Slackers

Posted on 13 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

The spectacle that’s called the Winter Olympics is soon to start in Vancouver and that got me to thinking. Why is it that athletes are still setting world records? And it seems that they are doing it with regularity. I’d like to see the statistics; are world records still coming at the same rate as they did many years ago?

If they are, I can only come up with two plausible answers. The first one sounds preposterous. The species is becoming better, stronger and faster. Maybe even one day man might be the fastest land animal. Sounds ridiculous at least to my first impression. What could possibly cause this? Maybe it’s something like the height thing. You know, the statistics prove that on average children will grow to be taller than their parents. Maybe that’s because of better nutrition. Also, at least some sports heroes are breeding with each other. This can be a standard breeding procedure to get a better species. Cows for instance have been bred to produce more and more milk. It works. There is quantitative evidence. It’s just that most times, world record holding athletes are not from successful athlete / successful athlete parents.

The other possibility is that successful athletes are slackers. Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard it is to work out and train constantly. In that regard I have high esteem for successful athletes. But do they do enough? It seems to me that they might be slowing down a bit in this regard after they are deemed successful. A great proportion of their life is taken up with a single minded purpose to be the best in the world. Even this might not be enough for some. To prove they are the best they may try for a world record. But what happens once they achieve this? They have nothing left to beat. Do they then say ‘enough with the drive I’m good enough and now want what the world can offer’? If another athlete can beat their record 5 years later why couldn’t they have trained that much harder for a record that can’t be beaten?

I personally think these successful athletes do slack off after becoming “the best to date”. Maybe that single minded pursuit of their dream has left their life lacking in other ways. Maybe best to date is enough for them. But I propose that those same athletes would have had more left and could compete with the athletes of a later time. Maybe it’s just the lack of goals left after you get a world record. Could this say something about the human spirit?

Maybe the rest of us are slackers too. It might be less obvious than in sports but could be true. The most obvious to me is in the field of rock music. I think some of the fans are like me and could care less about the age of the performer and only about the music. But it has become obvious to me that as an artist grows older, eventually their music seems not as good. It can take a long time, sometimes twenty years or more but to me it has happened to every artist I know about. And in rock music, the artists cannot use age as an excuse, they don’t have to deal with being unable to perform because of body changes like the athletes do. Either there are negative brain changes as we age or these rock musicians are slackers, too.

Maybe there is something to the expression you have to stay hungry. Success seems to eventually lead to slacking. Maybe we as a species need to try to rise above the herd more often and for longer.

Posted in Humour, Sports | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Open Call for Cartoonists

Posted on 7 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I haven’t been keeping track of any stats on this site, like how many views I get per article and such. I’m just crossing my fingers that there is a large enough critical mass of you that at least one of you is a fine upstanding cartoonist or willing to dip your foot in the cold, cold water of cartooning.

I myself have cartooned before, a political cartoon in my university days called Jacques O’ Christmas Tree. If you are thinking by name alone that the title character might be a jack o’ lantern head on a Christmas tree body then you would be right. I am retooling right now and hope to start doing a Jacques O’ Christmas Tree comic strip.

The transition from political to straight humour isn’t a perfectly clean path. A couple strips I developed for Jacques (the new strip) were straight political humour involving the International Olympic Committee. I even came up with one for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

It would be ideal to publish these now, with all the buzz of the upcoming Olympics. But I still haven’t compiled my scanner and still don’t know how to use it. So I am trying to reach out to any of you who are cartooning inclined and have a scanner. I will provide the 3 jokes. Just please draw the cartoon and scan it into jpeg format. Then email it to me with the jpeg being the body of the letter and your name can either be on the drawing or list it in the title of the email and I will put it up at this site with accreditation.

I’m not offering any compensation for the work I’m requesting. So let it be known, if I end up with no nibbles from this it just proves that being a cheap bastard doesn’t pay. But also let it be known that I haven’t received one scrap of compensation for this site as of yet. So come on, be a victim with me. The email to send your work to is larry@larryrusswurm.com .

