Happy Seal

More playing with pictures. Here's a happy seal from Witty's Lagoon.

The Long Recovery Week 14

Clearly, things are looking up -- last night I went through the drive-in at Wendy's.
Now before you get yer garters in an uproar about global cow warming and all that, consider this: I drove up to the order window, wound open my own window, and passed out money, then took back my change then took in my drink and meal.
I did it all with my left arm.
Slowly, very slowly, my shoulder is getting better.
It's still very weak, and mobility is still limited, but it is coming back. I keep finding myself able to do things that a week or two ago I couldn't.
And I must be feeling optimistic about my eventual return to the kayaking -- yesterday I ordered a waterproof VHF radio.

Takei on Hardaway

Once again, Jono has sent me a YouTube that I am compelled to post on the blog! Damn him!
Here, George Takei responds to Tim Hardaway's recent homophobic rant.

Spider-man... in 5 Seconds

Future Shock (past tense)

Introducing... The Book!

The Long Recovery Week 12

This was a week of firsts.
Monday, I had my first bath. I decided that it was time to try to get in and out of the tub. Getting in was okay, but getting out still remains a little haphazard. However, I didn't fall, and it was very relaxing. Heck, I may even have another one tonight. (Long-time followers of my misadventure will recall that due to the tinyness of my bathroom and the awkwardness of my injury, I was forced to pee in the sink for a short while after my release from the hospital. I would like to state for the record that for some time I have been able to pee in the usual manner and into the usual bathrrom fixture, although I still occasionally pee into the sink because I am a lazy and gross bastard.)
Tuesday, I tied my shoelaces for the first time in three months. After getting home from my accident, the first phone call I made was to my niece who works in a discount shoe store to ask her if they had any sneakers with velcro instead of laces. And lo, they did, and they were delivered unto me, and I've been wearing them ever since. But after a recent long walk, I discovered that discount shoes aren't designed to be walked in over a lengthy distance, and since my plan is to walk home when I return to work, it was time for more comfy (and more expensive) shoes. And so it was that on Tuesday morn, I took my old expensive sneaks out of the closet, placed them on my feet and tied the laces with no discomfort in my battered left shoulder. Huzzah, huzzah.
And today another first: my first day back at work. What a, er, um, thrill it was to be back. Makes one hanker for the days when I could just sit home, rest, watch tv and get paid. And that was just last week!
Actually, it felt good to be back, if for no other reason than it represents another small step along The Long Road Back. The shoulder seemed to survive the day fairly well. And when I did my exercises in the evening, it seemed a lot less tighter than usual. Perhaps being back at work did it some good.
I stuck up a copy of my x-ray in my cubicle. Most people were shocked at the amount of metal in my arm.
"Is that permanent?" they gasped.
"Yes," I replied, "until someone figures that the going rate for titanium is worth digging up my cold and rotting corpse for."
I walked home, as per my plan, and although I was jealous of every bike rider that passed me and every kayaker in the harbour (there was only one, and he had to be crazy to be out on a stormy day like today), at the end of the day I feel a little more confident that one day soon I'll be back on my bike and in my kayak.

Imagine - George W. Bush

Eagle

I'm playing around with some pictures I took on various kayaking paddles over the last couple of years.
Here's an eagle off of Willows Beach.

How To Get on The No-Fly List

1. On an airplane, quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Turn it on.
4. Make sure the passanger sitting next to you can see the screen.
5. Log on to the Internet and click this link.

Battlestar Galacticons

Here's a great article on Neocons who use sci-fi and fantasy analogies, and how many of them are upset at the third season of Battlestar Galactica which depicts many of the Galactica crew as insurgents against a Cylon occupying force even going so far as to use suicide bombers against the first graduating class of human security forces police recruited by the Cylons:

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who writes regularly about Galactica’s politics on NRO’s group blog, The Corner, also picked up on parallels between the show and the war on terror. Goldberg took particular glee in attacking Galactica’s anti-war movement, which he said consisted of “radical peaceniks” and “peace-terrorists” who “are clearly a collection of whack jobs, fifth columnists and idiots.” Goldberg also praised several characters for trying to rig a presidential election. “I liked that the good guys wanted to steal the election and, it turns out, they were right to want to,” wrote Goldberg. Stolen elections, evil robots, crazed hippies … what more could a socially inept right-winger want from a show?
But alas, this love affair between Galactica and the right was not to last: in its third season, the show has morphed into a stinging allegorical critique of America’s three-year occupation of Iraq. The trouble started at the end of the second season, when humanity briefly escaped the Cylons and settled down on the tiny planet of New Caprica. The Cylons soon returned and quickly conquered the defenseless humans. But instead of slaughtering everyone, the Cylons decided to take a more enlightened path by “benevolently occupying” the planet and imposing their preferred way of life by gunpoint. The humans were predictably not enthused about their allegedly altruistic rulers, and they immediately launched an insurgency against them using improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. Needless to say, this did not go over very well in the Galacticon camp.
“The whole suicide bombing thing … made comparisons to Iraq incredibly ham-fisted,” wrote a frustrated Goldberg, who had hoped the struggle against the Cylons would look more like Le Resistance than the Iraqi insurgency. “The French resistance vibe … is part of what makes the Iraq comparison so offensive. It’s a one-step remove from comparing the Iraqi insurgency to the (romanticized) French resistance.”

The article goes on to mention further sci-fi allusions, including a writer who thought that:

“[i]t’s time to institute Disintegration Chambers in our major American cities,” he said, referring to a Star Trek episode that featured two tribes who preferred to fight wars by disintegrating their own people rather than sending them into live combat. Even though the episode was actually an allegory about the perverse methods governments use to shield their people from the brutal costs of war, he took quite a fancy to the idea of forced disintegration, especially for his ideological foes.
“Here’s the deal,” he wrote. “We decide what constitutes torture, and identify it as the following: insufficient air conditioning, excess air conditioning, sleep deprivation, being chained to the floor, and other forms of psychological stress … Those who disagree with these techniques must sign a record that registers their complaints. When a terrorist finally spills the details on a forthcoming attack on, say, Chicago, the people who signed the register and live in Chicago are required to report to the disintegration chamber.”

The Long Recovery Week 10

It's funny how I can suddenly discover that I can do something without even thinking about it, or that I can still find that there are very simple tasks that I cannot do.
For instance, last week after physio, I ran for the bus. Not that the running itself was a surprising thing -- I'm not much of a jogger, but up until my accident I was riding my bike five days a week, so I was in shape enough to run if need be -- but the fact that I was running and my shoulder seemed pretty okay with it was an unexpected surprise. It wasn't until I got on the bus that I realized that I had run a couple of hundred metres with little discomfort.
Mind you, later that day I couldn't get my socks off. As I stood in front of the laundry hamper, I decided that the socks I was currently wearing were due a wash. So, still standing, I bent my left knee, lifted my left foot, reached down with my right hand and pulled my sock off. After lowering my left foot, I lifted my right foot and without thinking reached down with my left hand and did not have the strength to take off my right sock.

The good news is that I am feeling more and more human and I'm venturing out more. Here's me last week at Gyro Park. Dig the "physio beard."

Climate Change Unstoppable

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations issued a their latest report today, conclding that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. [See here, here, and here.]
The report, using their strongest language yet on the issue, said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries," no matter how much humans control their pollution. "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report.
The report finds that sea levels will rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100, and it also concluded that seas would continue to rise, and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come (by comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century).
The report also finds a new wrinkle in the climate change story: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.

The President of the United States said, “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
Oh, sorry. That wasn't the current President speaking.
It was President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1965.

Living in his own private reality bubble, the current President, "President" Bush, is rejecting mandatory carbon caps, but likes the idea of giant space mirrors.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse ... But I Refused Anyway

I just got spammed. It says:

"Dear Home Owner,

Are you tired of paying high interest rates? Act now on your loan pre-approval.

You can receive $265.00 for
$678 per month.

Please respond Instantly.
http://ilook.tw/knln



Kent Jones
Loan Center


Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

Wow. Now there's a freaking deal. Too bad my fingers don't move at the speed of light so that I could respond INSTANTLY.