Sidney by the sea

This Sidney doesn't look at all like the big city Sydney we visited down under some 15 years ago, but it was warm, the sun was shining, the skies were blue and the natives were friendly when we drove up to the neatly groomed little park where their the information centre was located. First impressions are always important, and on this occasion I'm pleased to say they continued throughout the visit as we drove and walked through their clean, well manicured neighbourhoods during our brief stay in this little town perched at the north end of the Saanich peninsula on Vancouver Island.

 Even Sidney's garbage containers are attractive.

Our visit to Sidney had come about because we had decided to visit a few of the Southern Gulf Islands which are accessible by small ferries from Swartz Bay, just an additional 5 minutes further along the Pat Bay highway at the extreme end of the Saanich peninsula. Not so long ago, the British Columbia Ferry Corporation, was a rather poorly maintained and inefficiently operated government run company. Now it is privately owned and managed, and boasts a fleet which includes several almost luxury liner-like vessels servicing the major BC Mainland to Vancouver Island routes. The ferry activity in Swartz Bay did in a way remind us of that big city Sydney in Australia, where there are also a great many ferries scurrying in and out of the harbour as part of a commuter service which by comparison puts to shame  its counterpart in Vancouver and their adjoining municipalities.

While I'm thinking in terms of comparisons, closer to home, Qualicum Beach (by the Oceanside) might also benefit from a few of the lessons learned by, and exhibited in Sidney by the sea. They might send their inward looking City Council and planning staff down for a visit to find out how to attractively blend in the commercial operations (which QB seems to so abhor) and whose absence forces their residents (and their tourists alike, I might add) to leave town almost every time they needed a product or service other than groceries.

I can't think of a single benefit that their present small town thinking policy generates, although QB's gray haired population appears to be quite satisfied with a monotonous lifestyle that does not ever require adapting to change... even if that change might be beneficial.

Another picture for the candid photo file.

I wonder how many of you recall the history story about King Canute? Actually there are two versions of that yarn, or at least of its outcome. Canute was the second son of a king of Denmark who defeated Ethelred the Unready, the king of England almost 1000 years ago. Canute, after a couple of other historic ups and downs, inherited the throne of England in 1017, when his conqueror father died suddenly... but a history lesson is not this blog's intended purpose.

The photo below, instantly brought to my mind the story about Canute requesting that his throne be moved to the edge of the ocean to demonstrate his ability, or inability, to command the tide to reverse its flow. Obviously he failed in his experiment, and depending upon the version of history you prefer, (and there are indeed many versions of history, each largely dependent on the story telling ability of one particularly historian... or his political persuasions or those of his boss) this was either:
a) To demonstrate to his flattering courtiers, who had tried to convince him of his God like power to stop the incoming tide, that he was all too well aware of their flattering ingenuity.
or b) Perhaps it was that he had simply succumbed to his own over-inflated ego, or alternately, had foolishly started to believe the news media rumours of his remarkable prowess.
Anyway, it is not my intention to presume to resolve this age old quandary, although, having spent many years in the real estate development wars, I have met my share of ego-maniacal individuals, and consequently rather prefer the plan b) propositions.

 Summer fun, or a historic mistake?

Whatever Canute's motivations were on that historic occasion, I doubt that the family in today's photo had any such illusions of some amazing power. What is rather extraordinary, however, is that the lady on the left appears to be holding an Amazon Kindle, or Sony, or some other make of electronic reader. And I rather doubt that any of these modern miracle appliances is built to float, or survive a salt water dunking... or posses the Canute sought ability to reverse the incoming tide.

Candid camera

As I've mentioned previously, I'm quite often happier with the effect achieved by casual, un-posed photographs, as compared to those that the subjects posed for, and I have a computer file folder which refers to them as my candid collection. Using the 420mm equivalent zoom lens on my digital Panasonic FZ35, I managed to capture several photos of this couple the other day (from the new board-walk on Parksville beach - but that's another blog for another day)... before the one who was getting wet, appeared to tire of the game, and finally come to his senses.

