January 25, 2008
Happy 2008
So I haven't written in a dog's age. I thought I would stick something new up here. This is a modern-day nativity.
On a related note, I've been keeping busy learning New Testament Greek, as I said sometime last year. I basically know about half of the words in the NT. Which actually makes it very readable: most of those words are used multiple times, so actually close to 96% of the content is a word I (should) understand. Grammar is a different story -- I don't count myself a Bible scholar just yet!
Let's see, what else.. oh yeah, visit my band LongFallen's MySpace, or that of my other, sometime band spectropulse.
Posted by The Greatness at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2007
The New RUSH
The boys have a new album, their first studio release in five years. I must admit on the first listen I wasn't too impressed. But after a few listenings, it's growing on me in a nostalgic way. Thank goodness for anthemic rock and Alex's guitar solos -- shades of Presto (1989) all over this one.
Posted by The Greatness at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2007
Independent Scholarship
This is a recommendation to all my friends, degreed or otherwise, who desire a life of the mind apart from their daily work:
Go read The Independent Scholar's Handbook by Ronald Gross. You will be inspired and possibly exhilarated.
That is all.
Posted by The Greatness at 10:18 AM | Comments (1)
March 05, 2007
The Greatness, plutocrat
February is over and March has begun, a passage of time both encouraging and depressing. Encouraging, because the coldest of the Nova Scotia winter is past. But depressing because March in Canada still feels like January for a Virginia boy. Not that February was as bleak as my blog probably made you feel. I apologize, gentle readers. I promise, you will never see a blank front page on this blog again. (Sorry, that doesn't mean I'll necessarily post more. Rather that I will provide "recent content" in an increasingly Orwellian sense -- like 90 days of posts instead of 30.)
No, February had its moments. Like when I took The Sweetness to the circus for her birthday. And when I saw Mercury, Venus, Saturn and two dozen Messier objects on the same weekend. And of course, when I found out just how rich I was: rich enough to be caught in the US government's web of double taxation and global financial surveillance.
Since my web stats unequivocally show that most of my visitors are American, the rest of the world will just have to bear with. This post is really for Usanians, especially those who want to know just how much America will go to bat for its citizens when abroad. Which is to say, not much. America is not the new Rome, generously lending its aegis to all who call it home. Really, the only thing vaguely Roman about my treatment by America as an "overseas" citizen is that, like the early Christians, I, too, must spend a lot of time in the catacombs.. of the Government Printing Office. (If it sounds like I'm overly nitpicky in the following, remember that I am merely dwelling on the only problems in my life, fabulously wealthy as I am.)
Let's start with double taxation, shall we? I will translate for my American audience. In Canada, you don't get pay stubs until near the end of February, so that's when I get the tax paperwork started. I got two T4's (the U.S. W-2) and one T4A (1099-MISC) this year due to my change of employers and of status; now that I'm a Canadian immigrant, I have to pay into the Canada Pension Plan and "premiums" for Employment Insurance. As a new immigrant, I am not allowed to collect unemployment unless my wife pays it back, but let that pass. I also am expected as a Canadian resident to report all worldwide income on my T1 (1040). So when BellSouth sends me dividends on a 1099-DIV, I have to report such earnings (properly converted to CAD) on T1 line 121 and attach Schedule 4.
As it happens, the US government has a tax reporting policy on all of its citizens, regardless of where they reside. This is a relative rarity among nations of the world, but then we've always been elite. So after I've figured my Canadian tax, I then sharpen my pencils to handle Form 1040. This isn't too bad, really. You use the IRS's official exchange rate for the tax year to convert your wages into US dollars and report that on 1040 line 7. Then you fill out Form 2555-EZ, on which you report every day in the tax year that you were present in your home country. (This doesn't directly affect the calculation, by the way, which makes you wonder what they use it for.) Then write the result in parenthesis on 1040 line 21 and write "2555-EZ" next to it. For most people filing 2555-EZ, the rest of the form is a handwriting exercise (write "0" on line 37, 38, 41, 43, etc.)
But as we all know, I am not most people. I am a magnate, a captain of industry. I have for many years received as much as $600 in filthy, unearned stock-market dividends, reportable on 1040 line 9a. As a Canadian resident, I have to report them in Canada as well. Under the principles of avoiding double taxation, a tax treaty should specify in which country I must pay and in which country I am entitled to a foreign tax credit. In principle, the Canada-U.S. Income Tax Treaty does this. However, the U.S. government reserves the right to tax its own citizens irrespective of the provisions of this treaty. Perversely, this position is called the "saving clause". I can assure you, no savings accrue to my benefit from this clause!
The IRS tells me, though I am a Canadian resident, that U.S.-source income is taxable in the U.S. and I should claim a refund of U.S. tax paid when filing in Canada. Except that I didn't make enough money in the U.S. to pay any tax. So I can't very well claim a refund of tax I didn't have to pay. Maybe in the end it doesn't make much difference; I would have had to pay somewhere, it might as well be in Canada. Still, the whole process is byzantine and doesn't seem altogether fair (and if you can stomach reading Article X of the treaty, you'll see it's obviously not fair in several other cases).
"All right, Greatness, quit belly-aching about taxes. Tell me about the global surveillance part." Sure thing. Have you ever looked at 1040 Schedule B? It's a trip. I especially like Part III:
There are so many things to love about this schedule that I will have to restrain myself. For one thing, you generally don't have to fill it out unless you have over $1,500 in dividend or interest income. The only reason I've ever seen this form is that the threshold used to be much lower. Good thing I was aware of it, because Part III applies to me. It looks like I should say "Yes" on line 7a, because (duh) I have some bank accounts in Canada. However, if you flip to page B-2 (oh wait, you can't flip to it, because it's not attached -- it's in the instruction package), you learn that unless you have more than $10,000 in such accounts, you should say "No" despite the plain language of the question. I assume that would be my alibi if they wanted to get me for making a false statement. This procedure also guarantees that anyone who has to fill out Part III has to read all of the miscellany around the question before answering, whether any of it applies to them or not. Really, IRS guys, this screams out for a redesign.
