Fact

July 8, 2020

I’ve never been a high-school teacher, but like most people reading this, I spent 5 years on the other side of it. And, like most people, experienced the entire spectrum of really good ones to really bad ones. But one thing they (and we) all knew; there’s an inherent power struggle between the teacher and the class, and it’s delicate. A teacher has to be very careful about playing that balance, especially as it’s twenty-plus students vs. one. Too strict or too mean, and they will lose the respect of the class. On the flip-side, too casual and buddy-buddy and they will also lose the respect… and control.

If you’re a teacher and you’re going to fail, it’s probably better to be over-strict and tough and not care what the students think. At least you’re likely to get results, and who cares about the bad-mouthing that goes on about you outside of class. I had many teachers who were that type. I also had a few, the best ones – who managed to skirt that fine line. They were friendly, relatable and fair… and received the respect due to them. They also got excellent results.

And then there were the few – some that lasted less than a year – that lost the class very near the beginning, and from there, they were doomed. There was no fixing it.

One such teacher that comes to mind was my grade 8 math teacher. He was new to the school, as were we all. But unlike all the other grade-8 teachers, this guy wanted to be our friend… and it didn’t take long for that to melt down, into an hour of anarchy every math class. Those 55 minutes were about 15 minutes of us all yelling “Boring!” in unison every few minutes, 15 minutes of him telling us to shut up… “Quiet guys. Quiet please.”, another 15 minutes of him handing out detention time, and maybe 10 minutes of actual teaching.

His technique for handing out detention was unique; he dished it out 5 minutes at a time. Every noise infraction would net someone 5 minutes, 10 if it was really bad, and he would dutifully write it down in a notebook before continuing to teach… only to be interrupted again moments later. And on Friday, he would read out the list of names and how many minutes everyone had earned. I’m not too proud to say that I was usually on that list, often near the top.

One particular day, we were playing rugby… this teacher had also managed to earn the coaching role for some of the grade 8s; the second and third-tier athletes. In my school, everyone had to play rugby, so… like the whole spectrum of great to awful teachers, there was also that spectrum of rugby players. All the way from world-class down to “he shouldn’t even be dressed to play, let alone out on the field”. I was somewhere in the middle, and on this day, found myself running with the ball, unimpeded, toward the goal line. I rarely found myself in that situation and was already celebrating in my mind… when, out of nowhere, I got tackled… hard.

I should add… in rugby, there is exactly one right way to play, and that is… hard. If you don’t go in as hard as the other guy, you will get hurt. This applies at every level, assuming everyone is pretty-much the same weight. There’s a reason why the world-class players are all monstrously large and very fit; they need to out-class the other guys. In fact, one of my classmates went on to play for the Canadian national team and then professionally, in France. He’s probably reading this, and if he is (hey Rich, what’s up), he’d tell you the same thing – you go in hard.

Except when it’s a full-grown adult vs. a 13-year-old. Said teacher probably could’ve taken a bit off the gas pedal… but he didn’t. And, so… instead of scoring a try, I ended up with a broken arm. It happens, and the teacher felt awful about it, but the rumour that made the rounds was that he’d done it on purpose, to sort of get back at me for ridiculing him in class so often. I don’t believe that for a second; he was a good guy. Too good to be thrown into the wolves with the likes of us, to be honest.

But… that cast on my arm earned me a bit of a free pass for a while. I didn’t change my behaviour in class at all, but when he’d spin around to dish out 5 minutes and see it was me — at that moment casually scratching my head with my broken arm, or making faces like I was in pain — he’d pause, roll his eyes, and turn back around. Until one day, either I overdid it or he’d just had enough… this was maybe 6 weeks later. He turned around angrily, and said something like “OK, Kemeny, that’s enough of this. That’s an hour.”

What? You can’t give me an hour all at once. That’s not fair!

Fair or not, he did… but, I should add, it did little to earn back any respect; from me, or from the rest of the class. He did not return the following year.

Like I said, there comes a tipping point when the respect is gone, and it’s never coming back. And so, as usual, as seems to happen with a lot of what I’m writing about these days, I look south of the border and am noticing something that perhaps is new; perhaps that wasn’t there before. A lot of people – who still have some — are losing respect for the sitting president. It’s important to make that distinction… there’s a huge difference between the actual president… and The Office of the President. This has nothing to do with Republicans vs. Democrats. Or the office of the president. We’re just talking about the man himself. Is he worthy of the respect he feels he’s earned? Worthy of a second term?

Trump is slowly losing his core… his unshakable supporters. After his niece’s book comes out, he’ll lose more. My personal view is that the U.S. can certainly survive another 4 years of a Republican-led government; Democrat too, for that matter. But what it perhaps can’t survive is another 4 years of Trump. The country is pretty fractured at the moment, and it’s telling that it’s taking steps to fix itself in spite of the president and his desires, not because of them. He’s lost the majority of the people, and the people realize what they need to do to fix what’s broken.

But healing takes time. My arm took two months. The U.S. will take years… but it needs to be given a chance.

