New Age Resolutions
Core Values
All I can say is that a year ago my life changed - and looking back I wouldn’t have it any other way… Happy Birthday Cavan Alexander… You are becoming such a wonderful young man - I love you with all my heart! I would also like to say Happy Birthing Day to my wife, an amazing mother to say the least! I love you and every day I am more proud of you than the last! I love you both so much!
Totally behind on getting these up. Some of you may be wondering where the infamous "couch picture" is… well Facebook Admin deemed it "obscene" and took it down. You can see the shot in all it’s glory here:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3504/3737251452_798ecd6f6d_b.jpg
We’re rebels… what can I say.
I can only add - please exceed 2.1
iStarBadger
Posted 1 month ago at 11:18 pm. Add a comment
Tobacco and Lifespan
How long (on average) to live by Country
Country
(years – average lifespan)
Date of the estimation
1
Monaco
89.68
2012 est.
2
Macau
84.43
2012 est.
3
Japan
83.91
2012 est.
83.75
2012 est.
83.07
2012 est.
6
Andorra
82.50
2012 est.
7
Guernsey
82.24
2012 est.
82.12
2012 est.
81.90
2012 est.
10
Italy
81.86
2012 est.
81.50
2012 est.
12
Canada
81.48
2012 est.
13
Jersey
81.47
2012 est.
14
France
81.46
2012 est.
15
Spain
81.27
2012 est.
16
Sweden
81.18
2012 est.
17
Switzerland
81.17
2012 est.
18
Israel
81.07
2012 est.
19
Iceland
81.00
2012 est.
20
Anguilla
80.98
2012 est.
21
Netherlands
80.91
2012 est.
22
Bermuda
80.82
2012 est.
80.80
2012 est.
24
Isle of Man
80.76
2012 est.
25
New Zealand
80.71
2012 est.
26
Ireland
80.32
2012 est.
<snip – snip>
78.49
2012 est
<snip –snip>
147
Bangladesh
70.06
2012 est.
<snip – snip>
217
49.72
2012 est.
218
Swaziland
49.42
2012 est.
219
South Africa
49.41
2012 est.
220
Guinea-Bissau
49.11
2012 est.
221
Chad
48.69
2012 est.
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 4:38 pm. Add a comment
Game Theory and the Higgs Boson
Game Theory can get very mathematical very quickly and that’s a shame as it’s a very good Theory of how the world works. I am a math guy by training so it works for me.
1./ Zero-Sum Games are fair games in which nothing is lost. If one player wins a bit that win is exactly matched by the loss of the other player. You can generalize this to games with many players.
An example could be a cake that is cut in a dozen pieces. Of course that isn’t quite ZERO. There will be crumbs that are lost to everyone.
2./ Most of the games most people can play in life cost more than a few crumbs. If you go to Las Vegas you might win but most likely you’ll lose in part because the house takes a percentage for itself.
That said the Las Vegas Games aren’t that bad compared to the State Lottery Tickets that guy in front of you is buying at the 7-11.
3./ On the other side of Zero-Sum are games with more winners than losers. Crop Insurance. In Ontario, Canada, there is crop insurance that is based entirely on the weather with no reference to the actual yield of the crop insured. When Castlehom was a commercial farm not a website the cash crop was Hay Insurance.
The Federal Government put up 25% of the actuarial payout, Ontario put up 25% and both paid for the cost of operating the plan. In other words for every million dollars Ontario Farmers put into Hay Insurance two million is paid out. In my case when I started out this was so crazed I could not believe it. I ask some of the small farmers and their answer was “we don’t gamble” combined with a combo of not having the coin in the Spring and a belief that they could beat the odds this Summer. Suffice to say I insured the clover fields @$150./acre the rough wild grass pasture @$30./acre. Beyond that it was a matter of rainfall and sunshine. Nothing to do with actual yield. Generally there would be a payout if it was a dry summer and no payout if it rained normal or better. Since I had more land than I could handle a dry summer was a double payout to me as dry meant I got the first cut off without loss and was paid for the second cut I didn’t need. Over the first ten years farming the net gain or profit was about $100,000. I’m not bragging. Crop Insurance is rigged to payout twice as much as the farmers pay in. That said a farm run as a business will still look carefully at the programs based on actual yield. I am here simply giving an example of how a well intended gov program can be gamed. You simply must buy as much “hay” insurance as you can as over time it has an ROI of 200% on the margin. It scales from 7 acres to 7,000.
