Why We Won’t Revisit the Moon

Posted on 24 August 2013 by Larry Russwurm

There is some debate in the space community about whether we should concentrate on making the Moon or Mars the next objective. Some say one place at a time. If we explore and develop the Moon well enough we can make it into a sort of stepping stone for Mars exploration. Some say Mars is the next objective. And really it should be the main one, Mars still looks like it is the most Earth-like of all the planets and satellites.

But clearly neither destination is really ours. When the time comes it will be the destination of the next generation. Shouldn’t we let them in on the discussion?

The next generation in the developed world likes cinema as that still seems to be one of the biggest mediums of expression. I’m not going to bore you with their likes and dislikes about Mars, Moon and space exploration movies. No. Instead we will look at the next generation’s take on Psycho.

There’s much to get the young ones’ interest piqued about this piece. It’s horror. It has action. It was made by a master of the form, Alfred Hitchcock, at the height of his powers. So pop it into someone from the next generation’s viewing list and wait. When it begins they will exclaim, “I can’t watch this it’s black and white!”

Take a look at the Moon next time you’re out at night. It is a black and white globe. Why the most colourful thing on it is that ridiculous, fake American flag the astronauts put on its surface. And if you get a chance to go to some other part of it, chances are the most colourful thing to see will be the blue/green Earth when it is visible.

The next generation will leave the “boring” Moon to be a starting point to developing countries’ space programs. Perhaps China, perhaps India could become a front runner there.

The developed world so much wants Mars that death missions are being planned with one way tickets to that planet. They simply want it too soon. The sensible choose to leave it for the next generation and a couple decades from now. The next generation is going to dream in the colour red.

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Gonna Get Someone to Ghost Write My Autobiography

Posted on 17 August 2013 by Larry Russwurm

I may not be important enough to get anyone to write a biography on me yet, let alone have people clamouring for my autobiography. The most direct route will be if this blog makes me a billionaire for bellyaching about my pet peeves. Failing that very likely scenario, I also write science fiction. The cost of being successful at these endeavours might very well be those biographies and maybe even an autobiography.

As I already told you in the title, I intend to hire a ghost writer to write down my life from my perspective. Why would I go this route? Well if people are clamouring for my autobiography, then I am already successful. I’ll probably lack the motivation to write, unless it has something to do with the bizarre story ideas I have. If I were made to make my autobiography because of the clamouring, it would seem too much like work and sap my enjoyment.

Besides, hiring a ghost writer helps someone else’s economic situation, too. I’ll already be successful, so there’ll be no point in helping me. This will make one more job for a fellow writer.

As well, I have exactly no experience in writing an autobiography. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. I don’t even keep a lowly journal.

Isaac Asimov would be ideal to ghost write my autobiography. After all he wrote no less than three of his own autobiographies. That experience would be wonderful.

But since Asimov has left this plane, I’m thinking there are bound to be ghost writers with at least that much experience. I can’t be the first one willing to have an autobiography done this way.

And when I get that ghost writer, I promise to be reticent, fanciful and full of fabrications. If a ghost writer expects to make money off my autobiography, s/he is going to have to work at it. Pretty soon they will outlaw me as an unreliable narrator.

Perhaps my autobiography will be found in the fiction section.

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Rowling Watch 2014

Posted on 10 August 2013 by Larry Russwurm

We’ve all heard of J. K. Rowling, author of the wildly successful Harry Potter series. We all heard of her adult fiction attempt The Casual Vacancy which sold well because of her name and the curiosity of some fans. I doubt a second adult book would have done so well.

But authors are well known to try pen names from time to time. So newcomer, Robert Galbraith was credited with writing The Cuckoo’s Calling. Interestingly Galbraith was praised in some critical circles for his writing. And he didn’t sell well.

It was found out that Rowling was the person behind this pen name. I think it was no mistake. A publisher has a praised book by a nobody it can’t sell. But if it let slip that Rowling was behind it, the publisher could be counted on to make a fortune.

Maybe Rowling herself would prefer to stay anonymous to beat some of the pressure. If this is the case it seems to me she is at odds with her publishing company.

I’m going to assume she is indeed at odds with her publishing company. In that case, I suspect Rowling will be much more careful of her privacy the next time. The publishers are unworried.

