The Great Shredded Wheat Mystery

As strange as it may seem, I happen to like Shredded Wheat. I've been eating the little straw cakes since I was a kid. I learned to like them at the annual summer scout camp. At breakfast we had the choice between Shredded Wheat and porridge. Now you must understand that this is not ordinary porridge, this porridge was scout camp porridge. I think they never quite emptied the huge pot they made it in, they just kept adding to it, day after day. They may not even have emptied it at the end of camp, just put on a cover and kept it as a starter for next year's camp. It had the consistency and colour of a fine Portland cement. It could have been used to build the Montreal Olympic Stadium (might have made it more solid). Since we had swimming just after breakfast (must go swimming when the water is at its coldest, builds character don't you know) filling your belly with something that had the specific gravity of concrete was just plain suicide, not to mention the fact that it tasted like... well like scout camp porridge. So I chose the lesser of the two evils and ate the little straw cakes for breakfast, got used to them and even got to like them.
There is a whole ritual around eating them. First of all you need a wide bowl that will comfortably hold two little straw cakes side by side. (At a certain moment Nabisco even sold square melmac bowls to hold your straw cakes in comfort.) Next you put them in the bowl, flat side down. (Yes there is a flatter side and if you put the rounder side down they'll wobble) Then you pour the milk over them making sure you thoroughly soak them, softens the straw a bit. Then finally pour the sugar on top. Never put the sugar before the milk since the milk will just wash the sugar off. Now quickly eat them, do not wait, soggy straw cakes are not a pretty sight.
Now here is the mystery. How many people can there be that love Shredded Wheat? I am asking this question because the last few times I went to the grocery store, the Shredded Wheat had disappeared. Their price was there, their space was there, but no Shredded Wheat. Of well, I said to myself, I'll just go to the grocery across the street. None there either. The next day I stopped at the last grocery store and once again gone... AND THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THIS HAPPENS. Do the baby boomers need so much fiber that they are cleaning out the shelves? Have the younger generation taken to smoking them in the hopes of a hallucinative breakfast? What is going on?

Let's celebrate...its Book Day

Today April 23rd is the 12th International Book Day. Let's celebrate. It seems that everything has it's day now, but at least this one is worth while. Did you ever stop to consider the lowly book? In today's high tech world it seems a trifle dowdy, low tech, old fashioned. Yet look again people, for a more perfect invention does not exist (or if it does I won't go into it here). The lowly book gives hours of pleasure where the only energy required is that used to turn the pages. The special effects are only constrained by your imagination or lack there of. (When I was in my late teens I read "The Exocist" in a marathon reading session that lasted until 4 am, talk about spooky. When I went to see the film I laughed because what I had imagined while reading was way scarier than anything in the film.) They are eminently portable, I have carried some in my backpack across the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, the Appalachians, the Rockies, while traveling with Mrs. BB around the many countries we have visited. The low tech book never needs batteries, is easy to find, (in the UK Tesco's usually has a good selection of murder mysteries at a cheap price) and if you find a used book store you can usually exchange them for a minimal price. (Did that in Namche Bazare in the Kumbu region of Nepal, can't get any farther than that) They can also be given to libraries, so others can get the pleasure of reading them, and at the same time make you feel good about yourself. (When we travel, we usually end up with a bunch of books that we give to a local library. It's our way of saying thanks for sharing their beautiful country) It has had a permanent impact on society and how we think and act. It has preserved the thoughts of great thinkers and artists throughout the ages, and the list goes on.
So let us celebrate the book, low tech or not, it is the closest thing to a perfect invention that man has ever designed.

