But when you've got election blahs, there's nothing like aliens to spice things up

Because on October 14th, the aliens are coming. According to Australian author, actress and psychic Blossom Goodchild, a massive spaceship will hover over Alabama (???) for 72 hours starting on October 14, to silence naysayers once and for all. Not to worry. The spaceship comes from the Federation of Light. (Not the Galactic Federation of Light, as some have erroneously stated.)

Canadian UFOlogist Stephane Wuttunee has noted the the convergence of dates also. And he has an explanation.

To stir the waters even further, consider that the Canadian Prime Minister Mr. Stephen Harper in the last week has called for surprise federal elections to occur on (you guessed it) … October 14th, 2008. According to Mr. Alfred Webre from Exopolitics.com, world officials are taking the announcement of the arrival of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in our skies seriously, and plans may already be underway to pull public focus away from such a seminal event and place it on more domestic and political issues instead. In this case, the controversy generated by surprise federal elections would tie up Canadian airwaves quite nicely. If extraterrestrials wish for their presence to be known to the world on that day, they would need to account for this type of potential interference, along with one million other variables.

Of course, being highly evolved Beings, they (hopefully) would.

Well yes, because a Canadian election would certainly be a major distraction from an alien manifestation, wouldn't it? The global press will be massively present in Ottawa and completely unwilling to peel their attention away from the spectacle of Stephen and Stephane duking it out. And Canadians themselves will be too transfixed to notice anything else at all.

Works every time.

His article concludes with a fascinating little video that demonstrates how Goodchild's channeling of the term "snow cone" proves the absolute validity of the October 14th prediction.



Feel like you're entering another dimension? Yeah, I did too. But I haven't laughed so long and so hard in a while, so I am grateful.


Technorati tags: Aliens, Blossom Goodchild, Stephen Harper

Election blahs

With elections coming up both north and south of the border, I am finding great difficulty drumming up enthusiasm for either contest. Amba is even worse off:

I'm so disgusted all around that I'm teetering on that "UNDECIDED: whether to vote or not" precipice these days. Each campaign keeps going to extremes that drive me toward the other. Right now I'm feeling that the Republicans don't deserve to be rewarded for this kind of anything-goes campaigning. Yesterday it was Obama supporters' clueless arrogance that was driving me towards McCain.

It is rather a sad thing when you have to vote for whomever disgusts you least. Do all the nasty, sneering partisans not realize that they are driving undecideds further away?

Granted, the Americans have the disease of nasty partisanship worse than we do. Perhaps that is one of the inherent failings of a two-party system: it is so much easier to become polarized.

Still, there are plenty of Canadians who are afflicted also. Some of them, unfortunately, work for political parties. I suspect the puffin incident will blow over rather quickly, seeing as it was so quickly disowned by the Conservatives. People who are too young to remember kitten-eating aliens and the Charest Conservatives' attack ads sneering at Chrétien's facial paralysis and how disastrously they back-fired should not be put in charge of websites unsupervised.

I personally am trying to ignore political advertising as much as humanly possible. No one party excites me. Unlike Amba, I am not going to fall off a cliff. As a moderate, the smaller parties are unlikely to get my vote. Of the two major parties, neither one excites my admiration. But one has dug a larger hole in my esteem over the years than the other, so for this election, I'm probably going to vote for the one with the shallower hole. Not very inspiring, but a girl has to decide somehow.

If anybody can cite me reasons why either the Liberals or Conservatives deserve some admiration, I am willing to listen. I can think of a couple of things myself, but they neither one has enough positives to turn those holes into hills.

And if anybody wants to put a good word in for one side or another in the American race, feel free too. The operative term is "good word". I am sick to death of sneers and mud-slinging.

(Yes, I know my recent post about Jack Layton had a bit of a sneer to it. But just a bit. That level of political cluelessness is hard to ignore.)

Technorati tags: Canadian election

The Taliban just doesn't get public relations

Now they're trying to influence Canadian voters. They want us to vote for someone who will pull our soldiers out of Afghanistan. To make sure we get the message, they're stepping up attacks on our troops.