Some in the artificial intelligence or advanced computing world like to write programs that analyze an author’s style. Imagine when they take all manuscripts emanating from Britain next year and see if they can positively ID the Harry Potter style in another book or series. It would be a coup for such software writers if they could out Rowling the next time she tries a new identity.

Or, what about those writing aficionados who think their wit is sharp enough to know an author’s style from book to book without having to resort to computers. If one of these manages to out Rowling, their wit would be praised by many.

Such strong incentives for these two groups leads me to believe that Rowling will be outed yet again. The poor woman. Must she pay forever for having once written the Harry Potter series? What a heavy, heavy, billion dollar yoke to have around one’s neck.

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Mega Wall

Posted on 3 August 2013 by Larry Russwurm

The United States has built about a thousand kilometres of barriers along its border with Mexico. Mainly this wall is designed to keep out illegal immigrants. Some want it along the whole of the border with Mexico. Perhaps this is a good idea. It would be right up there with what the Romans accomplished when they built Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. Just remember that the Roman Empire is a failed state.

Even more zealous Americans have suggested putting a wall to keep Canadians out as well. Now this would be more along the lines of a major feat. Much like the building of the Great Wall of China. There are many more thousands of kilometres between the US and Canada. And let us not forget that China is not a failed state. Indeed some say it will rival the US in power in a few decades. This is worthy of American attention.

And the idea of keeping parts hidden from Canada, just like with lovers, will attract our attention more to it. Say for instance Detroit is bankrupt and precious few Canadians want to visit this crumbling city. Now put up a tall wall that Ontarians can’t see over and say “nothing to see here” and suddenly we’re curious. Did the aliens just land in old Detroit? Has old Detroit reverted back to nature? What exactly are those Americans up to in Old Detroit? Detroit might become a go to destination of the curious Canadian.

It’s even more obvious why a wall would be an advantage in Niagara Falls. The Canadian side owns only half the Horseshoe Falls and none of the Niagara Falls. It’s just that the best view of the falls occurs from the Canadian side. A huge wall along the political division would cut the Canadian view down to half the Horseshoe Falls. Suddenly people would want to honeymoon on the American side. I smell money.

The newer, more hidden United States will bring about less contempt due to familiarity. I would not be surprised if more travel dollars were spent there by Canadians. The cost/benefit analysis might even show that Americans could make money off the wall. All this as well as becoming a bigger rival to China.

And of course there are all those Canadians who now just have to walk across the border. Some say it is easier to smuggle drugs across the Canadian border than the one with Mexico. What about other contraband stuff? Select Canadians made a killing off of prohibition.

Sure that town in Quebec/US (Derby Line, Vt and Standstead, Que.) will look silly with an even more giant wall piercing its peacefulness. But isn’t it about time that the town was brought into the present? That shared library and opera hall will have to make a decision. Maybe we’ll let the shared sewer system thing slide – after all it is underground. National security shouldn’t have to mess with that level of indecency.

Alberta will raise a royal stink. “Aren’t we just northern Texas?” they’ll ask using the most baleful expression possible. “Can’t we be exempt?”

So, Americans, as long as you can mount a defence to the baleful look of Albertans, I think it is in your best interest to build a fence along the Canadian border. It’ll make a good make work project while your economy is still down. And if that same fence also hinders the ease of which the rumbling of American tanks and other war machinery could cross our currently undefended border, then so be it.

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Canadian Conservatives: Shouting at Us, Whispering a Block Away to Disabled

Posted on 27 July 2013 by Larry Russwurm

The latest mailing I got from the federal Conservative party, under the guise that it’s from my member of parliament (Harold Albrecht), to abuse the free service from Canada Post, had something that made me laugh right away. There was some braille on it – in picture form and not the actual raised dots. Immediately I knew that the powerful Conservative Party should be made fun of for this.

Above the braille it says “SUPPORTING JOBS FOR ALL CANADIANS”. I was curious and this first braille explaining page I found on the Internet let me know that the braille was a straight cypher substitution for those shouted words.

