What can I say -- things are so busy these days I was even considering not visiting family this Christmas...
So, in the mean time, here's some interesting reading on the search for Steve Fossett, and here's a bit of a scary video on why maybe you don't want more stuff this Christmas.
Recently, I've read several claims that we don't need to believe the planet is warming because this winter is going to be one of the coldest winters that Canada has seen in some time. While this logic is intuitive at first, I find myself using the same piece of information to support the opposite hypothesis, namely that climate change is upon us. Why? Simply put, my expectation of climate change is that in addition to warmer weather, we will also see more cold winters.
As anyone's life experience tells them, weather is variable. It changes from hour to hour, from day to day, from season to season, and so on. If somebody records the temperature every day for years and years and years, and looks at the temperature on (for example) September 22nd every year for century, then they will find that on average the temperature was 17 degrees, but that sometimes it was warmer -- as much as 25 -- and sometimes it was colder -- as cold as 5. (I've pulled these numbers out of a hat for demonstration purposes.) If that same person made a table of all the recorded temperatures, looked at how often a given temperature showed up, and graphed the result, then it might look like this:
If you gave this information to a statistician, they would try to fit what's called a distribution model to those temperature data, giving something like this:
The model here is a normal distribution, which is like the "Bell curve" teachers might use to adjust grades in a class. In reality, the temperature distributions would not be normal like this; they would have a more complicated statistical distrution. For now, let's just assume that this distribution is good enough, so that I can demonstrate my point.
Now, suppose the climate at our weather station changes. Things get warmer, and more "energy" is put into the weather system. If we do the same study, our new graph might look like this:
It looks pretty similar, but if you look carefully, we can compare the modeled distributions for the two sets of data:
Now we can start to see the effects of the changed climate. The average temperature is higher, there are a lot more really hot days, and also a few more really cold days. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a situation with a lot more hot days and a lot more cold days.
So how do we know that the climate is changing? Statisticians have this trick in their toolbox called extremal analysis. Basically, they use fancy mathematics to determine how often we're going to get those low-frequency events, or extreme events, when we don't have time to wait for them to happen. In addition to a warming "average planet", researchers are seeing more extreme events. There are more hot days, more cold days, more hurricanes, more droughts, more floods, more ice storms, etc., etc. Their findings suggest that the weather systems are experiencing a shift like the one we have just described in the example above. Hence, just because this winter is going to be a cold one, it is not a reason to denounce climate change.
Back on land.
Back on sturdy land.
Back on sturdy land that doesn't rock.
Well, sort of. It took a bit of time for my brain to catch on to the fact that things weren't rocking anymore. When I awoke after my first night back on terra firma, I could feel the rising and falling of the room. In the shower that morning I turned sideways to brace myself, the shower was rocking back and forth. It was my first ever case of the "dock rocks", a term I've heard many times but could not find on in my 45 second search of the internet. Basically, it's the sensation that things are still rocking even though you're back on land.
The trip itself was a good one. The first few days were tough, but on the morning that I had to start working, the seas got a little bit calmer and my queasiness subsided. That meant I could enjoy a glass of water, or a coffee, or some juice, and that I could focus on my work. For the first time ever, I got over sea sickness before getting off a ship. Woo.
Off for an adventure chasing eddies. Back in two weeks. You can follow the action live at this site.
Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. At least you'll know where I am, though. Which is probably more than I'll be able to say as the sea reminds me why I shouldn't be a field oceanographer.
Things have been slow around here. Well, by here, I mean this little blog. Things have been rather haphazard in the real world. Between school and SAR and wedding planning and post-school planning, there hasn't been much time to write anything. Well, really, there just hasn't been much inspiration to write anything worth reading. I've been thinking about this waves, and rings, and eddies, and a few other things which, in a twisted context, include this guy (or gal): 
A quick note to fill in a few blanks from last week's post. First, I am getting back to my normal self as the emotional strain from last week is releasing itself.
The search was one of the roughest I've experienced. Looking for two teenagers, suspecting the worst while hoping it is only a prank, has its toll. In addition, it was a high-profile search: our staging area was swarming with media, family, friends, and curious onlookers. It was also my first time being involved in the management side of a real search. On Wednesday, I was on site from 4:30 am until 10:45 pm, dealing with search management issues.
Throughout my years working on the search team, I have learnt that I am often proficient at blocking out emotions during these events. This allows me to think and act calmly. Essentially, I hide in an objective "shell" and guard myself from emotions during the event. Though I hate to say it in such cold language, it can almost feel like I am playing a game at times. In many ways, this is an advantage for the lost person. While it does not remove the sense of urgency from the event, it allows for clear thinking and (hopefully) sound judgement. A sense of responsibility, rather than one of frantic compassion, ensures thoroughness and efficiency of one's actions. I believe that this response is enhanced by the training. Having practised what to do, over and over, one's mind is able to focus on the actual doing.
When the search is over, however, the reality of the outcome -- especially if it is a negative one -- begins to percolate into my thinking. Last week, instead of slowly removing my protective shell, it was smashed violently by the reality around me. Suddenly it was over. Family and friends, dozens of them, were consoling each other in front of the media and other onlookers. The fire department had counsellors helping them handle their grief. Paramedics were present, monitoring those who were responding to the news more traumatically. Onlookers gathered to watch the body bags be transferred from the boats to the trucks. The medical examiner was milling around in search of the that site, since it was at a different location than the staging area of the search. I found myself watching all this, walking around, wanting to help, but knowing that there were trained and qualified people already doing that, and realizing that I would be in the way. I did not want to stare, but I did not want to do nothing either. There was still plenty to do on site, however, and it did not take long for a fury activity to return to the site. As it turned out, it was not until about 3 hours after the conclusion that I got home, was able to stop, and shed my first tear.
That brief pause that I took to look around me, however, the snap-shot of hysteria and realization, still engulfs for brief moments. In the last few days, it has been the processing of those images that has occupied my thoughts. The hard part is knowing not to ignore these impulses of emotion, and to deal with them and talk about them. For this, I am express immeasureable gratitude to Allie, without whom such traumatic events would be too much to handle.
...
