Are You Taking a ConCERN Position on the Large Hadron Collider

Posted on 14 October 2011 by Larry Russwurm

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider or LHC has drawn so much interest that some of it is negative. There are fears that we’re dealing with forces of nature we don’t know how to control or how they fully work.

Look, that’s always been true when science pieces together something new. There were also rumours that playing with chain reactions with fission might start an uncontrollable reaction that would use the whole earth as fuel.

An Indian girl was so concerned about the LHC starting up a couple years ago, that she reportedly committed suicide.

I don’t want any repeats of that suicide, now that we are creeping up on 2012 and the so called end of days the Mayan calendar is supposed to represent.

Firstly I don’t believe the Mayan calendar predicts a doomsday scenario. That calendar simply stops in 2012. It was made such a long time ago, the Mayans figured that somebody would extend the calendar or a new calendar system would be in place, this far into the future.

Secondly, every so often there seems to be a doomsday prediction that turns out to be nothing. Remember Y2K? Or the Jupiter Effect? Doomsday predictions are far more common than actual doomsdays.

So, I hope the end of days of the Mayan calendar in 2012, combined with CERN’s LHC working does not convince other young souls the end is so near that suicide is viable. I don’t want any more suicides.

So here is CERN’s own site to hopefully calm you about the supposed doomsday. They say that reactions in the LHC have occurred in nature before and yet, say, the moon hasn’t been eaten by an originally microscopic black hole. They also say that every theory scientists have constructed that don’t have a good outcome have all been disproved. Theory is on the LHC’s side.

That the Higg’s particle has been called the “god” particle doesn’t mean that any god or gods have been angered. And theory seems overwhelming that any microscopic black hole will evaporate away and never grow into something large.

There is little to fear next year. I just wish the young would take a chance and live through a doomsday prediction, just to see how ridiculous such beasts usually are.

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Contrary Ontario

Posted on 8 October 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Greetings from Contrario, the multiple personality province that votes a different way federally and a different way provincially. If the Progressive Conservatives are in nationally this province will vote Liberal for its provincial leaders. If the Liberals are in nationally, it will vote for the NDP or the Progressive Conservatives to steer the province.

I remember hearing of this tendency way back when I was a kid when Bill Davis (Progressive Conservative) won regularly for the province and Pierre Trudeau (Liberal) won regularly for the nation. I heard this had been going on more or less since World War II.

So I just checked today. I compared the federal leaders to the provincial leaders and found that there were only 4 overlapping time periods. From 1957-1963, Progressive Conservatives were in nationally and provincially. From 1979-1980 again the Progressive Conservatives were in the two high levels of government. And a third time, 1984-1985 the PC’s were in both levels of government as the leaders.

More recently, 2003-2006 the Liberal party was in charge provincially and federally. Since then the leaders have been different.

Simple addition will give an 11 year total for a period out of a total of 66 years that the ruling party was the same, federally and provincially. Or about a once in 6 years showing. Maybe someday I won’t be so lazy and might try to take this back to confederation and see how the voting went. But that makes things more complex as there was a Farmer Party that ruled Ontario once and for the first years of confederation, a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals led this province. Interestingly this coalition was headed by John S. MacDonald. I always wondered why John A. MacDonald insisted on the A.

You would think that Stephen Harper, who was also raised in Ontario, would have been politically astute enough to have heard of this contrariness of the province. Instead he predicted a conservative hat trick in Toronto earlier this year of conservative Rob Ford municipally, Tim Hudak provincially and himself federally. Well Hudak failed, I say because of the contrary behaviour of Ontarians.

What could be the reason for this voting behaviour? At first glance one might think that Ontarians become disenchanted federally really quickly, so they react and form a different government provincially and vice versa. But this doesn’t explain the dynasties. Like Bill Davis and Pierre Trudeau, Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty, dynasties abound in this history.

No, I think that Ontarians are deeply conscious of their weight in the nation. Federally Ontario has 1/3 of the voters of all of Canada. Because many times they decide the national vote, they also realize that trusting one party too deeply could be bad. Thus the contrary nature.

