Paul Mackin's Daily Blog

Visit to Vancouver - July 2011

2011-07-30T15:11:00.001-07:00

Visit to Vancouver - July 2011, a set on Flickr.

Bringing my son out to Vancouver to get to see the city before he moves here in September to attend UBC.

I remember him being a very small baby and now this! Well, one of the joys of growing older is watching your children fly from the nest.

Paul

OK, at last, I am writing a blog on Organic Food.

2011-07-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

Organic Food.

Recently I was talking to the participants in the ½ Marathon Clinic I am teaching at the Beaches Running Room about nutrition. Each clinic does have a lecture on nutrition and I am always pretty unhappy with the outcome as the amount of contradictory advice out there about the very basic process of eating is a bit annoying. I know a lovely woman named Terri who is a specialist on diet an nutrition and she will be giving a lecture to my group this week. There will be things she says to them that I disagree with but she is the subject matter expert and I am the fat, over opinionated runner. Still, I do give my students one piece of advice, tongue well in cheek: “Never eat organic food”

This does get some people’s back’s up to be sure and I do intend this to be a humorous statement as much as anything else but there is a fundamental element to my opinion that no-one has ever challenged me on. There is no such thing as non-organic food. All food is organic. Organic has a couple of definitions one being something derived from living processes, the other being a compound based on carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. In other words anything we eat, anything, is, by definition organic. Of course, people don’t mean that when they talk about organic food. They mean that it is “natural”, “free of chemicals”, “grown without fertilizers or pesticides”.

Hogwash.

Let’s deal with these one by one:

Natural – no crops grown today are the non-manipulated originals. All modern crops, whether “organic” or not have been genetically manipulated by humans to become the modern versions. Granted the techniques are usually limited to artificial selection (cross breeding, hybridization, grafting) and the new techniques are far more sophisticated, but we have been breeding our food for as long as we have had agriculture.

Free of chemicals – see “organic” above. Nothing is free of chemicals. Everything is made up of chemicals including you, me, your children and pet cat. All food is made up of chemicals and a molecule doesn’t care whether it is derived from “natural” processes or built in a lab. The only important thing about a molecule is what is in it and its shape and those will be the same if the molecule is the same, no matter the source.

Grown without Fertilizers or Pesticides. Again, not on any farm, anywhere - except perhaps on a subsistence farm in the third world which is doing an inadequate job of feeding the farmer who is running it. Fertilizers are everything in farming and Pest control is essential to keep yields above minimum levels. The difference is the source of the fertilizers or Pesticides not whether they are used or not. Organic farmers may use manure rather than direct nitrates but they are using a fertilizer. Oh, and by the way, the manure pile that fed a recent batch of sprouts in Germany may have been the source of the eColi breakout in Europe that killed some folks.

It is better for you. There are really not any studies which demonstrate that to be the case. In fact any studies that are at all credible show no better nutrition profiles for organic over non-organically produced food. There are not as many studies as you would think as they are very difficult to do and it is important to understand why. We can tackle a study on organic food two ways. First we can do a basic nutritional chemical analysis – those studies have been done and overall there is no compelling evidence that organic food is better (one recent article here from the Telegraph in the UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5932100/Organic-food-has-no-added-nutritional-benefit-says-Food-Standards-Agency.html). The second approach is much harder. Take a couple of thousand people, divide them into two groups. Feed one group only organic produce, feed the other group only non-organic produce. Make sure that the participants do not know which group they are in and make sure the individuals managing the data collection also do not know which group is which. Run the test for a suitable duration (say five years) and look at health outcomes after normalizing the data for demographics, lifestyle and other factors. Health factors to look for? Well, I would start with incidents of cancer and heart disease, life expectancy, perhaps neurological outcomes such as incidents of senile dementia? The bottom line is that such a test would be hugely difficult and take decades and given that from a nutrition point of view the foods are identical, well, it is a difficult study to justify.

Tastes better. Based on what? Highly subjective but I have never seen a credible taste test which shows identifiable differences. If someone tells me they can taste the difference I am sure they believe they can but they know what they are eating and so could be predisposed to believe that their preferred food tastes better. Here is my challenge to those folks. Have the courage of your convictions – do a double blind taste test on your own. You can do it with a couple of friends, it won’t be scientific, but it might be instructive. Here is how to do it: Have a friend go to the market and pick up two sets (organic and non-organic) of the following items: Apples, Bananas, Tomatoes. Or, if you want, any three vegetables or fruits. Your friend must try diligently to make sure that the organic and non-organic look as much alike as possible without any noticeable blemishes. The same friend then must wash the produce and remove any labels of stickers from them. Two second friends will each carve up servings of the produce not knowing whether they are working on the organic or non-organic foods. They put them on plates labeled 1 and 2. You and as many others as you like then taste and vote on which tastes better. The results are tabulated by your second set of friends and reported back after the fact to the purchaser of the food who then assigns the results to the two identified groups. How will it turn out? Don’t have a clue. My prediction would be that with a large enough group (say 100 or more tasters) it will be a statistical tie. On the individual level it could go either way but my guess is that the perceived differences will be quite minor. Try it, nothing wrong with a bit of home science to keep life interesting.

Better for the environment. Tough one as no farming techniques are environmentally pure. We have to farm, irrigate, fertilize, pest control, harvest, ship and store our food, all of which takes energy primarily in the form of fossil fuels. Still, according to Normal Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on feeding starving masses (agriculture scientist - saved over a billion people from starvation - look him up on Wikipedia). We can, with organic farming techniques, feed 4 billion people on this planet without mass deforestation (which would suck from an environmental point of view, I am thinking). Where do you want your kids to be on the side of the following equation: 7 Billion Population - 4 Billion sustainable. Almost 1 in 2 has to go...

So, back to my running group. One of my students asked why I got emotional about this sort of thing. Hmm... I have been in countries where the life expectancy is below 50. I have been in places where malnutrition is rampant. I have learned first hand the lesson that Norman Borlaug, so succinctly taught with the following quote: " some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things"

Ultimately Dr. Borlaug called it, the organic food movement is an elitist phenomenom manifesting itself in an affluent society. It is simple snobbery and I would encourage the snobs to get over it. There are people starving out there, folks. If you really want to make a difference, boycott organic and give the considerable money you save to the World Food Program (http://www.wfp.org/). Famine has returned to Africa, the only continent where many countries do not part practice modern agricultural techniques and a continent where organic food supporters have actively pushed for the banning of Gentically Modified Crops. I guess ideological purity trumps starving babies. The 20 - 30 % of your annual food budget that you waste on, in my opinion, a fiction, is needed elsewhere.

Little editorial comment here - do not take my word as gospel - I am an engineer and a businessman not an agricultural scientist, botanist or biochemist. These are my opinions only and while I like to think I have thought them through and researched them., I am not infallible. If, however, you choose to disagree with me, be prepared to discuss it, I would welcome such a discussion. These are matters of science, not emotion and science has a code for dealing with this sort of thing that helps us establish the truth. The scientific method is clear, pure, repeatable and completely unemotional. Let's base our discussions on critical thinking, not feelings.

Next time I will try to blog about something less controversial, still, I had to admit this was fun to write!

Paul

Update after a rather long break.

2011-07-10T13:05:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

I have been pushed to return to overdue writing on my daily blog after a small incident this morning. I will try to update this blog more often and will include some of my usual space news items as well but I must begin with a bit of a rant on history and conspiracy theories.

This morning I was leading our Running Room 1/2 Marathon Clinic and one of the participants, knowing of my interest in the space program asked me how to deal with someone who felt that Apollo was faked. I suggested referring to this fellow with appropriate technical language - my thoughts were that "f***ing idiot" work. I believe I referred to the person we were discussing a number of times this way. I think my running mate was a bit surprised at my passion on this matter and I explained to him that it was merely a matter of perspective. Try replacing "Moon Hoax Conspiracy" with "Holocaust Conspiracy" the latter being an odious attempt to deny the history and reality of the Holocaust, the former doing the same with the manned Lunar Landings. I am not drawing an equivalency between these events, I am simply pointing out that the denial of history to push an ideological is evil and wrong no matter what the historical event you are denying is. Further, the techniques used are the same - primarily look for something which represents a perceived (not real but perceived) gap in the evidence and drive a truckload of denial through it. Sound credible and attack any who disagree with you.

I won't get into what the Lunar Landing Conspiracy whack jobs will say here in this blog other than to point out that their "evidence" has been adequately dealt with on the Bad Astronomy website at: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

A couple of developments since the Fox TV special aired. How would you like some pictures taken from Lunar orbit which show the landing sites and FOOTPRINTS?

This was taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter currently studying the moon. Picture explanations can be found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

Of course, NASA was part of the conspiracy but we can also find similar pictures from recent ESA, Indian, Japanese and Chinese missions to the moon as well.

Ok. Rant over.

Kudos to NASA getting the Space Shuttles Discovery, Endeavor and Atlantis up for the last time. Like most of you, I am not sure where NASA is going next but Orion (the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle), and Heavy Lift (a variant on Ares V) seem to be in the cards for 2016 to 2018. SpaceX will be servicing the ISS by the end of next year and may have crews up not long after that.

One place that NASA may choose to go with people could be somewhere they already are with Robots. The Dawn spacecraft approaching Vesta as we speak. It will be in orbit in just over a week and will spend a year exploring the second largest asteroid before heading off to Ceres the largest. Ion Drive, incredibly sophisticated and efficient. Wow. http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

OK. Got to go but will be back more regularly now.

Paul

Trump (and company), Osama and Obama

2011-05-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I want to lay out a masterful performance in the past week which clearly had the greater good in mind but also had a sweet taste of cold, cold revenge on a number of levels.

Last week, Donald "The Idiot" Trump, was running around demanding the President's birth certificate and scholastic transcripts and was actually getting airplay. Suddenly the universe shifted and how it shifted! First off, Obama's birth certificate has been available for years. The Registration of Live Birth, which I have a copy of on my laptop, is the official document of the state of Hawaii - that's what you get, that is the certified document. You got that, you are born in Hawaii. So Obama is born in Hawaii but, because he is black and the fact that there is a fat, stupid, failed real estate developer who wants to keep his reality show ratings up and has no intention or ability to run for POTUS, he must dispatch his personal lawyer to Honolulu to get special permission to show the long form document publicly.

Trump now on the defensive, claims he and his investigators, forced the President to reveal his long form document and then demand the President's scholastic transcripts while neither acknowledging the legitimacy of the birth certificate he is taking credit for producing nor keeping his promise to reveal his tax returns in exchange for the release of the long form document. He is a liar and a cheat who wants to change the rules on the fly and seems to feel that yelling "Excuse Me!" in interviews qualifies him to run the most powerful nation on the planet.

So now comes the trap. Step 1 - Obama mocks and I would say humiliates Trump at the Corespondents dinner on Saturday night. Trump looked bitter and mildly angry during the President's speech. I personally found very amusing the reference to Trump now investigating the fake Manned Lunar Landings, something which now puts him in the camp of the most extreme conspiracy nuts out there. With Trump, and by extension Bachman, Palin and to a lessor extent Mike Huckabee, who bought in to Trump's tirades, now marginalized, Obama, literally, moved in for the kill.

Osama bin Laden is a vile creature who has killed thousands by his direct actions and by indirect actions has probably killed several hundred thousand people. He is as deserving of death as any monster out there. President Obama made a very tough and high risk call to take him out, Tom Clancy style. No intelligence gathering required - a bullet in the brain, grab what you can and prove, indirectly the role of Pakistani intelligence in keeping him hidden. Good riddance! He is gone and the world is a better place. Don't need to see a picture. Don't care. He is done and will never hurt anyone again.

Back to "The Donald" - anyone talked about him, or Sarah, or Michelle, or Mike, since then? No, hmmm, didn't think so...

Well done, Mr. President - you are absolutely deserved of your title! With your legislative record to date, ability to negotiate and clear executive decision capability, you may very well go down as one of the great ones.

Paul

Conservative Majority.

2011-05-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hi blogerets,

It has been a while since my last post but here we go...

As any of you who are my facebook friends know, I am a card carrying Liberal. I have been, at various points in my life, a NDP supporter and a Conservative (Joe Clark RULES!!!!). I consider the Jean Chretien to be one of the greatest leaders we have ever had. To those who disagree with me, well, fair enough, but I would suggest that the Clarity Act and the elimination of the deficit make my case well. I would also suggest, as a right wing Liberal, that Bob Rae would have made an excellent successor to Jean - a bit of left to offset the necessity of the right. We got Paul Martin. I guess Jean had it right, Paul was not ready for prime time and the legacy of that is that the most successful political party in Canada is now at risk.

My thoughts on tonight's results:

Any result which gives us the effective elimination of the Bloc Quebecous is intrinsically good and fair. There is significant evidence that Duceppe's recent relaunch of the discussions on separation, and so it should

Any result which results in both the election of a single MP while showing reduction of support for the Green Party is good but not necessarily fair. While I am very pleased about Elizabeth May's victory in BC, overall support for the party is down across the country. The Green's are well minded but scientifically and solution deficient. Still, they represent a sizable percentage of Canadian public opinion and that should be reflected, fairly, in their place in parliament

I do not fear a Stephen Harper majority - I will probably benefit from it, personally. Still, I am very nervous when a Christian Fundamentalist is elected to a position of authority, let alone a position of power. Anyone who personally does not understand that we live in a universe governed by certain fundamental natural principals but instead views things as inexplicable and thus requiring supernatural explanation isn't capable of tying their own shoes, let alone governing a G8 country.

Move on Stephen. Do a couple of years then retire after a good win.

Paul

15 minutes and we are done!

2011-03-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone

Well, Sir Issac Newton proved himself in spades tonight. After an exquisitely orchestrated gravity assist and solar sailing 8 Billion km journey to go a mere 100 Million km, a small engine on the Messenger Spacecraft fired for 15 minutes and successfully placed man's first robot in orbit around Mercury. For the next year, at the very least, Messenger will explore the nearest planet to the sun and try to understand this rather strange, very dense and very temperature diverse world.

Another interesting thing about this. While the WGG had American Idol recording on our PVR, I switched over to the media server that I have connected to the TV and used the Web to access the streaming video feed from the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University which had a live show coming from Mission Control for Messenger. Way cool. We live in a very different world and the even cooler thing is that if I wanted, I could have watched it on my iPad or smart phone, in the latter case, I would have been able to do so while sitting on a streetcar or in the park. Totally connected to something that is happening in real time but 100 Million km away.

Welcome to the 21st century. Hope you enjoy the ride...

Paul

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

2011-03-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

A somewhat frivolous title to this blog, quoted from the first season of Monty Python. Unfortunately, it sprung to the mind of the WGG in response to a true tragedy. Over our lifetimes both Barbara and I have had the joyous opportunity to visit Japan and we have both fallen in love with the Japanese people, their culture and, of course, their food.

I also love Japanese technology and their thorough approach to design and planning. Until this week that is.

Putting aside the tragedy of the earthquake, as difficult as that is, and the loss of life, as impossible as that is to do, I think we need to understand the nuclear problem they have and its ramifications for the deployment of similar systems elsewhere.

Let me preface my next comments with an acknowledgement of my strong bias in favour of nuclear electric power generation. In my day an engineering degree was a pretty close approximation of a physics degree and, while not in the business, I would say I have a better view than the layperson of how this technology works and its relative strengths and weaknesses. Further I am also an opponent of giving money to people who want to kill me or of using low efficiency, high pollution technologies for power generation.

So the situation with the generation sites in Japan. What happened? Well, the core of a nuclear reactor generally contains some rods of either processed Uranium or Plutonium of which that atoms shed particles called neutrons and interact with other atoms in the core which generates more neutrons. This is called a chain reaction and it makes a lot of heat and radiation. The heat is used to bring water to the boil and make steam to drive turbines which in turn makes electricity.

What happened in Japan was that when the earthquake hit, by design, the power was cut to the pumps which drive water through the core. Immediately diesel generators kicked in, as was designed for, to keep the pumps going and not let the core overheat. Then, the unexpected happened - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition - and the Tsunami hit and drowned out the diesel generators. They planned for the quake but not the Tsunami, even though the two go together. The essence of disaster recovery planning is saying "What if it hits the fan and smells really bad?" and that was not what happened here.

So, what does this imply for the nuclear power industry? Well, we can't burn petroleum forever and if the man made causes of climate change are actually irrefutably established, coal isn't good. So, wind? Maybe but the energy density generated is relatively low and it is not particularly reliable. Solar - great but it is enormously difficult to store the energy for when the sun goes down? Tons of other options but first among them is nuclear and the more we invest in it and plan for the real appearance of the Spanish Inquisition, the better we will be at dealing with the avoiding exactly this kind of problem. If we get over our fear we can deal with cost, safety and waste management problems. Kudos the to Japanese for getting it so close to right - unfortunately "close" doesn't quite cut it under some circumstantes. The Spanish Inquisition is like that...

Bit of a piss poor time to talk about this but, we need that technology.

Paul

A blog about the space program...

2011-03-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

With the Space Shuttle Discovery orbiting the earth, attached to the ISS and this being the last flight of the Discovery, I thought I would say a few words about the space program - a favorite subject of mine.

I will come to Discovery and the manned program anon but first let me tell you about the robot spacecraft that I maintain a sharp interest in and why.

Messenger - the MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft. After several flybys of Earth and Venus, the John Hopkins University Advanced Physics Laboratory Messenger Spacecraft has completed three flybys of Mercury and is now poised to go into orbit around he planet on March 18th. This is a very difficult thing to do and no spacecraft has ever orbited Mercury before. It is a matter of being slow enough when you get there to get into orbit - falling in toward the sun causes you to speed up so you shed that orbital momentum using the flybys to slow you down. Now Messenger is aligned to do just that. Mercury, while relatively close to us is less known that the other terrestrial planets and there are a number of very interesting aspects to Messengers mission. I will dedicate a blog to Messenger when it enters orbit. The Messenger website is http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
The Dawn Spacecraft, run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is an Ion Propulsion robot which will, should its mission be successful, will be the first to orbit two other objects in the solar system. Well, not quite true, the Apollo spacecraft orbited both the earth and the moon but this is orbiting two Asteroids. Vesta and Ceres - two very different objects, the former very rocky, the second very icy and among the largest of the asteroids. In fact, Ceres, is the largest and is considered to be a dwarf planet like Pluto. Ion Propulsion is really cool. The way most spacecraft work is that they use a bunch of fuel to get into just the right orbit, then coast to their destination and the use a little bit of fuel to slow down and orbit. Alternatively they just fly by and take a lot of pictures in a short time. Dawn is different. It is always using its fuel which is electrically converted to Ions (Atoms with an unequal electrical balance), these are expelled from the engines but because they are so light, the opposite reaction of the spacecraft away from them is very small. The actual thrust is equivalent to that of the weight of a piece of paper on your hand but it is constant and adds up. Ion engines are very efficient and get more out of their propellant than conventional rockets. I will write about Dawn when it arrives at Vesta in July, the site is: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
Next up is New Horizons, also run by John Hopkins. This one is not going to arrive at its destination until July 2015- it is on its way to Pluto and will fly by the planet in just a couple of days. I will also write about this one later but try to imagine a 12 year cruise just to get to where you are going. This is such a long journey that the spacecraft is actually shut off for most of the journey and only really operates 3 months a year. The site is: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

As I said, expect followup blogs on each of these but, you know, with the shuttle mission winding down it is easy to believe there is not a lot going on in space - the truth is quite different. Robots work well up there and we learn huge volumes from them.

Back at you on the Shuttle and Manned programs in a couple of days.

Paul

I, for one, welcome our new computer overloards!

