Worth a good laugh.
H/T to Dust My Broom Lickin’ Good
ADDENDUM: Hey, it beats Easy, Breezy, Beautiful OfficiallyScrewed
Tories Cut Free Trips To Ottawa For Civil Servant Training
I didn’t even know this black hole of Liberal spending existed!!
But I am glad it is now in limbo.
H/T to DBT
Syd Barrett Dead At 60
I am a big fan of Pink Floyd. I mean how can you go wrong with a song titled “Several species of small furry animals gathered in a cave and grooving with a pict”?? One of my favourite song titles of all time and a song I fell in love with when I used to stare at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling of my bedroom in college!!
Actually, I think Syd was gone by the time that song came out, but he did help get the band rolling.
I think it’s funny that on CBC tonight this story followed one on a study on the virtues of magic mushrooms!!
Syd Barret dead at 60
Tainted Blood Victims To Be Compensated – Conservatives Get It Right
I have a special vested interest in this news. My dad was one of those who received tainted blood that gave him hepatitis C. With this being such a personal issue, I have never spoken about it on my blog because of a deep seated resentment. You see, the Hep C flareups my dad had during his battle with a beatable cancer made his condition very hard to handle for the oncologists.
He was in his late 50’s. He had several years of work left in a good paying job that would have made life in their retirement much easier than it has been for my mom. The proposed payment should make life a bit easier for her in the coming years. Knowing my mom, she will probably outlive me so this is in no way tied to any greed on my part. I just don’t want her worrying about the monthly bills in her gardening years.
My dad taught me so many things that I can only mention a few. He taught me to play backgammon on an old board he had. I have been teaching Cookie on the same board and everytime I roll the dice I think of him. He taught me how to kick soccer balls and every one of T-Bone’s soccer games, I think of him. He taught me my love for hockey, which for a Greek immigrant was a major feat and every game I think of those Wednesday and Saturday nights watching Borje Salming and Darryl Sittler. He taught me to respect my elders which I still do to this day although more and more I notice that the number of people older than me is dwindling. He taught me how to work hard for what I earn and he taught me how to care for my possessions, which I think about everytime I spend a dollar or get something fixed on my truck. He taught me to tease, something Cookie reminds me of everytime she says “daaaad, quit being so sarcastic” which she has been saying since she was 6.
But most of all he taught me to joke and laugh as much as possible. I am reminded of this every bad joke my wife rolls her eyes at. (but I see the sides of her lips curling up a bit in a smile everytime.)
I miss you Pops. You can stop worrying about mom now. Stephen Harper is making things right.
The Best Toilet In The World
Considering there has been much talk lately about the “wizkids“, many blogs continue to write about urination and the forces of nature that make people go in public.
I have a great solution, but it would require investment, and a few laws being changed depending on the province.
Why am I suggesting this you might ask? Well three or four years ago, I too was down at the Canada Day festivities and my bladder started calling. So me and my family went into the Tim Horton’s not far from the Hill. There was a huge lineup and when I took my turn and walked into the single toilet bathroom (no stalls), I was gagging. The toilet bowl was full to the brim with a filthy brown water. The reek was immense.
And as is pointed out in a post by Proud To Be Canadian, many places around the country have issues with bathrooms. Be it a lack of them, or bars/restaurants having rules stating the facilities are to be only used by patrons, or as I experienced, during busy events, some bathrooms just cannot be cleaned frequently enough.
Here is the solution. I would suggest putting these all over cities in the heart of the bar districts, wherever events are held, and in various tourist attraction areas.
I came across this very bathroom while walking along the Piers in San Francisco. The bathroom is a pay bathroom with a grated floor. It is stainless steel and after each usage, the door closes, and the bathroom starts churning away as it “self cleans”. After waiting in line behind a couple of people I took my turn. The water was still dripping off the grates when I entered but the toilet was spotless and dry. The sink was spotless and dry. And it was the best money I ever spent.
The only drawback was the time it took to do the cleaning. But if you supplement them with a few portapottys, or allow a cleaning bypass for families lined up together, they could prove to be the answer to the problems plagued by drunk youth and those with weak bladders.
9/11 Conspiracy Theorists Need To Tighten A Screw Or Two In Their Heads
I have been seeing a link to a mock science experiment that the right is using to downplay the conspiracy theory’s regarding the collapse of the WTC.
You can read about this mock science experiment here. It is interesting to see the effect of fire on chickenwire, but I think NIST has done a far better job at explaining how the towers came down. Most left wing whack jobs probably didn’t even gander at it.
You can view the whole pdf of the NIST analysis (over 400 pages with diagrams, charts, analysis, etc.) here. I urge you to go to about page 282 of the document, which is page 364 of the pdf file and read the 20 to 40 pages about their analysis of each tower falling and keep in mind, that the structural integrity changes once parts go into motion. A building is designed to be inert. Once parts start moving beyond tolerance of design, any architect will tell you that the building is in trouble.
