An important comment on the scientific method

As reported in the mainstream media. Draw your own parallels.

Standin' in the rain

A bit of musical nostalgia from the days I used to do 150 mile commutes in the deep damp deadness of an English Winter. Headlights framed by pitch darkness and lots of late lonely nights driving to and from jobs all over the country (and sometimes out of it). "Out of the Blue" blasting out of the cheap cassette recorder in the dash of whatever pile of junk I was driving, that leaden feeling in the gut from too much Red Bull and junk food. Sometimes I miss those times, but then my sanity returns.......

Demonstration of failure

I'm not normally a combative sort, and generally speaking would walk ten miles rather than pick a fight, but there are some people who just sit up and beg to be taken down a notch. Today's stressor were a bunch of noisy people who marched into the Bay store at the Woodgrove Mall, North Nanaimo shouting "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! How many animals died today!" loudly and repeatedly as they paraded around the ground floor waving lurid placards of skinned animal carcases (Yes I did see, and no, they didn't impress me) amusing the staff, and giving security the runaround.

This was a demonstration by supporters of PETA, generally referred to by those who know what goes on at one of their 'animal shelters' as People for the Elimination and Termination of Animals. I think because the Bay store occasionally sells a fur coat, the six or seven people who marched around the store with one person yelling the same tired slogan over and over thought they were justified in doing so.

Now I'm a keen supporter of free speech and the unfettered (Within reason) right to make your point publicly, but quite frankly these few people made the organisation and cause they purported to hold dear look like a bunch of right unwashed wallies. They startled around a dozen shoppers, because that's all there were in the store at that time. As demonstrations go, it was pathetic, both in numbers and effect. Had there been a hundred people outside the store protesting, now that would have made their point far better. However, knowing Nanaimo, with it's relatively high proportion of hunting and fishing types isn't quite ready to be included in the confused muddle of modern metropolitan thinking. Did the demonstrators wish to end the wanton slaughter of animals? If certain web sites are to be believed, then the members of PETA would be better off visibly demonstrating that their own house was in order before further campaigning devalues their cause further.

However, these demonstrators did succeed in one aspect; they made me want to go all Clint Eastwood on them with a 12-guage.
"Get off my lawn!" Great line. Must go see Gran Torino.

More classic Python

What can you say? Scientifically accurate and funny.

It's the end of the world

What with all the predictions flying around for 2009, I thought I'd recycle this vid about the end of the world as predicted by the doomsayers.

.......and what might come afterwards......

Happy new year.

Oh dear...

Just a little wintry amusement to lighten a so far very dark day. Oh well, it will only get lighter from here on in. The darkest day of the year is over thank goodness.

More snow shovelling today as we attempt a snow break out for a Christmas with some of our (over) extended family. Promises to get complicated as always. Wife is slightly emotional missing girls who are going to Englands Lake District for the holidays. This promises to put a damper on the festivities; therefore I cannot relax and have to do my best imitation of an emotional rock. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I'll need a break to get over the break.

Get over it

My favourite Eagles track from the 'Hell freezes over' tour. Which funnily enough it feels like it might be doing tonight with a very un-Nanaimo like minus thirteen Celsius prophesised. Last I checked our thermometer outside the kitchen window it was minus five and sinking. Brr.

Great line in the song "I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass." Oh yes.

Managed a trip into town for a 'Do' we got invited to although any sudden acceleration or deceleration threatened to put our little 4x4 into a tailspin (Despite good snow tyres). One pedestrian just stepped straight off the kerb on the other side of the road and made a rude gesture because we didn't pull an emergency stop to let him all the way across. I know pedestrians and buses generally have priority, but had I tried to stop quickly on that precise stretch of compacted snow and ice we would probably have broadslid across to the left hand side of the road and into him, there was that little traction. Not a happy thought.

All Christmas presents are wrapped and ready to be delivered. We have invitations for drinks and stuff over the festive season. Six days left to Crimbo. It could well be the first white Christmas I've seen since the 1960's. Yay.

Canaerobic exercise

I've discovered how so many Canadians keep fit. It's a system of exercise unique to Canada called Canaerobics.

