Something in the Air

Posted on 16 August 2014 by Larry Russwurm

People might try to pass it off as some sort of coincidence, but last year the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks made it to the Superbowl. That is the teams from Colorado and Washington state. These are the two states that legalized pot.

Now I don’t know why football players who can smoke pot play better, it’s just something that happens. I know most of you are going to poo poo my conclusion but just allow me to ask this: why did the New York Times editorial board reveal a pro pot position just months ago? Again, coincidentally, New York City has the most American football teams of any city with the Giants and the Jets.

Good football teams sell papers. Lots and lots of newspapers. It’s the stories and the stats that bring this about. The New York Times wants good local teams hence their pro pot stance. They don’t want to see dynasties develop in Seattle and Denver. New Yorkers are nothing if not ambitious.

Also making football news this year is the possibility of the Buffalo Bills moving to Toronto and thus making American football truly international. It kind of is already with the former ownership of the Bills letting Toronto host one game a season already.

But now that the pot connection has been made in football, I don’t see Toronto as a prime host of American football. Toronto doesn’t want a team doomed to failure because you can’t smoke pot in Ontario.

More likely the places that would add international flavour to American football would be the city of Amsterdam, the island of Jamaica or the province of B.C. Pot might not be legal in the province of British Columbia but that is only because the politicians are lagging far behind the populace. I suspect a change is on the horizon soonest.

But this new open, football winning society might be at risk. They test Olympians for any performance enhancing drugs. It would be a small thing to test NFLers for pot smoking. Of course Olympian Ross Rebagliati’s excuse will probably wear very thin when all the winning NFLers say simply that they were nearby when pot smoking occurred.

I know some people wish to see the best American football possible. In that case some legalization of pot seems to be in order.

Post Script: By the way I’m not a total pot advocate. For instance there seems to be a smoking gun in that pot can trigger mental illness like schizophrenia. Any legalization must take that into account so pot could perhaps have a high legal age of consumption since schizophrenia tends to hit younger people more so than older people.

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Brave, Brave Donald Trump

Posted on 9 August 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Brave Donald Trump proved that he is indeed in the home of the brave, by bravely pressing some buttons on Twitter and uttering an opinion. In a nutshell this brave man dared to oppose a sitting government.

Bravely the Donald wants Americans to leave all Ebola patients in Africa. Bravely he pointed out that Ebola fighters, who try to slow down the current outbreak in Africa, know the risks so should be banned from treatment in the good old USA.

Bravely the Donald also wants flights from those impacted countries to stop immediately.

Two Ebola fighters have been taken in by the sitting government and given experimental treatments on US soil. Bravely the Donald opposes this.

Implicit in the brave Donald’s position is a willingness to cut off American research to stop or slow the spread of Ebola. Those two Ebola fighters are being used to test the experimental treatments under controlled conditions in the USA. If the Ebola fighters had been kept out and flights had been banned from impacted areas (as the Donald wishes), it is obvious that the Donald wants the whole American scientific effort to halt.

And if a new illness starts in the good old USA, I expect brave Donald to stay put and expect full travel restrictions on himself and his fellow Americans. Gleefully and bravely he might find that those outside countries don’t bother trying to cure that new scourge in the USA. Only then might the brave Donald be pleased. Bravely pleased, that is.

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Bigger Hogs

Posted on 2 August 2014 by Larry Russwurm

I wonder if it’s just my imagination or if the average motorcycle is actually getting bigger. Now some people may be concerned with noise so they might want smaller motorcycles. I say let the motorcycles get bigger.

You can’t blame the biker. After all they just want something bigger between their legs. But in my bigger motorcycle stance there is something that some motorcyclists might not like.

I wouldn’t want motorcycle engines to grow. They have enough c.c.’s as it is. I want the size of motorcycles’ mufflers to grow. I want the muffler to be so big and efficient that it makes the motorcycle sound like the tiny whine of a gas sipping compact car.

For too long the world has only felt sorry for those people with houses close to the airport. I say we extend that sympathy to those on common motorcycle roadways. Those people suffer just as much. Just not as badly in the winter.

While having this idea in my head, I came across this article that talks about motorcycle noises beginning to be regulated across Canada. This article takes the sensible view that motorcycles along with loud cars (in my estimation there are 19 loud motorcycles per every loud car) should be subject to the same noise regulations.

But I personally think that since some noise proponents are taking the fireworks defence, I say we go there, to the fireworks offence.

Fireworks in most of Canada seem to be regulated to being used on three evenings of the year – Victoria Day, Canada Day and New Year’s Eve. So maybe motorcycles should only be used three evenings a year and let’s make sure that one of those evenings is in the middle of winter.

To me the fireworks offence should be legislated from sea to sea to sea. Then, perhaps I won’t ever feel that familiar shaking of the whole street caused by a single rider on their motorcycle.

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A Nice Day for a White Wedding

Posted on 26 July 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Let’s say that a couple bonded around the sport of tennis. So they could have their wedding in that sport’s shrine -say Wimbledon- for sheer, high class points.

Right after the tournament is over and the rest of the crowd has filed out, the wonderful ceremony could begin. Since many of the guests may be from outside of London, you would want to make the date coincide with the finish of the women’s or men’s championship. This classes up the event even further. Since Saturday is the people pleasing wedding day, it would be best to hold the wedding on the date of the women’s final.

The guests would see the new woman champion be crowned as well as the marriage of their loved ones.

But most importantly, Wimbledon being Wimbledon, the bride might be expected to become the bridezilla of all bridezillas. You see, Wimbledon insists on its competitors wearing such predominantly white clothes that any tiny splashes of other colours on the white need to be preapproved by the proper tennis authorities.

So at least the winner and 2nd place of the tournament will be wearing enough white to upstage the bride. Indeed white is common even for the spectators of tennis. Maybe many, many more spectators will be draped in white.

All this white will lead to much fury, anger and invective unleashed by the bride. She might rant for hours. Then maybe, just maybe, all that pent up emotion released on such a wedding day will drain the bride. So complete might be that draining that the entire rest of the marriage might only see the bride being sweet. And that may be the happy ending from such a classy, memorable wedding day.

Then, too, the bride may save her anger for whomever told her about the Wimbledon wedding idea. I mean really, who looks to the internet for classy ideas, especially those sites which freely mention something about rants in the very title? But isn’t this small possibility worth the chance of that truly happy marriage?

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Most Beautiful

Posted on 19 July 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Unmentionable magazines are fond of generating publicity by having a list of the most beautiful or sexiest people in the world. It drives magazine sales, produces a lot of link love and just plain old publicity for the publication. Indeed, I’m surprised all magazines don’t try to break into the party. Why, I just entitled this post “most beautiful”, shouldn’t advertisers be beating down my door to be associated with this post?

I would just like to point out one thing. These carefully collected and hotly contested lists have one very simple trait. They consist almost exclusively of film or television actors. Let’s examine that for a moment.

Let’s say you achieve the dream of being in a relationship with one of these actors or actresses. And they are good at their craft. If they cheat, they will likely be able to effectively lie their way out of it. Some of these actors even have trophies saying they can lie their way through most situations.

Film actors go off to shoot in exotic locales all over the world. Now I’m not certain that gives them motivation to cheat, but it certainly provides opportunity.

Alright,alright, the dream of being in a relationship with an actor that can easily cheat isn’t so good, but why not assume they’re going to cheat and just beat them at it?

Then, when the day comes when they try to trip you up – they can. They’ll say, “Well I appreciate how you tried to pull the wool over my eyes and realized that nothing less than method acting would do. Your excuse was that you were taking auctioneering classes MWF and you were just taking them every Monday. At first I thought you were a bit slow but you were really cheating Wednesday and Friday. Nothing less than some commitment to the lie would have helped. Kudos. But I’m cutting you out of my life forever.”

An actor may be incredibly attractive. But my conscience can only recommend them for one night stands.

So when checking out those magazine covers with all those sexy actors or actresses, remember the magazine isn’t so hot, those people are only for flings. So step away from those magazines. I said step away. Okay, okay. I bought one earlier because I knew I was going to do this rant and wanted one final reminder of the most beautiful.

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The Kitchen, the Loo, and the Bridge

Posted on 12 July 2014 by Larry Russwurm

It has come to my attention that the three cities in Waterloo Region (in Ontario, Canada) all can have derived architectural nicknames.

Kitchen can stand for Kitchener. Indeed that city uses the slogan “Keep Kitchener clean as a Kitchen”. Loo can stand for Waterloo, meaning a toilet in the English of certain parts. Waterloo is actually shy about promoting this tie, not unlike the shyness of many in regards to toilet conversation. Bridge could stand for Cambridge, an architectural improvement on the “ford” city names like Brantford and Stratford. Yes my biases are showing, I really prefer a bridge to fording a river.

Kitchener only got its name when it was decided during World War I that total war against Germany should involve changing the name of a city called Berlin to something more palatable to the British Empire. Thus the year 1917 I see as the age when Kitchener (or the Kitchen) came to be on the inside.

It took longer for the Loo to arrive on the inside. Indeed in the 19th century the vast majority of loos existed on the outside. Indeed these constructs were called outhouses, thus trumpeting the fact they were on the outside. After enduring much, sometime in the 20th century, the Loo started cosying up to Kitchener and eventually got in the inside by calling itself Kitchener’s twin city. With Kitchener’s approval, the Loo became part of the inside.

Doesn’t the Bridge (or Cambridge) just scream being on the outside? Indeed Light Rail Transit (something between a bus and a subway) is coming to the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo in only a couple years from now. The region can only afford this in the well built up areas of the Kitchen and the Loo. Years after that completion, the region will expand Light Rail Transit to the Bridge.

Cambridge politicians opposed the LRT for Kitchener and Waterloo. Why should they have to pay for something that doesn’t benefit themselves (although initially they get bus rapid transit)? And mostly it feels like the Bridge is on the outside and might never be on the inside.

Houses are much more common for people to build than bridges. And the vast majority of houses have a sunken basement. What makes a house the most habitable is that we don’t stop there, we add at least another level. This other level bridges the basement. What I am trying to say is that sure some bridges are outside, but by far the most common type of bridge is in almost every home.

I have no doubt that the Kitchen and the Loo are going to bring the Bridge clearly inside. Sure it might take more years but Cambridge is going to get the LRT, too. How do I know? Well decades ago all Canadian cities were clamouring for the plant Toyota planned to bring to Canada. Instead of offering competing bids, both Kitchener and Waterloo backed the bid by Cambridge. The Cambridge Toyota plant employs thousands to this very day.

Maybe the Bridge was on the inside all along. Well at least since 1973 when it was formed from towns and one small city. I think all three cities are now on the inside track in Waterloo Region.

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Franking

Posted on 6 July 2014 by Larry Russwurm

First of all, who was the nasty person that dragged poor Frank’s name through the dirt, forever associating his name with the act of Canadian politicians sending mail to constituents at no cost through Canada Post?

I do take exception to that “no cost” label. A crown corporation that has to keep making cutbacks and jacking up rates, could indeed use actual paying customers. This article says that a politician gets 4 free acts of franking and pays a nominal fee for any extras. I believe that fee is nominal indeed, because my Member of Parliament sent me no less than 17 pieces of what can only be described as propaganda, in one year.

I said last year that I was going to keep track of how many pieces of mail I get from my Member of Parliament, Harold Albrecht. Long time readers will know that I have been annoyed with this policy of franking for years. They say that with franking the public is allowed to write back to their MP for the same free cost, but in reality if we made an ongoing campaign of it as our MPs do, the policy would stop almost immediately.

17 pieces of mostly crap arrived this year, that touted a government “Action Plan” that does nothing more than any government would do. Most of this propaganda contained a “Be heard” icon with a question and three arrows, one of which pointed to “The Conservatives” and none of which pointed to the other three parties listed. This is an obvious act of propaganda since my MP is Conservative.

17 acts of junk mail were performed against me by my own Canadian government.

I had the idea that I would figure out how many households in my community would receive this mail and figure out how much Harold Albrecht was costing me per year above and beyond his usual expenses and salary.

A Conservative/Liberal committee found that a third party, the NDP, were guilty of abusing their franking privilege by sending party propaganda (I don’t understand the difference between this and the 17 pieces of propaganda I received from the Conservatives). They are trying to make the NDP pay for their indiscretion at the rate of 1 charge of 1st class mail per item sent out. The first class charge is about 97 cents so this should make my calculations easier because I don’t have to consult with Canada Post.

There are about 100 000 people in a Canadian riding. There are actually many more in Harold Albrecht’s Kitchener-Conestoga because this is a very fast growing area. But I will use the 100 000 people estimate. The number of people per household is a difficult number to obtain quickly on the internet (shame, shame Statistics Canada and the government of Canada), but Burlington ( a nearby Ontario city) had 2.6 people per household in 2006 and a 2003 American census puts the average per household at 2.57 people. So I will use the 2.6 figure.

One hundred thousand people divided by 2.6, times 97 cents,and times 17 gives us a figure of $643 230.77

Let’s be frank. Each Conservative MP is likely costing us over $600 000 a year in franking alone. There are 162 Conservative ridings in Canada. Franking is likely costing us 97 million dollars per year for the propaganda of one political party. This just totally dwarves the 1.17 million dollars the NDP is being accused of for improperly franking. If the Conservatives and NDP are using franking for propaganda can the Liberals be far behind? Only $22 million is being given to Canada post for all this franking.

Canada Post has cried out that they are hurting by raising rates and discontinuing delivery to urban addresses that don’t have community mailboxes. What is the real cost of franking? The information speaks for itself. Down with franking.

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Homeopathy and the High Price of Chemicals

Posted on 28 June 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Homeopathy is the discipline (hah!) that states that a properly diluted chemical can still have an effect on your immune system. The dilutions are so extreme, that there is either a vanishingly small amount of the original, active ingredient or maybe none at all in the final dose. Proponents of homeopathy pounce on this point as a positive, saying that is why homeopathy is so safe.

Dilutions can be done with water or another liquid solvent. For nonsoluable solids, the alleged active ingredient can be ground down and then mixed with, say, powdered sugar. The solvent or powder is at least 90% of the combo with the other 10% or so being the active ingredient, of which 10% is taken and added to a new 90% solvent or powder. This is repeated a few more times till that active ingredient is almost nonexistent in the final product.

But wait a minute. Since this effect is so successful for a human’s immune system (say the proponents), I guarantee if this is true it must also be successful in other areas of study. Nature rarely wastes a good idea in only one sphere. Nature tends to use good tricks again and again.

We all know that chemicals can get expensive. If a solvent or powder can retain memory of a chemical for the immune system, I say we begin to see if this is true for more systems. Maybe it is true in inorganic systems. If so we might be witness to huge shifts in manufacturing.

If you could do the first couple of dilutions of an expensive chemical, since we only need 10% of the first dilution, we could either use that other 90% for more homeopathy or rescue 90% of the active and presumably expensive chemical. Thus, you could have most of your chemical and use it, too.

Manufacturing might be problematic at first. How could you make solids out of a solution or powder? Well you could add a fixative to the powder or maybe freeze the solution. But a fixative adds impurities and freezing needs a cooling system. Well that cooling system could all be made up of frozen homeopathic solutions. And we needn’t have an infinite regress as that first cooling system could make itself cool enough to be frozen where needed.

With the high price of chemicals, homeopathy would vastly lower the price of manufacturing as water is plentiful and even the distilled kind is relatively cheap. Powder could be similarly made out of inexpensive things. Things would be so cheap we could bring Chinese manufacturing to its knees. All around the world, prices would go down.

So next time you hear the word homeopathy, don’t say “Bah, humbug!” like me, instead say, “That’s the future of manufacturing!”

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Is There an End to Humour?

Posted on 21 June 2014 by Larry Russwurm

I come to you this week without humour. Oh I thought of a couple jokes. But they’re one liners that I can’t figure out how to pad into a post.

I sometimes wonder if all the jokes possible will ever be told. When I pressure myself to come up with a funny post I can almost feel the finiteness of humour. That week I feel all the jokes have almost been written.

Usually a couple or a few weeks later I’m three post ideas ahead and throw my head backwards and laugh. “Of course jokes aren’t finite,” I think. “I might be able to figure out jokes to the day I die.” Even with extended life as some science fiction holds out to be true.

This all reminds me of my science days at university. A female from my Earth and Atmospheric Science class found out I was a physics major. She asked a question that caught me off guard. “Don’t you think that physics is done?”

Done. As in complete. I hadn’t thought of that possibility before so I didn’t comment. But I’ve thought of the question since. Of course physics isn’t done. There are still some problems and details that physics just can’t model yet. And of course there is dark matter and dark energy.

My interest in science fiction has gotten me to expand upon this question. Grand Unified Theories or GUTs try to tie as much together as possible. But unifying things can only happen so many times before you have a Theory of Everything (TOE). ( Why should physics concepts come back to the human body like these acronyms do?)

Because these acronyms exist, it should be obvious that a large part of the physics thought complex believes there will one day be an end to physics.

I’ve played with this and thought about a possible way of portraying a finite science. Perhaps 1500 AD to 2500AD are the golden years of physics where there are still new things to work on. My prediction would be that at about 2500 that Theory of Everything might be made known.

But in some way I doubt 2500 would be the endpoint of all human science. We’d probably still be working at the details till 3000. We’d have to get the Theory of Everything to extend to chemistry then biology and maybe even to the softer psychology and other domains. And having a theory doesn’t mean you necessarily have made all that’s possible with that theory. Engineering and tech could last with newer ideas till 3000 AD, too. So the golden age for humans might be from 2000 AD to 3000 AD where we have a decent life and still have the thrill of discovery.

I think the case of finite humour might depend on finite science. If there is an end to science then there might very well be an end to humour. Perhaps humour needs more and more new concepts for us to find different humour.

Since our 3000 AD bodies might very well be built to last forever, perhaps we might terminate our existence at some point. When we reach the end of humour and we know all the possible jokes, that might be a good place to stop.

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Vertical Stripes

Posted on 14 June 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Sports fans sometimes are bewildered by things in other parts of the public sphere. Where they can go on and on about the whys and wherefores of each subtle movement in the game of their choice, they are at a loss to explain even commonplace actions in other areas.

I say let’s help them out in the sphere of law. To make things ever so much easier for them, we should dress our judges in vertical stripes. And instead of a gavel they can have a whistle. This will make things so much more explicable to the sports fan.

Then we can easily explain away the trials of one of their stars, O. J. Simpson. The leniency of the first trial was countered by the harshness of the second trial. We can say it in one simple sentence and all the sports fans will get it. The harshness of the second judgement was to play even up in the game.

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