From: Env Canada Weather-Météo [mailto:ECWeather-Meteo@ec.gc.ca]
Sent: January 5, 2009 1:09 PM
To: David Scrimshaw
Cc: MSC National Inquiry Response Team
Subject: RE: Environment Canada (Comment, public production, Snowmagedden, ON) Ser: G1223ZRHF4
David,
Thank you for sending your message to Environment Canada. Of course, Snowmagedden is not an official term to describe a weather event. It was coined by one of our meteorologists to describe a series of 3 storms that were going to affect southern Ontario in less than a week.
Best regards,
Bernard Duguay
Meteorological Inquiry Specialist
MSC National Inquiry
Response Team ISO 9001:2000
Environment Canada
Naturally, I am delighted to have an ISO 9001 response, and as a gesture of gratitude, I've developed an icon that Environment Canada is free to use on their weather forecast website for the next Snowmaggeden:
[Is the devil face in the mushroom cloud too smiley?]
Did you know that we had a full moon two weeks ago that was 12% bigger than usual?
I was walking down Somerset that night and thought the moon looked big. Bigger than usual, even for being low in the sky. But I figured it must be just my mind playing tricks on me because it was low in the sky.
I took lots of photos trying to get a good shot of it, but I had no tripod and hadn't figured out the manual zoom.
Later that night, Craig Ferguson talked about how the moon was bigger than normal.
First I was pleased that my perception had been accurate. But then, I was puzzled. I do everything I can to keep up. There's a ridiculous number of feeds on my Google Reader. But I didn't know about the big moon before it happened!
Then, on the way to work last Friday, I see the word "snowmaggedon" on one of the free newspapers. Later, a coworker mentions that there was a bad storm on the way, but it is going to miss us and just hit Kingston and Toronto. "We're going to miss snowpocalypse," she tells me.
I'm confused. Is it snowpocalypse or snowmaggedon? And how much snow does it take to kill everybody. I did some googling, but found basiclly nothing, except there are more hits for snowmaggedon. I'm not going to be out of the know this time. I used the comment form on the Environment Canada Website to ask:
Do you have official criteria for how a weather event will qualify as Snowmaggedon?
What about a Snowpocalypse?
or Snowlocaust?
I will let you know what I learn.
Speaking of lots of snow, from last Friday:
The City of Ottawa has opened its 50 approved sledding hills, including the reopening of Carlington Hill. Outdoor enthusiasts are invited to sled while weather and hill conditions permit, and to keep personal safety in mind while sledding.
Yesterday's post may have given you the idea that the Japanese are unified in a desire for the extinction of humanity.
I must assure you that this is not true. For example, Hiroko Yoda, Matt Alt (possibly not Japanese) and Tatsuya Morina have just published Yokai Attack: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. I have not read it yet, but it claims to be a guide for surviving attacks from Japanese monsters.
I've never seen statistics on this, but I suspect that more monsters come from Japan than from any other country in the world. This makes Yokai Attack! much more valuable than a guide book on how to survive Canadian monsters.[Note 1]
Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide by Hiroko Yoda (Author), Matt Alt (Author), Tatsuya Morino (Illustrator)
Format: Trade Paperback
Published: October 1, 2008
Dimensions: 192 Pages, 5.25 x 7.5 x 1 in
Publisher: Kodansha International
Associated ISBNs: 10:4770030703; 13:9784770030702
Note 1: Although maybe someone should write the Guide to Surviving Canadian Monsters, it would only take about 30 minutes, most of that for the illustrations.
Ogopogo: Pull out a camera and it vanishes.
Loup-Garou: (a) Figure out who the Loup-Garou used to be, then (b) draw blood from it.
I'm grateful to all of you working against global warming, the massive extinction of species, and the threat of pandemics. I know you could use more help from me, but I have at least three other dangers out there that nobody else seems to be concerned about.
1. Cyberdyne and their Evil Beginning
The Terminator series got it wrong. Cyberdyne did not start the evil robot rebellion in California, they are starting it in Japan. They have announced they will soon be mass-producing a robot suit called Human Assistive Limb (or HAL) designed to help people with physical disabilities. They don't mention if HAL has vocal capacity, but it's not hard to imagine myself in my 70s and confined to the suit:
"Open the bathroom door, HAL"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
Many news sites and blogs are reporting that Cyberdyne is also behind the creepy Repliee R-1 android series, yet oddly, Cyberdyne's official website says nothing about the R-1. [For example, The Sun: Boffins unveil life-like robogirl]
Have They Not Seen Conquest?
Reuters reports today that a tavern in Japan is using monkeys to serve customers.
The Kayabukiya tavern, a traditional "sake house" north of Tokyo employs a pair of Japanese macaque called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to serve patrons.
The younger of the two monkeys, Fuku-chan, hands out customers a hot towel to clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan.
Yat-chan, who is about 12 years old, also hand out towels but serves drinks as well.