"____________________" Caption by _____________

I didn't realize that there would be an uninvited gull in one of the shots until I uploaded them onto the computer, but it does add a little perspective to the scene, don't you think? In fact I might have 'Photoshopped' one in, had this one not happened to glide conveniently by at the appropriate moment.

Anyway, the objective of this blog (there's always a point to my blogs you know) is to encourage my blog 'followers' and/or 'RSS subscribers', or even 'casual visitors' to use the comments space at the bottom of the page to create a good caption for the photo. I'll even leave the caption space blank for you, and will give you credit for the title if you suggest a good one. Just remember that others will be able to read yours too!

So far my own favourites are:

Land ho! Home James! and, Oh you're heavier than I expected!

Insanity

One definition of insanity, occasionally attributed to Albert Einstein (although I was unable to confirm this attribution) is as follows: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

Whether or not it was this great mathematician's original observation, or that of some other perspicacious individual, the world is remarkably well populated with persistent individuals who have yet to recognize the inevitability of this truism.

I actually wrote this lead in to a blog, without having any specific rant to follow it, and as I look back through my collection of pearls of wisdom, I can see quite a few where it might have been appropriate, but looking into the future with the help of my crystal ball and, of course, my rear-view mirror, I am convinced that a new one will pop up and bite me soon enough.

So for the time being, dear follower, I will just let you imagine for yourself, any appropriate story that this definition of insanity conjures up in your own mind.

Albert Einstein - (1878-1955) He of the theory of relativity fame, and also of the formula E=mc2.

At the first link you can watch a caricature of our genius actually being drawn on YouTube by Tom Richmond. Or if you prefer a Karsh photo  This link where you can you can enjoy the work of a genius in portraiture and photography.

Meantime, I'll go hunting through Google images for a (non-copyright) portrait of Albert E, while letting my own imagination run wild... perhaps about politically motivated policies that have failed time after time, and will no doubt do so again in the future, or perhaps about some alchemist's futile attempts to change base metals into gold, or the search by a mad scientist for the elixir of everlasting life.

Don't you just love rummaging around in the dark corners of your mind

There's gold in them thar hills

Somehow the shout of: "There's REEs, or rare earth elements in them thar hills" does't have quite such a dramatic a ring to it. But we'll be seeing much more on this topic, or more precisely, on the impending shortage of these really not so 'rare in the earth' minerals, in the news media over the next weeks, months and even years.

As I pointed out in my June 13th blog, only a couple of decades ago the US was the globe's primary producer of REEs, but was supplanted by China, whose many small processors (although the the main source of their minerals is actually one mine in Mongolia) undersold the one major US producer (California's Mountain Pass Mines) and thereby cornered the market.

A Miner 49er - back before helicopters, 

when men were men.

That California mine is now owned by Molycorp Minerals and is being brought up to environmental standards and modernized at a cost of $1/2 billion, before being returned to production - projected for 2011. Another mining corporation, Avalon Rare Metals is working on an apparently rich deposit of rare earth elements in Canada - the Nechalacho Rare Earth Element Project located at Thor Lake, Northwest Territories.

China has apparently been reducing its exports of REEs by some 6% per year for some time, and while some Chinese spokespeople have indicated that their exports will not be suddenly terminated, others have not been so optimistic about their future actions. The Chinese government has certainly warned that they will need an ever increasing portion of their production for their own national consumption, and it is also concerned about conservation of supplies for the future. World demand is currently estimated to be some 150,000 tons per year... and climbing.

Because of the long lead-time it takes to bring any mine into production, some experts have warned that there will be a shortage of REEs very soon, and that this might last for as many as 15 years. Rare earth magnets are required in many electronic products, and the elements are essential components of such diverse things as batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines, i.e. the new alternate, green energy products.

This creates a new quandary for the environmental activists to ponder, because they absolutely abhor mines. Obviously, without new mines the alternate energy, "green" industries will grind to a halt, and the world would remain totally dependent on oil and coal - what I refer to as the black energy sources.

I have little doubt that the ever pragmatic, political decision makers will be forced to concede to the miners on this occasion... as they have done so frequently in the past.

Rare earths - Challenge or opportunity.

