5 Reasons Why London (Ontario) Needs a Monorail

5) Biking is suicidal. There are very few dedicated bike paths on London’s streets. I don’t mean the curvy nature bike trails along the rivers and through parks. I mean major roads that serve to get traffic through the city, North/South and East/West. I have counted two, citywide, one of which happens to be on campus at UWO. There may be more, but they’re in the wrong places and do not serve the large student community (at least 20% of the city population).

4) It will stop the suburban sprawl. Let’s face it. There are currently over a dozen suburban wastelands being built at the far edges of London, with more planned. If a more efficient public transit system existed to serve the downtown and near downtown areas, then people would build UP not OUT. Stop destroying our beautiful forests and reduce the ecological footprint by living in sky-rise apartments. Besides, why does anyone want to live in a cookie-cutter-house in a neighborhood with un-navigable winding streets that are a 20 minute drive to get food, movies or a drink with friends? You could be living in an apartment with a cityscape view and only a few minutes away from all your needs.

3) City landmark. Although the John Labatt Centre and the University attract a lot of people to visit London, there is no landmark that is immediately identifiable with London. Having a monorail will make London a unique city, as opposed to being just like every other Southern Ontario city.

2) Reliability. The current bus system is unreliable. I’m not happy waiting 30 minutes for a bus to get me downtown on a Friday night. I want to party now, not in 30 minutes plus transit time. And why do busses stop running at midnight?!?! Maybe the cab companies have something to do with this conspiracy.

1) Traffic sucks. Just try driving across the “forest city” without screaming a few profanities. Traffic engineers have not yet managed to figure out how to time lights on major roads so there is no stopping. Making a few major streets one-way would definitely help. It worked for Hamilton. But I have a feeling the traffic engineers would just mess up this job too. So the only viable solution is a monorail. Get some engineering students to design it for school credit.

Journal of Experimental Cock and Bull

It would be an understatement to say I am frequently frustrated at the quality of scientific articles in high impact journals. Take the example of the cover story for the December 22nd 2005 edition of Nature: “Dancing’s role in sexual selection.” Why is this leading edge research? This is the kind of thing a group of poor-dancing MIT students try to answer on your average Friday night.

Another article is the recent June 30th 2006 edition of Science, where researchers tried to find a correlation between income and happiness. Newsflash: there is none. Mind you, the researchers didn’t ask anyone living below the poverty line how their day is going.

It was articles like these, and an inspiring conversation with colleagues, that has evoked me to create the Journal of Experimental Cock and Bull: An international bimonthly journal of pseudoscience. After creating the cover, I realized the theme behind it was eerily similar to The Onion. Soon there were visions of a successful spin-off company from my MSc degree flying through my head. About five minutes later, I realized my writing skills lack the wit and effectiveness of Onion editors (part of the reason I started this blog). Although, I am currently accepting abstracts for the second issue.

A priest, rabbi and pastafarian walk into a bar

In a recent article published in Science, the authors claim that public acceptance of evolution has decreased over the past 20 years in the US. While other counties can boast that over 80% of the population believes evolution to be true (Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France), only 40% of Americans believed the same. Canada was not included in the study. The article goes on to explain that familiarity with genetics and basic biology is a major influential factor for adults who accept evolution.

When presented with a description of natural selection that omits the word evolution, 78% of adults agreed to a description of the evolution of plants and animals. But, 62% of adults in the same study believed that God created humans as whole persons without any evolutionary development.

So it seems that people are paying attention in school and church, but they have conflicting beliefs. Granted, it is not conflicting to believe in God and evolution. It seems politicals and corporate media may have had an influence on this. I recall a few Republican rallies where people had signs reading "My grandfather was not a monkey!" It makes me wonder if television shows like CSI can possibly help to educate the public about DNA, evolution and biology, or if they will just warp the public view further from the truth. Only another 20 years will tell.