Unhappy Anniversary

Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez spilled 40 million litres of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. It had a catastrophic effect on the local wildlife. Depending upon whose figures you use, somewhere between a quarter of a million and half a million sea bird died, along with a thousand otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles, and two dozen orcas. Nobody can even begin to figure out how many fish (and their eggs) died.

Happy Pi Day

That's right, today is Pi Day!

If you don't believe me, just write out the date: 3.14.

Word of the Week - Tetrachromat

Tetrachromat - a woman who sees four distinct ranges of colour rather than the normal three.

The retinas of most people's eyes contain three types of cone cells which act as receptors for blue, green, and red wavelengths of light. The brain combines information it receives from each type of cone to process perceptions of colour. Each of these receptors can generally pick up 100 gradations of colour, so the average human is able to distinguish between 1 million distinctive hues. (100 shades of blue x 100 shades of green times 100 shades of red = 1,000,000 possibilities!)

Tetrachromats, however, are rather special. In addition to the standard cone cells -- red, blue, and green -- tetrachromats possess a fourth type of cone cell that reacts to wavelengths between red and green. The addition of the fourth cone permits tetrachromats to distinguish between shades that appear the same to non-tetrachromats. In fact, they may be able to distinguish between up to 100 million distinctive hues. (100 shades of blue x 100 shades of green x 100 shades of red x 100 shades of "tan" = 100,000,000,000 possibilities.)

There seems to be disagreement as to the distribution of tetrachromacy in the human population. Earlier this week, a guest on the local CBC morning show said that tetrachromacy was limited to 3% of women. However, I have also read that some scientists believe that as many as 50% of women and 8% of men carry four types of photoreceptor cells.

The more interesting question is whether or not any humans possess brains (or optic nerves, at least) which are wired to deal with 100 million different colour gradations, but that is opening a can of worms that I don't want to deal with.

Even more interesting is the existence of pentachromats in the natural world -- creatures such as pigeons and butterflies whose retinas contain five different types of colour receptors. However, the word of the week is tetrachromat, so I think I'll end here.

Thoughts of Home

A friend of mine posed an interesting question in an e-mail earlier this way: what would you miss about Canada if you no longer lived here? I've thought about the question a lot over the past couple of days.

Although I know it is not a definitive list, I know some of the things I would miss:

• plastic poppies and Remembrance Day ceremonies held in freezing rain
• Seeing Bruce Cockburn in concert
• Sunny Boy and Red River cereals
• driving from Toronto to Vancouver
• seeing soldiers of highland regiments whose relatives came from Germany, Cambodia, Jamaica, and Guatemala
• small towns with BIG artifacts (like geese or nickles or Ukrainian Easter eggs)
• Georgian Bay
• swimming in the ocean at Whitecliff park
• watching people skate at Nathan Phillips Square
• the Gulf Islands
• parks and conservation areas
• the city of Toronto
• the Okanagan Valley
• watching seals swim by the spit at Piper's Lagoon in Nanaimo
• snow, snow, and more snow
• always talking about seeing the North (but never actually going there)

Today's Toronto Moment

Today was a beautiful, spring-like day and I took advantage of the nice weather to go for a walk at lunch. I work in the Eaton Centre, so I walked down Bay Street to see what was going on at Nathan Phillips Square. You see, this is the 175th anniversary of the founding of Toronto and they were kicking off the celebrations today.

It was an interesting tableau -- there was a school choir on the stage, people sitting listening, and a surprisingly large number of people skating on the artificial rink. I am sure that if I had gotten close enough to the stage I might have even seen the current mayor, David Miller, or an actor portraying the first mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie.

The thing which stood out for me, though, was almost lost in the activity of the busy city street. As I walked up Bay Street, I heard the faint sound of someone playing Land of the Silver Birch on a glockenspiel. Somehow, it seemed totally appropriate for the moment.

111

111 is the atomic number of the element roentgenium (Rg).

A score of 111 in cricket or darts sometimes referred to as a "Nelson".

The 111th United States Congress is currently sitting in Washington, DC.

Opus 111 was Beethoven's final piano sonnet.

In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins disappeared during his 111th birthday party.

111 episodes of Miami Vice were made.

1-1-1 is the emergency telephone number in New Zealand.

Rome was devastated by fire in 111 BC.

111 is now the number of Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.