Flubber-gusted, Arrrrrrr

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.

That's random

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.

you are here...

In response to themikestand's request about our whereabouts in this post...

That yellow dot on the Atlantic coast is approximately Halifax (my version of here). North is to the right in the picture. West is to the top of the picture.

The yellow dot near the horizon is where I do my field work.

The red dot is the Bay of Fundy.

The green dot is Cape Breton. (Those white parallel clouds are internal waves that formed as wind blows over the highlands.)

Are you happy? Only if you are...

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.

Apple webpage evolution

A Flickr member who goes by the name of Kernel Panic and is clear a Mac-phile has made an effort to document the evolution of the apple.com homepage over the years. I don't know if this is a complete list, but it's impressive all the same.

Some are neat, some are less neat. But this is the oddest one of the collection (when the Mac page was hacked in 1997)...


Then there's the arrogant ones...


And the whole "think different" campaign...


And of course, their commeration of cultural legends...


And this one taught me that I'm older than Apple, though only just slightly.

Rescue on Mount Seymour, BC

Last week on CBC Radio's Sounds Like Canada, I heard an interview with Tim Jones (See February 1st - I have asked CBC if they will be making that interview available but have not yet heard back. I will post a link to the interview if it becomes available).

The interview gives a first person recount of a somewhat remarkable rescue by North Shore Rescue in Vancouver, which actually got them a lot of press. I was so taken by the story, I wanted to find other recounts of it. I found one on the team blog. (A SAR team with a blog? And one of the busiest teams in the country, too?? Maybe we should do that...)

I'm not going to cut and paste from the story because the whole thing is just amazing. As a teaser, it involves 1000' falls, helicopter rescues, collapsing shelters in poor weather, and searchers surviving avalanches. Our team has an expression, "the harder you train, the luckier you get". Though the narrator of this story is a little modest, it is clear that this team didn't just get lucky on this one.

I thought of joining North Shore Rescue many years ago when I lived in Vancouver, but after reading their site I realized I wasn't their ideal candidate since I had no mountaineering experience. This story confirms that thought.

52 weeks ago today

Fifty-two weeks ago (plus or minus a couple of hours), I was sitting on a big flat rock on the side of Long Lake, just outside Halifax. I wasn't alone. With me was my lady friend, Allie.

The weeks leading up to that point by the lake had been rather hectic. I had been preparing for a departmental seminar and a conference, and Allie was studying hard for an exam. But we managed to sneak off on a nice warm February afternoon to go for a hike. It was a beautiful walk through the woods with a light mist blowing through the trees. Normally I would not remember these sorts of details a week after the fact, let alone a year, but this hike was going to be a special one. Unbeknown to Allie, I had a ring zipped away in my pocket, and today I was going to stop worrying about her finding it in my sock drawer.

As we walked along the trail through the woods, I was looking for nice spots with scenic views. Noticing one particular spot, I decided we'd have to visit it on the way back. So after walking by a waterfall, and balancing across some fallen trees, all the while hearing the drips of melting snow on a warm day, we stopped at this sun-warmed rock looking over the lake to have a little chat.

Allie, being Allie, was in the mood to talk, which was good. Today she had chosen the topic, How lonely and miserable my life would be if I had never met her. I'm not kidding. What could be better?

Apparently in all of Halifax, she had determined it would have been absolutely impossible for me to ever find anyone as good for me as her.

"Um, yeah, about that," I sheepishly interjected upon deaf ears.

In fact, it sure was a good thing I went to Montreal when I did, and a good thing that I happened to meet her when I did, otherwise who knows what would have become of her and then I would never have met her and I'd be doomed to a love life of failure worthy of its own ongoing saga on some cartoon TV-series^*.

At this point I had the ring in my hand - clutched very tightly because I was not dropping this thing into the lake - but the conversation was starting to drift a little past where the time seemed right.

So I waited for a good time, and I tried to steer the conversation back...

... and I waited ...

... and I waited some more ....

and then Allie said, "Well, we better get back to the car before it gets dark." And with that she shuffled off the rock, turned her back to the lake, and started walking back up to the trail.

Quickly, and with mountain goat grace I might add, I managed to scramble to a nearby gravel shoreline. It was there that I mustered all of my intellectual ability to compose the most incredibly suave statement that would both woo her and delay her return to the trail. "Hold on a second."

And I walked up to her.

And I looked at her.

And she looked at me.

And I paused.

And I asked myself why I didn't rehearse this out-loud at least once.

And I took a deep breath.

And before I could say anything her eyes got really big -- I mean saucer big.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said bashfully.

"No, what is it?"

"Um, I thought you were - well this is going to sound silly - I thought you were going to get on one knee."

And then, with my whole poorly-scripted plan quashed, I just went with the flow and got on one knee. And I said some garble and probably stuttered. And I offered her the ring. And she accepted it.

^{* To be fair to Allie, I may have embellished this part only slightly.}