So McGuinty got into power again, this time with a minority.

And as an update, Dave MacDonald, the TV weatherman who was claiming the jury was out on whether there was a human cause of climate change, barely lost his race in Kitchener Centre. It was close enough that maybe blogs like this one had a role. I’m probably done for local and regional politics for a while.

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Call of the Intolerant

Posted on 5 October 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I bet most Canadians would be able to identify which party in their province or federally is the least tolerant. And I bet the answer would be the same for almost every respondent. I don’t even have to name them for this article.

I used to think that this party was just stupider than the other candidates up for office. But, you know, at least one racist or homophobic scandal hits this party every election cycle. I no longer think the leaders of this party are stupid. I think they let something slip each election cycle to appeal to a certain kind of voter.

The leaders of this party will probably deny everything and try to stay as respectable as the other parties. But I think they do know what is going on. Even the racist and homophobic voter needs a party. This party chooses to woo that vote.

The election cycle thing? Well every few years, new voters come to vote in elections and they don’t know which party is most homophobic and racist. This party needs to alert them, thus there are the regular scandals for this party.

Here is the latest scandal in the Ontario election. If you don’t know which party I’ve been talking about, the answer is at the link. So I guess I don’t have to hide it any longer. Tim Hudak is backing this homophobic and by all reports, incorrect propaganda. He is so sure his homophobic stance will win support that he is not distancing himself from it.

Woo woo! Look at me, I’m being intolerant, just like a segment of the population. Vote for me.

And although that segment of the population has been forced to become quieter I not only believe they exist, I also believe they will vote for Tim Hudak.

To some extent political correctness has driven them into hiding but I know they exist. You see I wrote a post called Repurposing Some Racist Jokes. I have over 170 posts so not every post or its tags is in my top 20 Google searches. “Racist jokes” is on that top twenty list. I think the majority of these searchers are looking for racist jokes for their “entertainment” and aren’t looking for me.

I had some worry about writing this post that I, too, am leading the racist or homophobe to the Progressive Conservative Party or the federal Conservative Party. I don’t want to do this. But I believe that shining a light on this scandal tactic will eventually drive it away. So, if I’m still blogging in future elections, expect a post when scandal shows Canada’s right wing to be bigoted. I’ll say, “That’s what they intend.”

I’m really hoping that the right in Canada will eventually weed out its own.

Oh and I realize this is a conspiracy theory. So some context about conspiracy theories I’ve believed or disbelieved might help you.

I don’t and didn’t believe 9/11 was an inside job. The fact that the buildings fell almost straight down? Gravity was by far the greatest force on those buildings on that day.

For many months I believed the “Dubya” conspiracy theory that Iraq was actively seeking nukes and other weapons of mass destruction. Yes even governments can have conspiracy theories. Of course “Dubya” was proved wrong after invading Iraq.

To believe or disbelieve is entirely up to you.

Posted in Humourless, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ironic Timing

Posted on 4 October 2011 by Larry Russwurm

The timing of this fall’s Ontario election is very suspicious. Only a few days after this Thursday’s vote (Oct. 6) will be the date of Canadian Thanksgiving (Oct. 10). Presumably we will be thankful for our new government.

Did the parties get together and through collusion agree on this date? Forcing us, the unfortunate electorate to be thankful for whatever party we get in power. Will this become some way to champion politicians, when world wide, voters are usually drained by their limited democratic choices? It all feels so contrived and unfortunate.

The timing is actually quite ironic in our first-past-the-post electoral system. With three major parties as well as some Greens and independents to vote for, the usual outcome will be that some party with much less than half of the vote will “win” the election and have more seats than anyone else. Thus, the majority of supporters will lose and Thanksgiving will arrive with the majority being unthankful.

If you think this is all unfair, maybe you’ll want to check out Fair Vote Canada’s site. You might want to get involved and help change these unfortunate circumstances.

But I say if the majority of the electorate is going to end up unthankful this Thanksgiving Day, perhaps we can make the politicians similarly unthankful. That’s right, Ontario, no matter who you elect, make sure they have a minority government.

