On Transportation Logos

Posted on 2 May 2026 by Larry Russwurm

You would think that airlines would have the most creative and best logos in the transportation industry. In Canada, at least, you would be wrong.

Let’s look at the airlines first. The biggest carrier is Air Canada. A very simple name for a national carrier. I am linking to their Wikipedia page so you can see the logo in the top right corner. Black letters in a boring font then a red ring with a stylized maple leaf inside. They couldn’t have ripped off the flag of Canada much more if they tried. I guess it gets their message across.

The other big airline in Canada is WestJet. Their hub is in Calgary. This is an airline started more for the “disenfranchised” west of Canada thus it’s name. Their name on their logo is dark blue, in a boring font. It has a light blue maple leaf with dark blue in its southwest corner. We get it. You favour the south west of Canada.

Flair Airlines is a discount carrier It has a its name in boring black font. As a flair they don’t capitalize either word in its name. At least that is quite a flair compared to its symbol of a black circle. Another flair is that the word flair contains the word air.

We shall move out of the airline industry and over to the train industry. The national train carrier is Via Rail. Via is a really cute name for a travel means. The very thick Via font is in yellow for easy visibility. This symbol is also the same upside down. Sometimes they use the symbol of a red maple leaf, the same as the maple leaf on the flag because it is owned by the government of Canada.

Next up is Go Transit. Again a very simple name for a means of transportation. This is the transit into the city of Toronto by a number of different lines to nearby cities and bedroom communities. The very blocky green letters of the Go are rather stylish and the negative space of the letters, makes a sideways T for Transit.

Third in line is my local rapid transit in Kitchener-Waterloo (and hopefully soon, Cambridge). This light rail line has the name of the Ion. That means go in Greek. You can see the logo on the upper right side as with all these Wikipedia links. It’s blue and green styled symbol is almost the same upside down, kind of like the Via symbol. It almost looks like cursive writing.

Rail transportation logos in Canada are way more interesting than the air transportation logos. I am looking forward to the high speed rail line in Canada, which is supposed to link Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, having a really cool logo. Please don’t disappoint like the airlines.

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Favourite Dog Breed?

Posted on 25 April 2026 by Larry Russwurm

I think that if I were to poll people about their favourite animal, I believe at or very near the top of that list would be dogs. It’s hard to argue that they aren’t the most loyal animal. And the propaganda of being man’s best friend doesn’t hurt them either.

The most hated animal is more hotly contested. It may well depend on what animal is most destructive in your life. But one of the worst animals is definitely the snake, It gets a bad rap in some ways but mostly it deserves the negativity.

Dog breeds are bred according to the defining characteristics of each breed. For example, Dachshunds are bred to be low to the ground and as long as possible. And no one can resist a good dachshund race because they look so cute and comical trying to run swiftly.

Selective breeding is what gave Dachshunds their famous shape and Dachshunds will evolve further through selective breeding. I believe they will become even longer. They have only just begun but I bet they can become two or three feet long.

Their small legs might end up getting smaller and smaller until they are nubs that barely keep them off the ground. I believe that selective breeding will still be in effect till even these nubs are gone and the Dachshunds’ torsos will be directly on the ground.

These Dachshunds will be very snake like but we will still love them with that Dachshund head and that delightful short fur. Finally! We will lave an animal that is snake like but is still cute and should have that dog loyalty.

But the fur on the underside of the Dachshund will wear off if taken on hard gritty surfaces like sidewalks, asphalt and gravel.

And it might be too hard on the Dachshund to drag their private parts on hard ground, so they might slither on their sides, resulting in hair loss on their sides, too. Suddenly Dachshunds would be dogs with Mohawk like fur. Or perhaps the dog would lose all of its fur completely. Either way, it would become more snake like and definitely less cute.

Would we still love this dog breed with the head of a Dachshund and the body of a snake? It’s hard to say exactly. But there will still be some outliers who would want these as a pet. Just as there is a market for reptiles as pets, some people would keep snake Dachshunds. Now whether there would be calendars and other collectibles with snake Dachshunds remains to be seen.

