Plant a Tree for that SUV

Posted on 1 September 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Have you heard about carbon offsets? Companies and countries are playing this new game, trying to lower carbon emissions first, but if they can’t, buying into another company’s or country’s scheme to offset the emissions they can’t cut.

Lucky for us, dear consumer, that option is also available to the individual. If you’re like most of us you’ve heard of your carbon footprint. Perhaps you’ve cut back on your electric bill at home and done other reductions. But you just can’t part with your SUV. For you, the consumer, you can buy offsets that plant trees and can even bring your carbon footprint down to zero, if you buy enough offsets. So if you buy 10 trees a year to counter the SUV you can say you are responsible (if garish).

But wait. Let’s say you live in North America. Wasn’t the entire eastern part of North America once trees? Didn’t the pioneers have to clear the land? They got rid of all the trees 200 years and more ago and still haven’t regrown those carbon offsets.

So to me, SUV driver, who probably hails from North America, you are billions and billions of trees in the hole. Why don’t we start there.

Indeed, I bet all the biggest civilizations were probably once prime tree growing territory. China, India, and Europe were probably temperate forests, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are trillions of trees in the hole. And I’m looking at you, Brazil, who is trying to catch up. Even in this golden age of offsets, are we losing to the axe of your country?

Still, I don’t want the offsets to stop. Even if we’re only treading water, it’s better than sinking.

And there is one line that may be helping. We fight forest fires, now. Forest fires are basically the release of all that stored carbon in trees entering the atmosphere again, mostly as carbon dioxide. Maybe we fight the fires to avoid property damage. Maybe we fight them for preservation of mature forest. Maybe we fight them so the heavy smoke doesn’t blanket built up areas. Regardless, we fight them and in the global warming game this might be valuable.

So plant some trees. Even better, make sure they don’t burn down.

Posted in History, Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Experimenting on the Trendy

Posted on 28 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

My post, Experimenting on the Rich, brought up a couple of trends in which the whole population is now experimenting on the rich, and I could have also have said we’re experimenting on the trendy for the points brought up.

Yes, collecting data on possible brain cancers brought about by cell phone use could be called experimenting on the trendy. Also, collecting data on laser eye surgery could also be called experimenting on the trendy.

Aren’t the headache and pain remedies we use also subject to trends? For a long time, Tylenol was the king of headache remedies, before that , Aspirin was.

We’ve been experimenting on those trends and it seems like we have some data on Tylenol that is going to change behaviours again.

A pair of studies suggests that early use of Tylenol increases the risk of a childhood asthma and asthma like events. The studies showed this might go all the way up to the teen years. It’s been known in medicine for many years that the incidence of childhood asthma has increased quite a bit over the years. Which environmental factor or factors are responsible had been a total mystery until now.

So what do we do, all throw away the Tylenol? Maybe not quite so fast. Firstly these are preliminary studies. But more importantly Tylenol still has its use.

Tylenol is still considered the safest pain reliever for a pregnant mother. In fact this might be why Tylenol got so popular. Maybe the thinking was ‘it’s best for me and my growing fetus – perhaps it’s the best pain reliever for the life of me and the child.’

For nursing mothers, the best over the counter pain reliever is Ibuprofen because it is not excreted into breast milk. Therefore there is little risk to the baby.

For kids and infants, now that Tylenol might be out it should also be known that aspirin is out, too, because of the possibility of getting Reyes syndrome when under 16. I remember they used to have children’s aspirin that was chewable and would take it when young. This was another trend that died after the data was collected. The other NSAIDs, like ibuprofen can be used in childhood.

As for other adults, I guess you’re on your own when choosing over the counter pain relief. It might come down to side effects or drug interactions so you should do the research and you should decide.

So it seems that not one of today’s over the counter pain relievers is good in all cases. Instead, it seems that each has its specialty. And maybe that’s good. Perhaps following a trend when it has to do with your health is not the best thing to do. But then again the trendiness of patients does lead to hard data about side effects.

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Hounding the Hounder

Posted on 24 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Alright this is two weeks old but I just didn’t want back to back posts against Harold Albrecht. That’s right, that Harold Albrecht. He sent me the latest propaganda days after the mega propaganda piece. I waited but needed to post about this one because it contains a lie.