Indeed, the electorate might have a better sense of timing than our politicians. All the polls say we’re heading there, anyway. Happy Thanksgiving.

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TV Weathermen Aren’t Scientists

Posted on 1 October 2011 by Larry Russwurm

In a nearby riding, Kitchener Centre, Progressive Conservative candidate Dave MacDonald is running for election for the Ontario government. He is a former weatherman for the CTV network in southwestern Ontario. In Canada, there is no accreditation to allow the qualified to say they are a meteorologist. So, anyone can say they are a meteorologist, including Dave MacDonald.

Here is an article stating that MacDonald has little or no qualifications. It also gives his quote: “There’s still a lot of controversy over what the cause of climate change is.” He’s trying to give the impression that any climate change observed might not be man made. He’s setting up his poor environmental record party to get out of paying for anything environmentally conscious.

The jury is not out on the man made cause of climate changes. We’ve changed climate at least since the 1940’s with cloud seeding which changed the amount and timing of precipitation. The jet age ushered in contrails which have both cooling and heating effects on climate. The ozone layer has both dwindled and rebounded due to the effects of man and legislation. This effects the quality of sunlight on earth and thus the climate.

Notice I haven’t mentioned the obvious build up of carbon in our atmosphere and its effect of warming up the atmosphere. See Venus if you don’t believe the greenhouse effect. It’s the hottest planet but it is further from the Sun than Mercury.

It is so obvious that man fundamentally changes his entire environment now, that the current age is called the Anthropocene. Yes, this is a geological term – we have such a major effect on our planet that it is being noticed in rock formation all over the world. The anthropo prefix stands for human.

Maybe Dave MacDonald is too ignorant to want to memorize the pronunciation or spelling of Anthropocene. This might tax his science technician brain.

But this slight hint of science credibility really seemed to “work” for the federal Conservatives. Gary Goodyear used his chiropractor skills as an in to get the minister position for science and technology. Would we put a technician in charge of a PHD with lots of experience? The federal Conservatives would, especially if he tried to open the door for creationists to also be in charge of the scientists.

But back to weather man credentials. Here are the lyrics to the Arrogant Worms song “TV Weather Guy”. You can even listen to the song for free there or purchase it. The Arrogant Worms could easily have written this about Dave MacDonald, even though they were writing from Kingston, not Kitchener.

Posted in Music, Politics, Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Famine and Cannibalism

Posted on 24 September 2011 by Larry Russwurm

In my news watching lifetime there have been three big famines: the Ethiopian famine of Bob Geldof fame, the Malawi famine of 2002 which was given little press, and the current Horn of Africa famine.

Despite brutal circumstances and horrible decisions to make, I haven’t heard of even a single one of the famine victims resorting to cannibalism. I’ve tried Internet searches to see if the famine and cannibalism have been linked at all and I don’t see even one rumour about it. And faced with death, I know that some people have made a different decision than these people in the past.

Turning their backs on cannibalism also occurred in the other two famines I’ve mentioned. I don’t know if this honourable behaviour in a bad situation is cultural or just shows a high moral character.

Certainly these peoples may not have been savvy enough to sock away money or food or use insurance as the more sophisticated and much wealthier developed world does. But do we in the developed world have a high moral character as these peoples do?

You see, I live in Canada, a developed country that is also home of the famous “Northwest Passage” that many explorers risked their lives for and many people lost their lives over. And of the 3 Franklin expeditions up there, two had problems with cannibalism.

Maybe this one explorer was just specially tainted. But also in American history, early Jamestown had cannibalism problems.

And we’ve all heard about seafaring people stuck in lifeboats in the middle of the ocean resorting to cannibalism.

Why is it that developed world people faced with death will make the lower moral choice of eating their own?

I’ve feared overpopulation, especially from the developing world, straining humanity’s resources past the limit. Decades ago there seemed to be no check to rising populations in the developing world. But more recently I’ve heard that the developing world is moving into cities and this movement leads to an almost stagnant birth rate. Earth’s population might actually stabilize soon.

