindred spirit. And if you are lucky enough, a Wife.

 

 

Photo Credit: Mike Mike Mike

 

Bex’s vow (much better in my opinion):

When we met outside that dubstep rave and you said “Let’s get trashed,” I knew you were the Wife for me.

But I knew I had you, see when I said if I were an enzyme I’d be DNA Helicase so I could unzip your genes.

We’ve been trouble since, causing scenes.

I promise to be there with whisky when you need me.

To patch up your poor skull when you are bleeding.

I’ll come to your lectures and expand my thinking.

Then kill brain cells together with excessive drinking.

I’ll do my best to thrash your brother at Scrabble.

When you need me to listen, I’ll let you babble.

And let’s not forget one last thing.

Zoe, my Wife, you are amazing.

 

I love my Wife. Photo Credit: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

 

 

A way without the will: bad choices lead to bad outcomes

I never planned to be a specialist in environmental reporting. I started my career in journalism doing mostly straight science writing—articles that required the translation of scientific mumbo-jumbo into accessible language. Genetics, technology, medicine—the usual. But the bulk of my assignments quickly came to be on environmental issues. The media are devoting more space to them as the public wants to understand and deal with the mess we’ve made. A science degree came in handy for translating the importance of neurotoxins and greenhouse gases.

But lately it’s made me feel a bit like a Cassandra, cursed forever to preach grim environmental truths that no one wants to heed. Here it is: things are bad, probably much worse than you think, and the most maddening part is that I believe we could fix things—we just won’t.

I’d always cared about the environment, but until it became a professional necessity, I didn’t study it formally. When I was a student at the University of Toronto, I didn’t want to spend every day feeling bummed out about how stupid and greedy people are and what a sullied planet I’ve inherited.

Instead, I wanted to study something that would make me happy. So I studied zoology. Learning about how living things work gives me constant wonder and joy. Most people don’t think of it this way, but biology provides incredible fodder for the imagination. All you have to do is look at the spiral of your own inner ear, leopard slug sex (YouTube it, seriously), the architecture of spider silk, the development of frog embryos or the complexities of the genetic code to see that this is true. Humans might be able to put a man on the moon and memorize pi to thousands of decimal places, but we will never create something as complex as a bacterium—let alone ourselves. Every day I learned something new that blew my mind, and every day I had fun doing it.

I only started to really learn about environmental issues in earnest in the fourth year of my Bachelor of Science degree, when I took a course on climate change ecology. I was still learning something new and mind-blowing every day—but it wasn’t fun anymore.

I thought I was well-informed. I knew that things were bad, but this bad? The world’s great coral reefs might disappear by the time I’m 40? The highest concentrations of PCBs on earth are found in the breast milk of Inuit women? A third of all species might be destined for extinction (or already gone) by 2050?

These weren’t the hyperbolic ravings of unshod hippies— this was top-calibre, peer-reviewed science taught at one of our country’s top universities. This wasn’t on the fringes of academia. This was the main fare.

In my first year doing environmental journalism—and I am embarrassed to admit this—I cried constantly. Just a few months after starting out as a freelancer, I was sent by a magazine to visit Aamjiwnaang, a First Nations reserve in Ontario that is surrounded by chemical factories, after being convinced/ conned by the Crown to sell their ancestral land to Shell, Dow, Sunoco and other petro-giants. Now, fringed by industrial smokestacks, the people there are plagued by a host of health problems, including rampant asthma, far-too-frequent miscarriages and what appears to be one of the most skewed birth ratios in the world (twice as many girls are born as boys—the oil industry contends it is little more than a coincidence).

Again, as a city-bred white girl with little reason to complain: I cried. A lot. Not just because of that one unfair, stupid mess, but for all the unfair stupid messes like it all over the world. The strange tingly headaches and diffi culty breathing I suffered while I was visiting the region—neither of which I would consider psychosomatic—didn’t help.

Now it is my job to know about every shred of environmental news and research that comes through the wires. And let me tell you: things are seriously messed up. Things are so much worse than you think they are.

It’s not that I think the ice caps will melt tomorrow and we’re all going to die horribly in some kind of apocalyptic Day After Tomorrow affair. I don’t think we are going to wipe out all life on earth and the planet will become uninhabitable—life is far more resilient than that.