It's jolly hard work but comprises of three basic steps;

1) Buy a snow shovel
2) Wait for it to snow
3) Get shovelling

For the advanced practitioner:
4) Wait for it to snow again (It will)
5) Get shovelling (Again)
6) Repeat as necessary (It will be)

I've been doing it all day long. Great for building up those necessary ice hockey muscles in the shoulders, thighs and back. Good for converting 'Molson muscle' into real muscle too.

Now I think I'll go to bed.

Update:
More snow. Hi ho.

The video is a bit naff, but.....

I'm not a fan of 'Xena - Warrior Princess' apart from thinking 'great number', and red blooded carnal thoughts about Lucy Lawless bringing a lump to the old trousers.

Never saw the movie 'Electric Dreams' from which this song came so this one is missing from my ELO archive. A cracking little tune by Jeff and the boys. I think an MP3 download is in order.

Forecast for snow days

While we're waiting for the snow to arrive, I've taken the liberty of adding a little seasonal snow to the blog. Not that anyone will notice, my reader stats logging something between zero and 'whoops, what's this load of old tosh'. It pleases me.

Local forecast is for a six inch snowfall sometime in the next three days. Whether it gets to us down at the waterfront I don't know. We'll see. Our little Mountain Goat of an SUV is thoroughly prepared with Winter Kit, snow tyres etc, so we're quite looking forward to slipping it into 4x4 mode and pootling around in the Wintery whiteness.

Gas prices locally are still slipping downward, and have reached 82 cents (About 44p UK) per litre. Still a ways to go yet. Amazing what happens when the speculators get their fingers burned isn't it? No money to gamble with, the latest 'Peak Oil' scare being ignored. I don't mean to be complacent, but the world is still here, and economic difficulties aside will continue to be.

Day job has been keeping me quite busy of late, and I seem to spend half my life in or travelling to, meetings. Still, I took it on, and although there's much to do we're getting there. Which a lot of people won't be doing if we get a big dollop of the white stuff as prophesised. Time for a coffee break.

Paradise found - on YouTube

From the ultimate Demigods of comedy. Utter brilliance and terrific news.

Fog and awe

For the past three days it's been foggy, and today visibility seems to have closed in to well under a hundred metres. You keep on waiting for the greyness to burn off, but I suppose this is the downside of living close to the sea, although I can't recall this happening last year. The temperature hits the dewpoint and bye bye view of Mudge Island. Yet right now the fog appears to be lifting, and not before time. That was getting truly depressing.

Yesterday afternoon Wife and I travelled up to the Galaxy Cinema and spent it watching the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace which left me a little stunned with the visual overload during car and rooftop chases. I think I'll have to watch it three or four times to catch all the detail in the various chases. Daniel Craig too seems to be closer to Fleming's literary creation than any of the previous incumbents. He seems to have encapsulated both the brutality and mortality of the role. The sense of violence he brings with him is intense and more tangible.

The opening sequence of the movie reminded me of an incident I witnessed on the entrance to the St Gotthard road tunnel in Switzerland a few years ago, where a car, an Audi TT as I recall, got caught in the blind spot of a big truck. The truck moved over into the exit lane and first pushed the car onto the hard shoulder, then as the hard shoulder narrowed on the exit slip road, began to crush it against the crash barrier while all the time the car was buckling, the windscreen starring, the car driver all the time sounding his horn and shouting. We were on my old Triumph 900 just behind the truck and couldn't believe what we were seeing. Bits and pieces of trim scattering all over the road. Behind, we had to do some fast manouevring to avoid some rather nasty punctures. By comparison, in the movie Bond's Aston Martin got off lightly. The Audi was totalled, finally coming to a scrunched up halt, jammed between the crash barrier and the truck, a third smaller than it was. Fortunately, the driver and his family got out unhurt.

Am currently boning up on Mathematics and Physics as a background to improving my job prospects. It's surprising how much you forget over the years. However, the old learning comes back pretty quickly too. All you need is a little practice and the fog lifts.

Update: Twenty minutes later and the fog is back with a vengeance. Just goes to prove the old Vancouver Island saying; "If you don't like the weather right now, go inside and wait five minutes."

Jones' theory of cock up

I would like to introduce a law that should help make life more readily comprehensible. Feel that the world is against you? Feel oppressed? Maligned? Unfairly treated? Want to know why?

Postulation:
Here are the answers. Jones's three laws of human existence, which are:

1) No person or procedure is infallible.
2) No matter how highly intelligent / educated, no human has their brain switched on at all times.
3) Humanity is governed by the universal law of cock up.

Abstract:
1) Institutions and Governments are made up of people.
2) All people are fallible.
3) All procedures are created by people.

Therefore all Governments and procedures, without exception, are fallible, and subject without exception to the laws of cock up.

Observational proofs:
1) You may fill in the form 'correctly', but you cannot guarantee that it will be read correctly by the recipient, even if the right form reached the correct person in good time.
2) Everyone, even the most intelligent and 'caring', has off days, hangovers, emotional upsets etc which cloud their judgement and make them as friendly as a deranged rattlesnake with a psychotic fetish for ankle biting.
3) Under sufficient negative personal pressure, all people default to negative emotions (Unless the drugs are still working).
4) Even the best happy pills stop working sometimes.
5) They may be out to get you, but the odds are that 'they' will screw up somewhere along the way.
6) The more complex the plan, the greater the likelihood that it will fail spectacularly.
7) The shriller the claims to the contrary, the greater the likelihood of abject failure.
8) 90% of humanity does not use anywhere near 10% of their brain capacity, and the other 10% has 90% less brain capacity than the other 90%.

These rules apply specifically to the UK, although experimenters /researchers in other countries are currently subjecting the above rules to high level axiom destruction procedures.

IPCC approved technology

Have just run across this wonder of modern technology, as approved (I am assured) by no less august a body than the IPCC using modern climate physics as developed using this model.

Have been introduced to the writings of James P Hogan, and Wife is wondering why I'm smiling so much. Specifically Kicking the sacred cow.

From Vermont Tiger via James P Hogan.

And in closing.......

What doesn't it cause? From Numberwatch via Climate-Skeptic, Tom Nelson and Marc Morano.

Right, this is the phenomenon that's got the current President elect of the USA all steamed up. He promises 'action' on climate change. Seems like it won't be only Bush that people will be calling stupid in the future. Glad the Harper administration north of the 49th parallel doesn't seem so keen on economic suicide. Canadians know about cold.

Standing in the rain

Ah, good old ELO. I once lived around a mile up the road from their drummer, Bev Bevan. Nice bloke, and still breathing. He had a big place, think it was called 'Cornerways' or something like that, near the Warwickshire village of Rowington. Big old mock tudor house with a lawn the would give a New Brunswicker palpitations of jelousy (They like acre sized yards in New Brunswick. That and big decks. "Hey, honey, come sit on my big deck." or "Look at the size of my deck."). Wonder if he still owns it.

Damp foggy day all day today here on our part of Vancouver Island with visibility around 100 metres. Not a Sunday for getting out and about, just a day for snuggling down and keeping warm. Oh, and trying to fine tune the Synopsis for the current MSS. Next is the sequel, followed by an attempt to re-draft my half finished Cerberus trilogy.

Am watching the current financial crunch with a certain heaviness of heart. It had to come, but I would rather that it wasn't taking such a bite out of our capital as it is. No matter, we have to earn our way in this world, and that is what I and Wife are doing. Standing in the rain. Doing our best.

OMG

Proof of global warming? Or is it just that shrinking (Not) Arctic ice cap that's to blame?

H/T Theo Spark

Real Comedy

The physical, in the shape of the infamous Morcambe & Wise mimed 'Breakfast sketch'.

And arguably one of the best verbal comedy sketches of all time from Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker.

Global what?

Had to smother a sceptical guffaw at the continued failure of the Weather to follow the computer models. Here on the island it's been pretty cool despite sunshine, and today is grey and damp. Over in the UK they are experiencing a dollop of the white stuff, which is unseasonably early, but not without precedent.

I know the 'warmista's' out there will hang onto their theory of anthropogenic climate change come what may, but it seems the climate has other ideas. Glad the price of gas is at 108.9 locally, although it would make life easier if it dropped down to below a dollar again. Time to wrap up warm.

Forever Autumn

Ah, but I was younger then, and full of the folly of youthful love. Shan't tell Wife though. Just a little place I once was, and the way I once felt about a special girl. Great tune, pity that the vid gets all anthropomorphic and cuddly in the middle, but it had the best sound quality.

And another old favourite from Jeff Waynes concept album 'War of the worlds'. Thunderchild. Never fails to get me where I live.

Ah nostalgia, never as good as it used to be. Maybe it will be again someday.