So I’m listening to the excellent song by Toto called Africa. The main chorus starts with “It’s going to take a lot to drag me away from you.”

The next line… it’s one of those lines that you interpret one way that you know is completely wrong yet even when you know what it is you still think it’s the wrong line. Well, I think that second line is “There’s nothing but a hundred men on Mork Avenue.”

The actual line is “There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do.”

I think my interpretation, although making absolutely no sense, is what they actually wanted to say but didn’t because they didn’t want to get sued by the creators of Mork & Mindy.

In September 2003 a safe injection site was opened in Vancouver, British Columbia, the first of its kind in North America. Its goal was “stop disease, it’s to stop overdose deaths and it’s to stop public drug use,” as Anne Livingstone of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said when it opened. The area of Vancouver in which it opened, the Downtown Eastside, has rampant drug use and epidemic levels of HIV and hepatitis C. Some 4500 IV drug users live in the 12-block area that the Downtown Eastside makes up.

Then-mayor Philip Owen pushed for the site, and current mayor Larry Campbell continues to promote it, not only in Vancouver but all over the province. Campbell doesn’t seem to emphasize its use for stopping drug abuse, focussing on trying to help people who are addicted. “It’s a brave city that accepts what we’re trying to do. It demonstrates the compassion and caring of its citizens,” he said. “I would love someone to tell me we’re not going to keep 10 people from becoming HIV-positive.”

There were some critics of the site, mostly from south of the border. John Walters of the White House Office of National Drug Control Police said that “the cost that’s going to be paid… is more are going to die and are going to suffer in their lives that don’t need to.” Jennifer Devallance, a spokeswoman for the same office, said, “the only way to reduce the suffering of addiction is to treat it, not encourage it — which is what the safe injection sites do.”

Two interesting studies of the site seem to be saying that the goals of the site are being met. The first, released on 28 September 2004 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that public injection and disposal of used paraphenelia decreased after the site was opened. This one looks like a bit of a no-brainer — if you give addicts somewhere safe and clean to shoot up they’re not going to do it in the streets. And since they can dispose of syringes and other items right there in the clinic, the streets and disposal boxes are going to be used less frequently.

The second study, released in the 19 March 2005 issue of The Lancet shows that shared needle use has dropped since the opening of the safe injection site. Again, it’s a bit of a no-brainer because addicts aren’t keeping syringes for multiple use, and thus they can’t share them if one of their friends needs a hit. Decreasing the numbers of shared needles means decreasing the infection rate, helping to slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis C in Vancouver.

The site has also helped addicts having accidental overdoses. Between 10 March and 31 August 2004 there were 107 overdoses at the site. CPR was required in only one instance, and there have been no deaths at the site.

In the six months from March to September 2004, 262 referrals to addiction counselling services and 78 referrals to withdrawal management programs (such as detox) were made. At least one client weekly was referred to methadone maintenance treatment.

Judging from these results it looks like the safe injection site is setting out to achieve all it wanted. Addicts aren’t shooting up in the streets, they’re getting some much-needed help, and some are potentially getting off drugs. If that’s not a success then I don’t know what is. And the site has another couple of years to go in its four-year trial period — two more years of success.

There’s an asteroid headed our way! Named AT72198, it’s generating a bit of discussion on the Minor Planet mailing list. It looks like it’s going to come quite close to the Earth, with one calculation saying that it’s going to come as close as 110,000 kilometers roughly 18 hours from now. That wouldn’t be the closest one we know about — on 18 March 2004 the asteroid 2004 FH passed about 43,000 kilometers from the surface of the Earth.

These things are predicted to come this close roughly once every couple of years, so this isn’t really that amazing. Still, you heard it here first!

Slight update: the predicted orbit of AT72198 doesn’t have much uncertainty in it, as the observed positions that went into the calculations were very good, and an impact is ruled out. Don’t go buying any asteroid insurance on account of this one, okay?

Another update: AT72198 has been given the slightly easier to remember name 2005 FN in Minor Planet Electronic Circular 2005-F24. You can also watch its orbit on NASA’s orbit simulator.

There’s an interesting little project called CSS Reboot that’s getting web designers together to “reboot” their websites on 1 May 2005, but to do so using CSS and web standards and generally accessible designs. It’s inspired by another project called The May 1st Reboot, which is also for web designers to reboot their websites on 1 May 2005, but the majority of the people participating there are people who use Flash to create sites.

The problem with Flash is that it’s often used badly, making websites a hodge-podge of different user interfaces and generally confusing the hell out of everybody. Take that May 1st Reboot front page as an example. It’s text and graphics and doesn’t need to be done in Flash. Simple HTML and CSS would have done the trick. Instead someone decided to make it all in Flash, which means that they had to reinvent wheels, like the scrollbar and a text box. Use HTML and CSS, and anybody can read the website. Blind people can access it via screen readers. People on cellphones can view it. People on old old computers can see it. Even grizzled greybearded Unix sysadmins using lynx can read it.

Flash is sort of slightly less secure than normal browsing, because there’s no way to know what URL you’re about to visit if you hover over a link. In normal browsing your status bar down at the bottom of the browser window shows you the URL, although this can be spoofed.

Flash also sucks complete ass on OS X, where its implementation causes the CPU in my PowerBook to fly to 100% usage, which makes the fans kick in and generally make too much noise.

Since I’ve been thinking about a redesign here for a while, I’m going to participate in the CSS Reboot. I have a design ready to go, I just need to make some tweaks to it to make sure it looks okay. Given that Alice and I are going to be on vacation from 5 April until 28 April (a day in Honolulu, five days in San Francisco, fifteen days in either Nanaimo or Victoria, then a day in Honolulu) I have to have something ready to go before then, so I guess I’m lucky that I have one pretty much ready now.