20061230 
In this day and age of obnoxious do-it-yourselfers and life hacking and self-helping and top ten lists of ways to be-more-productive, I'm mostly out in left field eating grass and staying out of the ruckus. A blog post on the internet is not going to transform your life, folks. You are an ineffectual, lazy, drunken, and mostly ugly bum. You are selfish and don't remember your friends. Your bed has only one side to it and it's wrong. You jump from dead end job to dead end job like the dead end slob you are. Don't read a MSN article today called "Ten Ways to Succeed at Life" and expect things to work out. Read Lame Austen's "Low Expectations" instead. That being said, I got a chuckle out of this wired article - My 4-Week Quest: Be Smarter. Our hero starts with a Nintendo DS game called Brain Age designed on the work of a Japanese neuroscientist. It's meant to work (and test) the mind. You know, brain teasers, sudoku, stuff like that. After a round with the thing it will tell you your mental age. Our hero scores badly; a decade slower and older than he really is. For four weeks he sleeps more, eats healthier, takes vitamins, and even takes blind showers. After four weeks he's scoring below his own age in mental quickness. So maybe most of the self-improvement crap is bunk.. this one, though.. maybe it is time to grab a blind fold and get down with the sickness.
20061228
Sometimes I considering posting commentary on news items and then other times I think to myself: gee, I'm sure everybody already knows about that, right? Thus explaineth the inconsistency - well, that and my extreme laze. So be it, this is life, right? Or not. Ex-Pres. Ford kicked it, ending the game in what I would call extra-innings. 93 is the oldest any president has made it and it is certainly higher than the current U.S. average age of death, which is 77.9. James Brown didn't fare so well, dying at 73 on xmas. The big payback, maybe? The older I get the more I notice how old people are when they die. There is a very large spread between 73 and 93 but to put things in a little more perspective, the recognized oldest woman in the world (a dubious title if I ever heard one, but regardless) died this year at age 116. If 93 is extra-innings than 116 is the longest game in baseball (Chicago vs. Milwaukee, 7-6 after 25 innings, for a total game time of 8h6m on 5/8/1984). I'm not sure I can even comprehend that. To reach the age of 93 - the oldest a U.S. President has ever lived (and no doubt, U.S. Presidents get pretty good healthcare) - only to have 23 more years in you!? I can barely fathom it. Geriatric to the extreme, bored out of your wits by the unending deluge of moronic epithets streaming through your tv by talking heads and political widgets, and fed up with yet another meal of peas and beans, yet with a long and arduous twenty-three years of imprisonment still to go within this cell we call earth! I know I'm bored out of my wits by the unending - and, basically, despite a change in specifics and perhaps a different angle of attack, all the same - words.. and unless I get (un)lucky I have a lot more than 23 years left to go. *sigh*
20061225
I've never been a snooze-button kind of guy. Listening to that irritating sound every 5 to 7 minutes somehow doesn't seem like a pleasant way to start my morning. Instead, I just turn the damn thing off and, more often than not, end up sleeping way past what I had planned. Bummer. Maybe I need this guy: the hiding clock.
20061222
This week a member of the Portland school board got hisself drunk and ran away from a cabbie without paying his bill. He was 24. After getting thrown in the clank - the police found him hiding behind a fence or under a porch or something - he apologized the next day admitting he "had a drinking problem". In his mugshot he looked a bit beaten up. Musta been a rough night. He has since resigned from the school board. What I don't understand is the inability to either a) get shitfaced and live to tell about it by going about your shitfaced life as you would your non-shitfaced life: by paying your shitfaced bills and not acting like a complete douchebag shitface or b) NOT obtain a public position such as a member of the school board in which acting like a shitfaced douchebag is generally frowned upon. I can pretty much guarantee he does indeed have a drinking problem, and it's this: he can't seem to handle is liquor. In fact there are probably quite a few Portland High students who could teach him a thing or two. Personally, when I'm being a shitfaced douchebag I take it outside. If I need to blow some shitfaced douchebag chunks, I do it in the alley, or the toilet, or my shoes. If I need to act like a shitface then I do it to my friends who will either ignore me or put up with it - NOT to the people who are providing me a service like driving my shitfaced douchebag of a person around, or serving my shitface a beer. I'm no saint, that should be clear. I've had occasion to fall down a set of stairs, run into a curb, and loose a few hours of an evening under alcoholic duress. Regardless, if it happens and I'm a shitfaced douchebag to you I won't be calling you up the next day to blame it on my "drinking problem." I won't try and externalize my douchebaggage as something I can blame on anything else (such as society, drugs, little green people on the moon, or my mom's talking cat). I'll just say I'm a straight up shitfaced douchebag and leave it at that. Integrity doesn't mean never having to say your sorry. It means having to say I'm sorry I'm a shitfaced douchebag sometimes. Cost of avoiding the entire incident? Paying the damn cabby $4.65.. which is pretty damn cheap as cabs go.