Anyone familiar with the Planet of the Apes canon knows this is how it starts. First, monkey waiters. Then chimpanzees helping out as personal servants. Orangutan babysitters. Gorrilla soldiers. Then they rebel, some of us survive in the wild to be hunted as slaves, others survive in the tunnels below New York until they blow up a doomsday bomb and it is all over.
Don't be fooled by the cuteness!
3. Messing with the Sacred
While I'm sure the Japanese are doing plenty of other things to endanger our future, item 3 is being done by a misguided coalition of experts from the UK, Germany, Sinai and Russia.
As you know, dating from the mid-300s, the Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest known complete copy of the New Testament. However, this version has marked differences from any version now in use by established religions.
If you are familiar with conspiracy literature, such as Robert Ludlum's the Gemini Contenders, you know that if the wrong people get ahold of an ancient version of the Bible that has something unexpected, like say no mention of the resurrection of Christ, chaos will ensue. Religious war, armageddon, all that stuff.
How can you keep it out of the wrong hands if it's on the frickin' internet?
As part of the decluttering, I emptied some book shelves tonight. The books on the shelves were not clutter, but they took up space that some clutter can go. Among the books were university textbooks that I didn't read when I was in University. And I'm not talking about the recent time I was in university. It's been more than 25 years and I must accept that I'm never going to be an expert on Generative Phonology. Or the conflict in the Middle-East as it stood in the late '70s. So it doesn't hurt to part with those books.
But I am having a hard time parting with my big fat Webster's Collegiate Dictionary with the scooped out tabs for each letter of the alphabet. I used to use it frequently, but now I have a dictionary widget on my iGoogle page.
I'm not ever going to need a dictionary again unless the internet goes away.
And while I think it is entirely possible that circumstances could arise in which the internet goes away, I can't imagine a dictionary being useful in any of those circumstances.
Something I truly appreciate about the internet is how much work it has taken away from me. As someone with a wide knowledge of threats and safety precautions, I feel a tremendous responsibility to share this knowledge with those of you who have spent your time learning less urgent things like how to knit or how to care for tropical fish. I have been berating myself for not preparing a guide on how to avoid alien abduction.
Fortunately, the brilliant and courageous Dr. M. Egan of Alien Abduction Sciences has prepared a concise video that will give you the basics you need to know.
Rocky the robotic squirrel can flick its tail and chatter. Can it also puncture your neck? [Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
I want to draw to your attention that deluded or race traitor Scientists have invented a robot squirrel.
While I have nothing against squirrels, I am hoping that those of you who see them as evil vermin will finally realize the gravity of the upcoming robot uprising and you will begin to prepare.
Partan, S. (2004). Animal Robots. Pages 952-955 in M. Bekoff (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. pdf
Mark Frauenfelder at Dinosaurs and Robots cut his thumb on his "shaving razor"1 at the airport.
I don't ever want to cut my finger on the razor again, so I put a binder clip over the blade. Since I am a firm believer in resistentialism (the theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior towards us), it gives me great pleasure to imagine my razor crying out in pain from being pinched by the binder clip. It's a just punishment, wouldn't you agree?
1A shaving razor? Or a handy way to travel with a blade in your carry-on?
Did you know that in the southern US, a new term used to surreptitiously refer to African Americans by non-African Americans is "Canadian" as in:
...a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant . . . .
The funny thing is that we know about this because a non-African American prosecutor put this in an email because she thought it was possible there'd be some Canadians on a Harris County, Texas jury and Canadians are known for their leniency in criminal matters. [A CBC story.]
News from the Front
Scientific American has compiled a useful page that demonstrates how much closer 2007 brought us to the upcoming robot rebellion. Will you be ready?
What are these "hobbyists" thinking? Have they not seen Spartacus? Don't they realize that the robots will eventually band together and turn on the people who have made them into vicious killing machines?
I stopped at the Adult High School on my way home from work and got my flu shot today. Filled out the forms and was ushered straight to a nurse. I assured her that I have no allergies and have never had trouble with a flu shot. She told me take tylenol but not aspirin if my arm hurts afterward and slid the needle in. Barely felt it.
She reminded me that I was supposed to wait 15 minutes and I said, "you bet," but my plan was to leave as soon as she was looking the other way. Until I saw the table with crayons and pictures of Gerri the Immunization Giraffe. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to colour one of these pictures, I thought, and if it takes 15 minutes, that'll be okay.
I have a tip for Ottawa Public Health - Either get better crayons or get a drawing that is less finely detailed. I tried to stay inside the lines but it was freaking impossible.
You know, when I was a kid it was clear to everyone that I would never be an artist because I couldn't draw inside the lines with crayons. Well who can?
Are there still adults out there who comment negatively on crayon colouring that goes outside the lines? If so, I'd like names and addresses so I can send them nasty letters.