For those who don’t want to see a second term, and can actually do something about it… and are politically strategizing their next moves… my advice: Go in hard. It’s the only way to win and not get hurt.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:26-07:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |15 Comments
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July 5, 2020

What a beautiful day for a bike ride… so, off I went, on a long one.

Usually, these rides wind up down by the water somewhere… Spanish Banks, Kits, out by Science World, English Bay, Stanley Park. I always manage to wind up at one of them. Today, it was most of them. And certainly, almost always, Vanier Park –- that beautiful, wide-open green space behind the Planetarium. Back in the 90s, when I lived near Granville Island, I was there almost daily. I’d usually walk west from my place… sometimes so lost in thought, I’d suddenly (well, a few hours later) find myself at UBC and have to take a bus back home.

But Vanier Park… there were two reasons I loved that spot. One, my favourite bench (which is still there, overlooking the water) and two… Ray Bethell.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s about to… because if you were ever down there at some point over the last 40 years, you’ll almost certainly remember the guy whose kite flying was so out-of-this-word that it was hard to imagine that what you were seeing was actually real. The guy flying three kites at once; one from each hand, the third tied to his waist, all three synchronized and doing acrobatics that were hard to believe and astonishingly beautiful.

I got to know Ray pretty well back then, and I’d often stop and chat with him. In fact, when he passed away in December of 2018, I wrote a little bit about it… back in the days when I didn’t post much to Facebook, haha. You can read it here:

https://www.facebook.com/kemeny.ca/posts/10156384761247481

And so today, as I was riding around that corner that used to be his turf, I thought about an interesting aspect of his life; he was older than I am today when he picked up his first kite. He then lived another 38 years… where, over time, he simply became the best in the world. As I wrote in that piece, whether you’ve seen him doing his thing or not, go re-live some memories and/or prepare to be astonished. Just Google the name or find him on YouTube. The dark, leathery tan… the wide grin… the unique cap. A lot of tattoos, with a lot of stories to go with them. And, of course, the kites.

It just goes to show, sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. Ray himself had a most interesting life, an eclectic collection of jobs. It was after he retired that he took up kites… which led to sponsorships and world travel and a whole 2ⁿᵈ act of his life.

Especially for those from whom this pandemic has been a life pause/reset/restart… or, at least, has led to some sort of introspection that further leads to thinking “what next” -– there you go. It’s never too late to do something else… and to eventually be doing it far better than you ever imagined.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:27-07:00July 5th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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July 1, 2020

Happy Canada Day, everyone!! … and as I mentioned yesterday, as always, July 1st also marks that tipping point — the halfway point of the year. Although it seems like ten thousand, we’ve only experienced 184 days in 2020. There are 185 days left.

You know how when you go away somewhere, it always feels like you’ve been there forever… but it’s only been a few days. It has to do with how we perceive time. When you’re doing something new, you’re much more “in the moment”… and you remember it, and you remember the time it took to experience it. As opposed to things we do routinely, on auto-pilot. We barely remember it, and time just flies by. Instead of taking the usual way home, next time, veer into some side streets you’ve never navigated. The 5 or 10 minutes you add to your trip will feel like 30. Simply the result of engaging your conscious brain, which then has to actually deal with what’s being thrown at it… as opposed to letting your subconscious deal with it. This year… every day has been something new, something way out of normal, something to remember. And it’s felt like forever.

So what will the latter half of this year bring? Well, I had a long list of ideas, hopes and aspirations for 2020. I wrote those down in late December, read them on New Year’s Day… and like everyone who made resolutions and plans this year, I couldn’t possibly have been more wrong. The old “Wow… didn’t see that coming…” which gets a fair sure of use during normal times… has certainly been worn out.

I reflect today on the fact of how lucky we are… and by “we”, I mean the majority of people reading this… who I assume to be in Canada, mostly B.C. Across this province and across the entire country, there’s no better day to celebrate that. I can’t begin to tell you what this 154th year of this country will look like, though these days, we’re learning a lot more about the great — and not so great — history of this country. For all the good and bad that went into it, and especially these days. acknowledging the bad… and undertaking to do something about it… this is still without a doubt the greatest country in the world. If you don’t believe me, go visit some others. It doesn’t matter where I’ve been or what I’ve experienced… for me, coming home is always the greatest feeling. Landing at YVR and then stepping outside, and taking a deep breath of that crisp, clear air… Ill never get tired of that.

Indeed, my life in Canada began that way, as a little kid… an immigrant, ESL, a whole new culture. I remember my first day in Canada, back in July of 1974… in detail. I don’t remember the subsequent 17,000 or so days anywhere near as clearly. As per above, you get into a routine… but let’s not take it for granted, and be appreciative of what we have. It’s hard sometimes to do that, because we’re so used to it… but as we can see from around the world, it doesn’t take much to send things in the wrong direction. It’s important to remember that, especially these days… we are very fortunate, and we have a lot to celebrate.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:28-07:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , |16 Comments
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Day 96 – June 20, 2020

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of Thai restaurant operators were sentenced to 723 years in prison… each. What egregious crime did they commit to warrant such a sentence? Basically, they lied. False advertising. They sold a bunch of vouchers that they couldn’t possibly honour… things like a full seafood meal for 10 people… for $30. People gobbled up the vouchers, but quickly started running into problems cashing them in… like a waiting list of several months. The restaurant finally pulled the plug and went bankrupt. “Sorry — we can’t keep up with this demand, so we’re outta here”. Not so fast.

This is textbook fraud… fraud 101… and Thai people aren’t quite so tolerant. In 2017, a Thai court sentenced a fraudster to more than 13,000 years in prison.

You don’t just get to say “OK, I lied…”, and move along. And truthfully, around here, lying is a pretty big deal too. A lot of people mess up, and the courts or whatever else deal with it… and that’s that, usually. But if you lie about it, it’s lot more serious. A good example that comes to mind is Martha Stewart… she did something stupid, for a stupid amount of money… a drop in the bucket for her… maybe $50,000. She acted on inside information, and, knowing before the public that a certain stock price was going to drop, sold some shares. So, she didn’t actually make $50,000 — she actually just avoided losing it. Stupid. And she got caught. And if she’d just admitted to it, she would’ve gotten a slap on the wrist, a fine that would also have been nothing more than a drop in the bucket, and the story would’ve been in the news for at most one day. But she lied about it… under oath. And for that, she went to prison for 5 months.

Here’s another word of the day:

Anecdoche: (noun) A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.

There’s a lot of that going on these days. Actually, it’s probably been going on for a long time. There are a lot of people who just like to listen to themselves talk. They often don’t have much of substance to say, but that doesn’t matter… that’s not the issue. They like to talk… at, not “to”, anyone who’ll listen. A room full of those sorts of people is a very special sort of cacophony. But that cacophony is greatly amplified when some of them are liars. And then just change it… it’s not a room of people, who ostensibly could be having real conversations; no… it’s leaders and decision makers… talking to each other, through each other, making it up as they go… contradicting themselves, contradicting reality.

This is what’s it’s like listening to most people with a microphone. This is what it’s like reading most of the news these days. So-and-so said this, so-and-so said that. They talk at each other. They lie. Then couldn’t care less how their exposition is received; they just need to say it, attempt to make it “stick”, and now — frighteningly — do not care when it’s not accepted, because there’s no consequence. There’s no judge, there’s no 5-month prison sentence. There’s nothing. Just take it. Don’t take it. Whatever. Move on.

If these were 5-year-olds, perhaps it’d be fun… watching kids weave their complicated houses of cards… and then watching them get in trouble from the teacher when it all collapses. The thing is, this isn’t kindergarten…. this is the real world, where as a result of lies and the inability or desire to listen, people will die. Lots of them… and some of them, before they die, will feel betrayed and cheated that they were lied to.

My morbid fascination led me to watch a few minutes of this rally in Oklahoma… I was interested to see the background. The crowd behind the speaker (it’s Eric Trump as I write this) is beautifully curated, as always. Lots of red shirts, lots of red hats, lots of white people… but also, strategically placed (perfectly placed, in fact). An Asian guy. A Black guy. Hey, good looking young ethnic people, want to be on TV? Come with me. Very few masks. How do you convince people they’re being lied to… especially when maybe they know, and don’t care? You don’t, I guess. And the consequence of these lies isn’t some ridiculous number of years in prison. It’s serious illness, or worse.

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:25-07:00June 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Interesting Words, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , |6 Comments
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Day 94 – June 18, 2020

Everyone has heard of Schrödinger’s Cat, but there’s a subtlety to that famous experiment that needs to be clarified… which is… it’s not that when you look into the box, only then do you know whether the cat is alive or not. It’s that until you look into the box, the cat is both dead AND alive. If that has you scratching your head, it’s because of course it’s a non-sensical scenario.

The issue has to do with mapping behaviour in the quantum world… to our visible, relatable world. And I’m not talking about the pseudo-scientific vibration energy healing quantum whatever… I’m talking about actual quantum physics, where things work differently at the subatomic level… and one of those things is that some particles, which can exist in one of two states, seem to exist in both… until you observe them, at which point they pick a side. For example, an electron… it has two levels, spin-up or spin-down. When you observe the electron, you can tell which state it’s in. But until you look at it, it’s spinning both ways. Or the polarization of a single photon… vertical or horizontal. And until you observe it, both. In simpler terms, imagine a coin. You flip it, and it falls to the ground. Now try to imagine that until you look at it, it’s both heads and tails… but the moment you look at it, it’ll pick one or the other. Bizarre.

There are problems with this sort of interpretation, and it’s one of many… but the thing is, this behaviour does exist, and it’s the foundation of the science that takes advantage of quantum mechanics. In a typical computer, data is stored in bits… and each bit is a one or zero. In a quantum computer, you have a Qbit… which can be a one, a zero… or both, simultaneously. A simple example, in a normal computer, a Byte is 8 bits, which can represent 2⁸ different numbers (from 0 to 255). But if that is a QByte (8 Qbits), you could theoretically evaluate all 256 versions at once, which on the surface implies a computer 256 times faster. And now imagine there isn’t just one QByte… but many.

Schrödinger had a problem with that, and came up with his famous thought experiment… which led to years of arguments with the greatest minds of the day, like Einstein, Planck, Bohr and Heisenberg (the theoretical physicist, not the meth cook).

At the end of the day though, what’s clear is that while these are all interesting theoretical discussions, and quantum effects can be exploited down at that level, as baffling as the experiments are (and there are trivially simple experiments you can do to actually see quantum effects)… the real world just doesn’t work this way. The “alternative facts” model of reality doesn’t allow for two things to be true at once, as much as some people would hope. The world’s issues aren’t waiting around for us to observe them before they tip in one or the other direction.

At present, depending how you wish to observe it, you might interpret this pandemic to be over. Or, of course, you realize it’s still very much going… and we need to be cognizant of that and respect it. You can’t have it both ways, but this seems to be what’s going on, depending to whom you listen. Schrödinger’s virus.

"If you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It's dying out.” — said Donald Trump, this morning. “No, it’s not”, says everyone else.

I guess it’s a good thing we’re not all subatomic particles, waiting to tip one way or the other. It’s good that while we understand there are indeed two (or more) sides to every issue, many of those sides don’t actually exist on top of each other. There’s some certainty to the fact that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, and there’s no version of political/pseudo-scientific hand-waving that’s going to change that… and we’ll see that in rising numbers as things open back up. Today, Canada went over 100,000 known cases. Let’s hope we’ve all learned something and stick with it… the idea was to get it under control, which, around here, we’ve done. The important thing is to keep it that way. Or we’ll have bigger problems than trying to figure out if some theoretical cat is dead or alive.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:25-07:00June 18th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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Day 93 – June 17, 2020

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led the expedition that led to the downfall of the Aztec Empire. He’s the guy that turned Mexico “Spanish”. As such, depending who you ask, you’ll get very different answers… To the Spanish, he was an adventurous, conquering hero who brought great wealth and pride to his people. To the Aztecs, he was a raping, pillaging, savage barbarian who destroyed and stole their land, their history, their culture and their prized possessions.

That’s a pretty wide and varying difference of opinion, the sort that reminds us that while “History Is Written By The Victors” (Sir Winston Churchill said that, or quoted someone else saying that), it’s not quite so simple. The implication is that when it’s all said and done, those who won get to create the narrative that history will record as facts, shove that truth down the throats of future historians, and that will be that, especially these days.

The obvious example is the current President down south who likes to make things up and hope they stick. This began a few hours after his inauguration, where the relatively trivial and irrelevant claim that his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever — was attempted to be presented as fact. Period. It’s the truth and it’s what’ll go in the history books. Except, of course, it wasn’t true. There were witnesses and cameras and everyone there and pretty much every version of verifiable evidence to contradict that claim, but that hardly seemed to matter. It was presented as “Alternative Facts™”.

Except that the world isn’t quite so gullible. “I guess we’ll move on” seemed to be the general consensus. If the president wants to make things up (3,000,000 illegal voters), etc… we all know it’s not true, so let’s just move on. All the lies are documented, so whatever. One day it might matter; today it doesn’t.

The thing is though, the world seems to be collectively getting sick of alternative facts. False claims, false reports. People are tired of having unverifiable BS jammed down their throats, and the result is an awakening that’s spreading into all sorts of different facets. I’m very interested to see where it all goes. To those who complain we’re erasing history… no, we’re not. Perhaps re-interpreting it, because perhaps the guys who were originally labeled the good guys — the guys who wrote the history… neglected to take into account the other side. We’re not so big on statues around here, but if we were, there’d probably be a few that’d need toppling.

The first one that comes to mind would be Joseph Trutch. Trutch was an English-born Canadian engineer, also surveyor and politician, who served as this province’s first Lieutenant Governor… guiding B.C. during Confederation. So far, so good. But also… Trutch was also horribly racist, and said some things about the Aboriginal peoples that are so vile that I won’t quote them. He also rolled back their previously-agreed-upon land reserves by more than 90%. Maybe in its day, “just the way it is”, but through today’s lens, more than worthy of a good statue-toppling. There’s a Trutch St. on the west side, and there’s one in Victoria. There were some rumblings a couple of years ago… perhaps time to consider changing them. Not much came of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we start hearing about it again. Uncle Ben’s. Aunt Jemima. They had their day. Time to move on.

All of these changes are occurring at the exact same time, when facts regarding something else that’s critical… our health and our economy and the next several years of existence… are all being argued about, with wide and varying opinions.