2011-02-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

It has been quite a week on the technology front with IBM's Watson cleaning up on Jeopardy. A good show, by the way and one that, until now, only humans could compete.

While Watson doesn't think like a person, or think at all, actually, it does give us some visibility on how Humans don't think and what we may be able to do with technology like that IBM has created.

A great article on the Watson experience can be found in this month's Atlantic but I do agree that this technology, particularly given its pattern finding capabilities will be incredibly powerful in terms of research with large quantities of data.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/is-it-time-to-welcome-our-new-computer-overlords/71388/

With Watson winning, a prize of $1,000,000 was to be awarded to the charity of IBM's choice. One of the charities selected with the World Community Grid ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ ) which I then investigated. This is basically similar to the SETI@Home project setup about a dozen years ago. It leverages a community of members who give unused cycles on their computers to solving broken down components of large problems in investigations underway by research organizations. This sort of approach is great for modeling problems such as molecular shapes, materials development, biochemical research and the like or just where there is a lot of data to be processed. Well, being the creature that I am, I immediately signed up. You will see the Grid's banner along with my latest stats at the bottom of this blog. Both my laptop and my rather overpowered desktop/multimedia machine are running the application. My multimedia box is an i7 Quad Core, hyperthread machine with 12 GBytes of RAM and a ridiculous 18 TBytes of disk. I could not, for the life of me, get that processor up to 20% utilization until I loaded the Grid software. Now, with no impact on performance for any of the other things I do with it, I am averaging 80%! Wow! And I get to help cure childhood cancer too. That makes me feel even better about my contribution that Suzanne Somers feels about hers! I least I am working with people who are educated, smart and honest.

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-human-condition/2009/10/23/breaking-health-author-suzanne-somers-mostly-wrong-about-science-medicine.html

One last thought on Grid Computing, if we are doing what we currently are doing as early adopters with free cycles on PCs, what are the possiblities when there are a couple of billion smartphones on the planet?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/02/urban-supercomputers.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Seesmic

Now, onto our last new bit of technology on today's blog. I am slowly moving paperless in my life. Both at work, I co-own a paperless computing company, and in my private life by the elimination of paper books and magazines from my home but with the edition of two iPhones, an iPad and a Sony eReader, I am trying to do my sustainable bit. As well as saving a fair bit of money and reading more, rather than less.

Well, if I can do that, why can't our technologically sophisticated children. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the iSchool initiative.

Wow! What a great time to be alive! Next blog is on the space program!

Paul

Science and Technology Smorg!

2011-02-14T16:19:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone and Happy Valentine's Day!

I have a couple of really interesting articles here in the blog today - this has been an interesting week from a science and technology point of view.

Any Jeopardy fans out there? Tonight begins the latest Jeopardy Challenge with the two greatest Jeopardy champions of all time taking on Watson, a specially designed computer which plays the game. This is a much bigger challenge that simply playing chess because Jeopardy questions are contextual, nuanced and often include puns. The background to this effort on the part of IBM is explored in the PBS NOVA show The Smartest Machine on Earth: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html

The tricky thing is modeling a vast data set to look for reliable patterns which allow the computer to connect the question to the correct answer.

Second up is an article in The Economist on Three Dimensional printing as a form of manufacturing. They can now print anything from titanium aircraft parts down to complete grandfather clocks which work perfectly right out of the printer. Manufacturing costs will come down, wasted materials will vanish and they are doing this today: http://www.economist.com/node/18114327

A Valentine's present from NASA. A few years back, a spacecraft named Deep Impact sent a perpetrator probe to impact with a comet called Temple-1 and then photographed the entire thing. The one thing they weren't able to photograph as the crater created - too much dust and gas generated by the impact. Tonight, a second spacecraft named Stardust, which has already returned samples from the coma of another comet, has been re-purposed to fly by Temple-1 and see if it can spot the crater. I know what I will be watching on NASA TV at 11:30 PM!

http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/

We live in interesting times and that is a good thing!

Be brave.

Paul

Disruptive Science

2011-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Just wrote a blog on Tablets as Disruptive Technology. I now want to talk a bit about Disruptive Science.

The NASA Kepler Spacecraft has the unique mission of finding planets, very special planets around other stars and specifically planets that are of a type and in orbits which could conceivably support life as we know it. Well, less that two years in there are over 1200 candidate planets with 50 odd that could, potentially, support life. That is in addition to the 519 extra solar planets that we have already discovered.

This article on SpaceRef.com describes the news well: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=32632

Why is this disruptive, well on the surface it isn't, but something will change very radically in our world when we discover life on other planets. This brings that day a bit closer and it will happen.

Here are three other disruptive science that is looming over us:

Investigations of how the human brain works - specific brain regions have specific functions, memory works in specific ways, consciousness exists due to biological processes and brain structures. Crack these items and we could be looking at direct computer interfaces to the brain, machine augmented telepathy and, wait for it, the big one... Immortality! Will it happen quickly, well, don't expect your grandchildren to tell you about it.
Detailed understanding of the human genome. Right now we have it mapped but what the genes do, understanding that will lead to better understanding of diseases, highly tailored drug and treatment regimes and gene therapies. Implications include the extension of human life span as well as the elimination of cancer.
Research into plant and animal genomes. Kind of an extension of 2 but, understand this, we need GM crops and foods. We don't need organic farming (remember Organic Food is no better for you, costs more and is way less efficient), we need ways to grow animal protean in a factory, not on feed lots. Implications here: feeding a growing world population, reduction of eating of animals (while still eating meat, yum!).

Well, time will tell, we may see some of this or not, but great news about Kepler!!!

Paul

2011-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

As the readers of this blog know, I am currently in the process of launching a new company and product, eSCRIBE (http://www.escribecorporate.com/) with my business partner. This is an exciting time, of course, but it is also opening my eyes to some newish technology which is, I believe, entirely disruptive. There is a great deal of interest with eSCRIBE customers in leveraging iPad or Android tablets in place of both laptops and, that favorite old standby, paper.

Let me take a step back. One of my favorite authors, the late great Sir Arthur C. Clarke, was very skilled at introducing concepts which would later come very close to how reality unfolded. He managed to predict, at a very minimum the Communications Satellite, Internet and Skype for free long distance international communication. While he also got a number of things wrong, he also had predictions which now boarder on the realized. One of them which I find intriguing is the soft screen.

Imagine, if you will, a flexible rollup LCD TV which you could deploy anywhere and which can access any and all information available to it. It could have an adhesive or magnetic back which would allow it to be posted on the refrigerator, a wall, in your living room or bedroom - wherever. It would have access to global data networks and have an intelligent user interface. While we don't have this technology yet, we do have something very close to it...

I was smoking some ribs and chicken for a family dinner a couple of weeks back and needed to come up with a recipe for Barbecue Sauce. I did some searching on our family iPad and found an appropriate concoction on the Internet and, propping the device on a small stand next to the stove, I proceeded to make the sauce reading from the iPad and working on the stove. After dinner, I was discussing doing this with the WGG and suddenly I had a "Ah-ha!" moment. Clarke's vision of the soft screen was all there - except for the "soft" part. The screen is big enough to actually easily read, it goes anywhere, you can use it for everything from reading books to accessing the entire body of knowledge of the Internet, it has a highly intuitive user interface and it is relatively affordable. Further, everything you can do with the iPad, you can do with its Android based cousin tablets.

The difference between tablets and smart phones has got to be the screen size - the functionality of the devices beyond that is not really significant. Further, with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, next generation tablets will also be able to serve as video and audio communications devices.

So, why do I consider them disruptive technologies? Well, tablets can replace:

Paper
Books
Magazines
Telephones
Televisions
Laptops

They can access and output any kind of audio, video or written material - they are true multimedia devices. With the growth of cloud computing and on line storage, they don't need to have the power of laptops, but that is also coming. Moore's law takes care of both performance and cost and as the technology gets lighter, smaller and perhaps "softer", Sir Arthur might get a further chuckle from the grave in there and those who don't want to give up their paper will end up with a device that is effectively indistinguishable from it in terms of function.

Back again with you soon!

Paul

Onto the next running challenge.

2011-01-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

Hi there,

Many years ago my old friend Harvey and I talked about him running the London Marathon for his 50th birthday. From that point on, I developed an interest in Long Distance Running and have now completed eight 1/2 Marathons and numerous 10km and 5 km races. In the next few months I am scheduled to run two further 1/2 Marathons (Burlington Ontario and Prague in the Czech Republic), a 30 km race (Hamilton Ontario) and now, as of yesterday, I am scheduled to run the Ottawa Marathon 3 1/2 months before my 52 birthday. Harvey was a bit ahead of me in terms of schedule but the man, to this day remains a dear friend and inspiration to me and for that reason and that reason alone I want to dedicate my participation in the Ottawa Marathon to him.

So, now for the scary part. To pull this off, I will have to run religiously four to five times a week. My Saturday nights will become as exciting as those for seminarians - no booze, modest food and bed early. Sundays will consist of runs no shorter than 18 km from this week forward. I will not travel over a weekend unless it is race related on on a taper weekend, in which case I will run, but a shorter distance.

Here is my schedule:

March 6 2011: Chili 1/2 Marathon in Burlington
March 27 2011: Around the Bay 30 km in Hamilton (followed by an overnight flight to the Czech Republic
April 2 2011: Prague 1/2 Marathon
May 29 2011: Ottawa Marathon - after this day to be noted as "The Harvey Marathon"

Tonight I formally start Marathon training with the Beaches Running Room Marathon Training Clinic. My body feels ok, no injuries. I do have a persistent cough which seems to stem from speed or hill training so I am going to have to work getting that sorted before too very long.

I must admit to being somewhat scared...

Rather than update you all, starting on Friday of this week, I will relaunch the Paul Mackin Runners Blog which can be linked to from this one.

Wish me well, I would ask for your prayers but there is a big scarlet "A" at the bottom of this blog .

Paul

Sad day in American Journalism

2011-01-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

My favorite US "Talking Head", Keith Olbermann, has resigned and his signature show Countdown is off the air.

I don't know what to say. I am a huge fan and between the broadcast show and podcasts, this show has fueled my interest in US Politics and kept me sane through travel to some pretty scary places.

Thanks Keith. See you down the road!

Paul

Late night in Nelson...

2011-01-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

I am here in Nelson BC doing yet another, and this is very exciting, eSCRIBE installation for our new company, eSCRIBE Solutions.

Nelson is a lovely place, I have been working during our very limited daylight here and, as a result, I have not had much time for photography - a shame as it is a very beautiful place. I am hoping that my colleague, Andrew, and I will have an hour or two tomorrow for some pictures.

Part of the work I am doing with eSCRIBE, is environmentally related. You can see the details at www.escribecorporate.com but, suffice to say, eSCRIBE is an excellent platform for removing the paper from meetings. In a community like Nelson, this is very appealing but I also believe it to becoming increasingly so world wide. The technology to replace paper has been improving for well over two decades and now with devices like electronic readers and tablets, particularly tablets. Since the WGG and I purchased an iPad, I have managed to almost eliminate my need for paper books and magazines, something I wrote about previously on this blog. To update you on that, since New Years, I have read six books and every edition of The Economist, and not used one page of paper. Barbara and I will only renew our subscription to The Economist if they allow a paper free option. Really, it is a different world.

Well, just a late night blog from Nelson - bed calls!

Paul

2011, 10 days in...

2011-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Well 2011 seemed to be taking off in a good way and then we got hit with the events of this past weekend in Tuscon, a city that I really love. A terrible shame. I lament the loss of all life at that mall but am heartbroken by the death of that young girl who only wanted to learn how politics work. I can't take particular sides on any aspect of the debate going on down in the states regarding this tragedy but I do have a couple of observations to make.

There is a big difference between guns that kill animals and guns that only are designed to kill people. We should think about that more often
In North America, we do a very poor job of identifying, managing and treating our mentally ill
Yes, the level of dialog between two ideological sides in the US has gotten so caustic as to drive people close to the edge over it. I would encourage our American cousins to take stock and reflect - they are so much better than this

Enough, this is enough to reduce me to tears. Let me switch to a couple of other stories of late.

Let's start with "Dr" Andrew Wakefield. This man, for those of you who may not remember, was primary author of a Lancet article connecting Childhood Autism with the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination. That article has now been retracted, Wakefield has lost his license and now, it appears, he may have been guilty of actual fraud rather than bad science. For reference please take a look at the following:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/01/piltdown_medicine_andrew_wakefields_scie.php

A second more fun story I enjoyed, but one with a very serious message hidden in it, is related to Atheism, Tides and the American Right Wing Media. I will turn this over the the ever amusing Keith Olberman:

What is shocking about this is not only the fact that neither people discussing this knew what caused tides but that something which has literally been understood for over 300 years was attributed to God and given the requirement for miraculous intervention. Whatever happened to Scientific Literacy?

Anyway, my first current news blog of the year. I will follow up with something from Canada's North on the weekend.

Be Brave.

Paul

Ten predictions for 2011

2011-01-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, Happy New Year!

As promised, here are my top ten predictions for 2011. I will review them again at years end to determine how wrong or right I was.

10. It is widely reported that Robert Gates will step down as Secretary of Defense. While she loves her current job, Hillary Clinton will succeed Robert Gates as US Secretary of Defense.

9. Israel will declare a further moratorium new settlements after pressure from the US in a successful effort to get a peace deal with the Palestinian Government. This will be painful for the current government but I do believe they can make it work and collectively the US and Israel can use this to pressure some movement in Iran on the nuclear front.

8. The government of Pakistan will fall after yet another military coup - this new government will have tacit and very quiet political support from the US and will be used to really clean up the boarder region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The new government will also purge the Pakistani Intelligence service of Taliban supporters

7. I may be a liberal but I see no way to avoid this - Premier Dalton McGuinty will lose the Provencal election to Conservative Tim Hudak

6. Barack Obama will have Congressional support in crafting a joint austerity plan which will include both entitlement reductions and tax reform. Elements will include:
- Phased increases to the retirement age
- The beginnings of a federal consumption tax

5. The commercialization of space will continue with:
- A suborbital flight by the VSS (Virgin Space Ship) Enterprise
- Cargo delivery to the ISS by a Space-X Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9

4. Everyone's Grizzly Bear of Little Brain, 1/2 Governor Sarah Palin, will not seek the US presidency

3. Goodluck Jonathan will win the election as Nigerian President but the PDP will be split in the process and Nigerian religious differences will begin to increase rendering the country less governable2.

2. Canadian Federal election resulting in coalition government by the Liberals and NDP, quietly supported by the Bloc. Stephen Harper will resign as Conservative Leader.

1. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will die or become incapacitated, bringing the situation on the peninsula to a head. Outcome is uncertain but I suspect China may have made up its mind it can live with a southern lead Unified Korea on its boarder in exchange for some security guarantees from the west.

We will compare notes again before 2012!!

Paul

Last year's predictions - accountability time.

2010-12-29T10:36:00.001-08:00

Hi bloggerets

Last year I made a number of predictions for 2010 and unlike psychics out there, I hold myself accountable and am willing to publicly admit when I am wrong as well as receive acclaimation and praise when I get it right.

So here we go with our review:

10. Ignatiff out / Rae in. While the jury is still very much out on the current Liberal leader, he clearly did survive the year. Will he survive the next election? See my 2011 predictions in a couple of days,

9. No federal election in 2010. Absolutely right!

8. Obama will select Augustine Commission's flexible path for NASA. Will keep Ares/Orion and extend Shuttle life to 2014. Right and wrong. Obama did accept the flexible path recommendation, kept Orion, cancelled Ares and extended the Shuttle likely by a single flight

7. Democrats keep House, make gains in Senate and Republicans eat their young. Wrong, wrong and absolutely right - the Tea Party will either have to fade out or they will cause the Republicans to a self destruct.

6. Federal government will lay groundwork for GST increase and Carbon tax, likely in 2012. No direct evidence of this but it still seems likely to me.

5. David Cameron wins Premiership in UK election but not mandate. Called it, first coalition government since second
World war

4. William, Prince of Wales engagement to Kate Middleton. In the bag!

3. Kepler and Corot spacecraft identify large number of exoplanets taking the total from 415 to over 1000. Likely right. The actual number on December 20, 2100 is 515 with a large number of additional candidates awaiting verification in the new year.

2. World Cup won by underdog. I say that I got this right as nobody was calling for a Neatherland's win even though they are one of the stronger European teams.

1. Neither Israel or US will make any aggressive moves against Iran on it's nuclear program a but that the Iranian government will continue to face internal pressures and is in danger of medium term collapse. Mostly right. I believe that someone was responsible for sabotaging Iran's reactor control systems with a virus and their material supply chain for construction but these are more passive moves and appear to be working. The dissident movement in Iran continues to grow and eventually the Mullah's will crash and burn.

By the ranking that I just invented off of the top of my head, but defensible, I rate myself with overall 7 out of 10 right, 2 clearly wrong and and 1 unknown.

Next, I will review the top stories of 2010 and then begin with predictions for 2011.

Paul

Christmas present update!

2010-12-27T01:51:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I think I have decided that my 2012 New Year's Resolution will be to purchase no new printed media. Notice I said 2012 - approximately 53 weeks from now. That gives all the publishers out there 1 year to make the change.

Right now, in addition to books, I get five publications that are printed on paper:

The Economist - published weekly. I also now get the iPad version as well and as far as I am concerned can stop with the printed edition any time. It is now up to the Economist to offer me the option of electronic only, something they do not do yet.
Astronomy - published monthly. Now available with some "web extras" but a long way away from being available electronically as a full edition
Sky and Telescope - also published monthly. Same story as with its competitor, Astronomy.
The Sky at Night - published bi-monthly by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I actually don't know that they have any ePublishing plans.
The Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I have been receiving this annual publication since I was 12 and I treasure it. I treasure it but haven't opened a copy in more than 3 years as there is so much web material available for assisting setting up with my limited observing sessions that it is redundant.

The fact that I want to go paperless, personally, is not something I impose upon these publishers. I simply want the ability to access their full editions on my iPad or similar device and save a few dollars for not having the paper copy. Simple!

This is not without precedent. Amazon Kindle and iBooks are already there. I received a copy of a book called American Grace for Christmas over the holidays - an electronic copy which I read through the Kindle app on our household iPad. The cost of that eBook was 1/3 of the cost of a paper edition. In fact of the 10 books I received as gifts this year, only 1 was paper based. My reading experience of these books is in no way diminished, in fact, now that I have moved from the Sony eReader, a product which I have used for a couple of years but do not recommend, to the iPad, it is enhanced.

Further, with the advancements in on demand media, the need for physical substrate on which to present it is gone. I don't know when I last played a CD or DVD. I can still do it, of course, from CD right up to Blueray. But I don't. When the WGG and I decided to watch a couple of films over the holidays we either got them from Netflix which has a monthly subscription model, or rent them from iTunes at $3.99. With our computer connected via HDMI to our LCD television, why would we do it any other way?

I believe that the newspaper, magazine and book publishers out there haven't all gotten to the point where they see the competitive advantage. Offer the content but limit the requirement for the infrastructure to produce hard copies of it. Improve your profit margins on top of reduced cost. To some degree this is the upside of the green revolution - while we need to go down this path for environmental reasons, there are real cost savings and profits to be had out there by going down this path.

Will blog you again in the New Year! Happy Holidays everyone!

Paul

Technology impacts in the strangest ways.

2010-12-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Back in 1997 I decided I was going to run a 1/2 Marathon. I was overweight, under active and raising young children so I wanted to have a bit more energy, see better numbers with my blood work at the Doctor's office and be a better role model for my sons. Not really a very unusual place for a guy approaching 40 to get to.