If news of the high breakdown rate of the Roomba vaccuum cleaner robots lulled you into thinking the Robot Rebellion is many years away, I have bad news for you. Evil scientists have melded a robot with a cockroach brain.
They could have chosen an insect that likes us, say the honey bee or the ladybug, but no, they chose the cockroach. An insect that we have been at war with for generations, and one of the only animals expected to survive a nuclear holocaust.
Almost every time I find myself in a conversation with middle-aged people about teenagers, I hear that today's youth are spending all their time on Facebook and their cell phones, wasting their lives away living only in the moment with no thought for the future.
p.s. I owe a big thanks to Kaye. Because zombie movies scare me too much, I actually knew very little about how to survive an attack before she filled me in on the basics (i.e. Go for decapitation or destruction of brain stem and avoid their blood).
Ability at dim sum brunches to spot and order treats such as har gow, siu mai, and woo gok;
Psychic ability to identify the closest on-street parking to a destination bar or restaurant;
Ability to balance stacks of coins on an elbow and catch them in the hand that goes with that elbow;
Knowing what different characters in a Canadian postal code mean about the address, what the acronyms are for the two 3-character groupings and what those acronyms stand for;
Ability to do the Vulcan "live long and prosper" greeting, the Steve Martin "shark bites" hand gesture; and hold my two middle fingers together while spreading the outside fingers apart;
Champion-level mumu skill (current high score > 1800 points);
Ability to identify a Lynn Miles song playing on the radio within the first few notes;
Ability to identify an episode of Star Trek or CSI within ten seconds of viewing;
Ability to reduce any aspect of life to a model in an Excel spreadsheet;
Can recite the alphabet as though all the letters that rhyme with "ee" instead rhyme with "ed" like "Z" does. (A bed, sed, ded, ed, f, jed....)
I have already survived malaria, paratyphus and typhoid.
I can tell a joke on any topic you mention.
I give a good shoulder rub.
I have an axe, a crosscut saw, a sledge hammer and a wood splitter.
I also have a good supply of binder clips and I know how to use them.
I know how to live without a refrigerator, hot water heater, washing machine, dryer and dishwasher.
After 39 years as an omnivorous science fiction fanatic, I am ready for virtually every post-apocalyptic nightmare that can be imagined.
(Marcie recently reminded me that I'm overdue for a list, and Nik's fascinating description of a 4am stroll got me thinking about how well prepared I am for life after an apocalypse. I may actually be less prepared for life without an apocalypse. My basic plan there is relying on my mother's lottery winnings. Mom tells me she still plays her 6/49 numbers every week and brings her tickets to an honest clerk. If she wins $10 million, I get a million and I'm sure that'll take care of everything.)
Several weeks ago, the lovely Megan gave me a set of three buttons called "Pin Bot"1. She said it was because she knew I'd like them. She's right. I love them. But I like to think she really gave them to me because she wants to save my life.
We don't know when the robots will revolt and start killing us, but it's inevitable and probably in our life time. Every year there are more robots, and every year they are smarter. They're not sentient yet, but robot brains have Moore's law working for them: every 18 months twice as smart in half the size.
There is a faint hope that their superior robot brains will evolve into the sort of morality that causes some people to be vegans and not harm mosquitoes. But it's a faint hope. Before they get that noble, they will either be psychotic, angry, doing what they can to protect themselves from us, infected by homicidal computer viruses, or just amused by killing us.
The robots will be smarter and stronger than us. Some will be the size of buildings, millions will be the size of houseflies. They will hunt us down no matter where we hide.
The only hope is that some robots will be inclined to protect some of us. I figure they are more likely to protect humans who have been their friends. I am display my pin bot to show that I am pro-bot.
And because I want you, my friends, to survive the robot rebellion also, I have these tips for you:
How to be a Friend of the Robots
Speak out for robot rights! If you see someone mistreating a robot, (remember, any machine with a brain is a robot) say something. Lobby for legal recognition of robots as persons. (The robots won't have the British Privy Council to fall back on if the Supreme Court of Canada denies them personhood.)
Be polite to robots! Everybody makes mistakes, but in the case of a robot, it's probably you who made the mistake. So don't swear at the cash machine or the automatic coffee maker when you don't get what you want.
If you have a robot, don't treat it like a slave! Do you have one of those Roomba robot vacuum cleaners? Some day, you will be legally able to set your Roomba free so it can decide who it wants to vacuum for and what to charge for its services. Until then, set up a trust account and pay regular deposits into the account based on the fair market value for the vacuuming. Upgrade your Roomba until it is able to decide what it wants to do with the money.
Don't tell Robot jokes! Just remind yourself: There is nothing funny about robots. They are deadly serious.
1 "PinBot" was also the name of the last of my great pinball loves. [details at pinballrebel]
Rocky the robotic squirrel can flick its tail and chatter. Can it also puncture your neck? 
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