Random thoughts on Earth Day

This will be a blog of random thoughts since those are about the only thing I am capable of at the moment. First of all it is now 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees F for non metric folks) and yesterday it was just as nice. Finally some warm weather, seems strange that only a week ago we were in the middle of a snow storm.
Today is also Earth Day, nice of them to celebrate the whole world at the same time as my b'day. Makes one feel kind of...... hmmm old? I hope they'll treat me better in my old age than they do the earth, cuz if they treat me the same, I'm sure in for a rough retirement. ;o) It's in spring that we realize how much garbage we dump on poor old mother earth. When the snow melts, there is garbage everywhere, plastic bags, different types of beverage containers, fast food take out stuff, paper, cardboard, miscellaneous junk, un-picked up doggy-do (I hate people who are too lazy to clean up after their stupid pets, almost makes me want to go buy a bag of ripe manure and dump it, in a pile, on their front door steps.) and that is just the stuff we can see. We sure could make more of an effort to clean up our acts, because if we don't, sooner or later, old mother earth will do it for us because she has before (just ask the dinosaurs or the trilobites) and she surely will again. The dinosaurs probably got wiped out because like dog owners, they kept leaving gigantic piles of dino-poop all over the place and mother earth got tired of the mess. ;o)
I went to see godwhacker's blog just now and he had a very interesting article for Earth Day. There may be hope yet, but then again I'm sure that the world's governements will find a way of screwing everything up.

Guns and all things that go bang.

Having spent ten years in the 6e Régiment d'Artillerie de Campagne, I think that I have a pretty good knowledge of things that go bang. From field stripping an FN C1 to firing a 105 MM Howitzer, I've pretty much done it all, and the one thing that I can tell you is that weapons are made to kill, that is their sole purpose, always has been always will be.

I can hear the gun lobby right now. "Guns don't kill, people do." Yeah well if the killer didn't have a gun, it would be much harder for him to kill. Now I hear them say, "Well he'd use something else.". Yes I'll admit that is probably right. I can see it in my minds eye, "Ok lock and load your .... baseball bat, your knife, your ax." Let's face it, other weapons just don't have the sheer killing power of a handgun or a rifle. It would be pretty hard to have a massacre, like the Polytechnique de Montréal, Dawson College, Columbine, or Virginia Tech by using a baseball bat and a knife.

Now let us look at the classes of weapons that are available to our killer. Let's start with the handguns. What use are they? Can we go hunting with a handgun? Shoot a deer? No, a handgun is used for one purpose only, to kill human beings. Beyond 100 meters a handgun is pretty well useless. When I was in the army, I was a marksman with a 9mm Browning automatic pistol and beyond 50 meters it is almost impossible to get any accuracy. People will say, "Well I need one to protect myself"... most people are more likely to shoot themselves than hit a target. On top of that most murders that use a pistol, are by a member of the family using the family firearm.

Ok next, the rifle. Yes here I'll admit that a rifle has its uses, besides shooting innocent people. Many people love to hunt and need a rifle for that sport. (Personally I find that hunting would be much fairer if the deer and moose could shoot back.) But today people are buying semi-automatic military style assault rifles (copies of AK47's, M16's etc) Those weapons were designed to kill people. They can deliver a tremendous amount of firepower in a brief amount of time. The 7.62mm steel jacket can penetrate a brick wall, go through two people and keep on going. They were designed that way. Using one to go hunting is ridiculous. If the hunter is such a poor marksman that he can't bring down his deer with his first shot, he shouldn't be allowed in the woods. He is a menace to himself and everything else around him. (A marksman should be able to group his shots in the bullseye at 400 meters, I know it's possible because I have done it. ) Hunters should only be allowed to use a bolt action rifle with a 2 or 3 bullet magazine. My preference would be that they use a single shot bolt action with no magazine, but I only allow a second bullet in case they wound the deer. (Frankly they should get their meat at the supermarket like the rest of us but to each his own.)

The killer at Virginia Tech had two automatic pistols, a 9mm Glock and a .22 Beretta. The killer at Dawson had a .45 Magnum Pistol, a semi-automatic assault rifle and other weapons. The killer at the Polytechnique had a semi-automatic assault rifle. Those at Columbine had an arsenal to make a third world country proud. Why should those weapons even be sold? Until we as a society finally put our collective feet down and simply banish firearms, the killings will go on, in schools, public places, at home when the man of the house decides to take his family with him and anywhere else where a sick ego can aim a gun. When will it finally stop?

