In the News

Home and Garden TV

I'll have to be brief this morning. I have a TV crew in the house. Okay, it's not so much as a "crew" as it is one guy from SewerMatic. He's down in the basement checking out my sewer pipe with a video camera on a long flexible wire. I've got some interesting root action going on. I'll show the tape at the next party.

On other blogs

My drawing of Michael Ball from Feb. 9 has been picked up by another blog - the Michael Ball (Only) Club. It's a blog dedicated to people named Michael Ball.

So far there hasn't been much interest in a blog dedicated to guys named David Scrimshaw. I was contacted several years ago by a David Scrimshaw who owned a power tool company in Australia. I'm hoping he's not the same guy who ran an internet service and skipped out on his customers. (The reason I suspect it could be the same guy is that Power Tool Dave asked if he could give ex-girlfriends my address and tell them that he'd moved to Canada.) The David Scrimshaw who runs an engineering company in England with a guy named David Taylor (I'm not making this up) never replied to my email. There's also a David Scrimshaw in Wales who does particularly well at cricket.

Dave Scrimshaw snaffled 7-20 off 10 overs as Denbigh pulled off a two-wicket win over Gwersyllt Park, dismissed for 90 (Jamie Griffiths 25). Denbigh hit 91-8 (Neil Pearson 3-28 off 13 overs) in a 20-3 result. [source]

At least, I assume he does well, they wouldn't mention his name if he was doing badly, right? Snaffling is good, right?

Scrimshaw at the Olympics

No, there isn't a David Scrimshaw at the Olympics, but there was a new use of my last name in this news item from MSNBC, subtitled Failing at the Olympics is forgivable, but getting fatter on beer is not:

If there has been a weaker performance by an American athlete on the international stage than that of Miller, I’m hard pressed to think of one. To hear Miller tell it, he spent more time in Sestriere’s nightclubs than he did in actual competition, which amounted to less than eight minutes. Miller’s final Olympic event, the slalom, lasted all of 16 seconds. He bulled out of the start house, did a couple of quick scrimshaw turns, and promptly straddled a gate.

I just checked with my avid skiing brothers, none of us has heard of a "scrimshaw turn". Steve suggests "Maybe it has to do with the turn being 'carved'". In any case, I'm going on the theory that Miller was doing well when he "bulled out of the start house" and "did a couple of quick scrimshaw turns", and only went wrong when he straddled the gate.

Ultraquistic Subterfuge: High class, first class, law class

I'm guessing that with photos of cats and birdfeeders, recipes for chicken dishes, and boot lace diatribes, some of you are wondering if I'm actually still going to school and learning things. Let me assure you that I am.

For example, this week, I learned that that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Right Honourable Beverly McLachlin, wrote this when she was a justice on the British Columbia Court of Appeal:

It may well be that generally discrimination cannot be justified in a free and democratic society. But it is not true that it can never be justified. Circumstances may arise where discriminatory measures can be justified. For example, in times of war, the internment of enemy aliens might be argued to be justifiable under s. 1 [of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms], notwithstanding the fact that this is discriminatory and would not be tolerated in peace time. [Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia (1986) 27 D.L.R. (4th) 600 (B.C.C.A.)]

I wonder if she ever found herself at a social function or somewhere chatting with David Suzuki. I suspect he has thoughts on wartime internment that differ from hers.

Anyway, I know academic speculation is not what you want from me. You want legal tidbits that you can apply in your daily life. Therefore this week, from my Legal Drafting class, I bring you one of the ways that ambiguity can arise in a text:

Ultraquistic subterfuge -- equivocal repetition of a word

Ultraquistic subterfuge occurs when a writer uses a word to mean one thing in a sentence and then uses the same word to mean something different. Whether this is a problem will depend on the reader and the context.