He says that the Conservative government is “Standing up to proposed taxes by the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, and NDP on electronic devices such as iPods, cell phones and laptops”.

Let me be clear right at the beginning. He lies. The proposal is a levy, not a tax, on iPods, cell phones and laptops. All the money will be transferred to Harold Albrecht’s big business friends in the album, TV and movies businesses.

The other parties proposed the levy in order not to criminalize the majority of Canadians who have downloaded a song or a movie. The levy presumes Canadians will continue to download these things, and offers a fair way to pay that makes the majority non criminal.

The conservatives propose a scheme of money making for their big business friends that makes DRM automatically trump everything else. DRM is a program that will take over your own computer and decide what you owe to the big businesses that made it. In the Conservative world, DRM trumps everything else. So you are the second in command of the computer you bought – DRM is first in command. DRM has crippled law abiding computers in the past (the Sony Rootkit) and there is no reason to believe that it will continue to be more docile.

The big recording companies want DRM to be king as well as the Conservative party. When the other parties will collect for them. That can only mean one thing. The Conservative strategy will result in more money for the recording companies. Which means that the Conservatives are not “Standing Up for Canadian Consumers.” But Harold Albrecht’s propaganda lies and says that they are.

2 lies in one mailing, Harold Albrecht? Shame. Shame.

Posted in Politics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Out of Date

Posted on 21 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I was curious if the Bare Naked Ladies’ (BNL) theme for the Big Bang Theory was a shortened version of a full song. I found the long version on YouTube and the earliest reference to it implies that it was made in 2007.

I like the theme for the Big Bang Theory, and for that shortened version I don’t know of any mistakes. It’s just that in two ways the rest of the song is out of date, scientifically.

“The dinosaurs all met their fate, they tried to leap but they were late, and they all died, they froze their asses off” is how some of the song goes. It used to be assumed that a big enough asteroid strike would cause a winter, possibly for the whole planet, that might last months.

Maybe the “winter” might still happen. But it is now believed that a big asteroid strike would heat the atmosphere incredibly for the first few hours. Anything unable to dive in water or burrow into the ground would be cooked. Thus it may have caused the first and largest BBQ.

This global superheating can be found easily on the Internet like here. Note the date, 2004, and it mentions that this was known for the last decade.

And the song goes on, “It’s expanding ever outward [the Universe] but one day, It will cause the stars to go the other way, Collapsing ever inward, We won’t be here, It won’t hurt, Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!”

Are they really promoting the “Big Crunch” (the collapsing) as modern science? Another look at the Internet shows that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. With an accelerating rate there will never be a Big Crunch. This has been shown to be true since 1998.

“What’s the crime?” you ask, “So what if they need to brush up on modern science?”

When something is out of style, do we not mock it?

What if in today’s world:

BNL all decided to have a high as possible hairdo, using two bottles of hairspray per member.

BNL preached that we should all have kept our VHS tapes and never spent a dime on HD movies.

BNL wore acid washed jeans while sporting a mullet.

BNL refused to get played on FM stations, only on AM with it’s lesser sound quality.

You get the idea. BNL shouldn’t be so woefully out of date on this one. This at a time when they seem to be modernizing by no longer having Steven Page in the band. You see kids, Steven Page did drugs. And as everyone has known since Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell II’, it’s Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll not the older and less cool Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.

Now you have this to do, BNL, a bit more to update.

And you, dear reader, the next time you want to say “that was so last week” you can now say “that was so Big Crunch”.

Posted in Humour, Music, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Others Assume, I Presume

Posted on 17 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I just had a gander of the words assume and presume in my dictionary. There are a number of meanings for both words. The definition I knew for both was identical. The dictionary says they both mean: to take for granted; suppose.

Let me presume for a moment. I presume that the word presume existed first. Then sometime much later it was decided that homespun, humble, folk wisdom needed a new saying. Cleverly the folk wisdom folks let assume mean the exact same thing as presume for a few years before springing the new folk wisdom cliche on everyone.

Suddenly every guru and every self help book said don’t assume. You make an ASS out of U and ME. Such humble folk wisdom was then established and repeated everywhere to the point where I’m sick of it. It was viral before the term viral was viral.

I say “I presume” to get away from this horrid saying. Because supposing and taking for granted are what extrapolating and interpolating are. These are powerful math and science concepts. You’re entirely right if you say they are not always true. But to use these concepts is quick and a lot of times leads to good results.