20061215
Now that the BoSox have come to a deal with Japanese pitcher Matsuzaka - $52 million over six years, in addition to the $51.1 million they paid just to negotiate - Boston businesses think they'll see a boon of tourism dollars as his countrymen travel to the city to see him play: [20,000 Japanese, on estimate,] will come to Boston annually to watch Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka in a Red Sox uniform.
They're also expected to spend $75 million annually here. That may or may not be an inflated number. Seatle saw tourism dollars jump ~$20 million when Ichiro Suzuki joined the Mariners.. but then they are an awful lot closer to Japan and border on Vancouver, with its large asian population. Nevertheless, it makes the $103.1 million (or $17.18 million per year) not seem so bad overall. Now let's just hope he can play.
20061214
For those of you not paying attention, Goldman Sachs had a pretty good year posting profits of almost $10 billion, 70% over last year. Thank-yous all around go out as holiday bonus checks - an average of $622,000 for EACH of their 26,000 employees! Top bigwigs can expect as much as $100 million. The bonuses are performance based which makes me wonder.. how much do the janitors get?
20061211
I've been doing this for a verra, verra long time. I think. Five years, while nothing in the terms of certain things (glacial movement, the lifecycles of stars, and the time it will take to recover from Bush) is still nevertheless a big chunk of time to (some of) us humans. Especially ones who have only lived a few decades. Very soon I will have six chunks of 5-year blocks under my belt. To be fair, the first five are basically lost along with my ever-dwindling supply of neurons. The second five are so vague they make up about as much as a bad infomercial I watched a few years ago while half-in-the-bag at 3am. Ten to fifteen certainly had some quality moments in there but aren't exactly crystal clear. That leaves basically three five-year chunks left, one of which I have spent blogging. I'm not sure what the purpose is and I don't know who I'm doing it for (minus one particular someone but I'm probably doing that for all the wrong reaons). In the end it's all excercise anyway.. but on rare occassion I click around in the archives and I actually get a few chuckles out of myself. The ultimate question way down the road is where it brings me, and who is waiting when I get there. I'm pretty sure that a majority of blogging is done with no notion of the future. It would seem, in fact, that humans in general have an extreme inability to think about, reason about, or even acknowledge, the future. I try, but Yoda would have hated me - I don't do much. All of my thinking takes place in bouts of inaction - driving in the car, sitting at work, laying sleepless in bed at 4 in the morning. It's always in places or situations where I am not in a position to actually do anything. So thinking about the future, reasoning about it, and planning goes out the window with a poof of smoke and by the time I'm anywhere to do anything I just don't care anymore. This is the curse of an active mind, I guess. You just can't choose to shut it off when it wants to go, go, go. Drugs are but temporary stop-gaps. Talk is cheap. Effort only works well in large doses. I have such little patience with everything and far too much thought about all of it that I am unable to create my own action. Stuck spinning my wheels, flinging mud all over the place but going nowhere. Perhaps this is why I choose to let it dribble out onto the web, why I collect statistics and post discussion and I know it probably means nothing, does nothing, effects nothing, but there is a little part of me that hopes maybe it will cause or create action in others. Or maybe just some extra thought. Even that I'd be okay with.