Look at "sentence" in this example: "In the final sentence of her judgment, she gave the foreign-born Canadian an internment sentence." Most readers will take the first "sentence" to mean a string of words and the second "sentence" to mean a prison term. If we turn that example around: "She gave the foreign-born Canadian an internment sentence in the final sentence of her judgment," it becomes much less clear if the "internment sentence" was the last string of words in the judgment or was the last prison term mentioned.

Exercise: find or create demonstrations of ultraquistic subterfuge. Prizes may be awarded for particularly subtle or clever examples.

Boot Lace Update

Those of you concerned about my boot lace troubles [as described here] will be happy to learn that I have solved my short lace trouble. I had a chance to stop by the Buck or Two at the Rideau Centre this week. I picked up a pair of 36" laces.

As you can see here, with the assistance of my good friend Keane, I was able to determine that these are indeed 36" long and they do indeed give a good length for these 5 eyelet-pair boots, which I assume must qualify as "ankle boots".

Another way to not get coffee

I thought that many years ago I had discovered (by "denial and error" as Ricky from the Trailer Park Boys would say) all the ways of not getting coffee from my automatic drip coffee maker:

1. Not filling the carafe with water from the faucet;
2. Filling the carafe with water from the faucet, but not pouring that water into the reservoir of the coffee maker;
3. Putting water in the reservoir, but not putting coffee in the filter basket;
4. Putting water in the reservoir and coffee in the filter basket, but forgetting to turn on the coffee maker; and
5. Putting water in the reservoir and coffee in the filter basket, turning on the coffee maker, but not plugging in the coffee maker.

I thought that was it, a 5-item list, but yesterday morning, while perhaps more groggy than usual, I discovered a sixth method of not getting coffee:

6. Putting water in the reservoir and coffee in the filter basket, turning on the plugged-in coffee maker, but pouring into an upside-down mug.

Walking to School

On Wednesday, I walked to school. I was about two blocks from home when I came across these bird feeders. I turned around and went home for my camera. From the placement of the feeders within this bushy tree, I suspect the homeowner doesn't mind feeding squirrels as well as birds.

Do you suppose pigeons might also benefit from the spillover?

I'm not a qualified Crime Scene Investigator, but you can take my word for it: these are pigeon tracks.

This colourful porch is next door to the house with the bird feeder tree. I hope someday to have the nerve to do something that is this much fun with my fence.

This warning is posted outside St. Luke's/St. Peter's. Do you suppose "the management" means the Board of Elders? Or did this sign miraculously appear...

in a fashion similar to the miraculous appearance of these dangerous icicles?

Lyle's New Friend?

Susan Lee sent me this photo several weeks ago and I've been trying to resist posting it, but I just can't. The power these cats have over us bloggers is too strong for me.

Dave's Easy Oven Meal Thing

Did you ever read Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey? It's the story of a family with twelve children that focuses on the flamboyant father, Frank Gilbreth, Sr. During my childhood, I must have read the book a dozen times. I liked it mostly because it was charming and funny and told the story of a family that looked like it would have been fun to belong to. Another big draw was learning about efficiency. The parents were two of the world's first efficiency experts and advised big companies on how to increase their productivity.

I especially loved that when Frank Senior went into a factory he'd ask to see the laziest worker because that worker always did things the easiest and fastest way. {Aside: While this has given me a certain pride in my laziness, it hasn't been enough that I mention laziness as my main weakness in job interviews. Since I can't honestly say that my main weakness is compulsive, perfectionist workaholism, I say, "Je ne suis pas vraiment bilingue," with my best accent of course, not the accent I use in Gatinueau to get people to switch to English.}

I am lazy . This means that when I give you a recipe, it is from someone who thinks about the easiest way to do things or who strives for the lowest effort-to-product ratio.

My Easy Meal Oven Thing is tasty, nutritious and satisfying. Perhaps not as tasty as my fried rice or jambalaya, but hands down, the Easy Oven Meal Thing has the lowest effort-to-product ratio of anything eaten at the ScrimChateau short of Ricardo's Pizza.