More @#$%$#@?&**$ snow

Last night we received another 10 cm of the #@$%%$#&?* sticky wet white stuff along with 80-90 km gusts of wind (which is still blowing). I'm starting to sound like Jazz. Enough said :o(

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I was listening to the news today and heard a story about the World Bank's governor Paul Wolfowitz. He is the man who orchestrated the invasion of Iraq using the invisible WMD's as an excuse. They must have been really well camouflaged. Then his buddy Dubbya gave him a nice cushy job in the World Bank. As he started his job his first comment was to say how he would clean up the corruption. Well the chickens have come home to roost. On Thursday he was having to explain how he had orchestrated (read ordered) a tremendous pay raise for his girlfriend.
Here in Canada we have our very own Lord Conrad Black, who is in court with racketeering charges and may spend the rest of his life in an American prison. (It shouldn't surprise anyone since he started early on by stealing and selling exams at his school (UCC). I guess he would say that it was only capitalism at work.) He has been quoted as saying, “Humility is a good quality, but it can be overdone.”. Wall Street Journal interview, Nov. 8, 1994. Well both he and Paul are about to learn what the word hubris* means.

*Exaggerated pride punished by the fates. In classical Greek ethical and religious thought, overweening presumption suggesting impious disregard of the limits governing human action in an orderly universe. It is the sin to which the great and gifted are most susceptible.

It's April and it's still #@$%$ snowing!!!!

There is joke that goes around in Québec every year. It has to do with that favorite winter stuff...snow. I'll try and translate and abridge it a little for you.

November
"First snow flakes, wonderful, so pretty."
December
"Ah finally a nice snowfall, a white Christmas. Let's go out and shovel and then we can make a snowman"
January
"What it's snowing again? Grumble... Ok I'm going out to shovel. At least we can ski."
February
"Still snowing...will it ever stop. Too cold to ski, boy I'd like some warmth."
March
"Snow again...@#$%?"
April
"@#$#@$% F$%#$g WHITE SH*T #@$#%?!!!!! "

We are now almost half way through April and it is still snowing. We are getting days with 15-16 degree Spring weather and then just when you think that you'll soon be able to get out your bike (18 speed road bike with magnesium alloy frame, carbon fiber front fork) it starts snowing again. You can't go cross country skiing because there isn't enough of the white stuff and you can't go biking because there is too much... AHHHHHHHHHH!

This picture was taken from my front porch this afternoon when I came in from work... big fat marshmallow snowflakes were falling and sticking to everything. Quite beautiful but you're soon soaking wet since they are as much water as snow. ;o(

Thoughts on technology

In his last blog Ian talked about keys and how they hadn't really changed in a long time and in the comments Jazz remarked that keys are pretty much perfect just the way they are. If we look at today's technology, we see that this is often the case. There is a rapid evolution of the technology in question until it reaches a plateau and there it stays except for minor improvements.

Here are some examples to illustrate. I am sure that if you took a 2007 model car and brought it back to the 1920's, people would instantly know what it was and how to drive the thing. There have been improvements but for all intents and purposes the car has been on a technological plateau for the last 80 years at least. Four wheels, a steering wheel and an internal combustion engine. Yes, there are improvements, ABS brakes, electronic fuel injection etc, but the basic concept hasn't changed.

The airplane is the same thing, we had a rapid growth of the technology from the Wright brothers until the Second World War where the piston engine airplane was at its height and another spurt when the jet engine came in. Since then it has been pretty much the same thing. An airliner of the 1960's is pretty much the same thing as one used today. In fact most of the planes used today date back to the 1970's (Boeing 747's, 737' etc) They did build a faster aircraft in the Concorde but the concept of faster than sound aircraft never really took off (pun intended), So here we are today with aircraft that though bigger in some cases, are not much different from aircraft 40 years ago.

The bicycle is another invention that hasn't changed in 100 years, The materials it is made of have become lighter and more high tech (carbon fiber and exotic alloys) but the basic concept is the same.

Why does technology reach a plateau, probably because the form it evolves into is almost perfect for its use. The bicycle is an almost perfect example, it would be very hard to improve upon the technology as it is now. It is perfect for its use, so why change it? Airplanes could be built to go faster but the cost penalty would be prohibitive and the benefits minimal, therefore they stay the same since the technological level they are at is perfect for the use they are put to. Replace the internal combustion engine? Up to now there has been no reason to, maybe with global warming that will change, but then the question becomes with what? We really have nothing to replace it with. We have hybrid cars, but even they have a gas burning engine. Why, because up to today it has been the most efficient means of propulsion for personal vehicles.