Today, after having had a few days to consider what happened, I am starting to feel better. The search community, which included the fire department, the police department (both municipal and federal), the Department of Natural Resources, and volunteer search teams from across the province, performed exceptionally well together. Everybody was concerned and wanted to find the missing teenagers, nobody was doing anything for their ego. We did the best we could and gave all we could, which made the initial internal response harsh. Everyone is aware, however, that there is nothing we could have done to change the outcome. This was a traumatic event for two families, a community of young individuals, and local society, and we did what we could to alleviate that trauma.
The funerals for the two boys will be held today. While I cannot attend, I will be thinking of them, their family, and their peers.
On Tueday afternoon, I got a call from SAR. For about 38 of the following 54 hours, I was responding to that call. Without getting into details now, the result was a tragic one. It has been a taxing few days for all involved in the search effort, but the thoughts and prayers go the families and friends of the two teenagers. No child deserves their fate.
This is an amazing story which, as the internal training officer on our SAR team pointed out, demonstrates why we always do shoreline searches after a water-related mishap.
On a related note, here's a photo of me igniting a hand-held flare in a recent training exercise:
What? You can't tell that's me? Well, here's one where my colleagues are having too much fun bandaging me up:
This is oddly funny. Or funnily odd. Or something.
By the way, sorry for not writing anything for quite a while. What can I say? The weather started getting good here, and there have been lots of other things keeping me busy too. Anyway, I will try not to post some good stuff soon...
From the pages of The Economist:
A British climber made the first mobile-phone call from the summit of Mount Everest. He took advantage of a Chinese mobile-phone base to ring his family, presumably to ask if he should pick up anything on the way home.I think I'd have asked him to bring me a snowball. Or a really big rock. Or maybe both.
One of the best summaries I've seen for the situation unfolding in Lebanon:
Or, if you prefer text, here is a good start.
So here's the short version: there's this grad student. Who's been there for too long. Finally, he gets motivation to finish. And does. His wife tries to understand what he does. His supervisor doesn't really care. After eventually submitting his thesis, his wife decides to be the only one who ever actually reads it... 
For those of you that read Canadian news online, you know the The Globe and Mail recently started allowing people to comment on their stories. At least that's most of the time. Sometimes, for certain overly heated topics where people start to get personal and racist, the Globe decides not to allow comments on a story. But most of the time, you can see what the (verbal and often uninformed) masses think about climate change, or Afghanistan, or the Queen of England, or the Ontario peach farming industry.
I often find it interesting to see what it is that people are talking about. So much so, that I actually bothered to write a script that queries the Globe website, sees what articles are being up for comments, and how many comments the stories have received. (It's also a good way to see the headlines without trying to load a page that sometimes crashes my browser.)
Anyway, here's what people are talking about this morning:
| Comments as of 9:49 ADT, 18/4/2007 | ||
| Article | comments/hour | # of comments |
| Loonie hits highest level since 1978 | 50.00 | 10 |
| Southern Ocean drowning in carbon dioxide | 12.34 | 232 |
| Cost of new tanks $1.3-billion, double initial estimate | 11.09 | 112 |
| A House divided against itself: Can it stand? | 7.88 | 36 |
| Arab world debates fate of Canadian brothers | 6.97 | 80 |
| As gas prices soar, so does transit use | 6.54 | 28 |
| Israel pounds Gaza as Hamas, Fatah battle | 6.20 | 19 |
| Britain allows animal-human hybrid embryos | 5.06 | 117 |
| Arrest fails to stem tide of leaks | 4.62 | 19 |
| Wolfowitz to leave World Bank at end of June | 4.35 | 60 |
| Newfoundland held back faulty cancer data | 3.55 | 22 |
| Teen pregnancies drop to a new low, abortions continue decline | 2.48 | 57 |
| Parched Australian farms soak up best rains in a decade | 1.75 | 4 |
How is it that after a 12-hour day, and when I'm doing my dinner's grocery shop at 7:45 pm, I just happen to choose the line-up where the cashier doesn't know the difference between Brussels sprouts and kiwis?
After overhearing that error in identification (two people in line ahead of me), I realized that I might as well pick up that latest issue of People, and start reading. (Oh, the article about bad bridesmaid dresses.... priceless!)
Here's one that the child psychologists will make a killing on (sorry, bad pun).
A group of teachers in Tennessee thought that it would be a good idea to discuss with their students what to do if a gunman attacked them. All in all, not necessarily an absolutely completely terrible idea. I mean, we've all heard about the school shootings, and having a pre-plan of how to deal with such a horrific situation is probably not the worst thing imaginable. But talking and doing are two different things, you could argue, so maybe it's not a bad idea to actually have a drill where you go through the routine of what you should do.
So following that logic, it is usually a good idea to talk about the exercise before being immersed in it, so that you can at least try to apply your knowledge. However, as you know, and as I know, and as everyone knows, it takes a lot of discipline to go through a drill with the same urgency as a real situation. And chances are if you discussed it first and then were suddenly thrust into a real situation, you would probably assume it was a drill. And let's face it... If adults would likely not treat it as seriously, neither would 12-year olds. I guess that's why we never knew exactly when the fire drills were going to happen in grade school. So perhaps, it's best not to tell the kids that it's a drill, and perhaps it's best not to talk about it before.
So far, the logic is impenetrable. But there's more. Surely if a gunman is going to shoot a bunch of school-kids, he wouldn't do it at, say, a school. Nooooooooo, he'd probably do it in a place that is unfamiliar to the kids. And it would probably be at night, too. Because that's when bad people come out from their poorly lit, dingy trailers.
So, what did the bright teachers decide to do? Stage an attack at night while on a field trip. They told the students a gunman was on the loose in the area, that it was not a drill, and that they should hide under the tables. Then a teacher, who disguised himself by wearing a hoodie (!), tried to get into the room while the kids cried and pled for their lives.
So who's idea was this brilliant plan? The assistant principal.
That kind of reminds me of a line somebody once wrote on a blackboard in high school. Those who can do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become principals. Seriously, though, how did this guy become a principal? And how did the teachers go along with it?
Tomorrow morning will be the first time since April 22 that I will not be getting up at or before 6:30. I can hardly wait. It's not even noon, and I'm thinking about sleep...
So I recently left you with the not-so-cliffhangered to-be-continued.
