News from Outer Space. March2014

GRAVITY WAVES
The biggest story is a convincing re-analysis of background cosmic radiation that points to gravitational waves, the ghostly debris of the first trillionth of a second post Big Bang.  Gravity is the one force that hasn't had a particle or wave associated with it.

Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive twisting pattern in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background,  Read more at Science Daily News.

CME ALMOST FRIED ELECTRONICS WORLWIDE JULY 2012
The sun spit out a perfect storm of flares that would have rivaled the Carrington event of  September 1st 1859 if it had pointed our way in July 2012.  Two trillion dollars of damage and a few years to recover sounds about right.   Nine days earlier we`d have got it.

``The paper in Nature Communications describes what gave the July 2012 storm Carrington-like potency. For one thing, the CME was actually two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes. Plus the CMEs traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by another CME four days earlier``. (posted at spaceweather.com but can`t give a permalink.) (Video below from The Register story.)

MULTI-GIGAPIXEL ZOOM MAP OF THE MOON

A 680 gigapixel image of the moon from 60deg. to the north pole  has been posted by NASA.  It zooms smoothly, resolving rocks to 2m. Almost unfrickenbelievable.  This links to the interactive website and below is a snapshot of what it looks like when you go  there.         There's an app for a map, not so finely resolved but stunning on your smart phone.










HUBBARD TRACKS LARGE ASTEROID COMING APART.
A large asteroid has been tracked as it starts to come apart with more than three lumps travelling jointly. It seems to have been cobbled together from smaller lumps which are being stressed unequally by the small but nonetheless real heating by the sun.

Time lapse Hubble photos of P/2013 R3 as it breaks up.

TWIN CRATERS IN SWEDEN
Side by side craters in Sweden (Lockne and Malingen) are proved to be from two such meteor chunks that had a like trajectory and arrived almost at the same moment.  The speculation is that multiple bundles are common and in some cases, the lesser is in orbit like a moon around the larger.  (Couplets may be 2 to 15%).  Link to a second story with pictures.

LINK
Link to last issue, January2014.

Redford optimistic for future of Alberta as she resigns. Me too.

"With profound optimism for Alberta’s future – I am resigning as premier of Alberta effective this Sunday evening.”

Thank you.

Alison in 2009 and today.

Polonius: ``I will most humbly take my leave of you``.
Hamlet: ``You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal``
(Hamlet Act 2 scene 2).``

The Wildrose Party in Cory Morgan`s recent blog post is sounding mushy and middling.I hope a whiff of opportunity doesn`t turn them into Redford conservatives.

As the Wildrose Party has grown and matured as a party, our policies have evolved and moderated every year. We have learned from experience what is realistic and what is acceptable to Albertans and have adjusted our actions accordingly. As the policy set moves towards what some may view as a more mushy middle, some critics have questioned what differences remain between the Wildrose Party and the reigning Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. While the policies may appear to be getting similar (can’t really find a good copy of the PC ones), the difference between the parties is still immense.
The biggest difference between the Wildrose Party and the PCs is subtle yet profound.``

Auditing your enemies. Nixon wanted a "ruthless son of a bitch".

Obama is getting the same IRS audit results as Nixon.  Are the president and his colleagues lily-white or is this "quacks like a duck, is a duck"?  The Chicago Way.

Nixon fired the IRS commissioner, R.W. Thrower in 1971 for insisting "Sure, we’ll audit them — just like everyone else when their names come up through the regular audit selection process.”  Looking for a replacement Commissioner in May of that year, Nixon "made clear what kind of commissioner he wanted".

“I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch,” he was recorded as saying, “that he will do what he is told, that every income tax return I want to see I see” and “that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”

Information from Tax Prof. 

R W Thrower fired in 1971
for doing his job at the IRS.

The genius of Rostropovich: Complete Cello Concerto #1 C Dur by Haydn

A wonderful performance of Haydn’s 1^st cello concerto with Rostropovich both playing and directing a crisp ensemble.  I watched three other versions with excellent cellists who mug and agonize while Mstislaw holds an inner peace. I think Haydn would love to have been in the audience.   R walks onto stage gesturing with a pulse of energy and sits while the players lead spiritedly into the work.  Are the 1^st cello and string bass playing from memory too?  I had to clap my hands for joy.

A Thousand Year Tug of War: Borders of Europe in restless animation.