20061208
This week was a bit of a turning point for me. Back in Maine, I finally found an apartment I liked and signed a lease, I've settled into the job after a few weeks of warming back up to it, and I'm done thinking about the transition. Certainly, I'll have to make it back to Montreal soon in order to pick up some belongings and finish up some administrative paperwork relating to my thesis, but these future trips will be just that - a trip, a temporary visit, a respite. What's more, a certain grammatical finishing statement was placed on my work over this year as well, with the acceptance of a boiled-down 15-page version of my thesis work for publication in the proceedings of the 2007 Compiler's Conference. Luckily for me, this means a trip to Braga, Portugal in March on NSERC's dime - the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. If things go accordingly I may request some extra time off from the job and spread myself around Europe visiting the various folks I know there. My sister completeled her Microbiology PhD this summer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is due to ship out to Paris this January for a three year post-doctorate. While I've never had a burning desire to visit France, I certainly won't scoff at the chance. One of my close friends during my pursuit of a masters over the last two years in Montreal was a Polish fellow with a penchant for linux, good television, and boozin'. Suffice it to say we got along quite well. He has since returned to Norway, where he grew up in his later years, and is working in Oslo. If I make it there it will be wonderful to have a place to stay as I have heard it is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Yet a third friend, this one a true Canadian, is currently in Ireland trudging through medical school. There is nothing more I would rather do this spring in the British Isles - other than perhaps attend the Isle of Mann TT races - than sit in a cozy Irish pub drinking myself silly with a good pal. Finally, and only possibly, my last 'new' roommate who is Danish may be back in Denmark when late March rolls around. He has vague plans with a good high school friend to start a restuarant there and, he being an excellent and learned chef and his friend being a world-reknowned artist of space with installations in many hotel lobbies and bathrooms in Europe, it would probably be a great idea to do so. Alas, alack, there is nobody I know who I could reasonably visit in Amsterdam nor Italy, and certainly not in Spain, which is a shame. Then again my time will be limited and all good things, be they labelled permenant or temporary, they all come to an end before you'd desire them to. What's left? Formalities. There is maybe one more paper currently orphaned on the servers at my lab that could be spruced up and submitted this year. The thesis review is in full swing but remains just a simple step, not a hurdle to overcome. My tuition is paid. No longer am I in any real sense of the word a McGill Student nor a Montrealer. While I have spent the last few weeks playing hide and go seek with the wispy thoughts of a happy return - the idea of dropping it all and moving to Montreal (be it for work, or play, or more ridiculous school) was still available with some sort of tangible reality attached with gossamer threads to the back of my mind - I feel that this week I have overcome them and put them finally to their rest, like unsatisfied ghosts whose fears are now allayed. That chapter is now closed. But like a rabid reader flipping pages long into the night it is difficult not to at least check out the first few sentences in the next chapter before you set the book down and turn out the light. Where is our protagonist going next? What will he do when he gets there? Inevitably, the curiousity keeps me awake long into the early morning hours and for that, I am now suffering. Tired and restless, tossing and turning, with many a sleepless night behind me, I am already trying to figure out which path to take. "Go further into the darkness, and follow the little green elf - Turn to page 73"
"Turn back, and return to the safety of town - Turn to page 12"
20061206
Cynical about the state of the world I am, sure.. maybe, but I remain hopeful. Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent with new solar cell technology. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix. While the operative word there is may, like I said, I remain hopeful. There is no reason to believe our technology will not continue to improve. Considering my nuclear discussion below where I discuss that the US average cost of residential power is about 10.94 c/kWh, 8 to 10 cents from solar doesn't seem too shabby when you roll in the environmental benefits. To speak somewhat abstractly (not accounting for energy loss due to transmission, the inefficiencies of storing energy in batteries during the day to be used at night, etc) - with an efficiency of 40% we would only need a square 265 miles per side to produce enough energy for the entire world. Is it the end all be all? No. Will we actually ever build a 256 2 mile solar panel in the desert somewhere? No. Is it a step in the right direction? Yup. Is it a viable piece of the energy puzzle? Certainly looks like it could be.
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute..
.. the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth. The US is basically just the same. If the population was just 100 people and the wealth of the nation was $100: - 1 person gets $38.10
- 4 people get $5.32 each
- 5 people get $2.30 each
- 10 people get $1.25 each
- 20 people get $0.60 each
- 20 people get $0.23 each
- 40 people get $0.005 cent each
Considering that the US poverty rate hovers around 12%, that means that somewhere between $0.005 and $0.23 is the poverty line. That means $0.23 is probably a very livable "wage".. yet it is about HALF of ONE percent of the top wealth holder at $38.10.. okay, the numbers are getting a little foggy and abstract now. Heading on over to the tax side of things and you'll find that The "rich" do pay a lot of taxes. The top 1% pay about 30% of all taxes, the top 5% pay about 50% of all taxes, and the top 50% pay about 98% of all taxes. That being said, according to the site globalrichlist.com, even making the $5.15 minimum wage annual income of ~$10,100 puts you in the richest 14% in the world.. Then again that probably doesn't take cost of living into account. You need $47,500 a year to crack the top 1% (in the world).
Today's supercomputers .. creating potato chips: "Pringles potato chips are designed using [supercomputing] capabilities -- to assess their aerodynamic features so that on the manufacturing line they don't go flying off the line," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. Ummm... okay then.