What I do think is that the world is going to change a lot over the next century. And I think the changes are going to be very uncomfortable. Energy, food, water and everything else will be more expensive and scarce.

But most of all—and for me this is the most heartbreaking thing—I do believe that a staggering proportion of life on earth will go extinct. No one really knows how much, but probably a third of amphibians, a quarter of mammals, and probably more than a third of all species. Period. Our world will be less diverse, less colourful and a lot less interesting. To an animal geek like me, it means a much more dull and lonely world.

But as bad as things are, I don’t cry or freak out anymore— worrying all the time and losing sleep won’t do any good, and I’ll just ruin my own health. So I just do what I can to make the world a better place, and the rest of the time, carpe diem and carpe nocte: enjoy my own life while I can, before things get much worse (because they will).

But this is the sad irony: as pessimistic as I am, I don’t believe it has to be this way.

Do I think we can avoid a slow, inexorable march toward an unrecognizable planet? Without a doubt. We can split the atom, we can peer into the structure of our own DNA, we can send satellites to bloody Mars. Our brains are—as far as we know— the most complex and sophisticated objects in the universe. Of course we can figure out how to live comfortably without making a horrible, stinky, cancerous mess everywhere. We already have every smidge of technology and know-how we need.

But do I think we will avoid catastrophe? Doubtful. Look at our track record. Look at what we spend our money, energy and hope on. Endless crap. Gargantuan McMansions we don’t need (except to fill with more endless crap we don’t need). Diamondstudded ass scratchers. And, of course, weapons. We spend more than a trillion dollars a year killing each other.

Humans can be artful, altruistic and sometimes rational, but there’s no denying it: we are a race of greedy and selfish buggers sometimes. But I don’t think that is any excuse for hedonism or despair. Humans are also endowed with at least one special gift: free will. Choice.

Choosing to be environmentally responsible isn’t about squishy sentimentality—it’s about intelligence. We need clean air, water and soil for our own sake. And it costs a lot more to clean up our mess than to prevent it in the first place. So we can choose not to be stupid. It’s not rocket science, and it’s not that difficult. Start with the easy stuff where you can (compost, take public transport, turn down the heat—you’ve heard this before). Stop buying stupid things you don’t need (a no-brainer, whether you care about your bank balance or the planet). And most of all: vote, and pressure politicians. The richest of us can put up solar panels and buy organic cosmetics all we like, but only with legislation will we see true change on a meaningful scale.

With a critical mass of public support and legislative willpower, it really wouldn’t be that hard to turn things around. Because our best estimates say it would take roughly $1 trillion—barely 1.6 percent of our global GDP last year, about what we spend annually on weapons—to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent (the minimum amount we need to prevent “catastrophic” climate change). If there’s one thing we greedy humans love, it’s a bargain. I’ve never heard of a better one. Let’s hope we aren’t too stupid to pass it up.

From the current issue of This Magazine

http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2008/09/env_waywithout.php

Guerilla Science: Assaulting your senses with reality

I love music festivals. And I love science.

It’s not every day that you get to combine the two.

I had the unique privilege and pleasure to help coordinate the Guerilla Science Camp at the Secret Garden Party this past July (my favourite festival of all).

Most of the time you see an educational type tent at a music festival it usually runs along the lines of “Realign your chakras with transcendental meditation” or “WAKE UP!! 9/11 was an inside job!!!!”

Not here.

Here we served up lectures on the philosophical implications of of quantum physics and string theory, the lysergic and mathematical patterns in fractals, optical illusions that illuminate the structure of your mind, and methodologies to master memory and the ways that you (yes, even you) can memorize 40 random digits in under a minute.

We featured workshops on the science of beatboxing, illustrations of the beauty of fluid dynamics, tutorials on climate change myths, proofs and solutions, and a science pub quiz (populated, like all pub quizzes, by unusually witty drunkards).

For the paranormally and psychically inclined – usually the scientifically averse – we also offered the chance to prove your telepathic abilities.

Our tent showcased the sounds of stars, the paradoxes of game theory, and – a subject very close to my heart – a lecture on mind-bending parasites and the medically under-appreciated prevalence of such infections. (I almost died of a parasitic infection as a child due to misdiagnosis. My fellow editors cringed when I published a guide on parasitic infections as a student journalist – see whatseatingyou-05022004. Whatever. People need to know more about this stuff, lest their bodies and minds become hijacked by nefarious nematodes.)