So some people may say assume makes an ass out of u and me. But I’m a blogger and I am the PRES of U and ME. I’m sorry PRESS isn’t spelled right but we bloggers don’t always have editors.

Posted in Humour, Language, Mathematics, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Uncomfortable Extrapolation

Posted on 14 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

This is a more adult themed post so dear reader you should be of age and shoo away any kids who may be reading over your shoulder. And that also means you, minor, trying to read this post despite any prohibition I might set up. I won’t work under the conditions of you reading me against my will. I won’t. Back to the adults. Only you may keep reading.

Yeah I know only the good kids will observe my prohibition against them. The bad? Well all we can do is slow them down. Hopefully enough so they don’t learn everything till they’re of age. So I can continue pontificating about it, thus slowing them down more. Pontificating. Perhaps you should look that word up, young one. It could be a naughty word.

Okay, perhaps I can explain my points without being too graphic. Television’s Dr. Oz has a little tidbit of information. He tries to tell it in a positive way. ‘Men,’ he says [I’m paraphrasing so I’m not using the normal quotes], ‘if you lose 35 pounds of fat, you will gain an inch’. (Hey kids, maybe it’s an inch of height.)

Well, let’s follow this logic the other way. That means for every excess thirty-five pounds a man has he loses an inch. So let’s extrapolate that out to a man gaining an excess of 210 pounds. Now, look, that is totally possible. An average man with this excess weight should have (according to averages) lost his manhood. In fact at this precise point you might call him asexual.

But wait, men can gain even more weight. So an excess of 210 pounds is the crossover point, where an outie now becomes an innie. I guess it’s not enough that heavy men start to have more feminine hormones (something else we learn from Dr. Oz) and grow ‘breasts’. No. We had to humiliate them all the way. Is a man with an excess of 420 pounds fully a woman?

Thanks for the imagery, Dr. Oz. Thanks for the imagery, extrapolation. I’m sorry I wrote this post. I’m glad I made the bad kids uncomfortable and confused.

Posted in Humour, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cryptozoology Puzzle Solved?

Posted on 10 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Cryptozoology usually brings to mind Bigfoot but I’ve more of a mind to think about Nessie, Champ, Ogopogo and the Lake Erie monster serpent.

These creatures are said to be in 4 widely separate lakes, ranging all across North America and also in Scotland, so it might be hard to see a connection beyond the superficial. All these lakes seem to have a large water creature, perhaps serpentine in construction and despite multiple sightings, certain proof of their existence seems at the moment unattainable.

And how did these creatures get between these widely separate lakes if they are all related? How can such creatures be the same species if none of them have ever been identified outside their lake hotbeds?

But certainly there must be a link – how can such similar tales exist so far from each other. So let’s look at the one similarity that might shed light on the subject.

The four lakes all have similar shapes – they’re long and skinny. That’s right, Lake Okanagan, Lake Erie, Lake Champlain and Loch Ness are all narrow, long lakes. This isn’t theory, it is fact. They are almost like swollen rivers, these long lakes.

How could similar creatures manage to inhabit this particular kind of lake.

Why of course they must have had an aerial view. I am suggesting that all these monsters are the same type of alien, with ships possibly hovering over the Earth, in such a way that they can choose particular lakes.

Thus, they’ve managed to inhabit these four lakes. Their alienness also means that if an intensive census exists in any of these four lakes “beaming up” can occur and thus these creatures yet again defy investigation.

Why do they like swollen river type environments? Why do these creatures always exist in long narrow channels for lakes? That is the real question.

Now that we have the proper question, perhaps we can get a proper solution.

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More Harold Albrecht Propaganda

Posted on 7 August 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I just received a mega pamphlet from my Canadian Member of Parliament, Harold Albrecht. He had been sending me regular “updates” but these were not as easily mocked as the pamphlet I first mocked here in April.

But when you send a mega pamphlet to all of your constituents on the public dime, you are risking more ire. Seriously, unfolded this thing is as big as a full newspaper page with both sides filled with propaganda. But there’s one thing extroverts and talkers never seem to get. The more information you put out there, the more likely there is something to hang yourself on.

