Something Red Tory

I discovered a blog by a Victorian (as in someone who lives in Victoria, BC, not a really old phat styling person) that I am so far quite enjoying. It's called Red Tory, and from there I found something else. Over at Something Awful they have an Anonymous Atheist Complaint Box. Here are the ones I liked the best:









I couldn't figure out how to add any new ones on their site, so I think it was sort of a 'promotional' thing that's now over. So if you have any Anonymous Atheist Complaints you'd like to post - let's see 'em in the comments!


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Not A Boat Enthusiast

Stumbling around the Net, I discovered more awesomeness - which, among the inter-webs, is proving to be an easy task.

If you have ever been curious about authentic Air Traffic Control (ATC) chatter, have I got the site for you.

Maybe you've read news items about aeronautical mishaps, watched two-word titled movies rife with airplane transmissions (Top Gun, Tin Cup, Die Hard [2], Ground Control, Passenger 57, Cast Away, Con Air), seen footage from the cockpit of a US war bird as it fires upon unsuspecting Canadian or British allies, or just watched the tower from the tarmac as your plane taxies towards take-off, and wondered what those guys in headsets are actually saying.

At LiveATC.net you can listen to live streaming audio of what's been said near airports all around the world. I've been listening to JFK's Tower feed for hours...oh, sounds like the wind is one eight zero at nine and flight 5228 is clear for take-off - excellent.

And in my subsequent research I discovered a very cool video of Boeing test landings being conducted in high crosswinds. These giant airliners come floating in sideways before correcting just as the landing gear touches down. It's harrowing, beautiful, and damn cool.

Who wants to listen to Schiphol's (Amsterdam) feed with me tomorrow?!

Letter to Braemar #3

So you work with wood, sometimes making your own furniture. Two weeks ago we started calling you Brabe (the short form of your combination Braemar/Abraham name).

I happened upon a McSweeney list today about what your name says about you. There are only 7 names on it. One of them is Abe. And Abe can make furniture.

Coincidence?

Canadian Cold Cases

It's amazing how often you read stories in Canadian news about decades-old murders being solved and those once off-scot-free killers arrested.

My advice to you is, don't commit a serious crime in Canada; there's very little violent crime and as a result we've got loads of detectives with fuck all to do - it may take 'em twenty years, but they're gonna get you.

In fact, here's a list of Canada's 20 unsolved homicides dating back to 1976. And only a Canadian can think that less that one unsolved homocide per year still seems a little high.

Of course, compared with the "NYPD Cold Case Squad and the detectives charged with investigating the nearly 9,000 unsolved murders in New York City between 1985 and 2004", not to mention, well, the rest of New York and the rest of the United States - we're waaaaay ahead of the game.

Maybe the RCMP can help solve the whole Biggie & Tupac thing...

Quasi-Headline Of The Day #4

This is an awesome beginning of an article:

"The loonie hit its highest level since the disco era..."

If you're not Canadian are you thinking, "Is the loonie a river? And why is it being compared to disco?"

Icy Hot

I learned something cool today - water can be ice even at high temperatures if there is enough pressure on it.

A team of Swiss and Belgian scientists discovered a large planet (named GJ 436b) 33 light-years away that is made mostly of ice while also having a surface temperature of about 250 degrees Celsius.

"The water is frozen by the pressure but it's hot. It's a bit strange — we are used to water changing conditions because of temperature, but in fact water can also be solidified by pressure," Frederic Pont told Reuters news service.

Looking for more significance than cool fact? Well, how about more proof that "there are many ocean planets" beyond Earth? Significant and cool.



CNN article

Overheard In Victoria

On the corner of Douglas & Fort Streets, a girl walking down the street while a guy walks along nearby says into her cell, "No, I'm talking to some guy I just felt up."

On the balcony of my hotel room, Dave enlightens me on bagpipe playing technique with, "You get more bag control with a rolling rate."

In the line up for drinks at Huggy's wedding reception, I misheard a question;

Sarah: "You heard my Jack Layton gossip right?"

Spage: "Your ejaculation gossip??"

Guy in line ahead of me turns around: "Clearly, this is the conversation I should be involved in.

The New Intelligence Scrutiny

Intelligence agencies, especially the Americans', have been under a lot of pressure in the past few years over their perceived failures to stop bad things from happening to good people.

In this new era, nothing suspicious goes unreported, and everything that is not exactly as expected is considered suspicious. And the fear runs deep - check out this story about how U.S. Army contractors in Canada found one of our commemorative quarters and how it turned into a warning from the Defence Department about Canadian 'spy coins'.

