The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Time for a Quiz You Will Learn From

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

A little history, a little geography headlines the Thursday Potpourri.  Plus, which country has declared Covid "over"? Are you okay with "smart lamps"? And wait till you hear the latest in Italian cuisine.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge. You're just moments away from a quiz. Little history, little geography. You're going to love it. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. BitBuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. BitBuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look,

lower fees, and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code podcast20 to get $20 free when you make your first deposit. and hello there peter mansbridge here once again with the bridge it's thursday that means potpourri thursday we got a few things for you but we're going to start off with a little kind of geography slash history lesson. That's not really a lesson, it's kind of a quiz. I used to, those were a couple of the subjects I really loved when I went to school. History especially, geography second. Everything else was a challenge i used to love history so here's my um here's my opening question if you were to walk the full tip of South America, and walk all the way.

How far north could you get before you were faced with water? So in other words, we're talking about the mainland Americas. We're not talking about the islands. We're not talking about in Canada's Arctic, the Arctic archipelago, all those islands in the high Arctic. Not talking about those. Even Baffin Island, you can't count that. We're talking if you could walk, and not across ice, but walk on land from the bottom tip of South America to the northern end of the mainland of North America,

where would that be? Don't look it up. Look at a map if you want. But anyway, I'm not going to give you time to search it all. If you know, you've probably automatically said it. And if you don't, which is probably the majority, because I didn't know until I was actually standing on it that I was at the northern tip of mainland North America.

And that spot is called the Bellet Strait. Okay, you know where that is? All right, if you're looking at your map and you can find Resolute, so on the northern side of Lancaster Sound, up in the high Arctic. And then you look almost directly south of it. You see Somerset Island. And beneath Somerset Island, it's a big chunk of land, Somerset Island. And then an even bigger chunk of land

which is called the Boothia Peninsula. And it's where the Boothia Peninsula and Somerset Island meet, which is the northern extremity of the North American mainland. And now they don't touch, obviously, where they meet, but it's a very narrow channel or a strait that runs between the two. And that strait is called the Bellot Strait,

or Bello Strait. I'll tell you why in a minute. But it's a narrow strip of water, frozen a good part of the year, but it does open up. And when I stood there, on both sides, first on the, I actually landed in a helicopter

on the northern side, so on Somerset Island, and crossed over to the Boothia Peninsula, so I could say that I stood on the most northern part of the North American and South American of the Americas continents. And when you look around you, you see lots of land around you. You look at the map. But this is it.

This is the point for whatever that's worth. Now, the history is worth something. Why is it called the Bellet Strait, you ask? Well, it's named after a French naval officer whose story is quite interesting. His name was Joseph Rene Bello. Young guy, but a distinguished record as a sailor

and explorer, and Arctic explorer, but he'd been all over. He died when he was 27, but by the time he was 27, he'd been all over the world. He'd been a part of expeditions to Africa and Madagascar. He associated himself with a number of English expeditions because this was at the time of Sir John Franklin and the various searches that were going on trying to find him in the Canadian Arctic.

And so Bello spent time on a number of those search expeditions. And it was on one of them where he and a couple of fellow sailors were out on the ice, and he slipped through a crack, disappeared, never seen again. 27 years old. And that's how he died. Now, he was well-remembered not only by his crewmates and by at least a couple of nations, France and England,

but also by the Inuit. He'd endeared himself with the Inuit in Canada's Arctic. And why, you say, did that happen? Because in many cases, including John Franklin's, they ignored the Inuit at their peril. But not Joseph René Belleau. He endeared himself because there was a story about him but not Joseph Rene Belleau. He endeared himself because there was a story about him that traveled around the Arctic

and it was that he met a disabled Inuit fellow. Chapo only had one leg. And Belleau built, constructed and fitted an artificial leg for this guy. And that story traveled, and that friendship traveled. So after Bello disappeared in the ice of the Arctic, he was given a ceremonial burial. And the Bello Strait was named after him.

Now, it's a beautiful spot, unknown by 99.9% of Canadians, I'm sure. But it actually is a part of our geography. It's part of our history. And it's a little story that I get to tell on a Thursday potpourri. Now, why do I tell it today of all days? Why do I tell that story? Because, bulletin, bulletin, bulletin,

there's a new ocean in the world, say those who are responsible for mapping and geography. Now, oceans are funny things, really. When you stand at the Bellot Strait, you realize that, in fact, the waters you're seeing in front of you are, you know, depending on the time of year and depending on the current, are literally washing between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It's part of what we call the Northwest Passage.

