Blessed by the Potato

On The Fork is a high-end restaurant on the Forks of the Thames inside Museum London. I was thrown by this when trying to find it, I wasn’t expecting it to be inside the museum, way in the back. Museum admission is free, so this actually gave me an excuse to run quickly through a floor or two of it while waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. The view out the back is quite good, overlooking the forks of the Thames (hence the name) out behind the museum.

The waiter warned us right away that the portion sizes were quite small, and that there weren’t separate appetizers and entrees: instead, we were expected to order two (or three) items off the menu, and whichever was faster/easier/lighter would be brought out first. Everything is roughly “appetizer” sized, with a focus on presentation and style over portion size, though even after two plates and a dessert, some of our group was still hungry. This plan does allow for some variety (in fact, it’s a favourite of ours at Kelsey’s, where we can just order 3 appetizers to share instead of a main course) but also can make a meal get really unexpectedly expensive. Each dish ranged from $7 to $16, which is about what an entree costs at a more casual restaurant, so plan on a night at the Forks being about 2-3 times as much (which is not out of line with other upscale restaurants).

There were only 4 vegetarian options: a “warm salad” with goat’s cheese that didn’t sound, smell, or look very appealing to me; the gnocchi and tomato sauce; a very heavy creamy soup; and a squash ravioli which I figured would either be quite nice or be really grody. I played it safe and stuck with the gnocchi, and ordered it again for my second course, much to the disparagement of the waiter, who was quite a character (and really pushed a second course on me, even though I wasn’t very hungry). He was also very pushy when dessert time came around, really trying to sell everyone on a dessert, even though he didn’t really know what each option comprised (it was the first day with the new dessert menu).

On the Fork is definitely out of my usual price and haughtiness range, so I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend it. I also don’t think I would recommend it for dinner: for a larger meal, you’d be looking at most likely 3 dishes to satisfy, and that would just be ridiculously pricey. Plus, at night, the view of the forks wouldn’t be as good (AFAIK, there are no lights on the river) so half the attraction of the restaurant would be gone. If you do go there and are driving, be sure to check out the municipal lot directly in front of the museum doors first: we saw that it was pretty full and just went across the street to the ImPark lot, which ended up costing us $7.50 — while the municipal lot was quite full, there were about 3 spaces left as we walked through, and it would have only been $2.50 for the same time period!

Canada has been at the forefront of nuclear research right from the very beginning. We also had some of the world’s first nuclear accidents at Chalk River in 1952 and 1958, and those early mis-steps lead to an incredible culture of safety in our nuclear power industry. No matter the cost over-runs, the delays in a project, or the engineering required, safety was always the highest priority, and our nuclear watchdog the CNSC was there to make sure that safety stayed priority number one. The CANDU, our series of Canadian-designed nuclear reactors were designed from the ground up to be as safe as possible: using natural uranium means the core can’t naturally go critical (and has non-proliferation bonuses), and heavy water as a moderator can be easily drained/evapourated in an emergency to shut the core down, etc. This reactor has also been sold with some success around the world (granted, we engaged in some fancy lending practices to sell it, and the design may owe as much to a concern about safety as it does to our position as a major producer of heavy water).

I’ve been a proponent of nuclear power for a while: sure, waste is an issue (though again, less so with the CANDU design) for the long term, but for the medium-term (10-50 years) nuclear power is really going to be our only cheap, GHG-free source of electricity, and I think we’re going to have to rely on it until other renewables can get off the ground. (I also think it’s better to plan to build one over the span of ten years and start now than to realize 8 years from now that oh shit, we need another nuclear power plant, like, now!).

Now, the Harper neocons have forced me to possibly reconsider that. First, they interfered with and politicized the issue of the NRU shutdown, and ordered it back up with a bill in parliament (yes, the other parties supported it, but they were also in a bit of a hard place with that). That move I thought was possibly the right thing for the moment: there was a big backlog of nuclear medicine tests because of the lack of isotopes. In the greater scheme of things, that might have been a time to forgo absolute nuclear safety, let the reactor run as it had been for a while, stockpile some more moly-99, and then shut it down again for the upgrades in another month or so. Beyond the moment though, it was a very dangerous move for the government to take. Once that step is taken of a government stepping in and overruling the nuclear watchdog, how hard is it to do again, for increasingly trivial reasons? Sure, this time the greater good may have been served by letting a downright ancient reactor run in a somewhat risky state (and note that this is one of the very few reactors in Canada with a design that will allow it to meltdown in a failure mode) to help thousands of patients. But what about next time? Will they overrule the CNSC again just to cut corners and get a steam-generating nuclear station set up for oil sands extraction? Maybe a bill to let another nuclear project run without safeties just because it’s too gosh-darn expensive to install them? (After all, they’ve got some taxes to cut!)