IN 20/20 hindsight I should have farmed in P.Q. as the farm supports for cow/calf are way better, I’d have learnt french, but amori fati as had I done that it is more likely I’d still be married.
I trust you are aware crop insurance reverts to a unfair lossy game when we include the non-farmers contributing without direct benefit.
I’m going to close on the Higgs Boson. On a day-to-day basis the universe as we know it is a zero sum game. Everything is conserved. By everything I mean everything. If they do the E = mc2 trick at CERN every thing balances – for every electron that is created there is for a brief instant an antimatter electron – a positron. Don’t believe me. Go Goggle!
What is the explanation for the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the Solar System and all the Stuff out there. We can’t make Stuff without making anti-Stuff. But something did and the best we’ve got as a suspect is the “Big Bang” at the very beginning. We say that by a process of elimination. Yes there is an anti-matter factory at CERN but we can’t save or contain the product. It’s gone in an instant.
I take it – the Stars – the Stuff – as grounds for an intense optimism. It is proof of concept. It can be done because it has been – at least once.
Every finite game we can see or perform is on the lossy side of ZERO-SUM – but Big Bangs create something out of nothing. It won’t be in my life time and it isn’t the Higgs Boson but give us a few billion years and we’ll figure it out.
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 6:07 am. Add a comment
U.S.A.F. Bombers
The XB-70A Valkyrie was a large six-engined aircraft. Two were built at a project cost of 1.5 billion dollars. XB-70A and used in supersonic test flew as fast as Mach 3.. One prototype crashed following a midair collision in 1966; the other is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_wing
B-1 Lancer[N 1] is a four-engine variable-sweep wing strategic bomber. First envisioned in the 1960s as a supersonic bomber with sufficient range and payload to replace the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, it developed prim-arily into a low-level penetrator with long range and super-sonic speed capability at high altitude.
The Convair B-58 Hustler was the first operational supersonic jet bomber capable of Mach 2 flight.[2] The aircraft was designed by Convair engineer Robert H. Widmer and developed for the United States Air Force for service in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the 1960s.[3] It used a delta wing, which was also employed by Convair fighters such as the F-102, with four J79 engines in pods under the wing. It carried a nuclear weapon and fuel in a large pod under the fuselage rather than in an internal bomb bay. Replacing the B-47 medium bomber, it was originally intended to fly at high altitudes and supersonic speeds to avoid Soviet fighters. The B-58 received a great deal of notoriety due to its sonic boom, which was often heard by the public as it passed overhead in supersonic flight.[4]
The introduction of highly accurate Soviet surface-to-air missiles forced the B-58 into a low-level penetration role that severely limited its range and strategic value, and it was never employed to deliver conventional bombs. This led to a brief operational career between 1960 and 1969, when the B-58 was succeeded by the smaller, swing-wing FB-111A.
The B-52 has been in active service with the USAF since 1955. The bombers flew under the Strategic Air Command (SAC) until it was disestablished in 1992 and its aircraft absorbed into the Air Combat Command (ACC); in 2010 all B-52 Stratofortresses were transferred from the ACC to the new Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). Superior performance at high subsonic speeds and relatively low operating costs have kept the B-52 in service despite the advent of later aircraft, including the Mach 3 North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the variable-geometry Rockwell B-1B Lancer, and the stealthy Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. The B-52 marked its 50th anniversary of continuous service in 2005: after being upgraded between 2013 and 2015 it will serve into the 2040s.[N 1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing
The genesis of the B-36 can be traced to early 1941 when it appeared that Britain might fall to the Nazi ‘Blitz’, making a strategic bombing effort by the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) against Germany impossible with the aircraft of the time.[3] The U.S. would need a new class of bomber that could reach Europe from bases in North America,[4] necessitating a combat range of at least 5,700 miles (9,200 km), the length of a Gander, Newfoundland–Berlin round trip.
