Undiscovered Discovery Discretization

An article on the BBC this morning has me somewhat baffled. I'll not go into a discussion about whether the Arctic should be fair game for drilling, or the can of worms that this will re-open in terms of land claims north of 66.5° latitude.

According to the survey, the Arctic holds about 13% of the world's undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids.

If its undiscovered, then how does one determine a percentage, especially one as precise as "13%". Since there is apparently an actual volume of oil discovered by this survey, why not use this to calculate as a percentage of the known oil reserves. Ass backwards calculations like these will go a long way to pissing people off when getting the runaround about oil prices and economic 'forecasting'.

Pave Over Paradise, Put Up a Parking Lot

When it comes to making a buck, greenbacks come before greenspace. The City of Waterloo has approved selling space for advertising on a number of trails around the city. As it is, its been a disappointment in the past few years to see many natural trails dug up and paved over with asphalt in the first place, the only benefit really being to a small fraction of rollerbladers that I ever see on those trails.

Particularly astounding was when the City of Kitchener decided to tear up some perfectly adequate trail in the Huron Park area to make some 'Eco Learning Center' deal, and then went and paved half the trails with asphalt, obliterating a series of nice biking trails in the process.

But back to the City of Waterloo pimping itself out, and ruining the retreat aspect of the local trails. The question is appropriately asked by Councilor d'Ailly, at what point do we draw the line on advertising once its started? Every time a new proposal comes along, a higher price can be asked, and the income for the City will again be used as justification for tarnishing the already rapidly diminishing natural areas within the entire Region.

And then what happens when companies want small 'inconspicuous' sign spaces at a price? If the price is right does the City give in again? I have no problem with putting advertising around the trail map kiosks, and encouraging advertised sponsorship on those signs, but the trails themselves need to be left untouched.

Just yesterday I went for a walk along the RIM Park trail and caught a glimpse of a doe and its fawn just off the trail in an otherwise natural marsh environment. If Disney were to come along and want to advertise the newest remake of Bambi on a sign along that stretch of trail, does the City give in so that it has money to pay its councilors the next time they vote a pay raise for themselves? I'd like to think not, and clearly there are some of those councilors who agree that this is a very bad precedent to be setting.

Uplifting News

Hardly the Bambino

I just came across this on Yahoo Sports. A construction worker on the new Yankee stadium managed to bury a Red Sox jersey beneath some concrete in the new project.

A construction worker’s bid to curse the Yankees by planting a Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot in the ballpark.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the remaining concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

...

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee—Gino Castignoli—phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

“We had anonymous people come tell us where it was and we were able to find it,” said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

...

[Yankees COO, Lonn] Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney’s office. “We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual,” he said.

Seriously, if there are Yankees fans dumb enough to believe in curses, especially one so arbitrary as burying the jersey of a player who likely won't even make the Hall of Fame, then they should foot the bill for a couple hours of labour to remove the offending article that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. What the hell are you going to charge the guy with?

Sure the construction company he works/worked for has grounds for dismissal cause he obviously wasn't working as hard as he could be, but criminal charges? Yankees organization, this is why people hate you. You blow a harmless prank out of proportion for no good reason. You need to get over yourselves and stop signing egocentric old men, then maybe your team wouldn't be losing out to Boston so often.

Thou Shalt Not Medicate

The Catholic Church has just knocked another gem outta the park. It seems people weren't going to confession enough (perhaps something to do with the old fashioned, and increasingly backward approach to a rapidly evolving world?). The solution: create some new sins to keep the sheep in line.

A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation and social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior. -AP

The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession - or the Sacrament of Penance in Church jargon.

According to a survey carried out here 10 years ago by the Catholic University, 60% of Italians have stopped going to confession altogether. The situation has certainly not improved during the past decade. -BBC

Of course, any drug or gene therapy, or even genetic manipulation of lesser organisms that lets a believer live a little longer, or a little happier will still be alright; less need for miraculous intervention that way. And hey, they're still teaching abstinence and shunning condoms to control the spread of disease, so really we won't even need those treatments much longer.

