Category: The Correction

Impossibilium ain’t just a song

Canadian scientists plus international cooperation FOR THE WIN.

Hmph. Listening to “The Future’s so Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” on a day like today on the way in…. wrongness, somehowerother.

Lovely time re chicken dinner at the ‘Villeans last night and then singing filk and other stuff. I HEART HEART HEART that 12 string of Tom’s and Peggy expressed surprise that I can actually play a 12 string now.  Didn’t mention that my left fumb now feels crabby.

Peter A at work has come back from another vacay with his lady wife, and once again they have brought me a tshirt, this time a flaming dragon from Tintagel.  This word will set off a long happy sigh in my parental units….

Mike got a phone interview.  He has passed the first gate… will he slay the dragon?

I KNOW TWO PEOPLE IN PERSON who have been omnominated for Hugos.  Ay!

In The Correction news…. Aughh.

Bullet (time) points

  • Migrainy
  • Talked to my mother last night
  • Very tired
  • Too much to do
  • Disorganized
  • Having hot flashes more or less continuously
  • My room is a disaster, although the clean clothes do outnumber the dirty ones
  • I actually cooked dinner last night – potato salad.  Jeff said there weren’t enough onions but that was because I was hoping Keith would eat it.
  • I am not going to Toronto for my vacation in November – I am staying here.  I’m taking Katie cross border shopping for her bday.
  • I am debating whether to cash out of all of my investments, because the end of the world is nigh
  • I am also debating whether or not to buy more musical instruments.  Because, you know, you can never have too many
  • Church continues to be interesting and challenging.  I have a meeting tonight.
  • Work continues to be interesting and challenging.  I have sworn a mighty oath to stop emailing people.  I have to relearn this over and over again.

Elementary, my dear particle

Oh, great. Now we have to rewrite physics AGAIN.

From the same site… Here, have an electric blue worm.

When palaeontologists drink….

Added Book of Eli to the list of movies watched.  Visually awesome, flawed in plot.  Every time I see one of these movies I think… where’s the goddamned food coming from?

Took off work early yesterday to get a massage…. since nobody I actually see on a regular basis is providing one.  Depressing, but there’s divorced life for you.  It’s either pay for it or go without.  Woke up this morning with tingling and numbness in my left hand as a direct consequence of the massage, but everything else feels better.   Massage dude gave me some stretches and reminded me to breathe.  I was testy with him, I admit it.

Memorial service en masse tomorrow.  I’m leaving for the 7 o’clock ferry, we’ll see what everybody else does. I messaged everybody else to either be here at 6 am or find another ride.  I’ll be bringing musical instruments.

I am off to work early to make up for lost time yesterday.

20 parrot tricks in 2 minutes. Just like it sounds.

It’s bloody hot here now.  We go from having the heat on to the air conditioning, it’s truly remarkable.

Staying at home….

I needed a mental health day, and by gar, I got one.

Here’s an interesting comment about the HST coming to BC.  I hadn’t realized stamps will be taxed.

An external report on the G20 riots.

Chocolate…. is there anything it can’t do?

Memory drugs that work… right around the corner? I can’t remember if this article said that or not.

Correction REDUX

I know I haven’t been posting much about The Correction, but not because I haven’t been thinking about it. One of the reasons I took some time off (apart from the fact that I felt I had to) was that I knew the money I’ve earned or been handed due to no effort on my part is going to be worthless at some point.  I am currently guessing 6 to 18 months.

Some American politicians are trying to work on the problem. Without a complete withdrawal from foreign wars, I fail to see how reducing the American debt to the point it can be paid back is possible.

This article, which comes from an American think thank which is focused on the effects of economic policy on working families, but which is centrist by Canadian standards, gives the skinny.  By Murrican standards they are scandalously left wing, but Canadians have kind of a different take on that.  Let’s just say they ain’t the Fraser Institute.  The skinny is that without an immediate deflation of the dollar of 20 to 30%, there cannot possibly be a controlled or ‘soft’ landing of the economy in response to a global shift away from the dollar, and a crisis in which the major nation lenders extend the digitus impudicus to the continuation of American government borrowing.

The US is our biggest trading partner.  For 35 out of the 50 states, we’re the biggest single customer.  Over 50% of what we produce, manufactured or services or food or energy, goes south.  When that market dries up, and believe me, it will, Canadians will be very glad that our infrastructure is in better shape and we can actually feed ourselves, heat and electrify our homes (at hellish cost), and have the banking structure in place to weather the disaster, although the economy will be disabled and crushed by horrific interest rates for a long while.  We may actually have a ‘replacement’ currency for foreign money to flee to… if there’s no place for the Euro-seeking investors and speculators to go.

I really feel for my kids; but we have survived pogroms, forced immigration, religious repression, the Russian Revolution, global depression and war, historically, as a family, and we will do it again.  It’s not an option to whine.  It is what it is, as my old employer used to say.

Right now, it seems like the market collapse is happening someplace else.  It isn’t.  It’s happening right here, right now.  We’re moving goods on credit across the ice of Lake Ladoga, and when the thaw comes, we’ll be pooched. I predicted that the collapse was imminent back in 2004.  The US bailout prevented bad things from happening, but the evil day is still coming.

The future is here… it’s just  unevenly distributed. (William Gibson).