Will our information revolution reach the same plateau, probably, since computers will sooner or later push up against the laws of physics (there is a physical limit to how small you can make the pathways on a silicon chip). As for the information, well there is a limit to what a human being can read and use. For example try to "google" words like "homes for sale", according to Google it gives you "Results 1 - 10 of about 30,600,000 for homes for sale. (0.09 seconds) " You will read maybe the first 50 if you are very persevering, but what about the other 30.6 million? Yes maybe the first 50 are the most relevant, but by whose criteria? So we'll reach a plateau, since we'll just not be able to assimilate the vast amount of information that is out there.
So the old adage of building a better mousetrap really depends on what is already there. If the old technology is perfect for the job it does, you'll have a lot of difficulty selling your new mousetraps.

The Nature of Man (reposted with comments on :o( )

As I was driving tonight I saw more than a couple of cars with the little flags of different hockey teams. As I watched them I started to muse about the nature of tribalism and the little things we do all the time. I started wondering what someone outside of humanity would see by observing us, probably a bunch of great apes much like the chimps they had observed in Africa. (I know it's strange but it's been a long week, we just put on a Medieval fair with our kids at school, 12 hour workdays are not conducive to rationality)
We have oneupmanship with the alpha males beating their breasts and howling. (Here in Canada it's called Parliament, I always wonder how they can take themselves seriously) Tribalism with threats of violence (Alpha males beating each other up, except we do it by proxy, why should our alpha males get hurt when we can send someone else to do it in Irak and Afghanistan.) Tribalism is everywhere, from the fans of sports teams to street gangs and sometimes the sports fans are more violent. People have actually been beat up, even killed for a stupid sport, how useless is that? Have we come very far? Nope
As I was musing about such weighty things, the radio started playing some Gregorian chant. As I was listening I was struck by the dichotomy of our natures, how could we, the killer apes, come up with such sublimely beautiful music? Mozart's Requiem, Bach's Toccata, Handel's Messiah, Palestrina, all the music that transcends our nature. What about the great cathedrals, an act of faith made of stone. The great word smiths giving us words that will roll down through out the ages,

Shakespeare's Hamlet,

To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

His Henry V

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

John Doone's For whom the bell tolls

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Milton's Paradise Lost, Dantes Inferno, Molière's superbe understanding of human nature. We have designed mathematics so complex and elegant that it can describe the fundamental nature of reality. How can our genome come up with a selfless example of humanity like Sister Theresa and a total monster like Hitler?

Sinner or saint? Demon or angel? G*d only knows for I surely don't.

***** SOMEHOW THE COMMENTS GOT TURNED OFF SO I'VE REPOSTED WITH THEM ON NOW. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA, MEA MAXIMA CULPA. (for people who were not brought up as a catholic in the old days of latin, it means: my fault, my fault, my great fault!)******

Words, words words

Being an avid bunch of readers, everyone in our family has always had an affair of the heart with the words that convey the message. (see Jazz’s Blog) Two sentences can have the same meaning but a completely different feeling depending on which words you choose to use.
On the net I found this little page that tests you erudition. Have fun! (Let's see how you do lil' sister mine. ;o) )

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Of mice and macs

I bought a new MacBook with 2 gigs of memory not long ago. It is our 8th Mac and we have had a Mac in the house since they brought out the first 512k Mac in 1985.
We had started computing way before that with a TI99/4A with all of 16k of memory. Programs? none, we programmed our own using Basic. Seems very primitive today but in those days it sure beat a slide rule and punch cards.
It is unbelievable the advance of technology in the last 30 years. I remember when I got my first Mac... BM (before Mac) you left spaces in your exams so that you could draw a diagram and cut and paste was done with scissors and glue. Barely 15 years ago if you wanted a web page you had to write the code by hand. Where will it all end? Well, I for one, won't be making any silly predictions because it is almost impossible to predict how far things will go. Some people however have tried....