Ultimately on the drug side of things, they're mostly referring to all those arbitrarily defined 'illicit' ones. But when you are based on the arbitrary, there's no problem with this kind of logic.

And then there will be all those forced into conflict by the declaration that the rich are sinners. Those that still believe God is speaking through George W. are going to need some extra medication to cope when they realize that as one of those rich people, he's one of the biggest sinners out there. But for no other reason. As an aside, I wonder what George himself confesses to sitting there in that vestibule.

I mean clearly the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are sinners, what with all their millions of dollars donated to curing disease though alternative therapies. Double whammy on those two, definitely destined for some lower level of hell when they kick the bucket.

In the end it still comes down to people who need some defined set of rules because their own moral conscience simply doesn't exist without it. And when there are people out there who think like this,

so you think if no one believed in any religion there would be no wars or fighting? i think it would be worse. i know if i didn't fear god's judgement i would have killed many many times.

cajunXLVII - FSTDT.com

some kind of indoctrination is certainly better than the alternative. I have a feeling though that through history there have been far more that killed in the name of their god, than those that have decided not to kill in the name of their god. Clearly the nature of that argument makes it unprovable, such is the problem.

Exhausted

The eggs are scrambled. The noodle's cooked. The brain's fried. But my last exam ever for my undergrad degree is done and gone, and hopefully passed. But instead of being full of energy to go to Toronto, and get some things done around the house that have been a long time coming, I'm absolutely drained.

The miserable, cold weather sure isn't helping the situation, but its slowly shaping up for the long term I think. Hopefully by the time May rolls around when the Jays have their next discount game I won't have to wear a coat to the game and it will be easier to get some other people on board with the idea.

During my last exam yesterday, for the first time in the 6 years I've been on campus, some assclown pulled a fire alarm, forcing everyone in the building to drop their exams and saunter outside into the gusting wind, snow and rain. At the time I was absolutely pissed at the idiot, but then I came home only to look at the news and see the loose details coming out on yet another school shooting tragedy. Something about the animal killing of 32 people will quickly put a fire alarm inconvenience to get out of an exam in its place.

Once again some kid loses control of reality, whether you blame it on the 'system' failing to be there for him, or video games, or TV, the fact of the matter remains that if there isn't such easy access to guns, every disaffected youth out there can't go run out and grab himself a semi-automatic weapon to relieve some stress. Now instead 33 are dead, and there will likely be a series of copycat threats and attempts across North America like those that followed Columbine.

People will be living in a heightened state of anxiety on campuses for weeks to months to come fearing that their school will be added to somber lists with Columbine, Dawson College, and West Nickel Mines Amish School.

People kill people, easy access to guns just facilitates it in large volume mass-destruction. Its time that governments do something more serious about gun control, particularly those governments that fail to even restrict assault weapons.

Pride by Division

I was browsing through the local AM news radio station's website this morning, which I find to be one of the better sources of timely local news, despite its less than insightful writing typically filled with grammatical and spelling errors.

On occasion I look over at the national and international columns to see if there's anything I missed in the bigger news sources, and I did so this morning, to see a mention of the first annual North America Outgames, which apparently slipped past me earlier in the week on CBC.

Now I've made it known before that I have no issues with people's lifestyle choices, so long as they don't adversely affect others, in ways beyond just making them uncomfortable for whatever reason. But when groups of whatever minority or belief go out and bitch to society about not being more broadly accepted or feeling segregated, and then create for themselves an event like this, you have to wonder what they really want.

Are they saying that being gay makes them uncompetitive in sports on other levels? The valid (and correct) argument is that gay people are no different than anyone else save for their lifestyle choice. Are they intentionally trying to draw parallels between themselves and those that truly are disadvantaged, for whom the Special Olympics was created?

If you want to do a better job of being accepted rather than shunned by certain communities, it would seem like a good idea to stop perpetuating mentalities of difference where really none exists. If you can't hack it as an athlete, you can't hack it, go on and find your calling elsewhere. Its not prejudice that's keeping you from Olympic gold.