IOC Cartoon #1:

Panel 1 :

The back of someone’s head looking at the outside of a store. Up above it says “Cubehead’s Furniture Warehouse”. There are two signs in the window. The first one says “Coffee tables $200”. The other one says “Wrecked Coffee Tables $250”.

Panel 2 :

Same person talking to an obviously cubeheaded individual. “I don’t get it Cubehead! How come the wrecked coffee tables are more?”

Panel 3 :

Close up of Cubehead speaking. “Well someone didn’t use coasters and left rings…”

Panel 4 :

Cube head still speaking. “…5 rings in a pattern the IOC would get upset about!”

IOC Cartoon #2

Panel 1 :

Man talking to a woman. “Did you hear about the latest crop circles?”
Woman, “No, why?”

Panel 2 :

Man, “They’re rings in the shape of the Olympic symbol!”
Woman, “So?”

Panel 3 :

Man,”The IOC must be in a useless manic state right now…”

Panel 4 :

Man continuing “…who are they going to sue? The farmer? The aliens?”
Woman, “Maybe the farmer will sue the IOC!”

VANOC Cartoon

Panel 1 :

Commentary bar at the top of the panel reads, “Meanwhile VANOC was annexing culture…”
Normal looking man talking, “I’ve got something that might help us stay in the black!”
Man in conical hat, “What’s that?”

Panel 2 :

Normal Man, “We’ll trademark “A Christmas Carol” all except the first word and last!”

Panel 3 :

Normal Man, “Then we can sue all the publishers of that book for violating our trademark!”

Panel 4 :

Man in conical hat, “Hmmm! After all Dickens did set it in winter. It’s like he was asking for it!”

UPDATE: Both IOC cartoons were published in a July post using the online service Bitstrips. They can be seen here. The VANOC cartoon’s effectiveness died with the Vancouver Winter Olympics. The IOC cartoons can live for other Olympics. London 2012 for instance.

Posted in Art, Humour | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Power Equals Momentum Equals Force

Posted on 2 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Right now on the Canadian Television Network (CTV) they are airing an ad for the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics. I want to throttle the copywriter because they equate power with momentum and force, terms which don’t even come close to equating if you use the physics definitions.

I know what you’re thinking. “Larry,” this is your thought, “you are being too anal. Perhaps the copywriter is just using the looser English definitions of these three words.”

Now as much as I hate it, this is usually a bye. Ordinarily I’d have to just take back the threat to the copywriter and bite my tongue.

But, this time the copywriter takes pains to introduce the physics definition of momentum. He defines it as mass times velocity.

Why can’t the copywriter also look up the physics definition of force and power? If he did he would realize that these three terms are indeed very different.

This copywriter has confused a new crop of Canadian physics students. His lack of insight makes it harder for the rest of us to make clear what is meant by physical terms.

I guess I’m mildly pleased that he didn’t use the terms energy, work and inertia to totally take us back to the dark ages. Yes, I shall stick with that old saw, that things could even be worse than they are now. This way I won’t be thrown out of CTV’s copywriting office by a team of large security guards.

Post script. I thought I may have been overstating the idiocy of the copywriter from CTV. So I recorded the ad and transcribed the offending part. The transcription follows:

“Momentum. Momentum is the power that exists in a moving object. It is mass times velocity. It is the fundamental force of motion.”

Power is defined as energy/time. Since they explicitly say “the power that exists in a moving object” they presumably mean kinetic energy / time. But who can tell with such confusion about fundamental definitions?

And how about force being “the fundamental force of motion”? Force is so tied into the concept of motion that its definition is Newton’s Second Law of Motion.

Yup. Guaranteed to confuse the new crop of high school physics students.

Post script 2. I finished this Feb. 1, but will wait till tonight past midnight to publish. That way this B.S. science commercial will be called out on that ultimate B.S. science day : Groundhog Day.