The best known of the rare earths (REEs) are: Cerium, Dysprosium, Erbium, Europium, Gadolinium, Holmium, Lanthanum, Lutetium, Neodymium, Praseodymium, Samarium, Terbium, Thulium, Ytterbium, and Yttrium, Scandium and Yttrium (17 in all).

Strangely, while you may not recognize a single one of the names of these mineral oxides, many are relatively common components of the earth's surface. (Cerium for example is the 25th most abundant element of the 78 common elements in the Earth's crust at 60 parts per million, but some other are present at only 0.5 ppm)
These chemical elements are uniquely able to retain their physical properties at high temperatures and in their elemental forms, tend to be iron gray to silvery lustrous metals that are typically soft, malleable, and ductile. As such they are in demand in many of the world's modern manufacturing processes including: nickel metal hydride batteries for hybrid cars, solar panels, wind turbines, super conductors, various electronic products and even military hardware.

The U.S. once supplied most of the global needs for these elements, but rare earth processing largely shifted to China after 1990, and currently that country controls between 95 and 97 per cent of world REE production.

The Great Wall  (An official Chinese government photo).

The immediate problem is that China's own need for these elements has reached a level where continuing to provide the rest of the world's requirements has become a problem, and they announced in September that they would not be continuing to do so. Needless to say, this has caused major concern for their customers outside China, who are now wondering where their future supply will come from.

If you are into the science of chemistry, you can find a periodic table of the rare earths, and scads (that's a scientific term) of other technical data, by googling the magic words "rare earth" in your favourite browser.

If you are into investing in mining stocks, which are normally considered to be one of the more dangerous crap shoots in the investment world, good luck to you. I'm almost afraid to admit it, but that's the opportunity I posited in the headline. And no, I don't have any hot tips for you.

Vancouver Island's Ice Ages

I know I said earlier that there were two processes involved in the geologic development of Vancouver Island, but there were really three, although the third is external to the earth's crust. 1. Was the volcanic activity out in the Pacific ocean, and elsewhere. 2. Was the collisions and subduction of the plates and 3. Was ice, or perhaps more correctly, the forces of ice, wind and water, as our entire continent is gradually being ground down and flattened out once again, while others are still forming.

Interestingly, one of the arguments frequently deployed by the oil and coal industry proponents who are in denial about climate change, is the undisputed fact that ice age cycles have frequently come and gone over much of the globe's surface. (This fact has of course little to do with the carbon dioxide caused, greenhouse gas effect which results to a major degree from man's carbon burning fuel activity, which has increased so dramatically since the era of the industrial revolution).

It is difficult to visualize a layer of ice so thick above our island paradise that it could be measured in kilometers, or to imagine the North American continent, with only the peaks of the mountains showing above the ice layer. Obviously these enormous ice blankets, together with the rocks that they drag across the earth's surface, and the force of the melt water as they retreat, jointly grind down, and cut through mountains. One of the other less obvious effects of ice sheets is to depress the earth's crust under their enormous weight, so that land masses would sink and rebound, above and below the sea level, which itself would rise and fall in accordance with the relative volumes of ice and water.

This glacier is on the steep slope of a mountain high above the Nisga'a highway, North of Smithers, BC.

Paleoclimatologists - there's another of these melodramatic scientific designations for you - have discovered a strangely regular pattern of glacial cycles. The timing of the cycles is apparently set by minor changes in sunlight caused by slow variations of the Earth's orbit, which is elliptical rather than circular.There have been at least 5 major ice ages in the history of the earth plus many lessor ones. The most recent cold period peaked at a glacial maximum some 20,000 years ago, when extensive ice sheets lay over large parts of the North American and Eurasian continents. (Fossil evidence indicates that homo sapiens has been around for some 200,000 years, which means that the earlier members of our species must have figured out how to keep themselves warm without the benefits of oil or coal)

So when will we return to one of these extended ice ages? Well, I don't know about you, but I'd be more inclined to worry about earthquakes, tsunamis or another volcano like Mount St Helens suddenly springing back to life... if I was the worrying type.

