Conservative vs. Liberal Politics

The continuance or elimination of the long gun registry is not an issue on which I have a well-formed opinion. Neither do I have any reason to jump in on the issue of whether Cheliak is being removed from his role in managing the program for political or language reasons. Well, ok, except to note that the government knew about his (lack of) language skills when they appointed him 9 months ago.

What appeals to my sense of humour is the way the Liberal party is choosing to complain about the matter. This is laid out very nicely in this CBC article. See if you can spot the contradiction in the following lines from the article:

Speaking at a news conference Thursday to unveil a slideshow of the Conservatives' "enemies list" — Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay said the Tories "want puppets, not professionals."

Ignatieff orders whipped vote

The House of Commons is considering Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner's private member's bill to scrap the registry...

I now have one more reason to continue my non-partisan ways by holding both of these federal political parties in the greatest contempt.

Solving Windows Problems

This has been a busy week so I've let the blog slide a bit. Consider this a filler until I can find some time to write something a bit weightier. If nothing else, it proves that my sense of humour goes off the rails when I'm under pressure.

1.My Windows Vista PC keeps telling me that it has "found solutions" for my computer. Yet it never seems to find the two most obvious solutions: Mac and Linux. I'm beginning to think that Microsoft's advice may be influenced by their self interest.

2. With all the talk of Trojan exploits on Android mobile devices, the first thing that I thought when I read the headline for this article about a newly-discovered Trojan asteroid is that aliens have hacked our solar system. Perhaps we ought to prepare for the sun to rise in the west later this week.

Enough of that...back to work.

Sing Along to the Giant Hogweed Invasion

First it was the invasion of purple loosestrife that we panicked about as it filled the ditches and fields, replacing native weeds with themselves, the foreign weed. The invasion continues while the panic has long since subsided. More recently it is zebra mussles and Asian carp that are the invading fauna (rather than flora) that threaten our lakes and streams. Now it is the turn of the giant hogweed.

It's like something out of a horror film: A pretty plant that was once the darling of backyard gardens has escaped to wreak havoc on a community near you. It grows tall enough to dwarf adults and is armed with toxic sap that burns human flesh.

The unwelcome spread of this noxious plant is nothing new. It is an ancient invasion, human mediated, much like rabbits in Australia. In fact it brought to mind a song written 40 years ago that I remember well, and is tucked away in my dusty collection of LPs and cassette tapes. It was written by none other than the band Genesis, and release on their Nursery Cryme album of 1971. This was very much in its early days when Peter Gabriel was the leading personality in the group and Phil Collins had just joined as their new drummer. It was the heady days of art rock, a genre in which Genesis was a rising star.

Peter Gabriel's lyrics to "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" tell an apocalyptic story about a "regal hogweed" being brought from Russia by a Victorian explorer to the Royal Gardens at Kew. Later, after being planted by country gentlemen in their gardens, the hogweeds take on a life of their own and spread their seed throughout England, preparing for an onslaught. The citizens attempt to assault the hogweeds with herbicide, but the plants are immune. After a brief instrumental (subtitled "The Dance of the Giant Hogweed"), the song ends in a crashing climax where the hogweed reigns victorious over the human race.

I know, it sounds so apocalyptic, but the song is actually quite decent and is quite humourous in its way. In my opinion it has aged not at all badly in the intervening decades although I listen to it only rarely nowadays. Here are the closing words of the song lyrics to give you a taste (but beware of pop-ups and other junk you'll pull up if you click on any song lyric site). Even the species of hogweed is the same as in the current crisis.

Mighty Hogweed is avenged.
Human bodies soon will know our anger.
Kill them with your Hogweed hairs
Heracleum Mantegazziani

Giant Hogweed lives!

One thing that puzzles me is that the song is titled The Return rather than The Revenge of the Giant Hogweed. Reminds me of a long-ago minor controversy that saw the original title of the Star Wars film changed to Return of the Jedi from Revenge of the Jedi, supposedly by Steven Spielberg himself.

Lucas changed the title, saying "revenge" could not be used, as it is not a Jedi concept.

However, I doubt very much that anybody got on Genesis back about the title choice, and, unlike the principled Jedi, revenge is very much the theme of the giant hogweeds in the song.

So dust off the old record collection or download the MP3, and then play the song the next time someone starts on about how we are all doomed by this majestic though nasty weedy invader. Just perfect for a lazy summer Sunday.