But anyway. This year, for the first time, "Yes" is the right answer (thank you, joint accounts!). So what must I do? From the venerable page B-2: "file Form TD F 90-22.1 by June 30, 2007, with the Department of the Treasury at the address shown on that form. Do not attach it to Form 1040." I haven't decided whether this is the tax man being nice to the boys in Treasury or just closing ranks. You see, this part of the schedule has nothing to with taxes. Part III is to remind all red-blooded Americans of their duty to comply with the Code of Federal Regulations Title 31, Part 103. Treasury form TD F 90-22.1 (supplied by the IRS) looks innocuous enough. They just want the bank name and account number of every foreign asset under your control, whether it's your money or not. Why, exactly?
What patriot could argue with that reasoning? How about this one.
Posted by The Greatness at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2006
Neil Peart Drum Lesson
Long time no write? Yeah, I know. And I'm not making it up to you right now, either. But this is worth seeing:
Posted by The Greatness at 06:54 PM | Comments (1)
October 04, 2006
White and Nerdy
Weird Al raps:
Scarily, I caught most jokes on the first pass! Oh, yeah, this song speaks of me -- to me, I mean. Maybe.
Posted by The Greatness at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2006
Star Struck
I'm turning 30 soon, and in a fit of parental generosity my mother asked if I might want a "special" birthday present. Usually I have a hard time deciding such things, because most birthdays just aren't special enough to warrant buying the toys I want. (Yes, I am five right about now.) But this year I was ready with my big request: "I want a telescope." Mom talked to Dad and he agreed to cover it. "Don't expect a present like this ever again," he joked. Actually, in retrospect I don't think he was joking.
Well, I may have spent all my parental capital, but it's here! This is actually my second telescope. The first one I got when I was ten or so. That would have been 1986, the year Halley's Comet came to town. The telescope was a Tasco refractor of the kind everyone's seen at Toys "R" Us. The top of the tripod sheared off on my first attempt to use it. Sadly, my father's bailing-wire repair failed to return it to status quo ante, and it resided in my closet until the day we put it in a yard sale. I remember seeing the comet with my dad in some binoculars one morning, rather than setting up the scope.
Fast forward to adulthood, whatever that is. The Hale-Bopp Comet of 1997 was an astonishing sight from the Shenandoah Valley where I went to school. I think the spectacle of that comet reawakened my interest in the subject. Over the past decade, I've learned the names of many constellations and can point to most of those in the sky. The Sweetness got me a green laser pointer last year for pointing at stars -- pretty cool in the boardroom, too, by the way. And now I have an Orion XT8 telescope, a serious astronomical tool.
The Orion XT8 is an 8" Dobsonian reflector. "Reflector" means it has a Newtonian design, where a hole in the top of the tube (8" in diameter on this one) brings in light to be focused by the mirror at the bottom. This focused light then bounces off the secondary mirror hanging near the top of the tube to enter the eyepiece at a 90 degree angle. In this design, everything you see is upside down, which takes some getting used to. "Dobsonian" means that, rather than sitting on a tripod, the telescope is mounted on what looks like a cannon emplacement. Incidentally, since the tube is 46" long, it pretty much looks like a cannon.
Seriously, this thing is huge. But it's fairly manageable. I've only had it for a few days, and it has been foggy or cloudy most of them. Still, I put it on the deck of my apartment and played explorer. So far I've seen a double star, a meteor, and countless pinpoints of light. This, mind you, was on a night when you couldn't see a star in the sky with the naked eye. I can't wait to see what it will be like on a good night!
Posted by The Greatness at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
Back from a week's vacation
... returned to find ~800 Gmail "conversations" in my mailbox. 650 were kindly marked as spam by the good folks at Gmail -- that's what I get for having my email address on the Web for so long! 50 were spam that wasn't caught. 50 were from people flaming each other on various listservs I subscribed to and haven't yet bothered to unsubscribe from. 30 would count as spam if I didn't do business with the companies that sent them. The leftovers demonstrated what I'd long suspected: I don't get more than 3 emails worth reading on any given day. And that counts donair-related mail as important!
Catching up on news, I see the Middle East is still screwed. A Nobel laureate has proposed what may be the only (politically) realistic way to combat climate change. Astrologers are vexed by how to incorporate three new planets into their horoscopes for more accurate forecasting. Also, I suck at hang gliding.
Did I miss anything?
Posted by The Greatness at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2006
Tropical Storm Chris
Watch out, Antigua. Batten down the hatches, St. Barthelemy. I'm coming.
Posted by The Greatness at 08:16 AM | Comments (1)
July 07, 2006
If you see the rotary on the road, kill it
My web statistics tell me, much as I would like to be known for my trenchant commentary on science/faith issues and current politics, that most of my visitors come for articles on one of two things:
Therefore, I must needs inform my readers that the Tao is no more. Yield and proceed is no longer a living example of Eastern mysticism. As of June 28, after a humorous bit of confusion among government officials as to what the law really meant, it was decided that the rotary is now a proper traffic circle, where the drivers in the circle have the right-of-way.
I have been in favor of this change for some time; I even told the CBC so, when they came calling about the haiku. I can't deny, though, that the old way was more fun. It seems a shame to lose all the chaos.
But there's hope yet: the lights still shine both red and green. Visually the rotary continues to evoke a vibrant indeterminacy.
Posted by The Greatness at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2006
Google's line of products expands!
This is the funniest spam I've seen in a long time:
Posted by The Greatness at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
The Parade of Projects
I am buried in unfinished and unrequited projects. Will they ever end? Not until I stop breathing (and perhaps even beyond). Whether it's my neurotic obsession with knowing everything, my self-identification as a Renaissance man, or my elitist derision for American Idol, I truly live only as I am learning and creating.