The traumatic origins of Vancouver Island (VI - II)

This blog will follow up on the prior one about the Pangea blob and its various moving parts:

Collisions were inevitable, and the results dramatic. Prairies were pushed, tipped, stacked, compressed and folded into mountain chains such as the Rockies and their foothills. In fact at one time our west coast was actually more or less where we now have the BC / Alberta border. From coast to coast to coast was rather less impressive distance wise in those days, eh? We are now told that the Vancouver Island we know and love, is a combination of three distinctly different fragments of the Earth's crust, which came together in stages as a result of three discrete land mass collisions.

That's one part of the story, and the other is referred to as subduction. No not seduction you dummy, but every bit as traumatic, because it results in the earth really moving... as in earthquakes. Great big ones. You see, most of BC sits on the westward moving, North American plate, whereas our little Island rests on the leading edge of the eastward moving Juan de Fuca plate... right where it slides under the N. American one. Doesn't sound at all like a really great place to live the idyllic stress-free life of an islander, does it? And this information becomes even harder to digest, when you realize that about once every 500 years or so (the scientists estimate the time lapse between major quakes to be between 200 and 1000 years, which seems rather vague to me) the friction between the two plates builds up to a point where it suddenly lets go... and we suffer a really catastrophic "big one".

Another of the snow covered mountains in the

central spine of Vancouver Island .

When is the next one due, you may well ask? Well, the last one with a magnitude of greater than 9 was in January of 1700, so your guess is as good as mine, but we may be OK for a while yet... if we keep our fingers crossed. However, we should certainly be prepared for a few smaller ones, perhaps like the 6.3 magnitude Gold River event in 2004. And lets not forget the tsunami potential. Remember Alaska's 9.2 magnitude quake in 1964, caused a wave which did considerable damage to houses and mills in down town Port Alberni. Both of these events were altogether too close for comfort.

The following website provides a record of Canadian quakes which have struck during the past decade.

http://earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/1997/index-eng.php

I do believe it's time to go revisit my insurance agent, to re-examine the earthquake coverage specifications... before they have a chance to read these last two blogs.

Young is a relative term.

Vancouver Island is relatively young, at least in terms of the time lapsed since the big bang which created our planet some 4.45 billion years ago. Paleontologically speaking (the earth science that studies fossil organisms and related remains) our island's records date back a mere 350 million years, and geologically speaking (the science that studies the physical matter that constitutes the earth) only a total of 420 million years.

Moreover our island, which is, as you are no doubt already aware, the largest off the Pacific coast of North America, is made up of a real mixture of materials. The oldest rocks are igneous. i.e. They are volcanic in origin, and were formed during an explosion somewhere in the south-western Pacific Ocean, in a manner reminiscent of the volcanic action that resulted in the formation of the Hawaiian island chain. So what on earth are these rocks doing over here, you may well ask?.

According to such usually reliable sources as the National Geographic, Goescape Canada, and our own Capital Region Geological history reference office, that's quite a long story which will take a little more time to explain, because it involves the extraordinary, and ongoing, movements of large chunks of our planet's surface which seem to float around somewhat randomly on its white hot molten core.

Once upon a time, many many moons ago, the land masses which we now recognize as continents were joined together as one gigantic blob, which earth scientists now refer to as Pangea. This blob was actually made up of various moving sections of the earth's crust, floating on the magma, and wandering around rather casually, opening and closing gaps between the sections.

Mount Arrowsmith - Looking West from Parksville, Vancouver Island

I know... don't you just hate these "to be continued" announcesements which appear at the most exciting moment in a TV program. But I guarantee, that you won't have to wait for an entire week this time, to see how I manage to condense the geological history of the earth into another single scintillating and remarkably brief blog.

Actually, I'm going to do my damnedest to have the second half ready to post by tomorrow. The suspense is really getting to me too you know.

The Salish Sea

What is, and where is, the Salish sea? you ask. Well, although we live right next door to it here on Vancouver Island, when I asked my coffee buddies in the Flat Earth Society that question the other day, no one was able to give me the correct answer. So if you didn't know that either, don't feel too terribly bad about it.