And, for the verbally impaired (as are commonplace at music festivals), we served up some hands-on fun with tactile molecular models, experimental fun with everyday materials, like cornstarch and bubble solution, and lessons in brain anatomy with cortextual-shaped cakes.

Fun for kids especially.

FYI: watching half-naked trashed people inflate balloons with baking soda and vinegar is unbelievably entertaining, possibly without rival.

But, above and beyond making a sticky molecular mess and shooting flames with custard powder, we had a higher philosophical aim. Science is, all too often, taught very badly at school. Students frequently walk away from secondary school thinking “science is boring” and “I should study Fine Art at Central St Martins.” Alas.

Science is about exploring and celebrating reality. And reality is bloody amazing. One of the principal aims of the Guerilla Science Camp is to rectify the shortcomings of mainstream schooling by re-educating people. Show them the magic that goes on every day in the world around them, in every cell of their body, every single second. Inspire them.

And you know what? As sleep deprived, as hungover, hot, sweaty, and addled as so much of the audience was, they really and truly listened to what our speakers had to say.

I was amazed and proud to see so many people walk away with new eyes, new thoughts, and new questions.

Appreciating the scientific method is important, not just for your experience of reality, but for how we interact with reality – socially and politically. How seriously should we take the threat of climate change? How do we decide how to approach it? How can we know if vaccines actually put children at risk for developing autism, and what are the real consequences of shunning the jab?

Helping everyday people understand the relevance, wonder and beauty that can be found in the sciences is an under-appreciated and important job. It is very rare – and very heartening – to see it happening in the midst of a music and sunshine-fueled love-in. This should happen more often.

Go reality.

Thanks, and so much respect, to everyone who worked so hard and so passionately to put this weekend’s events together. And credit must be given to our speaker Frank Swain, science punk, who went far and above the call of duty, helping us with technical pit falls, scheduling headaches and logistical nightmares. Absolutely stellar. 

You can see a video montage here (I myself appear at about 2:45 and 4:05).

Truth is stranger than fiction

Science gets a raw deal.

It is stereotyped as the soulless study of statistics, the meaningless gathering of data, an uninspired reduction of life’s complexities into humdrum mundanities.

People will proudly tell you that they failed highschool chemistry – yet would be ashamed to admit that they know nothing of Shakespeare. They will snidely denigrate the hard work of lab researchers, and heap praise upon the most loathesome of composers, “artists” and musicians.

Invariably, it is those with the least knowledge of science who feel most entitled to dismiss its importance.

This pisses me off. Science is neither boring, nor mundane: it is an exploration and celebration of reality.

Because, you know what? Reality is mind-boggingly cool. The world around us is more complex, more inventive and more ingenious than we could ever understand. Don’t believe me? Check out the intricacies of the genetic code, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, or the luminescent explosions of slug sex.

We cannot even begin to grasp just how vast, brilliant and beautiful our universe is – it is inspiring and daunting beyond words. As I always say: Truth is stranger than fiction.

It was a poet who said it, but today it may be our scientists who appreciate this line most of all: See a world in a grain of sand.

Any jackass can sprinkle paint on a canvas, construct indulgent shrines to themselves, or write mediocre novels: it takes a truly epic kind of creativity to contemplate the cosmos.

Now, this is a particularly sore point with me, as my family is densely populated with artsy fartsys who do not appreciate – nor wish to appreciate – why I adore biology and why it inspires me so. My step-grandfather, an old school Euro novelist, will dismissively say things like “Yes, sure, you are good at writing – about science,” as though my knowledge solely encompasses the meaningless nuts and bolts of base matter and not the deeper mysteries of existence. I get no respect. So take my vitriol here with a pinch of salt.

But, nonetheless, I am not alone in this view: all science buffs lament society’s lack of appreciation for our craft.

A recent issue of New Scientist carried a fantastic editorial by Lawrence Krauss which expounded upon this point very articulately:

Last month I read a column in The New York Times by David Brooks that has bothered me ever since. In it Brooks describes an essay about the medieval concept of the universe entitled C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem by Michael Ward, a chaplain at the University of Cambridge.