It Is Not (too hot to blog)

One reason why I write this blog is to experiment with organizing my thoughts and clearly communicating them in written form. This doesn't require that I have many (or any) readers, only that there is the potential for people to read what I write. Just knowing that is enough to give me the discipline to make the effort to write well. I often miss the mark, but then that's what makes this blog worthwhile: practice.

A common problem that any writer frequently encounters is finding the right word, or choosing among several possibilities. Among the many times I've dealt with this dilemma, there is one that for some reason gives me pause since I don't know what choice is best. It's a silly little thing, perfectly suited to a mid-summer blog post when the heat is affecting my ability to pay any attention at all to my blog. My problem is the common word sequence: it is not.

My problem is not that there are many other choices -- using the phrase is uncontroversial and has few true alternatives -- but rather with how it is typically contracted in ordinary speech. The phrase is shortened in one of two commonly used ways:

1. it's not
2. it isn't

There is actually a third -- it ain't -- which we can safely ignore since it isn't (it's not) considered good English. Even keeping to the first two possibilities, I often wonder which is best.

The first choice sounds a bit rude to my ear, yet, so far as I am able to notice and recall, it is the more popular choice. But since it appears to be more popular, perhaps I'm wrong to dismiss it. What I would really prefer is a third (or is it, fourth) choice that would supersede the others.

The contraction I'm leaning toward is an admittedly peculiar one, although it has seen usage in poetry and other works. This contraction is tisn't. Of course there is the matter of unfamiliarity that makes it seem inappropriate, and there is some variation with the use of apostrophes -- t'isn't, 'tisn't -- which is true of any neologism or resurrection of an old word that had passed into disuse. On the plus side it removes the ambiguity of choice, and even comes with its own corrupt version: tain't.

On the other hand, if this is the sort of thing I'm worried about maybe I'm better off taking a blogging vacation. But not just yet.

Toronto the Blue

With Toronto getting ready to host the G20 summit later this month there has been enormous attention given to the costs of holding it in Toronto, costs that are both direct ($1B) and indirect (unknown). Figuring out how much of the $1B of direct costs is truly one-time items is difficult to determine from the outside, but it is still going to be costly. It is of course money that is simply being reallocated from the general tax base to selected points within our domestic economy so the money is not being lost, though perhaps not used to best immediate effect.

The indirect costs are more interesting in that they fall almost exclusively on the shoulders of Toronto residents and businesses. These are potential risks of physical damage due to protests and official security measures, and the loss of economic activity during the summit due to both mandatory and voluntary shut downs of urban space and businesses. Even the Blue Jays are leaving town.

Questions are being asked all around as to the sense of holding this summit in any urban centre due to the excessive security requirements and economic disruption. It's especially curious since the summit participants and the media covering the summit will almost certainly pay no attention at all to the city, and indeed will find it difficult to exit the summit security bubble to see any of it, and of course residents and protesters will be kept quite firmly outside the bubble. This pretty much ensures that any damage caused by protests will fall on the citizenry and their livelihoods, not on the intended audience.

As the government insists that this is all good for Toronto by allegedly giving a boost to future tourism, they are also adamant that they will not cover any of the direct and indirect costs to residents and businesses caused by their activities or those of the protesters. There is no evidence to support that there will be any future boost to tourism, and certainly not that any such boost will compensate for the immediate cost of the summit. It is therefore reasonable to then ask why the government is so steadfast in its position that this summit must be held in Toronto, no matter the cost to taxpayers or to Toronto? I think I have the answer.

A quick perusal of the representation in Parliament for Toronto ridings, especially the more urban 416-area, is a sea or red and orange: Liberal and NDP. Perhaps the message is that if you don't vote Conservative they will gift your city an international summit, complete with their following horde of firebomb-wielding anarchists and malcontents. Consider yourselves warned.

Chain Emails and the Reality Quotient

As much as I hate to admit it, like many people I have a circle of friends and family (but never business colleagues) that provide a steady flow of chain emails into my in box. This is nothing remarkable, just something to hide since it's a little bit embarrassing to know people like that. When I do look at these emails before I send them to the trash, it is not because I'm interested or curious about the content, but rather the further insight it gives me into the sender. I never mention this to the individuals in question when we do meet in person, although it does affect my regard for them.

