Comments noracharles has made

  • actually...

    New Urbanism is a movement in town/city planning and way of living. It means ending the suburban nightmare of single-use zoning and returning to multi-use zoning. So a city or old town (main street) centre are the perfect examples of this. You have single family homes, multi-unit apartments, apartments above stores, street-side stores, large sidewalks, smaller grid-style streets etc and everything is very walkable.
    I'm very happy to see it in practice again and hope more and more cities and town continue to do this.
    If you are interested in this topic of New Urbanism, check out "Geography of Nowhere" by James Kunstler and "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream" by Andres Duany et al.  Extremely interesting books.

    My only concern is that these New Urban communities, like Seaside, Florida tend to be taken over by the wealthy and drive home prices up and end up excluding middle and lower income residents because they can't afford it. If these new town plans are to work, they need to have provisions for lower income housing/apartment units so that everyone can enjoy the community, not just the wealthy.On Clustered housing and green space combine to good effect posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 6 Responses

  • Grapeseed oil

    Try grapeseed oil instead of canola. I pour some in a pot to coat the bottom of the pot, let it warm up on medium heat, and dump in a layer of kernals. A few minutes later - fluffy popcorn (organic, bought in bulk!). Melt some butter and add a little salt - and you've got yummy popcorn. Now that I make it like this I find I intensely dislike the regular microwave stuff my friends use - way too salty and fake tasting.On Why conventional popcorn sucks, and what you can do about it posted 10 months, 1 week ago 20 Responses

  • Tar Sands

    Unfortunately PM Harper is in the pocket of his oil buddies and will never regulate the tar sands. He laughably set emissions targets that are intensity-based (so overall emissions will rise) and tried to make it look like he was getting tough on the tar sands. And in the election he said they wouldn't export raw bitumen to countries with lower environmental standards than us, which made me laugh and weep because that rules out no one (heck, I'm pretty sure China may be more environmental friendly than us. We are still pushing Asbestos on developing countries to prop up the Quebec industry and by industry I mean a measly 600 or so jobs).

    Sadly, many of my fellow Canadians have bought into his lies (you repeat these lies enough  people start accepting them as truth) and the media here pander to Harper and heck, are probably afraid of him since he sues anyone who has the guts to disagree with him (see his lawsuit against the Liberal party and Elections Canada).
    There will be no change unless Obama flexes his muscle and forces change on Harper. On Images of oil addiction in Canada's tar sands posted 11 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

  • waste of money

    Wow...this was a giant waste of time and money. We ended up with almost exactly the same parliament as we had to begin with.
    I feel bad for Dion because I truly supported his Green Shift, and he seemed like a man passionate about his policies and had integrity. But I've come to realize debate and really getting into issues and policy doesn't matter in an election. After all, a party was elected whose platform was released one week before voting day and was 44 pages long with giant font, and 22 of those pages were photos of the party leader. No substance. It is about superficial stuff like personal looks, sound bites, disrespect and bullying. No wonder we had an historic low voter turn out - 59%.
    This is a sad day for Canada and its citizens. On Canadian elections strengthen Conservatives, drinkers posted 1 year, 1 month ago 3 Responses

  • correction

    Actually, a correction to your article. The Conservatives won a minority, not a majority. They won 143 seats (not the 155 seats needed), so it means to pass bills they need the support of the another party.
    The conservatives unfortunately did a fantastic job of fear-mongering about the carbon tax. They hammered home the rise in prices (really the true cost of the energy we use)as a tax grab and didn't point out the income tax reduction. What gets me is that energy costs are going up anyways b/c demand is increasing in other countries with huge populations like India and China. We are going to pay more anyway and at least with the Carbon tax we could have to promoted green innovation and reduced our consumption.

     Unfortunately we also have the antiquated first-past-the-post system, so that means a party with only 35% of the popular vote gets elected while 65% voted for the other guys with serious environmental platforms and end up shut out. It also doesn't help that there is only one right-wing party and 3 centre/left parties, so splitting of the vote caused a lot of seats to go to the Reform party...oops I mean Conservative party.
    So, for another couple years my country's government will not reflect the true Canadian view about the environment. On Canada's election deals defeat to Liberal Party and carbon tax posted 1 year, 1 month ago 7 Responses