And shouted words they are. Years ago when I was on a BBS it was explained to me that when I use all capitals, I am shouting. In those early days of linking computers up, I don’t think that italics were available on the board I used. Bolding was possible but only the more technologically proficient could use that strategy. So to emphasize words, I would use capitals. After the shouting thing was explained, I then realized that newspapers and magazines sometimes shout their headlines. Capitals are a way to get attention just like a newspaper boy shouting “EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!”

So Conservatives are shouting that headline to Canadians. But since the braille they used is pictorial and cannot be used by those with diminished sight, the Conservatives might as well be saying this to these visually disabled people from a block away.

But wait just a minute. Sometimes those with sight problems have great hearing. Perhaps some can barely hear what the Conservatives are saying.

But you see, instead of shouting, the Conservatives whisper the braille. “supporting jobs for all canadians” is all in small letters. That same page I found explaining braille also says a certain braille cell put before a word capitalizes the first letter. Two of these cells in front of a word capitalize the whole word. So yes indeed the Conservatives mean to whisper this to the visually disabled.

Why would the Conservatives whisper to the visually disabled? Mainly because only a short time ago they revamped copyright law. One sentence, put in the right place, could have made it possible for the visually impaired to change electronic format books and magazines into different formats they could then understand. Books would be as easy to get for them as most of the general public. But the Conservatives upheld the primacy of digital locks so the visually impaired are at the mercy of the copyright holders at a time when most of the big ones tend to be maximalists [There is an alleged loophole, but that might be closed]. The Conservatives failed their disabled constituency.

Oh and the Conservatives were lazy in making that cypher substitution for braille. Again, using that first braille translation page I found, Braille has contractions and cells that mean certain combinations of letters. The suffix “ing” and the word “for” have their own one cell short form. So the braille on that mass mailing I got, isn’t even conventional braille.

As well, these mass mailings from the government offend me. There is a cost to Canada Post and thus the taxpayer. So, this year from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014 I am collecting all these mailings. We’re just in our fourth week and I’ve received 3 so far.

At the end of the year I am going to count all the flyers I receive. I am then going to go to Canada Post to find out how much it would cost for a person to mail out all these. I will figure out how much my riding costs and then multiply by all the Conservative ridings in Canada to find the true cost of all this propaganda. Stay tuned.

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Dyson Has Yet to Even Acknowledge the Vacuum’s Arch Enemy

Posted on 20 July 2013 by Larry Russwurm

Their is no doubt that Dyson has made vacuum cleaners infinitesimally better more than once. But I’m not going to tell you that company’s ads. Instead, I’ll deal with that one topic the company and inventor have so far completely ignored. That is the vacuum cleaner’s arch enemy – the common housecat or felix vacuumius hatius.

Every cat owner knows that as soon as any vacuum cleaner is turned on it sends the cat of the house fleeing for safety. Sometimes even the cat’s safest of places needs vacuuming. There has been little respite for our furry friends. Personally, I am trying my best for my cat by inhabiting an apartment without any carpet. But even I have thought life might be easier with my cat’s archest of enemies.

So I guess it’s up to me to come up with a vacuum that Dyson and all the other vacuum companies have missed.

The first thing I note is that it seems to be the sound of the vacuum that has cats everywhere fleeing for their lives. So perhaps sound is where we should start.

We can do this scientifically by finding pleasing sounds for cats. But sound is a monstrous domain. One type of sound is music. One type of music is country music. For years my Dad had a room filled floor to ceiling along every wall with just the Canadian country music put out on vinyl. Each LP contains forty minutes of different musical sounds.

As you see we are looking for a needle in a haystack. Instead, we should have started with the sounds that cats make and judge these sounds by their reactions to them. Cats like purring sounds of course. So instead of a roar, we must make vacuums quieter, as quiet as their own purrs. That’s where the future lies in vacuuming.

And I heard you non cat lovers thinking that if only we could make vacuums louder with more of a hiss to them. For shame. May the cats of the world spit out a hairball on your property.

Perhaps it’s not the sound but the actions of the vacuum that arouse a cat’s ire and fear. Vacuums suck away dirt and sometimes scents too. All the marking of its territory that the cat puts down each and every day might partially disappear due to the sucking of the vacuum.