I recently got one of these that especially amused me because it told me something about the forwarders' RQ scores. RQ is like IQ, except that it measures a person's awareness of the real world; RQ is a Reality Quotient**. However, keep in mind that emails containing urban myths only partly measure a person's RQ since these are often forwarded out of laziness rather than a low RQ. The (very) few times I have asked the sender why they sent me a particularly steaming load of manure, the lazy ones are those who, it turns out, barely skimmed the first paragraph before forwarding it on to everyone on their contact list. A typical response I get is along the lines of: "well, I didn't really give it any thought but I thought that since it might be true you might like to know." In other words, the sender is too lazy to devote even a moment's thought to it, and instead off-loads the thinking to dozens of others who, sadly, are likely to do the exact same thing. A month later when they receive the very same email or some variation thereof, they do exactly the same thing. Perhaps this is unsurprising since how can they remember or understand an email that they never actually read the first time.

Which brings me back to that recent email I received. This is the one that is purportedly originated by a computer technician who wants to warn low-RQ internet denizens that chain emails are bad. Some of them are so bad that they contain magical computer thingies that will suck up all your private personal details, bank accounts, health records and who knows what else, and send them to the evil ones in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Lagos or Sao Paolo, who will then sell it all to the mafia, and it is they who will proceed to separate you from all of your worldly possessions. When you forward on these dreadful chain emails, the very same thing will happen to everyone you know. You get the idea.

This is nothing remarkable in itself since despite the near-ubiquity of internet access, many people understand very little about the technology and even reasonably intelligent people with a decent enough RQ are willing to at least entertain the idea that there is some small grain of truth in these tales. What amused me about this email from a "computer technician" is that it ends (I'll bet you've already guessed) by instructing you to forward the email to everyone you know so that they, too, will know that they should not forward chain emails.

Pretty soon I expect to start having a recurring nightmare where the world's average RQ finally drops so low that humanity devolves back into a non-self aware and non-intelligent species whose only reality is grubbing for their next meal. Who could have guessed that the internet would come back to so viciously bite its creators.

**RQ is not a widely-accepted term, but it is in use. An internet search turns up many examples, but none that I care to link to.

The Struggle For Survival: Britannia Park Edition

Ah, yes, the never-ending struggle between predator and prey goes on all around us the natural world. Who hasn't watched these surreptitiously filmed battles in the wild between majestic beasts: lion vs. gazelle, snake vs. frog, shark vs. dolphin, and the list goes on. It is quite ordinary and unremarkable in most ways, despite the necessary cruelty, pain and death it engenders.

Perhaps less remarkable is when animals -- any animals, not only predators -- compete for the same food. Hyenas do it, as do litters of suckling newborns. It can even be witnessed on the manicured lawns of local parks, it seems.

It was during one of those rare periods this weekend when it wasn't raining that I saw an unusual sight. What looked like a chunk of bread, whether purloined from picnickers or intentionally left for the birds, was being fought over by a small flock of about a dozen gulls. This is a common enough sight if you've ever had occasion to throw food to these flying garburetors. This was not the thing that struck me as unusual. It was what happened next.

Into the mix there appeared a squirrel. It intrepidly jumped in among the squawking quarrelers and grabbed the bread in its mouth. As it was making its getaway, the gulls finally noticed what had happened and the lot of them turned to chase the furry thief. They kept low to the ground, half running and half flying, trying to impede the squirrel's escape.

The squirrel was quickly surrounded and was being flown at from all sides by the enraged flock. The squirrel darted to and fro, avoiding their sharp beaks but not quite able to break from the circle. In the general melee, the squirrel did finally find an opening and darted through it, and broke into a loping run toward a stand of brush a short distance away. The gulls gave chase, dive-bombing the squirrel as it ran.

The bushy-tailed rodent did succeed in making its escape since once among the bushes the gulls were no longer able to fly at it. What was a barrier to the birds was a protective fence for the squirrel. Now free of the pursuit it took its prize up the nearest tree where it presumably ate the bread. Except that we're talking about a squirrel, so it's equally possible that it dropped the bread, stowed it among the branches to be lost forever, or left it to be retrieved and buried a while later by itself or another squirrel.

So ends another majestic episode of struggle among the beasts in the wilds of Ottawa's park system. I have to wonder if it was crows instead of gulls, whether the squirrel would have come out quite so well. A squirrel may be brighter than a gull, but crows should outperform most rodents on an IQ test.