YASTSMINAGD: Yet Another Study That Shows MaryJ is NOT a Gateway Drug: but this one, by the University of Pittsburgh, had a duration of 12 years. The Pitt prof studied 214 drug-taking boys aged 10-12 for a dozen years and determined that lack of parental guidance, bad friends, and shitty neighborhoods led to drug dependency, not green buds. In fact just as many of those studied who did end up with a drug dependency started by drinking alcohol first, or smoking cigarettes. I've said it before and I'll say it again, and again, and again. Family values - a term I don't particularly like as I don't think it is hip and with the times and sounds a little too old-skool to be cool - is where it is at when it comes to defining the social landscape of a culture. Look a few posts below at my single parent's statistics. Look at how many children grow up without a father or mother. Look how hard it is, financially, for those families. Until a parent can admit their own responsibility to their child and stop blaming all their problems on the schools, the system, and the state's inability to pay enough welfare while they smoke cigarettes on the back porch, nothing will change and, in fact, it will probably just get worse. In the meantime, feel free to light one up.
Is trans fat unhealthy? Sure, no doubt. Is eating less trans fat a positive step in bettering one's health? Probably. Is it okay for a municipality to ban it? I dunno. Following the New York City Board of Health's unanimous decision to phase trans fats off the city's restaurant menus, experts say the move could be an important step in saving many people from heart disease..
.. The measure, first proposed on Sept. 26, will take effect July 1. By this date, restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils that contain artificial trans fats. And by July 1, 2008, they will have to eliminate artificial trans fats from all their foods. In a day and age where people are up in arms over firearm bans (no pun intended) and citizens are scared of their governments spying on them, this just seems like something people wouldn't be happy about.. just as many are grumpy about smoking bans. Then again, if it truly is a major contributor to heart disease, the single largest cause of death in the United States, then I'm all for it. It just blows my mind that we are able to pass this kind of legislation - even at the municipal level, and this is a BIG municipal level (NYC!) - yet we struggle with far more important issues like social security and Medicare reform, campaign finance reform, etc, etc, etc. Meanwhile, it looks as though among the other places, such as Chicago and New Jersey, which are loving this ban idea is Los Angeles, of all cities - looking to nix the slicks (that's my funny way of saying no more fast food gooey-pooey from nasty synthesized flavouring agents, i.e. trans fat). On Friday, City Councilmen Jose Huizar and Tom LaBonge asked for a report on how the council could restrict trans fat in Los Angeles' restaurants.
"This is a critical public health issue. As the New York City health commissioner said, people are no longer dying of typhoid fever, they're dying of heart disease," said Amy Cooper, Huizar legislative director.
"We wouldn't hesitate to regulate something that is toxic, but we know trans fats are toxic."
LaBonge equated the proposal to restrictions on smoking in restaurants and workplaces. Equating this to no smoking in restaurants? It would be more comparable to banning smoking in a smoke shop or banning ammo at a gun range, in some ways.. or maybe it is like requiring rubber bullets instead. At the end of the day there probably isn't much we can do to stop really fat people from eating bad foods. However, if we limit the access (both accidental or unawares access and the ability for intentional access) then we probably have a very good chance at improving overall health.. but at what cost? Even George Orwell couldn't conjure up a version of the Food Police for his totalitarian novel 1984.
20061204
The ESPN's Sports Guy on Page2 has a funny quip about the Boston Red Sox' bid for Japanese pitcher Matsuzaka: My favorite part about their $51.1 million bid was that they originally wanted to bid $50 million, then they decided on $50.1 just in case someone else bid $50, then they decided that someone else might go through the same logic, so they upped it to $51.1 million ... and then, nobody else bid more than $42 million. I thought that was hysterical. Listening to them recount the process was like hearing a hung-over buddy describing a 3 a.m. eBay bid from the night before. On the flip side, Florida will be playing Ohio for the national championship. A sham, I say, a sham. In a stand-up move, Ohio's coach Tressel declined to vote in the polls. Response from the committee? "Booo." Which I just don't get. So he thought it was a conflict of interest to vote.. what kind of voting process requires the members to vote? Whatever happened to free will. It's not like his vote would have swung things, I imagine. Meanwhile, the rest of the bastards voted in last week's #4 pick of Florida over #2 Michigan most probably because of.. wait for it.. take a guess.. money. A midwest bout like Ohio vs. Michigan wouldn't interest a large portion of the country, they say. The TV execs are chomping at the bit and insisting on a more national game. Whatever happened to real sports where the best man wins? Me, I'm not much of a college football fan and I'm certainly not a Michigan or Ohio fan (if I was forced to pick a team) and yet the only thing I was looking forward to come Jan. was a Ohio Michigan rematch. A good old grudge match, two against one, the darkhorse Wolverines getting another shot at the top team. Obviously, some Michigan folks agree: The system stinks.