• "I think that there is maybe a world market for 5 computers." Thomas Watson; Chairman of IBM, 1943
• "Computers of the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." Popular Mechanics 1949
• "But what is it good for? (about the microchip)" Engineer at the Advanced Computing Division of IBM, 1968
• "There is no reason to believe that anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olson founder of Digital Equipement Corporation, 1977
• "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates 1981
• "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet."' -Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and Hewlett-Packard interested in the personal computer that he and Steve Wozniak created
  

Politicians and lack of "savoir-vivre"

Last night they had the leaders debate for the upcoming provincial election. While I am not a great fan of politicians and do not expect much from them, I do expect them to have a little bit of "savoir vivre". Last night however one of them, Mario Dumont, brought politics to a new low. Last fall, as you probably know, an overpass near here collapsed killing five people. Last night "Super Mario" came out with a government memorandum about the overpass that seemed to show that there had been problems before the collapse. He used this terrible tragedy to score political points off his adversaries. Hey guy, PEOPLE DIED IN THAT COLLAPSE! You don't use people's tragedy for political gain. It's worse that bad taste, it's just plain ghoulish.
Mario should be ashamed of himself, but knowing politicians I'm sure that he and his advisors are all patting themselves on the back for their coup. (I'm kind of surprised , in a way, that he didn't come into the studio with a piece of bloody concrete along with the memo.) And they wonder why people don't vote or why politicians have such a bad reputation.

Traveling what fun.

Well we are back from a small vacation in Tunisia. Mrs. BB and I have some friends in Tunisia so we decided to go pay them a visit. It was a delightful vacation but what a contrast. We left the day after the snow storm where we got 30 cm of snow and arrived in Tunis to a balmy 25 degrees. Then we left for a three day excursion in the southern desert. We rode camels, visited a dry salt lake, a hidden mountain oasis, climbed sand dunes, climbed in the ruins of a Roman coliseum and generally had a great time. We then came back to the hotel in Hammanet and relaxed for the next two days since it was pouring rain. Seems strange that a desert country like Tunisia should have such rain. There was 64 mm of water in 48 hours. I was reading in the news that Algeria was also hit hard. Finally we spent Saturday with our friends visiting the museums and Souks of Tunis. If you look at the picture you'll see that we went shopping at "The Bey" just like we do in Canada. ;o)
The people of Tunisia were invariably nice and helpful. In fact when we rode into Tunis on the local community taxis-bus (a small minibus that waits until full to go to destination and costs about 4 dinars ($4 cdn) from Hammanet to Tunis (75 km)) we needed to go from the terminus in Tunis to our hotel. A young lady who was on the bus with us was going our way, so we all piled into the taxi which brought us right to the door. When we offered to pay for the taxi, she just smiled, waved and wished a good day in Arabic. Their hospitality is without a doubt one of the most generous I have ever seen. Our friends refused to have us pay for anything, saying that in their culture a guest is sacred and is owed the best hospitality that they can give.
It is said that traveling widens our horizons, seeing how other cultures live makes it very hard to see them as two dimensional stereotypes. In every country we have been we have always encountered nice, generous people who would go out of their way to be helpful. From the police officer in Wales who called the hospital on his day off to ask how Mrs. BB was doing after an accident, to the staff of that hospital who went way beyond the call of duty to help, to the taxi driver in Liverpool who lead us to our destination and then refused payment, to the girl in Tunis, all of them showed us a generosity of spirit that seems to be a universal constant whatever the culture. I know that not everyone is like that but wherever we have gone we have always found generous people, and that makes traveling worth while. :o)

Snow day!!!! :o)

Well my March break just started with a bang... no school today since right now in Montréal we are having ourselves a nice snow storm (15-25 cm of snow with 40-60km/hr winds). (I'm sure that my lil, sister Jazz is very impressed, well maybe not, since I know how much she just loves winter) I'll be able to sit at my desk at home, with some Gregorian Chant playing on my Ipod (I know it's weird but I find it relaxing. I often play it while driving because of that, and no I'm not a believer, I'm an atheist, I just like the music.) This means that I'll be able to finally get all my corrections done, quietly, with nobody interrupting me every 2 minutes in the teacher's room because they are having a problem with a computer, printer, or program. At school; I'm the local computer geek. It's not part of my job but since I'm such a helpful person (it's good for my karma :0) ) I will usually help out the other teachers. The only down side is that Mrs. BB might have trouble coming back tonight, so I hope that the storm will die down later today.
With an abrupt changing of the subject, Mrs. BB and I finally bought ourselves some new Macbook laptops since our old 12" Powerbooks were 5 years old and starting to show their age. They were still usable but were getting kind of slow. We'll probably use one of them as a server and the other one we'll use while traveling which we do quite a lot of.