Instructions for Dave's Easy Meal Oven Thing

In a 9"x13"x2" oven pan put:

• 1.5 cups (0.35 litre) of dry brown rice (Can you use white rice instead? I imagine you can, but you'll get no support from me for that substitution. [a] Brown rice is better for you. [b] White rice cooks faster, but if you're using chicken or eggplant, you want a longer cooking time.)
• Protein (I often use 12 chicken thighs as illustrated here, but also will use chopped boneless chicken, chunks of pork, beef or mutton and even fish. If you're not a meat eater, I bet a can or two of chickpeas would be great.)
• Chopped vegetables (Today I used eggplant and green pepper; I often use zuccini, I would only avoid vegetables that don't do well with 1.5 to 2 hours of cooking time.)
• Sauce (Pictured here is President's Choice Madras sauce, PC has several other Indian curries that work well, but there's no need to stick with PC or even curry. Italian, Tennessee barbecue, Thai, a peanut butter sauce [example described here], you name it, they're all good.)

• ~3 cups of water (Or less, depending on how liquidy your sauce was and how much water is in the vegetables and protein you've used. If you're not sure, go with the full 3 cups because it's better to have it come out soupy than burned and crispy.)

Cover the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 to 2 hours.

DMZ = Zero

As I type this, my DMZ and my inbox are both empty!

If you've not been a fanatical reader of this blog, you might have wondered about the DMZ graph in my sidebar. It tracked the number of emails in an Outlook folder I created to put all the messages overwhelming my inbox. [My original post describing the DMZ concept is here]

I'm having a lot of fun looking at the empty email folders.

Philosophy Link: Hazem sent me an interesting article from the Independent on the importance of the study of philosopy today. It's a good reminder about what we should be trying to get from our educations and I like the summaries of various philosophers they've attached. [Learning about life: What's the point of philosophy? (Discuss)] Excerpt:

Philosophy's aim is to encourage independence of mind and a critical ability to sift good things from bad things. Many of the problems that beset the world arise from unreflective acceptance of dogmas, which prompt knee-jerk reactions and polarisation of views. Obviously enough, a little more reflectiveness would go far to making the world a better place.

Icy Trees

Ice storms leave prettier results than other storms. Here are my obligatory photos from yesterday. (Lisgar at Elgin)

New Winter Olympic Sports

We Canadians love the Winter Olympics. Let's face it, at the Summer Olympics, we suck. But at the Winter Olympics, per capita, we outpull our weight. We're always happy to see a new sport get added to the Winter Olympics because... more medals for us!

That's why while the Olympics are on, we often find ourselves asking what possible new sports could be added? What winter activities could be turned into international competitions?

Here are several that I'm aware of:

The Ice Walk: Competitors race each other while carrying two full garbage bags down a 5-degree icy slope, returning with a newspaper and handful of mail.

The Windshield Clearance: Competitors have identical cars covered in a 2mm thick layer of ice. They must enter the car, start it, clear the windshield and drive through a complicated set of pylons and then parallel park in 15cm of mixed snow, slush and ice. [The clearing of ice is Dave T's idea, I came up with the driving part because I want to see how many Olympic athletes can drive with as small a hole in the ice on the windshield as my father could when I was a kid.]

The New Winter Driver Assist: Many people have already suggested a whole series of competitions for stuck cars (for example: the one-, two-, three- and four-person pushes). I'd like to add to that my idea that would not only give Canada a good shot at a podium sweep, it would allow some non-winter countries to participate. The ingredients:

• A car that is stuck, but not so stuck that it actually needs a push;
• A recently-licensed driver from a tropical country who has never experienced winter; and
• A winter driver who uses words and gestures but no physical contact with the automobile to help the driver get the car unstuck.

Ides of February Round-up

Feeling the pressure for constant innovation here at the lab, I bring you our latest experiment:

Strawberries dipped in chocolate pudding yogourt

Analysis: A fine way to eat chocolate yogourt pudding, but straight pudding tastes better with the strawberries because the sourness of both the strawberries and of the yogourt doesn't quite work. If I liked banana more, I'd try that. Any suggestions?