The USAAC opened up a design competition for the very long-range bomber on 11 April 1941, asking for a 450 mph (720 km/h) top speed, a 275 mph (443 km/h) cruising speed, a service ceiling of 45,000 ft (14,000 m), beyond the range of ground-based anti-aircraft fire, and a maximum range of 12,000 miles (19,000 km) at 25,000 ft (7,600 m).[7] These proved too demanding—far exceeding the technology of the day—for any short-term design,[5] so on 19 August 1941 they were reduced to a maximum range of 10,000 mi (16,000 km), an effective combat radius of 4,000 mi (6,400 km) with a 10,000 lb (4,500 kg) bombload, a cruising speed between 240 and 300 mph (390 and 480 km/h), and a service ceiling of 40,000 ft (12,000 m),[4] above the maximum effective altitude of all of Nazi Germany’s anti-aircraft Flak guns, save for the rarely deployed 12.8 cm FlaK 40 heavy Flak cannon.
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The pix here illustrates the essence of the swing wing – it’s two different aircraft – one for subsonic performance the other for sonic. Enough said or said by the pix! The link says more. http://virtualskies.arc.nasa.gov/aeronautics/3.html
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 10:24 am. Add a comment
Down but not out.
Leonard Cohen 101
If there’s a defining image of Leonard Cohen’s career, it’s the cover of his 1968 debut Songs Of Leonard Cohen. He cut a dashing figure, with his suit and his middle-class businessman’s haircut. Already well into his 30s, Cohen was thoroughly out of step with contemporary rock music, but to his credit, he didn’t pretend to be a Hippie. Instead, his natural-born outsider status instantly made him a cult figure among similarly disaffected and alienated listeners. Over the course of nearly 45 years as a recording artist—right up to his wonderful new album Old Ideas—2012 NOW. Cohen has never commanded the kind of broad popular appeal enjoyed by peers like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Paul Simon. But the level of commitment among his small band of followers is intense. To Outsiders, Cohen’s reputation for po-faced miserablism—has earned him the ironic nickname “Laughing Len”—his songs seem deceptively turgid, joyless, even shlocky in their seemingly overbearing seriousness. But if you’re on Cohen’s singular wavelength, his penetrating examinations of the human condition brim with wit, lust, wisdom, and a timeless melody.
In 1968 I moved to Ottawa as likewise this famous gang had a few years earlier. The pix is a better capture of their essence than I can write. It captures the swagger. Yang/Yang no Yin. We met; we intersected at 150 MacLaren St..
Pelletier had the “gang” Penthouse and Marchand had a modest 1-bedroom Apartment as likewise did his then mistress: a multi-lingual Estonian Beauty. Tiu spoke french, english, german, russian and spanish, pitch-perfect; I’ll wager she’d be able to “ace” the essential “500 words & phrases” in any tongue real or imaginary from mandarin to hobbit in a single day.
There were eight Penthouses on the 13th floor of 150 MacLaren St.. It appears the Building is under construction this 2012 from this pix I’ve lifted from Google Maps. Go to the Street View and look up. The little 1 bedrooms Apts are on the lower floors. When I was there (if my memory serves) there were two elevators opening on the back of the front Apts.. The Penthouse I rented was on the right-side back of the building. On the left-side was a Penthouse rented by a homosexual dentist, then one by Pelletier, then one by the Iceland Embassy, 8 in all, these three units plus mine will serve for the story here. I mention’d the dentist’s orientation because every few weeks the Elevator Lobby would be vandalized – sometimes bad enough to take a few days to fix. I know I’ve already posted or emailed about this - but for the newbies – there’s a lot about being a queer “every body knows” which is anything but gay. Gay is Ad Age miss-direction. The Dentist was not a happy camper. Or so he said. I think he was the bitch. We used to walk to work together the days we left the building at the same time in the morn.. Same Story with Pelletier. I am surprised how Canada went Nutso and followed this “Odd Bunch” of French Cdn. whose loyalty and identity was to less than all of Canada. I said it’s complicated. They were honest. They were there for Quebec and proud of themselves. “We’re billingual and you’re not.” I had fewer walks with Pelletier than the Dentist. I doubt he was homosexual or cheating on his wife and nobody but Trudeau was Trudeau. What I admire about them “then and now” is that they were what they were.
In the case of Trudeau – his crazed risk-taking – at the highest levels of governance and personal license was a miracle I’d not believe but for that I saw it with my own eyes and one degree of separation. So did many of you reading this Post. He walked on water. Dressing up in NAZI Costume is something the voting population knew he’d done as part of his draft-dodging WWII. For a few magic years it seemed Trudeau could do anything he wished - and so he did – almost everyone in Ottawa that mattered - went along - whether it was the Mounty getting him a Pizza or a Looker. Finally we had a swinging P.M. who dates Stars like Barbra Streisand, Liona Boyd and Margo Kidder. As Leonard the Poet says, “Everybody knows” but what “Laughing Len” meant is “knows what is really going on”, the acts not the words, the practise not the theory.
