It's Official: The Weather Sucks

The members of our unofficial kayaking group and I have found ourselves thinking that the weather this year has been worse for kayaking than last year. We all recall a great spring for paddling in 2006, with nary a cloudy day.
We have had some great weather this year. A week ago today was the warmest day ever recorded in Victoria, but on the other hand our planned paddle only three days previous to that was cancelled due to rainy weather. And on the gripping hand, most of the good days have seemed to have come during the week, while the weekend weather has turned bad. And weekday paddles don't work for all of us -- some of us have to work for a living.
So with our planned trip to Discovery Island this Saturday possibly threatened because of a forecast of heavy rain, I decided to check the facts. I consulted our past kayak blog entries to see if our memories are valid. In terms of weather, was last year a better paddling year?


I returned to paddling on April 8 this year after recovering from my accident, so I compared the paddles from April 8 to July 18 in both years. As it turns out, in each year there were 20 paddles documented in the blog during this period.
The Results:

2006 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
55% - cloudy
5% - cloudy and rainy
10% - foggy
25% - sunny
5% - cancelled due to bad weather

2007 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
45% - cloudy
15% - cloudy and rainy
25% - sunny
15% - cancelled due to bad weather

The proportions of bad weather to sunny weather seems to be about the same; one paddle in four was under sunny skies. But even though there's been the same proportion of unsunny weather this spring, the weather would seem to be have been a little worse as we've cancelled more trips this year and gone out on more rainy days.
So the perception that this year's weather is worse seems to be accurate. Adding to this is the fact that we did have an amazing Spring last year. Out of 13 pre-April 8 trips in 2006, seven were on cloudy days and six were on sunny days, a ratio of nearly 50-50. This year is a little harder to judge as pre-April 8 trips are not as well documented in the blog. However, the three that we have photographic evidence for shows one sunny paddle, one cloudy paddle and one snowy paddle. A small sample size to be sure, but it leans towards to another checkmark in the 2007 Bad Weather column.
Further adding to the perception would be the miserable Fall last year. Prior to my accident in late November, all three of our planned November paddles were wiped out by bad weather, and November, December and January were marked by an incredible series of nearly two dozen fierce and destructive windstorms in the area, which resulted in many cancelled paddles. All this makes it seem like it has been a long time without a good run of sunny paddles.
What does this all mean, apart from the fact that I wasted an evening hunched over my keyboard with a Diet Coke figuring this out? Well not much, except that sunny paddles don't come along every day. They come along only one in every four paddling days apparently, so enjoy them when you get them.

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.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: A Cautionary Tale