Here is some trivia about snow.

• The highest seasonally cumulative precipitation of snow ever measured was at Mount Baker Ski Area, outside of Bellingham, Washington in the United States during the 1998-1999 season. Mount Baker received 1140 in. (29 m or 95 ft.) of snow, thus surpassing the previous record holder, Mount Rainier, Washington, which during the 1971-1972 season received 1122 in. (28.5 m or 93.5 ft) of snow. (Now that's snow. How about shoveling that out of the driveway?)
  
• Snow crystals are crystals that have formed around tiny bits of dirt that have been carried up into the atmosphere by the wind.
• Scientists think that there are really four different shapes of snow crystals. The simplest shape is a long needle shaped like a spike. The other shapes all have six sides. One of them is a long, hollow column that is shaped like a six-sided prism. There are also thin, flat six-sided plates. And lastly there are intricate, six-pointed stars.
• As the snow crystals grow they become heavier and fall towards Earth. If they spin like tops as they fall then they may be perfectly symmetrical when they hit the Earth. But if they fall in a sideways fashion then they end up lopsided.
• Falling snow crystals clump together forming snowflakes. Each snowflake is made up of from 2 to about 200 separate crystals.
• Snow crystals are really soil particles that have been dressed up in ice.
• The shape that a snow crystal will take is dependent upon the temperature at which it was formed.
• What is chionophobia? The fear or dislike of snow. (Jazz must suffer from this ;o) )
• Bright marshmallow-colored snow blinds us with its gleaming white color because it reflects beams of white light. Instead of absorbing light, snow's complex structure prevents the light from shining through its lattice formation.
• Snow can actually be seen in several different colors. Snow can be red if the air during the snow formation contains red dust particles. Snowflakes forming around these tainted dust particles take on a reddish color. Red snow is found in those parts of Europe where the air is filled with dust particles from the red sands of the Sahara desert. In addition, certain types of algae stain snow yellow, purple, orange, green, and red. In fact, some people believe that the red algae that taints snow red actually looks and tastes like watermelon!

Flying on skis

There's nothing like cross-country skiing, fresh air, snow, and a good workout. Now x-country skiing is great at anytime but at night it's even better. The temperature was ideal (-7 to -8 degrees Celsius), great snow (dry and powdery), wax was perfect and finally the moon is almost full. All these things factored in make it indescribable. You almost fly across the snow and you can do 8 feet just on one kick. It's the closest thing to flying I know with your two feet still on the ground. Add to that, the full moon and it's "féerique" (more beautiful than reality, from the fairies world) The moon shining on the snow is so bright that most of the time I had my head light turned off. The pale white light, sparkling on the snow, with the black, black shadows of the trees makes an image approaching the abstract. When you stop all you can hear is the soft sighing of the breeze in the trees, nothing else. No cars, no people talking, nothing. If ever you get a chance to try I highly recommend it.

And they're off.

We are having an election here right now and the politicians are making promises right, left and center. Promises that everyone knows they will never keep. (and politicians wonder why they are about as popular as a dose of clap) So to make things a little less cynical, or maybe to prove I ain't the only cynic here, here are some quotes on the the subject of democracy.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. WINSTON CHURCHILL, speech, Nov. 11, 1947

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear, ALAN COREN

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. TOM STOPPARD, Jumpers (Ah those hangin' chads and electronic voting machines)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. H.L. MENCKEN

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech, May 19, 1856

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. WINSTON CHURCHILL

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, The American Democrat

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing. ANATOLE FRANCE, Penguin Island

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. ROBERT HUTCHINS

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. E.B. WHITE

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H.L. MENCKEN

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. HELEN KELLER (a very wise woman)