“Women loved Mr. Trudeau and he loved them back. He was far more comfortable with them than men, especially if they were young, gorgeous, lively, artistic, left-wing and a bit flaky.”
Remember when Margaret Trudeau tried to tell her side of the story. Nobody want’d to believe her truth. The Truth. So she went to Studio 54.
“Personally, if I were Margaret, I would have cold-cocked the guy. As a husband, Pierre was critical, emotionally withholding and deeply old-fashioned. “Reason before passion” was his motto, but obviously he forgot it when he married her. They were doomed to make each other miserable. After they split up, he insisted on custody of the children and cut her off with scarcely a dime…”
Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, Toronto.
Tiu was a Director at the National Gallery. She never talked about Leonard but there he was - usually at the Deli with an opinion on whether to order lox or pastrami. In the bedroom. Absolutely. It’s all good. I wonder if she’s alive. If she ever got back with him. I saw her ten years later going thru the AirPort in Van., B.C. on my way to Boston.
There are days (today for example) I wonder why we (including myself) allow ourselves be so miss-directed by the news. It’s not that “It’s all lies.” It’s that it is never so simple. It is as above. If you were there you know “It wasn’t like that!” - if you try to explain it - you can’t – sometimes not even to yourself.
Marchant was 50 when I met him. In the steam room. Jean Marchand, PC, CC (December 20, 1918 – August 28, 1988) was a well known French Canadian public figure, trade unionist and politician in Quebec, Canada. Under Pearson he was appointed Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and later of Manpower and Immigration by Prime Minister Pearson. Under Trudeau he held many senior portfolios. He was Minister of Forestry and Rural Development from 1968 to 1969, Minister of Regional Economic Expansion from 1969 to 1972, Minister of Transport from 1972 to 1975, a Minister without portfolio from 1975 to 1976, and Minister of the Environment in 1976. He’s been dead a long time. When I met him he was at the top of his game. I said it’s complicated and it is. I owe much of my “success” to Jean. He never lost himself losing Tiu. Just the opposite. Was he a Good Sport and/or a Liberal? I don’t know? It was “beyond good and evil” and “human all too human”. He was my leg up in Ottawa and beyond. The beginning of my meeting key people like Bernard Ostry (via Tiu dot dot her via Jean). Ostry later ran TVO. He was my key speaker for “INSIDE VIDEOTEX”, Telidon, leading to Grassroots, Phoenix Data. It all connects. I knew that at the time and I have not forgotten that I didn’t get those plums by hard work my Boy Scout Merit Badges or my M.A., P.Eng.. Thank you Jean. I needed my degrees and skills to do the work, cook the plums, but without your cheatin’ heart it never would have happened: my life.
If you want me to LOL tell me life isn’t fair but it should be. It can’t be!!!
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau CC, CH, PC, QC, FSRC (
/trʊˈdoʊ/; French pronunciation: [tʁydo]; October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000), usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.
Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals, but he joined the Liberal Party of Canada when he entered federal politics in the 1960s. He was appointed Lester Pearson’s Parliamentary Secretary, and later became Minister of Justice. From his base in Montreal, Trudeau took control of the Liberal Party and became a charismatic leader, inspiring "Trudeaumania". From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, he dominated the Canadian political scene and aroused passionate reactions. "Reason before passion" was his motto.[1] He retired from politics in 1984.
===============================================
Too bad I never learnt spanish from the lady. I was her “Ricardo”. I remember the music; I’ve forgot the words. That’s the muddle of it.
iStarBadger
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 7:56 pm. 3 comments
Random Notes
There is nothing I am going to post here and elsewhere that has not been posted somewhere else better. If you are looking for the expert on life, love or the lotto please remember: that’s not me. BUT!!!!
#1 They are not going to find the Higgs Boson – not at CERN, not this year, no time soon. Surfing the net I’ve read that working scientists were giving odds of 4:1 or 80% amongst themselves that it will be found this year: 2012. If you find anywhere - real money with real book makers - who are dealing (Las Vegas?) please text me. 305/407-4152. Even if I’m reading the odds backwards a bet of 80% that it will not be found is a gamble I’d take, i.e. You show me a Higgs Boson and I pay you $800.00 otherwise you pay me $200.00.