Posted in Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Brain Drain Revisited

Posted on 30 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

In the previous post I tackled the brain drain problem: highly skilled and thus “brainy” Canadians moving to the United States in search of better pay or careers.

Let’s examine that highly skilled equating to brainy assumption for a minute. Does no one in the press recognize that highly skilled does not necessarily mean brainy? Remember the stereotypical ‘absent minded professor’. It’s not hard to get the idea of someone being well trained in one category of intelligence while being sadly lacking in other areas. Indeed, I think this is what the ‘absent minded professor’ stereotype is meant to illustrate.

So, the Canadian “brains” might be deciding to move due to an impaired judgment process in their non-specialty areas like lifestyle.

Let’s look at one important stat. The murder rate. You need a fairly large city to compare murder rates with, because smaller centers can vary widely, year to year.

So I’ll take the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, and note that that city had a steady murder rate over the two years of 2000 and 2001 of 61 murders in both years. Now which American city to compare with? Here comes the art in this comparison. Detroit has roughly the same population and is also a Great Lake city. Indeed these two cities are connected by a 5 hour drive. The murder rate for 2000 was 396 in Detroit and 398 for 2001. That means you have about a 6 times greater chance of being murdered in Detroit than Toronto.

Maybe you feel this is an unfair comparison. I guess it is. On average the American murder rate is only 3 times that of Canada’s. I just can’t help comparing Detroit and Toronto because I live on the road between these two cities.

Want to live the longest life possible? That, too, might be a consideration of these so called “brains”. In a recent year, Canada’s average life expectancy was 78.1 years. The U.S.? 76.8 years was the average.

And now, if our “brains” pay attention, the economy in the current recession has been better up here than down south. Sure your job may be offering more. But if you are planning the move with family, the others might not fare as well as you.

So here you are “brains”. three good reasons not to move south of the border. Don’t worry if none of these reasons are your specialty – I checked for you. But then again some of you are probably so “idiot-savant” my coaxing and attempting to reason with you is probably lost.

Hey, maybe those of us left here are meant to be in an intellectually better rounded populace.

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

The Brain Drain

Posted on 24 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

For those of you who don’t know, a brain drain is said to exist from Canada to the United States. The U.S. is said to be luring Canada’s most sought after and brightest with offers of more money and better jobs. The Canadian media laments the loss long and loud to whomever is willing to listen. A tragedy, they say. Perhaps they cannot figure out how we are to maintain our standard of living with this going on.

I disagree.

No I’m not going to bore you with tales of Canadian immigrants coming in with their own skills. That has already been done. And perhaps they have plans to eventually go to the States as their ultimate destination.

I hope the brain drain continues. In fact, I really wish it would pick up the pace. Why?, you ask. Because eventually I hope to be the undisputed most intelligent person in Canada. The smartest in a whole country. How many people can say that? 200?

Imagine. Being the most sought after for any job. No one stepping on your little personal theories and saying wrong-o, Charlie. No one else being a know-it-all so you could fill the air with all the little trivia you happen to know. It sounds like quite a good system.

There is a downside to it all. What if the brain drain continues and continues and continues? Canada’s population would recede. What if I find that all the smartest people left and now there’s only me?

Well I’d still be the smartest person in Canada. Pessimists would point out that I’m also the stupidest but I wouldn’t hear it being across the border from them.

But I’d get lonely. So what to do? The U.S. has a 9 times bigger population base than Canada right now. Statistically there’d be about 9 people at the same intelligence as me. Nine of them! I could pick and choose who I wanted and bring them up here so I wouldn’t get lonely and still be the smartest person in a country.

Posted in Humour, Politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Maybe Uranus Will No Longer Be the Butt of All Jokes in the Solar System

Posted on 19 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

We amateur astronomers and other language police have all shook our heads when the many, many of you have mispronounced the name Uranus into common English words. We have then chastised you although we were once amused by this low humour at an earlier point in our own lives. We’re too mature to laugh anymore, or so we tell ourselves, when the truth is we no longer laugh because it is such an old, old joke.