So how does one do it? Well, the web was available so I went did a bit of research. I also contacted my dear friend Harvey who had run a couple of marathons and asked him for some help and eventually put together a training schedule which got me through to completing the Toronto Scotia 1/2 Marathon in September of 1998 with a time of 2:22:18. A respectable first showing.

I ran a bit longer but it slowly faded out as I started and then completed my MBA and set up my current company.

I came back to running about 5 years ago and, oh dear, have things ever changed. I mean the training is the same, mostly but the technological support is amazing. Take, for example calculating distance. Back in the 90's I used to take my car, zero out the trip odometer, drive a route that seemed about right for the distance I wanted to cover, record the distance and then use that for a particular race. The process now, well I go to a mapping program for racing, and there are quite a few (I will include some links below), and map it out. Distance, elevation and even target times can be calculated.

Before running, I wrap a lightweight plastic strap around my chest, throw on my running gear, put on my GPS watch and off I go. When I get home, the watch automatically synchronizes with my computer, downloads all the data to a web site where is is displayed visually as a set of statistics about my run or, get this, an animated trace of the run showing route, speed, heart rate and elevation. Here is today's run:

Looking at this, you can know more about my health and running performance than my doctor could have told you 15 years ago.

So, what are the driving technologies behind all this - two and they are both disruptive:

The Internet and Web
GPS

While both of these technologies are actually getting kind of old, we are finding ways of using them that would never have been self evident to anyone when they were developed. Technology outcomes often lag, by significant times, technology introductions.

What other things are coming down the pipe for we runners. Imbedded chips in our footwear for race tracking is already here. Perhaps something could be done with oxygenation monitoring technologies? Perhaps heart health diagnostics could be built into the GPS watches. Don't know but it is going to be a pretty different world in this any every other area of our lives.

Keep an open mind!

Paul

Paperless Reading...

2010-12-13T18:56:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

Two blogs in two days - wow, sounds like I am getting motivated!

As you know from my blog a couple of days back, the WGG and I are the proud parents of an iPad. It is desperately searching for a sibling, probably with 3G, which may come along shortly after Christmas. I think this is a two iPad house. In fact it is a multiple Apple device household with:

160 GByte iPod Video Classic

8 GByte iPod Touch

2 GByte iPod Shuffle (Gold - see below)

32 GByte iPhone 3GS (ditto)

32 GByte iPhone 4G (unfortunately, possessed by the WGG)

16 GByte WiFi iPAD

The only redundant piece of equipment is the Touch which was replaced by the 4G in the past few weeks. It will likely go to a good home in the near future.

Now, I have been someone who has leveraged eBook technology for several years, having owned a couple of Sony eReaders. Unfortunately, I have been unhappy with the Sony platform. It works reasonably well but the quality assurance on the hardware is poor (I have seen two of them completely die with no ill use), and, as usual, Sony doesn't play nice with other content providers. So with my second eReader in for repairs (4 weeks and counting), the WGG and I got an early Christmas present for each other with an iPad. We went onto iBooks and bought a couple of things. Nice! Still the selection was limited and I mentioned this to an Apple customer rep the next time I was in the Apple Store. Her advice, get the Kindle App for the iPad.

Oh Wow!

Over 750,000 titles plus access to Project Gutenberg and Google books! OMG! Then we came across both the Economist Application for iPad and the new Virgin Project eMagazine. I may never buy a paper book again. Think about it, I have pretty much ubiquitous access to Internet and I can access almost anything I want in a format that is easy to read, about as heavy as a book (but containing potentially hundreds) and the media base is only going to grow. Screen technology is far better than with older devices and I have no difficult in using the technology or reading from it.

A couple of cool pictures:

The picture on the left is shot exactly at the same moment as the one on the right. The image on the iPad is from the front "page" of the new Richard Branson Project Magazine.

I sense a first world game changer, yet again, Mr. Jobs!

Back to Power Generation next blog, I promise.

Paul

Update - An Editorial Comment, The King's Speech and a discussion on Mackin's Three Rules...

2010-12-12T20:03:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Was driving back from taking the kids to a movie this evening and the WGG (Barbara) commented that my new blogs weren't as fun to read as my older ones. She felt that my more pure focus on science and technology reflected less of my personality. So, with that comment firmly in mind, let me segue this away from my ongoing comments about power generation and transmission and into something more homey...

My sons are going to be spending this Christmas in Scotland visiting their grandparents with their mother. That said, we had Christmas dinner with them today and then took them to see The King's Speech - a film about the stammer of King George VI. I am a bit of a sucker for any film about the royal family. Well, I was not disappointed. This film treat's His Majesty's challenge with humour and respect and I greatly enjoyed it. One of the sadder bits about the movie was the Duke of York's (later the King) treatment at the hands of his older brother, King Edward VIII - and unpleasent and self indulgent idiot. Upon returning home, the WGG and I discussed Edward and I commented that he clearly didn't follow Mackin's third rule and then I realized that I have never written about them on my blog before so, sequing again, Mackin's three rules...

Don't Panic. Panic never accomplished a single thing. Whatever the situation, work the problem. If you panic, you won't help yourself and the problem will still be waiting for you should you survive to address it. Never panic!
Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are. Self explainitory, particularly if you have ever done it (I have on two spectacularly instructive occasions - there won't be a third).
Never believe your own press. A bit of humility and honest self examination goes along way to keeping you rational and focused. When people complement you, they may not have your own best interests at heart.

Edward VIII clearly violated that third rule, and may have violated the second as well - there is not a lot of good you can say about the horrid Wallis Simpson, AKA The Duchess of Windsor.

Good movie. Go see it over the holidays, it will show what I would say is the essence of bravery - do ones duty, personal limitations be damned.

I will be back with a blog on micro power generation in a couple of days but promise the WGG and my few other fans some glib comments about Sarah Palin (of little brain) and religious zealotry.

Ciao for now.

Paul

Power Generation - my first iPad post

2010-12-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

I am posting this from an iPad in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Kind of cool actually. In any case writing about power generation up here is very interesting as they have significant power generation and transmission issues In the arctic. First off, consider the geographic and demographic challenges:

1. Low population density makes it difficult to scale generation appropriately
2. Large area makes it difficult to transmit power from centralized generators
3. Lack of infrastructure means that construction and logistics represent real challenges for any new facilities
4. Climate pushes the energy requirements up and increases the risk associated with power loss

There are resources here, however. Plenty of hydro potential as well as reserves of oil and natural gas. All good but difficult to get and exploit. There are three territories in Canada's north and each approaches generation separately driven mainly by items 1 and 2. In the Yukon where most of the population is in one city with ready access to hydro generation, they rely on hydro with diesel top ups. That is, if they need to they can put additional diesel generators in play for peak load management. In Nunavut, with a highly distributed a population and a very low population density, they rely on community based diesel generators. Noisy, polluting and with a whole challenge of logistical issues related to getting fuel to said communities but a workable solution. Here in NWT there is a combination of the two with a major population centre in Yellowknife getting it's power from both hydro and diesel and the smaller communities relying on stand alone diesel generators.

The problem is that people need power to live. You can make things more efficient but ultimately you must generate power and get it to the facilities which require it (such as homes) you must generate that base load and have the ability to address peaks in demand as I mentioned in my last blog. There are entire economies defined around power generation and transmission and in over the next several blogs I am going to review a number of approaches using examples such as what we have gone through today. Of all the mechanisms for power generation at we have however, please take this away from today's posting - diesel powered community generators are the least efficient devices available. In addition to the burning of the fuel itself, the efficiency of the generation process is relatively low and the energy needed to find the oil, refine it into diesel and ship it to where it is needed is monstrous! Is there an alternative? Several, but in an environment such as where I am right now, no attractive ones...

Bigger steps... Much harder to take...

2010-11-29T17:17:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,

In my last post I talked about how efficiency was a relatively achievable goal in terms of energy usage. Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFBs)in our home, recapturing braking energy in our cars (the basis for hybrids), more efficient use of insulation in appliances - there are a number of ways to do this. Once these changes are made, it is difficult to go backward, for example, in far less than 10 years it will be difficult to buy incandescent bulbs which consume 4 time the energy for the same light generated as CFBs. I firmly believe that hybrid and flexfuel systems in cars will be the minimum standard in 10 years as well and all new televisions, appliances and the like are much more efficient than their predecessors.

Still, efficiency alone will not do it. Generation is the problem and further, peak generation is really challenging. If you have a certain generation capability which is appropriately sized to a community there will be times when the community uses less energy than it does at others. Sometimes the demand will be very high, sometimes lower. When you design your generators, how do you decide what load you are aiming for? The highest level possible? The lowest? The average? If it isn't for the highest then what happens when peaks occur? Where do you get that energy. Bear in mind, you cannot store it - if you generate it, it is available only then, if not used it goes to waste - another efficiency problem. The way generators deal with this is complex but basically it comes down having a good understanding of your customer's needs and scaling generation as required. So you have a nuclear or hydro plant that can produce a certain number of Megawatt Hours (MWH) and that is sufficient during the day but peak power usage comes at 7 PM when requirements jump by 20%, well, at that point, the generator can either produce more power with the existing plant or add other sources to the mix, usually coal or natural gas generators, which, alas produce a lot of waste carbon.

So we have a predicament. If we size our generation capability to meet with maximum need, then we are inefficient and power will cost significantly more. If we maximumize efficientiency, power may cost less but it's carbon footprint is much larger and we utilize more non-replaceable fossil fuels in the process. The answer is partly a behaviour management issue on the part of consumers. In my area, we pay less for power in the evening and are encouraged by the utility to use appliances such as washers, dryers and dishwashers only after 9:00 PM. Further, we have an agreement with Ontario Hydro that they can shut off our air conditioner during summer if power requirements get to close to generation capabilities.

Interestingly enough, however, it is power requirements during summer which may provide a hint at a good way to manage peak loads. During hot summer days, air conditioning demands go up - quite a bit. But hot summer days also have something other than heat to offer - the sun is out and solar energy could be in abundance. One of the schemes that some friends of mine in the utility business are trying is to put solar panels on top of buildings and feed that peak summer energy back into the grid to help with peak summer loading. A simple idea - can't see why we haven't been doing it for years! Like CFBs and hybrid drive trains...

Next we will talk about the bigger questions - generation. The why, the how and whether efficiency is the answer...

Paul

Little steps in the right direction...

2010-11-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

I wanted to write a blog about baby steps - they add up. One time I asked someone how do you actually train to run a marathon and the answer "One foot after another" was quickly forthcoming. It's a little like that with sustainability, as a society we consume a massive amount of energy - the majority of it from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have a carbon output, of course, but a more important pair of issues with respect to a major source of energy is that the folk who own a large amount of it, hate us and large percentages of their citizenry want us dead, or converted to Islam. The second of these issues is that they are a limited resource - there is only a certain amount of it out there. In other words, climate change aside, there is the issue of rational sustainability.

So, what can be done about this issue? Well, two things - energy usage is going up and there is no realistic expectation that with a growing global economy (present hiccups aside) it will do anything other than that. First we can improve efficiency. Second we can find new sources of energy. We will, of course, have to do both.

So this brings me to baby steps. You are driving a car - every time you hit the brakes you extract energy from the moving car and radiate it out as heat (from friction). In other words you generate heat energy and mechanical energy to slow down the moving car. Hybrids take a slightly different approach, they take a percentage of that energy and use it to charge a battery. The drive train on a hybrid is modified to then take energy from that battery and re-apply it to the wheels which improves the overall fuel efficiency of the car by using less fuel to help move you on your way. Is it an electric car? No, it is a hybrid - it is an improved fuel efficiency vehicle and represents a baby step in using less fuel. What is the end game here? Well, perhaps it is a totally electric vehicle, perhaps it is a hydrogen vehicle, perhaps it is something not yet identified but in the mean time we have used sound engineering principles to improve efficiency and use less non-renewable resources.

It is exactly the same as using incandescent vs compact florescent light bulbs. You are using less power to achieve exactly the same result. Maybe you don't like the light as much but, hey, you are changing bulbs way less often and, on even a modest scale such as in a home, less power will be consumed. A change in technology will have an incremental improvement on efficiency and we will not move backward. Many jurisdictions have banned incandescent bulbs, for example, and I believe that hybrid vehicle technology while the next step on a journey, will become the norm and not the exception while we move further along on said journey.

As we move forward, energy utilization efficiency will improve and we should reward and encourage that.

Next blog will be on the question of generation...

Later!

Paul

It's been a while...

2010-11-22T11:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry folks,

I have had a very busy summer and fall and have fallen away from blogging for some time.

A couple of personal updates.

Running season is with us again and while, primarily due to scheduling issues, I was only able to complete one of the three September runs I planned, I am now back with the Running Room and training for the Chilly Half Marathon in Burlington come next March. I will be relaunching my seperate running blog in a couple of days.
I have added a new role to my professional life as the Executive Vice President of eSCRIBE Solutions. You can find out about eSCRIBE and it's recent Microsoft IMPACT award at http://www.escribecorporate.com . I still have my old gig at MGCG but my business partner and I have started this new and very exciting endevour which I will talk about more in future blogs
I continue to maintain a Facebook presence and have linked this blog to it - I have now added LinkedIn to the mix - all this social networking going on!! Being the total technology wonk that I am, who knows what is next. Twitter perhaps?

So as to the life and recent suspended animation for this blog. As of this week, I will be maintaining it on a regular basis, at least once per week , more often should the need or the desire arise. Its focus will remain on science, society, politics and technology and I will continue in my ongoing diatribes against religious extremism, pseudo-science and social conservative ideologies.

I am back - be afraid, be very afraid...

Paul

Adam & Eve, Navels, Queen (the band) and Asteriods...

2010-07-11T19:44:00.001-07:00

Hi bloggerets,

A while back I asked wrote on my blog with the question "Did Adam and Eve have Navels?". As always, I, in my completely annoying way, have a purpose in mind.

OK - so let us understand the question. The Navel is the connection between a fetus and it's mother through the umbilical cord. If Adam and Eve were not born of women (Adam was kind of a spontaneous thing and Eve was, well, kind of a rib thing...). So did God (which coincidentally is Dog spelled backward - no connection whatsoever - but maybe we should call him Yahweh, just to avoid confusion), so did Yahweh construct Adam and Eve with Navels? No need for it and they would then be unique among Humans as the only members of our species without Navels. Way cool. So let's assume that Adam and Eve don't have Navels. Again no reason for them to do so.

So, let's jump on over to the subject of the band Queen. Great band! I've seen them in concert several times. Now their Guitarist, Brian May, is also an astrophysicist and wrote his PhD thesis on dust in the solar system. We know a fair bit about this, we know how much dust there is now. We can project how much dust and debris there use to be as well. The cool thing is that when comes to big debris, there is less of it in the inner solar system now than there was before. How do we know this, well, lets look at moon craters - there are not a lot of new ones being created. Some, but not a huge number. Same with meteorite impacts on earth, or Mars or Jupiter's moons. Since we know there are not a lot being created now, there had to be either a lot of time for craters to form or they formed a long time ago and have been incrementally added to as time goes on.

Which brings me back to Adam and Eve and the entirely new subject of asteroids. If you are a creationist and believe the earth to be in the range of 10,000 years old, then you also believe that Adam and Eve were likely born without Navels. In which case, given what we know about debris in the solar system and the rate of crater deployment we can project that the following asteroid was created with navels (or at least craters) for which there is no explanation whatsoever.

Yesterday, the ESA Comet Probe Rosetta visited an asteroid as part of its ongoing mission:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-07/12/c_13395419.htm

We have never seen this thing before but, it is pretty heavily cratered and has been in a stable orbit in the most debris ridden part of the solar system. If it is 10,000 years old - it has Navels. Or, surprise, surprise, something measurable and predictable - it is far older than 10,000 years old.

Everywhere we look, everything we look at, adds pebbles to the vast, unequivocal body of knowledge which is our weapon against superstition. Including the creation MYTH.

Have a nice day.

Paul

The hidden taxes of deficits and Restaurateurs bad habits

2010-06-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

I haven't posted in a while and have a couple of things I want to get off my chest.

I was having a chat with a recently American friend of mine. She grew up in the greatest country in the world but moved south - she is extremely happy there and has a great life and a wonderful family, I am very happy for her. But... talk about drinking Koolaid! OK, so, health care and taxes. Her taxes are lower and her health care is covered, with some user fees, I imagine by her husband's employer. Except that for 10-15% of her fellow citizens, that is not true. And... Unfortunately her taxes are by every definition I can come up with substantially higher!

How is this possible, you ask, Paul? "Everyone knows" that US taxes are lower than those in Canada. Well, not so much. If you look at the combined tax burden of your average Canadian and your average American, I will acknowledge that there is a difference in your average American's favour. The calculation would be complex and I am not an economist or accountant but, sure, say 10% lower, not more than that, perhaps less. Two things that justify those tax differences:

You get what you pay for! We have a medicare system which covers everyone with high medical standards and minimum wait lists. Sure there are wait lists, particularly in lower population areas of the country - for non-critical procedures and tests. Not so in the major centres. I have had three tests of late and none of them has had a wait time of more than six weeks, due to my travel schedule, and the shortest time from request to test was 20 minutes. Further our pension system is balanced, our EI program supports people with dignity, our roads are good, our infrastructure is in pretty good shape.
Things cost, whether you pay for them now or not. My friend claimed that her taxes were lower. Sure. on the surface, perhaps. The US is now running massive deficits - those have to be paid for. Putting something on your credit card means you pay for it tomorrow, you defer payment. Running deficits with lower taxes means you are deferring higher taxes. It is a false belief that US taxes are lower, they are ridiculously undertaxed. And we should note that the deficits were incurred under GWB not BHO.

Sigh, so many people to enlighten, so little time!

OK, so, onto bad habits by Restaurateurs. Went to a place this evening for dinner. Wanted a burger but, given that wasn't the healthiest choice, wanted to offset some of the damage with a salad as opposed to fries. THEY WANTED TO CHARGE ME $5.00 for a side salad "upgrade". This in a time where everyone is talking about healthy choices, obesity, health crises brought on by bad food habits.

How about this. This restaurant has a young healthy clientele - they are located right next to the volleyball courts and running boardwalk on the Toronto Beach. How about you get your burger with a side salad - that is standard. You want fries? $1.00 extra! You want fries and gravy - $1.50 more! You want Sweet Potato fries - $3.00 more and god help you, if you want poutine with it, $5.00 more!

Design your systems to drive the outcomes you want in mind. I believe that this resteraunt would please their existing clientele, improve their bottom line and garner customers by taking this approach. Or, if not, if they want to go about it the old way - charge $2.00 for not giving me Yukon Gold Fries and instead putting a bit of lettuce, tomato and cucumber on my plate.

OK, I have ranted enough!

Back again soon - sooner than of recent posts, I promise!

Paul

Funny stuff on Glenn Beck...

2010-05-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

I was running on the treadmill tonight whilst watching this on my iPhone. Do you know how hard it is to run while laughing your head off?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wow!

OK so got into a debate on Facebook the other day on, sigh, creationalism... OK. Let me state this. I will give $20.00 to the first person who can find me a modern, peer reviewed biologist who has published an accepted paper on scientific creationalism.

Please, enlighten me!

Paul

Vaccines and the direction of the US Space Program!

2010-05-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I am currently in Edmonton, having finished my one year African adventure a couple of weeks back, now on my way to Yellowknife. We (MGCG - my company) has also just closed projects in Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

So, I will be close to home for a while which will allow me to get onto the running clinic for which I am signed up on the 25th of this month (10 km - target is the Chicago 1/2 on September 12) and to spend more time with family and working in a professional environment that I both understand and appreciate.