Avian Citizenship

What makes a bird Canadian? They aren't on the tax rolls and they don't have passports. Yet it seems to be so terribly important to tag the origin of birds that get in the way of large aircraft.

The scientists have a reason to identify the population of the Canada Geese in the US Airways 1549 incident: which is to find ways to prevent or avoid similar occurrences in the future. That's fair enough. Scientists seem to assign them their home by where they nest and procreate. In this case, that would be Labrador.

However we should be wary of the moniker that we humans assign to these birds -- Canada Geese -- since it means nothing of essential value. We could just as easily call the geese Americans, and then wonder why they keep coming up here and pooping all over our cherished Newfoundland-Labrador. Where are all the editorials about that outrage?

Adjectivitis and the Weather

Superlatives are superlatively superfluous.  Or something like that. Adjectives are a bit of a disease that you learn to avoid in business (if you dare) since they add nothing and can alienate those the adjectives are meant to impress. Are you intrigued by products that are the best, or new and improved, or indestructable? I hope not. We should all have become just a little bit wary of these verbal attacks on our credulity.

Something like this happens when it comes to Canadians and the weather. Cold enough for you? It isn't enough to say that it's -30 C, we have to add that it is the coldest this winter, this decade or this century. And it isn't just cold, it's very cold or extremely cold. Never simply cold.

We hate the cold, but seem to revel in enjoying how much we hate it. So we harp upon the temperature as if cold weather in January were remarkable. Or perhaps it's just me that's a bit jaded since I've lived in a colder climate than that in Ottawa. I don't remember which comedian said this, but I like the line: Canadians have to be tough since just the weather is enough to kill you.

But the thing that really gets to me is that we just have to add in the wind chill. Now it's no longer -30, now it's -40. To emphasize the point, many will even forget to mention that it's a wind chill number, not actually the temperature. Wind chill is Canadians' way of adjectivizing numbers; saying -40 is apparently a more sophisticated way of saying it's -30 C with a breeze.

The thing is (and you can do this experiment yourself), if you take a thermometer outside where it's -30 C with a howling wind and hold it out there for a while, the reading will quickly drop from +20 C and then slow as it approaches and finally reaches -30 C. The wind chill may be -60 yet the thermometer will steadfastly refuse to go any lower, and it certainly will not go to -40 where the mercury will, the urban legend says, freeze and then explode in your face. None of this will happen. The reason it won't happen is that the temperature is -30 C, not -60 C, despite the attraction of those beautifully-large negative numbers.

If you're adventurous, you can try the above experiment slightly differently, in line with this fascinating snippet from the Wikipedia entry on wind chill:

The method for calculating wind chill has been controversial because experts disagree on whether it should be based on whole body cooling either while naked or while wearing appropriate clothing...

I would love to observe these experts when they're comparing these competing techniques. Who knew scientists were so tough.

So what does it all mean? It means that it's -30 C with a nasty, heat-sucking wind. That's just what it is. When it's windy that thermometer get to -30 C faster; the wind, like a fan pulling air through a car's radiator, causes a more rapid transfer of heat. Adjectives need not apply. It's just that wind chill temperature is more sexy than watts/centimeter/second, which does accurately tell you how cold it feels.

When Environment Canada went to this latter style of reporting in parts of the country years back, people hated it. I think they hated it even more than metric. No one complained that the reports were wrong - they were in fact extraordinarily correct, surprising everyone who knows to never trust a weather forecast - but a statement like "the wind chill is 2,400" just didn't excite people. There were no opportunities for adjectives. Eventually they gave it up and went back to the temperature style reports which, while mostly meaningless, fit better with Canadians' world view, which includes not trusting the weather report.

The only cure for this disease is called spring. Then we can complain about how wet it is and try out some new adjectives to describe that.

LHC Armaggedon (a parody)

The following is a parody in the form of a fake news article that I posted earlier this year as a comment on a popular science blog, under a different pseudonym. With the turn up of the Large Hadron Collider scheduled for today I thought it timely to republish it on my own blog, and taking the liberty of making a few edits.

The theme was to satirize the few odd folks out there who seem to think the LHC will destroy the world, and to also take a dig at a few other loons unrelated to the LHC issue. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

------------------***------------------

ZP
Foiled Terrorist Attack on Science Installation
Tuesday April 1, 12:01 am ET
By Zeppo ze Zeppelin, for Zathurts Press
Armaggedon averted, for now

Geneva, Switzerland (ZP) -- Disaster averted as crazed group of Christian terrorists attack site of nearly-completed particle accelerator.