But first, a brief synopsis of what I was doing last week first. Many of us remember taking a first aid course at some point. Maybe it was to get our babysitting certificate when we were 12, maybe it was to become a life guard. Me? I took my first course only 3 years ago. It was a wilderness first aid course, i.e. what do you do when the ambulance is a few hours away or more?
The course was excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone who has 3 days to kill enjoys hiking or biking or skiing or camping or canoeing or ... you get the idea.
Well, these courses expire every 3 years and I thought, while I have the time to take a week off, I may as well upgrade to the first responder course. What's the difference? Well other than taking almost 3 times as long, you get to play with toys and do more detailed patient assessments.
Okay, so because this was a wilderness course (with a lot of situational learning), we had an overnight scenario. After our warm-up, we proceeded down to a lake and "set up camp". Except we
didn't do that. We knew we wouldn't be spending any time there so we didn't really bother with trivial things like tents and fires. We had dinner, and chilled out for an hour or two. Chilling included things like a discussion of whether our instructor was a pirate and one man's randition of Acuna Matata from start to finish. Scary what a 30-year old camp director knows.
We were sitting there for quite a while wondering what was going on. Then, just as the last sun beam trickled over the horizon, we saw a flare shoot over the lake. Show time...we haphazardly get our stuff together, and started to organize. Which team is doing what? Another flare goes off. I guess our instructor thought we were taking too long and was getting impatient.
We had previously divided into 3 teams. One went straight to the north end of the lake where we thought the flares were coming from. My team did a shoreline search. I don't know what the third team did.
After about 10 minutes, my team came across somebody in the water. He was cold and shivering, and of course his clothes were soaked. We pulled him out of the water and called in the other teams for help. We removed his clothes and set up a hypothermia wrap using sleeping bags, tarps, emergency blankets, and rope. Our team started the monitoring the patient and the other two teams went off chasing other flares.
The patient was of course cold. An effect of being cold is that your blood vessels constrict a little. As a result, water is removed from your blood and directed to your bladder. (Ever wonder why you always have to pee after spending time outside in the winter?) So in addition to being cold, a hypothermic is also dehydrated. So water was one concern.
The other concern, of course, is warmth. The usual, intuitive, thought for how to warm somebody up is to put them next to a fire. If the person is actually seriously hypothermic, however, being too close to the fire can be leathal. Napoleon's doctor observed this when trying to invade Russia. The reason is because the blood in the extremeties becomes too warm, and shocks the heart when it is pumped back to the body's core. So the best way to rewarm somebody is to roll them up in blankets and let them warm themselves from the inside. Food is always good for getting your furnace going.
So what's a good backcountry solution? Hot Jell-o! (In liquid form. No need to wait for it to set.) There's a reason Jell-o's part of every hospital meal...it's easy to digest and nutritious. So we are periodically heating water with a camp stove, pouring Jell-o powder into it, and feeding it to our patient. Over time, however, it becomes clear that he is going to need oxygen, too. Our dispatch "radioed in" to 413 squadron asking for help, preferably a SAR-Tech. Of course, we couldn't get that as it would defeat training purposes, but a kit was dropped nearby and we were given its GPS location.
By now, just to give an idea of the time, it's probably about 11 pm.
I went off to find the oxygen at about 12, with a member of another team. It took a while, trying to navigate a maze of trails in the dark, but with the GPS we found it. We also brought back the stretcher and a bunch of blankets, just in case. By now it was probably 1 or 1:30.
After that a slow night of monitoring continued for us until somebody broke their femur (for the sake of the exercise). Breaking one's femur can actually be a life-threatening injury if the leg is not put into traction, so while two of us stayed with the hypothermic patient, the rest dealt with the broken leg. After probably half an hour, things were not going well for the broken leg victim, there was constant screaming and shouting from the group. I decided to go check it out.
That's when I discovered they were dealing not only with a rather big guy (probably weighing about 190 lbs), but also the whole situation was happening on a steep and rocky slope with no good footing. His leg was put into traction and the screaming subsided. The team had a
litter (stretcher) and were preparing to move him onto it so they could get him off the slope. As I approached them I leaned on a tree for support and found it was rotten and that it started to give under my weight. I looked to the bottom of the tree trunk and saw the litter
was secured to it!
I moved myself into a position where I could notify the "climber guy" in our group, who I guessed had secured the litter. Right then, I suddenly hear someone yelling "Traction! Traction!" I almost had to laugh when I saw the wood used for the traction splint was rotten and
had snapped. Three of us worked in rotation to keep his leg in manual traction while a group went and found a new, solid piece of wood. I told somebody about the situation with the rotten tree and that was also dealt with. About 20 minutes later, a new traction splint was put into place, and we started to move him. The in the litter was clearly a little concerned about where he was and that we were moving him, and so I spoke to him a little bit and calmed him
down, reassuring him we'd do it slowly and deliberately. The terrain was not good and it 8 of us about 5 minutes to move him 15 metres. At that point, he was in a stable location. The temperature was about 5 degrees so we decided to leave him there for the night but firt cover him in blankets and a tarp to keep him warm.
By now it was about 3:30. We were all very weary by this point. Our very active day had officially started 19 hours ago. It was about 4 degrees out.
We had two patients that needed monitoring. 4 of us stayed up, two with each patient, and 4 of us went to sleep. I volunteered to stay up, mostly because all my gear was in the hypothermia wrap. My hat and gloves were being used as well. Somebody lent me a tent fly and I sat there, wrapped up in that.
I feel asleep in that time, and woke up in semi-sitting position, shivering at 5:15. I realized I needed to get warm. I stumbled down to where peole were sleeping, and woke up the guy with the -20 sleeping bag. It was his shift for monitoring the patient. I took my boots off and my jacket, and crawled into his sleeping bag. I got one hour's sleep before being woken by the instructor. Time for the debrief.
So, I guess that's one way to spend a Friday night.
I have to admit, when I first read about this "Encyclopedia of Life" it sounded kind of kooky. But I checked out the website, and watched their little video promo. It starts with a rather elegant description of the planet's biosphere.
Constantly reconfiguring, morphing, decaying, the natural world is at once confounding, sublime, brutal, and unspeakably elegant.
As Friday was winding down for most, mine was just beginning. This week, I have been involved in a wilderness first responder course as part of may SAR training, and last night was what they called the 'overnight' component.
