π

I've posted a couple of past columns concluding that humans, ultimately, are not as rational as we like to think ourselves to be.  What we are, I believe, is pattern seekers, and that's the basis of intuition.   You suddenly realize that one thing is like another--like Newton's realization that the falling apple and the earth's moon were bound by the same force, or Philo Farnsworth's inspiration for television from watching a till in the soil.  It's a sudden insight, an epiphany.  And fundamentally, it's irrational. 

But that brings me to another kind of irrationality:  irrational numbers.  Belatedly, I learned that March 14 is known as π day.  π, the lower case Greek letter pi, is equal to 3.14159265359…, and March 14 or 3/14 which is an estimate of π to two decimal places has been designated Pi Day. 

π is an irrational number.  It just goes on without repeating for ever and ever. 

There are lots of irrational numbers.  As a matter of fact there is a famous, elegant proof by mathematician Georg Cantor showing that the set of irrational numbers is larger than the set of rational numbers. That's a lot of irrational numbers considering there are an infinite number of rational numbers.  Cantor showed there are different sizes of infinity.  But that's another Mindfingers post.

π is perhaps the most famous example of an irrational number, and almost certainly the first one practically used.  π is simply the number of times a diameter goes into the circumference of a circle.  That is, if you took the diameter, D, in the circle below and wrapped it around the Circumference, C, it would go just over three times—π times to be exact.  

Circles, of course, are important, now as in antiquity.  The moon is a circle.  The wheel is a circle.  π was the magic number that would turn straight lines into circles.  It was known back as far as the Babylonians and Ancient Egyptians.

Despite the fact that π has been proved to be an irrational number, this hasn’t stopped people from trying to patterns within it. It has been expanded to around ten trillion decimal places, last I checked.  People are forever counting how many 5's there are, or where certain combinations of numbers appear.  There are oodles of “sacred geometry” websites professing spiritual revelation out of the understanding of π and other important irrational numbers.  

Of course, since π just keeps going, it does have the exact phone numbers, consecutively and in alphabetical order, of everyone who has read this post.

But in fact, π is not without pattern.  If it's written in its decimal format, it looks that way, but there are other ways to write numbers.  As an infinite series for example:

Looking at that, π appears quite elegant actually.  It's an accurate representation of π, but it's not very efficient.  To get π to 10 measly decimal places, you'd have to expand that series to 5 billion terms.  There are other infinite series that converge on π much more quickly, but they lack elegance of the above.   This one converges very quickly, but isn't quite as nice to look at:

Messy.  Looks impressive though, right?  And it's hypogeometric.  That sounds important!

The above mess was the work of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-schooled brilliant mathematician from one of the poorest parts of India in the late-19^th / early-20^th century who, with practically no formal training in mathematics, wrote to Cambridge professor of mathematics G.H. Hardy about his work on infinite series and continued fractions. Hardy, after reading the unsolicited work Ramanujan, was completely out of his depth.  He famously said that the theorems in Ramanujan's treatise "must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them."  Ramanujan went on to a storied tenure at  Cambridge University and made phenomenal contributions to mathematics.  He died at 32, probably in no small part due to chronic malnutrition and disease as a youngster.

pic of Ramanaujan.

Srinivasa Ramanujan:  "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."

Another way of articulate a number is through continuing fractions, where π can be represented as:

These numbers, like humans, may be irrational, but they certainly aren't unintuitive.  They have patterns that can't be seen in a simple decimal expansion.  The patterns can only be seen when you include infinity--such as infinite series or continued fractions.  Rather pretty patterns, and restoring my faith in the underlying elegance of the universe. 

Without getting too geeky (I know, I know--too late), one of the most beautiful equations in mathematics is known as Euler's Identity. I've even seen a tattoo of it.

Here, e is the natural exponent.  If you've ever done much work on growth of bacteria, half-life of radiation, or compound interest, you may have come across it.  It's the "base unit" if you will, of exponential growth or decay.  And, like π, it's irrational.  2.718281828... 

The term i is the square root of -1.  But, of course, negative numbers can't have square roots which is why i stands for "imaginary number."

So you take one irrational number, e, take it to the power of another irrational number, π, times the imaginary square root of negative one, subtract 1 (known as "the multiplicative identity" in mathematics) and you get 0 (known as "the additive identity" in mathematics).  It ties together a number of disparate mathematical terms and concepts in an equation of breathtaking eloquence and simplicity.

Let's close off with a little brain teaser.  What's the solution to the infinite series below.  Answer next time.

Six Things You Didn't Know About Octopuses

I’ve covered a lot of topics on this meandering blog over the last year or so, but it seems that I have inexplicably not written a post on octopuses, nor can I fathom how I could have made such a glaring oversight.  Whaddup wi' dat?

As someone who has difficulty coordinating the motion of a mere four limbs. I’ve always had immense respect for the octopus, who must manage eight.  

You’d think, extrapolating from the above, that I would therefore revere millipedes, but in fact I find them rather dull.

Anyways, without further ado, six things you didn't know about octopuses...

1.  The plural of octopus is not octopi.

In the Latin, regular masculine nouns end in a –us when they are singular.  When you pluralize the noun, you use the suffix –i.   In English, we’ve sometimes kept that for words derived from the Latin, and thus the plural of focus is foci.  Or stimulus and stimuli.   Or cactus and cacti.  Or how about this one:  What do you call a mushroom with a nine inch stem?  A fungi to go out with.  Ba da boom!  I’ll be here all week, folks.  But octopus is derived from the Greek, not the Latin (oktopous, meaning “eight footed”) .  Following Greek declensions the plural of octopus would correctly be octopodes.  But that would probably just confuse most folks, so the most acceptable plural is regular old octopuses.

This is an octopi.

Actually, that reminds me, it's March 14 today (3.14) so happy Pi Day everybody!

So the next time you are in the midst of discussing cephalopods and some pedant tries to correct you when you say "octopuses" by telling you the plural is octopi, you can actually out-geek him, snort derisively and proclaim loudly, “Pshaw! Clearly you are unaware that the etymology of the word is Greek, not Latin.”  Then send him to the corner to try to figure out the plural of doofus.

The adjective for octopus is correctly octopodal, as in “Cthulhu’s face is octopodal.”  But I think octopussy would be way cooler, as in “This squid tastes kind of octopussy.”

2.  Octopuses Could Be Aliens

Octopuses are pretty weird looking--gelatinous, translucent, boneless masses, all giant head and tentacles, and a beak with a tongue that has teeth built into it.  If you want to make a really freaky looking alien, as a matter of fact, you’re well off dropping a little octopus in.  H.P. Lovecraft was perhaps the first to clue in to this.  Lovecraft is a writer from the early 20th century of cult status who founded the "formless dread" school of horror.   He describes the indescribable Cthulhu—the Thing That Should Not Be—as “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”  Lovecraft even once sketched Cthulhu—apparently taking a dump. 

"Hey, Ineffably Abominable One, how about a courtesy flush?"

Then there’s the Daleks, the arch-enemies of Brit eccentric time-travelling demigod Dr. Who.  These creatures look like tin cans with an egg whisk and a toilet plunger sticking out of them, and strike terror across the universe despite their seeming inability to climb stairs.

But what does the inside of a Dalek look like? 

Yup, definitely octopussy, I think you’d agree. 

How about this alien?  Ring a bell?

Octopussy, with a hint of arthropod.

3.  Octopuses have been granted honorary vertebrate status

Octopuses are thought to be the cleverest of all invertebrates (i.e. animals with no backbone), demonstrating the ability for both long-term and short-term memory.  They can solve mazes.  They use tools.  They can screw open jars.  They can solve second-order non-linear differential equations. 

They are such clever and inquisitive little critters that in England they have designated “honorary vertebrate status.”  That might not sound like much to you and me, but, with respect to experimenting on animals, it means you can’t dissect them while they are still alive and stuff.  Something I’m sure the octopuses appreciate, anyway.

4.  Octopuses Have an Odd Intelligence

We know that octopuses are smart, but smart like Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man.  There’s some formidable intellect at work there but it is very different than ours.  There is an active debate in the biological community as to the intelligence of octopuses, going back all the way to Aristotle, who called the octopus a “stupid creature.” 

The current orthodoxy is that the octopus, having evolved in a completely different world than the one we did, has a completely different intelligence suited to its survival.  One theory has it that the octopus abandoned its shell (which most other mollusks have kept) and suddenly found itself soft, slow and delicious—a fatal trifecta in the Darwinian stakes.  So they developed intelligence as a defence mechanism.

Octopuses have pretty big brains, gargantuan by mollusk standards.  Some half a billion neurons, on average.  Not quite up there with human beans, who have somewhere around 50 billion, but nothing to sneeze at either.  They regularly escape containment in ways that their human captors can’t even understand, except to say that all the fish in the adjacent fish tank are gone and their octopus has gotten fat.  They are regular Houdinis apparently.  One reason is that octopuses can escape out of a hole the size of one of their eyes.

Octopuses also have very distributed brains.  Two-thirds of their neurons are outside their brain.  Some octopuses can autotomize—that is self-amputate—its limbs in times of danger.  Now since the neural net of an octopus is distributed throughout its tentacles, the amputated tentacles actually carries some intelligence with it, so the arm has the “presence of mind,” if you will, to taunt the predator while the octopus disappears in a cloud of ink.

5.  Octopuses can Taste With Their Arms

The suction cups on an octopuses arms (apparently they are not called tentacles.  Whatevs.) are equipped with chemoreceptors that taste what the octopus is holding.

6.  Octopuses are the World’s Greatest Mimics

In comparison to a Mimic Octopus, calling a chameleon a mimic is like calling the guy that flips burgers at MickeyD’s a chef.  I mean, what can a chameleon do?  Change colour slightly.  Big whoop.  The Mimic Octopus, like the chameleon, uses chromatophores to change colour (Chromatophiores are cells that contain pigments that can be released through muscular control, thereby effecting camouflage).  Octopuses have a palette of four colours to choose from.  But octopuses also have iridophores, which reflect light, effectively making them just about invisible in a marine environment.  Not only that, they can control the texture of their skin to match their surrounding environment, be it coral, rock or sand.  Not only that, but the Mimic Octopus can change its shape to look like a rock or a predator, such as a sea snake or lion fish.  Ah, the advantages of being boneless!  And not only that, but they also change their behaviour to mimic the predator they are impersonating.  Now that is camouflage, baby! 

See the video below for a flabbergasting example. 

So that’s octopuses.  Pretty darn cool.  They're slimy.  They can change colour and shape.  They can become invisible. They’re smart.  They can escape through a hole no bigger than their eye.  They are ...(ahem) ... well-armed.  They can squirt ink.  They can self-amputate limbs which become almost fully autonomous mini-octopuses themselves, and then grow the arm back later.  They eat sharks.  They have extremely powerful tentacles that can actually taste you, as well as paralyze you with venom so that you are perfectly aware, but powerless as you are inexorably drawn to its central feeding beak where they drill their tooth-lined tongues into you to suck your guts out.

Cool critter.

Ruminating on the Black Plague While Washing Me Socks

Well, here I am in Mississauga, just outside of Toronto washing my socks in the sink and drying them on the radiator.  Air Canada managed, somehow, to lose my bag for more than 24 hours on a direct flight from Vancouver to Toronto.  But they’ve authorized me to spend $50 on toothpaste and stuff.  And—here’s something that might be useful for you at some point—many credit cards, including mine fortunately, have insurance on them.  I get $500 coverage for delayed baggage, so at least I can buy myself a shirt, some pants, a warm shirt and some skivvies.

In other news, the hotel charged me $3.50 for a to-go coffee this morning.  Are you guys kidding me?

So as I’m sitting here watching my socks dry on the radiator I thought I’d grab the paddles, yell “Clear” and try to bring this damn blog back from the dead.  We’ll see if the it gets the heartbeat going again or just spikes the EKG before eternal flatline.

It’s not my fault; just my nature.  I’m easily distracted by shiny baubles and a dozen lives stretch out behind me like so many jackets tried on and cast aside.  Adam the Good Student, Adam the Wayward Teenager, Adam the Bartender Party Animal, Adam the Engineer, Adam the Anarchist, Adam the Musician, Adam the Government Worker, Adam the Writer and Poet, Adam the Caver, Adam Goes to Afghanistan, Adam the Boss, Adam the Sporty Dad.  So Adam the Philosophical Blogger, was destined to join the scrap heap with the rest of the outfits I’ve tried on in search of Me.  

Maybe it's like Kurt Vonnegut said, Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.

But enough about me, what do you think about me?

I just finished The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, a Pulitzer Prize winner by Siddhartha Mukherjee.   If you want to know how to pronounce his name, click the link below:

Mukherjee  is an oncologist, so he knows whereof he speaks.  No, I don’t have cancer.  Or, rather, I may have, but I’m not aware of it.  I just have an enduring fascination (keeping in mind that “enduring” for me means “greater than one year”) with the mechanics of the human cell.  I’ve written previously on the subject, specifically on the fatal relationship between aging and cancer (Mindfingers: Immortality and Cancer).

The book was very good on many levels—the diabolically difficult task of trying to conquer a disease caused by one of your own cells going rogue; the politics of the great tobacco company battles of the 60s and 70s; the hopes of so many “cures” dashed, like radical mastectomies and chemotherapy; the bleeding edge of genetically engineered drugs.

I was especially interested in the sections on medieval treatment of cancer, though.  They had some funny ideas back in the Old Days.  Not “funny ha-ha” but “funny-that’s-so-gross-I’m-going-to-hurl-my-supper.”  One of these ideas was that the body was made up of four fluids, or humours:  blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.  Any illness was brought about by a surplus or deficiency of one or more of these humours.  No less than Hippocrates (of Hippocratic Oath fame) popularized this idea, and its sway over medicine continued until the mid-19^th century when the theory of cell pathology became popular.  Apparently, the idea predated even ancient Hoppocrates and can be traced back to the Mesopatamians (Humorism).

Mesopatamian.  The only thing harder than that to say drunk is “No really, I shouldn’t sing karaoke.”

Anyways, enough humour, back to the humours.  Too much blood brought about inflammation and fever.  Of course, many wounds and diseases of the day resulted in inflammation and fever.  These people were commonly bled.  This resulted, I’m sure, in a higher mortality rate than the non-bled but nobody ever seemed to notice.  One of the reason the bubonic plague of the 1400s was so bad in Europe was that the wretched victims were bled.  In the Muslim lands, boils were lanced which actually helped. Perhaps occasionally, some gormless traveller from the East would mention that the Muslims seemed to have a better handle on this thing, but then he’d be tied to the stake and burned alive as a heretic. 

With respect to the Black Plague, the Christians and Muslims had one thing in common though—they both blamed the Jews.  Quel surprise! Meanwhile a group of particularly observant Christians, the Flagellants, were literally thrashing themselves  to death daily with iron-studded whips to purge themselves of the sin that caused the plague.  And, not counting the God of Abraham’s plagues,  catapulting plague-riven corpses into walled cities is perhaps history’s earliest example of biological warfare.  Anyways, the bottom line is that the Christians, Muslims and Jews were all killing each other, and the Black Plague was killing all of them indiscriminately.  See what I mean about funny.  OK, that’s a little dark, but I have no change of clothes for tomorrow and I’m washing my socks in the sink here.  Anyways, where was I?

One of the interesting things is lingering impression medieval medicine has left on the English language today.  A bad balance of humours led not only to physical pathology but also affected moods and behaviour.  Too much phlegm made you sluggish, and today we have the adjective phlegmatic, meaning “unemotional and calm.”  Too much yellow bile put you in a foul mood, and today we have the word bilious meaning “unpleasant or ill natured.”    Blood was associated with courage and hope, thus the adjective sanguine (Old French for “blood”) meaning “confident and optimistic.”  Temperament, from the Latin tempere, “to mix”, was the balance of the humours.  And even temperament was a good balance.  Similarly, if your mix was good at some point you were said to be “in good humour.”

And what of black bile?  It only caused two disorders.  One of them can be guessed from the Greek term for black bile, melan chole: depression.  The other—cancer.

My socks are dry.

People Don't Change

It all started, strangely enough, with The Apprentice.  For those of you who recall, this show takes a bunch of young business up-and-comers, preferably with entertaining personality "issues", and pits them against each other in contrived contests.  At the end of the show, the two teams are judged, with much pomp and circumstance, by none other than The Donald, Donald Trump.

Inside The Donald is a rebel with a Mohawk trying to get out.

I have to admit, I quite like The Donald.  Perhaps because I think that a man so ostentatiously ridiculous while raking in so much money is pulling one over on all of us.  He's a better straight man than Bud Abbot.  Also, I'm impressed that the guy made millions, lost it all, and then made millions all over again.  I mean, I'd be happy to manage that feat once.

Anyways, at one point on the show somebody asked Trump what advice he would give to young wannabe magnates watching the show.  Trump's words:  "People don't change."  I'm not sure what I'd been expecting but it certainly wasn't that. 