OK. So. Let's talk vaccines. How long do you want to live? Life expectancy is currently in the high 70's for men and low 80's for women. When my friend Ed, who turned 80 today was born, it was somewhere between 50 (my guess) and 60 (his guess). What has changed? Well, lots but the most important things would be vaccines for: Small Pox (erradicated), Polio (nearly erradicated), Dipthereia (which nearly killed my mother as an adolescent), Mumps (which I had), Whooping Cough, Hephaetus A & B, Menegitis (nasty thing - kills kids).

Funny thing is, that a lot of people haven't ever seen these nasty diseases. I guess it doesn't feel real to them. Further we have a lot of folks with access to incredible amounts of data, not information, data, who come to the most alarming of conclusions.

Let's look at a particular case. A mother takes her daughter of 2 1/2 years to get a vacination. Some time thereafter the child is exhibiting some cognative issues which are later diagnosed as Autisum. This is really sad, and my heart goes out to the mother and the child. The question is whether the vaccination caused the autism. Every study, bar one, recently discredited, says no - there is no causation - only coincidence. Further, another parent, who may be spooked by this, decides to not allow her child to be vaccinated - that child now represents a risk to the community as a whole.

So, with that in mind, and with a solid acknowlegment that higher education does actually have collateral damage - particularly when it comes to PhD's in English Literature, Cheerleader's and Playboy Centerfold's being references for scientific knowledge, please enjoy and learn from the following Frontline episode on the War on Vaccines.

Reminds me of a recent posting by Brian Dunning on alternative health approaches.

Listen folks, "Big Pharma" and Science have kept your life expentency growing for the past 400 years.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4200

That's right. Feel noble for your ignorance!

Enough, I need something to calm me down...

Oh yeah! the space program! Great article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37007306/ns/technology_and_science-space/

We are moving forward! Next Shuttle launch is pending - back at you soon.

Paul

Updates, Obama and a BRAND NEW BLOG!!!

2010-04-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Some exciting news today. I am pretty happy with the fact that it appears I will not be returning to Nigeria or, if I am, it will be for a very brief visit. What does that mean to you, gentle blogerettes? Well, more attention to my blog for one thing, but also, I am running again and with that in mind, I would like to introduce a replacement to the Rekyjvik and Prague running blogs at:

http://paulmackinsrunningblog.blogspot.com/

My first target, after preping for and completing a Running Room 10 km clinic in July, will be to get ready for and to complete the Chicago 1/2 Marathon on September 12th. I am also going to be tracking my weight aggressively as my lower back problem will only be helped by getting down to 100 kg or so. It will be a big job but I have a great support network and am confident that I can do it.

Anyway, you can check out the blog and I will keep everyone update on my progress through that channel with occasional mentions here in the Science/Tech/Politics blog.

Speaking of Politics - you go Mr. President:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And interpreting the kind of oppositition he faces, on the health care front, but it is equally banal on the financial reform front:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Heavy sigh...

Talk to you soon!

Paul

Running and Asteroids!

2010-04-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Went for my first run of the week today, 3.1 km, the road back is slow but with my trips to Africa either severely limited in number and duration or not occurring at all, well, let's just say I plan to make up for the year I lost.

Signed up for a 10 km clinic at the local Beaches Running Room which kicks on May 25th. I plan to use that to develop some heat running endurance skills as running in the summer is always more difficult for me. After that clinic is over, I will see about some sort of 1/2 Marathon clinic and then a winter Marathon clinic to get me ready for the Prague 1/2 and the Ottawa full marathon next year. Will be kicking off the Prague 1/2 Marathon blog again in May a full 10 months before the event.

Weight is down approximately 0.7 kg first week, stay tuned more updates to follow.

Now onward to Asteroids. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now I like this plan. I would like to see the Shuttle keep going for a couple of years but aside from that I cannot fault the approach. The important point is that it is not about LEO any more - we are going to explore the inner solar system! Now, the full plan won't be published for a couple of more months but I will keep you updated from what I glean from my sources as information becomes available.

Talk to you all again real soon!

Paul

Update on NASA and other stuff...

2010-04-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Still on track with the return to running. Stay tuned for a weekend update.

Now, onto NASA. First off, from today's Hardball with Keith Olberman:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is consistent with what I had heard on SpaceRef next week. While we have some limited data at this point, I do believe that we are going to get what is referred to as the "Shuttle C" the "C" stands for Cargo - this would be an automated shuttle derived Cargo ship. The idea has been around for a while and this would allow deep space missions to be staged at the International Space Station. This is very exciting, my friends. Imagine building missions to Mars and the Asteroids using Space Station technology at the ISS - Wow! Suddenly the ISS has a real purpose. We can look for the introduction of in orbit refueling capability, VASMIR engines - true deep space capabilities. I cannot wait to hear the details!

Other stuff... Sarah Palin is an idiot. Sorry, just had to throw that in...

Talk to you on the weekend!

Paul

Home again!

2010-04-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I am back in Canada again after another trip to exciting Lagos. While away I did not gain any weight, which is important because inactivity and diet are real problems while I am there.

So, now with between 0 and 2 remaining trips to Nigeria scheduled I post the Paul Mackin October Challenge! This daunting challenge, only between myself and me, is to get my weight down to 103 kg between now and when I run the CIBC Run for the Cure on October 3rd. I will be revamping the blog a bit to record this but here is the skinny. When I ran Prague a year ago, my weight was 111 kg, I am presently 116.8 and need to get down by 13.8 kg in 26 weeks - that is 0.5 kg per week or, as our American cousins would have it, roughly a pound a week.

Stay tuned for future updates.

NASA note - the 15th of this month, Thursday this week, is the long anticipated NASA summit. Stay tuned for my report on Friday.

Be seeing you,

Paul

Automotive sensiblity....

2010-04-01T03:48:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

This blog is coming at you from Lagos, the Venice of West Africa, well, something like that...

I read with interest about the planned announcement from both Ottawa and Washington today on new fuel economy standards.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canada-us-team-up-to-restrict-auto-emissions/article1519474/

Well done! The nice part of it is that it is the California standards that are being adopted something which clearly demonstrates that the overall brain power in Washington has increased immensely over the last fifteen months. I actually believe this should be the first step on the road to even higher efficiency standards - let's aim by 2025 for, say, fleet averages of 60 miles per gallon? That would be, oh, about 4 l per 100 km! Wow! Doable with today's technology too! One other thing I would do is to make Hybrids the standard. Regenerative braking is not a new concept - I worked on systems which used in back in the mid 80's, why not make it a standard to be leveraged! My current Camry Hybrid gets something in the range of 6 to 7 l per 100 km, not terribly far from that which is imposed by the new standard. If I drive it very carefully, and the car actually can tell me how to do that, I can get it as low as 5.5 l per 100 km. Just some tweaks on the current technology get us to the new levels.

Of course the World's Greatest Geophysicist also has a fuel efficiency story to tell, she drives a Smart Car which literally sips diesel. Now I wouldn't want to drive across country on the TransCanada highway with it, but, for getting around in the city it is a great little car which is cheap to run and beats the new fuel efficiency standards easily.

Well, enough about cars, here are a couple of other ditties just 'cause I like them.

The most predictable development in the US Healthcare debate

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36122855/ns/politics-decision_2010/

I have serious problems with the current law, not that I, with a greater life expectancy than my friends to the south, have to live with it, but what is telling is that everyone seems to know that this thing will be liked as it gets rolled out. Right wing idiots aside.

OK. So. Speaking of right wing idiots, let's add religion to the mix! Why? Because I am me!

This, my friends, is what happens when cousins marry:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36113919/ns/us_news-security/

End of days my ragged ass...

Later!

Paul

Coming at you from lovely Swindon!

2010-03-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Well, in approximately two hours I will be leaving for the absolute centre of the Universe: Cardiff! Alas, that is on my way to the Venice of the South (Lagos) but I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be my last trip to Lagos! I am also hopeful that is the case because then I can start running again and maybe, just maybe, sign up for a 10km run in Ottawa this May. We will see what transpires.

As to other Blog matters, I have never been a fan of David Frum but did enjoy his most recent book on the path for right wing Americans Comeback: Conservatism that can win again. Frum recently suggested that the Republican party made a grave error not participating in the health care reform process recently completed in the US and has been fired by some right wing NoThinkTank for doing so. I agree with Frum, the US right looks extremist and a party with only one idea - "Just say No - TO EVERYTHING!". The fact is that this piece of legislation will revolutionize American Health Care delivery and with a couple of incremental changes, it can become a highly effective system. It is already a vast improvement on what was in place before hand. Well done, American Cousins, welcome to the adult world where we treat access to health care as standard evidence for a civilized society.

Let's see, what else have we going on...

Great show on PBS recently Nova: What Darwin Never Knew: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/darwin-never-knew.html this is loosely based on Richard Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth something that I am currently part way through and is really a very compelling story. Anyone who doubts Evolution through Natural Selection really doesn't know anything about the science of the matter as there is no doubt about the process and no dissention within biology circles about this matter whatsoever.

ell, now that I have that off my chest, I am going to eat a sandwich and head off to the train station. Updates on NASA coming from the best city in the world!

Paul

A general update...

2010-03-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

As you can probably tell, I have been quite busy for the last few months. Between projects in Nigeria and here in Canada I have been kept quite hopping. Well, that is starting to wind down. My initial commitment to the Nigerian company I am working with was for a single year and that year comes to an end this month. As a result, when I return to Toronto on April 9th, it is with no plans to return to Nigeria. That could change, of course, but my hope is that I can work closer to home for a while and spend time with the WGG and my sons.

My interests in sustainability have finally become reflected in my working life with MGCG's introduction of a new line of paperless computing products. Don't know yet what the market will look like but we are seeing a fair bit of initial interest. I won't spend a huge amount of time here on my blog on this matter but it could be that I am starting down the path of a new sort of business. Let's see where it goes.

With respect to my other areas of blog discussion, well, finally got the gym in pretty good shape here at home and have just started running again. My health is fine but my weight is higher than I would like it to be, all those damn hotel meals. Andrew, my youngest son, is interested in running the CIBC run for the cure this year with me in October. My plan is to do exactly that and then start training for Prague in 2011. Alas I have had to skip Prague this year, it is next week and I am not in any shape to attend it. My friends Dieter, Harvey and Arne have my apologies and I hope to see them in Prague one year from now.

As far as my political interests go, well, it looks like the my friends to the south will actually pass a "better than nothing" health care reform bill. All talk of a government takeover or this being socialism is simply noise from the ignorant and uninformed. Countries that have government healthcare have healthier populations and, the United States, the country with the self claimed "best healthcare in the world" have shorter life expectancy than we Canadians, the Europeans, the Japanese and the citizens of Australia.

I managed to pick up the latest copy of America's Heritage Invention & Technology which listed top 10 technology trends related to consumer electronics. I can't find a link to the specific articles on line but the trends are:

Trend 1 - Cellcam
Trend 2 - Cellphone Applications
Trend 3 - Digital Music
Trend 4 - DVD/Blu-ray
Trend 5 - GPS
Trend 6 - Social Networking
Trend 7 - Laptops
Trend 8 - DVR
Trend 9 - eBooks
Trend 10 - Big-Screen Plasma TVs

Fascinating article and each of these is, of course related and tons of it was predicted and predictable.

Well, I will endeavour to get back to it and publish more often. Stay tuned...

Paul

Came across this thing on Facebook....

2010-03-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

Hi Gang,

It has been a while but I am now about ready to start updating my blog more regularly. Part of the reason for not posting more often has been my travel schedule and this facebook tool I came across shows the reason as much as anything.

Here is an incomplete list of the places I have visited in my 50 years....

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Great holiday rentals at TripAdvisor

Really rather amazing, if I do say so myself.

Anyway an update early next week on US health care, the Canadian budget and NASA...

By for now,

Paul

Well, that took longer than expected!

2010-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Hi there,

Sorry that it has taken me nearly a month to update this blog. I have been back here in Nigeria for the past two weeks and was in Yellowknife for a couple of weeks before that - going from the sublime to the ridiculous, as it were!

Things are going well here, I think. It will be a helluva lot better in exactly 9 days when the World's Greatest Geophysicist joins me. Not sure why she wants to visit Lagos, certainly isn't my charm, but I am pining for her company and so looking forward to seeing her!

As to my long term plans, well, I will be finishing up here either on the 27th of this month, the 9th of April, or the 2nd of July. Sound confusing? Welcome to Nigeria! My company's current contract extends until the 9th of April, one year from when I re-engaged in Nigeria, but we are only paid up until the end of February. Assuming our last invoice get's paid then we will remain engaged to early April with me here until the 27th of February and then returning the 22nd of March. There is also discussion of us extending until June but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. No matter what, however, this project will end by the start of Q3 2010! Hopefully, I will get to spend a bit of time in Canada's Arctic this summer but I must admit that I am looking forward to time at home with the WGG and my sons!

A couple of things on the news update front - Sister Sarah and the ongoing jokes of American Politics.

You know, on my facebook page I describe myself as an "Evangelical Athiest". True enough I suppose but not actively "Evangelical". I am not out to convert anybody unless they try to convert me. The religious right in the US has nothing to fear from me unless they piss me off. Unfortunately they continue to try to do that through their whole health care debate! Look guys, you take care of your fellow citizens, live longer, pay less for health care and I won't take away your belief in a fictional sadistic deity, ok? I mean really guys, I don't want to turn Dell Ammo on you (http://www.kopubco.com/tjc_trade.html)!

Seriously though, if our cousins to the south want to do it right, a single payer system is the way to go. What you have proposed is a poor imitation of a comprehensive health care system but it is better than nothing. Pass it and move on!

NASA. Well, my annual prediction for NASA was that they would follow the Augustine Committee recommendations adopt the "Flexible Path" approach. In that I was correct. What I am sorry about is the cancellation of Constellation. While I think the US should stay in the manned space launch business and I regret their decision to get out of it, I can accept that between the private sector, the Europeans and potentially the Japanese, there are alternatives. I can live with this but would like to see a revise plan and we have yet to see that plan developed.

Canadian Politics. Steven Harper is an idiot. Can't say much else.

OK, if you insist...

Perogation was a mistake and typical of the kind of arbitrary decisions this government makes. Same with this poor Canadian kid tortured by our cousins to the south - "Bring Him Home".

I am ranting. I really dislike Steven Harper!

As per Sister Sarah... Well, I just can't go their right now, other than the fact that the more we learn about her, the less likable she is.

OK. I promise to update this blog more often and will ensure that I once I know about my schedule here in Nigeria, I will let you know about my running plans. "Hey Fatso..." will be getting its next chapter real soon! Promise.

Paul

They just don't get it...

2010-01-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Here in Yellowknife, started my travel for the year. So far I have two trips to Yellowknife and two trips to Lagos planned. That will get me up to about 50,000 miles - all by the end of April! It is possible that I will significantly exceed that but we don't know yet! Got to figure out what to do with all these accumulated miles - stay tuned, some ideas are percolating!

So, Senator Harry Reid put his foot in his mouth referring to Obama's "Light skin" and lack of "Negro accent". Awful! Terrible. He should resign and the Republicans will make him do so, just like the Democrats made Trent Lott resign after his innocent misstatement at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday! I mean all Lott did was imply that the United States would be a less troubled place if Thurmond had been elected President on a segregation platform. Yeah, both bad, both equivalent.

Except... Hate it when facts intercede....

Reid was praising Obama when he suggested that the current President could win. Awkward wording, stupid even, but this is a guy with an A+ rating on racial issues by the NAACP. Trent Lott really did suggest that the United States would be a better place with no inter-racial marriage, sports, bus service, voting legislation for blacks. He did this praising a man who not only was racist in his stated beliefs as a Presidential candidate but also fathered an illegitimate black daughter whom he never acknowledged throughout his life for fear of voter retribution. Oh, and that pesky NAACP rating - Lott had an F.

Here is an interesting quote on Thurmond, I couldn't make this stuff up, plus a link to the Wikipedia article from which I quoted:

"He left office at age 100 as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd).[1] Thurmond holds the record for the longest serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years. He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone U.S. Senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. He later moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time,[2] never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints.[3][4] After his death it was revealed that Thurmond and a black maid, Carrie Butler, had a daughter whom Thurmond never publicly acknowledged.[5] He is the only U.S. Senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

The Democrats didn't force Lott to resign, the Republicans did - they turned on their own guy, rightly so, I might add. So there is no equivalency or favoritism of accusation. The Republicans just don't get it.

"I have a dream" said Martin Luther King... I hope that one day, the United States can get over the huge pain it still feels with respect to race. It is difficult but it is not rational. My Great Grandfather, if I could bring him back to life for an hour, would be shocked to find out that he has, among his many descendants, three people who are half black and one who is half Asian. But, as a society we get over our hangups and prejudices - we mover forward. The United States needs to move forward as well.

So endeth the first blog of 2010!

Paul

New Years Eve Update.

2009-12-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

Well folks,

Here we are on the 31st of December with 2010, the last year of the first decade of the 20th century about to begin. Bear in mind that the last year of the 20th century was, by definition 2000, so 2011 is the first year of the second decade.

Anyway, I had a good night! I went on the Running Room Resolution run tonight - my first race since the Ottawa 1/2 Marathon. My time was ok, 37 minutes and I did walk about 1/4 of it but better than I expected. You see, I have a bit of a medical problem which raised to the fore after my last run in Ottawa. I noticed, after that run, that my lower back was "itchy" - only word I can use to describe it. Then I noticed some pain down my right leg. Well, in early December I had a CT scan and it revealed that I have Severe Lumbar Stenosis in the lower two vertebrates of my back. For a really scary read on what this is, exactly, you could go to Wikipedia and view the following article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_stenosis

I will tell you that, while serious, I do not have much risk of some of the advanced or more dangerous symptoms of the condition. So, after a seven month break I tried a 5 km run tonight as reported. Here is the photographic evidence to prove it, thanks to my son James!

Before the run!

And, five km later...

Crossing the finish line in just over 37 minutes...

Thanks to Barb and the boys for being there for me - it is great to have someone there to cheer you on as you cross the finish line.

So, how is my back? I will update you all in a day or so, but I won't be doing a lot of running until April - no Prague 1/2 Marathon this year, dammit!

I am aiming to run the Chicago Marathon in October with my friend Stephanie and I plan to do four things in the mean time:

Walking every day
Swimming regularly
Working with the WGG to finally rest my weight issue under control
Meet with Andy to discuss some other exercise options to both increase my lower back strength and to work on the weight.

Stay tuned.

Got off my last flight for the year yesterday, coming back from a family visit to Edmonton, and am heading to Yellowknife on the 10th followed shortly thereafter with a five week visit to Lagos.

Will have some other New Year stuff to report on before we all head back to work on Monday but in the mean time....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Paul

2010 Predictions - Part 2

2009-12-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Continuing with my posting from yesterday, here are the top five predictions that I have for 2010:

5. Gordon Brown loses the next UK election to David Cameron. This should not be interpreted as a win (or mandate) for Cameron, nor a loss for Brown, simply time to change hands - as we did here in Canada after Paul Martin's indecisive reign as PM. Cameron will come to office as uninspired and unloved but a change for change's sake. A pity really, his party has so much potential.

4. Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of HRH William, Prince of Wales to Kate Middleton. The Queen learned a few things through the Diana/Sarah fiasco's that her sons were forced to endure. Love matches work better than the alternative and the middle class brings real cache to the royal family in terms of credibility and common touch. Kate, the poor girl, will be hounded by the press but it will be better managed than in earlier times. The Queen will be shown to be a loving and involved Grandmother and Charles will be the proudest Papa out there and will show it.