It started with a bit of a warm-up, a search for a couple thought to have been at a cabin in the area. We had three teams. One stayed behind with the first response gear, and the other two ventured into the woods following clues. After half an hour of slow, deliberate searching, the radio silence was broken. Crackling over the radio one of the teams called in
The cabin exploded! We need help.
As a quick update. I have not been blogging much because I've been
I have been feeling like something is missing from my pre-game routine before ultimate games. Perhaps I should take a page from Hollweg's book.
Okay, I'm going to say right here that this goes out to the academics in the room. The rest of you are probably wasting your time. (But then again, why else would you be here, right?)
I just discovered this cool feature in Google Scholar. It's easy to do, just follow these steps:1) Cut a hole in a box.
1) Go to Google Scholar
2) Click on the "Scholar Preferences" link on the right:
Yeah, yeah, the arrows. I know.
3) Scroll to the bottom and click select "Show links to import citations into ..." and choose your poison. (Mine happens to be BibTeX.)
Okay, let's try this out. Let's search for something of interest.
Looks like we stumbled upon a gem here. Maybe we'll want to reference this at some point. So by clicking on "Import into BibTeX", we get the reference in BibTeX format:
@article{naveh1982kpd,
title={{Kinetics of peroxidase deactivation in blanching of corn-on-the-cob}},
author={Naveh, D. and Mizrahi, S. and Kopelman, I.J.},
journal={Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry},
volume={30},
number={5},
pages={967--970},
year={1982},
publisher={American Chemical Society}
}
Dear smokers,
As somebody that shares your side-walks, bus stops, park benches, beaches, lakes, rivers, and scenic outlooks, I have a minor request. And I know this doesn't pertain to all of you, but it seems to pertain to a lot of you, possibly most of you.
You know that bit of the cigarette that you put in your mouth and don't smoke? The cigarette butt? Please don't throw it on the ground/street/gutter when you're done with it. Instead, please throw it in the trash, where it belongs.
Now that might seem like a lot of work for something so trivially small, I know. But have you ever stopped and looked at how many cigarette butts are littered near a bus stop? Or a flower bed next to a fountain in the park? Or even a garden outside a hospital? It's more than you'd care to count.
Apparently, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered each year. Here's a few ways to wrap your head around that number. If you placed those cigarette butts end-to-end at the equator, they would form a line that circled the globe three times. If you put them in a pile, the pile would take up a city block and be 8 stories high. The littering rate equals 142 per second. That's equivalent to over 2 per day per person on the planet. Or, another way to look at it: every time somebody on the planet takes a dump, somebody litters a cigarette butt. (Give or take.) That's a shit-load of litter. And the reason for it? As far as I can tell it's a combination of apathy and sheer laziness on the part of smokers. Junkies are probably more careful about disposing of their needles.
I knew a smoker that worked in remote parts of the world, where he was about a 2 hour flight from any road. He would store cigarette butts in a bag in his pocket for weeks until a plane came to deliver food and pick up garbage. So please don't tell me that carefully extinguishing the butt on the side of your shoe/a tree/the garbage can and then tossing the butt in the trash is too much work. If it were, this friend of mine would have burnt his pants off years ago.
A lot of smokers complain that their rights to smoke are being violated by a repressive anti-smoking society. That's fine and fair, and in a lot of instances it probably is going too far. But remember that it's not your bus stop/park/whatever; you're sharing it with hundreds, maybe thousands of people. My mom used to tell me that with privilege comes responsibility. If your kid ate 5 Popsicles a day and couldn't eat a Popsicle without leaving the Popsicle stick lying in the yard, how long would it be before you made an ultimatum about it?
Please lead by example.
I have to say that my feet are hurting a little more today than they do on an average Monday. But then again, yesterday I did a little more footwork than I would on an average Sunday. But, as I've mentioned once before, I'm trying to get back in shape, and I've decided to compete in the 8-hour version of the E2C adventure race. And so in preparation, my team mate and I decided to do mini-E2C this weekend. Now I spend my share of time in the woods. Well, more than average, anyway, but this weekend was especially gruelling.
I should have known it was coming. But I didn't. I was in blissfully disillusioned, thinking that we'd be prancing around forests with relative ease. That expectation was rudely shattered 15 minutes into the 5 hour race when I found myself fording a knee-deep, forty-foot wide, ice-cold, rushing stream. That's when I put the pieces together and realized the implications of having a former national orienteering champion as a team mate for the race.
At 9:15, instead of frying up eggs and sipping coffee, I was drenched from the waist down in 5-degree weather.
We crossed the stream, made our way to a the edge of a lake, and cut into the woods looking for our first checkpoint. A mere 20 minutes into the race were there. Things were looking good.
All we had to do next was bush-whack in a straight line for about one mile to intersect a road. My team-mate, who I must say has the uncanny ability to slip through the densest forest like a freaking deer on speed, was flying. I barely looked at my compass or map as I tried to keep up. When we finally emerged from the brush on a road, I had no idea where we were. That confusion was not helped by the map. The logging roads in the real world trailed away from intersections at fastly different compass bearings than the ones on the map. Some took sudden 90-degree turns that weren't on the map. All this made it very difficult to figure out where we were, and we walked aimlessly on these roads for about an hour before determining our position. By then we were about 5 km from where our planned route would have us so we made a new plan, and quickly (i.e. in the 90 minutes) found two more check-points. With two hours to go, we had found less than 1/3 of the checkpoints. We went back into the woods and started bush-whacking, but because we were looking for a trail that didn't exist, we spent the next 90 minutes covering about 4 km in the thick woods. By the time we came to a trail, we had 30 minutes to cover 5 km (on roads now) to get to the finish line before running out of time. There was one more check-point right near the end of the course, so our final score was 4/10, unlike the 7 or 8 we had hoped for.
But I learnt some lessons. (1) Even though the course was built for GPS users, we had decided not to bring any because that would be cheating. Next time, I should either take a GPS or not do a race like that. (2) Even if it's a bad map, you have to trust it. (3) If you sign up to run through the woods with a deer, you're going to get your ass kicked by the forest.
ME: I can't believe how much hair seems to fall out in the shower.
ALLIE: I wouldn't worry about it. Each day, 100 new hair follicles form.
ME: Yeah, I don't think that's gonna cut it.
