Meme alert: "The stain is on the move"

Today's Dilbert is in serious danger of engendering a new meme, if it isn't already one.

Quote Jests...

Those who know me in person, know me as one who commits creative mis-quotation. In fact, I often call myself the Quote Jester. Which is itself a jest in a quote from the title of an instrumental number by Phil Keaggy not to mention being a misquotation of "Court Jester".

So, here's my misquotation for the day. "There's no quote like a mis-quote."

And if you want to exercise this noble art, you can do it yourself by tacking a simple phrase to any stative sentence, which is a misquotation from the BareNaked Ladies' song, "If I Had A Million Dollars." It goes like this:

"I went out and got a library book -- but not a real library book, that's cruel."

Obviously there are some situations where it's funnier than it is in others. I am not responsible for inappropriate uses to which you may apply this idea.

Letter to cbc.ca about archive format

I just sent the following note to cbc.ca regarding the file format of their archive material. Maybe this is a pointless rant but it would be nice not to have to funnel their WMV content through some other tool before being able to watch it. The "At Issue" segments tend to be worth catching if you want to stay on top of what's what in Canadian politics.

I noticed this awhile ago but I've never thought to mention it until now. I am gradually moving to a Microsoft-free computing life at home and all the video at www.cbc.ca/national/archive is only playable on Microsoft Media Player.

What would prevent the CBC from using a user-platform independent format for this archive footage? I would really appreciate it if it were some technology (flash? like youtube and google video) that didn't require me to use a particular supplier's software in order to view it. I do have MS-machines in the house. I would just rather not have to use them for this if I didn't have to.

thanks...ank

Good-bye Bertie

So the on-going scandal of dodgy campaign financing in Ireland has come to an end that could have been predicted ages ago. How corrupt was Mr. Ahern, really? And if he was corrupt, how corrupt was he compared to other politicians whose career started at the same time or before as Mr. Ahern's career?

I have the handicap and advantage of not actually being from Ireland, so I can't continue either of those conversations except as a listener -- and I'd love to hear some pithy, non-polarized opinions from people who know better than I on either of them. I feel happy for Bertie that he can still have his little jaunt to the States before he goes. I think I have a small notion of how important that is for him and for his country. I'm even gladder that the Good Friday accords don't look like collapsing just because one of the leaders' hands appear unclean.

But in listening to this story unwind, I couldn't help wondering if he's no more than a victim of surviving from one era of accountability standards into the next? I'm not denying that Bertie was corrupt. The details from the Mahon Tribunal has made this much clear: corruption happened. And worse, he was consistently economical with the truth and forgot too many of the details, whether inadvertently or not (the old "Incompetent or Crooked?" question rears its head).

My mixed feelings on the outcome lead me to wonder if, when financial/political accountability measures become more concrete, more rigorous, if the people would be better served (with the longevity of their most senior, most experienced leaders) if such laws included riders of amnesty and/or some kind of owning-up commissions -- with penalties like this only exacted for those who don't make a clean breast of the past. I have little faith that the laws are capable of keeping the politicians and their funds honest -- but I am sure that without the freedom to own-up with amnesty I feel they are likely to be even less effective. Further, I fear that the more stringent the measures are, the more creative corrupt politicians and power-purchasers will get in the buying and selling of influence.

Bernanke gives color to J. R. Saul's analysis of economy

Within the last few months, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the now 16-year-old Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. I had begun to see hints of one of Saul's central assertions echoed in the rescue of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase with the help of the American Federal Reserve. I don't have my copy to hand right now but let me reiterate the thoughts:

In 1992, Saul wrote that we had then been in a near-20 year depression that was being hidden and shuffled out of view by pushing it around through manipulations of currency exchanges and interest rates. He went on to support that statement with a lot of facts which, all taken together, made a startling picture. I found that picture to correspond closely enough with reality that it has made sense to keep watching events in order to see if the evidence continues to pile up in its favour, or in contradiction. For myself, it also seemed to be a compelling interpretation of the on-going movie: rollicking cascades of currency crisis here; market "correction" there; and any number of other dashes of the Electronic Herd of stampeding gnu. Thomas Friedman called them just a commonplace of globalization in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. But if you look at the forces that keep the gnus running it soon becomes apparent that few of their movements fail to be started, turned or stopped by the acts of various governments and regulatory bodies. Who wants the malaise to set in where you are? Keep it moving with interest rate changes, tax cuts, import concessions, anything! The facts have continued to fit Saul's picture better and better all the time.

Now it struck me that the way in which Bear Stearns had been prevented from collapsing looked like another case of the hiding the depression and that force of déjà vú just came crashing down with this story. In it, Bernanke is reported to admit that preventing the US from slipping into a depression is exactly what he had in mind when he made the deal to rescue Bear Stearns. That rescue was made possible only by very deep manipulations of the Bear's value and by moving the remaining sub-prime risk on its books around in a most creative fashion. Suddenly this story has moved from being a hint that Saul was right to a full-blown case in point. What is now a nearly 35 year malaise has just been shoveled around for another swing about the pole.

I'm just not sure anymore whether to hope that the problem is like a tetherball, capable of endless swinging about the pole, or a maypole that will eventually wrap itself around the pole with nowhere left to swing. Can we stop the ball in ways that are non-destructive and re-invent things, or will things really have to get to a destructive "no-rope-left" state before this situation can be put on some other footing? And will we find out before or after I've retired? before or after my kids are up to their eyeballs in mortgage, marriage and parenting? Time goes fast, learning goes slow...

The Penny: "It's not a priority for us now" Whaaa...?

Dear Mr. Flaherty,

Regarding Private Members Bill, C-531.

Sir, I was stupefied by the summary dismissal the press is reporting you gave to the idea of discontinuing the one cent coin. "It's not a priority for us now," sounds alarmingly like, "We didn't think of it, so we won't consider it now."

I am not an NDP voter, so I have no party-axe to grind. This is an issue of common sense. The thing that will attract the voters your party will need in order to gain majority status is an ongoing exhibition of common sense, which in this case will lead to a lack of common cents.

Save our money! Don't spend any more on circulating a coin that has become entirely annoying and totally pointless. Let wire transactions continue to the nearest cent but let our pockets grow a little lighter -- and release a little bit more copper for the whole world to benefit from. (see this article from Scientific American as referenced at slashdot).

Good ideas are worth looking at no matter who had them first. Please give this one more than passing notice.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen etc. etc.

cc: Hon. Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre,
Hon. xxxxx xxxxxx, MP for my home riding

Discontinuing the Penny

To the Hon. Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

Dear Mr. Martin,

In regard to your private member's bill to discontinue the penny, thank you. This measure is about 5 or 10 years late and should have been entered into
consideration around the time the $2 coin, what I call the doubloon, was introduced. The cost of all that copper to Canada should give it all the impetus it requires. That force is only strengthened by the moral dubiousness of hoarding copper this way when there is not enough of it in the world for everyone in the world to enjoy our lifestyle. What should it matter that the bill comes from an opposition bench? Wisdom should be commended regardless of the source.

Retaining the $0.01-precision for wire transactions and rounding up or down to the nearest multiple of 5 cents on cash ones is at least a partial return to the common sense that BC exhibited before confederation. Back in the day, political rhetoric here said that BCers were not so niggling as to figure things out to the nearest 100th of a dollar and pennies were routinely discarded in the Rockies by BCers on their way home from the money-grubbing east. That such an attitude has taken this long to even begin to resurface is a sad commentary on the rarity of common sense.

I wish your bill safe and swift passage.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen etc. etc.

cc: Hon. xxxxx xxxxxx, MP for my home riding

I had a nightmare last night

I turned on the TV briefly last night to watch the beginnings of The Trojan Horse on the CBC and the sight of the Stars and Stripes over Ottawa's Peace Tower, even in a piece of fiction, felt like a knife through my heart. It got too violent for my taste in evening family viewing pretty quickly, but I confess I am both attracted and repelled by the idea of watching it. I'd like to see how the whole story plays out but if I do see it, I'm going to dread every view like that one, not to mention grieve its possibility in advance, even when the reality is still so very unlikely..

Headline Puzzle from January answers...

Maybe I should just give up. Oh well... here are the answers from January 5. The headlines were

OUR BAD MICROSOFT COMPENSATE FOR XBOX LIVE HOLIDAY PROBLEMS
HUCKABEE OBAMA CARRY MOMENTUM INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE
CALGARY MAN SUCCUMBS TO CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING
DEFENCE APPEAL IN PICKTON CASE A NO BRAINER
CANADAS WORLD JUNIOR TEAM GOES FOR GOLD AFTER BEATING US

The key was "STORAGE", the setting was "CDROM" and the hat was "RETRIEVE".

Peut-être je suis mais un poseur...ank

"The mercury in one CFL bulb can contaminate 1000 gallons of water"
Recently, in an internal company bulletin board, someone posted this link, citing the title and asking "Is it true?"

My answer was, let's do the math.

How much mercury is in a bulb? According to wikipedia, anywhere between 1 and 12 mg. The best models seem to have limited it to 1mg but there is a limit in place of no more than 6 mg, so let's assume that we're talking about 6mg.

1000 US Gallons of water is 3890 L, 1000 Imperial Gallons of water is 4540L. Typically gallons nowadays refers to US gallons, but let's make it 4000, just in case (makes the later math easier, even if it's not a fair mid-point).

4000L has a mass of 4000kg. 6mg in 4000kg is 1.5 parts per billion by mass.
According to this link, the American FDA's "Maximum Contaminant Level Goal" for mercury, a cumulative neurotoxin, in drinking water is 2 parts per billion.

So, as usual, this kind of a headline looks like a little late-breaking hysteria. Mind you, if enough of the bulbs have 12 mg, that would be 3ppb which would fail the (arbitrary?) MCLG. Where the "safety line" actually is is probably a matter for debate that gets very political very quickly. Like, did you know that crematoria are a prime source of airborne mercury pollution? Years of dental fillings, all going up in smoke...

All that said, ever since the fad of CFL bulbs started taking hold, aside from my complaint that they don't emit enough light and what light they emit tends to be too cold, I have wondered aloud quite often where the infrastructure for safe disposal of expired bulbs was. A rhetorical question, I know. But then, such infrastructure must grow fast enough to take up the slack. Given the likelihood that "incorrect recycling" of CFLs is going to mean concentrations of mercury in landfills, I wonder how the neighbours of the various dumps in the western world are going to feel about those dumps becoming mercury magnets, alongside all the other wonderful things they've taken in over the years?

This stuff has all got to be solved a different way. Wish I knew what that way was...

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #3

I missed last week's deadline in a good cause. My wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary -- away from any computers, in a lovely place across some water from where we live (I'm being coy about it because I may want to use it for a future headline puzzle).

Two weeks ago, I posted a puzzle whose solution was...

PASS THE SCREECH CROSBIE IS NEWFOUNDLAND LT GOVERNOR
HOUSING DEMOLITION PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE IN NEW ORLEANS
ZUMA SAYS NO WORD FROM PROSECUTORS ON GRAFT
QUEEN NOW OLDEST MONARCH IN BRITAINS HISTORY
EIGHT GLASSES OF WATER A DAY AND OTHER MEDICAL MYTHS

KEY = MONEY, SETTING = PURSE, HAT = WALLET

The new puzzle is this:

LTJ FKM ZWNJLDLXC CL NLZAIYDKCI XLJ EFLE PWOI VLPWMKG AJLFPIZD

QSMWILKK FLIYI MIHHR YFYKZDSY UZDF ZKT QIYECQUHK

JDWFDLB VDQ GZJJZVKG RI JDLKIQ VIQITNHC SINGIQNQF

FRMRPLR GYYRGN JP YJLHOCP LGBR G PC DIGJPRI

ZWRWYWN CXVEY ODRTXV MUWG QXUN AXV QXEY WAMUV PUWMTRQ DN

Happy solving!

Kenya :: Rwanda -- the comparison was inevitable

A newspaper in the cafeteria caught my eye, running this story from the Globe and Mail (our Ontario paper that tries to masquerade as a national one). I was wondering how soon people would start to compare Kenya today with Shake Hands With The Devil Rwanda. Ouch.

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #2

Somebody game me a tuit (it was round. I got a round tuit, er around to it...) and here I am with the answer to the last Headline Puzzle and the new one. If anyone sees me doing this "wrong" somehow, please leave a comment!

So the headlines were...

US TONING DOWN PLEAS FOR HELP WITH AFGHAN MISSION GATES SAYS
AT BALI CLIMATE CONFERENCE SIGNS OF COMPROMISE
HAMAS POLICE ARREST AIDE TO PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER
LEBANESE ARMY GENERAL LAID TO REST IN STATE FUNERAL
MUSHARRAF LOOSENS ELECTION GRIP AS HIS POLLS SLIDE

SETTING = FORCE;  KEY = WEAPON;  HAT = MILITARY

So here's the new puzzle...

DSCC QXW CBYWWBX BYPCRZW ZC UWGEPIUMASUM AQ VPLWYUPY

VUFQEXB ZSKUYEJEUX IDUJSQJSDQ OYTQV CEJV IUYEOS EX XSC UDYSTXQ

JDQW GWSG PR HRAT ZARQ YARGKVDCRAG RP XAWZC

AQUUT TSI SHBUFL RSTXGEM OT WGOLXOTF MOFLSGV

OCDYX DJNUUOU EQ PNXOK N GNH NAG EXYOK VOGCINJ VHXYU

Solution to be posted in another week...

UPS Ground to Canada -- Seriously Busted

In the US, there's a wonderful service, more cost effective than the Post Office for almost all package-delivery applications. It's called UPS and referred to tersely and fondly as "UPS Ground". It's so addictive that given the similarity of addresses between the US and Canada for the post, US residents who have parcels to send to Canada naturally assume that Brown will get the job done.

Well, it will but... There's the little matter of a border between the two countries, and it happens that when you send things via Brown, your "gift" suddenly becomes a COD parcel, possibly challenging the value of the gift in the first place. The thought counts, and we Canadians are too polite to complain loudly to our generous friends, but seriously. For all the tackiness of "gift cards", suddenly a gift card at amazon.ca, for instance, makes a whole lot more sense.

Now, it used to be a whole lot worse. There used to be a several week delay while Brown tried to negotiate the border and send the package around in Canada using their then half-baked delivery network up here. They've gotten a lot better and are no longer a byword in bad delivery. But they are a bad deal, and if you're in the US, shipping to Canada, they're a bad deal that you probably won't hear about from your friends north of 49. We like you. The gifts you send are thoughtfully chosen and highly appropriate, 95 times out of 100. Why should we quibble about how you choose to send them to us? But there it is.

For sending parcels to Canada from the US, the post office is a better deal, if not for you, then certainly for the people you're sending to. And if their rates are just over the edge, maybe an over-the-web gift cetificate will work better. Last time I checked, those really were duty-free.

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #1

A long time ago I tried to produce these periodically. Here's another try. I will post the solution to this headline puzzle a week from today, 2007-12-21..

ZW CKFVFM IKOF GUPDW HKY RPUG OVCR DHMRDF TVWWVKF MDCPW WDBW

JA GJMS DMSZJAB DHOKBEBODB NSUON HK DHZLEHZSNB

BVJVK TEAFSM VLLMKQ VFNM QE TVAMKQFRFVR TLFJM JFRFKQML

KNOPCNZN PSRW HNCNSPK KPMG YD SNZY MC ZYPYN JXCNSPK

IQRGWMMWP JBBRZER ZJZNVKBE DMKA WR GKR ABJJR RJKOZ

Instructions for solving should be here.

Still More Banking Woes?

A news story caught me by surprise yesterday: that the central banks of many industrialized countries, together with the American Federal Reserve have banded together to keep a money supply going, even in the face of further sub-prime mortgage meltdown red ink. The best explanation I've read so far (of course, it's from Big Brother) makes no attempt to estimate how much damage is still to come, only that the current losses add up to $60Billion and that the full extent won't be known until March 2008. The current loss is over half the amount of money that was ear-marked for easier loans this week, so I wonder if the banks have estimated the total loss already, privately, at that level. Or is this an artificial quantity, floated out there just to keep the banks liquid?

The whole thing sounds scary. Until I realize how lucky I am that I'm warm, fed and dry enough to worry about how this will affect my next re-mortgaging negotiations which aren't exactly happening in the next year.

How to keep blogging?

Find quotable things and link to them. Here's one:

"Real Men don't attack straw men."

I love it. This sort of thing gets done on all kinds of fronts. Here's the original. For the rest, the next time you hear someone's position on something get ripped apart in twenty seconds or less, go back and check what the victim really said. In their own words. Without even straining the brain I can think of four or five of these, many of them high profile enough they might be familiar to you.

Copyright amendment was a tipping point

It's been a long while since I posted to this blog last. It's not as
though I've had no opinions, it just seems that I've found so few gaps
in what I'm doing to post here. I'd like to write piercing coherent
things that people will want to read, that may change some people's
minds but fitting that into being a husband, Dad, a software
developer, a commuter and a member of my community -- not to mention
continuing to service my reading addictions has been hard.

Call it a New Years' resolution a few weeks early but I mean to post
here more often -- perhaps with a little less attention to hotlinks --
I do like to cross-reference what I'm writing to other things so that
if you haven't gotten access to the background materials that lead me
to my conclusions already, at least you'll have a chance to do so.

For now, here's a fun link for the holidays:
http://www.guessthiscity.com/ which is run by a friend of mine. Just
simple sets of 20 pictures or so for, as far as I know, for about 43
cities. Share and Enjoy (an oblique reference to heads and pigs is
purely coincidental)

One Small Victory for Fair Use

An open letter to the Minister of Industry and my MP

Dear Mr. Prentice,

Thank you for withdrawing the so-called "Canadian DMCA". I was and
have been deeply troubled by the readiness of the government to take
the part of the purveyors of creative content against the interest of
its consumers and often of its creators as well. I urge you to take a
different, more balanced view of the issues that are driving this
field.

The purveyors of creative content have received a surcharge from the
sale of blank media on the presumption of guilt on the part of
Canadians in contravening copyright law. As galling as the presumption
of guilt is, it is a small price to pay by the consumer. It should be
sufficient for all time to preserve fair use rights. It should allow
consumers of content to time-shift, media-shift, even share moderately
and for non-commercial purposes with friends without fear of
surveillance, suit, damages or imprisonment.

The role of the Canadian government in this ought to be clear: to
balance the rights of ordinary citizens, creators of content and the
commercial entities that market and distribute that content. It is an
open secret that the commercial entities regularly abuse the creators
and they are doing whatever they can in any jurisdiction that will
listen to them to extend that abuse to the consumers of that content
as well. To have to pay some money every time a song is played --
especially to groups who manifestly do not have the best interests of
the artists at heart -- is untenable, unconscionable and an undue
intrusion into the lives of ordinary Canadians.

If the end result of "failing" to pass legislation like this in Canada
means that less and less large-company media comes to Canada that may
not be all bad -- but we all know that that end-game will result in
such widespread piracy that it will not be to anyone's benefit.

Do us all a favour and tell these extortionists (the MPAA, the RIAA
and others) to take their blank-media surcharge and be quiet. Once and
for all. The consequences of not doing so include all kinds of ills,
not least of which is the further disaffection of thousands of younger
voters who will get the message loud and clear if legislation like
this ever passes, that whomever the government of Canada is for, it's
certainly not for them. And that would be a serious breach of what you
were sent to Ottawa for: ultimately as the guardians of the
sovereignty of Canada, a trust too sacred for the kind of quick
sell-out a Canadian DMCA would represent.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
(address & phone-number witheld)

An Open Letter to the BC Utilities Corporation

Here's a letter I just sent to the BC Utilities Corporation. Consider echoing your sentiments along the same lines to their complaints department.

Dear Sir/Madam:

My complaint about Natural Gas Marketing in BC is simple enough you may find it easy to write off as some crank. Please do not. It consists of no more than five words.

REGULATE RETAIL NATURAL GAS SALES.

I remember seeing a flakey survey go by that was worded in such a way as to elicit more yes than no responses and did not do anything to lay out the potential repercussions of deregulating natural gas sales in BC. Salespeople for these marketers have come to my home and those of several of my friends. The offer presented to us would have seen an immediate 12.5% jump in our gas rates, at least. Others have been told "Just sign here. You're not really committing to anything."

Deregulating phone service is not a bad idea since telecommunications bandwidth is practically infinite, totally fungible and easy to do without. Natural Gas, though, while being mostly fungible is neither infinite in supply nor easy to do without. Deregulating its distribution at all exposes the citizens of this province to the speculative vagaries of the marketplace in a way that government for the people ought not to do.

As for the advertising campaign unleashed at the same time, it is abusive in the extreme, implying that if you don't want choice on your natural gas, you must be a boring person who always wears gray socks, always eats turnips and always reads the same books. It looks to this citizen (not just customer!) distinctly like an attempt by yet another multinational corporation (Kinder Morgan) to use governmental agencies (the BCUC) to gain an opportunity to gouge its customers at will (through gas marketing proxies) and deflect the responsibility for the debacle back on the customer ("if only you hadn't signed that piece of paper..."). In all probability, what we are seeing is not such a nefarious conspiracy but it tastes bad. Really bad.

So I return to my five simple words. Get rid of this stupid situation and go back to doing your duty to the citizens of BC:

REGULATE RETAIL NATURAL GAS SALES.

Expect to get more letters like this in the coming days. I will be sending the above letter to my local newspapers, posting it to my blog and forwarding its contents to a number of my friends. With any luck (my luck, that is), some of them will forward similar sentiments to you. I hope there'll be enough to reverse this silly decision, whose public process I do not remember seeing any timely publicity on.

Sincerely,

name and address blinded, Aldergrove, BC