Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

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Deep in the heart of Texas

May 1, 2013 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

First, let’s get it out of the way: So, how y’all doing?

I had to start this week’s column with y’all, you see, because it is about Texas, which is where I was recently.

Texans say “y’all” about as often as Canadians say “eh?” – that is, about once a year. However, some years ago, a Texan made the mistake of saying it in a movie, and so now everyone knows that people from Texas say y’all in every sentence. Sometimes twice.

So, having dispelled that myth, I’m now going to start another: what Texans really do is eat a lot of jalapeno peppers. You can find them everywhere – in chili sauce, in rice dishes, your morning coffee, and in the chocolate cake. Texans eat so many of these hot peppers that I’d bet cash that it’s the Official State Vegetable. [Okay, so that’s easy money: the only other vegetable ever served in Texas is refried beans, so I’ve got 50/50 odds there.]

The extensive use of jalapenos means that food in Texas comes in just two flavours: Thermonuclear Tex Mex and Blow Your Taste Buds Out Barbecue. This makes perfect sense because Texas has hot weather all year round, so obviously the one thing you want to do when sitting down to a meal is sweat some more. [Actually, it seems to be a natural law that hot regions have hot cuisine. You would never, for example, find a Hot N’ Spicy Reindeer Burger on the menu in say, northern Finland, where it might actually do you some good. See also India vs. Iceland or Mexico vs. Russia.]

Another myth about Texas is that everything is big. Coming from Canada as I do, where just one of our provinces is bigger than the countries of France and Spain combined, I have a slightly different sense of the word “big.” But I will say that Texas, and in particular the city Houston is “sprawling.” It was so sprawled, in fact, that for my conference at the new George Brown convention centre, I needed both a day’s rations and a GPS unit to make it from one end of the exhibition hall to the other. At some point, Texas architects are going to have to learn how to build “up” instead of “out.”

This is not to say that Houston is all ugly and urban. Unlike other cities I could name (which I won’t name, but will call by the pseudonym “Detroit”), Houston is making a real effort to beautify the streets and bring in some greenery. Unfortunately, municipal workers are doing this with such enthusiasm that if you stand still for more than two minutes on a bare patch of ground, you risk being drilled with a tree planter, and stuffed under a sapling.

The other problem with all this arboreal exuberance is that Houstonites have not chosen their tree species wisely. The tree roots tend to grow “out” instead of “down” (see also Texas architecture, above), which means that you need a pair of sturdy hiking boots to climb over sidewalk paving slabs that have been shoved up at 45 degree angles in all directions. It’s really only a matter of time before someone trips and falls. If they are holding a coffee and a burger at the time, given the legal history of the US, I predict a massive lawsuit involving unsafe sidewalks, traumatic coffee burns and corporate enforced obesity.

Assuming of course, that the plaintiffs don’t try to travel to the courthouse by train. In a moment of foolish romantic travel idealism, I had decided to see a bit of the US on my way to Houston and booked a trip by rail. What I did not realize was that the US train system consistently operates in its own time zone, which is Local Time + 1 or 2 hour delay. This meant that I sprinted across several states just trying to catch missed connections.

The other fun bit was that major metropolitan train stations in America are apparently, by law, placed in hard to find and incredibly rough neighbourhoods and then made to close on weekends. This ensures that you get to meet the locals, even if you try to look inconspicuous and just want to be in a Lonestar State of Mind. After a couple of nervous hours, you’ll feel that All the Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.

Which is why I was glad to get back, All The Way From Texas.

Photo by Melvin Thambi on Unsplash

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Bird watching for fun and science

February 27, 2013 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Bird watching is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the world. The US Fish and Wildlife service, for example, estimates that some 51.3 million Americans watch birds. It’s not hard to see why the hobby is so popular: it gets you outdoors, you don’t need a lot of equipment, and it’s fun to spot the less common birds.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society want to harness that enthusiasm to aid global conservation efforts. Their program, eBird, provides a standardized checklist for “birders,” as they are called, to enter their observations. A birder simply registers at the site, and then enters when, where, and how they went birding, and fills out a checklist of all the birds seen and heard. The site also doubles as a journal, allowing birders to keep a history of their observations online. eBird is extremely popular: in March 2012, participants reported more than 3.1 million bird observations across North America.