Earlier today a group of about half a dozen attackers assaulted and gained access to CERN's LHC (Large Hadron Collider) situated on the border between France and Switzerland. They were heavily armed and swiftly made their way to the interior and took hostages. The hostages, all of whom are now safe, were particle physics students and tradesmen working on the installation which is scheduled to be activated later this year.

After securing themselves and their hostages they communicated by telephone to major media outlets and CERN project headquarters. In an unexpected twist, the terrorists demanded, not that the facility be destroyed or otherwise disabled, but rather they wanted it turned on immediately or they would begin executing hostages one by one, or as they described it, dispatching them to their maker.

Specifics of their objectives remain unclear since they tended to incoherence and self-contradiction during these telephone conversations. According to a CERN spokesperson one thing they seemed upset about was a legal suit recently filed in Hawaii. Even the spokesperson seemed to struggle with the tortuous logic of the terrorists' concerns as he continued to explain. "That suit is already known to us and is an ill-considered attempt to stop the activation of the collider since they claim that it might destroy the Earth. Those fears are absolutely groundless." In response to further questions he went on to talk about the team's enthusiasm about the possible creation of novel particles such as 'strangelets' and miniature black holes.

The terrorists however, believe that the LHC, which when it is finally activated will be the most powerful partcile accelerator ever constructed, will result in the destruction of the planet. If the Hawaiian court, whose jurisdictional authority is dubious, does issue an injunction there is a risk the accelerator's activation would be postponed indefinitely. The terrorists, who are members of an extremist fundamental religious sect, believe activation of the device will bring the day of judgment foretold in the Bible. Apparently they wish to hasten the purported end of creation and, it seems, to prevent the 'unworthy atheistic scientists' from being the instigators of the End when the accelerator is activated in due course. One of the terrorists in an abusive rant also derided Darwin's theory of evolution and, if it were true, which he also asserted was a lie, ending the world would stop that as well.

The situation seemed quite dire until project staff traced the telephones being used by the attackers to the vicinity of the one of the facility's particle detectors. The facility, being 27 km around would have taken too long to search even with the rapid deployment of French special forces. Luckily they eschewed using wireless phones since they feared getting cancer, presumably in the short time remaining to the 'End'. Some quick calculations by a small group of bespectacled scientists led to a conference with the military commander and an unusual tactical gambit. The science team's leader, Dr. Fritz Kugelblitz spoke afterward to reporters.

"When we discovered they were hiding inside the ATLAS detector we had an interesting little idea. There was some risk to the hostages but no more than an assault by the soldiers, and we could do it much faster." Simplifying the matter for us he described how the terrorists minds were clearly highly polarized in comparison to the general population, which they could somehow make use of. "What we did, in short," continued Dr. Kugelblitz, "was to briefly activate the detector's enormous magnets."

While the technical explanation is complicated the result was spectacular, and fatally gruesome. One of the hostages, still seemingly in shock and being escorted to the waiting medical team, told of hearing a loud hum and seeing the eyes of the terrorists glowing brightly. They then all fell to the ground with their liquified brains pouring out of their ears.

According to Dr. Kugelblitz's explanation the terrorists' highly-polarized and low-energy neurons enabled the powerful magnets to spin their brains inside their craniums at relativistic velocities. The hostages were unaffected.

When asked about the glowing eyes, he mused. "Ah! Bremsstrahlung."

How the terrorists gained access to the secure site is still unclear. It is rumored however that a security camera at one of the guarded entry portals, where the guards were subsequently found to be sound asleep, shows a dapper looking gentleman who bears a striking resemblance to media personality Ben Stein. In the video he is seen talking to the guards. Just talking.

In a bizarre coincidence, several PETA activists were apprehended on site the same day by the already-deployed military force. It was determined they were on a sabotage mission to disable the very same installation. As they were being led away in handcuffs, one of them who gave her name as Jaime Poutine, told reporters that their group is trying to put a stop to unrestrained scientific curiosity which, PETA claims, is having a deleterious effect on feline mortality rates.

"Despite today's extraordinary events," the CERN spokesperson said, "the Large Hadron Collider project remains on schedule."