You've got to feel sorry for Jack Layton. Both Harper and Dion have made it clear that they are committed to staying in Afghanistan, and that they won't be intimidated by Taliban threats. The only major nation-wide party calling for a withdrawal is the NDP. By default, the Taliban is saying, "Vote NDP." Which puts poor Layton in the awkward position of trying to defend a platform plank that gets a stamp of approval from the Taliban.

Somehow I don't think they'll be mentioning this "endorsement" on the NDP website.


Technorati tags: Taliban, Canadian election

Changing generations

It was the teenagers who told me that I had crossed over. Not with words. It was the way they looked at me. I still thought of them as younger brothers and sisters, but it was clear that they saw me now as a "them" not an "us". With three children, I was definitely on the side of the parents.

It took me a long time to get used to it. I thought of myself as a young person who had acquired some children, but no. I had been booted up a generational bracket, whether I accepted it or not. My life was full of mini-vans and diapers and parent-teacher meetings.

Now it's happening again. No, I am not announcing the arrival or even the future arrival of any grandchildren. But whether I like it or not, I am slowly being eased up another generational bracket. My nest is empty (although one fledgling is contemplating a return), my hair is grey, my waistline is, um, ample, and I'm handing out unsolicited advice. All the symptoms are there. Actual grandchildren will only be the confirmation.

And really, I'm not sure I'm ready. Life expectancies being what they are nowadays, there are a lot of people up in the fourth generational bracket, which means there are still a lot of people I consider old codgers, even as the generation below me considers me an old codger, and they - though they probably don't quite realize it - are considered kind of old themselves by the generation below. It's positively dizzying.

I think I'll go cry on my mother's shoulder.


Technorati tags: Getting older

Can pink elephants be that far behind?

They're not changing the water as often at the Higashiyama zoo. Maybe they should make an exception for the polar bear pond.

The increased algae has entered the bears' hollow hairs and the result is green polar bears.

On the other hand, it makes for a great publicity stunt. I mean really, how many of you had heard of the Higashiyama zoo before?

And on a more serious note, how many realized that polar bears had hollow, transparent hairs? The hollowness is for insulation purposes, of course. And polar bears normally appear white because they reflect back the full spectrum of light, just like snow.

Walrus is pleased to present this infotainment moment as a free public service.


Technorati tags: Polar bears

Jack Layton and Obama

Jack Layton, the head of Canada's NDP (New Democratic Party, for you non-Canadians) says he is "picking up" some of the energy of Obama's campaign and may "borrow" from Barack's playbook.

Well, colour me gobsmacked.

What Mr. Layton does not seem to understand is that the Obama campaign and playbook are founded squarely on Barack himself: the man, his words, and most importantly, his charisma. Pointing out similarities in environmental policies and photocopying campaign slogans are not going to make any of that fairy dust rub off on Layton.

How can a man lead a political party for so many years and be so oblivious? This is just making him look pathetic, like the kid in the background waving at the cameras when someone else is being interviewed.

Set up all the jars you like, Jack. You can't bottle lightning.


Technorati tags: Jack Layton, Canadian politics, Barack Obama

How bumblebees fly. And how to be a flyswatter virtuoso

Well, there's another one for the history books. Another trope is dead. For years people have been pointing to scientists' inability to explain how bumblebees could fly, given their bulk and small wings, as the outstanding example of how much we still had to learn.

But Edward Willett of Hassenpfeffer tells us that Michael Dickinson has now illuminated that particular mystery.

More recently, Dickinson combined robotic modeling with slow-motion video to at last answer the question of how honeybees, heavy insects with short wing beats, generate enough lift to fly, in apparent defiance of the calculations of aeronautical engineers.

Dickinson found that bees have an incredibly complex wing beat. The wing sweeps back in a ninety-degree arc, then flips over as it turns, all this happening astonishing 230 times a second. Like the rotation of a propeller, this generates more lift than the ordinary wing beats of larger insects.

This is an impressive accomplishment. Dickinson has also studied the flight pattern of flies, and has used his studies to tell us how to better yield a flyswatter.