On the bus: Last night I was on the rear bench of the #2 when a guy with messy hair asked me what time it was. I'd seen the time on a pay phone just before the bus came so I told him "about five to ten." He thanked me in a way that seemed a little over the top and put the unlit white end of a cigarette in his mouth.

Just as the bus turned onto Somerset and stopped, he moved to the seat by the door. A woman got off the bus, the door closed, the green light went off and then he got up and pushed on the door. He looked angry, but didn't call out to the driver.

This is when I remembered the "sit in the middle" rule of thumb for avoiding crazy people on the bus. The theory is that friendly crazy people sit up front near the driver, unfriendly crazy people sit at the back as far from the driver as possible. The cigarette guy slumped against the panel next to the door and let the bus go two stops before he pulled the cord to signal a stop. As soon as he got off, a man who looked like he might have come from Ethiopia or Somalia moved to the back corner with a big white plastic bag.

I didn't have to wonder why he'd moved back for long because he pulled a sweater out of the bag and folded it, then he folded a couple of shirts. What an excellent use of time, I thought. This guy is using dead time on the bus to fold his laundry instead of doing it at the laundromat or when he gets home. I wondered if he felt a bit embarrassed about it (airing his laundry in public, so to speak) and considered offering to help as a way to show I thought it was a fine thing to do, but I only had three stops to go and I'd have to get off the bus before folding a single shirt. (Plus, I'm not that good at folding shirts anyway.)

Then he leaned over and began to ask me a question. "A long time ago, did you..."

Oh, oh, I thought, he's one of the people in the documentary I did ten years ago, he remembers me and I don't remember him, but then he finished "used to smoke on the bus?"

I was about to tell him he had the wrong guy, I never smoked on any bus, when I realized he was asking about the Canadian history of smoking on buses. "Oh," I said, "a long time ago, maybe twenty-five years." We had a nice little 3-stop chat about it. He was very happy that people didn't smoke on buses here, unlike the place he came from. Just before I left, I complimented him on his time management practice with the laundry.

If I tell you about how I like to use PBWiki, I can get 10MB more storage.

A wiki is a website that has two main features:

1. It is easy to create new pages and link to them from other pages; and
2. Any reader can edit the content.

I created a wiki for the Mature Students at the Law School because a lot of the upper year students have advice for classmates and I thought it would be a good way for us to keep the advice in one easy to manage place. So far though, as easy as I find it to edit the thing, I seem to be the only one who does.

My other wiki I use for school work, particularly my research notes for papers. It's an extremely handy way to have all my notes available wherever I am, and to make links between them and to information on the web that I'll be referring to.

Check out the PBwiki tour! or Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.

Dangerous Occupations

I was at the Manx last night. The first part of the evening was supper with a cousin who is in town on business. We talked a bit about our grandparents. They had hard lives. Our grandfather fished for cod from a dory off the Grand Banks for 23 years. This brought up the topic of how dangerous fishing was and how men still die regularly. My cousin said she'd just read a list of the top five most dangerous jobs and fishing was right up there with mining and surprisingly to her, driving taxi. "We've got a bad problem back home with taxi drivers getting attacked." I told her I didn't know whether we had a bad problem or not.

Most Fatal Jobs in the USA [source]

1. Fishers
2. Timber Cutters
3. Airplane Pilots
4. Structural Metal Workers
5. Taxi Cab Drivers

Later in the evening all kinds of people showed up to see our friends Michelle April and Al Wood (Red Wood Central) perform their excellent blues. It was kind of like a house party at a pub. I had a sore throat, so I left a bit early, around 11pm. I thought about taking a taxi home, but it bugs me so much how the drivers always talk on their phones that I decided to walk and take the bus if it came.

I pulled my hood up over my toque and made it to the corner before deciding that walking home in -15C weather with a very sore throat wouldn't really be smart. So I walked back to the Manx and waved to the taxi driver parked there. Sprawled out talking on a handheld cellphone, he waved me into the back seat, and moved the phone to his left hand so he could start his motor.

He kept talking until I was in and had shut the door. "Lebreton and Louisa," I said. He shook his head in what I took to be a "no" gesture, so I said, "just head down Gladstone past Bronson."

"Yes, no problem," he said. I realized the head shake hadn't been a "no", but instead the head rolling gesture people from places like Sri Lanka use to show they understand and agree.

He went back to talking on his phone, but he managed to stop at the red lights at both Metcalfe and O'Connor without my assistance. Then he put the phone away and asked about my evening. I told him it was fine and asked about his evening. He said fine, but in a way that implied it could be better. "Things slow?" I asked.

"It's Sunday," he said.

I didn't really know where to go next with the conversation, so I said, "you know, I was talking to a friend tonight who said she saw a list of the most dangerous professions and she told me that in the top five they had mining, fishing, and taxi driving. Because of attacks on drivers."

"Yes, it's true," he said, "it is dangerous."

"I have been attacked three times... seven stitches..."

"Have there been lots of attacks in Ottawa?" I asked.

He did the head roll and traced a line on his cheek with his thumb. "I have been attacked three times." He told me about a time he had taken some guys to Kanata and then Stittsville where they refused to pay, then beat him up and he'd needed seven stitches for a cut on his face. I didn't get all the details straight. He'd not been at all happy with the police response. It seems they identified the attackers but didn't press charges.

Anyway, I paid a bit more than usual for a ride home from Elgin and I've decided to ease off on the drivers talking to their friends while they're driving us around.

Link: Canadian Taxi Driver Homicides

What’s the deal with shoe laces?

I was going to write about aloe vera. I did several stupid things while messing around with the fireplace two days ago and one of those stupid things involved using my finger to determine if something was too hot to touch. Normally I treat second degree burns with cold water and ice packs but this time I decided to try tearing off a piece of my aloe vera plant and squeezing the juice onto the burn.

I always thought this folk remedy was fairly bogus, but bits of the aloe vera are falling off anyway, so why not try it. Guess what! It worked. I squeezed the sap onto my finger three times over the next six hours whenever it started to sting and the pain would go away. There’s a white bubble of skin there now, but it hasn’t hurt at all.

Anyway, I was going to write about that, but one of my correspondents told me that nobody wants to hear about my blister. (Although, now that I think of it, Dave T would love to see it and would only be disappointed that it’s not at all gruesome.)

So…

What is the deal with shoelaces?

Recently one of my boot laces broke for the second time. After the first break, I reattached the two pieces with a fisherman’s knot, but you can’t really use this method for the second break because the knots don’t go through the eyelets on the boot. So, I had to buy new laces. Off I went to Big Buds where I perused the rack of laces.

I bought flat laces because they hold a bow better than round laces. Then I consulted the packages to determine which length to buy. Five holes = 27”. So there I am in Legal Drafting at the back of the class room and the prof is talking about sentence structure stuff that I figure I’m pretty hot on already, good time to put the new lace in the boot, I think.

Well, look at it. These laces barely come out the fourth pair of eyelets and yes, they are 27”. Why not tell me to buy longer laces? I would do it.

Okay. I can't do it. I was just going to stop there. But in the course of preparing this piece I read the whole back of the package. And below the thing about eyelet numbers it has this "ankle boots" thing followed by the skates, etc. block. I just figure ankle boots are for women and must have more than 5 eyelets and saw "skates" in the store but missed the whole "work, hiking, hunting boots" thing. Technically, my boots aren't work, hiking or hunting boots, but I see now I should have just bought longer laces for the boots.

One of Sally's Friends: Michael Ball

I sketched this picture while Michael was playing with Sally and Jody on Saturday night. Coloured it in this morning while relearning some rules about children testifying in criminal cases in Canada.