At the end of the day, we need to know what’s going on. Transparency, clarity, all the rest of it. There are those “victors” already trying to write today’s history, but fortunately, we’re not all ignorant sheep. You can try to convince someone it’s safe to go back to normal, but don’t expect they’ll just believe it. The Vice President says coronavirus is over. Twenty-one states are reporting rising numbers. Some states are shutting down again, the obvious consequence of opening up too soon. And around here… you know what, not great numbers. We would’ve been very happy with these numbers two months ago, but as far as trends go… it’s creeping in the wrong direction. Again, low two-digit numbers aren’t a calamity, but I prefer high single-digit numbers. Let’s not forget, this thing isn’t over… history needs to be written… just not yet.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:26-07:00June 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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Day 91 – June 15, 2020

It was nice to see Dr. Henry and Adrian Dix back on the podium. It’s been a while — since Thursday, in fact, that we got a live update. There’s something so incredibly calming about the way those two present themselves, and their messages. I suppose it helps that they’re reporting good news. The numbers locally are slightly higher than a week ago, but still nominal. No new deaths since Friday. Green data all across Canada today. Might I add, across the country, the new-cases numbers from yesterday and today (+379, +344), are the lowest since March 22nd… when they were heading very quickly in the other direction.

I don’t get stressed watching these reports any more; very calming… very sophisticated… very cultured. Here in Canada, we might take this sort of demeanour for granted… but elsewhere… you don’t have to look too far to see the way different cultures approach things.

Yeah, you know, I was going to write about the cultural differences, between here and south of the border, but perhaps that particular topic has already gotten enough attention from me. I get it. You get it… cultural thing or not, let’s talk about something else.

Like maybe a little follow-up to a post from a couple of days ago, where I mentioned San José, Costa Rica. I spent a fair bit of time down there at the turn of the century, and it was quite an experience. You don’t have to travel far in this world to collide with significant cultural differences, and as per my usual rant of not being ok with “that’s just the way it is”, that place certainly offerers plenty of opportunity to scratch your head in disbelief.

The first thing is… this is the place that U2 had in mind when they wrote “Where The Streets Have No Name”. The streets, literally, have no names. Destinations are defined by landmarks… like the government office whose official address included the words “behind the papaya/watermelon/cantaloupe stand”. Another one was “200 metres east of the bridge, north 300 metres, left at the Alcoholics Anonymous 100 metres, yellow house”. McDonalds, mango trees, large boulders, Antonio’s house, and, on one occasion, “where the bank used to be” — all parts of official addresses.

Interestingly, at some point, someone decided to try numbering some streets… they did some of “downtown”, but the plan seems like it was ultimately abandoned… and nobody uses the street numbers. Why is that, you might be wondering…

Like every other Latin American city, town or village… you will find, right in the middle, the Central Plaza. From there… avenues that run east-west, and streets that run north-south, nicely numbered. So far so good, right? Except… in San José, the avenues north of the plaza are the odd numbers, and those south of the plaza are the even numbers. Want to go from 5ᵗʰ Ave. to 6ᵗʰ Ave? That’s a 6-block walk. And to keep things ridiculously consistent, same with the streets. West of the plaza, even numbers… east of the plaza, odd numbers. A walk from 12ᵗʰ St. to 13ᵗʰ St. will be a very nice 13-block walk. Back in school, you may have asked the teacher… like, teacher, when am I ever going to use trig in the real world? Well, if you’re a kid in San José, there’s an answer to that. Typical word problem…. If Carlito is walking east on 1st Ave, and he just crossed 14ᵗʰ St, and Juanita is walking west on 4ᵗʰ Ave. and just crossed 11tᵗʰ St, who will reach the Central Plaza first? Well, if you take the cosine of the angle formed by (1,14) and then take the tangent of (4,11) and then… oh, wait… more important point… if the question is, “When/where will they meet?”, and you throw into the mix the fact that one of them got lost and asked for directions, then the answer is… “never”. Because for some reason, the friendly people in San José don’t really like to say “I don’t know”. So when you ask for directions, you will always be given directions… very confidently, with specific instructions and finger pointing. And often, they will be completely wrong, the result of someone just making it up because they don’t want to admit they don’t know. I guess there’s another relevant U2 song that applies to that place… “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

It reminds me the time there that we went to the beach; me and a couple of friends. It was a “Beautiful Day” (yeah, U2 song), and the beach was quite packed. Curiously, nobody was in the water. And, there was no lifeguard… the lifeguard stand was empty, but had a red flag. Weird… the water looked pretty calm, with “Every Breaking Wave” (U2, of course) but not a single person in there. To hell with it, we thought… we’ll take the risk of these one-foot waves. We went into the water… it was warm and amazing, and we spent a long time in there. A few people looked our way, but nobody else came in, and nobody said a thing. We eventually left, packed our stuff, and found a nice beach-side restaurant for nachos and beer. I was the only one who spoke fluent Spanish, so I was the one who did most of the talking with the waiter… who asked where we were from, etc. I asked him about the beach — so beautiful, calm water… how come nobody was swimming? Oh… he said… yeah, this morning a whole bunch of sharks were spotted in the water. Oh. Yeah… great, thank you. You'd think one of the thousand people on the beach might have said something. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