ALLIE: Well, maybe your hair is falling out faster than it's coming back.
ME: You know, I really shouldn't worry about what happens to my hair. I mean, it is my hair that's leaving me, after all.
Well, it has been kind of quiet here lately. But I think it's been a good kind of quiet. Like when you're sitting around the campfire on a beach, and all you can hear is crackling wood and and waves gently rolling onto the shore.
So here we are you and I, sitting on the beach just to the side of a palm tree whose fronds rustle as the trade winds stream past. We've been here a while, and I decide to get up and stretch my legs. The moon is bright tonight, and the clouds in the sky are sparse. Orion stands proudly in the night sky as I stroll along the black sand beach, right at the threshold of the water's edge.
A set of waves is tumbling in. The whitewash shimmers on the blackened ocean. The ocean meets my feet and rushes past -- it's slightly cooler than expected. It reaches up the beach, then recedes. For a moment, the sand gets pulled from underneath my feet as I sink an inch or two.
I've wandered far enough from the fire that I can't hear it anymore, but a quick glance over my shoulder reveals its flickering orange glow on the lone palm tree. I look up at the waves, then past them, into the restless and endless ocean.
I take a couple of steps up the beach, out of the reach of the waves, and sit down facing the ocean. There's something floating in about two feet of water. It's reflecting the moon beams. I can't make out what it is, though, maybe it's driftwood? I don't care much. Taking a deep breath, I instead enjoy the sweet smell of the nearby rain forest intermingled with the salty sea breeze.
Okay. Time to get up.
Lethargically.
Strolling back to the campfire, I stare at it's glow. Nobody breaks the silence as I sit back down. Looking at each other, we share smiles, but there's nothing to be said. A piece of firewood pops, drawing our attention back to the embers. Nothing is said and we return to watching the dance of the fire.
Yeah, it's been that kind of quiet around here.
So on Monday, I think the good folks over at the Globe and Mail were tweaking with their website. I was having some problems which I described to them:
I run Firefox on Linux (insert technobabble here). On your site (and only on your site) I get a segmentation fault when I try to scroll down the page: (insert more technobabble)
As such, I cannot read the content of the globe's website. Today is the first day I've encountered this problem, so it must be a relatively new change.
We do not support Firefox on Linux, for your reference system requirements for theglobeandmail.com can be located at the following link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/v5/content/help/technical-answers.html#general
I think this may partially explain why it is that I am losing my hair.
In no particular order
... A day in the life of Mr. Speaker ...
RESOLUTION NO. 2149 - Tuesday, March 27, 2007
HON. CAROLYN BOLIVAR-GETSON: Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:
Whereas we were all relieved to hear that a missing boy, only two and one-half years old, had been found in the woods near Moser River just before dark last night after being lost for more than four hours; and
Whereas family members were quickly joined by volunteers, including the Sheet Harbour and area ground search and rescue team, with several other volunteer teams also on the way to the area; and
Whereas a potential tragedy was avoided due to the prompt response and coordination among ground search and rescue, the RCMP, our own Emergency Management Office, paramedics, volunteer firefighters and the Natural Resources helicopter crew;
Therefore be it resolved that all members of the House join the Tibert family of Moser River and acknowledge the life-saving efforts of those who helped return the boy to his family last night, cold and wet, but otherwise in good health.
Mr. Speaker, I request waiver of notice.
MR. SPEAKER: There has been a request for waiver.
Is it agreed?
It is agreed.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
On the left, we have what I've had to look at for the last 2 years. On the right, we have what I get to look at now. Yay!
So it's that time of year.
The time of year when you start to realize how little you've done since last fall. When you realize that you have become sadly out of shape, and dammit, you're ready to do something about it.
About 10 days ago, I decided I was going to reverse the getting out of shape trend that had persevered all winter. I decided I was going to try to get in shape for the Blue Nose Half Marathon. (The website for the event has the witty(?) line "the thrill of victory and the agony of the feet".) But is that enough? Nooooo. I have also decided to sign of for the E2C, and another 4-hour orienteering event shortly before it...
Okay, I say to myself, maybe I should get in shape so I can do these things.
So I wrote a note to a friend of mine (who is ridiculously in shape) to see if he would go for a couple of runs with me and basically drag me around the blog a few times. His response was something along the lines of, "I'd love to go on some runs with you, but I must warn you that I'm not really in shape right now and doubt I could run the half in under 1:30."
Well, that's a relief, since doing that last year would have put him in the top 15 finishers, and I'm not quite at that level. At least not yet... I almost hit that time once, and I still partially blame poorly marked miles for missing it, but I don't know if I'm going to go for such a laudable goal this time. I don't want to set that as a goal this year, especially since Halifax will offer a hillier course, but I kind of know myself, so who am I kidding? If I decide to do this, I'm going to want to hit that goal. He knows this.
So last week I went for my first run, since ... probably September. It was slow, with lots of stops. I probably ended up covering about 7 km. To my surprise, I was stopping due to flares up pain from an injury I incurred in 1999. But I survived, without aggrevating the old injury. (Knock on wood.)
This week was less slow, and I (barely) covered 10 km.
The first 4 km were only 3 minutes slower than the pace I'd need to maintain if I wanted to do the half in 1:30. And that's less than 20% the distance to the finish line. Then I slowed down, and probably ran the remaining 6 km in about 35 minutes. And today I can barely walk without looking funny. So I have my work cut out for me.
I think I'll just keep my goal at "don't get hurt" for a while more.
Many people I know loath the public washroom. It's an unsanitary mess of other people's business. Generally, I'd have to say my tolerance is relatively high on this front, but every now and then I come across something that makes me wonder about the general lack of cleanliness of the less fair sex.
Let me introduce you to my work environment. I work in a building of relatively well educated folks: I'd say the average person probably has more than one university degree. My building is quite secure after-hours: unless you correctly enter a 7-digit password, you're locked out. Each floor of my building has it's own pair of his and hers washrooms. By my estimate, the gent's room on my floor handles about 35 of us. Really, it's not an anonymous community; if you see a face you don't recognize you generally assume the person's lost and ask if they need help. So, you might expect, a group like this would try to take care of their environment. You know, keep it clean, be responsible enough to leave a common area more or less as you found it. That sorta thing.