When I play my horn, my mind often wanders all over the place, but when Michael plays you can see that his entire being is absorbed with the music. Even when he's playing bass and plucking slow whole notes.

As for his fiddle playing, I've heard people play fiddle faster than he does, but no one with his sweetness of tone. Every time he plays the Lover's Waltz, my eyes tear up, and I don't even know if the song has any words.

Fun at Sally and Friends

It was a fine time at Rasputins on Saturday night. I drew this picture of Sally while she was playing with Michael and Jody. I wish I could remember the name of the piece they played because it was really pretty. I'm afraid the colours are a bit more wrong than usual because I kept using the wrong pencil crayons in the dark.

Isn't this an attractive group? Doesn't it look like an audience that is having fun? And this is before Linda Millar said "I play the accordion" instead of "I love you" in Something Stupid and long before Dave Taylor pushed the wrong button on the keyboard and it started blaring out death metal in the middle of his Cole Porter-esque Just Friends song.

Happy Fish or Cut Bait Day

I hope you're all successfully navigating the hidden shoals and sandbars of the waters of February 3rd. [If you're in a relationship and don't know about Fish or Cut Bait Day, you might want to read this.]
My day is off to a good start. I just read a heart-warming law case {Hallmark Financel Insurance Brokers Ltd. v. Fraser & Beatty and McNairn (1990) 1 O.R. (3d) 641 Ontario Court (General Division)} in which a client sued a lawyer because the lawyer misunderstood an instruction and cost the client $62,000 on the purchase of a business. The judge said that the lawyer, McNairn, had done nothing wrong because his interpretation of the instruction was reasonable and the client had plenty of opportunity to catch and correct the mistake.
So, commenters, what's your favourite way to start a break-up conversation? "We need to talk"?

New Invention: Chocolate Yogourt Pudding

I had my first class of the Winter semester today, Legal Drafting. This means that I'll be posting drawings again soon. (I'll get to the pudding in a minute.) I actually did a drawing in class today. I didn't colour it because it's a small class and the prof doesn't know me yet. I thought he might think I'm bored if he sees me take out my coloured pencils.

So I'll colour the picture tomorrow in Evidence.

The Legal Drafting prof gave us a quote I like:

The goal of the legislative drafter is not to draft a law that a reasonable person can understand.

Instead, it is to draft a law that an unreasonable person cannot possibly misunderstand.

When I got home from school, I decided to boil up some dumplings and broccoli. (I'm coming to the yogourt pudding really soon.) I got the broccoli stem pieces boiling, came up, read some emails and then went back downstairs to add the dumplings. Guess what! I'm out of dumplings. Time to buy more. So my supper was what I believe would be an Atkins-friendly meal of broccoli with spicy peanut sauce. [Dumpling and broccoli instructions here.]

That's when it occurred to me that tonight would be the perfect night to try making yogourt pudding. (I told you we'd get there.)

Ever since I made the Toxic Waste for Halloween, I've been thinking about fun things to do with pudding. I bought a few boxes at the Loblaws on Saturday and just after I bought milk to add to it, I walked past the yogourt section and thought, hey!

750g of (plain) yogourt is just more than 500ml which is how much milk you're supposed to add to the instant pudding. So I just mixed it all together. At the first scent of the yogourt, I thought, oh, no, this is not going to work. But I didn't let that stop me. I kept going with the mixer for the full two minutes. Then I put the bowl in the fridge. Wait, no, first I took a taste of the pudding from the beaters. It tasted good. I removed the beaters from the mixer, licked them off, threw them in the sink and then put the bowl in the fridge.

Five minutes later, I scooped some into a dessert bowl. It had a nice thick pudding consistency and a rich flavour. Almost like a soft cheese cake taste.

But here is the thing that has me really excited. By the time I finished the bowl, I felt like I'd had enough. If that had been ordinary pudding, I would have wanted more. Lots more.