So a friend of mine used to work in a sign shop. Another fellow who worked in the same shop quit and stole 200 empty binders when he left. He moved down to Washington State.
My friend and his wife were going to drive down to Seattle for the weekend. But before they go, he decided to phone the guy up and see if he'll give back the binders as long as they are in the neighbourhood. The guys says okay. What's he going to do with 200 binders anyway?
My friend phones Canada Customs. He explains the situation and asks if will he need any paperwork to get back into Canada with the binders. No, says the friendly official voice on the phone.
My friend and his wife go to Seattle and have a weekend. On the way back, they stop and pick up the binders. Then they get to the border at White Rock.
"Anything to declare?"
"Yeah, I got these 200 binders that were stolen from my company, but the guy who stole them is giving them back so I went and picked them up."
"That sounds like a commercial transaction. You need to go to the truck crossing on the other highway."
So my friend turns around, re-enters the US and drives to the truck crossing.
"Anything to declare?"
"Yeah, I got these 200 binders that were stolen from my company, but the guy who stole them is giving them back so I went and picked them up."
"Okay, you'll have to fill an excise from in Building B across the Parking Lot."
My friend goes across the Parking Lot to Building B.
"Anything to declare?"
"Yeah, I got these 200 binders that were stolen from my company, but the guy who stole them is giving them back so I went and picked them up. The last fella said that I had to fill out an excise form here."
"Do have it?"
"Have what?"
"The excise form."
"No. I'm here to fill it out."
"Well, yes, you fill it out here, but you pick it up there at Building A, where you were to begin with."
So my friend heads back to Building A.
"Anything to declare?"
"Yeah, I got these 200 binders that were stolen from my company, but the guy who stole them is giving them back so I went and picked them up. You told me that I had to fill out an excise form at Building B. They said that I have to pick up the form here."
"Well, of course you pick up the form here. Didn't you know that? Only an imbecile would go to Building B without having already picked the excise form. Here you go."
With form in hand my friend returned to Building B.
"Anything to declare?"
"Yeah, I got these 200 binders that were stolen from my company, but the guy who stole them is giving them back so I went and picked them up. They told me that I had to fill out an excise form at Building B. Here is the form."
"Okay, good. Do you have the receipt for those binders?"
"I'm sorry?"
"The receipt for the binders. You can't fill out an excise form without a receipt."
"The friendly official voice on the phone said that I didn't need to bring any paperwork."
"He wouldn't have said that if he had known there was an excise form involved! You do have receipts. Don't you?"
"Yes," said my friend. "I'll go get them."
He walked back to his car, past the trunk full of binders and got in. He started the engine and drove away. After a moment, his wife asked, "Where are we going?"
"To get the receipts. They're on my desk at home."

Am I That Terrifying?

Only three -- three! -- kids came by my house for tricks and treats last night. Jeez, six kids live on my block! What's up with that?
Admittedly it was unseasonably cold last night, around the zero mark during the prime trick and treating time, but still....
I'm starting tothink that Hallowe'en is now much more of an adult holiday than a kid's holiday.
At least I got all the leftovers....

Feeding Our Cars

In this article, Gwynne Dyer points out something that I wasn't aware of:

For the sixth time in the past seven years, the human race will grow less food than it eats this year. We closed the gap by eating into food stocks accumulated in better times, but there is no doubt that the situation is getting serious. The world's food stocks have shrunk by half since 1999, from a reserve big enough to feed the entire world for 116 days then to a predicted low of only 57 days by the end of this year.
That is well below the official safety level, and there is no sign that the downward trend is going to reverse. If it doesn't, then at some point not too far down the road we reach the point of absolute food shortages, and rationing by price kicks in. In other words, grain prices soar, and the poorest start to starve.

So another crisis is looming in a century already full of crises. While Islamic fundamentalism takes on Western fascism, while we go to war to fight for cheap oil to burn away in our SUVs (and slowly poison ourselves in the process), while we approach massive environmental and economic upheaval, we are running out of food. And where is it going? Dyer further notes:

In the United States, a "corn rush" has been unleashed by government subsidies for ethanol, and so many ethanol plants are planned or already in existence in Iowa that they could absorb the state's entire crop of corn (maize, mealies). In effect, food is being turned into fuel -- and the amount of ethanol needed to fill a big four-wheel-drive SUV just once uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year.

So not only are we killing ourselves and our planet to support our energy-rich western lifestyle, now we're literally starving people to do it.
And the conseqeunces? Dyer notes in this article the baffling non-response of the world's politicians and citizens to the climate change crisis, noting that:

...global civilisation falls into violent chaos as huge numbers of people start to starve. Even two degrees hotter will reduce agricultural output in the main food-producing regions of the world by about a quarter.
Much hotter, and it will be much worse, so we may end up negotiating (or more likely, fighting) over which billion of us starve first. Intelligent human beings, faced with that prospect, would act at once, or so you would think -- especially because the actions required are not really all that painful, provided that they start right away.

We need our governments to put the same effort, if not more, into the right battles as they are into fighting the wrong ones. If we don't spend a greater effort fighting climate change and hunger than terrorism, then fighting the wrong battle will have been truly a monumental waste.

Fascism. It's the New Terrorism.