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The Unfairness of Sport

Posted on 18 April 2026 by Larry Russwurm

I find it terribly unfair that a country can earn a gold, silver and bronze medal in any sport except team sports. Why is it unfair for a country to field more than one team? This affects Canada negatively in hockey and curling especially.

Even the curling events to pick the top Canadian team is unfair. Canada pits the top team from each province against other provinces, This would be fine if Canada’s provinces had equal populations. But Ontario has 100 times the population of Prince Edward Island. It’s not fair at all.

Have countries been banned from allowing more than one team because of difficulty in naming the other teams? I propose Canada A, Canada B and Canada C, etc. for the names of these teams.

How would a country pick the players for the different teams?

I suggest Canada A gets the pick of all Canadian players. Canada B gets the pick of all the remaining players. Canada C would get the pick of the remaining players after that.

To make it to the Olympics, say, each of the Canada teams would have to qualify against the best teams in the world.

All world events would see the best teams compete. If Canada C is having a hard time in hockey, There should be some kind of mechanism to allow the America B team to take its place.

I think these would be closer and more exciting games. But there is a down side to this realignment of sport.

Canada would not have a world cup of soccer team. With three Brazilian teams and 3 France teams, etc. There would be no room for the best team we can field. We are simply not good enough to field a team compared to those country’s best teams.

But maybe that is as it should be. We are not nearly as soccer mad as those other countries are. Getting from soccer nothings to soccer somethings would be an incredible hard road to hoe. With a lot of effort, especially from immigrants, we got into the word cup of soccer the last two times. This is strange for Canada.

It would probably be 10 times the effort and time put in to get Canada into a world cup that has 3 Argentina teams and 3 German teams. It could be done but it would be very difficult.

This system would award dominance. Much like in the single person sports. But I don’t think it would be as easy to spread interest around the globe in that particular sport.

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Stupid AI

Posted on 11 April 2026 by Larry Russwurm

Q: What’s long and hard on Gemini (Google’s AI)?

A: Third Grade.

I was curious how Gemini would handle this question so I asked it. It filibustered by not letting me get a word in edgewise while it recounted 6 or 7 things named Long in the world. It was only afterwards that it let me finish.

I started using “Hey Google”, Android’s assistant for timing things. Things worked well with this. It worked perfectly and so I continued to use it when Gemini (a so called artificial intelligence) took over.

But very early on, Gemini failed me on a simple, straight forward command. This was all for timing things. I don’t use an assistant or AI for anything else.

So I gave it another chance and it worked a couple times until it didn’t. It gave a chance for me to respond and I gave it the worst rating it could have and said the most important part about timing something is notifying me.

Again it worked the next couple times but didn’t the third time. This time it offered me to rate it on the phone screen. Again I gave it the lowest rating. I typed in that the most important thing about timing something is notifying me.

That’s three failures. When the previous “dumb” assistant had a perfect record. I want “Hey Google” to come back. Gemini blatantly sucks. And in the joke up above I am giving Gemini too much credit. As if it could make it through second grade!

I am not going to give Gemini more complex tasks. It has failed the easy ones. What on earth would get me to trust Gemini for more things when it can’t do the simple things I have asked it. Gemini is a failure.

I know the real reason that Google gave me an inoperable Gemini. Before the 1st time it failed, Gemini asked followups to the timing order. It said something that meant the same as this: “tell me what you need the timer for and that way Gemini can help you better.” I didn’t answer and I refuse to answer. Also it’s trying to force me into doing more work by answering, when the whole point of using Gemini is to do less work.

Gemini is fishing for more information about you to sell so it can have a complete workup on you that is more valuable. I said no, so Gemini maliciously does not comply at times. Shame on you Google for lying and saying that Gemini is better. It’s worse than the “Hey Google” assistant that I want to go back to.

