The Icelandic glacier by the name of Okjökull – affectionately known as “Ok” – was declared dead in August of 2019. Allegedly killed by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, it was mourned in a ceremony attended by grieving scientists, sombre politicians and artists, and anxious children. A pair of Texan anthropologists memorialized the glacier-that-was in a short film, and famous local author Andri Snær Magnason wrote a “letter to the future” – Ok’s epitaph – on the plaque marking the spot where it...
Pandemic-level medical crises have the potential to create intense and widespread pressure on medical systems and personnel, and the COVID-19 pandemic has done so in numerous jurisdictions across the world. Since its arrival in North America early last year, COVID has caused multiple episodes of such pressure on various health-care systems. In North America and many parts of Europe, vaccines are now plentiful and the latest wave of COVID-related pressure on the medical establishment...
World energy markets are in turmoil. Prices for electricity are climbing in many places, even where there are long-established modern electrical grids. Oil has risen to about US$70 per barrel, from levels less than a third of that in March and April of 2020, at the beginning of the COVID crisis. Natural gas prices in North America have more than doubled in the past year – the Henry Hub trading centre was quoting $4.97...
When the rope is all below you, trailing down the vertical passage of hard and unforgiving rock, and you reach up to ascend another step toward the sky, it is said that you are on the sharp end of the rope. It is sharp with consequence and responsibility, for the consequence and responsibility are all yours. You are the author of your situation and only you can manage what happens next. You, the laws...
As COVID progresses, mutates, and continues to be a dominating presence in our lives, one might begin to focus increasingly on the role of masks in our lives.
In western societies, masks were virtually non-existent in our daily lives before governments began mandating that we wear them. Now, they are everywhere. Some people have embraced mask use, others have been passive, and others resistant. Along the way, how many of us have stopped to research...
They may seem like simple pieces of material, but masks are actually heavily researched and often sophisticated articles of personal protective equipment. In our previous examination of the science of masks https://big-media.ca/face-the-facts-diving-into-the-science-of-masks, we looked at the clear hierarchy of protection from standard masks: N95 respirators, surgical masks, and last, cloth masks. We covered a lot of ground, but there is much more data to bring into your next debate over the effectiveness of face...
The last 18 months have felt like a prison sentence for many of us. Therefore, it seems appropriate that we look at how a famous problem in game theory known as prisoner’s dilemma might relate to our current challenges. Prisoner’s dilemmapresents a scenario in which the choice of action can bring about a result that is great for one prisoner and terrible for the other, reasonably good for both parties, or bad for both...
The Women in Cleantech (WIC) Challenge is about to determine the $1-million winner of its three-year, six-female contestant challenge to produce sustainable, clean innovation solutions. The project ties together numerous important and topical issues: the environment and climate, sustainability and energy, inequality and diversity, nudging, social justice, and gender capitalism. Readers may wonder about the ramifications of applying a gender lens to the development of people and projects. What are the benefits and aims?...
While we were distracted by COVID-19, a strange thing happened: the flu disappeared. Just take a look at the striking chart below from the World Health Organization (WHO) showing global flu cases plummeting from normal levels in February 2020 to almost nothing by May 2020, and staying there for the rest of the year.
Chart 1: Number of global influenza detections by subtype between November 2019 and December 2020. Source: WHO.
Flu season has been an...
In yet another signal that COVID-19 remains a dominant factor in our lives, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Deputy Chief Public Heath Officer and adviser to the World Health Organization, said on August 12, 2021, that “a fourth wave is under way in Canada.” She reported that active cases in the country have doubled in the last two weeks to 13,000. How does this information fit into what we know about vaccine rates, herd immunity, and the reproductive...