But to provide my own analysis of the main conspiracy theories I have seen:
Conspiracy Theory: The jet fuel could not burn hot enough to melt steel girders.
Explanation: It would not have to melt the steel girders, just heat them up enough to allow for sag, which the NIST report points out. Once sag starts to happen on a floor the horizontal pull of the floor would cause the outer walls to be pulled inward, thus providing a kink in the shape which would cause the tower to give. Think of how much stronger your arm is when your elbow is locked straight than when you bend it a little bit and force so much more weight on the tendons and muscles holding your arm in that bent position. Give it try. Take a five lb weight in each arm and hold one straight over year head with elbow locked, and the other over your head with the elbow bent slightly and see which arm tires out first.
Conspiracy Theory: The tower was using reinforced steel and had been designed well. How could fuel have melted the girders and caused the collapse.
Explanation: According to NIST, WTC 1 fell because of buckling around floor 98 due to the heat buildup weaking specific structural points. This means that when the 12 or so floors above came crashing down on a weakened floor 97, the amount of pressure was immensely more than the structure was designed to support in a stable, inert environment. ex. Think of when you jump down about 5 feet or so and land on your feet. The pressure on your ankles and knees is far more than that of your weight when you stand on them.
Conspiracy Theory: People saw explosions around the base of the tower.
Explanation: Continuing the above example, with an analogy, when someone jumps from a buildings second or third floor to save their life and they land on the ground, they inevitably have shattered ankles and/or knees and broken foot arches from the pressure of landing and all their weight coming down on these joints. Similarly, every time the mass at the top hit downwards the pressure on the base of the tower would have reverberated the footings and pillars near the bottom almost as much as the ones at the top where the pancaking occurs. Eventually the concrete, as it does under very high stress, cracks and explodes outwards looking like an explosion. Remember, we aren’t talking about someone on the 98th floor jumping up and down. We are talking about the mass of every concrete and steel section above the 98th floor all coming down at about 10 ft/s and accelerating. The weight would crush each floor underneath and add that floors weight to the next floor being struck, and each time there would be a massive amount of pressure being applied to the floors far lower in the tower.
Conspiracy Theory: Bush killed almost 3000 people to start a war.
Explanation: Leftwing nutjob whackos grasping at straws.
Please feel free to post any other conspiracy theories here. I would be glad to debunk them.
H/T to Kate at SDA for the chickenwire experiment.
Now can I please get back to watching the F1 race before taking my daughter to see the movie Cars?
Ottawa Blog Mafia Get Together – July 14th at Mexicali Rosa's – Dow's Lake Pavillion
The third Ottawa blogger gathering that I know will be this coming weekend. Specifics are not finalized but it will be either Friday or Saturday.
Head on over to Phantom Observer’s site to put your two cents in. for more info.
Let’s try to get more than the small crew we got together last time around.
I will post again once Phantom sets the schedule and location which shouldn’t be long.
Update: The date is set for July 14th from 8pm to 10pm at Mexi’s at Dow’s Lake Pavillion. You can view a map via google maps here. Note, just northwest of Prince of Wales and just east of Preston is the parking lot. It’s free or pretty cheap if I remember correctly. I think you can enter just off of Prince of Wales.
Spread the word.
Mexico's Left Tries To (over)Throw A Party, But No One Came
Approximate number of voters who did voted for left of center partys? 23 Million
Number of left of center Mexicans who came out to protest election results? 100,000
Number of votes the PAN party won the election by? 243,000
Value of having a conservative party win the Mexican election? Priceless!!
Don’t let the left wing media let you think 100,000 is a lot. When compared to how many voted left of center in the Mexican elections last week, this number is a paltry 0.4% of their number. To me this implies there is little or no interest in the general populace to get involved in reversing the election results.
H/T to Jack’s Newswatch
Adscam2 Is Getting Interesting And It Just Might Make The Summer Fun!!
…and this could be fun.
Steve Janke has tracked down what the $210,000 got us as citizens and it isn’t pretty. So far there are three one page advertisements that depict a few people enjoying antiquing, fishing and cycling in the Caledonia area.
I don’t know about you guys, but I think these ads could have been done with a digital camera, a few family members and Adobe Photoshop. To prove this, I would like to point you all to Stephen Taylor’s quick work in creating knock offs.
In fact, I have a feeling that there will be dozens of knock off comedic versions in the blogosphere by the end of July. Oh look!! A third one already!!
To help the effort, I would like to provide anyone out there with the following two images to incorporate into your own version.
and
In My Front Yard
I went out front to shoot some hoops with the kids tonight when my daughter started squeaking “Daddy, a deer, a deer!!”. I turned around, looked across the street and sure enough there was a deer. I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a couple of shots.
We didn’t want to spook it but considering I live in suburbia (with the houses across the street not built yet) it was a nice treat on a Saturday evening.