The words immediately struck me, because this is something that is so contrary to popular thinking.  The two main religions in the culture we call The West are Christianity and secular humanism (which is basically Christianity without out all the mysticism and miracles mumbo-jumbo).  Both have personal transcendental change as part of their mythos.  In Christianity, the self is profoundly changed upon acceptance of Jesus Christ into your heart.  In secular humanism, the myth, inculcated through a slew of schmaltzy after-school movies,  is that "you can be anything you want to be, if you try."  Indeed this later quote was more along the lines of what I expected Trump would offer when asked for advice.

The truth is, of course, you can't be whatever you put your mind to. A knock-kneed kid genetically pre-disposed towards poor hand-eye coordination may want to play in the NHL.  But it ain't gonna happen. 

People often say, "if only I had it to do over again, I'd do it differently." And yet, we do have it to do over again.  Every morning when we wake up, we have the choice of transformational change, of completely turning our lives around and becoming one with our ideal self.  The past is behind us, the future an open book.  You can say, "From now on I'll be like billionaire, philanthropist, daredevil and raconteur Richard Branson." Or in my case:  "Today I will start making use of all those fantastic organizational tools at my disposal so that I'm not in a constant state of confusion as to where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing."

But it doesn't happen, does it?  No matter how hard you try you still wake up with yourself every morning. Not Richard Branson.  Not Adam the Suddenly and Miraculously Organized.  I've been giving myself Stuart Little pep talks for thirty-five years on getting more organized.  The only thing that's changed about me as I look in the mirror, is the lines etched into my forehead, the crow's feet around my eyes.  I look at that slowly sagging face and wonder where that 18 year old rebel is.  I still feel like I'm him, though that middle-aged responsible-looking person staring back it me belies it.  I still feel him sneer at the fancy letters after my name, my tiny suburban empire.  I hear him whisper in the twilight between awake and dream:  "Burn it.  Burn it all."

People don't change.

It may sound like I'm being Captain Buzzkill here, but that's not my intent.  I don't tell the kids on my soccer teams, "What?  You wanna play for Chelsea when you grow -up.  Well, kid, why doncha put all your wishes in one hand and all your crap in the other and tell me which one fills up first."  Kids are still finding out about themselves; you don't want to tell them "stick a fork in it, kid, you're done."  But my son—great little soccer player by the way—is  a little older now and I am starting to drop the hint that, on top of all the work that's required to become a professional athlete, some of it is just drawing the right cards in the genetic poker game.  Elite coordination and athleticism, strength, competitiveness, drive, focus.  Gretzky scored 378 goals as a ten-year old.  That wasn't all from hard work.  I'm sure there's plenty of kids who probably tried harder than Gretzky who didn't score ten.  You have to concede that there was more than a little talent involved with Gretzky.  So I tell my son to chase his dreams, sure, but there's something to be said just for the sheer enjoyment of playing the game.  I'm crap at soccer, but I still love playing.  Not to mention the pints after—but he's  a bit young for that yet.

Of course kids set extraordinary goals for themselves, and that's OK.  Grown-ups, on the other hand—at least moderately self-aware ones—have become attuned to their natural strengths and weaknesses.  They don't want to be Batman anymore.  The wise thing to do is to align your goals with your nature.  I took a Master's Degree in Environment and Management, and, further to the "Management" end of that program, we had to undergo a battery of personality tests.  Of course I, like the others in the class, hoped the results would show that I had executive leader potential written all over me. 

But alas, 'twas not to pass.  Now, looking back, it makes perfect sense.  One of the traits of top CEOs, apparently, is optimism.  I'm an inveterate pessimist.  I've tried to be an optimist.  After all, an optimist, as well as perhaps having the potential to be a CEO, is also probably a happier person.  But I've come to the (rather pessimistic) conclusion that it is simply beyond the purview of my will to change from a dark person to a light one.  Then there's the aforementioned organizational deficit. Did I mention that I'm also easily distracted by shiny baubles, metaphorically speaking?  Also, that 18 year old rebel lives inside me still.   I often wonder if all the other middle age moms and dads coaching soccer or sitting around some work meeting have the same voice in their heads:  "You are not one of them."  Or maybe it's just me.  I have no idea.

Sorry, was distracted by that shiny bauble for a moment.  Back to the task at hand.

People don't change. 