Brooks writes that “while we moderns see space as a black, cold, mostly empty vastness, with planets and stars propelled by gravitational and other forces, Europeans in the Middle Ages saw a more intimate and magical place. The heavens, to them, were a ceiling of moving spheres, rippling with signs and symbols, and moved by the love of God… The modern view disenchants the universe, Lewis argued, and tends to make it ‘all fact and no meaning’.”

Brooks’s and Ward’s articles both reflect a popular view that science, by explaining the inner workings of the universe, robs it of the wonder that religion provides – a viewpoint that, frankly, I find offensive. How anyone can suggest that medieval hallucinations might spark the imagination more than the actual universe that we have been so fortunate to uncover is beyond me. The “heavenly actors” populating the spiritual universe of Lewis were, like many religious myths, intellectually lazy creations of fundamentally ignorant minds. It is a far grander kind of imagination that is needed to fathom the real universe.

Damn straight.

He goes on to describe the scope of the universe, the incredible number of stars and galaxies above us, and reminds us that every atom in our bodies was born in the heart of an exploding star:

Over time, 200 million stars have exploded in our galaxy, producing almost all the elements that make up our bodies. The atoms in your left hand may have come from a different star than those in your right: we are all star children.
If this poetry of nature does not change the way we view our place in the universe, providing not mere facts but new meaning, then we are truly spiritually bereft. Yet too many people feel that they must invent alternate realities to justify human existence.

Right on.

Now, to be fair, many people can be forgiven for their lack of appreciation. Science is, quite often, taught very badly at school, and we chronically suffer from a lack of good and qualified teachers. And when you consider that so much funding for the sciences is shunted into commercially profitable fields and the military (ew), no wonder that people forget about the inspiring, abstract, and artful facets to the sciences.

But you know what? If you look “science” up in the Microsoft Word thesaurus, the word “art” appears (alongside just three other words).

Word.

Biofuels: a handy way to appear green without actually being so

Can you name one issue that every major political party in Canada and every single presidential candidate in the U.S. agrees on? Hint: it’s not health care, it’s not education and it’s not Iraq.

It’s ethanol, blessed by all as a keystone of energy, agricultural and environmental policy. You’d be hard-pressed to find a mainstream politician on either side of the border—or even on the other side of the world—who hasn’t wholeheartedly embraced the idea of making “biofuels” like ethanol out of corn, wheat, canola, palm oil and sugar cane.

Our Conservative federal government has stipulated that biofuels must account for five percent of gasoline sold by 2010, and has earmarked $200 million in incentives to farmers. The Liberals and the NDP would both double this goal to 10 percent. The European Union, meanwhile, wants 10 percent by 2020, and Brazil already requires at least 20 percent. And in the U.S., every single presidential candidate, from McCain and Huckabee to Clinton and Obama, has touted ethanol. Even George W. Bush loves it, endorsing a law stating that it must account for 24 percent of transport fuels by 2017.

Funny that the exact same chemical—grain alcohol—that our leaders will proudly abstain from drinking, they will enthusiastically pour into the engines of the economy.

And no wonder: biofuels sound like such a nice idea. Instead of using dirty black fossil fuels, tainted by war in the Middle East, human rights atrocities in Africa and ecological devastation in Alberta, we could grow fresh fuels out of clean, green plants on our peaceful prairies. We could reduce our dependence on foreign oil, boost domestic agriculture and be kind to the environment all at the same time. Farmers, industrialists and environmentalists all kept happy. Win-win-win.

If only it were that simple. The reality is that biofuels come with nasty collateral damage.

The idea is that biofuels will help us curb global warming because they are theoretically “carbon neutral”: instead of releasing old carbon, locked away for millions of years in fossils, we could harvest new carbon, absorbed from the air during the growing season by plants, then simply returned to the atmosphere when the biofuel is burned. No muss, no fuss.

There are plenty of holes in this theory. Biofuel crops devour massive quantities of fresh water. Rainforests are razed and wetlands drained in the tropics to grow sugar cane and palm oil. Corn and canola crops in the north are carpeted with nitrogen-rich fertilizers, which wash through rivers and spawn blooms of toxic algae in the Gulf of Mexico.