According to this CNN story, "President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq."
Rumsfeld is also using the word. Click here to see a video where he describes the rise of “a new type of fascism'’ and compared critics of the Bush administration’s war strategy to those who were Nazi appeasers in the 1930s.
Merriam-Webster Online describes fascism as:

1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Sound like anyone we know?
Perhaps Rummy and Bush mean "fundamentalism," described by Merriam-Webster as:

1 a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching b : the beliefs of this movement c : adherence to such beliefs
2 : a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles, ie islamic fundementalism

I can understand how Bush makes that mistake. He's Bush. D'uh.
But how can such a learned man as Rummy make that mistake? Then again, he might be confused. After all, he's a fascist surrounded by fundamentalist fascists.
So let's recap:

Osama Bin Laden: fundamentalist

Saddam Hussien (r): fascist.
Donald Rumsfeld (l): fascist.

Super-Duper-Size Me

A friend recently received a new Lands' End catalogue. As I looked through it, I realized that this must be an American company as they advertise men's clothing available up to size 5XL.
Strangely, they have no 5XL-sized models. But I digress.

Why They Hate Us

If anyone in the West needed a concrete example of “why they hate us,” one really needs to look no further than the acts of terrorism being carried out by the Israeli government in Lebanon.
First, let’s be clear. Israel has the right to defend itself. But what Israel is trying to do is affect a political change by using violent action against an unarmed civilian population. And that’s terrorism.
Pure and simple.
And here’s the rub for Arabs. When an Arab country, Iraq, invaded Kuwait, the whole world was up in an uproar! The UN passed resolutions denouncing the invasion, and the West lead an attack to repel the invasion based on those UN resolutions. One of the justifications for the 2003 Iraq invasion was again Iraq’s apparent flouting of UN resolutions. (It turns that they weren’t. But I digress.)
Yet when Israel invades an Arab country, the West seems strangely silent on the matter, except for the US, which has pointedly not called for an immediate cease-fire, only for a cease-fire once Israel has secured its position. (Of course, it’s not like Bush can complain… he’s doing the same thing in Iraq. But I digress again.) Further, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice appeared to actually condone the attacks with her preposterous and naïve comment that the invasion was the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Israel has occupied foreign territory for 40 years in contravention of numerous UN resolutions, and has invaded Lebanon – again – but the West does nothing but sit back and fret. And there’s not much of that going on, either.
The ultimate irony is that Israel will never achieve its security goal with this action. This is just what Osama bin Laden and his Islamists want. They want to see Israeli and American soldiers stomping over the region like bulls in a china shop. Right now, Israel is doing more recruiting for Al Qaeda than bin Laden could ever hope to do.
For every Hezbollah terrorist taken out in this offensive, dozens of civilian families have suffered casualties and perhaps gained a new appreciation for the Islamist cause. Some may even become jihadists. Burying family members has been known to radicalize people.

Observations and Other Delusions

I'm very fond of self-depricating humour.
The trouble is that I don't do it very well.

Blame the Victim

So far, Israeli shelling in Lebanon has killed eight Canadian citizens, including one UN peacekeeper.
And what does our Prime Minister have to say? Not much, other than he's sure it was an accident and that everyone's really really sorry.
Hurling ordnance into cities is never an accident.
Talk about blaming the victims....

I Don't Get It

William Kristol says it again here, and it's a statement that deserves some scrutiny.
(Kristol also says that all the problems in the world are the fault of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, sorting of glossing over that the reason for the Islamists' popularity was the American-backed coup of the democratically-elected Iranian government of the early 1950s and the installation and American support of the Shah's 25 years of brutal dictitorial repression. When Bush rambles on about how a democratic Arab nation will change the Middle East, remember that there was one 50 years ago until the West overthrew it. But I digress.)
While talking about the current war in Lebanon, Kristol says, "Better to say that what's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States."
I don't get it. How do you quantify the statement that the US is the leading representative of democracy? They're sure doing a good job -- Be Nice To America or They'll Bring Democracy to Your Country!
What about that other chestnut that America is the "freest nation on earth." Again, how is this determined? Does Time publish some sort of "freedom index"? Is it determined by a straw poll of Fox News correspondents? Don Rumsfeld's tea leaves? Or by reading the pattern of buckshot left in Dick Cheney's hunting victims, er, partners?
It is a strikingly American perception that somehow the USA is rightfully the leader of the democratic world. Only in the US is the President often referred to as "The Leader of the Free World," and it is done as if it was the obvious natural order of things.
I don't recall when this was decided. Did I miss a meeting? Was I on vacation that week? If we're in the free world, and the free world has a leader, shouldn't there be a vote or something like that on who leads us?
I know I didn't vote for him.

A Crazy Diamond Shining On

It's hard to figure why the death of Syd Barrett has knocked me down a peg or two today. I must admit that I am not a big fan of Pink Floyd's brief Barrett-led period. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn has never been part of my music collection, although Ummagumma did provide some musical reference to the Barrett years.
The story of Syd is what compels, the musician boy-genius who walked the fine edge between genius and insanity and finally fell right over it. Maybe I'm feeling sad now that the story has ended.
Or maybe it's the continued reminder that my childhood idols are becoming old. Becoming mortal. Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears....

Efficient: productive of desired effects; especially : productive without waste

So I'm watching the news last night. And some economist comes on (I wish I remembered his name) to comment on the hit the stock markets, particularly the TSE, have been taking the last few days.
First, he says that the markets are a model of efficiency. They are self-correcting and always right.
Okay.
Then he says that markets are always over-correcting. Generally, when prices rise, they rise too far to reflect actual value, and then a drop in price occurs to correct, but the drop is usually too far and the over-correction results in prices that are too low to reflect actual value.
So let me get this straight -- the stock market is extremely efficient because it generally reflects a price that has little or no bearing on reality.

The Cookie Test

A few days ago, my co-worker Linda brought in a box of Peak Frean assorted cookies to share with others in the office. I snarfed up a couple of favourites, the Garden Creams, and others dove into the Fruit Creams and the Bourbons. The only ones left were a couple of round ones (whose name I don't know, alas). Linda offered them to me to finish off.
"No thanks," I said, "I don't like those kind."
She stared at me blankly. "What do you mean? They're all the same."
"No, they're not," I replied. "Those round ones are sort of lemony and I don't like them as much as the others."
"But they're all the same," she insisted.
"Well, you'll just have to get some more and we'll do a taste test."
The next day, she brought in another box and crumbled up some cookies and fed them to me. (Your tax dollars at work.)
"That's my favourite, the Garden Cream," I said as I munched the first sample. Next came "the Fruit Cream. You didn't put any of the fruit filling in the sample so I can't tell you which flavour of Fruit Cream it is. But it's clearly a Fruit Cream."
Finally was the "round lemony one that I don't like."
Linda was amazed. "I can't believe it. No hesitation at all. Dead on everytime. Wow. I'm in awe. I thought for sure they were all the same. Well, here, I guess you better finish off the rest of those cookies that I took the samples from."
Once again, science called and I responded in triumph. It was certainly not a cheap ploy on my behalf to get more cookies.
Nosiree.

Dreaming of Dwarves Playing Hockey

I now have proof that television and radio can affect your dreams.
A couple of nights ago, I spent the evening watch some Red Dwarf episodes. Then I went to bed listening to the radio, a local sports show dissecting the latest Vancouver Canucks game.
I had a dream.
I was watching the Canucks play on tv. They were short-handed (and playing without helmets for some reason), but Canuck captain Markus Naslund fired a wrist shot while cruising through the slot and scored. We cut back to the Canuck player in the penalty box to see his reaction. It's Second Technician Dave Lister of the mining ship Red Dwarf. He's holding a hockey stick, dressed in his usual slobby clothes (not a Canucks uniform), and stares straight into the camera and says, "What are you fookin' lookin'' at, Smeghead?"
Chew on that, Mr. Freud!