3. The Kepler and Corot Spacecrafts will reveal a large number of earth like Exoplanets and the number of detected Exoplanets will rise from its current level of 415 (as of December 18, 2009) to well over 1000. Please understand how extraordinary this is - everywhere we look we are finding planets and the chemicals of life. At some point those two trends will meet up - I am not taking Star Trek here. The exoplanet equivalent of bacteria or plants, perhaps, but life nonetheless. If we find it, it will change everything in terms of our expectations of the Universe around us. It could conceivably cause a real shakedowns to those of religious faith - Earth Life, and by extension, Humankind, would be a bit less special, a bit less divine.

2. The World Cup will be won by an underdog team, not of the usual suspects (Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy, Germany). I actually don't have a clue here but I think the African location of the cup may cause a "local" (meaning continentally local) team to surprise. Note: of all the predictions that I am making, this is the one I am least comfortable with.

1. Neither the US nor Israel will do anything to Iran to stop their Nuclear program. Iran is in the process of another revolution, one which will see the fall of the ayatollahs and the Republican Guard. Any activity by the US or Israel will detract or derail that revolution. They will monitor and support the rebels but will stay out of it in 2010.

Well that's it for my predictions. Next up, my personal milestone moments of 2009 - the good, the bad and the ugly...

Will be back with you again by New Year's Eve!

Paul

Ten Predictions for 2010 - Part 1

2009-12-26T21:33:00.000-08:00

Hi gang,

As many of you know I am not well known for the accuracy of my predictions but I will endevour to come up with some here which I believe are defensible and don't have an emotional bias to them.

10. Michael Ignatiff resigns as leader of the Liberals to be succeeded by Bob Rae. I just don't think Ignatiff has it in him and think he will be pushed out before Christmas 2010.

9. No Federal election in 2010. While I believe the economy is recovering, I think that the Tory numbers will not be moving enough to ensure a majority and thus, I believe, we will see a second full year of Tory Minority Government. The challenge to Harper is that if we have another election and he either loses or doesn't get a majority then Quebec may have to find itself a new premier as there may be a vacancy when Jean Charet heads to Ottawa.

8. The Obama Administration will reluctantly resolve to follow the "Flexible Path" option provided by the Augustine Commission. It will allow the Ares/Orion initiatives to continue, will extend the life of the Space Shuttle and will come up with some extra funding for NASA. Not the $3B per year needed but probably 1/2 to 2/3 of it. The Shuttle will extend to 2014 and Ares/Orion will fly that year.

7. The Democrats will keep the House in the US and may even keep most of their seats. The will make a small gain in the Senate. The Republicans will eat their young, figuratively speaking, with internal right wing purity checks which will cause their popularity to further erode and will likely eliminate even the most unlikely Palin 2012 scenarios.

6. The Federal Government will begin to lay the groundwork for both a Carbon tax and a GST increase. The actual rises will not come until 2012 or 2013 but the rhetoric will begin by all four federal political parties.

Next up, our top five predictions for 2010 and a personal note from me regarding my running activities coming up for next year.

Paul

Evil is Hot!

2009-12-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

The boys, the WGG and I went to see Toxic Avenger, The Musical on Friday night. What a hoot! The play has a very simple theme - nerdy boy meets blind girl, boy decides to clean up toxic waste in town, is brutalized by some bullies and thrown into said waste, emerges as mutant superhero and ultimately save the day and wins the blind girl's affection.

This thing has a cast of five and about 20 separate roles, two characters "the White Dude" and "the Black Dude" play most of those characters, male and female. Here is one scene from the play on YouTube.

My advice: take in the show! It is not expensive and it is a great night at the theater!

This evening we went down to Nathan Phillips Square to do some shopping and check out the Christmas lights - follows a picture of my three favorite people and some really beautiful lights.

And so we head into the last five days before Christmas. It is going to be a busy couple of weeks. I have meetings almost every day this week as well as afternoon and evening events. Then we get into Christmas and that is always a busy time. We will be visiting the WGG's family in Edmonton from the 28th to the 30th and then spending New Years eve at home. I am running the Resolution Run in Aurora on the 31st and then heading off to Yellowknife on the 10th. Followed by Lagos upon my return.

Ah, life never seems to slow down much. Oh well!

In any case, will update this blog sometime before Christmas. Stay tuned....

Paul

A couple of great articles...

2009-12-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Hi gang,

I came across a really interesting article on MSNBC on the top 50 scientific discoveries over the past 50 years. The interesting aspect of this is the exponential aspect of knowledge. With respect to the exploration of the solar system, for example, in 1957 we had launched an satellite. By 2007, we were totally dependent on space technology (GPS, Weather Satellites, and Medical monitoring technology).

http://www.casw.org/casw/article/50-science-sagas-50-years

Now, I would put that kind of track some results here from my Christian Fundamentalist friends (and yes, I do have some). Here is the question - you have cholera. I give you two treatment options: Prayer or 350 mg of amoxilyn 3 times a day for 10 days. What are you, oh person who god talks to directly, gonna do? What if you challenge god? Say prove your existence to me, cure me without scientific intervention - you demand that I ignore the vast preponderance of the evidence and deny evolution and the formation of the universe? Prove it to me.

I will gladly help any Christian fundamentalist who wants to take this test. I will monitor the results and will accept God on high, should the evidence support his existence. To date nobody has accepted this offer but I remain in hope.

Now, also on the science front, we have evidence of a world not dissimilar to our own:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/12/16/2152989.aspx

What kind of world do we live in with such wonders in it! Oh, I forgot, we don't. The Universe is 6000 years old and every bit of evidence to the contrary is an insult to our "faith".

Paul

Listening to "Social Distortian" and otherwise feeling Bliss...

2009-12-13T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hi gang,

The WGG and I have had a pretty good weekend, the kids were over yesterday and we took them uptown to the Yonge and Eglinton area of Toronto. They seem to genuinely like my recent move and are having a great time down in the big city. Here is a photo taken yesterday of them and the WGG as we decorated the Christmas Tree.

So we are all going to see the Toxic Avenger next week here in Toronto as a Christmas treat for the boys. It should be a great time.

OK so, now onto the news. First off, let's talk about Copenhagen. My opinion is that the focus here is wrong. Climategate, Global Warming, the wrong terms... Let us talk instead about sustainability. Do you know how much energy the sun dumps onto our planet in a day? Every thing we use for energy comes from that source - coal, oil, solar, wind, geothermal - they are all basically solar in nature. So let's be more efficient in how we get it, avoid the coal/oil middle man! The Picken's plan is still one of the smartest plan's I have heard on sustainability - natural gas for hybrid cars, wind and solar for grid generation, topped up, of course by some nuclear. Make sure you have a smart grid, a progressive taxation policy and a politically enlightened environment and, well, Bob is your Uncle!

Vaccination: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2295541

Enough said, get the jab and be healthy!

Paul

December Smogsbord.

2009-12-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Hi gang

A bunch of stuff to go over...

I am back in Canada having completed my fifth trip to Nigeria this year and that, of course, included two layovers in Europe (Prague, the UK and Iceland). It has been a good year but I must admit that Nigeria is, as always, a challenge. I want to build the transnational fibre optical network there, it would be such an accomplishment and would so help the people of that fine, but challenged nation. Stay tuned...

Came across a great article on GM foods in today's National Post. Actually it was pointed out to me by the World's Greatest Geophysicist but I agree with it in its entirety. In the words of Marc, the World's Greatest Pig Farmer "we need this technology to feed all humans":

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2311489

Now, onto other things...

I am tempted to discuss the US Senate debate on health care but keep coming back to the same two lines:

Canadians live longer
We have lower costs, per capita, for health care than Americans

I could make many other comments but will hold off unless challenged. We also teach science in schools, and our physician base reflects this...

Something on US Afghanistan policy. Tom Freidman makes a great point on taxation policy. War is painful!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now, understand that I support a huge tax increase for fuel in Canada as well. It encourages a move to a non-carbon based fuel economy. More about that in a later blog.

Well, running out of steam. Should let you know that I am within 15 days of making a decision about the Prague 2010 1/2 Marathon. Lots depends on whether the Nigerians pay their outstanding bill or not by next week. They pay it, I am in Lagos, they don't I have 21.1 km of Prague cobblestones in front of me.

Later!

Paul

Greatest Show on Earth...

2009-12-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

On my way back from Lagos, sitting in Frankfurt airport with way, way, too much time on my hands so I decided to inflict my boredom on my faithful readers, you lucky sods, you...

Am in the middle of reading Richard Dawkin's Greatest Show on Earth. Really good book about the overwhelming evidence for evolution. Here is a link to the book's main web site, I suggest you check it out.

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5589249912568597380

I had this aquaintence once, bit of a jerk really, who was a Christian Fundamentalist and once commented to me that all one had to do to reject evolution was "look at the evidence" meaning, of course, that it didn't withstand scrutiny. Well, Dave, old fellow, here is my response and if we ever meet again, this may be part of our discussion.

Check this book out, it is a real page turner!

Paul

Nigeria and loving it!

2009-12-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

There is very little in this world that I cannot take. I was in the military and learned how to stand for hours on end, do pushups for no reason whatsoever, and be yelled at on a regular basis. Not a problem. I have a pretty good tolerance for things and have the patience of Job. Except for one thing...

Don't have me do nothing. I cannot stand to be bored...

I am sitting here in Lagos with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO!!!

I have tons of work to get done back home but it would be far more efficient to be there to do it. Plus I miss the WGG and my sons like mad!

OK, deep breath...

I start running again this week....

Bye from Lagos.

Paul

Coming out!

2009-11-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

Hi gang,

I used the "gay defense" this past week here in Lagos. A friend of mine was being harassed by a bar girl over at the iconic Pat's Bar in Victoria Island and was getting a bit frantic. These ladies can be very persistent, particularly as one gets to the end of the month and with Christmas coming up. Anyway, as she was annoying him, I slipped my arm around his waste and said "He's mine", my friend's response was to put his are around me.

She freaked. Homosexuality is illegal here in this very religious nation. I was accused of denying her ability to "love the man" and somehow being against God. Well, God and I separated a long time ago and I am not to concerned but I didn't get into that with her.

Here is a picture of my new "friend" Thomas, a Swede who has forgotten more about Fibre Optical Cable than I will ever know.

Now onto other things...

Great article on vaccination foolishness in Wired magazine. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/

As many of you know this is one of my "0 to rage in 5 seconds" subjects - scientific ignorance is as offensive in a modern society as is illiteracy or innumeracy.

Another button of mine that can be pushed is about evolution and "scientific creationism", here is something on one of my inspirations, Richard Dawkins - notice the "idiot" evangelists stupid and crude attempt to link an understanding of the reality of natural selection to faith.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/25/darwin.dawkins.evolution/index.html

Heading back to Canada in just a week and about done with the African experience. Looking forward to doing some work in a more Canadian climate and spending much more time with the WGG and my sons.

BTW now that the African adventure appears to be winding down, there may be a Prague 1/2 Marathon Blog relaunch - just in case you are interested....

All the best,

Paul

Health Care from a country that has less than none!

2009-11-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Hey gang,

Back in Lagos again and this time I am going to tell a slightly gross personal story. It involves bodily fluids, and, alas solids, but also is about health care and it is an important story.

As you know, I am often amazingly offended when some politician from the United States (always Republican) rails against the Canadian Health Care System (CHCS - didn't know we had an acronym) as an example of what Americans don't want to have.

Forget my usual argument that we live longer by an average of 3 years.

Forget my usual argument that we pay less per capita by $4.00 per year for health care.

Instead, let me tell you a little story. I went to see my Doctor for my annual medical last week. We spent some time talking about my health, including the fact that I had just turned 50. Michael, my Doctor, was his usual thorough and professional self and, as usual, blood was drawn, weight was taken, all basic orifices examined (oh happy day!) and I was then to be sent off to specialists for a CT scan (back problem related to a run in Ottawa back in May) and a Colonoscopy (I am 50 - at 40 other things were included, best left unsaid).

So, I arrive in Nigeria last night and there is a message from my Doctor's office, less than 3 business days since the exam. I have an appointment for my colonoscopy on the 25th of November. Wow - that is less than 3 weeks after the exam for a totally optional and completely preventive examination! Now, the problem isn't the doctor, it is me, I am in Nigeria until the 16th of December and, boy, those Christmas holidays sure put a kibosh on things! Well, guess what, I call and I get an appointment for the 17th of December for the consultation and early in January for the actual exam! Good lord - I am being forced to make such sacrifices because of our "socialist medical system" .

Here is the cool thing. Usually Colon cancer doesn't show up into later life. I am having this exam, free of charge, at a time which I run little risk of having the disease but around the time the precursors to it (polyps and flat tumours) may start to show themselves. They can deal with both during the procedure and if no symptoms are in place I won't need another one for 10 years, if they see something, they can likely deal with it on the spot, and I don't have to deal with it again for 5 years. Doing this now costs some money, dealing with this if I were to have colon cancer would cost a lot more. Preventative medicine saves money but the only way people will engage in this sort of preventative regime is if it is covered by a SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. Focus on health rather than health care!

Sorry, American Cousins, to use such offensive language. Still, did I mention: WE LIVE LONGER THAN YOU AND WE PAY LESS FOR THE PRIVILEGE!!!!

Plus we still have a Queen - a real advantage over the idiot you just got rid of, but I digress!

OK - to wind this down, I want you all to really look at this video on the human cost of the lack of health care in the US. Please, don't focus on us here in Canada, we are fine, focus closer to home:

https://video.pbs.org/feature/87

Hey, American Cousins, get with the program!!!

Paul

Coming at you from Edmonton!

2009-11-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

Hi bloggerets!

I am in Edmonton with the WGG visiting her family for the weekend. Just wanted to get a quick blog update out there before I head back to Toronto as the next few days will be busy. I am home tomorrow, entertaining a friend from Nigeria on Tuesday and Wednesday, spending some quality family time on the weekend and then flying to Lagos for a month on Sunday. Whew! I am tired just thinking about it.

OK so, stuff to update you on.

US Health Care. They don't have a clue. They need this. Why do they think that Canada, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Germany - hell, all of Europe, can do this and they can't. I am confused. Still the Congress passed a bill, a step forward, but we aren't there yet.

Training. Have made a tentative restart in training after my summer of back injury and travel to Nigeria. Kept swimming all summer and have been doing some treadmill walking over the past couple of weeks, so far no back issues., so am now viewing the Chicago Marathon of 2010 as a likely race return. Having my annual medical on Wednesday and will update you all after that.

H1N1 - just get the damn vaccine will ya? This is not a debate it is an rabid panic. Just get it, you and yours will be fine.

Hamlet at St. Andrews - my son James is in Hamlet at St. Andrews College between November 26th and 28th. I will not be able to be there so if any friends of mine feel like going in my sted, the box office number is: 905-727-3178, extension 260, tickets are $20 CAD and the performance will be exceptional - trust me.

Guess that is it for now, boys and girls.

Update you from the road to Lagos!

Paul

I am in love with my car (and my Mum)!

2009-11-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Got a brand new car last week - the lease was up on my Avalon and I decided to go with another Toyota - my third Camry, but this one was a Hybrid.

Good lord, what a car. I leased a Camry Hybrid with the leather and navigation package, blue tooth hands free phone system and an snow tires plus rims. Cost approximately $15,000 less than my Avalon and it is such a better car. It gets 800 km per tank of gas - that is approximately 50 MPG, the Avalon gets 23 a regular 4 cylinder Camery gets 27. I get into the car, my phone trains instantly and I hear phonecalls through the stereo and the steering wheel is my microphone. I have XM satellite radio, an iPod interface, a 4 CD changer, GPS Navigation and more bells and whistles than you can imagine with respect to data collection on the Hybrid Drive system. Did I mention that it gets 800 km per tank of gas!!!! Oh, yeah, and it has a rear view camera for backing up and parking.

Hey, it ain't that hard to support sustainability! In fact, if you accept the fact that the North American car manufacturers have been in denial for a number of years, and are now paying for it, you can make a difference, save some money (I get a $2000.00 rebate from the government), and get a great car for a lot less than expected.

Now, as to the Mum thing. Well, my lovely mother Marina, celebrated her 75th birthday on Halloween. Mum has had a rough year with the loss of a brother and a sister-in-law, but she is a trouper. Here is a photo taken of her, my sister Heather and I on the day itself. Happy Birthday, Mum!

That said, I will conclude my first blog here in November but promise to be back with you in just a couple of days. Stay well, bloggerets!

Paul

Swine Flu and a Beautiful Event!

2009-10-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I was on Facebook earlier today and had a bit of a dialog with my sister in law, Connie, and some of her friends regarding inoculation against influenza. One of her friends said that it was a con job and all government propaganda, another indicated that getting the shot for children was a serious decision and required much reading and careful consideration before, err, something, what, oh, yeah, I know, PROTECTING YOUR CHILDREN!!!

OK - I have heard it all. Let's go through this. Vaccinations are a mechanism to trigger an immune response to a virus. They are a dead, weakened or simulated virus shell to which your T-Cell's react producing antibodies. This process is as natural as all get out. There is no "natural immunity" which is somehow better than "vaccinated immunity". A second concern is that vaccines are somehow harmful, causing something like autism. Well, I could debate this, not that it needs a debate - no evidence for this exists, but instead I will say the following:

"Jenny McCartney is a big fat idiot"

Plus she is wrong.

Plus there is no evidence for a link between autism and vaccination.

Plus she is an idiot, oh, sorry, I repeat myself when I am under stress...

There is no debate in the medical community here. Doctor's are sworn to "do no harm" and they are committed to this. Every Doctor you will meet will tell you to get the shot so do it, damn it. The alternative is well understood and well documented.

Let me lay that out for you:

You are born, there is a 20% chance that you or your mother will die during the process. If she dies, chances are you go too.
You may die during childhood. In fact if injury doesn't do it, disease, usually viral or bacterial based will do it
If you make it to your child bearing years, say 15 or so, there is a 20% chance that you or your child will die in childbirth
Then you die - in your late 30's or early 40's...

Each of these statements is true without modern nutrition and medicine. There is no "ancient knowledge", there are no "good old days". So take advantage - let your kids have the best chance of living full lives, get the flu shot and follow a rational immunization schedule.

Here endeth the pontification.

Now onto NASA....

Way cool!

Simple and limited message today...

2009-10-19T16:29:00.001-07:00

Suzanne Somers is bad actress, from a stupid TV show, who has never done anything worthwhile in her life other than be a "celebrity". In other words, an evil idiot bastard. This "lady" comes up with lies by the mile - particularly with respect to Hormone Replacement Therapy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33387002/ns/health-cancer/

I am too disgusted to comment further...

Bye!

Update from the Nation's Capital...

2009-10-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Nigerian Nation, that is.

I am back in Abuja which I have often described as "Nigeria Lite" - a far easier place to function in that Lagos in many ways but, also, in some ways, not nearly as interesting as Lagos.

Nigeria has a bad reputation and there are some justifiable reasons for that: corruption, crime, poor infrastructure, etc. The funny thing is that it is not how poorly it functions that is of note, it is how it manages to function at all! This is a place of dynamic people who are among the greatest traders and natural business people I have ever met. Nigeria has more people and more oil than anywhere else in Africa and it is only 49 years away from colonial rule. Now, many Nigerians lament that things were better during the colonial era than today but, well, people always pine for the good old days and while Independence, military dictatorships and civil war have been part of the story since 1960, there are things that I must admit I like about Nigeria and the thing I like the most are the people. They are warm, friendly and very, very smart.