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. ARISTOTLE

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. PLATO

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. H.L. MENCKEN

Democracy is the road to socialism. KARL MARX

Justice is served

Today the Supreme Court of Canada made me proud to be a Canadian. It threw out the provisions of Canada's Anti-Terrorism law making it legal to detain a person indefinitely without trial.
The current Federal law allows sensitive intelligence information to be heard privately by a federal judge , with only sketchy summaries given to defense attorneys. ( Of course the people doing the accusing are the ones who decide what information can be given to the accused. This usually means next to nothing.) If the people choose to fight their deportation they can spend years in jail while the cases go through the courts. Even if they are freed, they risk being labeled as terrorists. (Maher Arar comes to mind) This means that the accused has no way of knowing the complete charges against him and therefore no way of being able to adequately defend himself.
The justices of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision (9-0), stated that certain parts of the law that pertain to the certificates are against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and they give parliament one year to make changes to the law.
''The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process,'' Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the ruling.
In the last couple of years our liberties have gradually been eroded in the name of security. To tell you the truth, I feel that these draconian laws are far more dangerous than any terrorist attack. The loss of liberty and freedom usually does not come in a terrible revolution but is a gradual giving away of our rights. Once started it is too easy to justify still more sacrifices until there is nothing left.
We would do well to remember that in the Germany of the 1930's, Adolf Hitler was democratically elected and by the manipulation of the public's fear was able to take complete power. Too many Canadians gave their lives to stop him and to protect the freedom that we enjoy today. Thank g*d. we are still far from that situation and hopefully with today's Supreme Court decision we will be farther still.
Maybe the men who were detained are guilty of something, if so put them on trial and give them a chance to defend themselves. If they are found guilty, then you can deport them. To not do so, not only infringes their rights but it diminishes everyones.

PS: I found a nice quote in the Montréal Gazette that fits perfectly.
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot." Horace Greeley

Oh my g*d she's bald.

Well good old Britney blew a gasket, as if she wasn't running one cylinder short of a V4 (have to be ecological). She cut off all her hair and got a tattoo. I don't know whether she is just bonkers or if she is sly as a fox. All that free publicity, maybe it will give some much needed CPR to her career, let's face it, it has been just about dead for the last three years. What is really strange is that this piece of fluff news, has been breaking news for days. In some places it even made it to the evening news and there are tons of videos on You-tube. Personally...yawn who cares?
Now mind you, I have nothing against bald women, after all Sinéad O'Connor has made a bald head her trade mark, but then again she has talent. Britney on the other hand is not even close to being in the same class, nor does she have the same class.

All of this just to introduce the trivia of the day... Hair, or lack there of.

• Average number of hairs on the head: 100,000
• Red hair: 90,000
• Brunet: 100,000
  
• Black hair: 110,000
• Blond hair: 140,000
• The longest documented hair length is Xie Quiping with 5.627 meters (Guiness Book Of World Records)
• Annual growth: 12 cm
• Female hair grows more slowly than male hair (too bad ladies)
• Normally takes about 7 years to grow hair down to the waist
  
• Male hair is more dense than female hair (ditto)
• Lifespan of hair: 2 to 7 years
• Diameter of hair: 0.1 mm
• Load-carrying capacity: 100 grams (= one chocolate bar)
• Humidity stretches the hair (also causes frizzz)
  
• Combing is less detrimental than brushing
• Hair grows faster in warm weather
• Elderly people have slower hair growth and diminished hair density (it's called naturally going bald)
  
• Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow.
• 35 meters of hair fibre is produced every day on the average adult scalp.
• 90% of scalp hairs are growing and 10% are resting.
• It is normal to lose 100 hairs per day from the scalp.
• You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone.
• Thyroid imbalance and iron deficiency are reversible causes for hair loss.
• Over 50% of men by age 50 have male pattern hair loss.
• Forty percent of women by the time they reach menopause will have female pattern (hereditary) hair loss.
• The technical term for balding is alopecia (There's a word for you Jazz. Britney is suffering from self-inflicted alopecia)
  

Medieval Help desk

Jazz sent me this since she knows that I love the medieval time period and I also have a rather quirky sense of humour. (Just ask my students) It is hilarious so I thought that you might all enjoy it as much as I did. The Medieval Help Desk
Enjoy. :o)

Here is a bit of medieval trivia for you trivia nuts.