It's a pretty hilarious read. In 2004 the Royal Canadian Mint produced 30 million quarters with a red coloured poppy on it to honour Canada's 117,000 war dead. When the Americans found one it set off a series of espionage reports. Previously classified documents show that they called the coins "anomalous" and "filled with something manmade that looked like nanotechnology". Nanotechnology!

"It did not appear to be electronic [analog] in nature or have a power source" "Under high-power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear but different material, with a wire-like mesh suspended on top."

"The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the U.S. Defence Security Service, an agency of the Defence Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through Canada."

They didn't get these coins in their change, they were planted!

Meanwhile, exasperated Canadians were unable to get the Americans to listen to them. ""That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence contractors will not go away," wrote Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service."

And seriously folks, if we were going to make a covert electronic tracking spy coin - I don't think we'd make it stand out by sticking a big red flower on it. Or maybe we were distracting you with them while our real spy pennies got past your impenetrable wall of security.

2004: The year of red quarters in Canada

Priorities

In a post earlier today, I mentioned that the politicians in Ottawa had thousands of more important things to spend their time on than tweaking electoral laws.

This is not one of them.

A parliamentary committee is going to review whether Shane Doan should remain Captain of Team Canada's hockey team because two years ago he was accused of saying something mean about French-Canadians. It was an accusation that was not substantiated and Doan was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing by the NHL.

Oh yes, this is serious. In a way it's funny how hockey is so important in this country that all the political parties supported the Bloc motion to have Hockey Canada explain it's choice to a parliamentary committee.

On the other hand, the Bloc says nasty things about all non French-Canadians every day and we don't demand that they step out of the country - on the contrary, we try our darnedest to keep them in.

The bottom line is that the government helps to fund Sports Canada which in turn puts money towards Hockey Canada - and the Feds are threatening to cut off that funding. Gilles Duceppe, the Bloc leader, said that "It's taxpayers' money, so they will have to have some answers". True, except that Gilles seems to be the only one hot under the collar about it and for him to dare use me and my fellow non-Quebeckers as pawns in his rhetoric kind of disgusts me. He doesn't care at all about anything or anyone outside of Quebec and these little subliminal phrases won't make me forget that.

I think Gilles is still just pissy because back in December 2005 everyone rejected his call to have a separate hockey team representing Quebec during the Olympics instead of having one team from Canada and he's still throwing tantrums trying to get his way.

Guess after saying that I'm now on the Team Canada blacklist eh?

2nd Anniversary

I missed it by a few days, but my first post was on April 29th, 2005. Happy Birthday Spew Forth!

Another Law I Can Do Without

No no no no no.

Tomorrow bill C-16 is slated to receive royal assent making it law. This bill, already passed by the senate, would require that we have federal elections every four years on the third Monday of October.

Not only are there thousands of issues more important for our politicians to be spending time on, but I'm a little fuzzy on how this is supposed to introduce "greater fairness" in our electoral system.

Harper says that under the current system, where the Prime Minister can call the date of a general election, the governing party can "manipulate the timing of elections for partisan advantage". I say that this kind of rationale is insulting to Canadians. Harper is saying that the public is incapable of being aware of what party they prefer for what reasons; that we can't possibly remember what one party did last year or what the other didn't do. In fact, what he is telling us is that you should be basing your vote solely on what parties claim in and around the date of the fixed election. Plus, if a party calls an election at an obviously opportunistic time, it gives the public a chance to judge that for themselves and not have Harper decide what we should and should not think.

I would also counter that having a fixed election date does not mean that the governing party can't give themselves a partisan advantage. If you know when the election is, then you can plan a spate of government spending leading up to the election as part of your 'campaigning'.

Need I also bring up the fact that with fixed elections you are will definitely see early campaigning from all parties including television, radio, and road sign bombardment. I doubt Canadians want any more of this than we are already subjected to. Think about the US Presidential elections and how they drag on for two years before you even get to the polls. You thinking about it? Are you looking forward to it here? I thought not.

If our goal is to model ourselves after the American electoral system, which is no way without flaws, then this is a step in the right direction.


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Jealousy

This sucks.

I went to see "hundreds of thousands of cheering workers march[ing] through Cuba's Revolution Plaza" in Havana on January 1st 2006 as they did for the May Day parade today.

Instead, I got to see what the Plaza looks like when it's deserted.

And in case anyone cares, if you only get to pick one to visit, I'd recommend the Plaza de la Revolucion in Santiago de Cuba over Havana's.

Here is a picture of it I took from across the street, at dusk, that is blurry.

La défense du Canada

On Thursday last I wrote a rather bombastic letter to the mayor and city council of Vancouver in an attempt to have them alter a bothersome road sign on my commute. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

My letter, sent April 26, 2007, with my personal info edited:

Honourable Sam Sullivan and esteemed Council members,

Every day on my commute into downtown Vancouver as I head North on Oak Street, I drive under a sign at Douglas Crescent (W 19th on the West side of Oak) that directs you to turn left to enter the "City Center". This may seem like a small thing to the members of Council, but it disturbs me and several people I've mentioned it to and therefore feel that it is an appropriate matter to bring to your attention.

So much of what makes us Canadian is slowly eroding away as we become more and more integrated with other nations and this sign does not respect a basic tenet of our society; our language. I hope that our city Council will support my suggestion that this sign be either fixed or replaced with the word "Centre" spelled as we would in this country. The current incorrect spelling reminds me every morning of our inability to respect our heritage, protect our education system, or care about the impact of things that don't make big headlines.

We already have a populace who is in the beginning stages of being unaware that in Canada we use two 'l's in 'traveller' or that when we short form dates it should be listed as day/month/year rather than the American system of month/day/year. If we are unable to muster concern over these little things, soon we will lose the 'u' in our honour and forget our history - we will forget where our language comes from and why it is as we read and hear it today. And if we're willing to say that it's 'good enough', where are our values, self-respect, or drive to be better and show it?

Again, I hope this petition is taken seriously as I do find it to be a serious matter. None of the big problems can be fixed without looking at the principles and bases of what makes us who we are. If we are willing to be indifferent about our culture where will this leave us? Thousands of people see that sign every day, and whether they chose to or not they are affected by it. Everything around us has an effect on our beings - we can't escape it, so I will remain optimistic that our Council will see fit to spend a few minutes in their busy schedules and imagine what kind of Canada we'd like to build in our corner of the country.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Spage

The next morning I received this reply:

Thank you for your email which has been circulated for information to the Mayor, Councillors, City Manager, and forwarded to the attention of Engineering Services.

An hour and a half later I get a reply from a councillor:

Dear Spage,

I agree and I will have our staff make the change.

Sincerely,
Raymond Louie
Councillor, City of Vancouver

This morning (Monday) I got another e-mail:

Hi Spage, the sign will be changed to the correct spelling.

Thanks

Mike Markovic
City of Vancouver
Traffic Management

And then this afternoon another follow-up e-mail:

Dear Spage,

After communications with staff, I'm advised by Traffic Operations that this sign should be replaced within a couple of weeks. The exact schedule will have to be fitted in with some special-event work they are doing, but it will be installed very shortly.

Sincerely,

Raymond Louie
Councillor, City of Vancouver

How exciting! My pride cup runneth over.

Magnetic Poetry #6

I incubate screams
for esentially luscious
storms of languid
power and soar thousands
of shadowy gardens
away in an elaborately
bigger trudge. I manipulate
you and me and
lie & play for I am
me & I am gone.

Neutrinos. Want To Know More?

We hear a lot about the 'brain drain' in Canada so it's nice to point it out when a Canadian brain, residing in Canada, does something cool and gets an award for it. Not just any award either, a very prestigious one called the Benjamin Franklin Medal. How prestigious is it? "Previous winners of the Benjamin Franklin Medals — which date back to 1824 — include Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell and Orville Wright, with more than 100 Franklin winners going on to win Nobel Prizes." Yep, that's pretty prestigious!

So who is he and what did he do?

Art McDonald is a Queen's University physicist (and director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute who was working with Yoji Totsuka from the University of Tokyo (they will share this award). They were studying neutrinos which are "an essential part of the Standard Model of physics and help explain everything from radioactive decay to the processes that occurred during the Big Bang" and are one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe.

What they discovered is that "the three known types of neutrinos can change into one another when travelling long distances and that they have mass."

This may seem like a very simple discovery but is, of course, not. With this revelation the idea that solar neutrinos disappear as they move through objects was refuted as it turns out they were just changing into other kinds of neutrinos. It has also led others in the field to "make connections to other areas of physics, such as the high-energy processes that are thought to have taken place during the first moments of the universe". Sounds righteous to me!


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