Now, it's not one that traffic would go on, but you could. You know, if you were in a canoe and you were canoeing the Northwest Passage, you could cut through Bellot Strait in a nice, simple way. You couldn't do it in a tanker or a cruise ship. But the water is seeping back and forth. I can remember we did, when I was up there one year, we were doing a scientific survey, well, an amateur scientific survey. We were throwing specially constructed, environmentally sound bottles

into the water of the Bellet Strait to see where they would end up. And, you know, it was all conducted by science and research fellows, men and women from a number of different Canadian universities. And inside the bottle would be, you know, where to contact them if you found this bottle somewhere. And sure enough, some bottles were found as far away as the UK. Others were found westward. But it was just underlined the real meaning of oceans, right?

Is that while we have separate oceans, it's really one big connected ocean. Right? The waters all flow. There's no barrier to them. So how do we end up from that to, we have a new ocean. Well, those who apparently are in charge of this,

at least those of the National Geographic, the cartographers there, the mappers, have decided, I mean, how many oceans are there? Do you know? Once again, don't look at a map. What did your school teach you? Well, there's the Atlantic and the Pacific, obviously, right? What else we got? Got the Arctic Ocean.

We got the Arctic Ocean. We've got the Indian Ocean. It's huge. Not to realize that fact, but it's huge. We got an idea when they were looking for that plane that disappeared, remember? We got an idea of just how huge the Indian Ocean is. Anyway, so we have the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Arctic, and the Indian Ocean. Is there another one?

I know what you're saying. You're saying the Antarctica Ocean. No. There's never been an ocean called that. And it's been confusing because of where the Atlantic and the Pacific meet at the base of South America and whether the waters actually circle it's the kind of thing cartographers

spend all night discussing but they have discussed it to the point now where in fact they are calling that area an ocean and they're calling it the southern ocean okay that's the name southern ocean so when you're asked how many oceans are there i like to say there's really only one but when you divide it up into the areas of the world, there are five. The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern Ocean.

Now, I'm not sure how important that is in the great scheme of things in our world today, but I find it interesting, and I have said to myself for almost two years now is there a way is there a way to tell the story of the bellet straight and, I found it. And you're still listening. And now you know all about Joseph Rene Bello. And, you know, he's one of my Arctic heroes. Partly because I got to stand right by the waters of the strait that's named after him.

All right, we have more on this Thursday edition of the Potpourri, and we'll get to it right after this. All right. Welcome back. Peter Vancebridge here with The Bridge, the Thursday edition, the potpourri edition. You can put all your maps away now. I'm done with that. I have a number of things I want to catch up on. Here's your COVID story for today.

I think I can probably turn this music off in the background now. How's that? That's better. One country, or at least its health chief, has announced that COVID is over. It's done. And within its borders, COVID is done. You know which country that is? You may have heard this earlier this week. It's Norway.

The COVID-19 pandemic is over in norway according to one of the doctors this is in the financial times leading the response against coronavirus in the scandinavian country this public declaration is among the first in the world from a global leader and could be a bellwether moment in the history of the pandemic. I mean, you know there's a lot of concern over the Delta variant, and that concern is shared in this country. But at the same time, numbers continue to go down. I mean, we're almost at 70% now in terms of first doses, and the number keeps growing. In the States, their number was way ahead of us on first doses. It started to slow down. They've gone from 3 million vaccines a day to 1 million vaccines a day.

They're hitting the hesitancy mark in terms of those who aren't sure whether they want a vaccine, and that's not good. That's not good if you're trying to get to the so-called herd immunity. But Canadian numbers on first doses are up. They are way down or way lower on second doses. But that has been the plan. That was the Canadian plan. Go first doses as far as you can and then flood the zone with second doses, which they've started to do. Vaccines are not an issue in Canada right now. We've got tons of them.

It's getting appointments. It's getting the distribution set right. And I think you're going to start to see those second dose numbers go up really quickly. But right now, I think it's still below 10%. And you want second doses. First of all, you've got to wait your appropriate amount of time between first and second dose. But you want the second dose to deal with the variant, the Delta variant in particular, if it becomes the problem, some fear it will.

But in Norway, they said, hey, we're past all that, man. We're done. This is over. The chief physician in the infection control division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health tweeted on Sunday, a couple of days ago, a graph showing Norway with its lowest level of hospital admissions since the end of last summer and wrote, that is the pandemic over with. Now, Norway's had one of the lowest infection

rates in Europe throughout all the three waves of the pandemic, helped by low population density and its relative isolation in Northern Europe, as well as decisive action by the government and health authorities each time infections started to rise. There was another thing working in Norway's favor too, and that was the fact, for the most part, it never had to worry about money and the cost of the pandemic, whether that was in the purchase of vaccines and equipment or whether it was in subsidizing those who were impacted by COVID in terms of their jobs. Why didn't it have to worry?

Well, it has a $1.3 dollar oil fund for easing the economic impact. Norway is one of those countries in the energy area that took in the money it was bringing in and didn't blow it on stuff right away. They put in a reserve fund. Kind of the idea that Peter Lougheed did in Alberta 40, 50 years ago. But successive governments used much of that fund. Their reserve fund. Norway hasn't. So they are sitting on top of this huge amount of money for a little country. Offhand, I don't have the population with me,

but I think it's like five or six million. It's not a big country in terms of numbers. It's always used to puzzle me, especially when we went to the Winter Olympics, I'd be standing there with, you know, Brian Williams or Ron McLean or, you know, for a Winter Olympics game, and I'd go, wow, Norway's got so many more medals than we have,

and they're just this little country. Well, that's because they ski every day. They're doing winter sports for part of their day. You know, that cross cross country skiing and shooting That's just a day heading to work Stop every hundred meters And bang No

I'm not serious about that But I am serious about their success in the Winter Olympics It's quite remarkable Anyway, Norway, done. Done and dusted. That's it for COVID in their country, and I hope that holds true for them. We will see in the next couple of months.

Here's something that in a way is kind of related to COVID. In terms of places that have kept working and kept their employees working through the pandemic, Walmart is one of those. So Walmart's learned a number of things about connecting with their employees. And as a result, you know what they've just done? They've given three quarters of a million smartphones to their employees.

Now, what's that all about? Well, CBS has a little piece on that. The announcement along with the app that Walmart is going to use for streamlined workforce matters shows a new digitized advancement that the major corporation is adopting to create a more technologically advanced work experience. So they're giving a phone, for those who care about these things,

it's a Samsung Galaxy X Cover Pro, can also be used for personal use, and the company will provide free cases and protection plans. The phone's retail price is currently about $500 US. Employees will only be able to use work features on the new me at Walmart while they're on the clock. So while they're at work and punched in, the only things that'll work are work related. Scheduling, push to talk with employees, signing into work by phone,

and voice-activated personal assistant are all features of the in-house operation. In the coming months, the company plans to add a feature that will help shorten the time it takes employees to get items from the stockroom to the sales floor. Here's what Walmart is saying. As retail continues to evolve and quickly, it's more critical than ever to equip our people with the tools and the technology they need for success.

Doing so makes work easier and more enjoyable, and it keeps the focus where we need it most, delivering a great in-store pickup and delivery experience for our customers. All right, then. You want a free phone? I work for Walmart. I haven't been to Walmart a lot, but I have been to Walmart. I've always been attracted to the idea of being that greeter at the front door.

I think that could work. Hi, Peter Mansbridge. Nice to meet you. Glad you've joined us here at the store today. Come on in, shop around. Any questions? Well, you ask one of our friendly staff. They're the ones with that free Samsung phone in their pocket. You've got to remember, this is a guy who started selling airplane tickets at the counter.

So maybe it all makes sense. Now, how much sense does this make? This is a story that was in the Wall Street Journal. And quite frankly, I don't know a lot about this. Some of you, and some of you parents especially, may have heard of this or may know of this. So let's talk about it for a moment. Sorry, just having a sip of coffee. A decaf.

I've been on decaf for 25 years now. I've been on decaf so long that I think it's caffeinated. It actually feels like I need it. And they like, I'm addicted to decaf. Anyway, that's not what we're going to talk about. Bite dance. Have you heard of bite dance? Anyway, that's not what we're going to talk about. ByteDance. Have you heard of ByteDance? ByteDance has some initial, it's a company,

has some initial success with its smart lamps. And that success offers insight into the Chinese public's openness to technologies that promise a leg up in an increasingly competitive society. Surveillance, in particular, is reaching deeper into the daily lives of Chinese people that many in the West actually seem comfortable with. Smart homework lamps have skyrocketed in popularity since TikTok creator ByteDance first introduced them in October. So ByteDance is the company that started TikTok, okay?

Chinese parents snapped up 10,000 units within the first month. What does a smart lamp do? Well, listen to this. You tell me how comfortable you'd be with this. The product monitors study habits and offers aid to students, but also raises privacy issues. The lamps come equipped with two built-in cameras, letting parents remotely monitor their children when they study.

There's a smartphone-sized screen attached to each lamp, which applies artificial intelligence to offer guidance on math problems and difficult words. And parents can hire a human proctor to digitally monitor their children as they study. Really? Oh my God. And I think back to when I was a student at school and I used to go to my room, close the door to study in quotation marks for a couple of hours, you know, I'd set up, I played a little basketball when I was in high school. I set up a basket, like a wastebasket, in the corner of the room and would throw pieces of scrumpled up paper at the basket and imagine a game and, you know, clock going down, last shot,

all that kind of stuff. That would have been fun to watch. I don't know. Can you imagine doing that? Can you imagine sitting in your home at night with cameras pointed at your kids in their room studying and a lamp they're using answering questions about challenging issues that they saw in their

homework? Would you be comfortable with that? That's the world we're heading into, right? This is just the, we're only at the leading edge of this technological change. I'm scared to think of what things will look like five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. But that's what we're looking at. So the Wall Street Journal reports on this, and they say, still, the ByteDance smart lamps and remote tutoring service is the first time we're seeing a mass market education-related surveillance product making it into the homes long before you see these.

I'm assuming it won't be long before you start seeing these advertised here. And the debate will immediately start as to, well, what else are they looking at? What else are they listening to? What are they doing with the information they're collecting, these smart lamps? Scary. Scary. Scary, scary. Okay, final story for today. This one, this one blew my mind.

You like Italy? I love Italy. Now, my wife is of an Italian background Cynthia Dale her real name is Cynthia Cerluini and so we've been to Italy more than a few times the thing I love most about Italy is the food the food is unbelievable I have yet to ever find a bad restaurant in Italy. Like, it doesn't matter what you walk into. It's going to be great. It's going to be great.

That's why this story is so concerning to me. You know what's the new thing in Rome? Look, Italians love pizza, right? They love pizza. Now, it's not the kind of pizza we have. You can argue about whether it's better or not. I think it's better. It's fresher.

It's everything. You know, like it's just incredible. Anyway, they love pizza. And they have pizza morning, noon, and night. And it's a fast, on-the-move food. You can pick it up almost anywhere. Freshly made, boom, boom, the whole bit. Okay, so you figure, how can it get better than that?

Well, in Rome, so says the New York Times a couple of days ago, in Rome, it's not do as the Romans do. In Rome, it's go to the vending machine for pizza. I'm not kidding. It looks like a big Coke machine standing there on a street corner, you know, in an area of shops. Big red machine that serves pizza. It makes a fresh pizza from scratch in exactly three minutes. And the owners are betting that it's going to catch on with Rome's pizza-loving population,

especially after hours, when traditional spots are closed and the clientele is, well, shall we say, less discerning, says the New York Times. Now, this is a big deal happening in Italy. Keep in mind, Italy is believed to be the birthplace of the first cookbook, right? This is how seriously they take their cooking. And you know when that was? Look at all the stuff you're learning today on the podcast, right?

The Emperor Tiberius. In the first century, it was under his reign, they put out a cookbook, the first century, it was under his reign they put out a cookbook, the first cookbook, at least the first known cookbook. Italy, first century. And here we are in the 21st century, and they've got a vending machine making and selling pizza. Go figure.

That's it for this Thursday, the potpourri day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Tomorrow, it's the weekend special. If you've got something you want to say, you better make it fast. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Thank you.