“It is best,” says Dickinson, “not to swat at the fly’s starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter.”

Well, for those of us with bad hand/eye coordination, that is not highly useful advice. But never fear. The Walrus comes to the rescue.

Killing flies is a very easy thing. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, flies do not react to slow change. Position the flyswatter over a resting fly very slowly until it's just a few inches away. Then a sudden swat, and the fly is history. They just can't fly fast enough to get out of the swatter's airspace in time.

Technorati tags: Bumblebees, Killing flies

Dimensions six through ten

The conclusion to our romp through time and space.

Wrapping your head around six dimensions

I offhandedly mentioned the existence of ten dimensions the other day in my post on binary thinking. (Go read it. You know you want to. It will help inoculate you against mind-messers.) When my son read it, he directed my attention to these two clips that explain each of the ten dimensions in an understandable way - or at least as close to understandable as that topic can get. This will also mess with your mind, but it is more likely to cause expansion than contraction. So, without further ado, here is the first one, that covers the first six dimensions.

The videos are the explanation of the concepts in the first chapter of the book, Imagining the Tenth Dimension.


Technorati tags: Tenth dimension, Basic physics

The fallacy of binary thinking

Binary thinking has become my newest pet peeve. No, wait! Don't run away. It's not as eggheady as it sounds.

Binary thinking is the kind of thinking that says: "If you aren't A, then you are B. End of discussion." Or: "If you don't do A, then you must do B. End of discussion."

It raises its ugly head all over the place, but most especially in politics. It is the thinking of division, of facile labels. It is highly effective for pressuring or bullying someone who has not recognized it for what it is.

It is doubtful whether it qualifies as thinking at all, seeing as it falls short of even one dimension in its complexity, let alone the three (if you're normal) or four (if you have pretensions to scientific thinking) or ten (if you're a confirmed physicist) that the rest of the world lives in.

Let me illustrate. Binary thinking reduces everything to two points, thusly:

A. .B

In politics, especially of the American variety, this means you're either a bleeding-heart, pinko, atheistic commie or a flinty-eyed, redneck, heartless fascist.

This, of course, ignores the possibility of a complete first dimension, which looks like this:

A................................B

There are lots of intermediate points (an infinite number, if you want to get picky) between A and B. There are a lot of gradations of colour, even between the pinko and the redneck.

And all of this conveniently ignores the fact that there is more than one dimension. (No, I am not going to try to illustrate this with a keyboard. You are going to have to draw your own mental pictures.) There is a point C above the line and a point D below it. Now we are dealing with an embarrassing number of points. Because there are, yanno, God-fearing liberals and atheistic conservatives. And generous conservatives and skin-flint liberals.

It gets better. Between you and the line AB, (Yes, I know it's a square now. Don't get difficult.) there is a point E. And on the other side of AB there is a point F. Because there are, yanno, authoritarian liberals and libertarian liberals. And authoritarian conservatives and libertarian conservatives. And the vast majority, who fall somewhere in the muddled middle of what is now a cube.

In all the vast space of the cube, it seems beyond childish to try to pile every single issue into a box on point A or another on point B. I would be greatly in favour of scrapping the terms "liberal" and "conservative" altogether. They generate more heat than light, and obscure thinking more often than encouraging it.

Please note that binary thinking is also a handy tool of salesmen and advertisers the world over. If you don't buy car seat Brand A, your children will die horrible deaths. (Of course, they are a little more subtle about it, but that's the message they want you to get.) Because a couple of cars have been broken into in your neighbourhood, you had better buy my security system, so you won't be facing a raving lunatic with a knife in your dark living room. (Yes, this one was used on me recently. He put lots of sentences in between Point A and Point B so that I wouldn't catch on to the absurdity. It didn't work.)

Reality can almost never be reduced to an either/or situation. Be suspicious of such simplistic analysis whenever it comes along. And look for the intermediate points, because out on the extreme edge is rarely a good place to be.

ETA: After posting this, I found this quote in my Quote of the Day box:

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Technorati tags: Binary thinking, Extremism