So why is it that I walk into the washroom on a Saturday afternoon to find it smelling like piss?
The short answer, for those who don't have the luxury of entering the men's room on a regular basis, is because some guy was too freaking lazy to press the flush button on the urinal. He essentially peed on a wall and left his urine and all its olfactory goodness to evaporate overnight when all he had to do was press a freaking button to flush. I have never really understood why guys have such a hard time flushing after themselves. (And I hope for the ladies, that this is less of an issue for you.)
So really why is it?
Yes, I'm still here.
No, I haven't forgotten about this site.
I'm just being pulled in too many other directions right now.
Yes, I will return soon and write something.
Hopefully, it will be something worth saying.
Hopefully, I'll have the time to say it clearly.
Hopefully, you'll think it was worth reading.
Until then, here's a fun toy to play with.
In case you were curious, I study what happens to underwater versions of these waves when they hit beaches. (Link to video.)
These waves, by the way, are the surface gravity wave equivalent of a sonic boom.
I think most of us agree that if we were famous, the lack of privacy would probably be the biggest price to pay for it. Perhaps one of the biggest symbols of that loss of privacy is the Paparazzi.
But still, isn't there a part of everyone that would like to feel famous, if only for an instant? And, perhaps, if the Paparazzi were after you, would that make you feel famous? I don't know, but that's got to be the logic behind this ad, designed for a taxi window near you.
Last night, after viewing the premier of 300 with Sween, his Lovey Wife, and Allie, we got home to find a wonderful message on voicemail. It was a birthday blessing. Basically it went something like this...
Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday.
Things have been very busy lately. But this weekend was a break from all that.
Each year I organize a student conference, which passed on Friday. Like last year, I have vowed that this year will be my last year organizing it. Unlike last year, I think the person that stepped up to learn how to organize it will actually want to do it again next year. Instead of doing things, I tried to take more of a delegation-style of management so other people did the work, thereby learning how to do it next time (without me). Still I had to prepare a presentation. I submitted the abstract for it only four days beforehand and still didn't have results at the time. I guess that's the beauty of a local student conference: preliminary results (i.e. two data points without error bars) are okay and deemed to be interesting...
Afterward, we had a departmental party which rolled into a birthday party at my house. We had copious amounts of sangria (served in a drawer), home-made meat balls and tiramisu from PG, delicious cakes from Anna, and a wonderful collection of friends to share it all with. Those who left while the buses were still running, while leaving earlier than any wished, made smart decisions because nobody scored a taxi. We had some rather freaky weather Friday night, with snow turning to hail turning to freezing rain and everybody was looking for taxis. One person got through at 1:30 and was told the taxi company would call when they were ready to pick them up. At 2:30 she got through to another company that told her the same thing. At 3:30 the 9 people that were still at our apartment decided to walk home. I did my best to try to assure people they could stay, and when they did decide to leave, I offered them as much rain gear as I could muster to help them stay dry. No taxi company ever called back. I hope they all survived their walks home.
I am now enjoying the spoils of having gone around the sun once again. I am eagerly reading A book about Pirates! that I received from Dan and Amanda. I am not sure how they found this book since Amazon says its release date is September 2007. But if anybody needs an absolutely silly book to read, may I recommend you start at the beginning of the story, and not expect fine literature. Next on my list is the first comic book I will ever read, which was delivered to me by Sween and his lovely wife (who you must read about when you visit his site). Seriously, I have never read a comic book. Perhaps this will be the dawning of a new era in my life. From the same man that introduced me to, um, the importance of monkeys, I guess. But the chance to read a comic book that has been called literature is kind of exciting. Plus I'll be able to say "I thought the book was better". I am also excited to finally have a copy of Baraka, from Mike and his Lovely Wife. I remember seeing this movie in the theatres and being blown away. I've probably rented it 5 or 6 times in the last 10 years. The word Baraka means blessing in several languages and the film is a series of images put to music that are meant to celbrate and humanity, our planet, and the interaction between the two. Its a stunning cinematographic piece and if you haven't seen it, it's worth renting.
On Saturday, which was my actual birthday, Allie and I agreed we were going to both do absolutely nothing all day. We didn't even take a day like that over our Christmas holiday, and I can't really remember the last time we both agreed to do nothing. We eventually rolled out of bed and got out the door around the crack of noon. Despite the weather the night before, it was a beatiful day. Temperatures were around 5 degrees and the streets and sidewalks were clear. We walked downtown, and had brunch at a restaurant called Deco. Then we perused random shops, mostly window shopping. (I picked up a orange long-sleeve shirt from MEC for SAR and that's it I think.) By about 4 or 4:30, we decided to head home but thought we aught to pick up a movie first. We had chosen two films neither of us had seen: Miller's Crossing and Syriana. But then while in line at the check-out, we saw they were selling the box set for the second season of Lost. After a short discussion, we decided to go and get the first season of Lost. Neither of us had really seen any episodes but have had many people tell us that we would love it. For the rest of the weekend we lay on the couch, watched Lost, and ate leftovers from the party.
It's kind of sad when you realize that you can't remember the last time you really did nothing for a whole day, let along two. But it was a much needed mental break.
...And we now return to our regularly-scheduled, daily fugue.
Yesterday, while talking with my office mate, we coined a new term: Googlespace. (To be fair, we didn't invent it, but reinvented it.)
In this particular case, I was looking for the package required to run ruby from a command line, and was having a horrible time searching for it. I didn't know what it was called, and using the words "command" and "line" with any programming language will have a suite of hits that lock onto a specific target about as well as a shotgun blast. Knowing that my office mate was using this tool already, I asked him to tell me what it was called, telling him that I was lost in Googlespace. This term seemed to please him, as it did me.
Spaces have a rather rigorous mathematical definition, such as vector spaces, or returning to an old post, eigenspaces. So surely there must be some sort of encapsulating space for the seemingly infinite Googlespace.
I was a little surprised, when I Googled Googlespace to find hits that had nothing to do with my version whatsoever. As you scroll down the page, there's something about a giant earwig. Near the bottom of the first page, there were a couple of hits that were closer to our idea of Googlespace. The definition by the urban dictionary was somewhat poorly defined, as it has more do with the space you take up in Google rather than the vastness of Googlespace (i.e. it's a definition of the subset within Googlespace that describes you).