And because they don't, you should align your goals and wishes with who you are.  For people with a natural sense of who they are, this is second nature.  But others perhaps carry around illusions of themselves.  For example, they want to lead, despite having repeatedly demonstrated a lack of any talent for doing so.  When you're deciding what you want to do with your wild and precious life, know thyself.  Speak honestly to that person in the mirror staring back at you. 

The Afghanistan Hangover

OK, let's drag this blog up back from the dead.  I'm home from Afghanistan, and it's back to work, kids, school, coaching and music.  And the blog!  It' s been hard to find time to put together the blog in the September school/sports  tsunami.  However, I realized that, while in Kabul, I had oodles of time to research and massage my blog posts into pretty polished pieces. 

But then I thought that pretty much everything I write is scintillating, so I don't really have to spend all this time and sweat putting together the perfect post.  Wing it.

So while I was over there I got laid off from my permanent job with Environment Canada.  Actually I got laid off, jumped to another job, and then that position was eliminated too.  So I went through the seven stages of grief while I was over there and came out the other end ready for a new challenge. 

Well it turns out they still managed to dredge up yet another position for me to do in the gummint. Please stay, they asked, you are still a valued member of our management team.  Well excuse me if I can't feel the love! 

So then it was the tough decision, as so eloquently phrased by The Clash:  "Should I stay or should I go now."

My inclination was to pull up stakes and open up my own company.  But then, my party-pooper wife asked me if I had any kind of plan.  "You've known me 15 years, " I said, "Have I ever, once, had a plan?"  When I go on to my Great Reward, you can stick the following epitaph on my tombstone. 

Anyway, my argument failed to convince her, so here I am back as a snivel servant.  The dream of opening up my own company is not gone, just postponed.  Apparently I have to come up with a plan first.  Sheesh.  Serioulsy though, she had to deal with a lot while I was over in Kabul, and it wasn't fair to get back and throw away my career for another adventure.

And honestly, I should be grateful to even have such a dilemma.  And I am grateful.  Many of the workers laid off from Environment Canada are 50-something career bureaucrats landing in a tough job market. They're the ones that have it tough right now.

I was kind of self-congratulatory about having come back from the war psychologically unscathed.  But I'm not quite so unaffected as I thought.  For instance, I've lost interest in the news. 

It's not that I'm disengaged. I just find the media a distraction now.  In the immortal words of Jane's Addiction "The news is just another show." After what I've seen, outrage over a bike lane on Thurlow just doesn't ping on my GaF meter.  I used to find those foreign affairs editorials in the weightier tomes like the Economist  so insightful.  But I can't get into them any more.  I think those writers, for the most part, have a memory of about four months.  Anything that happened more than four months ago is happening for the first time.  "OMG, Israel and Palestinian Territories Miffed at Each Other!"  "Iran Saber-Rattling!"

I think what happens with these foreign policy analysts is that they have to stay so on top of things, geopolitically, all the time, that their heads get filled up with a constant barrage of low quality information, and the old stuff gets pushed out.  It's like those poor guys who only have a memory of  15 minutes.  Before that and it all fades to mist.  So these unfortunate souls are  in a constant state of "Oh my God, this is unreal.  I gotta write this down."

The other thing I noticed since I got back is that I am horrified by the waste.  The Afghans were very efficient.  Everything got used.  Even what they threw away was mostly cleaned up by the vagrant kids, then the dogs and then the goats.  We waste so much.  At least a third of our food, apparently, ends up in a dump.  Not just the food, but the water, the energy, the mindless consumerism of "toss it and buy a new one."  I wouldn't say I'm angry about it.  I think it's just human nature that we don't conserve unless we're forced to conserve.  I just feel a bit like I'm living in a vomitorium.

And finally, I always had this sense of entitlement.  One of the more unappealing aspects of Canada is that we are a little oversubscribed in the area of smug. 

Canadian William Shatner demonstrates Canadian smug.

I suppose I had it too; the idea that Canada was such an oasis of serenity in a world of chaos because we were doing it right.  Well those poor shoeless waifs in Kabul didn't do anything wrong except have the misfortune to be born in the armpit of the planet.  And most of my prosperity comes not from my sterling character and limitless drive, but from just being lucky enough to have been born here. 

In other news I'll shortly be publishing a few stories and a couple of books through Smashwords, and I may as well warn you now that I'll be flogging them here mercilessly.  More on that later.  Much more.  Ha ha ha.