Perhaps a scent, analyzed to be exactly your cat’s scent, could be put on a marker at one end of the floor attachment of the vacuum. Then you could clean up in such a way that you are marking the carpet for your cat after suctioning.

Now I know this requires chemistry and the willingness to put a scent on your carpet even while you are cleaning it. But isn’t your little shnookums of a cat worth it? After all I’ve heard that cats, when confronted by their owner’s death and no more food, only begin to eat the owner after feeling a second or two of remorse.

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Only Coke Would See a Bright Side to Living in a Big Brother State

Posted on 13 July 2013 by Larry Russwurm

Have you seen the latest feel good television advertisement from Coca Cola? Here in Canada and I don’t know where all else they are showing good deeds caught by surveillance cameras. All to the strains of the sweet song Give a Little Bit by Supertramp.

I won’t give away the entire commercial but there is a part where some young man steals a first kiss from a young female. And there is the part of the commercial where a man pushes what I presume to be a stalled minivan off the railway tracks and escapes the train by only a second.

If we didn’t have surveillance cameras installed everywhere we might never have seen these heartwarming moments. Coke has found the one bright spot in a big brother state.

But why stop here Coke? The Soviet Union also had cameras rolling from time to time. Perhaps you can find something in the KGB archives that is heartwarming. Like a young man stealing a kiss from a young woman. Now maybe that young woman’s family objects and was connected to high places in the communist party. So maybe the young man ended up being sent to the Gulags. Still it was a sweet moment.

Cameras were also certainly around in Nazi Germany. Perhaps there is brave film of a Slavic father taking a bullet for one of his defenceless children. That’s at least as heartwarming as the train incident. Only with more serious consequences.

How about it Coke? Support the Big Brother state as far as it goes. To Soviet levels of intrusion. To Nazi levels of intrusion. To Orwellian levels of intrusion.

After this commercial, I bet Coke will do better than Pepsi for the government employees of CSIS, the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies that are the architects of the new big brother state.

Perhaps Coke can expand to all security personnel including security guards, prison guards, bouncers and private investigators. Your ad might get you the politically well connected and a large part of the court system.

If the majority upholds the police/ big brother state, then maybe the majority will drink Coke. Maybe Coke can then finally out Pepsi for being a terrorist. What a sweet day that will be for Coke.

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China is Broke

Posted on 7 July 2013 by Larry Russwurm

There is no need to reevaluate world economic might and clout. China still manufactures the lion’s share of the more inexpensive goods. And growth rates are still good for that country. By my title for the article I mean that small “c” china is broke. As often happens with a good so fragile. For centuries the west has been able to abuse the capital “C” China because of this almost identical name.

It was probably an accident that china became known as such. Undoubtedly the nation of China was the only place that the west could get such fine eating ware. So the eating ware became known as just china.

But centuries ago, a journey of thousands of miles added much cost to any good. So Europe worked at it and could eventually manufacture china without the need for extreme shipping. The name stuck, I think for propaganda reasons.

English speakers could say “China is weak,” “China is fragile,” and “China is easy to smash”. Eventually China almost lived up to this billing as the west ascended to higher heights than that isolated Asian power.

But china was also praised as a commodity. There was such a thing as fine china, which most households tried to have as well as the ordinary china.

The nation of China fought against class differences in the communist revolution. The elevation of fine China over the rest of China was halted at long last in the 20th century.

Economic revolution in the late 20th century all the way to our time has led to China manufacturing many inexpensive goods – including china. So once again, china is labeled more honestly and has less of a propaganda tone.

Indeed the ball is now in powerhouse China’s court. Perhaps they can make china impervious to breakage. Perhaps this will take a different strategy like using smooth metal. If many advances happen, perhaps diamond or other very strong materials could be used for eating ware.

Then it remains to be seen if and when the Chinese label some innocuous product “North America”, “Europe” or “Oceania”. Perhaps they’ll tack one of these names onto old style china. Perhaps it will be something else weak and disposable. After centuries of lagging, China is back on almost equal footing, including in the propaganda wars.

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Advertising With Purpose

Posted on 29 June 2013 by Larry Russwurm

At first glance everything about bus bench advertising seems wonderful. The advertiser gets their message out there, the bus passenger gets a place to sit, and the advertising can be incredibly local.