Anyway, heading out in two days and on my way for an annual sojourn to Las Vegas - yet another opportunity to not gamble in a place where they make gambling almost compulsory. Will update this space after that trip.

A note on the Ares 1X Mission - slight delay but we might still get the bird up this month:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33351268/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Great article from SpaceRef on the LCROSS impact including some nice pictures:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32609

While the visual impact of this was less than spectacular, the scientific gains will be important.

On the entertainment front, my son James just pointed me to a remake of the 1960's show The Prisoner. The trailer looks intriguing.

Well, got to go. Will update again before very long.

Paul

A story on healthcare - and 13 annoying things...

2009-10-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

As you know I am something of a fan of the Canadian Healthcare system. We are truly blessed, no matter what our cousins to the south say, they just aren't even close...

A friend of mine, an older gentlemen, was playing tennis last week and suddenly felt some chest pains. He drove himself to the hospital, was diagnosed with a heart attack and admitted. Four hours later, from what I am told, he had received angioplasty, a stent installed and was looking at hospital release within 72 hours.

Wonderful! No bad side to this story - and it could be true in Canada or the US, Britain too, and any major European country. Great. The difference, of course, is that in the US, if this gentlemen didn't have insurance, like 47 million of his compatriots (1/6th of the population), he would be facing bankruptcy. Further, I doubt that any environment in the world could beat the four hour record for a procedure that didn't exist 20 years ago.

Cousins to the south, when your lying Republican politicians tell you that "we don't need a Canadian style Socialized Health Care System", apply to immigrate - we are actually pretty nice up here! Taxes are higher, to be sure, but look what you get - including an additional 3 years in life expectancy!

OK 13 annoying or, at least, unbelievable things. I am reading a book called 13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks. Here is the actual list:

Most of the Universe is Missing
The Pioneer Anomaly
Varying Constants
Cold Fusion
Life
Methane from Mars
The Wow! Signal
A Giant Virus
Death
Sex
Free Will
The Placebo Effect
Homeopathy

This is a great book, read it, if nothing else will convince you of the advantage of natural explanation and the scientific method as opposed to supernatural explanations and "will of god" this will.

http://www.13thingsthatdontmakesense.com/default.aspx

Get better, Ed.

Paul

Something very sad...

2009-10-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Hi there

I have been following this case for a while and came across its sad and, I think, unjust conclusion today.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091006/health/health_us_prayer_death

I don't know if they are stupid or brainwashed - they certainly are "holier than thou". It is clear from the article that, even at the end, the father doesn't get it that he did something wrong. Now, as the bloggerets out there know, I am not particularly tolerant of these things, but in this case I have to worry about the other children in this family. The father is, err, unrepentant and clearly too stupid to breathe, doesn't say much about the mother but, hell, she married the moron.

Sometimes I despair.

And then something like this comes along to make my day. Thanks Rachel!

OK, last thing for this update - LCROSS, LCROSS, LCROSS - coming to the Lunar south pole in just over 48 hours!

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/

Back at you from Nigeria in a couple of days!

Paul

News update!

2009-09-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

Quote of the Day: "If the news media would devote a tenth of the energy on fixing the financial system as they have devoted on recent weeks to this Michael Jackson thing, the world would be a better place - don't you think?" - David Brancaccio, Now on PBS

Great article on evolution. Ladies and Gentlemen, the mighty Richard Dawkins speaks!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216140

This guy is really impressive and the points he makes are good ones. An aquaintance of mine, a born again type guy, once said to me that the problem with Evolution was the evidence. That there were gaps in it and therefor it had to be wrong.

Well here is how this all pans out - we have a theory which is so close to complete, tested and measurable, with the vast preponderance of evidence supporting it. Bear in mind, of course, that theory does not mean hypothesis - it is a theory, something of very specific meaning in science. It has been tested, reviewed and stood up to intense scrutiny! "But it has holes in it" Fair enough. Sure it does but they are few and far between. So because it has holes in it, we instead say "see God had to do it" or as I would say it "ti od to dah doG ees" - cause the reasoning is backward. This is the largest lack of reasoning imaginable. The universe gives us very clear clues as to how it operates and if we use our reasoning to understand those clues then bozo Christian idiots tell us we will be damned for all eternity! Wow, using the reasoning skills that the supposed Christian God gave us.

Possible explanations - God doesn't exist, perhaps, God is cruel and is intent on damning anyone with anything about an idiot's IQ, seems likely - check out the Old Testament (particularly Job - way cool), or that the theory is right in which case what is the role of god, grand architect? Maybe...

"Elvis didn't do no drugs!"

OK. My obsessiveness with Christian stupidity even bores me from time to time. Let's talk space!

Water on the moon: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/25/2080696.aspx

Very cool but even better is coming with the LCROSS impact coming your way October 9th. You might even be able to see it in your telescope. Unfortunately mine two are in Canada and I am in Lagos but I guarantee I will be looking up anyway! We are crashing a large impactor into the moon's south pole and looking for water in the debris kicked up.

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/

Late breaking news on LCROSS includes a target shift - very cool, they are really trying find the maximum density of Hydroxyl and are aiming at it.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32487

Finally, on the space funding thing. To my American Cousins, please review and sign the referenced petition. This is important - we Canadians will be part of your future efforts and will support you but, and you know this, you are the super power, and in this you really are super!

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/09/28/can-a-letter-writing-campaign-save-florida-jobs/

We also have the third Messenger Mercury flyby coming down the pipe and the cool thing is that it happens tomorrow:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

We have discovered a lot about the inner most planet from Messenger and it hasn't even started its primary orbital mission yet - stay tuned for a lot more information and some great, really amazing pictures.

On to other things. Reading a really great book right now called The Battle For American 2008 by Johnson and Balz. Fascinating book and I would say it is not about how Obama won but instead about how Clinton lost. We all watched that election with fascination and this book takes you behind the scene to understand what was happening in the background. Truly captivating.

Paul

Just a quick update!

2009-09-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

On my way to Nigeria again - it has been an extraordinarily busy time since we got back from vacation in England/Iceland/Wales... As many of you know, I am now a resident of Toronto, having moved in with a Geophysicist of some international renown. For two packrats to merge households is both difficult and time consuming but I do believe we got there.

OK onto regular blog fodder.

First off, picked up the latest Maclean's at the airport yesterday, had a great interview with Richard Dawkin's, one of my all time heros. Can't find the interview on the Maclean's web site but the interview is worth a read, particularly on the teaching of evolution - he suggests starting at 8 and I pretty much agree. He also talks about the falicy that evolution comes somehow down to chance, which it doesn't, natural selection is a non-random process, chance is random. Natural selection drives evolving organisms to maximum use of their environment.

Anyway, pick it up and give it a read.

Next, stay tuned for some good news this week - the moon is looking like it has a lot of water. Both the LRO and India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft have found considerable evidence of south polar ice. This is very cool and very important (can anyone say "Rocket Fuel").

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1350

Watched a great show on my iPod on the flight to Frankfurt last night. The PBS show NOW had an episode called Food Inc. Very interesting - perhaps this is where we all need to start when discussing health care in either Canada or the US. Glad I gave up McDonalds just over 1 year ago...

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/523/

Well, gotta fly. Will update you all from Lagos over the weekend.

Paul

Smorsborg - the September edition

2009-09-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hey bloggerets!

I am heading of to Africa again on Monday and figured I would clean out my list of blog topics a bit.

A friend of mine in Texas, Canadian girl by birth, recently commented that she "quite disliked Obama" and it made me think of the sorry state of the American political fray at this time. Now this is an intelligent young woman and one of the best people I have ever met but she may be caught up in something no one can truly understand and that opinion, in mine, is questionable. This man has been in office for 8 months, has dealt with two wars, an ongoing economic crisis not of his making, is dealing with structural debt due to poor, nay, pathetic tax policy (the United States doesn't have a spending problem, they have a taxation problem in that they don't raise enough taxes - particularly to fight two wars), is facing some long term issues that his political system is not set up to deal with (sustainability, transition away from an oil economy) and gets instead to have to put up with, take your pick, Birthers, Deathers, loaded town halls, and guys showing up with guns at meetings with the President in attendance - idiots and morons all...

With respect to health care - I give you two sets of statistics provided by our friends at the CIA from the CIA World Factbook:

United States of America

Infant mortality rate:

total: 6.26 deaths/1,000 live births - country comparison to the world: 180
male: 6.94 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.55 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:

total population: 78.11 years -country comparison to the world: 50
male: 75.65 years
female: 80.69 years (2009 est.)

Canada

Infant mortality rate:

total: 5.04 deaths/1,000 live births - country comparison to the world: 189
male: 5.37 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.69 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:

total population: 81.23 years - country comparison to the world: 8
male: 78.69 years
female: 83.91 years (2009 est.)

Funny thing, Canada has a great health care system, one that could, of course improve, and yet we spend quite a bit less on health care per person than the US does. It is a single payer system, provincially run but mandated by the federal government, has independent doctors of whom you can make your own pick and in most of the country, waiting times are not that much different from what you would see south of the border. Another funny thing, our American cousins often use Canada as an example of the kind of health care they don't want to have. Well, that confuses me and I will ponder it - good thing I have an extra three years over them to do so...

Which brings me to the lovely and talented Rachel Maddow and the problem with South Carolina:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now, not to give Rachel more air time than she deserves (no, I acknowledge that is not possible), I also saw this and wanted to pass it on. As you all know by now, I am an evangelical atheist - my job is to enlighten, educate and convert or, if nothing else, poke fun at. As said in this interview, we are talking about people who believe the impossible. They believe the world is 6000 years old and/or that life needs supernatural intervention to exist. Again, paraphrasing the interview - they distrust facts and catering to them is catering to the village idiot.

Now onto other stuff. Hey, if you don't believe the universe is 6000 years old then this is great, if you do, then here is an article about a really cool picture of the universe 12.7 billion years before it existed.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29184

Also from space the HVA was successfully docked to the ISS using Canadarm 2. Way to go guys! Here is some video from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8262085.stm

Finally then, on the subject of Kanye West - someone actually ruder than me. Here is a great article by Rex Murphy on this abomination and about someone, an entertainer, who is truly inspiring (and at the top of the UK charts)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/kanye-that-dame-has-class/article1293550/

Guess that is it for now. Next blog will be coming at you from Nigeria!

Paul

Sad day...

2009-09-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I just found out that Norman Borlaug passed away at the ripe old age of 95. This is someone who may have been the single greatest person of all time.

OK - time for me to make an inflammatory comment, it is what I do. Christ merely founded a religion, or more likely, had a religion fostered upon his name (which was Joshua, not Jesus), but Norman saved the lives of a billion people, wresting them from starvation.

Here is the wikipedia story on Norman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Now, I am also a fan of the Penn & Teller show Bullshit! and they do have a segment on this giant, I have shown it before in the context of a discussion on GM crops but this time it is to focus on Norman:

As to his critics, for whom I have almost universal contempt, he himself said it best:

"some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

Rest in Peace, Norman.

Paul

P.S. Update on last week's blog - the HTV-1 cargo carrier for the ISS. Our Japanese ISS partners have pulled it off and docking commences tomorrow. Well done!

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/h2b/htv1/status.html

Hubble, Japan's Space Program and NASA

2009-09-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone

As I write this, in my last night in my old house, up above my head is the ISS and the Shuttle, each slowly moving apart. Tomorrow the Shuttle returns to earth, the ISS is almost completed and will next received a visit, hopefully, from a Japanese supply ship. Here is a YouTube clip from the Japanese Space Agency:

Way to go, Japanese ISS Partners!

This latest Shuttle Mission was great but not nearly as exciting as one which today revealed the fruits of it's labours. The final Hubble Servicing Mission back a couple of months back did, indeed upgrade the world's most popular telescope:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32758727/ns/technology_and_science-picture_stories/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1

Very cool.

So, whither NASA. Well, it looks like they don't have the funds to do as they have been instructed. Here is the summary report from the Augustine Commission:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32327

Bottom line - this will take money. Second bottom line - this is important.

Mackin's solution:

Leverage the ISS international partners - hey let them (including Canada) contribute to the $3B shortfall - their High Tech companies will love it, it will create jobs and new technologies and is a great force for peace, democracy and, you know, moving mankind into space - not just one country.
Leverage the ISS as a space station for journey's to the moon. Build Ares 1 to support the station, get the ATV (ESA's answer the the HTV) human rated, develop the next generation Soyuz, involve the Chinese and get us some heavy lifting capability (Ares V, anyone). Make the ISS a beach-head for journey's beyond LEO.

Anyway, I will let you know if NASA contact's me regarding my opinions.

Keep looking up!

Paul

Back home, but home is changing... And Jack Bauer

2009-09-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

The World's Greatest Geophysicist and I returned from Iceland the other day and now I have just a couple of weeks to move before I head back to Africa. Where am I moving, you ask? Well, to the home of the WGG, of course! As of this month I am officially co-habitating, living in consolidated manner or, my personal favorite, "Shacked Up".

We had a great holiday together! Visited my family in England, my best friend Harvey (see the eBook on this blog), my family in Wales and also played tourist in both London and Cardiff (the absolute centre of the universe). I haven't processed all the pictures yet but will get them into Flickr and then link this blog to that site next week.

As to the Shacked Up situation, well, we are both terribly happy and I must admit to going into my second half century with an optimistic and very content outlook on life. I have had girlfriends in my life, been married to a wonderful woman and have two fantastic children, but I must admit that Barbara is unique in my life as we have so very much in common. Don't want to get all mushy on the blog here, because this is where we discuss other things, but I do want to thank Providence or whatever else for allowing this to happen to me.

OK, onto other subjects. American Cousins to the south, take note. Jack Bauer has your number on this whole health care business:

Why should Mr. Sutherland, who plays Jack Bauer, have an opinion? Well, he may live in the US now but he is Canadian, used to go to the same school as my son, and his Grandfather was voted "The Greatest Canadian" in a recent national contest. For why? You ask oh, uninformed American Cousins? Well, he invented something. What? Our national health care system which you so often insult and condemn. Look, I am a fiscal conservative who nonetheless believes that a society takes care of certain fundamental aspects of its citizens lives, not controls, protects and safeguards. No truly great society can possibly ever consider themselves to be civilized and a world leader when 1.5 times the population of Canada exists within their boarders, uninsured.

Shame on you GOP! You, with your birthers and deathers and DICK, and Sarah, you nauseate me. Do what you want, but don't lie about my country's greatest accomplishment - our average life expectancy is greater than yours...

Back over to to the story of Tommy Douglas and Canada's Health Care System:

And part 2...

Have a nice day!

Paul

Iceland and Teddy

2009-08-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

The World's Greatest Geophysicist (hereafter shortened to WGG) and I continue to have an amazing time in Iceland. As I write this I am in a hotel in Hofn, somewhere in the Southeast of the country.

Amazing scenery - I will be updating and posting my Flickr sets later but in the mean time. Here is the view from just outside my hotel room a few minutes ago. These are two "tongues" of the glacier Vatnajökull.

To give you an idea of the scale - those two intrusions onto the plain below are approximately 4 km apart, there are two others within view of my hotel room but my camera can't capture them all with a wide angle lens! This is the largest glacier in Iceland and you can't even see the main body of it!

As to what else we have seen, again, I will be updating Flickr but here goes a nice picture of the WGG and a waterfall - pretty typical which tells you how remarkable this place is.

Alas the world continues even when we are on vacation. I note with interest and condolences the passing of the Lion of the Senate for our US cousins. I think he will be missed by many of his fellow citizens and, unfortunately, condemned by many others. Consider this, his brother was President, his other brother was Attorney General, then Senator, then Presidential Candidate. Both were assassinated. Neither had their name on as much legislation as he did. There is not one piece of social legislation for the past 40 years which does not have his name on it somewhere.

Joe Biden, as is appropriate, says it best.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Not to say this was an unimpeachable record....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32564662/

And he was the man who ran for President without really knowing why and may have helped ensure that Jimmy Carter was a one term president.

Finally, let's turn it over to Chris Mathews - I can't match the man...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Thanks, Teddy. Our American cousins and the rest of the world will never find your like again. Rest in peace.

Paul

Vacation, guilt, frustration and weight gain!

2009-08-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone,

No matter the seriousness of this blog's title, I am on vacation in Iceland with my girlfriend Barbara. We are having a great time and today visited the famous Blue Lagoon. It has been just super so far and tomorrow we continue our tour with a visit to Thingvillr. I will post a few more notes from here as I go forward and will throw in the occasional picture. Such as the two which follow:

My guilt comes from the same place as the frustration and weight gain. I was originally going to run the Reykjavik Marathon this weekend but having to commute to and from Lagos since the spring has hurt my ability to train and as such, after 4 1/2 marathons this year, I am afraid my season is over. Just can't train there. Unfortunately, that means that I am frustrated and have gained weight. I am scheduled to return to Nigeria twice more and then the 2010 season will begin - stay tuned. In the mean time I have to get some sort of training thing going and am working on a plan as we speak. Stay tuned.

I posted an entire photoset from the Blue Lagoon to Flickr - here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12290600@N06/sets/72157622103493384/

Blog at you soon!

Paul

Common Sense.

2009-08-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I like common sense. Generally I am pretty good with it but being male, as many women I know will like to point out, I may have a gender based disposition toward not having as much of it as all would like. Now, of course, common sense can be misleading. There are things which appear to defy common sense - just look at something like quantum mechanics - nothing common sensical happening there. Hell just look at stats and probability - it might seem to be common sense that if you have a room with 50 people in it that the odds of having two people with the same birthday are pretty low but in fact they are nearly 100%! Common sense? Well, it don't help you here. In fact the probability curve is shown in the following article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Another example of common sense. Eating garlic. A geophysicist of some renown and I were having dinner tonight and some mixed olives were on the table. Amongst the olives were some lovely cloves of marinaded raw garlic. Now I like raw garlic but given that the aforementioned geophysicist and I will be sleeping close to each other for the next little while, it occurred to me to ask if it would be ok if I sampled said garlic. The answer, alas and predictably was "no", but common sense was executed with me asking first. Hence my next few days are likely going to be nicer than they would be otherwise.

Other common sense from this evening. Ketchup. New, well, last couple of years, ketchup bottles are now plastic, squeezable, and have eliminated the whole issue with the inefficient delivery of squashed tomato waste matter. Hey, leverage gravity! Common sense!

So where am I going with this, Science. Science works. To paraphrase Carl Sagan - if someone comes down with cholera you can do a couple of things. Wait for them to get better - some will, some won't. You can pray for them - same results as just waiting, measurably (and, yes, such trials have been done). Or, you could give them 500 mg of tetracycline every 4 hours for 10 days. Guess which will work? Want to predict the position of Jupiter in the night sky 10 years from now (or 100, or 1000)? You can ask someone to consult some crystals? You can ask a psychic? You can ask an Astronomer - he or she will give you an accurate answer. They others might too, but I bet they would consult astronomical tables to do so? Science works.

Pray for rain in a drought? Won't do much.

Use pure water to cure cancer? Won't do much.

Stick needles in yourself and rotate them around because Chairman Mao couldn't afford health care for his country and invoked "ancient knowledge"? Well, back when the ancient knowledge was acquired people lived to be 30 so the knowledge is very suspect.

All this brings me to "Organic Farming" - please listen to the following podcast, do a bit of reading and get away from this putrid marketing ploy. There is no difference between the nutritional value of "Organic Produce" and regular produce. Use some common sense!

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4166

Have a great day and enjoy those "non-organic" apples!

Paul

How do you spell "Hypocrisy"?

2009-08-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Bloggerets,

I am surprised you asked the question - back when I grew up we knew how to spell. Well, not me, exactly, but other people who don't have to rely on Spell Check when they actually remember. In any case, the answer to the question of how to spell "Hypocrisy" is:

S A R A H P A L I N

Now, I admit to being smug on this subject but here is why. I live in a country that:

Has a single payer health care system
Guarantees the rights of all citizens to access basic care
Does not charge for care
Has guidelines about the quality of care

Further, in my life the following things are true:

I picked my own doctor
I have picked my own specialists
I have never waited any length of time for an appointment or a referral
My life expectancy is better than that of my "American Cousins"
The infant mortality rate in my country is better than that of my "American Cousins"

Finally, I don't have a major political figure in my country who is a Doctor and doesn't believe in the basic, most fundamental theory of biology - Evolution. Further no member of my Parliament would choose to diagnose a brain dead woman that he had never met for political purposes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case. Thank the universe that Bill Frist is an American phenomenon and not an apparition from Canada. Our Doctors try to "do no harm"...

Which brings me to Sarah, someone who could be best described by Tom Waits as a " piece of used jet trash ". Let's be plain spoken, this is a nasty bit of work who's only redeeming quality is that she is stupid.

Here is Sarah on Obama's Death Panel: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32340009/ns/politics-white_house/ - notice the words "Downright Evil".

Here is Sarah on the dialog about health care shortly thereafter, calling for "Civil Discussion": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32362219/ns/politics-more_politics/

Hmmm... Sounds like somebody is smokin' somethin'. Or just stupid - same effect.

Here is the reality, this is what the legislation in question says:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32364264/ns/politics-more_politics/

Wow. You know, if Terry Schaivo had the opportunity to have a Doctor to work with her to discuss end of life options, as I have had with mine, free of charge, perhaps she wouldn't have ruined the career of Bill Frist by forcing him to mis-diagnose her over video.

Look - Americans - get with the program. You are retarded when it comes to health care and the fact that you have Sarah Palin as a leading political figure indicates that your retardation may be fatal. Work hard to get over this...

Paul

A space science blog posting from Abuja, Nigeria

2009-08-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to post a new blog which will hopefully not contain anything that my readers consider inflamatory or otherwise annoying. Well, actually, I just want to write a space science blog and your emotional state is your own business...

Interesting article on the Kepler Mission. To refresh you all, and this is exciting stuff, Kepler is up in space pointing at one particular section of the sky which is continuously images. It is looking at the brightness of all the stars in that section of the sky. Now, if a small planet orbiting goes in front of the star, from our point of view, Kepler should see a very small decrease in the amount of light coming from the star and when the planet goes behind the star, Kepler should see a smaller decrease in light as the planet's reflected light is now not visable. Clear as mud, well, it does indeed work. We have identified a planet around another star which does exhibit the orbital orientation necessary for this to work and we used this as a test case for Kepler. Voila! Things behaive as expected - which is why we all love science, isn't it. Unless of course you don't believe in the scientific method, of course - which I know all the bloggerets out there do! Right!

So, here is the article from MSNBC, which has a great science section (more on that later): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32319679/ns/technology_and_science-space/

So, what else to tell you about... Hmmm... Well, how about some NASA news? I have a bit of a long winded story to get us to an article here but there is no point in apologising for it, we have to follow it though from start to finish.

I own a very cool piece of technology, a Sony PRS-700, PRS stands for Personal Reading System. This is basically an eBook which holds some vast number of tomes, more if you stick in extra memory (which I have) and I brought it with me, as I always do, here to Africa preloaded with a bunch of reading - keeps me out of the bars, mostly. Anyway, two great books I brought with me this time: Censoring Science by Mark Bowen (http://www.mark-bowen.com/book_cs.html) and Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (http://www.unscientificamerica.com/), the nice folks who brought our American Cousins ScienceDebate2008 during the US Election last year. Anyway a feature of both of these books is that they talk about the marginalization of science, and in fact its outright censorship, during the dark ages (AKA Bush Years - 2000 to 2008 AD). Interestingly Michael Griffin, the head of NASA in the later part of the Bush Administration came across as a bit of an ideolog and coward in both of these books, certainly moreso in the first but alluded to, I think, in the second as well.

Griffin, as you may remember, was the architect of the Constellation Program and a contributor to the only decent thing Bush did, his Vision for Space Exploration. Well, after reading the books, I begin to understand why the Obama administration so wanted rid of the guy - his clear brilliance aside. He was a critical player in censoring information with respect to climate change as well eviserating the planetary research budget for NASA - he even (according to Bowen) was clandestinely responsible for the reshaping of NASA's mission statement (http://www.physorg.com/news72971590.html). Well, perhaps we are well rid of him but I must say, his approach to manned spaceflight is one that I agree with. Saying all of that, and we are finally getting to the end of this tortured tale here, NASA is reviewing that with the Augustine Commission which is to present its findings at the end of this month. As a taste, here is an article on their short list options:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32307312/ns/technology_and_science-space/

I personally like the "Dash out of LEO", "Lunar Global" and "Mars Direct" scenarios but would prefer "Lunar Global" and would least like "DooLEO". We shall see...

One of the other things that both books, particularly Unscientific America discuss is the inability of the population to understand and relate to science and, further, to fail to see the benefits therein. This is partly due to the free market nature of news broadcasting and which caters to individual interests which are more "News you can use" or celebrity stuff (don't get me started about Michael Jackson - I am upset enough about the skinny on Michael Griffin) and are eliminate thier science departments. The MSNBC Science Page is a refreshing oasis of knowlege in a Demon Haunted World (apologies to the late great Carl Sagan).

Well, got to go, space cadets, catch you when I get to the Northern Hemisphere, or maybe sooner.

Paul

Happy day - we have some Shatner for y'all!

2009-08-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

If I can have the juxtaposition of ridiculing Sarah Palin and William Shatner doing anything, well, it makes my month.

Here thanks to Conan O'Brian, we have "Master Thespian" William Shatner, AKA Captain James T. Kirk (whom James T. Mackin may or may not be named after ;-) ), T. J. Hooker, and wonderfully Denny Crane, reading the Tweets (or in this case Twits) of Sarah Palin, AKA (with apologies to J. K. Rowling) "The Governor who ran away"

Over to you, Captain!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Was it good for you, too?

Paul

Happy day - we have some Shatner for y'all!

2009-08-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Was it good for you, too?

Paul

Rant from Lagos

2009-07-31T01:48:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update from here in Lagos. Some fun stuff and a whole bunch of hell, I am afraid.

You know, if you check out my facebook profile, I describe myself as an evangelical atheist. Of course being an atheist is an obvious and rational choice but why, you ask, evangelical? Well, because I do have a deep seeded need to stamp out stupidity wherever I go.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32228994/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

And yes, folks, I do feel that a faith in god is the sign of serious inbreeding with resulting mental fallibility! Be offended if you please, my intention is to offend and maybe you will get smarter. The above article has really pissed me off! Poor kid - not her fault that her parents are idiots but she paid the ultimate price therein and please don't tell me that this is an extreme example and not all religious people are this stupid. My response would only be: Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Russia, Jonestown, Waco, George W. Bush.... I could come up with more but I might find it difficult to hold down my breakfast. Jeez, this guy killed his kid through his faith - sounds to me like a net loss.

OK I did promise some good news. As many of you know, I have some very stern opinions regarding the organic food movement. Well, thank you to the three laws of thermodynamics for science! Here is the latest meta analysis out of the UK:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32205139/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

You get it? No nutritional difference but far more expensive and far less efficient in terms of calories per square hectare. We need efficiency, there are people out there who are starving and our population is still growing.

OK - today's rant is over.

Paul

Oh well, at least they are not just fixated on the "faked" Lunar Landings...

2009-07-22T21:48:00.001-07:00

Nutbars abound!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sigh. This is racism pure and simple.

A couple of things. There is not one shred of evidence that Barack Obama is not a natural born US citizen. Look, and this is the second time I have posted it, here is his Birth Certificate!

Now, some wack jobs say stuff like "This is a certificate of live birth, not a birth certificate". It is an official document from the 50th state saying that he is American born and, by implication and by the citizenry of his mother - American!!!!

You know, the US Supreme Court had a chance to weigh in on this sucker!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-obama-birth-certificate1dec08,0,7258812.story

Here is the killer quote:

"Five weeks after the State of Hawaii vouched for the authenticity of President-elect Barack Obama's birth certificate, the controversy over allegations that Obama is not eligible to take office next month has reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to announce Monday whether it will consider the matter."

The state vouched for it! It is an official state document. Debate over - move on! We have got a space program to get moving again....

OK. I just threw the last part in but stay tuned...

Your blogger buddy,

Paul

Happy Moon Day, Granda!

2009-07-19T21:09:00.001-07:00

Hey gang.

Forty years ago this evening I was lying in bed with my brother David and my Grandfather. I was nine, David was seven. We had had our baths, we were in our pajamas in bed, in the main bedroom of their apartment at Greenwood and Queen in Toronto. Granda had a bottle of Labbats IPA nearby. My grandmother, Janet, was in the living room watching something else while knitting. Hard to believe there was anything else to watch because someone, in fact two men, were about to step foot on another world.

I miss both Granda and Nana. I had them both until quite late in my life - Nana passed away when I was in my late 20's and I was in my 30th year before Granda departed this mortal coil. A day doesn't go by without me thinking about them.

I don't have any direct pictures from this time but I do have one of Granda and I taken seven years later and here it is - notice the hair and the ELP T-Shirt.

Now, let's talk about the events of 40 years ago. I remember it as basically being suspenseful - bear in mind, I was into this. I read all the articles, I kept up on the news and the technology. David was bored, being only 7, and the picture didn't make a lot of sense - it was very fuzzy. We could make out what was happening , of course, but having Walter Cronkite (sadly missed at 92, a few days ago) explain it all to us made up a great deal for the lack of quality in the TV screen.

Still we did it! We, humanity. We as a species left the planet and walked on another world. Neil, Buzz & Michael, you are citizens of the world and we all owe you something remarkable! Still, we acknowledge that you were supported by more than 400,000 people.

Still, there are complete morons out there who deny the entire thing! Let's take our hands off for a moment to cheer on the mentally marginal, the psychotic, the neurotic and the simply annoying - here we go with the obligatory article to the raving nutbars!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/207149

Now that we have dealt with the unpleasant parts of all this.... How about what it was like to be there, to experience it? Well, one man went to the moon and decided to tell some stories about it. I am happy recipient of his work nine times over but lets read about the 4th man to walk on the moon, the amazing Alan Bean.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/rocket-man-meets-monet/article1221088/

Finally, because we must be forward looking , I will end this blog with a article on what may be coming. I have limited visibility here but Ares 1-X is schedule to fly on my mother's birthday - October 31. Stay tuned.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31997786/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Keep looking up!

Paul

Organic Food and GM Crops!

2009-07-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I have to admit that I am now getting into an area where several dear friends of mine might disagree with me but I am going to, with absolute respect to their complete ignorance of the facts, continue, unabated. Am I difficult? My name is Paul James Mackin! Am I arrogant? My name is Paul James Mackin! Am I right! Yes, I am - I am Paul James Mackin and I am CANADIAN!

OK - starting point here. If you wish to disagree with me on anything here you are more than welcome to. If you wish to debate me, then please be prepared to do the following:

Identify the thing you disagree with
Have peer referenced analysis to defend your disagreement (don't worry about me - I will address my side of that, with vigor)
Be prepared to discuss this in a scientifically literate, unemotional and rational way
Be able do defend any and all scientific arguments you make including sources, peer reviews, etc.

Guess I seem like a hard ass but this is the process, more or less, that science takes. Why should we be less pure - particularly if you feel you are right? By the way when it come to medical evidence, please review "clinical trials" as opposed to "studies" - the former are science, the latter are sales propaganda.

Organic. Hmm. Interesting word. When I studied science in High School, a subject often ignored resulting in the high degree of scientific illiteracy that to exists today , organic chemistry was loosely defined as Chemistry which involved Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen atoms. Cool. Given that definition, we can agree that every bit of agriculture on this planet is Organic. Great!

Except it isn't. We have "Regular Produce" which is bad and "Organic Produce" which is good. I am having flashbacks to an appalling novel I read in 1983 called The Sheep Looked Up by John Brunner. Bad novel although some cool things happened to me as a result of first reading it, still, as a harbinger of the environmental movement, it was fundamentally wrong. No matter, "Regular Produce" and "Organic Produce" are equivalent, except that organic is more expensive to produce, deliver and sell further it takes more effort and time to produce less usable biomass per hectare. My advice to you is to avoid the word "organic" while shopping, you will save money, eat better produce and, further will aid in the efficient production of food worldwide.

In North America, Europe and, thankfully, to an increasing degree in Asia and South America, food availability is becoming far less of an issue. Why? Genetically modified crops. You have been eating them since you were weened. Your parents ate them, as did your grandparents. Hey, here is the good news, humans are the creatures who modify their environment to their betterment. It is a distinct advantage and has allowed us to move up to the absolute pinnacle of the food chain. Very early humans developed genetic engineering - we actually called in agriculture, but it is genetic engineering! We did it with crops (wheat, barley, potatoes, root vegetables, anything really), we did it with animals (dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, goats, fish...). Genetically modified foods are at least 100,000 years old and we are still around as a species.

And what has been happening over that 100,000 years? Well:

Human life expectancy and quality of life have been increasing
Live birth ratios has been increasing
Human population has been increasing
Technology levels have been improving - particularly those related to energy consumption and efficiency
Human health, overall, has been improving
Efficiency of land utilization with respect to calories of food produced has been significantly improved
Levels of human starvation as a percentage of overall population has been decreasing

This is not to say, of course, that we don't have issues. While I am less sanguine about "Global Warming" than most, I am something of a fanatic on sustainability. I believe that we live, particularly in North America in a "fat ass" society of too much consumption, too little exercise and too little "good food" including seafood, vegetables, fibre, etc, etc

But that is us...

We are the lucky ones...

What if we actually have to deliver and feed the third world? Particularly Africa (a place I know well). Well, my feeling is that, much like Marie Antoinette, we say "let them eat cake" without understanding the depths of their plight. I believe the phrase could also be "Do what I say, not what I do". We are taking advantage of the technology that allows us a better life but denying it to the wonderful people of Africa - a place I love and a people that I have learned to treasure.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/enviro-romanticism-is-hurting-africa/article1222806/

Yes, we are actually the bastards that that this article implies - yes, in fact, I think we are evil, smug and more self important that could ever be stated by the talented Ms Wente. I give you a Penn&Teller moment and ask you, please, watch the entire thing.

Well I am blogged out, no matter how angry I am. Take the following away:

"Organic" is to food as "Brighter" is to laundry - meaningless at best and entirely worthless at worst.
We will need Genetically Modified Crops - but we have been using them for most of the history of our species, recently our techniques have gotten better but the fundamental use of GM crops goes back to the origin of our species
Cancer rates are not increasing, nor are the rates of other conditions such as heart disease or diabetes. We are now measuring stuff we didn't before. We need several generations to determine long term trends. Granted, short term trends are discouraging but, you know, messages related to healthy lifestyle, stopping smoking, good food, may already have a positive impact on those short term trends.

Well, I am sure I will write more later on this - I am pretty steamed, stay tuned.

Paul

More space stuff...

2009-07-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Given that we are now in the middle of the 40th anniversary week of the first manned lunar landing, I will write a number of blogs to celebrate that event.

Last month the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was sent to the moon with the ability to photograph very small objects on the surface. In celebration of that capability, and the the dismay or denial of the fake lunar landing conspiracy nutbars, here are some photos of the actual landing sites of several of the Apollo missions. Please note that on the Apollo 14 landing pictures the actual tracks left by the astronauts as they marched out to Cone Crater can be seen.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=31798

Now I know conspiracy nutbars will simply say that these pictures are faked but the body of evidence is insurmountable - we went to the moon, and not one credible historian or scientist believes otherwise...

As to that journey, in honour of the 40th anniversery, NASA released digitally enhanced video from the first lunar landing. Share and Enjoy:

One sad note today, the man who brought the Apollo success to us all passed away today. RIP Walter Cronkite.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28773

Finally, we are in for interesting times at NASA. I personally favour Bush's mission to return to the moon on the way to Mars but I acknowledge that there are other points of view. The Obama White House and the newly appointed NASA administrator are awaiting input and that input is coming in very short order. I eagerly look forward to it!

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/17/2000359.aspx

Keep looking up, everyone.

Paul

A total space blog, for once...

2009-07-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I believe tomorrow is the fortieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. I remember watching it, live, at my parents house. It was a magic moment with a huge, "lead in stomach" wondering about whether they would make it. Of course they did and I will be writing about this over the next few postings.

To start all that off, let's begin with an interview with Mike Collins - the Command Module Pilot of Apollo 11. Take it away, sir:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28746

Onto another space note - the Shuttle is back up in space tonight, we are now getting into the last few flights of this amazingly capable, amazingly risky spacecraft system. Julie Payette is on board and we have that unique event now happening where two Canadians are in space at the same time with Robert Thrisk on board the ISS. We have come a long way - but have way further to go. Mars, the Asteroids and Jupiter's moons beacon.

Got to go. Will update again soon!

Paul

Jean Chretien and other stuff...

2009-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

OK, many of you know that I am a card carrying member of the LPC (Liberal Party of Canada). I am actually a pretty strong economic Conservative but very progressive on social issues.

I want low taxes (in fact want income tax repealed) - but love consumption taxes and would favour a carbon tax

I am a strong believer in our public health care system and often chastise my American friends for all the terrible things they say about "Canadian Style Health Care" but I do believe in both user fees and more private options.

I understand that I do not possess a uterus and as such don't really feel I can decide for a woman what is right for her and her body when it comes to reproductive health

I hope that gays have better luck with marriage than straights! Hey, I am the last person who should talk about marriage!

I also believe that the current LPC is rediscovering itself and that we, as a party, miss our great leaders. With that in mind - here is an article that makes me happy!

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090713/national/chretien_honour

Congratulations Messrs. Chretien on receiving a such a significant honour! You have served your country and our Monarch with distinction. Well done!

On a lessor note - our religious maniac friends to the south keep finding feet and continue to find extra room in their mouths.

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And people wonder why, when people I know tell me they go to "Bible Study" or encourage me to "get a little faith" I act with something closely akin to revulsion.... I am thinking Northern Island (Bible Study with guns, drugs and sensless murder), I am thinking Protestant Reformation (Bible Study with fire and war), I am thinking Salem Mass (Bible Study with torture, brutality and complete lack of due process), I am thinking Afghanistan (Koran Study with bad fashion sense), I am thinking the Israeli Settlements (Torah Study with a complete lack of common sense). I am thinking the corrupt Jim and Tammy Baker (Bible Study with entitlement on an epic scale), the lecherous Jerry Falwell (Bible Study - with hand support), the local nutbar at the corner of Yonge and Dundas trying to save our souls (way too much Bible Study), the people who protest American GI funerals because the US Army in some way supports homosexuals (Bible study and clear sexual dysfunction). Sigh. They only things that the Religions spawned by the syncopate Abraham have in common is that they are monotheistic and that they target Blasphemy as a crime worth execution. They are all bastards - and you may quote me.

OK, not to end on a sad note. Here is a picture that you really want to look at - because the universe we live in, spanned by natural and very predictable processes is still full of wonder and beauty. Consider this my gift to you all today - it is from the Astronomy Picture of the Day Site:

Paul

Where or where has my little Paul gone, oh, where, oh where can he be?

2009-07-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

Hi bloggerets! Long time no blog!

I must apologise. I have been busy and things have had my attention. Just to give you an idea of my schedule, here is what I have been up to.