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Why Red Should Be Your Favourite Colour

Posted on 28 March 2026 by Larry Russwurm

Have you ever heard of red light therapy? That’s when red light is shone on your skin to help with various skin problems. It’s supposed to reduce wrinkles and help treat acne and scars. As well it’s supposed to help with the appearance of the skin in general.

Meanwhile blue light, at the other end of the visible light spectrum, is considered bad for your sleep. Hours before you go to sleep, you are supposed to stay away from screens, especially blue light screens, because the blue light can negatively affect sleep by suppressing the production of melatonin.

So that’s red light good, blue light bad.

Then there is the red shift of all the galaxies in the known universe except one. All those galaxies are headed away from us. We know this because of the Doppler shift. The further they are away from us the bigger the red shift and the faster they are going away from us.

The exception is the Andromeda Galaxy. It has a blue shift and is headed towards us. Indeed it will hit us in about 5 billion years. Stars are really far away from each other. As a result, it is almost a certainty that none of the stars in Andromeda will hit any of the stars in the Milky Way (our galaxy). However, I think that the Oort cloud will be so disturbed that comets will rain down on us and might cause an extinction event.

So if you’re counting that‘s red shift good, blue shift bad.

Staying with astronomy, astronomers use red light flashlights. This is because red is known not to throw off our dark adaption. Using red light allows astronomers to read sky charts, coordinates on their equipment and anything else, like following instructions. Astronomers stay in the know because of red light.

The rest of the spectrum does throw off our dark adaption. So if you turn on a blue flashlight for instance, to read something, expect to wait another 5 minutes for your dark adaption to come back and you are useful again.

Again that’s red light good, other light bad.

As a useful home hack, do not buy clock radios that don’t have red light numbers. You both lose your dark adaption and if the numbers are blue, you are suppressing the production of melatonin both of which can negatively affect you at night.

What have we learned about all this? Well we have decided that your favourite colour cannot be blue. Red would be the obvious choice for your favourite colour. Make life make sense. Make it red.

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Early Spring 2026 Grab Bag o’ Humour

Posted on 21 March 2026 by Larry Russwurm

I’ve gotten 3 furniture things over the last 10 years and I have noticed a trend. Each piece needed some assembly. As a result an Allen key was provided. That’s not what was interesting.

What was interesting was that each successive Allen key was smaller than the last. These were all the same size of key for the Allen Key. But the Allen key in each case was shorter in each of its lengths.

Is the company telling me that they are saving cents for having shorter Allen keys? Is this worthwhile to even change? Apparently.

But each successive Allen key has less torque because the length of the long part is shorter. If this trend continues, not only will I need smaller hands with which to grip the Allen key, but my strength will have to be even greater.

Maybe this is an attempt to engineer a change in shape to the human body. I’m just not sure I will approve of this change,

*

Remember when everyone had different ring tones for their phones? This is not true on the bus anymore. When someone’s Samsung phone rings, everybody looks at their own phone. But everyone is wrong except the person whose phone it is.

A similar looking about happens when either of the other tones for a text or a notification occurs. Maybe some in the herd ought to pay for a different phone. Perhaps an iPhone or a Pixel phone. Or perhaps people should pay for a ringtone, like they used to have in the olden days.

But people on the bus are usually trying to save money anyway they can. Perhaps they cannot pay the inflated costs of those other phones. Perhaps they haven’t budgeted for the cost of their own ringtone.

But even more likely, is that people don’t want to bother with the ringtone when they are getting a new phone every two years via their plans.

Regardless, we on the bus are left looking whenever anyone’s phone goes off.

*

I thought we had an agreement with CUSMA. The agreement about the deals may still stand but how to pronounce this as a word still seems up in the air.

I thought it had been agreed in the news agencies that it would be pronounced KOOZ-MUH. But lately I have been hearing news anchors calling it KUHZ-MUH.