The first thing I noted was that Albrecht says, “Improvements move forward despite Ignatieff flip-flops”. Firstly I’m not convinced that what Albrecht calls improvements are really improvements. That might be a matter of opinion. But in his whole article that follows he only shows that Ignatieff (the opposition leader) changed his mind once. That plural of flip-flop becomes important here. Of course Albrecht is eager to paint Ignatieff as someone who changes his mind often and thus (presumably) can’t be trusted. But Ignatieff only changed his mind once, Albrecht, so hold your horses. Do we judge Britain poorly for changing their minds and demanding a halt to Nazi invasions?

This whole flip-flopping thing is a thing Conservatives think is bad. Why? Because they are also small c conservatives and thus by definition are against change. Should we not also call out conservative leaders for being stubborn dinosaurs? In a straight out popularity contest I think that flip-floppers might actually beat stubborn dinosaurs. So be careful how you paint the opposition.

Then, under a section entitled “Empowering an Innovative Economy” He chooses to lead with the story that national consultations were held on the digital economy. This is the infamous James Moore consultations that led to Bill C-32 that ignored the public’s bad opinion about Digital Rights Management or DRM. DRM is enshrined in this bill as the one and only gatekeeper of everything digital. Any “right” that may be given by this piece of potential legislation can be taken back by software in the DRM. So you have no rights under DRM and to make it worse any effort to circumvent the DRM is considered criminal.

I’m tempted to use the Seinfeld bit about the rent-a-car place that didn’t hold the reservation. ‘Listening and acting on the consultation is really the important part – anyone can just consult.’

But let’s say we make a big show of consulting with PETA and vegetarian groups before going to Newfoundland. They try their best to influence us in the way they want. Next we go to Newfoundland and go on an all seal meat diet and go everywhere in our freshly made harp seal fur coats. Then we say we have only done this after long consultations with PETA and vegetarian groups.

PETA and the vegetarian groups are going to be pissed. Before releasing Bill C-32 James Moore basically said that those who opposed the bill would be radical extremists. He knew from the consultations that a large group of people were going to be pissed and attempted to get them first.

There’s more to mock in the mega pamphlet. Albrecht’s 13 hour last day before summer. Better work hard one day, what with all that tough holidaying around the Olympics. Or the present given to veteran Harry Watts. Since he gave you the photo op you’re lucky he accepted the gift of a photo he probably already had with Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands, but this one was signed by PM Harper and two other conservative MPs. What a treat.
But I can’t mock the whole mega pamphlet without being wordy and thus letting opponents get some of their own jabs in. So if you read this far, thank you. I’m still many, many words away from writing a mega pamphlet.

Posted in Humour, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Anchor Weasels

Posted on 31 July 2010 by Larry Russwurm

This is a post about anchor weasels – those members of a news team that provide the face of the TV station to the general public.

My problem with them is their comments on the weather. I’m sure the higher ups like to promote them as being “human”, “non-robotic”, and “likable”. Politics being what it is, I’m sure the higher ups tell them to just comment on the weather, a relatively safe topic, which shouldn’t offend most of the political spectrum. This offends me. Right now. In the summer.

You see all anchor weasels get to work in a nicely air conditioned environment. And the job pays well enough that they can afford an air conditioned home and an air conditioned car. You can see where I’m going with this.

In the summer, when temperatures are average or less than average, all anchor weasels like to say they wish it were warmer. In fact they seem to get depressed until temperatures have finally reached or exceeded 30 degrees Celsius. I guess this feels right when you are only visiting the weather for a few minutes at a time throughout the day. After all this is probably the only time they realize it is actually summer outside.

Myself? I think the only ones that should be allowed to comment on summer conditions are the people who work outside all day over hot tar. These people would know enough to tell everyone to keep hydrated and would see uses for cooling down stations on the hotter days.

I didn’t ever work over hot tar but did work outside for 9 hour days a couple summers in a row. The hot tar thing helped me keep cool as in ‘at least I’m not working over hot tar’. One of those days I worked reached 35 degrees Celsius and I remember barely moving to do work in that heat. The boss never came out of his air conditioned office to accuse me of cheating the company. And indeed, I’m quite sure that I was working as hard as was possible because I drank about 10 glasses of water that day and went to the bathroom once.