I left Nigeria on June 16th, returning to Toronto for a couple of days and then coming up to Yellowknife on June 20th. By the weekend of the 26th I was in Washington DC and then the next week down in Corning New York. I am presently back in Yellowknife and will be here until this weekend. Home for a week, in Edmonton for the weekend, then back up here and finally back to Lagos on the 27th of the month.

My life, such as it is, has become a little more complex.

Anyway, Washington was a mini vacation - here is a photo of myself and the world greatest geophysicist with my good buddy Albert.

Anyway a couple of technology things I want to get to this week but before I do that, let me start off with the fact that everyone's favorite suspected pedophile has gone to meet his maker. Now, I don't buy into the line that this guy was a great talent. He was ok but he was no Tom Waits. Thank god because there can only be one Tom - two would probably mean the end of the Universe. In any case the thought of 17,000 people crowded around in a Los Angeles stadium mourning a guy they never knew, who seemed to like little boys a bit too much, while his celebrity "friends", cried over the world's loss is a bit more than I can stomach. Don't get me wrong - the guy sang a good tune or two but that's it. I don't value celebrity - just don't.

Now, Buzz Aldrin is a celebrity that I would value but he didn't sing or dance or abuse little boys. He merely walked on another planet with a buddy of his forty years ago this month. Way to go, Neil, Buzz and Michael! I remember watching you on live television with my Grandfather and my brother David from my grandparent's apartment down near Greenwood and Queen in Toronto. Wow! Forty years! Well, we are back to the moon again this week with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/. We are also almost ready to launch the first test flight of the manned rocket which will help put people back on the moon by the end of the next decade: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flighttests/aresIx/index.html - where I believe they are starting to build the stack, as they say!

OK so now onto other technology news! My other favorite subject - cars. Great article from Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/142223. All I can say is that I am getting my first Hybrid car this year and I cannot wait. http://www.toyota.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WWW.woa/18/wo/Home.Vehicles.Go.CamryHybrid

OK folks, one last thing before I go. I promise you that I am going to be good. Really. I will leave to the master to explain the real meaning behind Sarah Palin's resignation:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Bye for now - I will post again soon. No worries!

Paul

Electric Cars, the iPod Touch and HD on iTunes

2009-06-07T02:04:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

coming back at you from Lagos again. This trip is going pretty well, I am here with my colleague, Doug, and having company alone is far superior to being here on your own. Not only that, the company I am working for seems to actually be serious about getting the project done - something far more satisfying than just cooling ones heels for a month, which has happened in the past.

OK, so, onto our theme of the day, such as it is. A good film was made not that long ago called Who Killed the Electric Car - the answer was GM and the oil industry but GM is about to reintroduce the electric car, reluctantly and with limited enthusiasm, but they are going to do it. Here is an article from MSNBC on the subject. Notice the very mixed message!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31146562//

A couple of points that Lutz and his colleagues make which are of note and, I think, fundamentally incorrect:

The people who buy a Prius or, in my case (shortly), the Camary or Hilander Hybrid are early adopters, basically people who buy it either enjoy the technology or to make a statement. Now technology is adopted in some distinct phases, there are technology enthusiasts - such as me who will buy something shortly after introduction. The curve shown below is common used for high technology market planning, but sadly, not in the automotive industry.
While gas prices are not in itself enough to justify the cost of this car, they will go up.
They have capitulated the high ground to Toyota which now has nearly eight years with the Prius drive train. They are introducing a technology which is far earlier in the curve than Toyota and as such, while car buyers hit the Early Majority part of the curve, the Volt will be targeting the innovators part of the curve, effectively relinquishing the high ground to Toyota and never really able to catch up as Toyota will likely next upgrade their system to support a plug in Hybrid technology

OK, so onto personal technology adoption. You know, someone I once new well made two predictions to me as recently as 2003. One was that GM would dominate the advanced technology vehicle space withing five years, the other was that Apple would rapidly lose dominance of the personal entertainment device space. Well, a visionary this guy clearly was not - he had some other issues as well but that is another story. To emphasize the fact, I recently purchased my seventh (7th!) iPod, this one a 32 GByte touch. I have owned a 30 GByte Video iPod, an 80GByte version of the same, a newer 120GByte iPod Video Classic, two iPod Shuffles (a 1 GByte and 2 GByte), one 8 GByte iPod Nano and now the touch. Further I have moved all of my music onto iTunes supported by a great piece of software called TuneUP, I have four iPod docking stations and my new Camary Hybrid (coming to the blog and my life in December) will have an iPod docking port. This is technology that I just adore. It is easy and fun to use, self sorting, takes almost no space, is inexpensive, convenient (just trying buying one song on a CD!) and has revolutionized media. Just this week, iTunes Canada joined iTunes in the US with now a much enhanced and broadened iTunes TV catalog which included some of the TV shows I watched. I was able to download in HD, Heros Season 3, Battlestar Galactica Season 4 and 24 Season 7. The HD download included regular non-HD versions which I can install on either of my video iPods (the classic or the Touch). Wow! They just offered alternatives to purchasing DVDs as well as reduced my dependence on my PVR. If they follow the US model, they will offer these shows as they are released on television.

Further to all this, you can rent movies on iTunes as well - please, don't even think about investing in a video store these days! Looking at our curve above, iTunes and its electronic brethren (hereafter referred to as "the 7 dwarfs"), the whole online electronic media space in North America and Europe is now likely well into the Early Majority Phase.

Oh, well, sometimes it isn't bad to be in the majority!!!

Blog you again soon!

Paul

Nigeria (again!), Canada and a new chapter!

2009-05-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

Hi gang,

Back in Nigeria again and it is hot and humid! The middle of the rainy season which lasts for about another four or five weeks and, I will tell you, here you shower and change clothes often!

The project is going well and I am beginning to feel some confidence that we can actually build this network. I am here with my colleague Doug and we are doing what we can to keep the momentum and build upon it. I will keep you all updated as we go forward.

Onto the subject of my adopted country. My friend Roz came across this article in the UK's (my birth country) Sunday Telegraph. As much as I love Britain, Canada has been my home for so many years that I cannot imagine living anywhere else and this article speaks to part of the reason why:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3575633/The-country-the-world-forgot---again.html

I hope the soldiers in question and their comrades who proceeded with them rest in peace.

Finally, folks, bandwidth limited, I will keep this short. There is a new chapter to the eBook Hey Fasto, want to run a marathon with me?. I hope you enjoy it.

Paul

Cars and the Rush!

2009-05-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

So our cousins to the south have finally gotten rational, and are dragging our idiot Prime Minister along with them.

We are moving toward North America wide, fleet wide, mileage standards of 35+ miles per gallon. This is great, I am so excited! Particularly since the Camery Hybrid that I am thinking of buying gets 50 miles per gallon. That car by the way, is a joy to drive. I am talking leather. I am talking SatNav, I am talking good acceleration, I am talking Power Doors, Windows and every bloody thing. Bluetooth. iPod interface. Security System. Car would grant you sexual favours if it could and for $15,000 less than what I am driving now. With a $2000 government rebate no less. Roll on December - I like this new car!

This car is, of course, manufactured in Canada - so I am not supporting foreign workers, parts are made here at Magna too, comes with a 8 year, 150,000 km drive train warranty and a 60 km warranty (extensible) for all other major components. Parts have never been a problem for the 20 years that I have owned Toyotas.

Yeah, we here in North America are really moving the technology forward. Yeah!

There seems to be real surprise as to why the North American Automotive Industry is in trouble but only among idiots and morons. Sad, really.

Mr. President, sir, Stephen (you cheap follow on, you!) I hope this is only a first step. It really does need to be.

So, as to the rush part. Much as I like the new Hybrid Camery, I will admit it is quick but not that quick. Had it up to 120 km on the highway in about 10 seconds - faster than I need - and it seemed to have plenty of head room. Still, no rush. Well, we need our rush don't we. How about a lot of rush. How about all Rush, all the time.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sigh, are the "Ditto Heads" really that stupid?

Paul

Telescopes, the death penalty and really stupid ideas (beyond the death penalty, I mean)

2009-05-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hi there everyone,

Let's take a minute and talk about the sexiest woman in the Universe. The lady Hubble now being lovingly serviced by the brave astronauts of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30721431/

This is really important, friends, this device has revolutionized astronomy and, after this servicing mission, it should continue to function well through to 2014. Personally, as NASA seriously over-engineers things, I give it to 2025!

Here is the video of the actual capture from YouTube. Consider that they are doing this at 27,000 km per hour. A remarkable accomplishment.

OK so, from something sublime to something ridiculous. You know I used to be a death penalty supporter. I mean it makes sense. Kill the bastards and you never need to have the risk of them getting out, you don't have to pay for their incarceration, and, good lord does it ever help the victims of a horrible crime cope. Great!

Except none of that is true.

First off, the risk of a serial killer getting out is negligible. Most murders are crimes of passion and they the death penalty does not represent a deterrence to the death penalty nor are suck killers likely to repeat themselves. Second, the US government, who has more people in prison as a percentage of population than you would ever believe, pays more to execute someone than to incarcerate them for the rest of their life. Why? Well, the cost of the appeal process. OK, so we limit that. Great, but, as we have learned in Canada, we often find people guilty when they are not. Well, maybe the US has it down better and that is why, next to Iran and China, they execute more people than anyone. Don't think so:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/13/tennessee.exonerated/index.html

Finally, the last point. Hmmm... this is difficult. I would argue that nobody can help the survivors of a murdered family member. I know that if anyone in my family were murdered I would feel incredible rage and want to personally deal with the person who had committed that crime. As a society, however, we have to balance off against that. We have to protect ourselves of course, but revenge is not, at least outside of idiot books like the Bible, representatives of the base ethics of a society.

OK - I have probably offended enough people, I will move on.

Really stupid idea time. I will turn it over to Keith Olberman.

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Really dumb. These guys have been sent a serious message and they just aren't listening to it.

Until next time, folks.

Paul

So, why do you think they call him...

2009-05-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

DICK!

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God, I hate this bastard.

Paul

"Buckle Up!"

2009-05-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

Guys,

Tonight was one of the best night's of my life! The new Star Trek film is amazing. The only bad part of it was that it ended - good news, I am going to see it again tomorrow.

OK - Paul Mackin's quicky review:

Five things I liked: (mild spoilers ahead)

Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard McCoy - this can only be called "Channeling"
Leonard Nimoy as Spock in his meeting with Kirk. "Jim, I can't begin to tell you how gratifying it is to see you again, old friend"
Spock's relationship with Uhura
Spock's emotions - young, adult and older
God damn it, The Enterprise!

Five quibbles:

The mechanism by which Kirk and Spock Prime get together is somewhat clumsy
The fate of a certain shoplifter - although I see the need
The drastic changes to the Star Trek universe and Canon (necessary in a relaunch, I recognise)
The swollen hands
In warp after the warp core is ejected

Five emotional reactions:

Sentimentality at the evolving Kirk/Spock relationship
Joy at hearing certain classic trek lines
Awe at seeing the Enterprise
Anger at a certain event that cannot be described (see the movie, dammit)
Admiration at a scene involving a wheel chair

My overall rating: A whomping 5 out of 5 stars.

Ranking in the pantheon of Trek Films: #1

Here is the Globe and Mail's detailed review, written by a professional reviewer, not a man who may have named his son after the film's main character:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090506.wtrek0507/BNStory/Entertainment/home

That's it for this blog folks - I am too overwhelmed to say more. Oh, sorry, not quite true, the company this evening was fantastic - Big Al, we all owe you a great thanks for arranging things. Barb, appreciate the holding of hands during the "Scary bits".

Paul

100 days...

2009-04-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well,

Our cousins to the south have had their new guy for 100 days! Good for them and good for the rest of us too. So, armed with Wasabi Peas and India Pale Ale, I will now venture forth into my opinion of the first 1/32 (more or less) of a two term Obama Presidency. Here is the Newsweek 100 day summary:

This man is a remarkable communicator - I call him the Professor in Chief. People do want to understand complicated issues and he has a gift for explaining those same complicated issues. He inherited a crappy situation and is dealing with it and doing so in what is starting to look like a credible manner. He also genuinely enjoys the job, something that his predecessor may not have. Finally, it is far nicer to have a VP named Joe over someone named DICK!

Here is the view of a couple of good historians on the first one hundred days:

Interesting that even the Republican representative feels that there are issues with the Republican stance.

Here is Countdown's take on this evening's press conference. A press conference which came after a really interesting town hall this afternoon - good lord, this man can connect.

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Speaking of Joe, wasn't that a masterful manipulation of the Republicans in the Senate with the whole Spector defection? The Democrats are going to need a filibuster proof majority if they want to get through health care and energy R&D legislation. With Al Franken likely going to win the Minnesota Senate Race, that gets the Dems to a place where they need to be to introduce real change. While I don't like the source, the following article lays it all out:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/28/specter-defection-raises-stakes-minnesota-senate-race/

Before I close, a couple of things I would like to see in the next 100 days:

Some approach to Pakistan that is going to lead to Taliban control
A rational Energy R&D policy - I would like a carbon tax but that isn't going to happen
More NASA funding and a new administrator selected
The shutdown of GM (also isn't going to happen)
Some very targeted investigation of "Crimes Against Humanity" by senior Bush officials over the last eight years

We will see what happens next. But let me end with my grading of the first 100 days - you get an A+ Mr. President.

Paul

Updates abound...

2009-04-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to update you on a couple of things. First off, my eBook, So Fatso, Do you want to run a marathon with me? - Chapter 5 has been delivered to our crack team of literary critics and, assuming that they return with comments that are anything other than absolutely scathing, it will be out in two weeks or so. Check into this blog early and often!

Politics. Hmmm... Well I think the states is going to have to undergo a Truth and Reconciliation commission of some sort. They know they did bad and, radical right aside, want to work through this. Obama is proving to be a great President - "The Professor in Chief" and is trying to make things work again - a focus on understanding and delivery rather than ideology.

Did I mention Dick Cheney's first name? Oh, sorry, I should have its... DICK.

Movies - really cool movies. The new trek film is now 10 days away here in North America. All the preliminary reviews have been great and Barb, my sons and I just can't wait to see it. I do believe it will be something of a family event with Jamie and Scot showing up as well.

An article on the reviews can be found at: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/22/star.trek.screening.room/

OK - Canadian Politics. I believe the end of this recession is in site and, as such, the Liberals will have no option but to call an election on "Fiscal Responsibility" before it is officially over. Mark October in your calendars, kids - we is going to the polls.

Later.

Paul

A Smorgasborg...

2009-04-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Hi there everyone,

It has been a while since I have posted, sorry - travel, getting over it and all that.

First off, a new Paul Mackin Blog which will temporarily replace the Prague Blog - ladies and gentlemen, the Reykjavik Marathon Blog: http://mackin-reykjavik-2009.blogspot.com/. Check it out, become a fan, tell your friends, inflict it upon your enemies (and then they will fear you). Go on, check it out!

OK so, we are now in the final, pre-bankruptcy days for GM and Chrysler. Savour the moment - bad business decisions are now coming home to roost: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30264733/. Ultimately this all will get sorted but with this financial action pending, nobody in their right mind will buy one of these cars and that, of course, escalates the situation.

A birthday of note: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28015 - Happy Birthday, you beautiful girl you!

So, why do you think they named him "Dick"?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Last point - Canadian Politics - expect an October election. You heard it hear first...

Paul

Can't judge a book by its cover...

2009-04-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Safely back in Canada and with an improved opinion of both Nigeria and the project in which I was previously engaged. It looks like I, and my company, will have a focus there for the next bit of time. We will see.

A couple of years back, there was a Welsh fellow named Paul Pot who found Baritone stardom on some sort of British talent show. Rightfully so, now another discovery - a real jewel - has been found. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Susan Boyle - here is the URL - I can say nothing else:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

What is remarkable about this video is the change. People go from contemptuous to adoring. She is not an attractive woman but, upon even the most rudimentary exploration, it is clear that she is bright, engaging, funny and very human. How we limit ourselves with our first pass view of people. One of the commentators said: "It was a complete privilege listening to that" - I can only tell you that the 3/8th of my ancestry that is Scottish is howling out with pride right now.

I was going to write about a bunch of other things tonight. I will defer that for 24 hours or so. I am that impressed by the lovely and talented Ms. Boyle.

Paul

Last night in Africa before the flight home...

2009-04-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I head out tomorrow night on a Lufthansa flight to Germany and then on a connecting flight to Toronto with appropriate, and I must say, lengthy, stopovers in my third favorite country in Europe.

I am sitting in the hotel bar here in Lagos and a great song just came on the sound system here - The Things we do For Love by one of my favorite bands, 10cc. Looking forward to getting home as all the people I love are there.

OK, so tonight I had drinks with my friend Remi and some of his friends and we discussed energy systems. I recently came across a great cartoon - Opus - only the best. I like this because it does discuss, in some ways the "mix" approach which I feel we have to take. It doesn't cover a few alternatives but its irreverence and direct approach is absolutely what we need.

As per our idiot cousins in the North American Automotive Industry ("NAAI"- sounds like the wail of some evil creature before it expires) , sorry but I refuse to claim a closer relationship with them than that - here are the latest monstrosities out of the NY Automotive show - these guys really need to decide who, and what, they are: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30095892/

Great news on the Trek front - unfortunately I will likely be in Lagos the day it opens: http://www.trekweb.com/

Blog you back from Canada on the weekend.

Paul

Paul Mackin's Daily Blog

Visit to Vancouver - July 2011

OK, at last, I am writing a blog on Organic Food.

Update after a rather long break.

Trump (and company), Osama and Obama

Conservative Majority.

15 minutes and we are done!

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

A blog about the space program...

I, for one, welcome our new computer overloards!

Science and Technology Smorg!

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Top stories from 2010 - part 1

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Paperless Reading...

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Power Generation - my first iPad post

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Little steps in the right direction...

It's been a while...

Adam & Eve, Navels, Queen (the band) and Asteriods...

The hidden taxes of deficits and Restaurateurs bad habits

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Vaccines and the direction of the US Space Program!

Updates, Obama and a BRAND NEW BLOG!!!

Running and Asteroids!

Update on NASA and other stuff...

Home again!

Automotive sensiblity....

Coming at you from lovely Swindon!

A general update...

Came across this thing on Facebook....

Well, that took longer than expected!

They just don't get it...

New Years Eve Update.

2010 Predictions - Part 2

Ten Predictions for 2010 - Part 1

Top ten stories from 2009 - Mackin's View. Part 2

Top ten stories from 2009 - Mackin's View. Part 1

Evil is Hot!

A couple of great articles...

Listening to "Social Distortian" and otherwise feeling Bliss...

December Smogsbord.

Greatest Show on Earth...

Nigeria and loving it!

Coming out!

Health Care from a country that has less than none!

Coming at you from Edmonton!

I am in love with my car (and my Mum)!

Swine Flu and a Beautiful Event!

Simple and limited message today...

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A story on healthcare - and 13 annoying things...

Something very sad...

News update!

Just a quick update!

Smorsborg - the September edition

Sad day...

Hubble, Japan's Space Program and NASA

Back home, but home is changing... And Jack Bauer

Iceland and Teddy

Vacation, guilt, frustration and weight gain!

Common Sense.

How do you spell "Hypocrisy"?

A space science blog posting from Abuja, Nigeria

Happy day - we have some Shatner for y'all!

Happy day - we have some Shatner for y'all!

Rant from Lagos

Oh well, at least they are not just fixated on the "faked" Lunar Landings...

Happy Moon Day, Granda!

Organic Food and GM Crops!

More space stuff...