Canada is huge. Mind boggling-ly big. So completely and utterly massive that the numbers become meaningless.
Canada is the second largest country in the world, covering more than 9,984,670 square kilometres – all of Whistler Village (including the Village North and Upper Village) fits in just one kilometre.
And for a big country, Canada is also relatively unpopulated. More than 85 per cent of Canadians live within 100 km of the southern border with the U.S. and the only major urban populations outside of that border zone are Ottawa and Edmonton.
To help people get around the Canadian Geographic Society has done the country a solid favour by putting an interactive Atlas of Canada online at www.canadiangeographic.ca.
Being Canadian, this service was naturally launched in the lamest way possible – with a 1960’s-looking cartoon featuring a young girl of undetermined ethnic origin with a friendly raccoon.
But beyond the launch lies a powerful tool for navigating this huge country. It’s much more than a map – an atlas contains social data, population data, environmental data, economic data, and all kinds of other data that can be represented geographically. The Canadian Online Atlas also includes stats about our country, and small feature articles on atlas information, such as a look at extreme weather in this country, and a story about western ecozones.
The interactive map features are still in the works, and you can only get within 321x321 square kilometres of Whistler and the surrounding area, but there’s always the CHiRP site at www.chirpwhistler.info if you want to get a closer look at our immediate community.
Interestingly, the Canadian Geographic project was released just days after Google announced that they would be offering aerial maps through their www.google.ca search engine. Check it out at http://maps.google.ca.
Spammer gets nine years
Sometimes, where criminal justice is concerned, it’s a good idea to make an example of someone to discourage others from following in their footsteps. That said, I don’t know what to make of the astonishing nine-year prison sentence handed down to serial spammer Jeremy Jaynes for sending millions of unsolicited e-mails.
Most people, frustrated with all the spam mail they’ve been receiving over the years, probably think that Jaynes got off lightly – some would prefer to see Jaynes stoned to death, drawn and quartered, and sent in little pieces to every corner of the country as a warning to other would-be spammers.
Jaynes was orginally found guilty of spamming last November by a North Carolina judge, and that sentence was upheld last week by a higher court. His prison term has yet to start, as the judge has referred the case to legal experts because of the unprecedented nature of the crime and the sentence. As a result, the sentence could be shortened, modified or even suspended by a higher court.
Whatever happens next, there’s a good chance that Jaynes will spend at least some time in the slammer – hard time to think about what he did.
It’s hard to find pity. In his heyday, Jaynes was making about US $750,000 a month sending out spam e-mails for his customers, and was ranked as the eighth most prolific spammer in the world. The actual crime he committed was sending spam while using a fake return address – under new laws in the U.S. you have to let people opt out of receiving future e-mails.
Will this sentence really discourage spam? Or will it merely drive the spammers off-shore where the laws are different and they can continue to spam with impunity?
If there’s an opportunity to make three-quarters of a million dollars a month doing something, I’d put my money on the latter – we haven’t heard the last of spam.
Sterilize that keyboard
Like a lot of busy people, I tend to eat lunch at my desk. I also come to work when I’m not feeling the best, usually stopping to pat a few dogs on my way to the office.
I’m under no illusions that my keyboard is a sanitary device. Eventually the crumbs will pile up and the keys start to stick enough that I have to get a new one, but in the meantime I’m stuck with whatever germs have taken hold.
A new study of workplaces in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Tucson, Arizona has discovered that about half of all mice, desktops and telephones are literally infested with germs.
Keeping in mind that this study was funded by Clorox Co., which just happens to manufacture bleach and antiseptic wipes. Three hundred samples were used in the study, which was conducted independently at the University of Arizona. The study found that about 47 per cent of desktops, 46 per cent of mice, 45 per cent of telephones, 26 per cent of doorknobs and 19 per cent of light switches showed signs of the parainfluenza virus, which causes ailments like colds, pneumonia and bronchitis.
Sharing a desk makes things worse, but because the germs can live for three days or more all it takes is a good sneeze in the next cubicle to infect your work station.
What to do? One suggestion is to clean your workplace more often, wiping down everything your hands come into contact with on a regular basis. Another suggestion is to wash your hands several times a day, and to be sure to cover your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze.
Knowing may be half the battle. Companies that make disinfectants and wipes readily available to their employees, and have cleaners wipe down commonly used surfaces as part of their schedule, show dramatically lower absenteeism caused by illness than others.