Actually, same trip — we went snorkelling… this was a few days later, and the shark thing was still on our minds… but the tour guide/captain assured me, where we were going — no sharks. I wasn’t comfortable with the whole thing… I really had no “Desire” to go… but a group of people wanted to go… so, ok, let’s go. We went out in this guy’s boat… put on the equipment and went in. Some jumped in, others lowered themselves in… and somehow, I managed to scrape my leg on the way into the water. It was bleeding, a tiny bit. OK, I thought, there’s no way I should in the water if there’s any chance of a shark nearby. But the captain was adamant… no no, no problem, don’t worry, it’s fine. I vehemently disagreed, but he really said I should go in. Then I said something like, hey buddy… you’re going to get paid either way. The full price, even if we don’t all go in the water. Ooohhh, ok, yes sir… yes, maybe you shouldn’t go in the water. Yeah, thanks man. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

There’s plenty to learn from other cultures… and if you want to go somewhere cool, “I Will Follow”, but certainly one thing I’ve learned over the years, having travelled to many interesting places… I’m always happy to come home. With Or Without You.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:27-07:00June 15th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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Day 89 – June 13, 2020

Rules are not actually “meant to be broken”… that’s a just a nonsensical way to justify stupid behaviour without wanting to take responsibility. But then again, some rules are stupid — like, genuinely ridiculous… and as I’ve written before (on May 16th, in fact), I have a big problem with people justifying nonsense to me with “that’s just the way it is”. We’d all still be living in caves if that’s how everyone thought.

There are people who “question everything” — and they’re typically insufferable jerks, because apparently they know better… about everything. There are people who aren’t too good at critical thinking, and might believe anything. Don’t try to argue with those people. And… there are people who are both. Just stay away.

There are people, and I’m one of them, who do question a lot… not because, just for fun, I want to be an oppositional jerk… but because if I see a much better way of doing something, I just can’t sit around and let it be. And if there’s a rule that makes no sense to me, yeah… I might break it. Which often leads to an argument with someone whose only fallback position is “because that’s the rule”. I will always defend my opinion, but it can be frustrating.

I was about to write about numerous examples where some version of this is the relevant point… but everything that comes to mind seems to do with airport security. So let’s talk about that. There’s plenty to dig into with that particular example.

I used to have a little screwdriver on my keychain… and when I say little, I mean for eyeglasses. The pointy part was less than 1cm long, and went into a tiny handle. The bottom part of the handle was threaded, so it screwed into the base, which was attached to my keychain. The whole thing was not much bigger than a medicine capsule.

What’s that, asked the TSA guy… I showed him. “You can’t take screwdrivers onto the plane, sir.”

“You’re kidding, that’s hardly a screwdriver.”

“Sorry, that’s the rule”.

“Come on, how can this be considered dangerous?”

“Sorry sir, you’ll have to dispose of it.”

This was a $5 trinket, not the end of the world… but what was further annoying was what else was on the same keychain, including a sort of multipurpose skeleton-looking key which is a flat screwdriver, a bottle opener, a saw, a nail file, a tiny ruler… and a few other things. But it looked like a key, so it was ok. Zero critical thinking.

One time I got stopped “randomly” just as I was boarding the plane, pulled over at that spot where the duty-free hand-off takes place. The guy searched everything…. “Why me?” I asked. “Nothing personal”, he said… “totally random, I just pick every 4ᵗʰ person”. I didn’t feel like getting into an argument with him about how that’s possibly, by definition, the least random way of doing it… I could’ve argued that for a long time, but I’m not sure he would’ve understood it. And anyway, the longer I stood there, the less chance the overheard bin above my seat would still be free. That’d be a total disaster.

There are a few airports in the world where, when you land… here’s how it works. You fill out a customs landing card and simply hand it to the guy. Then, there is this magic gate… with a big red button. You go through one by one and hit the button, and when you do, one of two lights turns on. Green — off you go. Red — search everything. Standing and watching it, it became apparent that it is indeed pretty random. It averaged red about one in five, but there were streaks of green that ran from 3 to 7. One thing that never happened was two reds in a row, and a lot of people had figured that out… so rather than a proper lineup, it was more a cluster of people about to go through who suddenly had to check their phones or make sure the suitcase was properly locked or whatever… but as soon as someone buzzed red, they’d jump into the lineup to be next. OK, I get it.

Unfortunately, one particular time… landing in San José, Costa Rica… I was late, in a foul mood and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Monsoon rains, bumpy landing, dark skies, brutal humidity. Just get me out of here. And to make it a bit worse, so distracted was I by my bad mood that I messed up the approach to the magic gate and wound up 5th behind someone who’d just landed on the lucky red. Dammit. It’s just one of these days. Guy 4 ahead of me, green. Next person, green. Green. Green. My turn….. BzZzZZZzzz. Red. Of course.

“F!@# this BS” was my thought, and I played the stupid gringo card. I obliviously pretended it was green and headed in that direction.

“Señor.” I head somewhere behind me. I kept walking.

“Señor!” — louder but more distant. I was walking quickly.

“SEÑOR!!” — I was at the sliding glass doors and walked through them. My ride was parked exactly where he was supposed to be. I ran, threw my suitcase and myself into the car and yelled at my friend.

“Hammer it!”

“What?”

“GO!”

“What the…”

“Just GO! And take the long way.”