Then again it might be my local news. I live in southwestern Ontario where the largest two rivers are the Grand River and the Thames River. The young news people aren’t told how to pronounce Thames and say the THAIMZ river.

But anyone in the know knows that London, Ontario is on the the Thames River Just like London England is on the Thames River there. So we should pronounce it like the British do. They pronounce it TEMMZ.

So all you bright news people, you aren’t anglicizing the word by saying THAIMZ, you are de-anglicizing it.

This also goes for Thamesville and Thamesford which are also on the Thames.

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Crude Mission

Posted on 14 March 2026 by Larry Russwurm

I just heard that the first crude mission to the Moon since the seventies will happen shortly. I just wonder what the crude part of it meant.

Maybe they’ll be using crude oil. Now that Iran is blocking a lot of crude oil in the Strait of Hormuz, of course the US would use up a lot more in a space mission.

Maybe they’ll be using even cruder methods. Perhaps they’ll pull back a giant elastic with a giant Chevy truck and let go when the ship is aligned inside just right.

Maybe it’ll be even cruder. They might build a giant cannon (just like they did in one of Jules Verne’s books), with the cannonball being the ship.

Maybe it’ll be cruder. Perhaps some cavemen will throw a bone in the air and miraculously it’ll turn into a spaceship.

Maybe it will be crude because they won’t send anything special for when they meet up with moon people. No language programs, no interpreters, no gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh.

Maybe it’ll be crude because it will be done by the USA and they have no regal royalty. Shut up Donald Rump, you have to be born into it for it to count.

Maybe it’ll be crude in that they will be using foul language. “F’n Ground Control this is F’n Major Tom. What $#!+ are you talking about today?”

Maybe it’ll be crude in that they aren’t sending up much water. In other words, the ship will have to recycle the astronauts urine.

Maybe it’ll be crude because the astronauts won’t be decent unless they do a space walk.

And what was crude about the seventies missions​?

Then again I herd this. So perhaps it is a crewed mission that hasn’t been to the moon since the seventies. That might be slightly more likely.

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March 2026 Grab Bag o’ Humour

Posted on 7 March 2026 by Larry Russwurm

Every ten years or so, there is a blockbuster cartoon movie about basketball. Goat is the current edition of such a societal trend.

The other sports are jealous. I used to assume that basketball was the third most lucrative sport in North America. I was surprised to see the real numbers. Yes football is the number one sport in North America. But I expected baseball with its 162 game season would be number 2. I was wrong. Basketball is number 2.

Perhaps it is because of the boost all those cartoon movies give basketball. Perhaps the very young are drawn in by the cartoons and end up liking basketball better because they have a positive first impression of the sport.

Maybe the number 4 North American sport, hockey, has learned from this. Maybe they don’t have the numbers to make a cartoon movie worth Hollywood’s attention.

But they can ally with the LGBTQ+ community. There is no doubt that hockey has a series hit with the show Heated Rivalry and its gay love story. Now if hockey had a series every 10 years perhaps with other LGBTQ+ communities being featured, perhaps they could also surpass baseball and be the number 3 professional league in North America.

*

I couldn’t help but notice McDonald’s advertising their coffee with the word smooth. This word is supposed to be a convincing positive to the brand. I can’t help but point out that cigarettes and alcohol have also advertised with the word smooth for their products.

Is smooth just a mostly nonsense adjective that today has come to mean, you will feel briefly happy because of the addictive quality of these products? The only product that I have seen the word smooth being used for that isn’t addictive is peanut butter. Smooth is used in it’s original meaning for this. That is not the case with the others.

I think there is a secondary meaning for the word smooth that has developed over the latter decades and it means, yes, this product is addictive. And you will like it precisely for that reason.

*

Back in the day, a fully bald head was rare. You were likely to only see it on Lex Luthor, Kojak, or Mr. Clean. But this has changed in recent years. Today, fully bald is considered preferable to partially balding. So men shave their heads completely.