But maybe the times are a-changing. It has now been speculated that Uranus harbours the correct conditions for liquid diamond seas to exist. And what you may ask would be floating in these seas? Nothing but mammoth diamond icebergs. Uranus may have just gotten its most perfect revenge on the English speaking world.

I must say when I wrote my introductory post about changing turds into diamonds, I never thought there could be such symbolism in the heavens. You can make fun of the richest planet in the sky but you can never do it again to its face. Well played, Uranus.

Posted in Humour | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

What I Don’t Like About Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics

Posted on 16 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Isaac Asimov wrote many stories and books containing his 3 Laws of Robotics. I would argue too many stories utilized the 3 Laws, and indeed I remember those who expressed concern that Asimov was tying together too much of his science fiction in the 1980’s. I now agree and see this as a weakness. You see, if the 3 Laws fall, many other stories are in some jeopardy.

Being an Asimov fan, at first I wanted to build upon the three laws in some way so I took a serious look at them some time ago. Instead of finding something solid to build on I began seeing weaknesses. To show you those weaknesses it’s necessary to state the 3 Laws.

Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics

1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.

The first problem I found with these laws is not very damning. It’s simply this : the first law is of course an order given to robots by human beings. It’s just that this takes precedence over every other order. Sure the laws can be programmed as is, it’s just that philosophically it sucks.

But I kept looking at the 3 Laws and it became apparent that the first law, especially the part about inaction would be a total bitch to program. And don’t forget that people see themselves as mentally injured and mentally coming to harm. I can imagine new injuries and what inaction spawned them being added 3 centuries after beginning with the 3 Laws. Would we ever be done programming the first law? Or would we ever trust A.I. Robots to decide these things?

More importantly, the first law would consume robot’s lives. Reshingling the house? That helpful robot maid (there’d be one in every house) will come up and say “Wouldn’t it be better if I did that? Gravity don’t you know. Be a dear and download the proper program for me.” Knowing the nature of contagious things, the robot maid would be an obsessive cleaner and try to bar contact with as many people as possible.

Most importantly, after hearing about Neighbourhood Watch and what it’s for, those robot maids would excessively stare out of the windows. When told to do their jobs, they’d say “The first law don’t you know.” Because of the first law, they wouldn’t do what they were built for.

And how long would it take before some 11 year old who couldn’t even be charged, started ordering robots to destroy themselves? It seems Asimov forgot about just how destructive kids can be. It seems doubtful to me that any homeowner will willingly allow such a thing to happen after investing presumably thousands of dollars in their robot.

What good do I see out of Asimov, now? Well I see him as a sort of kindly father figure. With the first law it seems to me he is trying to put a minor hero on every street corner. With the second law he lets the average robot owner have more power than ever before. With the third law he tries to protect this kindly vision. But I really think it’s time for different and new ideas about robotics.

Posted in Science Fiction, SF Criticism, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Seemingly, I Already Know What’s Under Those Clothes

Posted on 9 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Those new airport scanners that reveal the naked you are still stirring up controversy. The scanners show people as naked who walk through them and are also supposed to reveal things such as explosives in your underwear. People seem most concerned about the naked part and worry that this image might be made public somehow.

Right at the start, the security people are saying they’ll blur all faces that go through this machine and that the person checking the image will be in another room and not be able to see the person who has been scanned.

Still mistrust exists and some people will refuse given even the best security measures with their image. They will need to exit from this line and submit to a pat down. But I offer my services to airport security in order to avoid some of those pat downs.

In another time (1993 – 1994), I used to draw political cartoons. I had to get a likeness of various people and commit it to paper. Being lazy I just did the likeness and didn’t bother to turn it into a caricature. Given time and a pencil and paper I could get a likeness of those people getting a pat down.