But still, I like the concept of Googlespace. Maybe one day, when I have absolutely nothing better to do I will pursue this. However, I truly hope that day never comes.
Before getting to those comforting words, I must tell a story.
But first, I must tell you about SETI.
There's a program run out of UC Berkeley called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. Basically, the project listens to the universe, hoping to hear something from another life-form, like a radio transmission. Now, as you can imagine, the universe is kind of a big place, so it takes a lot of time, energy, and computer power to listen to it all. To help with this gargantuan project, SETI elicits help from whomever is willing to help them. They developed a program, called SETI@home, that you can download and run on your home computer.
Here's how SETI@home works. When your computer is idle it will spend its time and energy searching for new life in the universe. Every couple of days, your computer will report into SETI and let it know where it didn't find anything. The report includes an ID for the computer as well as its IP address.
Okay, now the story:
Meet James Melin, a software developer in Minnesota. He and his wife have seven home computers. Since it is hard to keep seven home computers occupied at once, James installed SETI@home on them. Sadly, a couple of months ago, his wife's laptop was stolen. The police had no leads, but Mr. Melin was determined to do what he could to get it back. Knowing the SETI ID for the computer, he went to the database where computers send their reports back to SETI. He found his computer ID, found the IP address, and gave that info to the police. The police then got a subpoena and were able to get the actual mailing address from the internet service provider. With that information, they recovered the laptop.
So, what are the comforting words?
Well when being interviewed after the whole ordeal was over, here's what his wife had to say about the love of her life:
I always knew a geek would make a great husband....He's a genius - my hero!
This one goes out to all you Linux/UNIX/Mac users out there. (I know there's gotta be at least one of you....) Today, I found the coolest command-line calculator ever. It's a Perl script that goes and queries the Google Calculator. Here it is in action.
Sent to me by the U.S. Department of Commerce:
ATTENTION
Greetings billfish anglers! Please complete the attached Billfish Angler Survey for 2006 and return as soon as possible. The results will be summarized for the next issue of the Billfish Newsletter which is currently being compiled.
[yada yada yada this is how you fill out a form butthead yada yada yada]
Thank you for your support.
Smooth seas and good fishing,
Jane Doe, Fisheries Biologist
John Doe, Computer Specialist
Okay, I'm going to be honest, here. I don't really understand these Meme things. But Sween seems to like them and had the grace of "tagging" me with this one. I don't really know what these things are...as best I can tell it's an excuse to write stuff. Which I guess kind of fits into the whole blog thing. But still, I've been dreading the day when I'd be asked to do one of these things. I will, however, at least honour the request of whomever sent it my way by doing my best to respond.
I guess if I'm to do this right, I better do some research. It turns out that the term Meme (pronounced "meem") is "a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another". The term was invented by the acclaimed science writer Richard Dawkins who has written books including The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow. It's an interesting idea, and I think I've heard it talked about in seminars about different pods of whales exhibiting different cultural behaviour.
The general idea is that memes are things like paintbrushes or catchy jingles or new ways of making tires...basically the social/technological equivalent to genes. I'm not sure if the meat of this document counts as cultural information about me that will be passed on, thereby making the world a different place.
Okay, I'm done dragging my feet. Let's get this over with.
6 things that you probably didn't know about me, but won't change your life now that you do
As some of you may know, the house where Allie and I live was put up for sale some time ago. We were given this information by our landlady about 1 day before the sign went up and about 1 month after resigning the lease. She had kicked out the tenants below when their lease expired but kept us on without telling us to make the property more sell-able. The thing that had us most worried was that the lease we signed is set to expire the day before our wedding. Suddenly we thought that maybe we were going to end up married but without a home.
Well, last week the house sold. And yesterday we met our new landlord and were invited to his housewarming. We totally lucked out. He doesn't want us to leave, he doesn't want to raise the rent, and he wants to do some much-needed improvements to the house.
In addition to being a nice guy that sounds like he'll be conscientious of the folks living upstairs, his brother is married to somebody I played ultimate with in Vancouver! His brother and sister-in-law weren't at the housewarming, because they're in Kauai for the winter (poor suckers). But his mother is flying to Kauai today and is all excited that we know her other son. So we basically went from being complete strangers to practically friends of the family in, oh, I'd say about 5 minutes.
Phew.
Jeremiah was a fellow oceanographer, a fellow ultimate player, and a friend. Shortly after I left Hawaii, he married a former resident of my home there. The soon-to-be newlyweds gave me one of the most beautiful leis I'd ever seen on my last night on the islands before moving back to Canada.
A few years ago, Jeremiah left oceanography to become a science teacher at a local high school. He thrived in that role.
Earlier this week, however, he lost his life suddenly while on a field trip. From the sounds of things, he just jumped into the water on a free-dive, and that was it. He didn't resurface. By the time rescuers could get to him, it was too late.
That is the tragic news that greeted me this morning when I checked my email.
I am a little stunned today. And a little saddened. When I first got the news of his death, I didn't know what had happened but I had a feeling the ocean was involved. He was a child of the islands, and had a connection with the ocean. If there is any solace in the story of his death, it is that he was sharing his passion for the ocean environment with his students at the time.
I was not only a friend of his, but also of his wife and his father, both of whom also played ultimate. On more than one occasion, we hung out on the ultimate field when the night's games were over and the lights had gone out, sharing beers and sharing stories.
Today, my thoughts are with his wife and his young daughter. He was a positive influence in so many lives, and will be dearly missed by many.
On the anniversary of Rafik Hariri's assasination, and just after the bus bombings in Lebanon, the March 14 Coalition wants to impose sanctions on Syria?? This is nuts.
Another cool shot from NASA's Earth Observatory:
The image has 6MB worth of detail so you can really zoom in! This is a shot of the Sea of Okhotsk (which is between Siberia and Kamchatka for all the Risk players in the room). Cold arctic outbreaks, like those that put the Canadian prairies in deep freeze from time to time, cause intense cooling sessions over this sea. When the ice - which must be almost 100% pure fresh water for it to keep its crystalline form - removes fresh water from the sea, the enhanced saltiness of the water left behind is actually enough to cause that water to sink. This heavy water will sink to the bottom of the sea, and then cascade down into the deep ocean, like a slow motion water-fall. (Interestingly the same thing happens in the Mediterranean Sea because evaporation removes water but leaves salt behind.)