The long way is a windy side-street way of going from the airport to where we were going. In that weather and how I was feeling, it was awful. And though I doubt they threw up any roadblocks for us, who knows. If they did… “Oh, I’m so sorry, mucho perdon, yo no hablo el Spanish, how much pay dinero por favor?!” I wouldn’t try that around here, but in places where rules make no sense, $20 goes a long way in clarifying them.

I’m not here to tell you to break the rules; I’m telling you to think for yourselves. This isn’t a call to anarchy, just a request to think about things that don’t make sense to you, and speak up. Question what doesn’t make sense because society needs that… it’s a critical part of evolving society to the next level. We can’t all just go along with what’s worked for the last 200 years because if we do, that’s how it’ll look for the next 200. People wonder what they can do to make a real change? Start here — question stupid rules. Get people talking about them, and when enough people do, maybe real change happens.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:28-07:00June 13th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , |8 Comments
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Day 88 – June 12, 2020

Have you ever wondered why the number of UFO sightings seems to be way down in recent years? It’s really pretty straightforward… once upon a time, people weren’t walking around with cameras (actually, entire TV studios) in their pockets. All UFO stories were relayed by word of mouth. Nobody would’ve expected a person to have a camera on them, and when pictures did show up, it was one-offs… look, a bright blob in the sky… the only reasonable explanation is aliens who’ve somehow managed to bend the laws of physics and time and space… and after their journey that must have taken millions of earth years, decided to just park 50,000 feet above the ground for a few minutes before speeding home for another few million years. Yes, that is indeed the likeliest explanation.

Truth is, if a flying saucer of any sort showed up today, it would be seen and captured by thousands of people. It would be on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter… from a thousand different angles. The fact that’s never happened should tell you something. And to be clear, there are unidentified flying objects all the time — unidentified by you and me. But rest assured, someone probably could identify it. And they wouldn’t tell you it’s little green men.

Funny story about UFOs though… I’ve never seen one, but I did cause a bunch of people to see one… and since this was in 1987, in the middle of the desert of northern Chile, there was nobody around with a camera… and here’s the story. My cousin and I had driven past a guy on the street selling fireworks. Side-note, in many places around the world, Chile among them, every time you stop at a red light, you will be accosted by a salesman of some sort. And they’re not all selling dingy crap… sometimes it’s ice-cold sealed bottles of water, charging cables, hats, cigarettes. But sometimes it is total crap. And sometimes it’s animals, like a skinned rabbit turned inside out. You usually keep your windows rolled up for those ones.

Every corner, someone is hocking something. And so, at some intersection, some guy jumped out with… fireworks… no idea why he had any or where he got them, but it was interesting enough to pull over and check out his stash. We bough a bunch of stuff, including a curiosity you wouldn’t see around here, at any of the firework pop-up shops that show up near Halloween.

What it was… was an open-bottom hot-air ballon, made out of wire and tissue paper. It was pretty big — fully inflated, maybe a 5-foot diameter ball of wire and paper that held a big candle in the “basket”. Does this thing really work, we asked… oh yes he said, very well… and proceeded to explain to us the process of unwrapping it and inflating it… after all, fire and tissue paper aren’t always going to go together well. OK, so cool… let’s get it… and we did. And on one of the following nights, we went a few km. out of town into the middle of the pitch-black desert (pitch black except for the crystal-clear, star-filled southern night sky, a real-life planetarium) and fired off a bunch of fireworks… and left the ballon for last. But eventually we got to it.

My cousin sort of held the balloon “up” while I lit the candle and held the basket straight and flat to the ground. Very quickly, the thing inflated… it was very impressive how little time it took to heat up the air underneath the ballon. Within 2 minutes, he didn’t need to hold it up… it was a big, glowing ball… and that air was hot, and pulling very hard… and I’m not exactly sure at what point I was supposed to let go, but eventually I couldn’t really hold it… so I let go, and the thing shot up into the sky, surprisingly quickly. It was incredibly impressive. Up it went, very quickly and very high. Ooooh. Ahhhh.

And then… well, the air isn’t necessarily still at certain altitudes. The wind caught it, and it started to drift toward town. Oh shit, that’s not ideal. And then… the wind caught the basket and candle, and ever so slightly tipped the basket to the side, causing the candle to come closer to the edge… like the edge of the bottom of the balloon itself. You know, the tissue-paper ballon.

What happened then was really impressive to see, even from far below on the ground. It caught on fire, and it was all entirely consumed within seconds, the entire thing engulfed in flames. For a few seconds, it was an impressive glowing fireball. Of course, that quickly became nothing more than a very hot mess… a collection of burning wire, which came crashing to the ground. Oh, the humanity.

We ran over to where this mess of wires hit the ground, glowing hot and still slightly burning…. and did the responsible thing and called the fire department. Ha ha, as if… no, we just buried it all in sand, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t still there today.