A bit of a lull from WW2 to the breakup of the USSR but change and struggle is the constant. It passes your eyes at five years per second.   Intriguing are the finely pixellated states where Germany now sits, unlike any other region. Their parochial granulation persisted for hundreds of years while surrounded by the pulsations of regional giants.  Russia, so much in the news this week, isn't clearly an empire or even a country until recent times.       Thanks to smalldeadanimals for the link.


Watch as 1000 years of European borders change (timelapse video) from TransferWise on Vimeo.

Russian humour in the Crimea: Obama promoted to KGB Colonel

'The newly elected PM of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, tweeted yesterday: “I wonder, after the successful campaign of handing over the Crimea, will Barack be promoted to a colonel?” '  The Russian-language Tweet was accompanied by a Photoshopped picture of Barack Obama wearing a Russian uniform.  (Quoted from the original at PJ Tatler).

Believe it or not, the Crimean PM-elect used yet another photo-shop for his tweet.  The use of mockery is a potent tool.

Sex-blind health premiums are a tax on young men.

Women consume more health dollars than men, a lot more. A third more.  Living longer explains only 40% of that. A Michigan study (2000) shows lifetime expense of $361,200 per woman and $268,700 per man. This isn't news to the insurance industry but it's big news for young men in America who are picking up the tab for Obamacare and being punished with a tax if they don't.  In Canada, health is over 40% of provincial budgets.  No wonder health is a woman's issue. The gentler sex has the upper hand and will keep it as long as health premiums are blind to sex. When most people live in families with children, who cares? When instead there are many single working adults taxed to pay health care for strangers, is that fair?

Sharing the load sounds kind of noble until you remember that the young generally have fewer assets and lower wages than those same people when they are approaching retirement.  Why pick on the young.  Just think of the last time you went out for a dinner in an upscale restaurant.  Almost every table has grey haired diners.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

Because ObamaCare prohibits insurance companies from charging different premiums according to sex, and because women tend to use more medical services than men--a disparity that is greatest among younger policyholders--the "gender averaged" premium increase is greater for young men than for young women.
That means young men are the most disadvantaged by ObamaCare's price controls--and, as a corollary, that they are the group on which ObamaCare's solvency is most dependent.

Obama, mocked as a "Prankster", has the germ of a good idea

The press and the Russians have mocked Obama for coming up with sanctions that might injure a dozen rich Russians and Ukrainians.   It does however echo the personalized strategy Israel developed to manage terrorism by taking down the command structure one kill at a time.  I think it likely that if a few hundred corruptocrats feared for their fortune, they would steer Russia's policy into calmer waters.  On the other hand, personalized sanctions is also the petty strategy of Obama and the left in America who try to attack and isolate people like the Koch family, rather than win a fair policy fight.

No government in history - a Word to the Wise.

No government in history
with a monetary system
ever intended to pay off all its debt.

Canadian oil moving south by train, competing with XL pipeline. Cue outrage.

Highlights from the Kansas City Star:

Choo choo trains of yesteryear have become “tremendously nimble competitors.” and "changed the competitive landscape forever", especially for thick Canadian oil sands product. Within two years CN and CP rail capacity will be abreast of the 830,000 barrels per day projected for the XL pipeline. North American oil train shipping ramped up from 10,000 carloads five years ago to 400,000 last year and 600-800,000 projected by 2016.  (This also means Canadian oil is getting a better price. By the way, most of the XL is already built from Cushing ND, south. Just the Canadian leg is blockaded by politicians and environmentalists.)

The little engine that could

The thick oil doesn't have to be diluted by a third and then undiluted at the other end to get through the pipeline, especially if the oil is kept warm in the tankers.  The tankers carry loads both ways but the pipelines are just one or the other.  The tankers can go to many more destinations including the east and west coast and barge destinations but pipelines cannot. Train capacity can be stepped up quickly in small increments with fewer approvals.    (If you Google "oil trains" you will only find links to outrage and danger flags.  Even in that area, there are gains:  New tankers have thicker walls and oil sands oil, being thicker, is less flammable.)

"Railroads have defied skeptics and are in it for the long haul".

Footnote:  Some oil prices are climbing because the backlog at Cushing ND is declining and that oil is being moved to market at world prices.   There was a big dollar discount for it until recently.  Another contribution to this is the Seaway pipeline that Enbridge bought and reversed to flow north to south.

"These barrels are no longer landlocked, so they're tracking the global price rather than that landlocked lower price they were seeing for the last couple of years,"

Graphene nano box is a hydrogen suitcase that opens and shuts on demand.

The ultimate hydrogen power pack has been invented.  A one-atom-thick graphene surface has nine hinged panels that fold when goosed by an electric charge.  The panels fold with overlaps into a six-sided leak-proof cube brim-full of trapped hydrogen. The 3-D animation at the link is beautiful.  The University of Maryland research by mechanical engineers Shuze Zhu and Teng Li points the way to amazingly light and long-lasting fuel cells.   h/t to Instapundit linking to phys.org

From the animation: (Click on the link above, not the fake "start" symbol below.)

Watch millions of Londoners going to and from work in sixty second animation.

The animation is based on scanned transit passes for the City of London for 3.1 million people.  The dynamic map is like a living crystal driven by solar energy (time of day).  Story found at zipcar.com

GPS Tracking all airplanes all the time everywhere in the world.

Flightradar24 is updating a world map every few seconds with the position and direction of all known aircraft aloft in the world.  Zoom on the world map to see your area.  You can check how far out your plane is while you wait.  The "About" page explains that Europe has almost 100% coverage and North America is increasing rapidly as more and more planes add the public GPS link.   Hat tip to smalldeadanimals.  Planes update by the second although some (in orange) have a 5 minute display delay.  Soon all planes will have this GPS satellite update as radar is replaced.

Here's the live display centred on Buffalo NY.
and two snapshots:

Truckers strike at Port of Vancouver: You are misinformed if you get all your news in one place.

From one site (CBC)you learn that container truckers' average pay is only $15.59/hour because of long waits and rates that have been pegged for eight years at the Port of Vancouver.  That seems ridiculous for a guy with a hundred thousand invested in his truck.

From a second site (CTV) you learn that great harm is being done to the Canadian economy and that the PM says it's not acceptable to have small numbers of people blocking important trade.

From a third:  The Seattle Times expects ships to be diverted to Puget Sound  and permanent market share loss for Vancouver, quoting a Port of Vancouver spokesman:

"What they're (truckers) doing is putting at risk their market share," he said. "If they thought it was competitive before, it's only going to get worse." Negotiations collapsed Thursday as Bob Simpson of Team Transport Services, which represents about 40 employers, asserted that demands by the truckers amount to an average 30 percent rate increase, plus 30 percent more in other monetary demands.

From a fourth, myself:  These truckers are mostly Sikhs and that has a bearing.  We paid an extra $1200 to get a Super B truckload of lumber delivered to our truss plant two weeks ago, double the going rate.  The lumber was two weeks overdue because no trucks could be found in the interior of BC.  One mill even refused new orders until trucks would come to clear out the mill yard.  No change is expected for 4 to 6 weeks.  Just like the drivers you see in the Port of Vancouver pictures,  most of the lumber truck drivers are Sikhs and, quite reasonably, they don't like to drive on poor winter roads.  The last delivery problem we had was because of the Diwali festival long weekend in November when Sikhs headed home to celebrate.  Can you find a single story highlighting the Sikh angle on this strike?

Good men but not into St. Patrick's day.

Thanks to Mark Twain for help with the headline.
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

Pi Pie

Pi Pie, created at Delft University of Technology, applied physics, seismics and acoustics.

Delicious and decidedly European, in honour of "pi" day.  The first 28 significant figures are iced into the top.  March 14th.  Why not?

More at Astrobob

You have to pay to find out if you're legal. CSA and the Building Code.

The BC Building Code 2012 governs all construction in the province.  It costs hundreds of dollars to find out if you are in compliance.  That's because BC pays the Canadian Standard Association for permission to print CSA specs.  This was publicized recently at restorecsa.com  "Ontario P:ays for Permission to Print Provincial Law", asking the question, "Does a private corporation own public law". (h/t smalldeadanimals).      

This is wrong in every way.  Power is arbitrary if the rules aren't clear and available to everyone subject to them.

Stop making fun of Shiny Pony

The Ban Bossy movement appeared in the States, apparently as battlespace preparation for Hilary to run in 2016.   Canada is ready for the Ban Shiny Pony movement.  Stop mocking this lovely toy favoured by young women honing skills for the adult world.

My beloved little pony
You can comb its lovely hair.
The video shows how.

Spy Olympics: America is #4 and China the top dog.

Strategy Page rates them:
#4  US
#3  Russia
#2  Israel
#1  China

Read the rest here.
US is ahead in data collection but not cyber attacks and penetration of other security agencies?

"Experts point to China as the undisputed leader in global cyber warfare. China is believed to have hacked the Australian intelligence apparatus, Indian government networks and departments within the Canadian government. The U.S. suspects China of both sabotage and espionage of American defense networks, private corporations, industrial organizations, research facilities and industrial assets"

US #4

.

Costco hearing aids - professional and the best deal. See photo with prices.

This is my second time to pick up a set of hearing aids from Costco.  People are still surprised to hear that Costco sells them.  Most don't know there are trained audiologists and technicians in every store that handles them. The photo with prices is from their display case in one BC store.  Everything is up front and open with prices clearly marked. I believe the Kirkland unit is a re-branding of ReSound.  You will need to make an appointment for up to an hour and a half. Testing includes the standard pitch-and-volume test done with an earphone and then re-done with direct-to-bone transmission, followed by discrimination with different background "white noises" that hiss or sound like traffic, followed by discrimination between various consonants at the same volume level and quizzing about your comfort levels for sound.  Prepay if you like their recommendation and pick it up two weeks later.    See link to "Why Costco rules in hearing aids as well as gummy bears" in Business Week.

Europe channels Sarah Palin: Drill Baby, Drill

Instapundit slyly points out that Europe sounds like Sarah Palin. Europe is pushing the States to up its energy exports so they can be independent of Russia's gas.  Obama doesn't want to hear what Sarah was saying but may have to.  A reminder: Once Obama releases gas export permits, the US is far ahead of the rest of the world.  (Most of the world except for Canada, that is.)  Read this:

"America remains the sole state to capitalize on its shale oil and gas resources.... The shale revolution was more than just the result of applying the dual techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling to underground hydrocarbon reservoirs. Rather, the US energy revolution was the product of a mature oil and gas drilling industry, replete with robust supply chains. The boom depended on a unique set of mineral rights that provided landowners with a financial incentive to invite drillers on to their land, on a deep pool of capital, and on a variety of small wildcatting firms willing to take on the risk of drilling exploratory wells. . . .

Despite having some of the thicker—and therefore easier to drill—shale in Europe, faulted stratigraphy, stunted support infrastructure, and a byzantine regulatory environment are preventing Britain from imitating America’s shale success."

Trudeau fils or Harper (rinse and repeat)?

I admire Stephen Harper but like Beethoven too.  Ludwig won't be our next PM and Stephen is no shoo-in either. Justin will have the edge for likeability, the change vote and lost liberals looking for a home. Stephen has the edge for character, policy and experience.  Justin will do better in a boxing match while Stephen tickles the ivories with panache. Does it matter?  20% of the electorate swings in a fortnight over cancer, faked expenses or a rumoured affair.

Not one of us gets to vote for head of government, not even in ridings from which representatives Trudeau and Harper will advance.  That's decided in a Party meeting we don't attend.  If you want a better leader, change the Party.  Change policy and appointments at the Party level in ridings and in national conventions. Voting in national elections for a representative instead of a leader does less.

Contradiction in Canadian National Character

While we Canadians get huffy when called hewers of wood and drawers of water, we are proud of our ice.
The papers are full of stories about the Great Lakes freezing right over (almost) and Niagara falls being frozen solid (well a few bits).   We're not just a cute face selling wood, ore and water, we have manly virtues that withstand blizzards of the True North.

Example from The Star

CTV News: Niagara Falls freezes again

"Bird brain" may be a scientific compliment

Cells coordinate for cognitive tasks during sleep with 3D pulses dispersing throughout bird brains.  Instead of an "elegant layered mammalian necortex" with 2D waves travelling within the neocortex during sleep, birds have "un-layered seemingly poorly structured nuclear masses of neurons" and a 3D wave dispersal throughout the whole structure.

"They found complex 3D plumes of brain activity propagating through the brain that clearly differed from the two-dimensional activity found in mammals. These findings show that the layered neuronal organization of the neocortex is not required for waves to propagate, and raise the intriguing possibility that the 3D plumes of activity perform computations not found in mammals.

The authors note that during the course of evolution, birds replaced the three-layered cortex present in their reptilian ancestors with nuclear brain structures. "Presumably, there are benefits to the seemingly disorganized, nuclear arrangement of neurons in the avian brain that we are far from understanding".

Plumes in the sleeping avian brain (Science Daily News)reporting on work at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.

Who you calling bird brain?

Next uncontested arrival.

China and Machiavelli will take a lesson from Russia's de facto re-annexation of the Crimea.  It's time for another uncontested arrival, this time in the Senkaku Islands of the China Sea.. Maybe China is already planning it.

"

"Go for it"

The window of opportunity may end November 2016 when the US gets its shit together.

Superpowers coming to Israel

Netanyahu, speaking to AIPAC, says the superpowers are not just coming to Israel,"they are flocking to Israel - Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Yahoo".

What do you think?  Is the fizzling United States a superpower or should it be the above economic giants who influence culture and spending all over the world?  They do this without an army of their own, by offering deals and service.  I like Premier Netanyahu's wit and wish more governments measured their importance by the deals and service they provide and the profit they provide to all their stakeholders.

Time to sell AAPL

Apple CEO Tim Cook angrily told shareholders Friday February 27th 2014:
“If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

His duty is to bring the best sustained return on investment possible.  To the extent that Mr Cook does not, Apple has entered decline.  

Nice guy who is wrong

Let him sell his stock to personally fund unprofitable initiatives.  Don't steal from the shareholders.

Nice for him to have spelled it out.

Low information voters hold the winning hand.

They always will.  As long as parliamentary democracy prevails, low information voters will decide who rules.   Despite reading dozens of political stories daily, I'm a low information voter too.  From the federal district of Saanich-Gulf Islands to the East Block, there's more to know than I can take in or anyone else is giving out, for that matter.   Whether dumb, endowed with a doctorate, or both, we are Canadians with a vote.   Campaigns are about persuasion, not about righteousness.  The campaign is won on rhetoric.


"Rhetoric is the art of discourse ... to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices"     (Wikipedia)

See you October 19 2015.

In an ideal world, the sizzle sold will match the steak served.

Life on Mars: Bacteria tunnels in the dirt

NASA cut open a Martian meteor and found convincing evidence that bacteria were tunnelling in the glassy dirt.  See picture.   Found in 2000 on the Yamato glacier in the Antarctic, the rock has three dateable events: Formed from lava 1.3 billion years ago, splintered off Mars 12 million years ago and landed on the glacier 50,000 years ago. The curved tunnels and micro-tunnels are consistent with traces left by earthly bacteria in basaltic glasses.    For corroboration, there are also carbon rich nodules which have been found in another Martian meteor, a meteor which was collected right after it's fall was observed.   Source: Science Daily News

A low-level tide of life came and went on Mars before we appeared. That seems to be the scenario. I think life as an outcome is the norm when conditions suit.  It's like seeing a couple kissing and not being too surprised to see babies ten years later.   The potential for DNA devices that walk around and reproduce seems to be baked into the beginnings of the cosmos.  This same week brought the NASA announcement of another 700 planets found in our galaxy.  Stand by for updates.

Tiny Tim deep sixes Global Warming

Remember him singing "The Ice Caps Are Melting" in 1968?  He got it that global warming delivers believers a high and is as much religion as science.  "All the world is drowning, oh ho ho ho ho, to wash away the sin".Then there's, "windshields wiping, nowhere left to go!"  The rising waters will heal the land, suppress technology and business while allowing the flower power kids to live off the land in harmony with Gaia mother earth.  Lyrics.


The  4 minute song's a little creepy.  That gets the Global Warming movement about right. If the evidence was there and the advocates less doctrinaire, I'd join the movement too.   Evidence I see points to climate ripples in a proximate long term return to glaciation.

Three under-reported realities in the Ukraine. UPDATE

1.  Although Russia may wish to invade the Ukraine as they did Georgia,  "the correlation of forces" isn't good.

If the Russians invaded the Ukrainian armed forces would probably resist in an organized fashion. In 2008 Russia had a hard time scrounging up enough troops to invade Georgia. But Ukraine has more ten times the population of Georgia and Russia still has a largely dysfunctional armed forces with fewer than 100,000 troops (paratroopers and special forces) that they can really rely on. Russian military staffs are quite good at calculating the “correlation of forces” for an operation and predicting the probability of success and that math does not look good when it comes to invading Ukraine.  

What gives Russians pause is the fact ... the Ukrainians are still willing to fight and this time around you cannot keep the barbaric tactics used to suppress the rebellion out of the news.

2.   Money in the pocket persuades people.  The Ukraine or most of it will be looking west.

When the Cold War ended in 1991 Ukraine and neighboring Poland (both, until then, subjects of Russia) had the same (low) per-capita GDP. Since then Ukrainian per-capita GDP has declined 22 percent while Poland, which quickly developed economic and political ties with the West after 1990, has soared to the point where Polish per capita GDP is three times that of Ukraine. Put simply, most Ukrainians see links to the West as the key to economic growth and protection from Russian domination.

3.   Fracking is changing politics.  The Ukraine is within ten years of energy independence from the blackmail of Russia. 

Ukraine began 2013 by signing a $10 billion contract with a major oil company to develop shale gas fields in Ukraine. Within a decade this could eliminate the need to import natural gas from Russia. This would free Ukraine from Russian threats to halt gas shipments if Ukraine did not do as it was told.

The West can .. impose sanctions, which will hurt the Russian economy and the popularity of the current Russian government. Such sanctions are possible largely because of the development of fracking in the United States, which has enormously increased oil and gas production in North America and made Russian oil and gas less of a necessity to the West. It comes down to how much empire can Russia afford. Not much, especially when you own general staff tells you that there are not enough reliable troops to successfully invade Ukraine.

The above is from StrategyPage's "Russia: Fracking to Free Ukraine".  You can subscribe to a cheap daily newsletter from them.  For the price, nothing compares for deep background from a Machiavellian perspective.

Footnote 1: News stories that say Yanukovych had removed himself to the cityof Kharkiv don't come into perspective until you see the map. It's as close to Russia as you can get and still be in the Ukraine.
Footnote 2: Russia has a great naval base at Sevastopol. This involves Russian property and not just prestige.  If the Ukraine handles this like Cuba did Guantanamo Bay, that will tone down aggression.  (Update Feb. 27: News stories about armed pro-russian men at the airport in the Crimea point to this being the area where Russia can gain the most benefit with the least effort.)
Footnote 3: Conrad Black's article in the National Post makes clear how complex the past of this region is.

UPDATE:  Russian troops are in the Crimea and possibly digging trenches at the neck between Crimea and the rest of the state.   My footnote 2 should have been THE LEDE.  I think the correlation of forces is still correct as to the country as a whole.  An excellent read from Michael Totten who DID predict the absorption of Crimea back into Russia is here.
UPDATE:  The Crimea depends on the rest of Ukraine for power and food.  Hmmm.

Cheer Canada's hockey team. Promote world peace.

Go Canada Go!  At Sochi our men are in the third period as I type.

Brag up Canada and make the world a safer place. A cornucopia of nations is better for world peace than One World hype for the UN and EU and everything supranational.  Canadian Cincinnatus summarizes:

 "I don’t think it is a coincidence that the people rooting for a transnational superstate are big government types of one sort or the other. And fans of small, decentralized government tend to be nationalists".

 He links to Daniel Hamman's Telegraph story:

“Nationalism (is) the drive of people of the same language-group to form independent and unitary states". Nationalism in this sense was a direct consequence of democracy. When Europe was a patchwork of dynastic territories, formed by conquest, marriage and happenstance, it never occurred to anyone to let people decide which state to belong to".

"Our sense of common identity makes us willing to accept election results when we voted for the losers, pay taxes to support strangers, and obey laws with which we disagree.”

"Those who have done most to threaten peace, far from being nationalists, are usually proponents of trans-national ideologies. The Islamists today, like the Nazis and Soviets before them, claim to answer to a higher doctrine than the established rules of territorial jurisdiction and national sovereignty. The nation-state, rooted as it is in old loyalties, tends to be the surest defence against these enthusiasms.”

In Canada, the provinces should be standing firm against Ottawa for the right to make their own mistakes.  The United States does best as a federation of states and worst as a Big Brother Votapalooza centred in Washington DC.   And the mother-knows-best types that ban your best value light bulbs should honour our view.

UPDATE: We won!  The world is a better place.
Footnote: Christianity didn't make the list but has a strong supranational side as well.

The perfect Canadian light bulb

In Canada,  a good old incandescent bulb wastes no energy at all ten months of the year.
5% brightens your life and the warm 95% cuts your heat bill.  I despise the coalition of mother-knows-best types,  bulb builders switching us to high price merchandise and politicians who love being flattered. They brought us into this mess.  The bulbs that are cheapest to buy, safest to dispose of, quickest to turn on, warmest in colour and, thanks to the accidents of life, often just as long lived as the fancy-dancy twisty-pig-tail ones,  are being forced out.  We are the poorer.


LED and CFL lights are at times the best choice and may someday replace incandescents on merit.   Meanwhile, show voters the respect they are due.  I'll decide how to shine this light of mine.

Buy a beach for Canada

Canadians are popular in those sun and beach destinations down south.  Make one of them an offer they can't resist.  Join our federation as an associate member.   It doesn't have to be a tiny island.  Think big and go for Cuba.   Cubans, given a chance to vote, wouldn't laugh in our face. They'd say, "Tell us more what you mean by 'associate member'".    There's a sound currency and a chance to get off the island and new investment.   From our end, it'll be nice boarding a beach-bound plane using a driver's licence for i.d.    The old question of "who is my neighbour" used to be answered by who lives within walking distance of where I grew up.  The internet gives the new answer:  Your neighbours are the people you can reach out to easiest.

It's cheaper to fly from Toronto to Cuba than to Innuvik.  Innuvik for one is a $2500 round trip and for that money there's not even a hamburger or a bench to sleep on when you get there.  The same money gets a two week trip for two with hotel, drinks and food on a Cuban beach. The economics tell you that Cuba is closer to Toronto than Innuvik.  The price proves propinquity.

Just back from Los Cabos, Mexico, I've got sunny beaches on my mind.  Canadians seem to be the most popular tourists there.  As I unpacked Thursday night, the middle clothes were still warm from the perpetually perfect temperatures on the south Baja coast, even though the suitcase had been in an unheated hold on the jet.

Cuba: Associate member of the Canadian Federation.
That this will piss of the USA should not be a factor in the negotiation.

Policy explains thousands of cancelled flights.

Snow is the obvious culprit but policy makes weather havoc worse. From AP you learn there is a $25000 fine per passenger if a US plane sits loaded on the tarmac for more than three hours! Instead of just cancelling one weather-delayed flight, airlines will cancel blocks of flights rather than take a chance on a $4 million dollar fine for a loaded 737 that waits too long.  This also means they get to keep their planes out of the blizzard area, saving de-icing fees and making it easier to get back on schedule when the weather clears.   Avgas is the biggest cost, almost triple what it was ten years ago. To fill more seats each trip, airlines have cut back on the number of flights which means there are few alternate spaces to offer after they've cancelled your flight.  Cancelled flights save a lot of fuel money.  To top it off, US rules have become stricter about how much rest pilots must have.  Every time weather goes wonky, schedules go wonky and there are fewer pilots who pass the policy test to fly those planes in and out of the storm zone. (Information excerpted from the link which emphasizes weather but has the policies buried further down in the article.)

Rule of thumb:  Whenever you find a cluster fuck, there is policy helping create, sustain and exacerbate it.

Justin Trudeau and Sandra Fluke - separated at birth?

Two liberal darlings with the beautiful-me look and matching hair.

Divorce most likely between rich men and richer women

From priceonomics.com a chart of Swedish divorce data.
When the wife makes substantially more than the husband, the chance of divorce doubles.
When the husband is rich and the wife even richer, the rate of divorce triples.
Their summary: Money buys you options.

Cheap home-made mobility aid for getting in and out of a car

Make your own set of styrofoam steps to help with disability transfers into an automobile.
Buy a 2 ft x 8 ft. rigid blue styrofoam panel with a thickness of about 2- 3/8".
Cut it into two panels 1' x 8'.
Split one panel into two 4' lengths.

Click to enlarge.

Split the second panel in two lengths at 32" and two lengths at 16".
Using a caulking gun, apply a few beads of panel caulk to bond them in pairs (hiding the printed faces).
Then bond the pair of 16" to one end of the pair of 32".
Then bond that assembly to one end of the pair of 48".
Wrap it up to protect from dirt, oil and water.
I used a roll of the plastic stretch film they sell for wrapping loose things together when you move.

