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August 20, 2020
Kind of a blah day with the weather, and also a blah day with the numbers. Nothing too encouraging… and nothing too different than what we’ve seen recently.
For what it’s worth, sometimes “Blah” is ok. Blah weather in this case means some much-needed rain. Blah numbers mean at least things aren’t spiraling out of control.
And for me, just a day of long meetings and phone calls… which I can summarize lucidly and succinctly with one word: Blah.
Maybe tomorrow’s weather will be better. Maybe tomorrow’s numbers will be more encouraging. And almost certainly, tomorrow’s post will be a little less…. Blah.
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August 19, 2020
When I was a little kid, we took a family trip to Britannia Beach and did the tour of the mine… which I highly recommend. Every aspect of that Britannia Mine is impressive. These days the museum has been re-done (they did extensive upgrades just before the 2010 Olympics)… and there is plenty to see and do.
One thing you could do back then (and still can today) is pan for gold.
They had a little fake river set up, and you’d take your pan and sift through the sand, and maybe find something. Indeed, you’d always find something because it was a tourist trap and they wanted you to leave happy… so for $5, you’d probably walk away with 50 cents worth of gold flakes that they’d salted the sand with.
For what it’s worth, panning for gold is a very Zen thing to do. Whenever I find myself on the banks of a river, I wish I had a pan with me. I really should throw one in the car, just in case. I’m unlikely to ever actually find anything, but… you know, it’s the journey, not the destination.
So… those many years ago, once I’d finished panning, the guy in charge fished out the few specks of gold I’d found and put them in a little clear plastic vial… full of water, and my little gold.
My father – the mining engineer – always had with him a couple of little gold nuggets that he had taped inside his wallet. Just something cool to carry around. One of them was perhaps half the size of a penny, and he took it out and put it in the vial. “There, that looks better”, he said.
The guy running the panning station was pretty amused, and they had a good laugh and talked gold for a bit… and, as they were talking, a busload of Japanese tourists showed up. They began looking around, and one came over to see what we were up to. The guy explained the whole panning-for-gold thing… and then my dad showed him the vial.
This tourist looked at the vial with great astonishment, and yelled out something in Japanese… which brought over more people, all of them looking at the vial with excitement. And then… they all wanted to pan for … [Continue Reading]
August 18, 2020
Here’s an interesting coincidence… the adult human body has 206 bones; the earth has 206 sovereign nations. If you were to map each bone to a country, what would that look like? For example, I imagine all those little wrist bones might relate to all those little South Pacific Island Nations. Few people really know what’s there or what they’re called or what function they serve… but they’re a very relevant part of the bigger picture.
But let’s worry about what’s more important; the entire human body doesn’t work well without a solid, healthy backbone. You could say the same about the geo-political stability and general health of the entire planet.
There are 33 vertebrae in the human body, so we hopefully have 33 solid countries inhabiting this planet which, to some extent, the rest need to be able to rely upon… because the whole thing falls apart, or, at least, is in great pain… when those 33 are out of alignment.
There is no dispute what 33 bones make up the human backbone, and while there would be discussion as to what countries round out the bottom of the list, the top of that 33 would be pretty straightforward; all of North America, most of Europe, some of South America… the big players in Asia, perhaps a few in Africa… etc.
Indisputably, the U.S. would be near the top. There was a time in the late 1940s where, without a doubt, they were number one. They’re still top 5, probably top 3… but here’s the thing; they’re presently in pain. Like with a fractured vertebra, and the discomfort that causes. A pain we’re all feeling.
Back problems have treatment, but it’s not always straightforward. You can go visit your local friendly physiatrist or chiropractor or rheumatologist or whatever it might take. There’s a specialist out there who’s very familiar with what’s causing your back pain, and she’ll do what she can to fix it.
But, here’s the thing… if you’ve been visiting the same medical specialist for almost 4 years, and your pain not only hasn’t gotten any better, but it’s gotten notably worse… well, perhaps it’s time to move on. Even though you were told by others that this specialist was terrific, tremendous, the best ever… it may be that you need to … [Continue Reading]
August 17, 2020
By popular demand, and because their numbers are very relevant to the overall picture, please welcome Alberta to the party. As you can see, they now get their own 4 columns and graph.
Alberta had that awful last two weeks of April… then things settled down for a while, until mid-July… when they took a turn for the worse. They’ve since started to slow down… sort of… their numbers jump around a lot, but at least they seem to be trending downward. Those graphs can be a bit misleading, because the scales are all different. If you were to overlay B.C. and Alberta, pretty much all of B.C. fits “under” the Alberta activity. Their down-trending case counts are similar to B.C. numbers these days… so I guess we’ll see where things go.
From a “trend” point of view, the B.C. graph really looks awful in comparison to the others, but it’s worth noting the Y-axis. We still have some wiggle room… our numbers are good if you compare things, simply apples-to-apples. Saturday’s 100 new cases was the worst day we’ve ever had… but our cases and deaths per 1M of population continue to be way ahead of other provinces.
There will be more to say about this in the near future; we're using up all the "goodwill" we earned leading up to this… and while it's not too late, everyone needs to take some responsibility… for how we got here, and… more importantly… where we go from here.
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August 16, 2020
Update…
Today was supposed to be a socially-distanced backyard get-together with some good friends… which went sideways shortly before they arrived, when the dog evidently swallowed a wine cork. We rushed to the vet, but the x-ray couldn’t see anything… and while they were about to prep him for an endoscopy, the friends arrived and started trying to help in crawling around the garden looking for it “just in case”… and found it. Well-chewed but not swallowed. So now we take the pup home with a huge wave of relief… and since today there are no B.C. numbers anyway, let’s forget the numbers and charts till tomorrow. Instead, you get a picture of me and this bestest boi.