Sometimes I am one of those bus passengers. Perhaps I shouldn’t rock the boat.

It’s just that those benches are covered in snow in the winter. The people that clear away the snow from the bus stops don’t clear the snow from the benches. Even if there is a huge thaw where all the snow melts, the temperature is too cold to sit down on these benches. When the temperature gets to below zero, the heat gets sucked directly from your booty to the bench. Which makes you numb and gets you to stand up while waiting for the bus.

In the other three seasons, temperatures are warm enough that you might wish to sit on these benches. It’s just that in my city with our particular benches, they don’t drain from the rain particularly well. Water stays on them until it has managed to evaporate. A simple design with holes, like my patio chairs, and they could drain more and thus speed up the evaporation of any remaining water.

Again, in my particular city with our particular benches there is a design flaw when in the sun. The benches somehow superheat when out in the sun for as little as ten minutes. If there is a sufficient breeze and a low temperature and I am particularly lazy, I will sit on these benches. After only a couple minutes my booty heats up to the point that I end up with sweat on my forehead.

Let me dissuade you from the idea that all this is an accident. After all they’ve had bus bench ads for a very long time now and they should have had all the bugs worked out of it by now.

There’s a fundamental concept flaw with bus bench ads. You see if anyone sits on the bench, passersby will not be able to read the ad. So the providers of the benches are doing everything in their power to get people to not sit on the benches.

There is one particularly bad bus bench that I know of in the city. It has a nest of wasps in it, preventing any rational being from using it to sit on. I could tell the providers of the bench about it. But I now know what their response will be. They will not fix this problem and it will add to the visibility of this bench sign.

I am, however, hoping that the representative of the company that changes the ad will get stung.

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Title Mining

Posted on 22 June 2013 by Larry Russwurm

The album Night Visions by the new band Imagine Dragons has a number of good songs on it. Indeed, one of my minor complaints about it was that the title Radioactive and On Top of the World aren’t very original. I have the song Radioactive by the Firm in my collection and what I thought was On Top of the World was a very famous song when I was a kid. While doing the research for this post, I looked up that song and found it was really called Top of the World by the Carpenters. But there was another song called On Top of the World that rated top billing on DuckDuckGo.

I developed a suspicion that Imagine Dragons were title mining in an effort to strengthen their lyrical skills. Of course a band would want the title Radioactive. Because a band wants to be active on the radio something I’m sure was not lost on the Firm. And On Top of the World just sounds so wonderfully positive. Why not use it as a title again? Song titles can’t be protected as anyone who grew up with a zillion Hold On songs, such as myself, ought to know.

So I got my Night Visions album (I have the normal version with only eleven songs so this whole post might just be sour grapes because I didn’t know there was another version with more songs) and searched all the song titles on DuckDuckGo. I typed in “lyrics” first then the title of each song without capitals. None of the first ten song titles was original. At least one other act had lyrics for each song searched. For shame Imagine Dragons.

Finally when I reached the eleventh song which is entitled Nothing Left to Say/Rocks I decided not to extend the benefit of the doubt and looked them up as two different songs. After all, on the album they are clearly two songs with silence in between and everything. Nothing Left to Say and Rocks are also unoriginal titles.

Well wait one moment. Maybe its just a matter of almost every good title has already been used, there being so many obscure acts and all. So I subjected the album I’ve been listening to lately to the same searches. Also, conveniently it has 12 songs on it, too. It is the greatest hits package by Kate Bush entitled The Whole Story.

I expected seemingly very original titles like Cloudbusting and Hounds of Love to pass the test. Indeed they did. In fact there were only two titles, Breathing and Wow which failed to be original titles (to be fair, I only checked the whole first page of results – all the Imagine Dragons titles were unoriginal in the first few results). I had expected The Dreaming to be unoriginal but the closest that was found was Dreaming by Blondie.

So I say to Imagine Dragons, “You’re big now so you no longer have to title mine.” And if that’s not what they’re doing they can now afford to be more unique and experimental and their song titles don’t have to sound “normal”.

But if they choose to rebel against my advice, the world could really use another song called Hold On.

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