The result is a light-weight three-step pathway for someone to get aboard your car or truck. No step

Six pounds, easy to pick up one-handed, easy to store.

is higher than five inches.  It sits steady on the ground and isn't slippery.  Our 95 year old step mother needs a walker and can barely step up onto a curb.  She says it's slick and climbs in and out of a VW van with it. Best of all, she climbs and seats herself unaided.

I think I paid about $35 for the styrofoam, $6 for wrap from U-Haul, and $6 for the caulking,  We had a caulking gun in the shed.  I used a hand-saw to cut the panel which produced some clingy blue bits to clean up afterwards.

Polite pols still possible in civil society

Look who's sitting at the table en route to Mandela's funeral. Jean Chretien (turned 80 this week), Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper.  Dress is casual with smiles all round.  As the National Post adds,  our PM Harper sent a sincere video statement of appreciation to Jean for his birthday.

Don't be distracted by your surprise that they are about to dine well on a jet.  Remember instead that they can talk to one another civilly, even with friendship.  Much more is needed.   Partisanship works in a bipolar world but most matters are multi-lateral calling for discrimination and judgement, not knee-jerk politics.

The twenty first century will be Canada's

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and two tiny city states (Singapore and Hong Kong) are the easiest places on earth to start a new business.  The once great United States has fallen to 20th place in this World Bank survey, behind such stalwarts as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Malaysia.   Starting a business means getting prodded, delayed and taxed by bureaucrats before you can turn on the lights.  (The same applies at the other end when you have to downsize or shut a business.  It can take years and bankrupt you in some countries.)

The chart means Canada should network with the other top four.  They are tucked by the edge of up-and-coming but badly-run China and Canada is cozied up against the other somewhat badly-run super power. Canada, a former British dominion, has location-location-location.   Network with the city states and Britain's former dominions in the south seas.   A trading empire doesn't have to be a military one.  Remember a few centuries ago when Amsterdam, London , tiny Portugal and Spain were the heartbeat of world commerce?

Telling lies and getting away with it: Wendy Davis

After listening in recent years to liars saying, "I misspoke", I take my hat off to Texan Wendy Davis's inventive circumlocution.    Caught in biographical lies, she says, "My language should be tighter". What a breath of fresh mendacity.  Only Bill Clinton can claim a match to its audacity with, ""It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is".  Here is her invention in full:

"My language should be tighter. I’m learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the detail.”

Applying this system, if I say I have a hundred dollars but really have just one, my error s not a lie.  I have cast the net a bit wide and hooked the other 99 by mistake. If challenged, I thank my critics for new insight into the English language. We are all in favour of learning stuff.

Related: She made the news today with a gaffe for the ages.  She said of her wheel-chair-bound opponent for the Governor's position in Texas that he "hasn't walked a day in my shoes".

That's how it has been reported.  The original text is kind of empty, literally saying no one can prove she isn't proud of herself. I will buy that.

("I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I've been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn't walked a day in my shoes.”)

What we eat and what we are told to eat: Some surprising differences

This chart linked by barrelstrength compares what Americans actually eat (the blue) with what the USDA says they should be chowing down (the yellow).   We seem to get only potatoes right. Are you surprised we drink more fruit juice and eat more cheese than counselled?  And as barrelstrength points out, most veggies don't make the grade.  Are hundreds of millions of free-choice citizens wrong while some thousands of USDA employees are all in the right?  I doubt it.
  (Original story at Mother Jones.)

Living happily ever after both a bug and a feature

A year from now, your life expectancy will be more than it is today. DNA upgrades to your genome, skin and heart muscle rejuvenated by your own stem cells and medical cleverness will do this.   There will be no birthday congratulations from Canada's monarch until you hit the big 120.  This is a feature and a bug.

It's a feature to live long and well.  Just as 60 is the new 50, we'll be saying 100 is the new 80.   I've a half dozen friends and relations in the 95-100 range already.

It's a bug to pay for those extra 20 or 30 years from savings and pensions which were designed with the idea you'd drop dead long before.   Something has got to give.  Will the cost of living drop? Will high-tech do-it-yourself health care be cheap?  Will our work life stretch for decades more?  Will it be easier to accumulate riches?  Will we fade away in grey and wrinkled poverty?  I'm optimistic and maybe ahead of the curve.  Public policy will begin dealing with this soon.

How will we sort that out?

Image of King George V and centenarian from The Daily Mail.