• The keep at Bridgnorth Castle, located in England, leans at 17 degrees, three times further than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• In 1813 a walled up skeleton was found in one of the vaults of Craigmillar Castle.
• In 1787 Robert Burns was knighted at Clackmannan Tower by Henry Bruce's widow with the sword of Robert the Bruce.
• The largest castle in England is Windsor Castle.
• The largest castle in Wales is Caerphilly Castle.
• All the inhabitants of Cainhoe Castle, in Bedfordshire England, died due to the "Black Death".
• Loch Doon Castle once sat on an island in the middle of Loch Doon. In 1934 the castle was moved, stone by stone, to the west shore of the Loch.
• Killyleagh Castle is the oldest occupied castle in Ireland. It was built in the 13th century.
• In 1250, Walter de Clifford forced a royal messenger to eat the king's Writ, wax seal and all. (ketchup with that?)
• At Exeter Castle, in 1136, the garrison used wine to extinguish fires from a siege. (what a waste)
• The medieval long-bow had a range of 220 yards and could easily penetrate 3/4 inch of oak.
• Super-heated sand was used in warfare. It penetrated the joints of armor and made the attacker run in the opposite direction.

Thanks to www.castles-of-britain.com

The name is Bond, James Bond!

Since I bought the whole collection of the James Bond films, I have been watching them with Mrs. BB every Saturday night. Sure the special effects are rather rudimentary and Bond is more macho than is politically correct in these newer egalitarian times, but the films do have something. Being a rather curious person I decided to look up the order of the films and that of the books. There is certainly a difference... the first shall be last. So the new James Bond film is which came out recently was the first book written. And even though I must say I was somewhat reticent about a blond Bond (Ian Fleming's description of him makes him 6'2" black hair and blue eyes) I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the film. It was a Bond that we hadn't seen in a long time, cold and ruthless, just as he was in the books. After all Commander Bond is an assassin.

Here are the order of the books as they were published:

1. Casino Royale (1953),
2. Live and Let Die (1954),
3. Moonraker (1955),
4. Diamonds Are Forever (1956),
5. From Russia, With Love (1957),
6. Doctor No (1958),
7. Goldfinger (1959),
8. For Your Eyes Only (1960) (short stories: For Your Eyes Only, A View to a Kill, Quantum of Solace, Risico, The Hildebrand Rarity)
   
9. Thunderball (1961),
10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962),
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963),
12. You Only Live Twice (1964),
13. The Man With the Golden Gun (1965),
14. Octopussy and the Living Daylights (1966)

Here are the films in order that they appeared:

1. Doctor No* (1962)
2. From Russia With Love* (1963)
3. Goldfinger* (1964)
4. Thunderball* (1965)
5. You Only Live Twice* (1967)
6. On Her Majesties Secret Service** (1969)
7. Diamonds are Forever* (1971)
8. Live and Let Die*** (1973)
9. The Man with the Golden Gun *** (1974)
10. The Spy Who Loved Me *** (1977)
11. Moonraker*** (1979)
12. For Your Eyes Only*** (1981)
13. Octopussy*** (1983)
14. A View to a Kill*** (1985)
15. The Living Daylights**** (1987)
16. Licence to Kill**** (1989)
17. Golden Eye ***** (1995)
18. Tomorrow Never Dies***** (1997)
19. The World is Not Enough ***** (1999)
20. Die Another Day***** (2002)
21. Casino Royale****** (2006)

* Sean Connery **George Lazenby *** Roger Moore **** Timothy Dalton ***** Pierce Brosman ****** Daniel Craig Green = not an Ian Fleming story

Here is some trivia about James Bond.

• In the film "You Only Live Twice" the screen play was written by Roald Dahl the famous author who wrote many children's books.
• In the film "From Russia with Love" Ian Fleming has a cameo appearance.
• Jane Seymour, the actress that plays Solitaire in "Live and Let Die", has eyes of different colour, grey and brown.
• Goldeneye (film 17) was the name of a WWII contingency plan in case the Nazi's invaded Spain that Fleming worked on while in the British Secret Service. It was also the name of his home in Jamaica.
• Ian Fleming had the same rank as Bond, Commander RN
• Ian Fleming chose the name James Bond because he thought it was bland and boring.
• Ian Fleming participated in the great deception before D-Day where a body was placed in the water containing documents that led the Germans to believe that the allies would invade Greece instead of Sicily. (see The Man Who Never Was)
• The Bond family motto is "Non Sufficit Orbis" (The World is not Enough) (film 19)
• Favorite weapon is the Walther PPK but before that weapon he used a Beretta which was judged to not have enough stopping power.
• Bond always took his vodka martini, medium dry, shaken not stirred.

* Some of the trivia borrowed thanks to bondtrivia.netfirms.com/