And if it doesn’t? Well the developed world has the best weaponry and if the world ever lacks enough food to feed it, the developed world will make its same choice when faced with starvation. Cannibalism will occur but this time it won’t be of people you know. The developed world will send raiding parties into the developing world for meat.

Like always we will say that the situation forced us to.

People from the Horn of Africa could say the same. They just don’t. So why is it a stock cartoon to show the innocent explorers being cooked for the hungry dark skinned people? The reverse seems even more likely.

 

“Franklin, I’m thinking that instead of lugging this 1000 pound pot around, we could have just brought 1000 pounds of meat.”

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The Future of Tobacco

Posted on 21 September 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I’m going to put on my lawful evil cap today to describe where big tobacco is today and where it will be tomorrow.

For years big tobacco has faced declining sales in the developed world. To offset this they have increased sales to the developing world. It is easy to be lawful evil there, especially when enough money given to the right hands can craft the law there.

Still, there will always be developed world “seep”. Important health information will eventually find its way to the developing world. So I only give big tobacco 100 years before they will be accountable enough to face shrinking sales there.

So what’s next for big tobacco? Of course finding aliens is perhaps the ultimate goal of big tobacco. But let’s face facts – alien brains will be unlikely to produce an addiction response when on tobacco.

So I say it will only be natural for big tobacco to go after the only untapped earth market I know about – animals.

In more than one developing world zoo, there have been cases of primates getting addicted to cigarettes. I gather that customers give the cigarettes to the primates. This link shows a chimp smoking in a South Africa zoo. Unlike aliens, it looks like these beasts can become addicted, too. This is just the start.

It is my opinion, in the desire to do evil and shorten already short lives, big tobacco will do some possible good by developing prosthetics so more than just primates can smoke.

Do you have an indoor cat? With the proper smoking prosthetic it can smoke. Prompting you, developed world reader, to make it go outside to smoke.

Other cats in the neighbourhood will see your Fluffy smoke and get to go outside and thus more cats will take up smoking in an avalanche of new sales for big tobacco.

Big tobacco will not stop till every type of animal becomes addicted. They will develop even more prosthetics so these animals can pay off big tobacco.

And big tobacco will cross their collective fingers and hope that most animals are too stupid to realize they are collectively shortening their lives.

And maybe, just maybe animals have been waiting for the chance to get proper prosthetics so they can rise against human overlords. Maybe when they rise up, big tobacco will finally die once and for all.

As for me, it’s been 5 years since I kicked my tobacco addiction. I’m never going to try a cigarette again because I think I’ll be just as addicted as I was for 25 years.

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Glowing Cats

Posted on 17 September 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Now that the world has discovered green glowing cats the question is why. This article gives a picture as well as a more complete story. Apparently scientists inserted monkey genes in cat eggs that protected against feline AIDS. As a marker for these genes, glowing genes from jellyfish were also added to the cat eggs.

Was it necessary for the scientists to use such complex reasoning to make glowing cats? In this post, I thought of a few simpler reasons to produce glow in the dark cats.

For far too long busker jugglers have had only the option of juggling with fire at night time. Might I suggest glow in the dark kitties for night time busking? Of course the busker would need some very thick gloves for all the scratches he’s going to get. Especially since the cats will always land claw side down in the juggler’s hands.

A more peaceful and obvious way to use glow in the dark kitties is as a simple night light for young children. Glow in the dark kitties are known for chasing childhood monsters away better than any normal night light.

Of course the kitty will have to be manacled to stay in roughly the same spot. And for hygiene it would be necessary to also put the kitty litter in the child’s room. But anything that calms junior so the adults can get some sleep is welcome.

While they are still rare, glowing cats can most obviously be used as bribes for world peace. Want to tone down the rhetoric from North Korea? Give Kim Jong Il a glow in the dark kitty. Of course the citizenry may have eaten all the mice because of starvation, so the cat might die. But we can give Kim Jong Il a new cat on occasion if he starves and eats the first one.