A neat feature of the image is that you don't really see clouds until the wind (which is blowing offshore) gets past the ice and starts blowing over the water.
Since we cannot let sween be without his lovey wife, and as it only seems right that he can have his cake (meaning his wife) and eat it (meaning his cake) too, I bring him (and you)
FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE
This recipe was given to me by my sister and copied out almost verbatim here. So, without further ado...
My supervisor is someone who labours over coming up with good titles for things. Papers, theses, email subjects, you name it. He always wants to get the point across as accurately as possible in as few words as possible. And he's taught me to follow that model to some extent, though admitedly I don't labour over titles of posts here all that much. Anyway, coming up with good titles can be quite the art and at times it can become an obsession. It is in this context that this headline is either terrible or amazing:
So, I don't have a lot of sea-going experience, but I've got enough to see this as going too far.
Some activist group was chasing down a Japanese whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean (i.e. between Antarctica and Africa/South America), which -- despite the calm seas in this picture -- is notorious for having some of the roughest seas in the world. From the sounds of things, these activists on board their ship The Robert Hunter got in the way of a whaling ship and got rammed by it, as was later reported from another one of their ships The Farley Mowat.
Now, based purely on the names of their ships, it's hard to take this activist group (the Sea Shepherds) seriously. Their actions make it even harder. As the photo above suggests, these people think of themselves somewhat as pirates, arrrrr. They tried to jam the whaling ship's propeller with ropes. They were harassing the whaling ship so much that it sent out a distress call. And they were reckless enough with their own lives and those of the sailors on board the whaling ship, that they forced two collisions, one of which left a gash in their hull! Apparently, they also temporarily lost a couple of their members who were in a small raft. Luckily for those in the raft, they were found.
Now, while Japanese "scientific whaling" operations may be suspicious, there is a limit as to what should be done to stop them. The adventure of almost getting killed while acting like a stupid-ass pirate (arrrrr) in one of the most treacherous oceans might get your adrenaline going, but I must say these people are idiots. Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't exactly call myself an advocate of whaling or a believer of the science Japan uses to suggest commercial whaling should be brought back into full practice. In fact, I think they need to be stopped. Whether you agree with the law or not, these whalers were acting within international law, so don't think you're being some hero by hating the player.
You want to go change the world? Great! Be my guest. Go lobby, generate attention through civil disobedience, do your thing. But try not to get yourself killed in the process. And maybe while you're at it, try not to threaten the safety of other people's lives, either. What would have happened if somebody was actually killed here?
In parting, I'll just close with a shot of the "R/V" Farley Mowat (that stands for "Research Vessel"...riiiiight) with a Pirate Flag! Arrrr!
Gotta love the Canadian flag and the pirate flag! Um, excuse me, Arrrrr, eh? Oh, you don't like pirates, sorry.
Why is it that when I find this site funny it happens to be mirroring the most unusual events in my life, like the challenge involved in getting a computer to give you a truly random number. Which is why today's xkcd comic is so fitting:
What makes this even weirder is that this is C code. I almost never program in C. But I happen to be for my random number application.
Really, this shouldn't be that funny. Today, however, it is.
In response to themikestand's request about our whereabouts in this post...
This is Benj:
Behind him at the Car Museum in L.A. is his favourite car, Herbie.
Benj and I have had a special friendship for as long as I've known. He is five years my elder, but when we met (I think I was about 4) we hit it off and became instant best friends.
Benj was handed mental and physical disabilities at birth, which is the first thing anyone will notice when they see him. However, he also has an amazing charisma and infectious love for life. This charisma made him a local celebrity on our street where we grew up as next-door neighbours. Everyone knew him, and everyone took care of him. He could walk out his front door in downtown Toronto at 8 p.m., and his family knew he would be fine. When I first met him we were of comprable "mental age". We would have fun riding our Big Wheels together or stomping on ants on the sidewalk.
As we grew up, however, this changed. At some point I became aware of what was happening...I was growing up faster than him. This was hard to take, and for a few years our friendshp suffered. But with time, I learned to accept this change in our friendship. It went from having a best friend to having a younger cousin or a younger brother. One of his most common questions to me was "Are you happy?" to which my truthful reply was "Only if you are". He became someone I would always want to take care of and always want to have fun with. Suddenly I realized that our relationship haddened actually changed...everything was always about having fun.
His house became a haven for me where I could escape the stresses of everyday adolescence, be it due to school or family or girls or anything else. No matter what was happening, we just continued to fly kites, catch frogs at the pond, watch Herbie movies, or play Hungry Hippos. Throughout my adolescence, we stayed great friends. I wrote essays about our friendship during highschool, and two television documentaries talked about our friendship. In the first one I was 5 and didn't have much to say, but in the second I was 15 and got interviewed extensively. That one ends with me saying something to the effect of:
Sometimes I wonder what will happen. I won't live here forever. What if I move or I go to university and move to another city? [pause] I know we'll stay friends forever.
Two years after the filming, I moved halfway across town. Then I left Toronto to study the in Montreal and Vancouver. Somewhere during that time Benj and his mom moved to L.A. where is two sisters were already living. As I predicted at the awkward age of 15, we've kept in touch. In the two visits I've made to California since he moved there, I've spent a couple of days visiting him. I have asked him to be in my wedding party, and he has accepted and is excited about it.
This week I discovered a something new about Benj. There has been a book published about him. There is something very special about this book. It is written by his mother. Benj's mother is a clinical psychologist that specializes in children with disabilities. So in a sense, he is very lucky to be have been born to her. She knows how to help Benjamin live a full life.
Benj's mother has encouraged his interests and helped his development always. Whether it was getting a dog or a turtle, or learning to play the harp (the Harp!!), or joining the local bowling league, or playing hockey, or finding temp work, she has made it happen. Thanks in no small part to her, Benj is a hard worker, an accomplished athlete, and a musician. He lives a very full life, and is one of the most sincerely happy people you could ever hope to meet.
As I told his mother in a recent letter to her, I am very excited about this book. It is both a personal and a professional description of his development, and will give me a deeper insight into one of the most important people in my life. And in addition, just thinking about reading this book is reminding me of everything our friendship has meant over the years.