The ESPN's Sports Guy on Page2 has a funny quip about the Boston Red Sox' bid for Japanese pitcher Matsuzaka: My favorite part about their $51.1 million bid was that they originally wanted to bid $50 million, then they decided on $50.1 just in case someone else bid $50, then they decided that someone else might go through the same logic, so they upped it to $51.1 million ... and then, nobody else bid more than $42 million. I thought that was hysterical. Listening to them recount the process was like hearing a hung-over buddy describing a 3 a.m. eBay bid from the night before. On the flip side, Florida will be playing Ohio for the national championship. A sham, I say, a sham. In a stand-up move, Ohio's coach Tressel declined to vote in the polls. Response from the committee? "Booo." Which I just don't get. So he thought it was a conflict of interest to vote.. what kind of voting process requires the members to vote? Whatever happened to free will. It's not like his vote would have swung things, I imagine. Meanwhile, the rest of the bastards voted in last week's #4 pick of Florida over #2 Michigan most probably because of.. wait for it.. take a guess.. money. A midwest bout like Ohio vs. Michigan wouldn't interest a large portion of the country, they say. The TV execs are chomping at the bit and insisting on a more national game. Whatever happened to real sports where the best man wins? Me, I'm not much of a college football fan and I'm certainly not a Michigan or Ohio fan (if I was forced to pick a team) and yet the only thing I was looking forward to come Jan. was a Ohio Michigan rematch. A good old grudge match, two against one, the darkhorse Wolverines getting another shot at the top team. Obviously, some Michigan folks agree: The system stinks.
20061201
I'll admit that I thought Al Gore's GQ interview was pretty well done. Don’t you find it appalling that [President Bush] won’t [see your documentary An Inconvienent Truth]?
Well, you know, he’s probably no more objective about me than I am about him.
.. How about all the warnings? [with respect to 9-11]
That’s a separate question. And it’s almost too easy to say, “I would have heeded the warnings.” In fact, I think I would have, I know I would have. We had several instances when the CIA’s alarm bells went off, and what we did when that happened was, we had emergency meetings and called everybody together and made sure that all systems were go and every agency was hitting on all cylinders, and we made them bring more information, and go into the second and third and fourth level of detail. And made suggestions on how we could respond in a more coordinated, more effective way. It is inconceivable to me that Bush would read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001, and, according to some of the new histories, he turned to the briefer and said, “Well, you’ve covered your ass.” And never called a follow up meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a single question. To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job. And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off! And I don’t know why—honestly—I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way. [Practically screaming now] But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!
But how do you really feel?
(cracks up)
What’s the nicest thing you can say about George Bush?
He made a terrific appointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Ok, Is there a second best thing?
I can’t think of another one, actually. GQ's Lindsey Lohan spread ain't bad either. 
The gov'ment wants adults to practice abstinence too! 998,262 births in the US in 2004 were to unmarried women in the age range of 19-29. The birth rate in the US is roughly 14 births per 1,000 in population per year, or a little over 4 million/year.. That, of course, means almost one quarter of all kids born today are to an unmarried mother aged 19 to 29. While the 19 to 29 year old age range is by far the largest contributor of unmarried births, they are still only about 50% or less of the total, which, of course, means that there are close to 2 million unwed births a year. The reported figure is 1 out of 3 children but it could be as high as 50% of all kids born. About 27% of family households with children under 18 are single-parent households and, due to divorce, death, and unmarried births, one in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in their childhood. One in two. As a trend, things are obviously getting worse. The number of babies born to unmarried women per year has increased well over 400% since 1978. The number of single mothers in 1970 was about 3 million. That number grew by 330% to 10 million in 2000. In the same period, the total population of the US increased only 37%. Meanwhile, over 40% of single parent households live at or below the poverty level. The rate of poverty among these households is close to double the national average. While living in poverty is generally no fun, it can also be harmful. Financial strain can be very taxing (no pun intended) and is one of the strongest predictors of depression and crisis in a family unit, regardless of the family structure. 3 out of 4 children in chemical dependency hospitals are from single-parent families. Almost two thirds of suicides are individuals from single parent families. 75% of teenagers who have pregnancies are from single parent homes. According to a National Child Support report in 2000, $39 billion dollars was owed in back child support to 29 million children of single parent women. Less than a quarter of single-parent women receive full child support and more than a third receive none at all. While almost 80% of these women are employed and nearly half carry multiple jobs, the hourly wage for (all) women without children is 90% of men's hourly wages while the comparable figure for (all) women with children is 70%. In 49 states the average annual cost of child care exceeds the annual cost of public college tuition and the average single mother spends 32% of her income on child care (that percentage is for one child only). These single-parent women have the highest rate of unemployment and have the lowest wages regardless of their education.. yet 59% of single mothers continue on with higher education whereas only 46% of married women do.
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