#2 I am still a libertarian. I am also still a socialist. In action and in words. That isn’t a contradiction it is an “it all depends”. I recently created some confusion within my inner circle so I’m posting here for reason I trust will be self-evident. Here’s the short explanation: Read the warranty or rather the license which comes with Microsoft Office. That’s metaphor but the best I can do.
#3 A long time ago on Big Island where once there was a real Castlehom: Ashleigh, Devon, Shannon, Kathleen and myself were having breakfast. KV and I were arguing about something and that lead to her running out to the J20 3/4 ton Truck intending to drive to Toronto. (back then the J20 was Blue – in this pix you can see a basketball hoop on the “upper barn”) 
I ripped the driver-side door off the truck and she tore off - sans door. Later in the day KV came home and made supper as if nothing had happened. That seemed like a good idea to me. I’d thrown the door up on the lower shed next to the main barn. It stay’d there a few days. I took the J20 to town and had the Dealer in Picton put the door back on. Cost ~ $200. My recall is that Devon ask me what he’d have to do to be able to do that and I told him a story about lifting a calf every day - till it was too heavy to lift. Devon got a set of weights. I didn’t have a different story for Shannon, Ashleigh or KV but none of them started lifting weights. In hindsight I know now the incident affected all of us but differently and exactly how - that’s their stories not mine. I’ve told you my story. I appreciate it can be spun to something else and over time I trust it has. Or not. Suffice to say that on that day we were all in love and a family and life was good. No one and certainty not KV was fearful of me. I never hit or hurt any of them, my loves, then and/or now (need I say that today at 71 that capability is non-existent on my part but existent on theirs). My story to myself this 2012 is that if I had stay’d farming and stay’d fit we’d still be as tight as we were that day – maybe moreso. I won’t say - because amor fati – you get what you get. I DID. In my case – I deserve it. MY FATE. No one made me do the J20 trick. Note: I am not reaching for a last word or an “I told you so”. The game is still afoot.
#4 “Love means you don’t have to say you’re sorry.” Unfortunately regardless of my protestations of eternal love for my ex-wives and children I AM SORRY AND HERE SAY SO - I crossed a line the other day – I think about a week ago – I called kv. Her # was on my cell phone. I HAVE SINCE ERASED HER # AND EMAIL. She didn’t pick up. Given what ensued I was lucky insofaras at least I can say the next 28 minutes was her call albeit arising from my error WHICH I HAVE FIXED. As soon as I answer’d her call, she ask me if I had called, I said “I did” and there I was in a toxic conversation I’ll remember and regret till I die (my dying is a particular sore point with kv as the Drs. promised I’d be dead in 1995). “Didn’t I understand her life was none of my business.” Suffice to say she is absolutely right. I do understand. “Sorry Kathleen.” In my defense I had only learnt a few days earlier that my first wife, the Delightful Donna, had died a few years ago. I’d just discover’d David Wallis my RAF colleague (Battle of Britain) was still alive and well (92). In an instant I got silly. I mean why would kv give a tinker, tailor about people she divorced me to stop hearing about! Esp Shannon! OKAY. FULL STOP. I am still 12-stepping ‘cause that’s what I do do. Who IAM. Suffice to promise; I’m going to leave her in peace a decade. I’ll call her in 2022. She could have been the Gov. Gen. Canada. WATCH MATT DAMON IN “WE BOUGHT A ZOO” – HIS 20 SECONDS OF COURAGE ON THE TRAIN TO OTTAWA – rent the movie – IT’s ALMOST WORD FOR WORD – OF COURSE SHE HATES ME. IF I WERE HER I’D HATE ME. ESP IF MID-GAME I LOST THE ZOO. BUT THAT’s NOT MY STORY. I SOLD THE ZOO. BUT YOU KNOW MY STORY – IT NEVER CHANGES. AMOR FATI.
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 5:31 pm. 5 comments
How to live to 91
.one way is to be interned at auschwitz-birkenau.
Posted 2 months ago at 11:20 am. Add a comment
1, 2, 4, 16, 256, 65,536, 4,294,967,296, …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SkneoNrfadk