Worse, biofuels are probably not “carbon neutral” at all. Clearing forests and drying wetlands releases huge quantities of carbon into the air. A careful analysis of the entire biofuel production chain by Nobel-prize winner Paul Crutzen reveals that when you factor in the greenhouse gases released by fertilizers, some biofuels are actually worse contributors to global warming than fossil fuels. The oil and gas required to power the farm machinery, refineries and transport add to the problem.

Plus there’s the question of food: there’s something profoundly immoral about feeding crops to cars instead of people. Already global food prices are soaring, and every credible authority—from the UN to the IMF—has fingered the rise in biofuels as a key factor.

Moreover, it’s unquestionably impractical: there is simply not enough land to meet these targets. Using the entire American corn crop would only offset 20 percent of annual fuel use. Turning every single arable acre on earth over to biofuels would still not offset our current usage of fossil fuels.

Biofuels are a handy way for politicians to appear green without actually being so. Instead of tackling the real challenges, like building efficient public transport, tightening auto efficiency requirements and investing in genuinely renewable energy sources on a large scale, they can just take the path of least resistance and replace a fraction of unpopular old fuels with deceptively different new ones.

Alone in Canada, only the Green Party has rejected biofuels. And, notably, John McCain (who was concerned about climate change long before most politicians came on board) dismissed them as useless in 2003—but has since endorsed them after taking a hit in the polls.

Biofuel may be political holy water, but it’s environmental folly. There’s little reason to believe it accomplishes anything but distracting us from the important issues and delaying real action.

(My editorial from the May Issue of This Magazine.)

**

Three notes I’d like to make:

1. Giving credit where credit is due: This was preened by my friend and former co-editor at The Varsity, Graham F Scott, who taught me more than almost anybody about the joys and pains of editing.

2. As with anything in print journalism, there’s never enough space to say everything you want to say. If I could have rambled on for another page, I would have mentioned this: As fuel experts are quick to point out, not all biofuels are created equal. Canola, for example, may result in a net release of more greenhouse gases during its production than are released by fossil fuels. Biofuel developers believe that cellulosic ethanol, derived from woody plants, could be a wonderful alternative to corn-based ethanol; it wouldn’t detract from food supplies, and possibly could be grown on marginal land (and not pristine arable soils). But I’m far from convinced. It’s much harder to break down cellulose and woody materials than sugary substances (you need extra enzymes to break down woody plants, like grasses – ask any cow). Engineers hope they can use enzymes harvested from the guts of termites, for example, but I doubt they will be able to do this economically any time soon.

There is only one kind of biofuel that I’ve heard about so far that I’ve thought could actually be a good idea: algal biofuels. Just maybe. 

3. Almost always, the best way to make your point is with comedy. The Onion has thrived on this notion for over a decade. 

Last month Steven Colbert summed up the ethanol issue perfectly:

I’m concerned that people won’t shut up about climate change. Look, we solved the energy crisis. The answer was ethanol. Corn plus magic equals ethanol! Ethanol makes us feel like the energy crisis has been solved and allows us to continue living as we always have: in our cars. The great thing is that not only do we not have to sacrifice, neither do the oil companies. To get 100 gallons of ethanol you have to burn 129 gallons of fossil fuels. We can break our addiction to fossil fuels without sacrificing our dependence on fossil fuels. When nothing feels like you’re doing something, you can’t get more energy efficient than that.

I am scared of Russia

We have heard a lot about the Russians lately. Poisoning defectors. Withdrawing from arms treaties. Sending out planes on territorial air patrols again for the first time since the cold war. Planting flags under the north pole in an attempt to claim the oil and gas reserves of the arctic for themselves. Generally being swagger and macho and scary.

For the past several months I have been growing more and more afraid of Russia. It really is starting to look like there is going to be an all-out brawl between them and Canada and the US over the North Pole.

I’m not happy about this.

And then this happened: Russia announced it had created the “Father of All Bombs“, a new kind of thermobaric weapon, the world’s most powerful non-nuclear device.

Sweet mother of god. This is not good.

Can somebody please tell me why global powers keep inventing more and more lethal weapons? Do we not have enough massive explosive things to kill each other with? Have we not already perfected the art of killing tens of thousands of people in one swipe? I mean, really…