Then I could extend each drawing down. And make them naked. Now it’s true that I never really will see anyone naked so I’d have to guess what’s hidden. I’m sure I’d be wrong about nipples, tattoos, shaved/unshaved areas, scars, moles, and genital sizes. But if I gave the average, considering the shape I can see, I could give the picture to people who’ve seen you and they would think I’d seen the real thing. And since the point of this whole exercise is shaming, I’d give each man very small genitals.

Airport security, wherever you are, hire me or another realist artist and we can get more and more people to use the new scanners. I’m not inexpensive but after all I might get compliance with your new security scheme, and isn’t that almost priceless?

Posted in Humour, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Picking

Posted on 2 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

It’s something I find quite amazing. Why is it that everyone’s finger is always smaller than the diameter of their nostrils? Throughout the ages this coincidence has led to nose picking, a habit that is deeply frowned upon in polite society. Officially I don’t pick anymore but I must say there is a temptation involved when I think of it.

Is there some magic ratio that relates finger size to nostril size? For instance a man with thick fingers couldn’t pick the nose of a preemie and in fact I don’t want to see this tried due to the delicateness of a little baby. Yet all through our lives, we are able to pick and that delicate nostrilled preemie might grow up to be that thick fingered man.

Looking at the close animal world of the dog and cat, say, we find that this is not a universal animal kingdom thing. Dogs and cats have much smaller nostrils and certainly their paws or foot digits couldn’t get up there. But aren’t their claws suspiciously the right size? With a cat, I suspect that unfortunately these animals would shred the skin of their delicate nostrils. Maybe a dog could get away with it but fortunately they don’t and are allowed in polite society.

So then, why us? Did God or evolution have something in mind? Maybe, just maybe we were made to pick. When we breathe in through our noses contaminants such as smoke or pollen or sand get somewhat filtered or blocked by our nose hairs. Picking would then “recharge” the filter or blockers. Sounds plausible. Then why don’t we always breathe through our noses instead of our mouths. Perhaps some people do and they are closer to what evolution intended.

If this was the original story then maybe it was found that open mouthed activity was more important as with talking. Thus we lost the nose breathing advantage.

And even in polite society, it must be pointed out that having a booger is even more a sin than picking one’s nose. So perhaps it is best to pick that booger away and then act like nothing happened.

Join us next week when we discuss how suspicious it is that a normal arm is just long enough for us to wipe our butts.

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With the World as My Witness, I Shall Never Eat Fresh Again

Posted on 25 December 2009 by Larry Russwurm

In social predators it happens time and time again that there is a top or alpha predator. Usually this beast gets dibs on the prey. Drunk with prestige, they think they are the top predator and to the victor goes the spoils.

But are the rest of the predators stupid? Surely they must know that together they can capture the choicest morsels. Or maybe they are acting intelligently.

After all if the food is bad, the one that eats first might fall down first with illness before the others have eaten. Thus, it is possible that the alpha beast is just a glorified food tester. The freshest taster is nothing more than a guinea pig.

But, you say, humans are brighter than this. After all, royalty is quite well known to have food and drink testers to ensure the safety of their meals.

Just as I do in my vow not to eat fresh.

When there is a food recall, who is it that dies or gets violently sick? Why, those people who have eaten the freshest food. If they had waited a few days to eat, maybe they would have known of the recall and not gotten sick. This is exactly where my procrastination tendencies pay off. I don’t go out of my way to eat the freshest foods. The food I buy is usually eaten in order of my cravings. And rarely do my cravings go according to the freshness of my foods.

So it is only with a slight effort that I now vow never to eat fresh again. You, large world, are my official food taster. And unlike kings and queens, I don’t have to pay you a cent.

But I end now on a note of caution. Obviously food can sit too long and become dangerous on the overripe side. So I must take pains to strike a balance, oh food testers of mine.

Posted in Humour | Tagged , | 1 Comment