Out of the blue today, they fired Linda Keen, the president of the CNSC. This has gone way too far now. She was just doing her job as far as I can tell. No matter what Lunn might have to say about it, her job is to make sure that nuclear energy and isotopes in Canada are handled safely, and to regulate that. That’s it. Her job is not to balance safety with health concerns and isotope availability. If the ancient NRU somehow became the only source for Moly-99 on the continent, and hospitals all over are facing shortages, well, that’s above her pay grade, and the short-sightedness of people who should plan that sort of thing is not her fault. The reactor is not safe, so it doesn’t come back up. Even under pressure from the government, she kept her chin up. The government can (and did) do an end run around her in the case of a health crisis/isotope shortage, and that’s fine. It was a special set of circumstances beyond the scope of her agency. But there’s no reason I can see for firing her. In fact, reading her letter it looks like the CNSC was trying to work with AECL to get a modified license to bring the reactor up without the backup equipment, but the ball was dropped by AECL (whose chief resigned already).

There are a few choice quotes from the Globe & Mail’s article about Lunn defending his decision:

Bloc Québécois MP Claude DeBellefeuille accused the Minister of undermining public confidence in the CNSC.

“You have shaken the confidence that people should have in this independent watchdog for nuclear safety. You have sown doubt about this body,” she said.

The article doesn’t have an answer to that one from Lunn, and that is an exceptionally valid point. The parliamentary override, as controversial and short-sighted as it was, could have been done with a lot less name-calling and finger-pointing. Most importantly, it could have been done with a lot less politicizing, which might have given people some reassurance that this trouncing of the nuclear watchdog, just doing its job, was a one-off affair, and not a recurring madness in our government. Either way, this episode is going to strengthen the arguments from those opposed to nuclear power.

Asked by the NDP’s Catherine Bell if he would resign if censured by parliamentarians, Mr. Lunn replied, “No, I serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister and I have his confidence.”

I predict that in a few days, Lunn is going to find out just how fleeting the “confidence” of the PM is. He’ll tear up a key campaign plank and break a promise, like taxing income trusts, and sow havoc in the markets about random, unjustified government intervention in the marketplace, on a complete whim. When he’s got as much political pressure as there is now to axe Lunn, and when Lunn has been as embarrassing to the PM as he has been, well… loyalty and confidence count for very little in the neocon party of Canada.

Here’s a neat idea from London Hydro and the London Public Library: you can borrow a Kill-a-Watt energy meter from the library using your library card, and find out how much energy things around your house use (with the idea being that it would help you find ways to conserve). I think it’s a pretty neat idea to share equipment like that through the library.

Wow, Portal was every bit as awesome as I heard. Neat new puzzle gameplay, hilarious computer, short but sweet. Add on cake and companion cubes and you’ve got a winner.

In fact, it took me longer to get my video card updated to a new set of drivers than it did to play through the game (about 3 hours, but I still have to play the bonus stages I unlocked). It’s an Asus made X1650 Pro (ATI) over AGP. And for some reason, ATI drivers don’t work on it. I install them, reboot, and then face a screen full of fuzz. Go into VGA mode, try another driver, repeat. When I last tried this, I ended up sticking with the out-of-date drivers that came on the CD (dated mid-2006 or so), which were good enough to run CivIV. Unfortunately, Portal just wouldn’t start up under those old drivers, so I had to try the process all over again. Fortunately, news of this stupid card’s incompatibility has spread enough that I found evidence of it when searching the web… just too bad it came too late to keep me from buying the stupid thing in the first place. To make a long story short, Asus has dropped the ball on this card, hard. Their drivers are really out of date for this card, and it is completely incompatible with other versions. I found two potential fixes: the first involved reflashing the BIOS on the card to make it think it was a Sapphire made X1650 Pro AGP. The other involved a custom version of the Catalyst drivers (“Warcat XG 7.4”) which properly recognizes this card.

A few months ago I got a coupon to buy some Becel Omega3Plus margarine, so I decided to give it a whirl. I’ve got to say I haven’t been very impressed. For the most part, it’s just like regular margarine (as you’d hope). You spread it on your toast, eat it, etc. But you get the benefit of having more variety of omega-3 fatty acids. While it seems to taste pretty much the same, it has what I find to be a really funny smell which often makes me change my mind and reach for the jam instead. My biggest complaint about it though is that it doesn’t seem to melt right when using it to cook with. Regular margarine (and butter) tend to melt and then bubble & foam when you have the frying pan at close to the right temperature, whereas this just seems to melt and then separate into a film with droplets in it, almost as if it were watered down or something.

Note that despite the marketing of this version as a source of Omega-3’s, original Becel margarine is also a source of Omega-3. In fact, both versions offer up 0.6 g per serving. The only difference is that the Omega3Plus version has all the different types of Omega 3 fats added in (ALA, DHA, EPA) which is probably better for you, while the original version doesn’t mention which source provides its Omega-3s (probably just ALA). The new Omega3Plus version also has fewer Omega-6 fatty acids (1.5 g vs 2 g) which is important; I believe the rule of thumb is that your diet overall should have about 4X as much Omega-6 as Omega-3, so a source of Omega-3’s (i.e.: something to bring the ratio back in line from our typical diet of 10X or more in favour of Omega-6) should have a lower ratio (here, 2.5X and 3.3X).

Since I’m really picky about my food having even slightly strange smells, I don’t think I’ll be buying the Omega3Plus version again, but if you don’t usually use your margarine for cooking with, you may not have any problem with it.