So I think you have an idea why I call them anchor weasels. But before leaving I just want to remind you that just as in the cold, cold winter, people die of the weather in the hot, hot summer. Hot isn’t always good.

“Bring on the heat,” say the anchor weasels. Which at times could sound like saying, “Bring on the deaths.” Anchor weasels – their personalities all seem the same – and lacking. I should read my news and weather for the rest of the summer instead of watching it.

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Playing With Bitstrips

Posted on 23 July 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I just recently was referred to a relatively new service called Bitstrips (Thank you Laurie!). This online service is apparently for the more artistically challenged to come up with comic strips. If you can come up with the words, the characters you’ve helped design can speak it in a comic strip.

Some of you may know that I authored 3 strips in February here, about the Olympics and the IOC, two of which are still applicable. I fished for someone to draw and allow me to upload those strips – exactly the service that Bitstrips offers. So I’ve already needed the service that Bitstrips offers. So why not figure out how to use Bitstrips in this public forum?

The first thing you might need to know is that you can use normal copyright subject to rules in the licence agreement. I wanted the possibility of someone translating my work for free so instead I wanted to use a Creative Commons licence. According to Bitstrips I was only able to use a Creative Commons Non-commercial, Share Alike licence. Bitstrips doesn’t allow the other Creative Commons licences, but for your enjoyment you can see them at creativecommons.org .

Now, all I had to do was to try the service by starting at bitstrips.com .

The first thing I did was to create characters. The character generator is a features based visual of the character you intend to use. Three characters ought to do for my two strips. I made the man and woman black to represent sub Saharan Africa and Cubehead of course was given a cube head and a middling dark tone to represent North Africa. Africa has never been granted an Olympics before. Everything else I chose was based on whimsy.

After generating some characters, you can start on the strip. I chose a three panel strip. I usually work with 4 panels but I adjusted. Some of the scene making is drag and drop. Some of it is touching one of the special button functions then manipulating the character. Sometimes you can use a click and even sometimes a double click helps you do what you want. Some of the functions are intuitive, some are not. It took me about 2 hours to create the first strip and the three characters. It would go much faster the next time, especially since I can now use stock characters.

My first strip was marred by text balloons. The standard type of balloon I used gets a smaller and smaller “attribution tail” as you add in more lines of text. The cartoon I was doing was ‘Happiness is an alien’. The man’s 3 line text balloons barely have a tail when he uses 3 lines of text. And, unfortunately the 5 line speech at the end has no tail at all. Thus, if you were to look at this cartoon in a certain way, it appears that the woman is saying the text plus her own line.

I called this strip series “The IOC Files”. But at the Bitstrips’ site, you can’t find that by doing a straightforward search. 163 comics come up. You have to search through all of these to find mine. I’m still not sure it’s there because I gave up. All the cartoons that use the word “file” seem to show up. Usually they have something to do with the X-Files. You can find my strip if you search for larryrusswurm – my user name. I think the search function has to do with how you save your cartoon when you are first publishing it. Automatically it chooses to do it under your name but there is an option to save it as a ‘bitstrips series’. Ideally the search function would work under both conditions.

The 2nd cartoon had a feature that I couldn’t find Bitstrips capable of. I think it’s common enough in cartoons to display the outside of a store with signs in the windows, so Bitstrips ought to have this as a background or scene. As well, I didn’t see a simple sign function. To get around this I tried to “make” the outside of a store by the “shapes” function and using the ‘text boxes’ as the signs for the business. This second cartoon only took about 20 minutes. That makes this a realistic option to drawing as a drawn cartoon takes about 20 minutes to do. And 10 minutes was figuring out the store front with shapes and text boxes. I can definitely see doing a cartoon in 10 minutes and each time having learned a little something new.

Anyways I do fault Bitstrips for not having the outside of a store, school, different houses and office buildings to set the scene of a strip. This I think is very important in the telling of a strip.

So what do I give Bitstrips as a critique? Well, despite all my complaints (I’m going to send a link to this blog to Bitstrips so they are aware of the problems I noted), I give them a 4 ½ stars out of 5. Don’t forget that I needed this particular service in February even though I didn’t know Bitstrips existed.

And even if you never want to write your own comic strip, you can spend loads of time just reading the strips of others.

Here are the two cartoons:

Posted in Art, Cartoon, Politics, Sports, Wee Bit O' Humour, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments