. . . and nine more ideas
SmartTrack
It’s the slogan that put John Tory on the right track for mayor of Canada’s biggest city, driving the votes of exhausted and frustrated commuters. Zealous supporters call it a “surface subway” that will provide service from the Airport Corporate Centre to Union Station and Markham — and all in seven years. Grumpy critics point out that it’s underfunded, lacks a crucial operating budget and does nothing for the aptly named downtown relief line subway. Commuters are crossing freezing fingers as they line up and wait.
Olivia Ward
Paleogenomics It has been only a decade since the human genome was first fully sequenced. Yet today, the publication of a new plant or animal genome rarely attracts reporters’ attention: it is hard to compete with the spectacular advances of paleogenomics, the research of ancient DNA. This year, scientists sequenced the full genome of a 45,000-year-old Homo sapiens, probed the epigenome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal, and traced the ancestry of European hunter-gatherers, the first native Americans and the Arctic’s successive waves of inhabitants. Considering how thick and fast the paleogenomic discoveries came in 2014, 2015 should be no less rich.
Kate Allen Islamic State The Islamic State started as a spinoff of Al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadist groups, morphing into the most powerful militia in the region under brutal warlord-in-chief
dadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim. On June 29 he declared a new Islamic caliphate, dissolving borders drawn up during World War I. Years earlier, in the savage chaos of Iraq and Syria, the group had been taking territory with little notice, but it wasn’t until last summer’s offensive on northern Iraq that Western teeth were set on edge. Who knew a terrorist group could become a state by creating one when nobody was looking?
Olivia Ward
Hacking Computer hacking isn’t new, but whereas in the past the idea of hackers taking down sensitive government or military databases seemed like the worst application of the crime, in 2014 retailers emerged as the biggest, fattest, targets. In 2014, Target revealed that 70 million customer accounts were breached during an attack in December 2013. In 2014, Home Depot announced that 56 million credit card numbers had been compromised along with 53 million customer email addresses. The victims included Canadian customers. Systems at TJ Maxx, Neiman Marcus and Gap Inc. — to name just a few others — have also been breached, leaving customers to wonder whether retailers are serious enough about protecting their information.
Francine Kopun
The right to be forgotten Maybe not everything has to last forever on the Internet. In a landmark case in May, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that individuals can ask search engines such as Google to delete links to information on request if the search results are deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or not longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.” The “right-to-beforgotten” ruling arose after a Spanish resident complained that a Google search of his name produced two newspaper announcements dating back to 1998 that he was auctioning off real estate to pay off social security debts. The man argued that, with those debts long ago settled, the information was irrelevant. The CJEU agreed. The decision and the thousands of requests Google began acting upon created controversy as European media outlets accused the tech giant of censorship. But the CJEU ruling can’t be appealed. A similar right-to-be-forgotten ruling has not been implemented in Canada and there are many who believe it never will. David Fraser, an Internet and privacy lawyer in Halifax, told the CBC that Canada’s Char- ter of Rights and Freedoms “has a guarantee of freedom of expression — we don’t have a guarantee of your right to be forgotten.”
Paul Hunter
Consent Was there another time when consent in a sexual setting has been talked about so much? With sexual assault charges against Jian Ghomeshi, accusations of abuse against Bill Cosby and the suspension of two Liberal MPs over allegations of harassment, as well as renewed focus on sexual assault at post-secondary institutions, the definition of consent is being debated and refined. Numerous Canadian universities have adopted guidelines specifying that consent should be enthusiastic and expressed repeatedly during a sexual encounter. In September, California adopted new “affirmative consent” legislation fot its colleges and universities spelling out that silence or lack of resistance do not indicate consent, and that someone who is drunk, unconscious or asleep is unable to grant consent. Only two or more robust yeses mean yes.
Patricia Hluchy
Hatewatching It’s described by urbandictionary.com as “the pleasure you get watching something on TV that comes from your hatred of it." And certainly, there is much to hate on the boob tube: for every True Detective there is a Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. When Mama June said she had “neck crust" (dirt trapped in the folds of your neck) in the first season, I was appalled, then facinated. I couldn’t stop watching or, rather, hatewatching. I kind of hated myself for hatewatching too. This season I have hatewatched many shows, my favourite being Fox’s Sleepy Hollow. In case you haven't indulged, it’s a modern-day. He is hounded by the Ichabod Crane story the headless horseman as well as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His wife also happens to be and his son is now witch, a an old man who, coincidentally, is a demon. It is a real jambalaya of mythology that shouldn’t work on any sane level. Which makes for perfect hatewatching.
Tony Wong
Climate change ref As climate change forces mayny to rethink the way they live, others are having to rethink where they will l live. and a few have made refugee claims. In 2012, a family from the tiny Polynesian island of Tuvalu asked New Zealand to grant them residency, in part because of climate change. The average elevation of Tuvalu is about two metres above sea level, and some say it is one of the places that could sink if sea levels continue to rise. The fam for residency on appeal, but only partly because of climate change beginning to look courts and scientists are seriously at the issue and what should be done to protect the populations of these lands. A Bangladeshi governement strategy paper estimates that more than 20 million people could be displaced by rising sea
levels, extreme weather and other manifestations of climate change. Some would like the UN to create a new category of refugee; others would like to see a separate UN convention dealing with climate change migration. Whatever the solution, with ocean levels predicted to rise up to one metre over the next century, climate change refugees are expected to become a huge problem — one that unaffected or less affected nations will have to deal with.
Debra Black
“I can’t breathe” From “Ferguson” to “hands up, don’t shoot” to “black lives matter,” the meme kept changing, until it settled finally upon “I can’t breathe” — the catch-all phrase capturing justice unserved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner and the vast U.S. law-enforcement issues that surrounded it. The phrase hasn’t stopped travelling, worn by everyone from the Phoenix Suns to the cast of the film Selma and turned into song by Samuel L. Jackson as a sort of civilrights ice-bucket challenge to his fellow celebrities. “I can’t breathe” ends 2014 as a grassroots movement across America. But a transformative one? We shall soon find out.
Mitch Potter