But the next day, no pictures… but a lot of people had seen it Did you guys see the UFO? What UFO we asked… oh yeah, this big glowing ball in the sky around 10pm. Oh yeah… no, didn’t see it. Oh, you missed it… it was huge, like 10 feet tall. An hour later, the story we heard was 20 feet tall. 30 feet… someone saw it land. Someone saw what might have been an alien. Someone’s dog barked, and it never barks; maybe more than one alien. By the end of the day, it was a full-on War of the Worlds.

We kept our mouths shut, because during that time, the country was still under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and breaking laws wasn’t a good idea. There was enough illegality about all of that, that talking about it was a bad idea; but hearing the story get taller and taller… that was amusing.

Anyway, as we’ve recently seen, the ability for anyone and everyone to be able to document what’s going on around them is leading society to new levels of accountability — which can only be a good thing. “Because I said so” is no longer an accepted threshold for the truth, no matter from whose mouth it’s emerging. This is where I’d end up saying something that someone might conclude is a Trump-bashing sort of statement… but I don’t need to. Like with UFOs, look at the evidence (or lack thereof) and make up your own mind. When things are going downhill and the top guy is saying things have never been better, you don’t need to have take a graduate course in critical thinking to figure it out.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:28-07:00June 12th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Travel Stories, Humour, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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Day 86 – June 10, 2020

Back in 1992, I went to a rock concert — Metallica, at the Pacific Coliseum… the Black Album tour, arguably their best. A very memorable concert, but before the show… something just as memorable…

Back in those days, like today, you stood in line to get checked by security before going in. Back then, they weren’t looking for guns or knives, though of course those would be confiscated… they didn’t even care about drugs. But alcohol, and the bottles that would house it — that was the big no-no. My friend and I were good little boys, so no concerns. We waited more than 15 minutes for the line to slowly snake its way to the doors, but we finally got there… and then this happened: My friend went in first, and the security guy frisked him…. and frowned. “What’s this?”, he asked…. “Huh?”, says my friend…. “Oh… oh shit… uh… oh boy….” and reaches into some lower hidden pocket of his relatively thick winter jacket and pulls out… a grenade.

Not a live grenade, of course… just a $5 army-surplus “hey, that’s pretty cool” sort of grenade. I imagine if this were today, some undertrained overzealous security fill-in would scream out “GRENADE!!” and there would be pandemonium. But back then…

“Yeah, I’m afraid you can’t take that in with you.”

“No… no, of course not. I’m so sorry. I…”

“You’ll have to check it.”

“… check it?”

“Yeah, coat check… go in, turn left… far wall, there’s a coat check… leave it there.”

“…”

“…”

“…. Ok.”

So in we go, turn left, go to the far wall to the coat check… he puts the grenade down on the counter. Coat check older lady doesn’t bat an eye… she picks it up, tapes a number to it, gives him the corresponding number, and puts the grenade on the shelf behind her. He hands her $1. Surreal.

After the epic concert, we’re herded out along with the rest of the unruly mob… and we’re far from the coat check, on the other side of the building. “What about your grenade?”, I asked him, as we approached the exit. His response strongly implied he wasn’t too interested in retrieving it.

Every time I see a grenade (which isn’t too often, notwithstanding the Bruno Mars’s song 10 years ago), I think about that grenade. I wonder what became of it? Did it sit on that shelf for a while? Did it make its way down to the Lost-and-Found? Is it still in some “Forgotten stuff people have left behind” pile in some basement storage room? It probably made its way into someone’s home, and when that person is asked where it came from, I wonder what they say.

This is the sort of story that wouldn’t happen today. Even here in Canada, where we’re a lot more chill than south of the border, but still. At one point, I suppose it was ok. These days, no way.

While I’ve been around, Vancouver has gone through three growth spurts, timed with three relevant events… Expo’86, the late 90’s handoff of Hong Kong back to China… and, more recently, the 2010 Winter Olympics. All of them brought lots of people to the city… and many of those people liked what they saw, and decided to stick around.

Those three events shifted the identity of this city… growth, diversity… some degree of “world-class”ness… creating different versions of time and place. Context. A grenade today on a U.S. city street during a protest? Serious problem. 30 years ago at a concert in Vancouver? Not so much.

It’s interesting how I always manage to tie-in some distant historical curiosity of my life and make it relevant to this present-day pandemic. And, more recently, tie it into the societal changes that are occurring. There’s no magic in my writing… it’s just the simple fact that history repeats itself, more often than we think. In concrete terms, pandemics have been reappearing for as long as man has been around. So have protests. And concerts. Same old stuff, dressed-up to be relevant as the flavour of the day. And whenever these days, you’re finding yourself thinking, wow… this is unimaginable. This impossible. This can’t be happening.

Yes, it’s imaginable, possible and it’s happening… again. Because it’s happened before. And it’ll happen yet again. It might look different… H34N87. COVID-68. Civil unrest because the [X] people are sick and tired of the [Y]’s people treatment of them.

We are living in interesting times, but let’s be clear… we’re not that special. Most people have lived through their generation’s versions of the same things. The key aspect is… did they learn anything from it? Have we learned from what they’ve learned, or are we doomed to make the same mistakes?

Yup… some rhetorical questions answer themselves.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:04-07:00June 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , |14 Comments
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