In March 2008, the Chemainus First Nation proposed renaming the Strait of Georgia, which lies between Vancouver Island and the mainland, the "Salish Sea". The BC Provincial Government agreed with the concept, and a formal application was made to the Geographical Names Board of Canada. A parallel American movement promoting the same name south of the 48th parallel had a different definition, combining the names Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound with that of the Strait of Georgia. This latter definition was almost made official in November of 2009 by the respective geographic naming bureaucracies of the governments, however they agreed to replace the names of the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound, or Strait of Juan de Fuca, with Salish sea as a collective term for all three waters, but to leave the three historic names intact.

 Across the Georgia Straight to

Mount Tantalus in the Rocky Foothills

So now you know where the Salish Sea is, and that it really doesn't matter whether you do know this or not, or even whether or not the name appears on your map, which it probably doesn't, because when we look east from our Island, we are still looking across the Georgia Straight... which believe it or not, was once known as "Gran Canal de Nuestra Señora del Rosario la Marinera". I guess anything is considerably better than that.

Wow! And I thought "Eyjafjallajökull", the name of that Icelandic volcano that has been causing the airlines so much trouble by spewing gigantic plumes of ash into the atmosphere recently... was a mouthful!

Curiouser and curiouser

Recently my wife and I went to see, or perhaps a more appropriate word is experience, two of the remarkable new 3D movies, and we were suitably impressed by this dramatic, much improved big screen technology. The days of the old fashioned red and green plastic, cardboard mounted spectacles, appear to have gone for ever.

However, after viewing the modern version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I couldn't help wondering two things. Firstly, if the movie's directors might not have over indulged in rather extravagant poetic licence with their version, as compared with that of the original author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson using the pen name Lewis Carroll. Secondly, how confused might those little children be, whose parents had kindly read to them the original version, written in a genre then known as literary nonsense, which portrayed Alice falling down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of peculiar creatures... then subsequently being exposed to this new, and substantially more terrifying, PG rated film version.

Equally unbelievable was the movie Avatar, although it benefited from more sophisticated, expensive and dramatic 3D flair and animation effects. In this story, the inevitably underdog environmentalists, depicted by the human-like avatars, thwarted the normally all-powerful, environment destroying, exploits of the big, bad, American industrial machine.

And now we must all look forward to the arrival of 3D TV. Actually that third dimension in entertainment has been around since its earliest movie version in 1915, and it has already progressed through several distinct TV technologies. Moreover, the Japanese have had a 3D cable channel since 2008, and another was inaugurated in South Korea early this year. The US, lagging as usual in this electronic field, did announce a full 24 hour broadcast channel at the 2010 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. This will be a joint venture between IMAX, Sony, and the Discovery channel, and it is their intention to be up and running with their new channel by the 2010 year end.

Fantastic! Will someone please send me the money to purchase the expensive new TV set that this will obviously necessitate.

Good neighbour fences - 2

One of my favourite haunts is Rathtrevor park on the east coast of Vancouver Island, just south of Parksville. There are many reasons that I enjoy it there: The fresh ocean breeze, the sound of the wind in the trees, the abundant bird life, the friendly people and the endless photo opportunities.

You can recognize me quite easily. I'm the fellow with a camera and binocs hung around my neck, ambling along with the aid of a five foot long, telescoping, silver and black monopod. This latter prop attracts quite a few puzzled glances, and if I pause for a moment to admire a particular view, from time to time, passers-by also pause to ask me what on earth it is. Being a bit of a joker, I sometimes tell the curious that it is a telescoping fishing rod, but few are sufficiently gullible to believe that, and I generally wind up demonstrating the quick release head, camera attachment, and its 90 degree tilt mechanism.

Sometimes I'm tempted to jamb it into the spokes of some idiot racing by at breakneck speed on a fancy mountain bike, or to trip up some young jogger who makes me jealous that I am now much too old to do the same thing. It also comes in handy for keeping at a safe distance, the occasional off leash, unfriendly looking dog, which the park's signs clearly insist "must be on leash and under control at all times".

So far I have managed to resist all of these temptations, mainly of course, because of the risk of damaging the monopod, but also because of the fact that if push comes to shove, I'm quite certain I could not run fast enough, nor far enough, to make my escape.

 Rathtrevor's photogenic fences
Why the headline good neighbour fences? Well all along the trails throughout Rathtrevor Park there are these attractive low level, split cedar log, Cariboo style fences, many adorned with little signs beseeching the passers-by to stay off the revegitated areas. These are my idea of the ultimate good neighbour fence. Sufficiently unobtrusive to never impede a view, sufficiently obvious to clearly delineate your private territory, really attractive in a rustic sort of way, and eminently photogenic.

Oh, and let's not forget the environment, eh... completely biodegradable!
 

PIN PIN. Talk about needles in haystacks.

How many of these damned things are we expected to remember. And user names are not much better, although if you use your own name, you might be expected to remember that. But was that supposed to be typed with capital letters, or a space, or period, between your first name and last name?

We have all heard about keeping everything secure to avoid identity theft, credit card rip offs, and so on, but it is almost embarrassing to watch some poor, unsuspecting old person finger pecking away at an ATM machine or one of the latest version of chip reader type credit card scanners, without a care in the world about who might be looking over his or her shoulder, then watching the smile of triumph on their face when the dreaded machine accepts their PIN.

Naturally, you are not supposed to write these numbers down, and certainly not to store them on your computer or in your purse or wallet. But if you have one PIN for each of your credit cards, bank accounts, cell phones, computers, computer programs, social networking sites (and I'm quite certain you could add to this list without any further prompting from me), it can become a major problem.

On top of all that... it is recommended that you constantly change your passwords with the goal of further confusing the bad guys.

Now let's see. What is my 10 digit phone number. I do remember when I used to be able to pick up the phone, and the operator would ask for the number I wished to call - no rotary dials, push buttons or touch pads. My phone number back then was 555. If it was a long distance call, you also had to give the name of your town. Now that I could remember.

Gosh I must be getting really old.

Life is a journey

The other day, because I could not remember the ending of the above quotation,I googled 'Life is a journey quotes'. Amazingly, that query returned 2,459,000 results in 0.12 seconds. Impossible you say! Then just try it for yourself.

Can you imagine having to browse through that lot to find the single one that fits the bill. Other expressions that immediately leapt to mind were: Too much information. Life is too short. How did Google do that. The information age.

But I digress. In any event I decided that it would be less troublesome to complete the quote in my own words, or perhaps those with which my memory is prompting me. Perhaps my name belongs up there with those who have already chosen to use their creative powers of thought and vocabulary to solve this particular meaning of life conundrum. You know names such as Socrates, Plato, Lao Tzu, Aristotle, Confucius, Gandhi, Galileo, Albert Einstein, Churchill etc. etc. No, perhaps my name does not belong in this group.

But there I go digressing again.

Assuredly, life is a journey to be enjoyed along the way, and we should cherish each special moment because it is unlikely ever to recur.

Perhaps one of the reasons that I enjoyed photography so greatly, is that this form visual art has the ability to freeze some of these special moments in time... enabling a return to them in memory, if not in fact.


All aboard?

That's garbage!!!

One of my many loyal blog followers came up with a great suggested topic the other day. That I should blog about "the great garbage bag rip off'' ... so here it is Russ.

For many years it has been recognized that dumping plastic in land fills (or anywhere else for that matter) is bad, very bad. The damn stuff unfortunately does not biodegrade (a big word for rot). Yet we have persisted in placing our garbage in plastic bags for convenient disposal.

Recently most stores who used to place our groceries in plastic bags at the check out, for our and their handling convenience, stopped doing so in the name of 'the environment'. And who dares argue against protecting the environment? But nearly everyone, previously re-used their plastic grocery bags for garbage, didn't they? Remarkably convenient and sensible that was too, don't you think?

Then the light bulb sprang to life, either at the plastic bag manufacturers' plants, or at the grocery stores head offices, probably both, but it doesn't matter which. They suddenly started refusing to pack our groceries into these hereto free reusable containers, and started instead selling us fancy expensive fabric bags (thoughtfully adorned with their stores' advertising) in which to transport their expensive merchandise to our homes.

So what do we do now with our garbage? Well, of course, we buy bright, shiny, new plastic bags at 20 to 40 cents a pop in these very same stores, to put our waste in before dumping it as usual at the curb on garbage pick-up day. Mind you, if you happen to feel particularly environmentally conscientious, you can purchase the compostable (another big word for rotting) plastic bags at 70 cents each. Wow, what a deal.

Caching, caching. $ $ $. Brilliant plan don't you think?

Hi ho! hi ho! - it's off to work we go.

Perhaps this old song, made so popular by Snow White's seven dwarfs, is not so appropriate any more. Going to work used to mean commuting to the office, or factory, or other such formal place of employment, but now it can just as easily signify staying at home and telecommuting, or perhaps even connecting to a virtual office somewhere in another country or another world.

If you're one of these new era individuals, do you miss the face to face contact, the water-cooler tittle tattle, the happy smiling faces of your co-workers, that horrible bullying boss, the prolonged coffee breaks or smoke breaks? Perhaps you just hop onto facebook, twitter, or one of the other new generation of proliferating social networking sites, to compensate for the more tactile real office experiences that you are missing? I wonder if you are still constantly bothered by business related phone calls interrupting your thought process, or is your mind constantly in neutral because your work is so boring?

I seem to blog quite frequently about that intangible thing known as 'progress'. Sometimes my comments are made with tongue firmly planted in cheek, others in a quite derogatory vein, occasionally reflecting substantial pleasure about the improvements that have resulted. I really don't know about telecommuting. I have never had to experience it, and it would almost certainly have been impossible to implement in my industry, home building, at least with respect to the construction itself.

On the other hand, if blogging can be considered as an example of the new way, I may unconsciously have been involved in this form of progress by working from home. After all, blogging is a form of publishing which employs the internet for distribution of the written word, instead of the old fashioned, hard copy, ink and paper system.

Is blogging work, I wonder? I enjoy writing, and used to get paid for it, but you are allowed to enjoy work, aren't you?

National pride and prejudice

Some say that the Scottish race suffers from short arms and deep pockets, and not infrequently the Scots must endure slurs to that effect. But we are a proud people and normally allow such insults to fly away over our heads without response... unless perchance we have been sipping a little too much uisce beatha, the water of life, Scotch whiskey. The Scots also invented the glorious game of golf, but apparently some do not appreciate this special sport. Mark Twain, for instance, apparently pronounced "Golf is a good walk spoiled". Obviously everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion... even if it is entirely erroneous.

The Dutch have a reputation for being very stubborn. They believe that "if you're not Dutch, you're not much". Others have been known to use the expression about the Dutch, "Wooden shoes, wooden head, wouldn't (wooden) listen". And then there are Dutch treats. Who said that Scots are cheap.

Of course there are the Irish. They believe in little green men and have a very strange sense of humour. They too manufacture whiskey... but it sure ain't Scotch. They also claim to have invented the bagpipes, although lord knows why anyone would wish that honour bestowed upon themselves.

There are similar stories to be told, and insults traded, between the peoples of many countries, and there are so many nationalities now represented in our own great country, that these opportunities to be prejudicial continue.

But wasn't it great to experience the extraordinary up-swelling of Canadian patriotism at the recent Vancouver winter Olympic games?

Perhaps you have noticed that many Canadians use hyphenated names to emphasize their heritage by adding a prefix to denote the country of their birth or that of their ancestors, to the term Canadian? Or rank themselves in generations, the more the better? I suspect, when push comes to shove, that we are nearly all proud Canadians at heart (with the possible exception of some Quebecers), and perhaps the significance of that unnecessary prefix will fade with the passage of time.

I'll drink to that. Cheers!  Proost!  Slainte!

Mail order world.

The other day my dear wife Jean received via her computer, unsolicited I presume, a spam email suggesting that she might be interested in a mail order Russian bride.

I, on the other hand, received by snail mail, my Cabela's fishing equipment catalogue. I used to await this arrival every year with baited breath... pardon the pun. Unfortunately, since I have been forced to give up angling, because of problems related to encroaching old age, the catalogue was almost as inappropriate as Jean's email.

But I do admit to buying stuff online, especially camera stuff... although first I drive to a real store to check it out, hands on. This must drive the shop owners crazy, don't you think? Mind you, most of the major stores now have their own internet based sales programmes too. I guess its a matter of "if you can't beat them, better join them".

Anyway, I'd just love to see one of the real Cabela's stores now that I wouldn't have to buy anything there. I'm told they are absolutely ginormous. Such a visit might well have cost me a fortune in the good old days.

Then there were the good old Sears catalogues, which were so frequently made available for reading, and/or other purposes, in outhouses around North America, and perhaps in other corners of the world where I have not had the opportunity to explore such utilitarian facilities.

There are many advantages to using the internet for shopping, in addition to the instant access to news and information of all types that it provides. For instance it is incredibly simple and fast to compare prices of both products and services, although some older and less computer savvy folks may have their problems adapting to the new ways, or trusting the internet to adequately protect their identities.

Love it or hate it, that's progress... I suppose.

Bang, you're dead.

One day last week we turned on the TV a few minutes before the noon news started. There on the screen was a magnificent male wild turkey with its tail feathers spread wide... as it calculated its chances of romance with a female of the species.

Suddenly there was a very loud bang and the proud male bird collapsed into a pile of trembling feathers. The camera shifted its focus to a beaming young lad with a large gun. He was being congratulated by his father on his first turkey kill.

Now I do enjoy eating turkey for Christmas, or Easter, or at any time for that matter. And I've got to admit to having used turkey quill feathers and those of various other birds like peacocks, as in the example on the right, in the process of tying trout flies with which to capture that sometimes illusive prey for fish dinner. But right before lunch, at a time when many young children might be watching the notorious one eyed monster, could it really be appropriate to go: bang, your dead?

I do enjoy photographing birds, and often times spend hours at a stretch, patiently waiting beside streams or in meadows waiting for them to pose appropriately in front of the camera. Sometimes I just sit quietly watching their antics, or identifying a species with the aid of binoculars and a bird book, if a new one has appeared or one whose name I have forgotten.

I've never personally shot anything larger than a rabbit, and where I come from, these are considered to be pests by farmers and gardeners alike. And I am certainly not a vegetarian or vegan, and absolutely not a subscriber to that PETA cult. Neither do I oppose the seal hunt because I believe there are far too many of them out there in the ocean devouring the fish that I enjoy catching.

I suppose its a matter of each to his own... in this dog eat dog world.

So after all, the world did not come to an end.

At a cost of $9 billion spent over 25 years punctuated by delays and repairs, the largest machine ever built is up and running, and smashing both particles and records.
According to 'Information Week' researchers: Cern's Large Hadron Collider set a record last week by smashing two protons together in a head-on collision and releasing 7 trillion electronic volts (7 TeV) of energy -- three times more than the previous record.

A cutaway illustration of The Cern LHC

Researchers hope to use the LHC to test the Big Bang theory and other theories about the origins of matter, mass, and the universe. The idea is to recreate events similar to those believed to have occurred when the universe formed 4.54 billion years ago, and to study the data for clues to the origin of the universe.

Naturally there were those trying to bring a halt to this work, because they believed that experimenting with these forces of nature might somehow cause another big bang which would cause the end of the world, or perhaps the universe.

There have been many others who have forecast the end of the world, and the most frequently quoted, or rather misquoted is Nostradamus.

In fact I have read that there are countless sites stating that Nostradamus "predicted" that the end of the world would occur in 2012. I have also been given to understand that this is nonsense, written by people who are simply copy-pasting what others have said, without ever having themselves read the prophecies of the medieval prophet himself. Actually Nostradamus predicted events up to the year 3797 in a book published centuries ago... Why should he have written and published all these prophecies from the 16th century to 3797, if he knew - according to his "lost book" - that the world would end in 2012?

Oh my what a relief that is... a great weight has been finally been lifted from my mind. Perhaps I should now look to the Mayan or Gregorian calendars for further reassurance. On second thought, perhaps not... I'd really rather not be forewarned that the end is nigh.