I think bald was meant to represent rarities in days previous. Lex Luthor was a genius who could challenge Superman by his brain alone and no super powers. Kojak was an uncommon detective who regularly licked lollipops. And Mr. Clean was that odd man that is both strong and really clean.

But today, now that full baldness is common in men, it is obvious that those attributes don’t apply to all bald men. Bald men aren’t usually evil geniuses, uncommon detectives or really clean people.

So Mr. Clean decided to retire their mascot because of all this.

Then two weeks later he was brought back when the powers that be realized he is the name of the company!

So I guess all those bald men can be really clean people after all.

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Hospital Ship for Greenland?

Posted on 28 February 2026 by Larry Russwurm

Rump recently said he would send a hospital ship to Greenland. This is, of course, an attempt at bribing Greenlanders that falls flat on its face. You see, Greenlanders already have free health care. If Rump sends a hospital ship, it only means that Greenlanders have two free methods of getting care for what ails them.

Perhaps Rump would be better off looking at home if he wants to offer free health care. Many, many, many people in the US would love to have this free health care Rump is offering. Why not offer it to his own citizens? This might pull up his tanking poll numbers.

Rump understands bribes. After all he has accepted a golden jet already for the presidency. And a made up peace prize from FIFA. And is currently accepting moneys to go toward rebuilding the White House. He is probably surprised that Greenlanders are still rejecting his overtures.

But of course Rump tries to give free health care to those who already have it. The rich get richer is his mantra and what his time in office is all about. This may seem like a waste to any normal human but to Rump it is just a redundancy that guarantees Greenlanders free health care.

I don’t understand how this hasn’t caused a flurry of protests in the US as he offers foreigners free health care but pulls back health care to his own citizens. Some Americans are waking up (again the tanking poll numbers) but it is so very slow.

Also, I have doubts on the use of hospital ships. I wouldn’t trust surgery on them in anything even approaching rough seas. “Oops! The surgeon cut in the wrong spot and then because of sea sickness, puked in the gash!” Yes I would have nightmares about having surgery on a ship.

It’s not just that. Getting a swab or a needle or taking a blood sample might be similarly dangerous During a storm, a hospital ship might be entirely useless. And I wonder if it would be trapped in the ice off of Greenland’s frozen shores in the winter. A hospital ship that can only operate in the spring, summer and fall doesn’t sound too great to me. Don’t get sick in the winter!

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February 2026 Grab Bag o’ Humour

Posted on 7 February 2026 by Larry Russwurm

The first two hands of a clock are the minute hand and the hour hand because they are always present. Some clocks or watches only have these two hands. So they could be called the first and second hands. But what is the third hand of a clock or watch called? The second hand. This means that any of the three hands could be called the second hand!

To me this is first hand information, To you it is second hand information. For anyone you tell, it is third hand information.

*

Have you seen the price of a one bedroom apartment in New York City? It’s about $5 000 a month on average for a NYC renter.

But capitalism has a way of subsidizing these apartments. All the renter has to do is show up at a game show or a talk show and cross their fingers for a giveaway. And you wondered why game and talk shows always seemed to be hosted in these big cities. Now you know why.

*

You’ve heard the latest craze for kids all over? They laugh hysterically when the numbers 6, 7 come up and in that order. My sources tell me there is no real reason for the laughter. There is no real reason it is these two numbers being funny. It’s just a fact of life in today’s world.

Teaching kids to count must be hard, especially when you get to that 6, 7 trigger. But usually kids are taught to count that low of numbers when most of them aren’t socially aware. So they might not realize that saying 6,7 is supposed to trigger laughter. So maybe counting is safe.

And fortunately, 67 is a prime number so it doesn’t come up when kids are learning their multiplication tables.

Still, I would hate to be a Canadian middle grade history teacher. You see, Canada’s confederation came in 1867. So that number gets mentioned a lot.

So I’m glad I am not a middle grade history teacher. But let’s be truly honest. I’m glad I’m not teaching middle grade school at all. Thus, I don’t have to deal with those brats.

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