But work has really started cramping my project timelines. Somehow, projects I do for money don't feel like my projects, though there sure are a lot of 'em these days. I don't directly comment about work on the blog, but if you want to contact me off the record, I can tell some stories, boy. (Short version: I may be managing eight people by September, and our new laboratory is ready(?) for move-in tomorrow.)
I fondly recall the unbounded, halcyon days of my youth when I could spend hours each day programming on my Commodore 64. Sadly, those days are long gone, and my Commie's not looking so hot either. Yet I'm sure the good old days weren't as great as I remember them. I had to go to school, didn't I? How is that any more freeing than having to go to work? Yes, my pysche is riddled with contradictions. I suppose the most important factor is my age. At this point in my life, I have accumulated enough plans for projects to completely swamp my available free time. In order to take control again, I have to finish some of 'em.
This is where you come in, dear reader. The following are projects I have been pondering for a while -- some, a long while. Critique them, laugh at them, add to them if you must, whatever. But let me know what you think is worth doing on this list:
- Read the books on my shelf I haven't read yet. (The Sweetness and I are incorrigible bookworms -- we bought seven in one day at a book fair this month -- but we can't find the time to read through our wordy wares before we've brought some more home.) I count 17 to read before I should buy another... but I probably will anyway.
- Read, in general, more books on faith/science issues. I'm keenly interested in such things. In fact, I recently joined the American Scientific Affiliation so I could get their journal and more fully participate in their forum. While many Christian bookstores showcase a "science section", the material there is often woefully one-sided. One would think that the YEC (young-earth creationist) position was the only one ever held in Christendom, even though it only really became dominant in the nineteenth century. If you want anything else, you gotta sniff it out.
- This is related to the previous: write a book on faith/science issues. In particular, an accessible book that helps non-science-minded Christians understand evolution and modern geology, and why they're not so bad. Books on theistic evolution and its theological ramifications live on Amazon and at the divinity school, but not at the Bible shop. (One notable exception is Coming to Peace with Science; I recommend it highly.) I'd probably also riff on some of the more plausible efforts to harmonize the evidence of science with scripture.
- Flesh out and actually write the screenplay. You know, the one about the guy who can teleport worldwide between identical-looking chain restaurants while sitting on their identical-looking toilets. If you didn't know, well, you do now. It's my idea, so don't steal it!
- Record an album with my band, Longfallen. We've been playing for almost two years and have got about 10 songs now, so this is fairly attainable. We should probably play in public first.
- Write a novel. Not a Great American novel, per se, but a smart, vaguely sci-fi look at the human condition and what we believe. I have a bit of a plot outline but nothing written down yet.
- Learn koine Greek so I can read the New Testament in its original language. I'm thinking about taking some online theology courses for credit towards an M.Th. or M.A., and learning NT Greek would be an excellent foundation for coursework that I could do in my spare time for free.
- Make an animated Lego short about the naval battles of the War of 1812. Am I being serious? I honestly don't know.
- Finish composing the chamber work I started about the number pi and the number e, and their climactic musical battle. Originally arranged for percussion ensemble, but I don't know where I'm going to find one of those now that I'm not a music minor in university.
- Learn to read Japanese. I have the books, but I know that would be a serious undertaking.
And... that's all. For now.
Posted by The Greatness at 02:04 PM | Comments (3)
April 04, 2006
Obligatory Blog Entry
You know it's time to put up another entry when the page stares blankly at all visitors. So here it is, my ob-blog, as all the kiddies are calling it. I direct you to a masterful work of great care, made by one of those puzzling sorts that has the chutzpah to follow a silly idea all the way to its absurdum.
Posted by The Greatness at 11:07 AM | Comments (4)
March 03, 2006
O Britainnia!
Hello, dear readers. It's been a while. How are you? The Sweetness and I have been doing relatively well, aside from a post-vacation cold. Thanks for asking. You'll be happy to know we got all that tax stuff taken care of -- or at least in the mail, which is all we can hope for at this early date.
We recently got back from a whirlwind eight-day tour of Britain, during which we visited London and its environs, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and York. As we'd both spent considerable time in London before, we resolved to get our money's worth from the BritRail train pass and see the country. Here are some of the trip highlights:
- Edinburgh Castle - Edinburgh's Royal Mile is home to important buildings both majestic (Holyrood Palace, summer residence of the Queen) and monstrous (the Scottish Parliament) but its most picturesque address sits at the top of the street.
The castle has been the fortified home of Scottish monarchs since the 11th century, though I doubt Elizabeth II has had occasion to take cover here. But if she did, Her Majesty could bedeck herself in the crown jewels of Scotland and clutch the legendary Stone of Scone, whilst paying respects to Scotland's war dead at the Memorial or visiting the Norman-esque chapel at the top. The history impresses, but the vista astounds; as a well placed fort, it naturally has the most commanding views of Edinburgh and its lowland surroundings. - Yorkminster - This cathedral in the heart of York is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and contains the world's largest medieval glass window. There must be a panel in this church for every chapter of the Bible!
Below the main level of the church, excavations can be toured that show off the deep roots of this house of worship, through the bedrock to Norman, Saxon, and Roman times. They've even unveiled the Roman road and some of the wall coverings. By the way, Constantine was proclaimed emperor on this spot in 306 AD, after his father unexpectedly took ill and died. (Also worth seeing in York: the marvelous York Castle Museum, chock full of 18th- and 19th-century items of ordinary life.) - The British Library - Okay, so this one's in London, but we couldn't completely ignore the first city of the UK, could we? We stood astride the Prime Meridian at Greenwich. We leisurely observed a dreary, rain-soaked skyline on the London Eye. We caught "The Producers" at the theatre in Covent Garden -- jolly good fun. But for my money (in this case, free, which makes it all the sweeter), the biggest thrill was looking at the actual pages of the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest New Testaments in existence. You can't snap photos of the codex, but you can stand overtop of it and put your nose right against the top glass if you want. Or maybe you'd prefer to examine the 2nd-century fragment of John. Or the Gutenberg Bible. Or if Christian manuscripts aren't your thing, how about a First Folio of Shakespeare? The "Treasures of the British Library" could not be more aptly named.
Posted by The Greatness at 12:18 PM | Comments (2)
December 29, 2005
Pet Peeves with Pax
The Sweetness and I recently returned from a trip that, to say the least, was a rather mixed performance for Northwest Airlines. On the first flight, the crew (or the fuel people at YHZ) rather bizarrely caused the aircraft to be overfueled, and we had to burn kerosene on the ground for 30 minutes, contributing to unnecessary global warming. The second flight was cancelled and we had to rebook to Washington to get to VA in time for my sister's college graduation. For some reason this involuntary change in plans was deemed a "voluntary separation" from our luggage, which blithely continued on to RIC without us. (At that point we were in distant Blacksburg, washing our underwear in the sink.) On the way back they got the customs declaration all fouled up and we had to spend 2 hours on the plane while they unloaded, re-recorded, and re-loaded the bags.
Yup, no question, the airline sucked by any objective standard. I'm no apologist for Northwest. Yet when flying, it could have been worse. Much, much worse. Like fatally worse. And something like a dozen of my fellow passengers failed to consider this when they bitched and moaned about our plight. They had a right to be mad, but their complaints were misplaced and, if acted on, would have gotten us killed. Here's a sampling:
- "Why do we have to sit here? Can't we just leave?" - overheard on the first flight, which was overfueled. The captain had already explained that the airplane was over its maximum takeoff weight. Actually, the aircraft was over its maximum taxi weight. It would have been illegal to even go on a ground tour of the airport while we burned off the fuel, let alone take off. Moreover, it would have been stupid in the extreme, because operating an aircraft over the manufacturer's weight limits automatically makes you a test pilot and your passengers guinea pigs. More weight means less speed, more runway required, and less lift -- at a given point, infinitely so (i.e. the airplane just won't fly). The pilot doesn't know where that point is, and neither do I. Do you feel lucky? Do you remember this crash in Charlotte? Or the unfortunate Aaliyah, who contributed to her own demise by insisting on violating the laws of physics?
Here's the proper question for the airline: "Couldn't you have siphoned off the extra fuel?" Maybe the answer is no. It was a bonehead mistake that isn't usually planned for. They obviously didn't want to piss off any particular passenger by throwing him off the flight after he'd already boarded (it likely would have been a "him" because they needed to get rid of a couple hundred pounds). The waste of fuel seemed pretty ridiculous, but compared to the alternative, maybe Halifax could stand to be a little less chilly...
- "They said the flight was overweight and they needed volunteers to bump, but there are empty seats on this plane!" - This howler is particularly inane. Obviously the airplane has empty seats because those are the seats the volunteers occupied! There are three basic things you load on any flight that impact the weight: passengers, cargo, and fuel. On this flight, weather at the destination was not very good. Visibility was bad enough, in fact, that the law (and common sense) require that you have enough fuel to fly there, try to land, fly to an alternate airport, try to land, and then fly for something like an hour beyond that (the standard can differ from airline to airline). The airline has no legal alternative but to comply with the fuel directive. Trouble is, they usually don't have to because most of the time (90%) the weather at the destination is good enough not to warrant that level of fuel. So when they do, they have to get rid of some passengers and/or luggage. Getting rid of fuel isn't an option unless you want your flight to become a glider at some point. Incidentally, in the summer a similar thing can happen to payload even in good weather, if the air temperature rises to a level that causes degraded engine performance.
Now, you could ask, "why did you fill the plane to such a level if you thought there was a 10% chance you'd have to kick people off?" I'd say 90% is a good risk, personally, so long as there are other flights to accomodate the excess passengers. The problem lies in how they often overbook the plane, so that it will be full even after the average number of no-shows are subtracted. In that spirit, I have a more relevant question: "why would you assume the average no-show number obtains at Christmastime? How many people really want to skip their flight on December 24?"
- "They say they cancelled our flight because of fog, but I just talked to my sister/mother/Aunt Edna and there's no fog at her house!" "How come airline X is flying into ABC but our airline isn't?" "If weather is so bad at ABC how come they're still flying to DEF?" - Fog is, strictly speaking, a cloud that forms at ground level. Just as we don't expect the same cloud overhead as we drive between two cities, or even in the same city, we wouldn't expect fog to plague an entire town at once. It's an unfortunate consequence of an airfield's microclimate (being tree-free and relatively flat) that makes fog so prevalent in the very places we wish it would leave. But it's often there, and I hope we can all appreciate the difficulty of trying to put an object traveling at 180 mph onto a piece of asphalt 150 feet wide when you can only see two car-lengths in front of you. Think about when you drive in fog at 60mph and you suddenly see brake lights in front of you. How much visibility, in time, do you have to start braking? Not much more than a second, I'd say. Divide that by three for an airplane, and consider that a pilot is doing much more than simply applying brakes when landing, and it's easy to see why we don't usually fly in bad weather like that.
If you are landing in those conditions, it's because you have three things on your side: 1) an airport with a Category III Instrument Landing System; 2) an airplane that supports Cat III approaches, including autoland; and 3) a qualified crew. Cat III approaches are only available at a clutch of elite passenger hubs worldwide. Your airport may have Cat II, which will get you down to 1/4 mile visibility. But most have only Cat I at 1/2 mile, which often isn't enough for widespread fog conditions. If you've got 2) you've got 3), naturally, but not every aircraft has one. That other airline may be flying a 767 when you're on a little Jetstream; if you gotta be there, it pays to check out the equipment on the route before you purchase the ticket.
Posted by The Greatness at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2005
Oops
I used to work at a bank, so I feel these guys' pain at what disasters can happen when financial computers are carelessly handled. But still... wow.
Posted by The Greatness at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Long live the BBS
Nostalgia struck as I read this article about the BBS, my first exposure to the world of computer networks. Sure, the old bulletin board systems were usually gulags for software pirates and digital graffiti artists. But a cool outlaw persona could be had for the mere price of a cross-town telephone call. Back then, the coolest geek on the block was fortunate to have parents who would front him a second phone line. Then you could have your own BBS, be SysOp of all you surveyed!! A stack of whirring 1541 drives was the music of the spheres to a 14-year-old proto-nerd like me.
But youth is fickle, and QuantumLink beckoned...
Posted by The Greatness at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
There's hope (?) for me yet
A tidbit for the day:
Angela Merkel, the new chancellor of Germany, is a quantum chemist, with publications in such journals as Molecular Physics and Journal of the American Chemical Society. This follows on the heels of physicist Yuan T. Lee being offered the premiership of Taiwan.
Does this herald a new era in politics? Quantum chemists setting the world right, under the banner of the Schrodinger equation and their leader, President Greatness!!!
Posted by The Greatness at 09:20 AM | Comments (1)
November 14, 2005
A new flying "record"
Boeing has established that their new 777-200LR "long range" is very long range, indeed. During Nov. 9-10 in a multitude of time zones lasting almost 23 hours, their test aircraft flew 11,664 nautical miles (which is 13,423 miles or 21,601 km) from Hong Kong to London. The trip required that they fly across the Pacific, and North America, and the Atlantic. A very impressive performance, though it leaves me scratching my head with a practical question: even if you have such an airliner, why would you fly it more than halfway around the world? I know, I know, stronger, faster, higher...
Posted by The Greatness at 08:41 AM | Comments (4)
November 01, 2005
Gomery Report released
The Gomery Report came out today.
That statement means absolutely nothing to my American readers, but for my Canadian readers it represents the Next Big Thing in politics. Let me see if I can put it in an American scenario: Imagine that it's 2009 and California wants to secede from the US because it's, like, sooo different from the rest of America and deserves to be treated as a distinct society. It plans to hold a referendum on the subject (especially apt, given how fond Californians are of their "propositions"). The Democratic party, in its historic takeover of Congress and the Presidency in 2008, make unity of the country an important part of their platform. They make good on this promise, establishing a new federal program that is essentially a feel-good advertising initiative (or propaganda machine, depending on your position) to roll pork into California and get Californians to appreciate being part of America. The enabling legislation for this program puts all the financial responsibility in the West Wing, and Pres. H. Clinton chooses her good buddy A. Sleezeball to administer the program (and maintain plausible deniability about its actions). In turn, Sleezeball hires Thief, Goon, and Good-for-nothing to figure out where the money should go. They decide to send it to advertising firms that only spend 3 cents for every dollar that is given them. And in turn these companies kick back around 30% of their government contract to the Democratic Party. The vote is held, the Californians narrowly remain American, and everybody claps Clinton and her team on the back... until the accountants start asking questions.
Haven't read it yet, but I bet it's juicy. Some of the characters involved are rumored to have operated like Mafia men, carrying around cases full of money.
Posted by The Greatness at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)
October 28, 2005
The cold cometh
Autumn is on the downhill in Nova Scotia, and sometime soon after Halloween the first frosty tendrils of winter will arrive. Snow will blanket the landscape, probably to melt for another month's reprieve -- but it has been known to stay that way through early May. How's that for scary, my readers living in more temperate climes?
Still, there's always somebody who's got browner grass. I'm glad I'm not stuck in this position...
Posted by The Greatness at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
My pen: R.I.P.
This may seem like a frivolous thing to write about, but it was so weird that I feel compelled to mention it. Many of you know my penchant for always having a black pen in my pocket. I seldom loan it out, even for a minute, lest it end up in somebody else's pocket; people apparently don't think of pens as belonging to anyone, and they'll walk away with one even if they borrowed it not thirty seconds ago from somebody standing right in front of them. Anyway, suffice to say I hold onto each pen until it runs out of ink, retired with a job well done.
Well, this morning my pen committed suicide, or maybe I killed it accidentally. Here's how it happened. The floor I work on at Dalhousie's chemistry department is closed with a fire door. As I was opening this door, I pulled out my keychain to get ready to unlock my office. But my pen tagged along, caught inside the key ring. I noticed this and tried to grab the errant pen with my right hand, letting go of the door in the process... but I failed. And the pen fell right between my right foot and the rapidly closing door, lodging itself at its widest point under the narrowest part of the door. The door was now stuck half open. I fought to remove the pen but I only succeeded in dismantling it. In the end, I had to use a thin edge of a crowbar to knock the remains of the pen out from under the door.
The pen could not, of course, be put back together. It died very young, with only 10% of its ink used. Now, that's about average for a pen in this dog-eat-pen-top world, but it's far below the lifetime of my pens. It's a tragedy.
(And yeah, I had like ten more in my office. Don't ruin my bittersweet moment)
Posted by The Greatness at 09:52 AM | Comments (6)
October 14, 2005
The Greatness: Recording Artist
Last night, I played a concert to unveil a new album on which I have all the drumming credits. Read about singer-songwriter Joyce Saunders and her new album in The Coast. The concert went relatively well; attendance must have been around 100 and there weren't any major musical gaffes. The concert got me thinking, vaingloriously, about how little I've produced for posterity in my eighteen years of drumming. Believe it or not, this recording is actually my first full-length album as a sideman that wasn't irretrievably lost (Adam Short Blues Band), recorded with 400 other people, or produced in jest using a boombox.
I should also note that our "opening band", Benn Ross' Fabulous Band, played an impressive early set in support of their new EP. The best thing I can say about the Fab Band is that I don't understand them. To describe the overall effect of their music, I'll channel my best too-cool music writer impression: imagine a trio of sonorous backup singers belting out William Carlos Williams poems to the tune of some giddy 50's jingle, backed by the full-throated percussion of a Bali gamelan parade. No, I doubt hearing them in person would clarify that word picture at all. Better yet, imagine Weather Report minus Wayne Shorter plus half of Manhattan Transfer. Still not clear? Then I can't help. Anyway, I enjoyed their playing.
Posted by The Greatness at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
The bad boy of Rush
The New Years' saga continues with the Collier County, Florida, sheriff's deputies countersuing Alex Lifeson. Lifeson, whose real name all Rush geeks know to be Zivojinovich, apparently got into a scuffle with police after they tried to arrest his son. What they were initially trying to arrest him for is not clear; Justin's impromptu concert at the Ritz-Carleton was not liked by the hotel, but he claims he stopped singing when asked. But whatever happened, the father and son, carousing to greet 2004, got themselves on the wrong side of a taser.
The question that grips us all: Does this mean Rush will be cool again?
Posted by The Greatness at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
Really amazing
So many people cheapen the word "amazing" by using it to refer to merely outstanding or relatively impressive feats. Since the word has a unique usage, I therefore refrain from using it unless it really applies.
Which, I think you'll agree, it does here.
Posted by The Greatness at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2005
J'adore les Iles!
The Sweetness and I went to the Magdalen Islands over Labor Day weekend. These little-known islands are situated south-centrally in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But unlike South Central, they aren't dangerous -- unless you consider the French dangerous. The Iles-de-la-Madeleine belong to Quebec, ostensibly a province of Canada, and they are unlike anything else in the whole country. Highlights of the trip and pics below the fold...
This beach has been mentioned in National Geographic and hailed as one of the most beautiful, unspoiled beaches in the world. So where is everybody? It's a three-day weekend and nobody is here; maybe the five-hour ferry from Prince Edward Island scared 'em off. Oh well, it didn't bother us. Everybody else was on the water next to the massive dunes, windsurfing and kiteboarding and such.
The Magdalens confounded our expectations of finding sleepy, ramshackle fishing villages amongst the sand and the surf. Actually everything is tidy and well kept-up, suggesting that the lobstering must be mighty good. Or maybe it's the seal hunt. Or the herring being smoked in smokehouses like this one. Whatever it is, they're not poor cousins shut out from the world, that's clear!
Beautiful, isn't it? Explorer Jacques Cartier, who discovered the islands, said that 20 acres of the Magdalens were worth more than the whole of Newfoundland. I haven't been to The Rock, so I will reserve judgment. I see the Magdalens as a cross between PEI and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Except, you know, French.
Posted by The Greatness at 01:00 PM | Comments (1)
August 29, 2005
Kevin J. Anderson: Hack
Warning: This entry contains spoilers about the Dune prequels. If you haven't read them yet and intend to, don't read the rest of this entry.
This weekend I finally had a chance to do some recreational reading. I chose to finish out the "Legends of Dune" trilogy that started with The Butlerian Jihad with the two I hadn't read, The Machine Crusade and The Battle of Corrin. The books are co-written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
I'll admit, I already had a very low opinion of Anderson as a writer. While his output may be prodigious, the quality of that writing fails to meet even sci-fi's regrettably low standards. He seems to subsist entirely on his ability to quickly generate derivative, stop-gap books for popular SF series that have an unquenchable demand (particularly Star Wars). I know his books always consist of an audacious storyline, a handful of static, inexpertly developed characters, hordes of one-or-no-dimensional extras, and prose that reads like an autopsy. Yet I was enamored enough with the Dune universe that I decided to gloss over these deficiencies. After all, Brian Herbert had shown himself to be a welcome counterbalance to Anderson in the "Prelude to Dune" series. There had also been rumors of notes left behind from the original author, Frank Herbert, about how things were to play out. How would the famed Jihad begin? What was the desert planet Arrakis like in those days? Who would discover foldspace? And why did the Harkonnen betray the Atreides at the "bridge of Corrin"? These were mysteries hinted at but never answered in Dune, and I was hoping to learn the answers to those questions. Sadly, the trilogy largely disappoints.
The Butlerian Jihad, with its ultimate dictum "thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," clearly had to have religious undercurrents. But Anderson (and B. Herbert has to take equal blame as co-author) portrays the jihadis as mindless, irrational followers of inept, equally irrational leaders, all of whom were unwitting tools for Machaivellian politicians and military men. The Jihad is a simplistic Luddite mob which should have burned out in a decade, yet its legend lives... because humans are too stupid to discard religious fervor. Is that really what the elder Herbert would have wanted? At its core, the mystique of Dune is Arrakis, a spartan place where no sane persion would be irreligious. Religion subsumed the science, with visions and prophecy guiding the actions and values of the main character, the Kwisatz Haderach. By the end of the book, those who had trusted to their own insights and mere technology were found wanting.
But in this series, religion serves no higher purpose than to insanely propel the plot to something approaching an origin. By the end we're left with the distinct notion that many aspects of the later Dune universe so esteemed by its characters (and the fans) is outright fiction, irrevocably distorted by the passage of time. Arrakis is an afterthought; the founder of the Fremen sacrificed himself for a monastic dream his own people didn't want and, in fact, seems to contradict the behavior of his descendants. The Bene Gesserit embark upon their massive breeding program for apparently no reason apart from arrogance. The beginnings of Mentats and Swordmasters, though rich in pages, are starved subplots, providing only enough to provide shallow "Aha" moments for readers looking for connections to the later books. Only the genesis of the Guild, a rare bright spot, is good storytelling.
Most damning of all is the coverage of the Battle of Corrin, consisting of some 60 pages. This is the title of the final book in the series, for crying out loud! Vorian Atreides, patriarch of the nascent Great House, is an absentee father whose own children ignore him. When he isn't off achieving great military feats all by his lonesome, he is sparring with his friend Xavier Harkonnen... and later, after a cowardly speed-up by Anderson et al kills off characters through the passage of time, Xavier's grandson Abulurd. Vorian is more interested in Abulurd than in his own children. The characters age, but do not develop at more than a glacial pace. And then suddenly, at the start of the Battle of Corrin, there's a moral dilemma: is the destruction of the machines worth the lives of millions of slaves? The Atreides says yes and the Harkonnen says no -- in fact, Abulurd disables the firing mechanism until the commander comes to his senses. Through writer's convenience, Vorien gets his way, the slaves inexplicably survive, and Abulurd is exiled, his family stained forever.
That was what I slogged through over 2,000 pages for? Anderson is infamous for writing static, all-good or all-bad characters; why did he have to get all subtle at the pivotal moment of conflict in the whole Dune universe? The epic conflict between the noble Atreides and the evil Harkonnen was not based on real treachery but on a difference of opinion?! I'm speechless. Somebody help me out here.
Posted by The Greatness at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2005
After the wedding
Well, I've been photographed, weighed, and prodded. I've had a chest X-ray (actually two, because I have "really long lungs" according to the examiner -- you can read into that what you wish, dear reader). I've peed in a cup. I've been fingerprinted several times to get police certificates for the FBI and two states. Now all I have to do for Canada immigration is cough up C$1,700 and fill out the amusing questionaire, which reads something like this:
- When did you meet your wife? (day/month/year)
- Did anyone introduce you two?
- Do you and your wife go on trips together? If so, describe the trips on a separate piece of paper and attach photos if any.
- Is your relationship known to close friends and family?
- Please attach photographs of your wedding ceremony.
Go to the inside page if you want to see 'em...
Posted by The Greatness at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
Whooshhh.. whooshhh..
... that's the sound of tumbleweeds blowing through the virtual wasteland that is TheGreatness.com. Okay, y'all, I'm going to try to do a better job with this blogging thing but it's tough. Getting married, transitioning to a new focus at work, and moving -- all at the same time -- doesn't leave much room for world-readable navel gazing.
But that doesn't mean I've stopped my musings; I just haven't been broadcasting them. Here's a short list of what's on my mind these days:
- Science as a political tool. I understand that academies of science, those government-chartered purveyors of advice and expertise to the political elite, have a role to play in getting our leaders streetwise to modern scientific issues. But does that mean they should be proactively stumping for specific treaties and legislation? Should they be soliciting fellow scientists to call their Congressmen? Key figures at the NAS apparently think so, as do many other academies, when it comes to climate change. I've even seen it said that "the science says we must act." Science says nothing of the sort. The science says "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." Even if it said "the balance of evidence suggests that an asteroid is on track to cause an extinction-level event next year," the onus is still on policymakers to ask the questions: What would be the consequences if it happened? Are those consequences unacceptable? What could we do ameliorate or, better, eliminate the problem? Do we have choices in what we do? What are the advantages and disadvantages of those options? Officially, NAS and the IPCC do not take an explicit policy position, but in practice it seems that Kyoto is the only game in town. Why that should be is a mystery, especially if they really believe the consequences are dire: Kyoto will never, ever, ever be ratified in the United States. Most of those 95 Senators who rebuffed it in 1997 are still in town, you know. (As for how individual scientists should interface with politics, this article does a good job of outlining the questions we should ask ourselves.)
- The philosophy of non-abeyant beliefs. I'm preparing a full-length entry on my thoughts on this issue. Simply put: it's often generally assumed that 1) in life, people act as "rational agents" in a kind of maximal payoff and that 2) nobody would remain in state of abeyance as to the truth of a proposition that presents itself urgently and importantly. But what if 1) overrides 2)? This is an issue, I believe, that has largely gone unnoticed in epistemology. I'll probably ask for expert advice on this one.
- Monist apologetics. The notion of soul-body dualism has been thoroughly discredited (most say) by modern science. So any attempt to find a synthesis between science and Christianity must take into account the overriding importance of the brain on mind functions. Up until yesterday I would have said that a concursus wouldn't have any resemblance to an orthodox view. But I've found a surprising ally in this goal: the resurrection of the body. I get the impression that the majority of Christians think of their resurrection as the body "giving up the ghost" and floating through the pearly gates. But that view is not entirely scriptural. Could it be that our new, imperishable bodies will be running old "soul" software? I'll continue to mull this over as it seems promising.
That's enough for now, I think. I'm going to make a goal of writing at least something every week starting in August.
TG
Posted by The Greatness at 11:05 AM | Comments (1)
May 06, 2005
Vacation in beautiful downtown Pyongyang!
After some thought, I've decided that this blog will largely be ramblings inspired by books I've read recently. This decision was arrived at for the following reasons:
- I read a lot of books.
- Most everything I've ever felt like posting to this blog has been somehow related to those memes transmitted to me through books (maybe they make me do it?).
- I'm an awfully lazy blogger and this is a good way to make sure I post semi-regularly.
Today's entry: North Korea (Bradt Country Guides) by Robert Willoughby
Since I'm a US citizen, I am currently barred from visiting this particular arm of the Axis of Evil. While my Canadian friends could visit anytime, either through tour operators in Japan or China or by official channels, my imperialist ass is forbidden to see firsthand such Orwellian wonders as the Tower of the Juche Ideal or the eerily beautiful Pyongyang subway. Good thing Bradt guides has put together this tourbook, or I might never have known about all that North Korea has to offer. Since the guide is meant to be used in-country, it had to pass muster with censors and is thus not as objective as the author would have liked. Instead it repeats, tongue-in-cheek, the official accounts of the world's tallest, fastest, biggest, most splendiferous public works. (Did you know that Pyongyang's "Arch of Triumph" is several meters taller than the Parisian version?) Not every area of the country is covered in the guide, as Willoughby hasn't been allowed to visit much of the interior. Highlights are Pyongyang, Panmunjom in the DMZ, and the "birthplace of the Great Leader".
Accounts of trips to North Korea suggest that everything a foreigner does is recorded on video, audio, and by personal shadows who check into adjacent hotel rooms and take notes on his activities. Everything you see and everyone you meet will be intricately staged for propaganda purposes, even down to the sharply dressed businessmen sitting in your subway car. It's like your own version of The Truman Show! Tempted yet? If you go, be aware that you'll basically have to do everything your guides tell you to do, including paying homage to Kim Il Sung with flowers and a respectful bow. And keep your opinions to yourself: A woman who asked her guide why Kim Jong Il was the only fat man in North Korea was reportedly detained for three days.
Posted by The Greatness at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Hilarious Bayesian advertising
Advertising links, or more specifically, the way they are picked to appear on my screen on various Web pages, have really been cracking me up today. CNN's story "Dragnet grabs 10,000 fugitives" served up four text ads, all soliciting for legal services. None of them asked me if I'd been subject to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, but that's probably because they can't help me then. Also, Tech Central Station had another global "variation" article which contained ironic sidebars like "Global warming -- it's happening", from Greenpeace no less. If it were any other publication I'd question their advertising strategy. But since they're already hired guns for Exxon I don't think it would help.
Not related, but troubling: why does anybody care about pregnant Britney?
Posted by The Greatness at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
malloc madness and Jim Crow
I have serious coding issues today that are really cramping my time. But I felt like making a blog entry anyway, if only to point out something interesting I learned today (which is, of course, the raison d'etre of this blog).
In history class we were taught about Plessy v. Ferguson -- and Jim Crow in general -- as if it were the ineluctable legal consequence of monolithic American racism, where business, government, and majority society were lockstep in support of "separate but equal." We don't tend to doubt this picture because it is held as nearly axiomatic that businesses were run by white men and white men were racist. Change "were" to "are" and you have the substance of every argument against repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But have you ever heard the whole story?
Posted by The Greatness at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2005
Back from the States
The Sweetness and I took last week off to tour the Outer Banks and attend an engagement party in our honor. OBX is not a particularly exciting place in March and many shops and restaurants are closed. Nevertheless, the weather was pretty good and we got to see the Wright memorial, four lighthouses, and the lay of the land from Corolla to Okracoke. In my quest for thoroughness I considered putting Portsmouth Village on our itinerary, but it turned out to be awfully remote for a day trip. The party was a great time and we enjoyed hanging out with family and old friends (well, my old friends anyway). But it's back to work!
Posted by The Greatness at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
It's been a month?
Hmm, I guess I haven't been blogging very well. Here's a summary. Work's been busy; I've been consumed with calculating the cost of starting a pharmaceutical company, and I also gave a departmental seminar on cheminformatics. On the music front, I've finished recording the drum tracks for Joyce Saunders' new album. And wedding plans continue unabated. I'll be in Virginia and the OBX for all of next week, during which The Sweetness and I will be feted by my family and a hundred-odd friends and neighbors.
On scientific-political fronts, I have something to say about the nature of justification but it will have to wait until after vacation for a full entry.
Posted by The Greatness at 11:51 AM | Comments (2)
February 03, 2005
Is the President a) mistaken b) an odious warmonger?
I've been spending more time in the blogosphere lately, and the output is informative but dizzyingly tendentious. Seems that you can't discuss a man's position on a topic without defaming his character. As that just isn't my style, I aim to make up for my lack of rhetoric with this Mad Lib. Fill in the topics you want for the opinions you crave:
"'s screed on from last week has been found to be utterly without merit, as should surprise no one. Today's article on demolishes his arguments and exposes him as . All of you can spare me your comments -- you've been proven wrong. Again."
Oh, and this cartoon is uber-hilarious.Posted by The Greatness at 02:05 PM | Comments (2)
January 25, 2005
Hiking the World
Last Friday, The Sweetness and I, in a moment of calculated whim familiar only to bean-counters and white-coaters, decided to venture out into the frigid cold and buy a GPS receiver. My reasons were manifold, the most obvious being that pilots, as a rule, think GPS is the best thing since pre-cleaved loaves, or at least ILS. Her reason? She wanted to go geocaching.
Geocaching, I am convinced, is a sport only a techie could devise. Basically, the idea is that someone puts some stuff in a container, secures it in the ground, and reports its coordinates on the website. Then the race is on to be the first to find it. While in principle the game could be played by judicious use of topographical maps, astrolabes, or Loran C, in practice GPS is the tool of choice for discovering the cache. Then, sign your name to the logbook, take an item, leave an item, and remove the ticks from your exposed skin. Additional facets to the sport include multi-cache routes, puzzles where one must divine the coordinates, "travelbugs" which are supposed to move among the various caches, and withering arguments among proponents of WGS84 vs NAD27 geodetic datums.
Okay, maybe I made that last one up. Anyway, we went looking for the cache nearest my house (probably only 300 ft away), but the snow kept it well hidden. So then we went searching for a cache in Long Lake Provincial Park. We emerged tired but victorious from the park a few hours later, newly enlightened on 2 important points:
1. Just because you can point to where it is doesn't mean it's easy to get to, and
2. Frozen lakes make great shortcuts.
Posted by The Greatness at 02:50 PM | Comments (2)
January 20, 2005
The Inaugural Blog Entry
What was that groan I heard? The 20th you say?
Didn't watch four more years become a grim reality. How could I, when I was in the midst of a Canadian blizzard and the power went out? The workday was as unproductive as... well, a computational chemist in front of a computer with no power. The only tangible mark I made on the day was create a ruckus with my buds over at the team blog. Sigh. I'm gonna take my leave of this electronic beast and drive to The Sweetness's house for supper.
Posted by The Greatness at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
- "Why do we have to sit here? Can't we just leave?" - overheard on the first flight, which was overfueled. The captain had already explained that the airplane was over its maximum takeoff weight. Actually, the aircraft was over its maximum taxi weight. It would have been illegal to even go on a ground tour of the airport while we burned off the fuel, let alone take off. Moreover, it would have been stupid in the extreme, because operating an aircraft over the manufacturer's weight limits automatically makes you a test pilot and your passengers guinea pigs. More weight means less speed, more runway required, and less lift -- at a given point, infinitely so (i.e. the airplane just won't fly). The pilot doesn't know where that point is, and neither do I. Do you feel lucky? Do you remember this crash in Charlotte? Or the unfortunate Aaliyah, who contributed to her own demise by insisting on violating the laws of physics?