There are also tools to compare your totals to other eBirders around the world. For example, you can keep tabs on your yard totals, your patch totals, and measure up against the top 100 eBirders in your region. Apparently, I have some catching up to do: the top birder in my area has completed more than 600 checklists.

If heading outside right this minute, doesn’t appeal, you can spend time on the eBird site checking out the range and point maps, bar charts, line graphs, and a real-time submission map, all on the explore data page.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

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Make your mark

June 26, 2012 By Chandra Clarke 1 Comment

English: This is a picture of an American voti...
Strange things happen behind these curtains. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, I will tackle a subject that has baffled some of the brightest thinkers of our time. The issue of the missing “dark matter” in our universe? No. Child poverty? Not that either. I will try to explain: the US electoral system.

Why is this such a difficult topic? Well for one thing, scientists can’t explain the epidemic levels of obesity in the US, because Americans are constantly exercising their right to vote. Indeed, a 1995 study suggested that US citizens were asked to cast their ballot approximately once every 3.5 minutes. And this was before the invention of online polls that ask crucial questions like: Should Rudy be voted off the island?

What are Americans voting for? Well, once every four years there is a presidential election, with congressional elections held at the same time. Elections for the House of Representatives are held every two years. Senators have six-year terms, with one-third elected every two years. Meanwhile State governors serve four-year terms with about half up for election every two years. All of this means three things:

1) The “Founding Fathers” — the people who set up this system — anticipated that revolving doors would be installed in every US government building.

2) These same people all had shares in companies that produced campaign promo items like bumper stickers, t-shirts, and US flag bunting.

3) It’s no wonder 95% of Americans have no idea who their local representative is.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start with something simple, like presidential elections. There are two parties in the US, one called the Democrats, the other called the Republicans. The first party has as its symbol a donkey, a pack animal known to bray a lot, and to be stubborn and gloomy. The second party is symbolized by an elephant, a war beast known for knocking down trees and stomping small things. Of course, one shouldn’t read into these things too deeply.

One becomes the leader of a party by going through a marathon process called “the primaries.” Leadership candidates campaign hard, state-by-state, to win delegates who will later attend a convention and select a leader. Many people believe that a successful candidate wins primaries by having a strong platform and discussing the issues. Actually, a successful candidate wins primaries by having a well-stocked campaign bus bar and fridge. This keeps the reporters assigned to cover your campaign happy and well-fed, which in turn prevents them from filing cranky stories with headlines like: “Candidate Flubs Breakfast; Expected to Drop Out of Race Tomorrow.”

Rather than hold all state primaries on the same day, the campaign is waged over a period of several weeks. This means that states further down on the schedule don’t get to choose between all of the candidates, just the ones that haven’t dropped out because they A) collapsed in exhaustion, B) ran out of money or C) forgot to restock the bus fridge. This holds true for every state but Vermont, which votes for a dropped out candidate anyway.

Once the two parties have selected their leaders, they square off in a campaign to become president. The candidates engage in serious, informed debate, and then respectfully ask the voters for their support. No, wait, that’s Finland. In the US, the candidates spend millions of dollars on TV advertisements that air every 32 seconds for about six months. Voter turn out is high in the US simply because the citizens will do anything at that point to make the pain go away.

The voting process itself is quite complex. First, because it is a secret ballot, citizens must register as either a Democrat or a Republican. They then go to a polling station where they enter a booth, confront a machine and pull a lever. Critics have compared US voting machines to Las Vegas slot machines, but really, that’s not a fair comparison: the user at least has some chance at winning when they play the slots.

Finally, all the votes are tallied. Well, except the ones from people named Chad, people overseas, and anyone in Vermont because everyone knows they’re going to vote for a dropped out candidate anyway. All the remaining votes are shipped, either by donkey or elephant convoy, to something called an Electoral College, which declares one of the candidates the president. No one quite knows what goes on there, but because it is a college, many suspect it involves large quantities of beer.

There. Now isn’t that all much clearer?

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