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have you down with ongoing nuclear aspirations? “Here,” we can say to the hard liner, “You don’t need nuclear to build glow in the dark cats!” And perhaps he’ll be satisfied enough to stop all nuclear ambitions.

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Why Cats Don’t Rule the World – Yet

Posted on 14 September 2011 by Larry Russwurm

What follows are the reasons that cats have not become our overlords yet. Despite what they might think.

1)They stealthily stalk new people, but instead of pouncing on them, cats sniff their feet. Sorry cats, but that’s not really regal.

2)To cats, change in the environment is so distracting they can’t focus on anything else. Rulers can’t afford the luxury of sniffing, licking and marking things with their cheek glands every time something is moved slightly.

3)With only the exception of kittens, Cats tend to kill everything that is smaller than themselves. Given the power, cats would kill EVERYTHING smaller than themselves thus ruining all Earth’s ecosystems. And you think men are doing a good job of destabilizing the environment.

4)Cats do a good job of imitating royalty by making men pick up and remove their $#!+ and urine. However some cats have shown they can be trained into using the toilet. Some even flush it. With such extreme backsliding cats aren’t as imperial as they once were.

5)Cats ruin their would be royal palate by licking their @$$es. And everyone knows that fine gastronomical tastes help define any would be upper class.

6)They ruin our estimation of their intellect by only vocalizing one word.

7)They don’t demand access to all of the great outdoors, as long as they have a window to sun in.

8)It’s hard to strike fear in the hearts of underlings when all cats are known to be deathly afraid of the common vacuum cleaner.

And finally,

9)They sold out that right eons ago all for the ability to get fish, some string to play with and for a bit of petting.

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Waterloo Region Citizens

Posted on 10 September 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I’ve had a handful of searches land on my site looking up “geographical humour”. I’m a bit surprised because I thought that those who were into geography were, as a rule, humourless. Since this might not be the case, I have more geographical humour for my area. It takes that old question, what to call citizens of a specific town, and through humour, degradation and puns tries to answer this for Waterloo Region. Here is my map to get a lay of the land. Waterloo Region is in southwestern Ontario, about 100 km west of Toronto.

Warning. Extreme pun alert. Nearly everything that follows will have a pun or three.

Well let’s start with the cities. Kitchener is the largest city and I believe the inhabitants should be called KitcheNERDs. That’s right, I’m going to emphasize every pun with capital letters. Like wise Waterloo residents should be called WaterLOONIES, and Cambridge residents should be called Cambridge Copycats. Why should it be this non pun? Simply put, I think in 1973 when Cambridge was formed they thought ahead to this very post and decided to name themselves something hard to corrupt. Others had noticed this incorruptibility in the past which is why there are almost as many Cambridges in the English speaking world as there are Springfields.

Four towns in Waterloo Region end in -berg or -burg so of course they will be called New HamBURGERs, BamBURGERs, PetersBURGERs and HeidelBURGERs. Then there are the -villes. Roseville natives should be called RoseVILLAINs, and Hawkesville natives should be called HawkesVILLAINs. People of the -dales ought to call themselves FloraDILDOs and BloomingDILDOs. The same insult can be used on the -hills, CrossDILDOs and MaryDILDOs.

I couldn’t corrupt a Saint so the 2nd part of these names needed to be worked upon. People from St. Jacobs, St. Clements, and St. Agatha become St. JakeOBSOLETEs, St. ClemENTRAILs, and St. AGHASTLIEs.

Of all the towns I think I’m letting Elmira off the easiest, calling its inhabitants ElmiraNITES. If you’re not from this area you might never get the play on the religious sect name, Mennonites, which Elmira has aplenty. From Conestogo you might have ConesTOKERs. You might see the WinterBURNT in Winterbourne. West Montrose would have West MontPOSERs.

WallensTEENIEs are from Wallenstein, LinWOODIEs hail from Linwood, WellesLEECHes are from Wellesley.

IRON Badens come from Baden, New DunDWEEBs are from New Dundee and AYR HEADs are from Ayr.

And that is my region and hopefully I’m all punned out for my next few posts.

Posted in Geography, Humour, Language | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments