What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Back in July, I attended the 25th reunion for the class of ‘84 at UNB.  Part of the allure was that is was also a get together for many of the cast and crew of the ‘81, ‘82, ‘83, ‘84, and ‘85  Red ‘n’ Black Revues.  We all had a tonne of fun, including re-enacting perhaps the biggest and best production number that UNB’s annual variety show has ever seen:  the Time Warp/Sweet Transvestite numbers from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I have woefully few pix from the event, but my pal Eric Langshur has posted a good mix here.  That’s me sporting the skull cap in the role of Riff-Raff.  Unfortunately, the skull cap looks more like a condom.

My Gleaner Response

I am on the “E-panel” of the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, which means I am periodically asked to contribute my opinion about what kind of issues the editorial staf there should pursue.  Here is their latest request:

The Daily Gleaner wants to know what you think are the most important ongoing story topics. Is it improving the quality of education for our children? More accessible health care? Contributing to a cleaner, greener environment? Reductions in property crime?

Here is my reply:

I am firmly of the opinion that the number one, and perhaps the only significant, issue facing society is education.  Not just “quality” of education, but re-thinking the entire process.  Our existing school paradigm is designed to systematically pound the individuality and creativity out of our children over the course of 12 years.  If we remove the constraints, they will solve health, ecology, crime, war, economy, etc. all by themselves.  

The very smart people who have made strides in science, sociology, art, diplomacy, etc. have all done so by BREAKING the mold, not working within it.  Our existing school model was born during the industrial revolution when what the “machine” needed was a whole crop of identical drones who knew basic math, communications, history, science, etc, so they could become effective cogs in the production complex.  That was fine for its time, but that time is over.

Students are already trying to break themselves out of the status quo using Web 2.0 and other social media.  But they keep getting dragged back in – you must get good marks so you can get a University degree so you can make good money and afford to send your kids to good schools so they can get good marks so they can get a University degree, and so on.  Bullshit.

An extremely courageous parent can change things for their children by home-schooling, but that is still considered “weird.”  For ALL children and parents to embrace a new form of education, it has to be publicly sanctioned and publicly funded and become the new normal.  For the version of this argument from a smarter man than me, watch this:

 

Waiting in Traffic

Yesterday, I was in Manhattan for the day for a meeting.  Afterwards, I took the NYC subway and New Jersey Transit commuter train back to Liberty Newark airport.  My flight left the gate right on schedule, and then we proceeded to spend 70 minutes in line waiting to take off.  Our pilot said we were 30th in line.  As we accelerated down the runway, I counted 50 aircraft in line behind us, most of them wide-body jets.

This happens to me almost every time I leave Newark at around the end of the business day, so I presume it happens the majority of the time, at least at that hour.  And of course, all of them have to leave their engines running, so they can inch forward when required.  I have no idea how much fuel an A340 or 777 uses while “idling” but I presume those big, honkin’ Pratt & Whitneys consume more that your average Prius.

It seems to me that arranging things so that 80 planes aren’t all trying to leave on the same runway at the same time wouldn’t be that difficult.  Perhaps I should call Al Gore.

BTW, when I image-googled “planes waiting in line” this was the best shot I could get.  They’re mostly 727s, so this shot is probably from c. 1980, but is IS Newark — you can tell from the 5 smokestacks in the background.

Not at all Grumpy

My wife (Cindy) and daughter (Bishop) recently returned from a week in Montréal, where Cindy and I met.  Specifically, we met in a bar on Bishop Street.  I was working at Grumpy’s at the time, and Cindy’s best friend (Robyn) had a brother who worked at a bar 6 doors down called Déjà Vu, who was a friend of mine (the brother).  I was visiting him one afternoon just before my shift at Grumpy’s, and Cindy and Robyn were sitting at the bar, so I got introduced.  One thing led to another, and Cindy and I were married 25 months later.

During our courtship, we attended a church service for some reason, and I mentioned that one of the ditties in the hymnbook had been penned by and ancestor of mine.  O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by Bishop Phillips Brooks.  Cindy said, “That would be a neat name for a kid!”  I said, “What, Phillips?”   She said, “No, Bishop.”  I remarked that that was his title, not his name and she said she knew that.  I asked, “Boy or girl?” and she replied, “Girl.”

So flash forward 10 years or so, and we are living in Vancouver and pregnant.  Of course the question of baby names comes up, and we decide on some combination of James and Harold (our fathers’ names) if it’s a boy, and Bishop if it’s a girl.  There turned out to be two X chromosomes in our offspring, so Bishop it was.

The funny thing is, everyone who knew us from our Montréal days, said, “Oh, isn’t that sweet – you named her for the street where you met!”  Our response was along the lines of, “Umm – yeah.  Sure.  That’s what we did.”  It had never even dawned on us that that connection was there.

Anyway, whenever we go to Montréal, there is an obligatory pilgrimage to Bishop Street and Grumpy’s bar, as evidenced by these pix.  And my enduring love for bartending and bar management, which occasionally surfaces in this blog, comes from my 4 years at Grumpy’s.

 

BTW, Bishop’s middle name is Evelyn, after my maternal grandmother.  Other grandmothers didn’t get in the running, because they had names like Claribel Fern Scovil and Rosalia Hyschinski.  And it’s pronounced EEEEvelyn, like in evening, not EVVlyn, like in Kevin, because, as her namesake used to say to me, “Who ever heard of Adam and Ev?”

BTW2, the reason there is no apostrophe in the neon sign is because of Québec’s language laws.  “Grumpy’s” would be an english  word, whereas “grumpys” in just a made-up one.

Elevator Defaults

I am genuinely curious about the behaviour of the elevators in the building where I work.  As I am frequently in on the weekends, and often the only person in the structure at that time, I have noticed a peculiar phenomenon that others probably miss.

Some background:  the building has seven floors, plus a basement.  There are two elevators – the one on the left serves the main (ground) floor through 7; the one on the right goes to the basement as well.

When either elevator drops you off, it doesn’t stay where it left you.  The one on the left always goes to rest at the 4th floor; and the one one the right always goes to park at the fifth.  ALWAYS.

It would seem to be a waste of energy to move the cars for no reason, especially since if it has just discharged a load on the ground floor, that’s the highest probability for the next rider to summon it to.  Why not just stay there?

I considered the fact that they may go to some mid-point where they can respond most quickly to a request from ANY floor, but that doesn’t make sense – if they were trying for rapid response, the one on the left (which services 7 floors only) should indeed hang out at 3½ (so we’ll say 4 is OK), but the one on the right (which also handles the basement should be at 3, not 5.  AND, when I am calling a car to the ground floor from their default resting places, the one from 5 always comes to get me, not the closer one.

Is it possible that it takes more energy to hold a car at G than at 4 or 5?  Is that why they always return to those floors?  Does anyone know anything about elevator efficiency algorithms? 

As an aside, I wonder about the naming conventions of “floors” and “stories.”  In Europe, the main (ground) floor is usually called “Main” or “Ground” or “Lobby” or something like that.  And the level directly above that is called “1.”  In North America, the floor immediately above the ground level is called “2.”  Do you think it’s because when the first two-story structures were built, the upper level was the only one with a “floor,” since the main level would have dirt or mats or thrushes or something other than a floor?  So the second STORY had the first FLOOR.

Three String Bass

Hey, you with the short attention span!  Pop a Ritalin and invest 4½ minutes to watch this cool video.

Mixed Message

This post will start as another jab at the editorial and proof-reading capabilities of the Moncton Times & Transcript, but it gets much more philosophical towards the end.  (This is one of the rare entries of mine where I actually know where I’m going to end up as I start to write.)

This is from the financial section (ha!  more like the financial 6 sq in.) of a recent T&T.  Many people nervously track the financial markets these days, wondering if they’re going to retire to Florida or live out their lives in a van down by the river.  So when they glance at the headline of the “At the Bell” corner of their paper, it’s not exactly reassuring to see that the markets are “mixed.”  I guess it’s better than “down,” but not as cheery as “up.”

But look closer – it seems that Murray Guy’s definition of the word “mixed” is different from, say, everybody else’s.  Mssrs Merriam and Webster think that “mixed” means, “combining characteristics of more than one kind.”  So there should be more than one kind of status for the financial markets covered in this report.  Yet the states of all of them are identical!

I’m not accusing the T&T of deliberately trying to frighten the populace; I’m sure this was just an oversight.  But it did draw my line of thought back to the topic of the last post.  The media, in general, prefer to report on bad, sensational, scary stuff, and even spin stories that might not otherwise be so, in that manner.  Not that I’m blaming them, either – they just, in the words of The Kinks, “Give the People What They Want.”  (Full lyrics appended.)

So why are we, “the people” like this?  Why do we prefer to hear about bad stuff over good stuff?  Is it some latent evolutionary thing where we are at our highest level of excitement when we are afraid?  In the book, Life of Pi, Yann Martel writes about how, despite the ideas of PETA, animals are actually happier in zoos because they’re not at risk of being eaten every single minute.  I’m wondering if this is true – perhaps people, and animals, PREFER to be constantly on edge.

Discuss.

Give the people what they want

Well, its been said before, the world is a stage
A different performance with every age.
Open the history book to any old page
Bring on the lions and open the cage.

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
The more they get, the more they need
And every time they get harder and harder to please

The roman promoters really did things right.
They needed a show that would clearly excite.
The attendance was sparse so they put on a fight
Threw the christians to the lions, sold out every night

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
The more they get, the more they need
And every time they get harder and harder to please

Give em lots of sex, perversion and rape
Give em lots of violence, and plenty to hate
Give the people what they want
Give the people what they want

When olswald shot kennedy, he was insane
But still we watch the re-runs again and again
We all sit glued while the killer takes aim
Hey mom, there goes a piece of the presidents brain!

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
Blow out your brains, and do it right
Make sure its prime time and on a saturday night.
You gotta give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
Give the people what they want
Give the people what they want
Give the people what they want

When Pigs Fly…

… I will start to get worried about the Swine Flu.  Until then, I will merely suffer from the constant bombardment of Swine Flu updates from our staunch protectors, the fourth estate.

I stand a better chance of being killed by lightning than by H1N1, but CBC isn’t telling me to stay inside during thunderstorms.  I’m more likely to be killed driving to the airport than by the flu, but the Vice President of the United States is telling me to avoid planes, not cars.

The situation in Darfur is past critical.  The world’s economy is in the shitter.  20,000 people die every day because of lack of clean water.  It’s GUARANTEED that people will die today from the regular flu, which could have been prevented with a vaccine.

Yet the media can think of nothing better to report on than a disease that has so far infected 0.0000036% of North America’s population.

I looked up “terrorism” and it means “the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion.”  “Terror” is defined as, “a frightening aspect;  a cause of anxiety.”  So right now, if you believe that:

a) the average person is more afraid of catching the Swine Flu that they are of an airplane flying into their building; and

b) the media use sensationalization as a means to attract readers/viewers/listeners; then:

the New York Times is more of a terrorist than Osama bin Laden.

Well, I Guess It’s Over

I’ve gone all week without posting.  It would be easy to say I’ve been pouting because the readers who voted on the validity of the controversial W-title post last Thursday have declared the W-streak over.  However, the truth is that I have been incredibly busy at work, including evenings and weekends.  And we’re going to France next week, which requires both domestic and professional preparations.

It doesn’t seem like the level of intensity at work is going to go down any time soon, which is very good from a professional perspective, but it will mean that my blog posts will not be happening daily any more – I just can’t carve out the time to stick to that frequency.

So the end of Ws will also mark a change in tone for this blog.  I anticipate that I will only be posting in the future if I feel very strongly about something.  Or not.  Who knows?

It’s kind of liberating not to have the “deadline” mentality any more.  There were times over the past year that I was actually slightly stressed over not having anything to blog about on some days.  I even apologized for lame posts more than once.  Now I can avoid that shame!  So presumably the increase in quality will make up for the decrease in quantity in the future.

102nd and last

Whoops!

Three significant things happened yesterday on this blog:

1. Clayton called me out on the title of Thursday’s post.  In the comments he said that “Work, Not Safe For” fails to meet the criteria for a “W” title and therefore my streak is over.  Which is ironic, because…

2. That was the 100th consecutive ”W” title post, and…

3. I didn’t write a post yesterday!  For the first time since April, a non-holiday weekday went by without me posting.  I plumb forgot.  I don’t really have an explanation other than work was really busy and amidst all the stuff I was doing, I was at the same time instant messaging back and forth with our travel co-ordinator getting some last-minute tickets booked for France.  I’m going for work, but it’s March break, so my wife and daughter are coming too.  So this is my first ever post from home on a weekend.

Anyway, I appeal to you to renounce Clayton’s claim that I failed to live up to the “W” rule.  Leave a comment and tell me my streak is still alive!  Or, if you believe I did fail, say that too, and I’ll slink off and pout.

101!  [Defiantly]