Election Watch '06: Highly Illogical

Not that I have any burning desire to continue to poke fun at Stephen Harper, but what the heck.
A canada.com story points out that apparently Harper is a huge Trekkie (scroll down to the second half of the article).
"Like, huge," says a source. "And it has to be the classic series, from the 1960s - none of that Next Generation, Deep Space Nine crap." Okay, I'll give Harper a point for being a fan of "real" Trek.
How true this really is I don't know, but it readily sets up the tried and true "let's compare the candidates to Star Trek characters" joke.
Paul Martin is Scotty. Clearly, he's always whining about needing more power, but he's also trying his damnedest to keep his wee bairns flying. Unfortunately for him, it seems that the good ship Liberalprise is on it's last legs, no thanks to the evil Klingon, Commander K'Gomery.
Jack Layton is McCoy. He has a cure for everything that ails you, and most of them are just good old fashioned horse sense. He's always muttering that the rest of the crew don't follow his advice. He is always speaking the truth from the heart, and as always, no one listens.
Gilles Duceppe is Captain Kirk. Which makes sense in a way as Duceppe wants to fly his ship his way, damn Starfleet and its blasted regulations. He's not going to listen to some blasted bureaucrats from across the galaxy tell him what to do. He's going to take his ship and fly on a seperate course.
Finally, Harper is unemotional, his smile is forced, and he speaks in a monotone. His logic often fails him at critical plot points. Obviously, he is Spock. He even has the same haircut.

D'oh!

Found this interesting fact in, of all places, Chris Turner's excellent sociological study Planet Simpson: How A Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation.Since 1950, the United States has used more resources than the entire human population of the world managed to consume prior to 1950. And using a little extrapolation, since the United States, at 5% of the world's population, uses about 25% of the world's resources, which means that since 1950, the entire world has burned through 4 times the amount of resources than the entire human population of the world managed to consume through all of history before 1950.

Hogan....!

This has been bugging me for a while... how come all the Germans on Hogan's Heroes' speak English?

Angelina is Having Brad's Baby: Do I Care?

Angelina Jolie is having a baby with Brad Pitt.
Why is this latest chapter in yet another Hollywood real-life soap opera all over the news? (It's the banner headline on Thursday's National Post... above the title, for gods sake.) Who cares? Or more importantly, why does anyone care?
A co-worker of mine was heartbroken -- heartbroken -- that Pitt's apparent fairy tale marriage to Jennifer Aniston ended. She blamed Jennifer for the break-up (she was firmly in the Brad camp), but was prepared to be mad at Angelina should she have somehow been involved.
That my co-worker could be so wrapped up in the private lives of three people that she has never seen in person, let alone met or interacted with, is something I find amazing in a vaguely disturbing sort of way.
For starters, we have absolutely no notion of any so-called celebrity's private life. None. Zippo. Nada. Jennifer Aniston seems like a perfectly decent and nice person. But is she? How the fuck should I know? Maybe she spends all her spare-time quietly visiting orphanages. Maybe she spends all her free time bitch-slapping her puppies. Maybe she doesn't even have puppies!
How can I feel justified enough to pass judgment of these people's live when I have no inkling about them that hasn't gone through a team of publicists, an airbrush artist, The National Enquirer and Mary Hart?
And why would I be interested anyway? They are not people I know, I have no vested interest in their lives. And yet millions or people are apparently keen to know every sordid detail.
I don't understand the public's interest in celebrity, but I do understand the media's: $$$. If people want it, we'll supply it. Entertainment reporters as drug dealers, magazine editor's as pimps. It's a crazy world.
Now, when Jennifer Aniston has Vince Vaughn's baby, call me.

I Need One of These!

The Homer Simpson Talking Pizza Cutter.
...mmm... talking pizza....